Ragged Company (18 page)

“Sure,” I said. “This is going to get crazy once we’re in there.”

“Got that right, bucko,” she said and touched my arm again.

Vance and Merton had finished making their agenda arrangements and were ready to meet the press. The boys asked for another round of drinks, and gulped them down as quickly as they had the first.

“Vance and I will go in, make a general statement, and then Granite, maybe you could bring them out,” Merton said.

“Sure,” I said. “No need to cue me. I’ll listen for it.”

“Okay, then we’re a go.”

When they made their entrance, the babble of voices died down slowly. Vance introduced himself and announced that the winners of the thirteen and a half million–dollar prize were there to pick up their winnings, then introduced Merton.

“I have been instructed to speak on behalf of my clients today,” he said confidently. “They are not like previous winners you’ve seen. They are not like people you may have met before. They’re unique. They’re special, and today they are exceptional.

“My clients are not working-class people trying to make ends meet. They are not single mothers struggling to maintain a life for their children. They are not students toughing it out for tuition and rent. Nor are they settled families content in their financial security and amazed at their luck. They are none of these. My clients are homeless people.”

There was an instantaneous babble again throughout the room.

“My clients are chronically homeless. I am here because they are so indigent that they had no identification. No way to identify
themselves and so pick up the prize being awarded this morning. I am here to act as power of attorney, establish bank accounts for them, and instruct them in money management. I’m also here to help them through this process with you, because as I’m sure you can glean from what I have just told you, this will not be a standard grip-and-grin photo op. I will answer on their behalf when required, and I ask you to consider for a moment the tremendous sweep of emotion that must be present in my clients this morning. I ask you to consider their unfamiliarity with this process and the fact that you will be addressing persons from a socio-economic background totally displaced from any you have encountered in this room before. I ask you to be humane and gentle.

“With that, may I introduce to you Ms. Amelia One Sky, Mr. Richard Dumont, Mr. Mark Haskett, and Mr. Jonas Hohnstein, our newest millionaires.”

I led them from the anteroom and the pop and flash began long before we reached the table where six chairs and six microphones awaited us. Once there, I stepped back and motioned for them to move ahead of me. Their heads were down and they all stared at the floor as they took their seats.

Margo Keane and an assistant entered the room carrying a large cardboard facsimile of a cheque and made their way to the front of the room where Vance stood waiting.

“You never really get used to this,” Vance said. “You never get used to the idea that you change peoples’ lives when you make these presentations. But today feels even more powerful because of the lives of the people to whom we make this presentation. I can honestly say, in my ten years here, that I have never made so special a presentation. Thirteen and a half million dollars may not be the biggest prize in our history, but today it is certainly the most life-changing.

“It gives me great, great pleasure to present this cheque in the sum of thirteen-point-five million dollars to Ms. One Sky and Messrs. Hohnstein, Haskett, and Dumont.”

I motioned for the four of them to rise and make their way over to Vance. They crowded around the large cardboard cheque
and looked sheepishly at the throng. None of them was able to look at the cameras. Timber winced at each flare of light. Amelia simply nodded at Vance and looked down. Digger shook hands limply without raising his head and Dick looked ready to bolt at any minute, his eyes darting back and forth across the ceiling. Margo Keane came over and stood beside me.

“They’re like frightened children,” she whispered.

“They
are
frightened children,” I said. “I hate this.”

“It’s good you’re here for them.”

“I hope so.”

Vance placed the cheque on an easel behind the table and my friends returned to their chairs.

“Questions, please,” Merton said.

“Mr. Haskett,” a red-headed woman said, standing to ask her question. “Mr. Haskett, how do you feel right now?”

“Digger,” was all he said, staring hard at the microphone when his voice boomed out over the speakers.

“Pardon?” the woman asked.

“Digger. My name is Digger. There ain’t no Mr. Haskett here.”

“Oh,” she said, scribbling a note in her pad. “Well, Digger, how do you feel?”

“Like I could use a fucking drink.”

There was laughter all around the room and Digger raised his head to glower at them all.

“Mr. Dumont. What will you do with your share of the money?” a well-built man with a crewcut asked Dick.

