Dead Low Winter. T.K. O'Neill
if they’d gotten me. Must’ve figured he was lucky in at least one way.
One thing about Nick, he’d do anything to protect his holdings. The string of low-ball rental properties, the two dive bars and his precious antique store gave the fat man a nice cash flow. But he still continued to invest in his little brother’s fast-money deals. I guess Nick couldn’t help himself; the more he had, the more he wanted.
Younger brother Sam’s personal capital was born out of a whiplash scam he’d pulled off a few years back. Used the insurance money to set up a sports book. Book as in “bookie.” He was also good at investing his brother’s money in drugs and having some fool like me do the retailing for him.
It was a natural progression for me to start selling, I guess. I was just going with the flow. At first it was weed and that was no big deal—like I had a history with that stuff. Getting a student loan and using it to buy weed was common practice when I did my stint at university.
Everything was going along all right there for a while. But then a ten-pound load I’d fronted out got popped and I was suddenly a maximum debtor to the brothers. And when you owed money to them, you were the collateral. They owned you and they made you feel it. You were on call twenty-four hours a day just to keep up with the interest. No job was too small or too large when you were into the Cross brothers’ pockets.
What choice did I have? I just went along with what they said. They knew guys who would kneecap you for a few bucks, the sheer joy of the act being the main reward.
So what do you do if you’re in debt? You up the ante.
So I started selling cocaine, the new drug on the Cross brothers’ menu.
And then I got into real debt.
The next guy around the poker table was a Greek sailor name of Miko, a small wiry guy with tight black curls, long thick sideburns and a bushy coal duster mustache. He wore a blue denim shirt worthy of a first mate on a boat docked in town, which he was. Miko was a last minute replacement for the captain of the ship who had begged off to tend to some late-breaking emergency. That’s what I was told, anyway.
Miko tapped his cards on the table and brushed away my offer of a draw. The stand-in was standing pat.
The game was draw poker, Jacks or better progressive, trips to win. This meant that every time a hand was played where no player possessed three of a kind or better, the cards were reshuffled and a new hand dealt. As long as you didn’t fold you were still in the game. The pot carried over and kept growing from hand to hand. It was one of Nick’s favorite games, and he usually waited until near the end of the night when most everyone was half drunk before requesting it. Tonight he was scrambling to find any game that might bring a large pot—big enough to recoup his losses.
We were, like, eight or nine deals into this one and I think we were on Queens to open. It’s pretty unusual to go that long without a winner but some nights the cards just shut down for a while. There was a small fortune in the pot. Nick and Sam were betting and bluffing like lunatics and going through all these crazy tics and scratches and movements of body parts like they were warming up for a third base coach-impersonating contest. Nobody else seemed to take notice and this made Nick even more brazen. One time he raised his right eyebrow so high on his forehead that it nearly blended in with his receding hairline.
The next and final player was Peter McKay, brother—or half-brother as Sam told it—of John McKay. Also Deputy Mayor of Bay City. He was a tall one with close-cropped, sandy hair and big ears that stuck out a little more than average. Not quite Dumbo but getting there. He had a square head like G.I. Joe and was wearing an ugly green polyester sport coat with a darker green turtleneck underneath. A heavy gold watch flashed on his left wrist and a gold ring sparkled from his right hand. He fingered the ring while he studied his cards.
The guy made me nervous. Dude had a pushy, prying way about him like a cop or a high school principal. And his eyes were cold when he smiled. Guess I just wasn’t used to high society. I was thinking he was getting wise to Nick Cross and his spastic routine, when Peter grimly asked for two cards.
Sam Cross was ready to bet. He fingered a pile of chips, smile still on his face and a Marlboro dangling from his lips, a small flake of ash resting on his oily brown beard. Brought to mind a pudgy Bob Dylan. He took a hundred-dollar bill from the pocket of his baggy seersucker trousers, wrapped it around a fifty-buck stack of chips and pushed it all into the mix. “Hundred and fifty beans,” he said.
Mayor McKay called and then looked at his watch.
Nick Cross raised it fifty, all the while licking the left corner of his mouth and scratching his chin with his index finger. He kept glancing over at Sam. That was the scam, see. According to Sam they’d done this when they were kids. He told me they had some sort of psychic connection on account of they were so close as children, and they could almost read each other’s minds. These signals they were exchanging were supposed to communicate what cards one possessed or didn’t possess and other things, like when to raise or call. I was kept in the dark about the meaning of the individual signals. They had to keep some secrets, they said.
Remind me never to play poker with you, I said.
They already knew enough not to play with me.
At this point of the evening even I thought I could read Nick’s mind: You fuck this up, Sam, you’ll never get another cent from me as long as you live, you scabby little cockroach—which may not be very long if I don’t win, you fucking dirt bag.
After Nick’s raise, Tom Geno folded, much to Nick’s distaste.
Miko was up next. He sucked hard on a Camel squeezed between his first two fingers, smoke curling around a tattoo on the back of his right hand, some kind of fancy sword in the middle of some flowers. There was at least a thousand of his cash in the pot already, from my guess, and a lot less than that in his shrunken pile.
Miko counted his chips carefully. Touched them softly one at a time and then slowly slid all but one into the pot.
I thought for a second Sam Cross was going to lay them down and give us the old read- ’em-and-weep. But suddenly Miko chirped up in an accent as thick as the syrup in a baklava. “I like to make raise,” he said, “but I have not enough cash. May I write marker? This I have for collateral.” He slid back the high-backed oak chair, glanced briefly at the knock-off Tiffany lamp hanging above the poker table and bent over at the waist. Pulling up his blue denim pant leg, Miko reached inside his black calf-high boot and lifted out a small handgun, set it on the table for us to appraise. Nick looked nervous.
Miko’s voice rose. “Is this value for marker? Any takers?”
“No markers to foreigners,” Nick Cross snapped.
John McKay grimaced and glanced over at his brother Peter who grinned thinly and put his hand to his upper lip to cover the oncoming sneer.
Sam Cross said, “Let me see that. I’ve always wanted a sweet little gun like this, I—”
“You’ll blow off your putz with that thing, Sammy,” growled Nick. He had a sour look and was chewing on a cigar.
“This is Walther PPK,” the Greek said, putting his palm down on the table next to the finely crafted pistol. “The double-oh seven—James Bond—he use this to kill many communists. Is worth seven hundred American.”
Sam said, “I’ll give you two bills—two hundred—for it.” He waved casually at his considerable winnings. “But if you want it back, it’ll cost you four—whether it’s tonight or next week. Savvy?”
“Is not enough. Is worth seven hundred.”
“Take it or leave it, pal, the clock is ticking,” Sam reached across the table and picked up the gun. Miko eyed him suspiciously.
Mayor McKay said, “Yes, please do,” his tone superior and weary. He stubbed out his cigarette in a square glass ashtray. ”If I would have known you were bringing a gun, Miko, I certainly would not have given my okay for you to join our game. Did you