Ronald Malfi - Snow

“Anyway, Kate was right,” Bruce said. “No sense sitting around here wasting time. You two good to go?”

“Good to go,” Todd said.

“Good to go,” Brendan said, too. Yet his eyes, which never left Molly’s, told a different truth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In the gloom of the hallway outside the computer room, Todd sat on the floor with his back against the wall, loading fresh rounds into magazines. He could hear the others talking in hushed tones farther down the hall in one of the offices.

Setting the gun down, he managed to wrangle his wallet from his pants without having to stand up. He opened it. The folded racing form was still inside—the racing form that was stained with his blood.

It was a winning ticket, the one that had ended his unfathomable losing streak. That one race had been his last chance, knowing that it would be all or nothing, and that he had no other choice. He’d bet to win, the name of the horse—Justin Case—almost prophetic in its allusion to his son. And it had seemed God was smiling down on him that sunny afternoon, because the motherfucker had won, had come in first. Todd had not only won enough money to pay back Andre Kantos, but would also have some left over for the next few months’ rent. Needless to say, Todd had been flying high when he left the Atlantic City Race Course.

Kantos and his men had picked him up in the parking lot of the track. They were leaning against his car, four or five of them, each only uglier and angrier than the next. He’d already had a few run-ins with Kantos’s men, the most recent one outside a Manhattan bistro where two of them smacked him around a little bit—a run-in that had hurt his pride and his conscience more than his face and ribs. But he knew Andre Kantos meant business; he wasn’t going to be able to put him off for too much longer.

Todd had paused in the parking lot when he saw Kantos and his men leaning against his car. The sun was already setting, the sky the color of ripening fruit on the horizon, and his shadow was stretched out long and skinny on the gravel before him.

“This is where I find you,” Kantos said, peeling himself off Todd’s car. He was stocky with large meat-hook hands and a face like a patchwork quilt. His thinning hair was the color of steel wool, greased back off his Neanderthal brow. A diamond stud earring winked at Todd, catching what remained of the sunlight. “You owe me a shitload of money, Curry, and this is where I find you?”

“I was gonna call you tonight, Andre,” he said.

“Well, shit.” Kantos smiled—a grim Halloween pumpkin smile. “I must be a fuckin’ psychic, huh?”

“I’ve got your money.” He’d produced the cashier’s check with the racetrack logo in the corner. One of Kantos’s men came over to him, plucked the check from his fingers, and nearly pressed his beaky nose to it as he examined it. Todd also showed him the racing form. “See? I’ve got it.”

Kantos came over to look at the check and the racing form. His beady little eyes glittered. When he turned back to Todd, there was a dispassionate sneer tugging at the corner of his pocked face. “You know, Curry,” Kantos said. “I take it back what I said to you last time we met, about how you’re one unlucky son of a bitch. Maybe I had you pegged wrong. Maybe you are lucky. What are the odds, right?”

Some of Kantos’s men grumbled with laughter.

Andre Kantos took the cashier’s check and folded it nicely into the front pocket of Todd’s shirt. He did the same with the racing form. His face so close to Todd’s, every nick and pore and crosshatched pockmark was clearly visible. The man’s ruinous little eyes glittered like polished jewels.

“So I guess I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning with my money, huh?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Kantos turned and lit a cigarette. “I hate motherfuckers like you who get lucky when the cards are down. Luck is for slouches and losers, Curry. People too afraid to cut their own way rely on luck. I ain’t had a day of good luck in my life, you know that?” He turned to one of his men—a beastlike guy with a mug like an old catcher’s mitt. “Show Mr. Curry how much I hate slouches and losers.”

They showed him.

He’d slept off the worst of the pain in the backseat of his car, too defeated to attempt to drive. Later, he’d had to pull over on the Black Horse Pike where he vomited blood into the bushes at the shoulder of the road. The next morning his face had looked like a Halloween mask and he was certain his nose was broken, along with a couple of ribs and the knuckles of his right hand. (He’d been right on all accounts—it seemed his luck had turned around, after all.)

But the worst was not the pain. It was not the doctor visits or the bandages or the harness he’d worn to bed for weeks until his ribs managed to mend themselves. The worst was that he could not let his son see him like this, that he could not tell Brianna that he had sunk so low. He’d canceled the boy’s visit. And wept like a child himself that night.

Those thoughts washed through him now, a tidal wave of emotion. He felt something heavy in his chest.

“Hey.” It was Kate. In his recollection, he hadn’t heard her approach.

Stuffing the racing form back into his wallet, he looked up at her and tried to summon his best smile. He wondered if she could see through it to the misery and torment boiling just beneath the surface. “Didn’t hear you sneak up.”

“Am I interrupting anything? Did you want to be alone?”

“Not at all. Have a seat.”

She sank down beside him, her back against the wall. “You feeling okay? You look a little…disconsolate.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Disconsolate?”

“It means sad, pensive, melancholy.”

Grinning, he shook his head and put his wallet back in his pocket. “I know what the word means. I just never heard anyone actually say it in a sentence before.”

“But am I totally off the mark?”

“I guess I’m just thinking about things. Giving myself time to let my life flash before my eyes. Just in case there isn’t time for it later.”

“Don’t say that. Todd, you’re gonna find that computer, bring it back here, and help us call the police.” She leaned closer to him. “ All of us. You’re all coming back to save the day.”

He just kept grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t help himself. “What’s this big change in you, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re certainly not the same woman I met last night at the airport bar.”

“Jesus,” she said. “Last night? It seems like a year ago.” She looked at him. “What do you mean by that?”

“You’re not the hard-edged, the-world-can-kiss-my-ass firecracker you were last night.”

Kate laughed. “Oh, brother, believe me—after all this, the world can certainly still kiss my ass.”

“I guess I’m just wondering if this is the real you.”

“I don’t open up to a lot of people, Todd.”

“What about me? You think if we were in a different place and under different circumstances, you would have let me in?”

“No.” There was no humor to her voice. “My parents fucked me up pretty good and now I’m fucking myself up every chance I get. I doubt I would have sat still long enough to see who you really were, had the situation been different.”

“What if I would have asked you out right there in the bar? Forgetting for the moment, of course, that you’re engaged.”

She put her hand on the side of his face. Kissed him. Softly.

“This is a map of the whole town,” Bruce said, pointing to the printout on the desk in the computer room. It was just Todd, Bruce, and Brendan in the glow of the halogen lamp, their weapons already secured on their belts. Each one was armed with a handgun and extra magazines, a shotgun and extra shells, and several rounds of loose ammunition packed into his pockets. Bruce had strapped Tully’s extra flamethrower to his back, the fuel canisters at his waist, while he’d given both Todd and Brendan portable butane torches. Only for use in extreme emergencies, Bruce had warned them, wary about drawing unwanted attention to themselves while out in the open. “This is the sheriff’s station here,” he said, pointing with one steady finger, “and this is the town square here. The whole bird’s-eye view. We’re talking just over a mile to the square then, of course, just over a mile back. You both look to be in pretty good shape, but it can get pretty treacherous moving through the snowdrifts.”