Gun Lake, page 6
The man polishing off a steak at the corner table was the one that worried Sean. He was another stocky fellow, but solid-looking instead of flabby. His arms didn’t bulge with muscle the way Wes’s did, but Sean wouldn’t want to arm wrestle the guy or get in a fight with him. He had a clean-shaven square face and his hair was cut short.
I gotta do that. Sean thought of his long locks pulled back in a ponytail.
The guy looked to be having his dinner after getting off work. Probably shift work, this late at night. Was he carrying? Sean glanced over casually, checking to make sure the guy didn’t have a piece against his thigh. He didn’t think so.
The steak eater just worked on his dinner and ignored Wes and Sean as they sat and nursed their beers for five minutes more. Then Sean looked at Wes and finally gave him a nod.
“Now?”
“Just stay put,” Sean said, taking out his Glock 31 pistol.
“Hey, buddy,” he said to the bartender.
The guy walked over with an empty glass in his hand. “Want another one?”
“No,” Sean said calmly, shaking his head. He pointed the gun at the bartender’s substantial abdomen. “All right, look. We’re going to rob you guys, and if you don’t do anything stupid, you’ll live to see tomorrow. Got it?”
The bartender froze and his mouth hung open. Wes stood up and waved his handgun in the air.
“Pops,” he said, “you over there, come here.”
The old guy at the bar just looked down at them and acted like he was seeing a mirage.
“Wes, hold on,” Sean said as he stood.
The big guy at the corner table was looking at them with full attention, lockjawed and ready for something.
“You, come here,” Sean told him.
The guy at first didn’t move, so Sean walked over toward him and put the gun in his face.
“We don’t want anyone getting hurt. So just stand up and walk over to the bar.”
The man stood up but didn’t appear scared. He kept his arms in close and moved slowly toward where Sean told him. “Sit down—yeah, that’s it.”
They finally got the old guy to amble over toward them. He didn’t have a clue what was happening. He took a seat next to the big guy.
“Watch them,” Sean told Wes, going behind the bar. “Where’s your boss?” he asked the bartender.
“He’s out.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“He left an hour ago. Check the back.”
“Yeah, but why don’t you come with me? And first, give me everything in that drawer. And I know you got a lot. I’ve seen it—looks pretty full.”
The bartender seemed to pause for a moment and Sean aimed the gun at his head. It was amazing the power you had wielding a weapon. If the bartender knew deep down that Sean had no intention of killing any of them, he’d have probably relaxed and stopped sweating like a pig. But that was the thing—a stranger points a gun at your face and you’ll do anything, absolutely anything, because you have no idea who the guy is and what he is capable of.
Capability. That was the underlying factor.
“All right,” Sean said, “now let’s go to the back.”
“What for?”
“So you can show me the safe.”
“There’s no safe,” the bartender said.
“That’s cute. Now go. Wes?”
“Everything’s fine here,” Wes said.
He was holding his handgun too casually. Sean scrutinized the stocky customer for a moment, then decided everything was all right. He nudged the bartender with the pistol and motioned with his head toward in the back.
“Look, I don’t know the combination, and I don’t know—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sean told him. “Just show me where it is.”
The bartender led him into a little cave of an office. The safe sat in the back corner, a massive, refrigerator-sized chunk of steel that looked like it could survive a nuclear blast. It looked shiny, as if the owner actually polished the outside, and it had a fancy round knob, sort of like the steering wheel of an expensive yacht.
“Look, man,” the bartender was saying, “I don’t know how to get that thing—”
Sean interrupted. “See that chair?”
“Yeah.”
“Have a seat in it.”
The leather seat squeaked as the desperate-looking man sat back in it. Sean took a sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and then went to work. He occasionally glanced over at the sweaty bartender but didn’t worry much.
When the safe finally swung open, it was just as Rita had told him.
And then some.
There were several rifles and at least one handgun that he could see. A box contained a stack of cash, more than Rita had figured would be in there. Even the bartender looked amazed at the amount of cash.
“All right,” Sean told the bartender. “I want you to carry this box out there.”
Sean grabbed a couple of the rifles and stuck the automatic handgun under his belt. He still gripped the Glock in his right hand, and he kept it at the bartender’s back as they walked back out to the restaurant floor.
This is easier than I thought it’d be.
15
THE MAN TOOK ONE LAST DRAG of his cigarette, then flicked it out into the full parking lot. He scanned the sea of cars like a father searching for his lost child but saw nothing unusual, then looked down along the Fox River waterfront. No watching eyes, not that Paul could see. Just give it time, he thought. Somebody would show up eventually.
Paul Hedges walked the gangplank up to the loud, colorful riverboat and passed through the ornate front entrance into the casino. He could coast through the huge room blindfolded, but it looked different through the eyes of someone who was leaving for good.
He saw his usual post over past the blackjack tables, a small bar that both waitresses and customers used. That area always had a sour smell to it, the result of too much liquor and beer spilled over the years—a stench you could try to scrub away but would linger until the day they trashed the room for good.
