Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

Danny’s boys hung close but not too close. The mook in front of me had on an enthusiastic expression like he was daem"cring me to try to run around him. I thought about picking up a chair and cracking him across the face, but I thought that probably wasn’t the best way to proceed. I was there to keep things from getting out of hand, not to start a riot on my own. I waited.

Finally Danny glanced up from his cards and waved me over with two fingers. The soldier moved aside and a path was cleared to the table.

“What, no dog this time?” Danny asked. “Figured you had him trained to read cards and bark out the suits. Arf arf! Queen of diamonds! Woof woof woof! Nine of clubs!”

His boys laughed because they had to. The Chi guys went along with it and smiled even though they had no clue.

My uncles knew exactly why I was there. Mal seemed a little disturbed but Grey was curious, his eyes a bit hot, wondering how this would all play out. He grinned at me and gave me a nearly invisible head wag. He wasn’t telling me not to join in. He was saying, You’ve got balls, kid, getting laid last night must’ve really fired you up to jump back into the game .

There was an empty chair on Danny’s right. I swung it around and squeezed in on his left.

“So deal me in,” I said.

“You need ten g’s to join us.”

Like his father, Danny didn’t bother speaking in code the way some of the other outfit guys did. They would’ve said ten bags of cement or ten slices of bacon or something equally stupid. Big Dan didn’t believe in speaking stupid in his own place, even if the feds were tapping him. Danny was following suit.

“My uncles will spot me,” I said.

“Sure,” Grey said. He gave me the wag again. His eyes were even brighter. He was enjoying himself. He paid ten grand, collected the chips, and set them in front of me. They didn’t amount to nearly as much as I would’ve thought.

Danny’s dealer did have a three-card bottom drag, just like Mal had said. The guy kept folding the aces back into the deck to feed Danny. It didn’t mean anything to Mal or Grey. I saw Mal cut the deck once and knew he’d snapped a face card out and palmed it. I had to fight to stay in the game, though. I sat next to Danny so that I could pull his discards and load myself up. I had wide pockets and kept them stuffed with at least one card each. Danny had a penchant for going for flushes. It was dumb, but it made it easy for me to cheat on his behalf. Once I knew what he was after, I could aim a suit in his direction.

Grey and Mal both had the minutest of tells. No one else would be able to pick up on them, but I could see exactly when my uncles were about to squeeze a pot or feed each other cards. Their cross chatter distracted the others, but I tuned it out. I managed to upset their juke and steal some cards they needed along the way. I fed the pot when they wanted to go light and I threw in my cards when I shouldn’t have.

I was down a couple of grand, which wasn’t so bad considering how little I cared about my own hands. I wasn’t nearly the card manipulator my uncles were. Not even as good a player as a couple of the fat cats. But I was lucky during the game. I managed to swing some tight inside straights and pulled a full house twice on the last card.

Danny had been worried that with three Rands in the game he and his friends would be cut to ribbons. Instead, he was up, with the Chi guys down. I think it made him feel secure, like he was getting back at them a litmysctle, showing them that, like his father before him, he could be in charge and take their money whenever he wanted.

Every now and then the conversation would get risque and someone would tell a dirty joke and Grey and Mal would feed into it like it was the funniest thing ever. Mal’s heavy laughter resounded across the Fifth and made heads turn. The girls kept coming around with drinks and taking food orders. I knew they were shills who would be glancing at our cards and giving Danny the information with coy body language. Wes kept mostly clear of the scene, popping over only every once in a while to make sure nobody was getting too badly bent out of shape. He was a good man to have around. I wondered how many times he’d kept Danny from going to war.

My nerves were tight. I tried not to make eye contact with my uncles. Grey still seemed to be having a good time, talking women, talking about the best places in Chi to eat, to score, to shack up. Mal didn’t talk much when he wasn’t chattering with Grey. He looked too intimidating. No one ever wanted to start a conversation with him.

It was never foremost about the money for them, just the skill of working the cards. They had as good a time fighting me for control of each hand as they would have had scooping in the pot.

About three hours in, the effort started to put a real strain on me. It was exceedingly difficult trying to keep everything as even as possible, to shield Danny from my uncles’ maneuvers. I wasn’t going to be able to hack it for much longer. Grey knew it. He nodded to me, a sign of respect.

I’d done my part. Danny still kept giving Mal the stink eye from time to time. Maybe he was showing off. It made sense. If he wanted to look hard in front of the Chi syndicate, he would’ve picked the biggest, meanest-looking guy in the room. Every so often he’d try to embarrass us the same way the guard at the prison had, by saying our entire names. “Malamute, you want another celery stick or are you going to step up to carrots now? Greyhound, I like your aftershave, reminds me of a good time I spent in a Parisian whorehouse when I was seventeen.” The Chi boys were used to fucked-up names and didn’t cut a grin. Their current boss was Nicky D’Amico, who’d been nicknamed “No Nose” because he suffered from asthma.

I’d been in the game long enough. If anyone’s luck changed too radically at this point, it would look extremely suspicious. Mal and Grey weren’t going to be able to juke Danny or the mob tonight. I wasn’t sure what I’d accomplished really. I’d screwed my uncles’ score. They weren’t going to like it. They were going to come right back here during the next big game and steal another forty grand, minimum. Maybe more to make up for their loss tonight. I’d bought a little time and pissed them off in the process.

It was after midnight. I cashed out. I’d won an extra two hundred bucks and left it as a tip for the waitresses.

Danny said, “Calling it quits?”

“I know better than to push my luck.”

“I’m not sure about that, Terrier. There’s a lot of things I might say about you. But that you know when to fold probably isn’t one of them.”

“I do tonight.”

I stood. I gave a nod around to the other players. Mal and Grey eyed me and I knew how it would go down. They’d play another hour, maybe win a grand or two each, and then fold up. I was going to get an earful.

ȍ lR1C;Maybe that’s good then,” Danny said. He thumbed his widow’s peak, took a swig of his drink, and wiped his face down with a cocktail napkin. I got the feeling he was working his way up to saying something that wasn’t going to be nice. I thought I should scram fast.

“Right. Have a good night, Danny.”

“So tell me, Terry. Did you snuff her?”

I froze. I knew he was talking about Cara Clarke. His timing was bad but he was asserting himself again. Mal and Grey both stared at him like they wanted to give him a smack. Everyone had heard the news. It was on everybody’s mind.

Who’s the guy who’d come home after five years and talked to his mass-murderer brother right before one of the victims’ sisters had been snuffed in the same place and pretty much in the same way, hmm?