Dick gulped and looked at Amelia.

“Do you people have names?” she asked. “Dick likes to know who he’s talking to. He’s very polite that way.”

“Oh, quite right, I apologize,” the reporter said. “Mike Phillips,
The Telegraph
.”

“That man’s name is Mike, Dick,” she said, and he nodded. “He wants to know what you want to do with your money.”

Dick kept his head down. “I wanna see
Field of Dreams
,” he said. “With my friends. We didn’t get to see it yesterday.”

“You want to go to a movie?” Phillips asked. “That’s all?”

“I like movies,” Dick said. “All of us do.”

“Do you go to a lot of movies?” Phillips asked.

“Every day,” Dick said. “Sometimes twice.”

There was a lot of note scribbling over that, and a large round man in a brown suit near the back of the room stood.

“I don’t mean to take attention away from the winners, but I have to ask,” he said. “Mr. Harvey, sir, why are you here? Are you returning to journalism and doing a column or a story on the winners?”

I grimaced. I had guessed that my presence would not go unnoticed but had hoped that the focus would remain on the winners. Margo Keane squeezed my hand and gestured with her chin for me to approach the table.

“No. I am not coming back. I’m here to support these people, that’s all,” I said.

“How are you connected, sir?” the round man asked.

“He’s our friend,” Dick said proudly. “We go to the movies together an’ he even showed us a boxin’ movie at his house while he was fixin’ up things with the lawyer guy.”

There was even more babble and a lot more note scribbling. Vance’s assistant brought another chair and I was squeezed in between Dick and Amelia. Margo gave me a thumbs-up from the corner.

“Hello, Granite,” said a tall thin woman standing near the middle of the room. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Jilly,” I replied in recognition.

“My name is Jill Squires,” she said to my friends. “I write for the same newspaper Granite worked for. So you are all movie buddies, is that it, Granite?”

“Jilly,” I said. “It’s not about me. It’s about these people here. The winners. I would be happy to speak with you after this is over, but right now it’s for them.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’d like that opportunity. Ms. One Sky, then.”

“Amelia,” she replied. “My name is Amelia.”

“One For The Dead,” Dick blurted.

“One For The Dead?” Jilly asked.

“Yeah,” Dick went on. “It’s her rounder name. We’re all rounders an’ we all got rounder names.”

“Well, that’s interesting. What are your rounder names, Mr. Dumont?”

Dick looked at his friends and then looked at me. I nodded.

“That there’s Timber,” he said pointing at Timber, who nodded with his head down. “Next to him is Digger. This is One For The Dead an’ I’m Double Dick.”

“Pardon me?”

“Double Dick.” He seemed pleased with the attention. “I’m Double Dick Dumont.”

“What an interesting name,” Jilly said, a little red in the cheeks. “How, ah, how does someone get a name like that, I wonder?”

Merton spoke up suddenly. “Well, you know, Ms. Squires, that’s a good question. But my clients are all a little anxious and I’d like to move things along. I would like to propose that Mr. Harvey and myself, through Ms. Keane from the Lottery Corporation, make ourselves available for background questions at a later time. Right now, I’m going to have to ask that you keep your questions specific to the matter of the prize. Next?”

“Gordon Petrovicky, All News Radio,” an older gentleman said. “Amelia, what do you think you will do with the money?”

Amelia took her time, and when she was ready she looked directly at Petrovicky as she spoke. “I guess it’s more important what we won’t do,” she said. “All the time we’ve known each other we have looked out for each other. We’ve shared everything. We’ve been there for each other. This money is a big thing but it can’t be bigger than that. It can’t be so big that we forget that we’re together, that we’re friends. That we take care of each other.

“I guess we could spend it on anything. But I know that none of us knows what that anything might be. Not right now, anyway. We have James and Granite to help us and that’s enough. Today, like Dick said, we’d just like to go to a movie. Do what we know and try to stay as we are.”

“So you have no plans? I mean, you have enough money now to set yourselves up for life. You don’t have to be street people anymore,” Petrovicky continued.