The door marked “Employees Only” opened onto a dim, musty hallway that led down to Mike’s office. Paul knew his manager would be there. They had talked on the phone half an hour ago.
The door was half-open. Paul knocked.
“Yeah?”
“Hi, Mike,” Paul said.
The short, round guy with slicked-back hair held a cordless phone in his hand. He gestured with his head for Paul to come in and continued talking.
“I gotta go. I’ll call you in a couple of hours. Just be up. Don’t fall asleep. Okay baby?”
He clicked the phone shut. “So you’re pretty serious about this, huh?”
Paul nodded. He sat in the chair next to the desk. The gray-walled room felt claustrophobic. No pictures on the walls, not even a window for some sense of life outside.
“There’s nothing I can say, huh?” Mike said.
“No.”
“Everything all right? Anything I can do?”
Paul shook his head. He knew the guy across from him, younger by about twenty years, meant well but wouldn’t have been able to do anything for him if he asked. Wouldn’t really have wanted to, either. It was just a canned response, but it did its job. It made this moment easier on both of them.
“I could use my check,” he told Mike.
“You leaving soon?”
“Pretty soon,” Paul said.
He had finally figured out the smell in the office. Onions and ketchup from some burger joint. Maybe the Wendy’s down the road. Funny. Paul had always assumed the onboard restaurant comped meals for management.
“I can give you the cash.” Mike studied him for a minute. “You in trouble?”
“No,” Paul lied.
“So how much you got coming?” He didn’t ask to see his time card. He knew Paul never cheated on such things.
“Twenty-eight hours. At sixteen bucks an hour.”
Mike reached for the oversized calculator on his desk and rubbed his mouth as he figured out the pay. He reached down and pulled a wad of money from his pocket. Mike always had a pocket full of cash.
“There,” he said. “That’s four hundred fifty bucks. A couple of bucks over.”
“Thanks,” Paul said.
“You’re not drinking, are you?”
The question surprised Paul. In another time, another life, he might have reached over and grabbed the pudgy guy by his thick neck and squeezed the life out of him. Whether he was drinking or not was his business and his alone—at least as long as he got his work done. But the years mellowed you out. At least they’d mellowed him. That and being sober for eight years now. And Grace.
“No,” he told Mike. “Can’t do that anymore.”
“I gotta tell you—you’ve been the best bartender we’ve had. Those others—sometimes I think a prerequisite for working booze on a riverboat is you gotta be an alkie. I’ve just—I’ve always told you I’d be in trouble without you.”
“Serving liquor isn’t rocket science,” Paul said.
“Yeah. But you don’t got the baggage all those others have.”
If only you knew, Paul thought.
“Anything else I can do?”
“If someone comes looking for me, just tell him the truth.”
“What’s that?”
“That I’m no longer here.”
“Where’re you gonna be?”
“Tell them you don’t know.”
Mike let out a nervous laugh. “All right, then.”
They said a quick and unsentimental good-bye, and Paul left the office.
He walked back through the blinking, whirring, clinking room that might as well have been a bonfire for people’s cash. Lay it down and lose it—that was what everyone eventually did on this riverboat casino. They lost it. They would eventually lose everything.
The numbers determine the outcome, and it’s all random luck, and so far I’m on the end of a losing streak.
Paul looked over at Everly, one of the bartenders he had befriended over the years. He wondered what Everly would do if he went up and asked for a gin and tonic. Everly would be surprised, but he would give him one. People on this ship didn’t judge. They carried enough of their own baggage to be unconcerned with yours.
He walked past this animated life and knew he’d never be back. The riverboat casino had several levels. This was the main floor with the tables for blackjack, roulette, and craps. People made more noise on the craps tables, but usually they made more money with blackjack. Paul had grown used to seeing the revolving dealers, the crowds that changed according to the day and the hour, the people who wanted more booze when they should’ve gone home. He didn’t judge them, either. And he couldn’t refuse them unless they could barely stand.
A pretty blonde cut in front of him holding a beer. She looked half-drunk. Paul noticed the etched-out half-moons under her dark-brown eyes. She looked at him and laughed.
“Excuse me,” she said.
He nodded and let her join her friends at one of the tables.
Random luck, Paul thought again. Being at the right place at the right time. Or the wrong time. This young girl might come to a place like this and meet a man she’d spend the next twenty years in love with, or she might meet a man who would ruin her life—all out of random luck. She’d eventually fall out of love, as most women did, and perhaps she’d be strong enough to leave or to tell him the game’s over. For the moment, though, her life was ahead of her. She held the dice in her chubby little hand, bright nails flashing, and might roll any number of combinations. And random luck determined that outcome.
“Please please please,” she was saying. She jumped up and down, shaking the dice in her hands. “Please, God.”
She rolled, waited, then her face crumpled.
Paul shook his head and wondered at the idea of asking God to help with the roll of the dice. He’d given up asking God for anything a long time ago.
Back when he’d tried going to meetings, they never used the word God. They always talked about “a higher power.” But it had never made much sense to Paul. God. Higher power. A divine being. Buddha. Whatever it takes to make these people hope for something. Whatever it takes to keep them plunking down their twenties and losing them and blaming God or whoever. God didn’t make them come here, and he didn’t make them lose their money, and he sure didn’t load any dice.
Even now, Paul could tune out the constant noise of voices and slot-machine reels and change hitting the bottoms of metal payout trays. He’d spent almost a decade doing exactly that.
“You working?” a red-haired waitress asked him as she passed. Her name was Nancy.
“Not tonight,” he said.
“Lucky you. I’m bored to tears,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
He nodded and walked out of this alien, familiar room full of lonely, searching people. He’d learned long ago that most of the regulars were people with no business on this boat—poor Mexican laborers who had just gotten paid or unemployed blue-collar workers or the kind of awful white trash that tended to be loud and drunk. Perhaps there were classy casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City, where people dressed up, gave big tips, and gambled with money they actually had. But the gamblers here were like that kid in the Willie Wonka story, giving up his last dollar for a chocolate bar in hopes of finding happiness and fame and fortune. But it never came. And as hard as these ignorant people searched, it could never come at a place like this.
The air outside smelled like the river. Paul leaned on the boat’s railing, lit up a cigarette, and did some more of what he had been doing the last few days. Looking around. Surveying his surroundings. Trying to see if anybody was watching him.
Working at the casino, Paul had gotten used to odd hours. Often he would get home at five in the morning, at an hour when newspapers were being tossed into driveways and coffee was being brewed in kitchens and normal working people were waking up and getting ready for their days. He would think about the outside world and how apart he felt from it. Sleeping throughout the day, staying up through the night.
But it wasn’t just the schedule. He’d spent his whole life outside of that world, the world of normal people, a world where the luck of the dice could pay off in triplicate. Where one lucky spin, one big draw, one gigantic turn could set you up for a good life. A real life, as opposed to the one that had settled into his wrinkles and thick brow and the sunspots that splotched his hands.
He rubbed his close-cropped gray beard, an old habit when he was lost in thoughts and nervous about something. And Paul had always been nervous about something or the other. High-strung, his mother had called it. Years ago, when the anxiety threatened to consume him, he’d tried to drown it in an ocean of liquor. He had managed to stay afloat and even climb out on shore. He wasn’t even sure how that had happened. He knew it wasn’t a matter of trusting in a higher power. Maybe it was just stubbornness. Or a little more random luck.
He snorted a short laugh. Some luck. You could manage to stay dry all these years and make a life, such as it was. And then one little thing could send the whole thing tumbling down.
One thing he knew for sure. He was one card away from a bad deal.
His only hope, the one last hope that had haunted him the last week, was a change of scenery. Not a change of life—he knew that was impossible—but a change of scenery. And that, in the long run, might just help prolong the pathetic draw of cards that had been dealt to him many years ago. A hand that contained no aces and one, only one, wild card.
A wild card he didn’t know what to do with.
16
JARED COULD BARELY STAND as Michelle helped him take off his shirt. His eyes couldn’t stay open, and he rocked unsteadily on his legs. She left on his jeans, figuring it would be too difficult to get them off without the risk of him collapsing and hitting his head on the edge of the bed or the dresser. She led him to the unmade bed and gently guided him onto the mattress, where he lay lifeless.
A lamp on the dresser lit up the bedroom. For a moment, Michelle looked around the strange, foreign world.
Posters covered almost every inch of wall they could. Most of them were of the bands Jared constantly listened to: Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Staind, Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park. It used to be that she would come into his room and find his trophies and awards front and center—all those little statues and ribbons from playing soccer and track. Now they were stuck in a closet, still unpacked from the last move.
Is this our punishment for moving? she asked God silently. Is this all because we should have stayed in Missouri? Did we make some big mistake?
Her husband wasn’t the type to second-guess decisions. The economy was tight. Jobs were scarce. The move to Naperville and the Chicagoland area was necessary. But should they have prayed about it more? Should they have waited for a more obvious sign from God?
Will you let me know, Lord?
Then she sighed, wondering if she even expected God to answer anymore.
She studied her son’s sleeping body, his profile against his pillow, the peace he seemed to be drifting in. How could someone who spent so much of the day locked up in angst and unspoken depression look so content while sleeping?
What can I do to get him back?
So much potential. She couldn’t get away from that word. The wasted potential tore at her heart. He’d be with them for the summer, then leave for Dover Academy in upstate New York. Maybe that would change him. Or maybe not. Maybe it would make him worse.
What do you want me to do? Nothing I’m doing’s working out. I have to do something.
But again, God remained silent. Was he holding a grudge because he knew she was ticked off at him? She knew she had no right to be angry at her heavenly Father, but she was. This was her son she was making herself sick over. Her eldest son. Didn’t that mean anything? Didn’t her prayers, their prayers, count for anything?