“It’s happened too fast. We haven’t had time to sit and talk about it. Our lives have been about getting enough every day, not about having enough.”

“Mr. Hohnstein? Or Timber, is it?” an older, greying woman asked. “My name is Susan Howell. I work for the Life Network. I’m doing a series on lottery winners and I wonder how you see this affecting your life?”

“Can’t,” Timber replied.

“Digger? How do you see it affecting your life?” the woman asked.

“Right now it’s keeping me from getting another friggin’ drink,” Digger growled. “So far it’s mighty fucking inconvenient.”

“Do you drink a lot, Digger?” she asked.

“Now wait a minute,” Merton said.

“No,” Digger said. “It’s okay. I can handle this.”

He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out his cigarettes, and lit one, exhaling dramatically. Then he reached in again, pulled out a bottle, and took a huge swallow before putting it back in his coat.

“There. It ain’t so fucking inconvenient no more. Do I drink lots? I don’t know, lady. I don’t know what lots is. I drink enough. That’s all I know. Enough to handle this shit. Enough to handle your phony Square John concern and your friggin’ poking around where you ain’t been invited to poke. I drink enough for that.”

“I didn’t mean—” she began.

“Hey, we all know what you meant, lady. We’re fucking rounders. We ain’t idiots. We coulda come in here all dressed to the tits and not said word one about our friggin’ life. Rock or Jimbo here would have fronted us the cash to score some duds. Hey, Rock even offered to get us a room last night. Did we take it? No. Did we get all gussied up for your benefit and try ’n hide who the fuck we are? No. We’re rounders. We live on the street. We got plumb fucking lucky and won a big chunk of change that we got no friggin’ idea what to do with except go see Field of
fucking Dreams like we were gonna do before all this shit started. Sure, you got questions. Sure, you’re curious. Sure, you wanna sell whatever you’re sellin’ and you wanna use us to do it for today. But you know what, lady?”

“What?” she asked quietly.

“You don’t give a fuck where we been or what we done to get by. You don’t give a fuck about that and you really don’t give two shits about what we’re gonna do with the money except that you wish it was you and you wanna tell this story to a whole bunch of other Square John fucks who will wish it was them too. You wanna know how all this feels? Imagine. Just imagine if it was all the other way around. Imagine if you landed on the bricks and you had nothin’. Then you had to start to live your life that way. How the fuck would that feel, lady? What would you have to say if someone stuck a camera in your mug and asked you what the fuck you were gonna do now? Would you have an answer? No. You wouldn’t know whether to shit, do a handstand, or go blind.”

“You’re supposed to provide us with an interview,” the woman said.

“The friggin’ interview’s over,” Digger said. “Jimbo over there said he’ll give you whatever you think you need. Rock’ll help him. Us? We just want out of here. Now.”

Merton stood. “That’s it. I’m sorry, but at my client’s request I’m ending this now. Mr. Vance and Ms. Keane can provide you with sufficient information for your stories and, as I said, Mr. Harvey, myself, and Ms. Keane will ensure you get all the relevant details. My clients’ wish is to retire and reflect on their futures.”

There was a crescendo of complaint as reporters threw questions at the table. But my friends busied themselves with getting back through the door that led to the anteroom. Vance and Margo moved to the front of the room with Merton to make arrangements for further contact with and information about the winners.

“Jesus, Rock,” Digger said. “That’s what you did for a living?”

“Well, not really,” I said. “I was more of a political writer.”

“Fuck,” he said. “That was weird.”

Margo entered the room. “Okay. That was maybe a little less graceful than I’d hoped, but they can work with it. What we need to do now is make sure that they get enough later to file good stories. They’ll want to do follows, though.”

“Follows?” Timber asked her.

“Yes. They’ll want to follow this story with stories about how you deal with the money. Where you go, what you do.”

“Do we have to talk to them?” Timber asked.

“No,” she said. “You’re no longer obliged to talk to them.”

“Good.”

“Still, Granite and I should talk and provide them with more background. Granite, you know the drill. You know what they’ll want. Will you work with me?”

“I guess I have to. In order for them not to hound everybody, we’ll have to give them what they want. When? Where?”