Tumblin' Dice (14 page)

McKeon said, “I knew this would be a clusterfuck,” and Price said, “Yeah, well, some things never change.”

• • •

Danny said, “Shit, look at this, look how fucking skinny Nugs was,” and Gayle, coming out of the bedroom and looking over his shoulder at the
TV
said, what are you watching?

“History Channel. This is
Underground Cities
— it's about the patch-over. Look, look,” excited like a kid, “there you are. Shit, you haven't changed.”

Gayle, looking at herself on the
TV
, her younger self staring right at the camera, the news camera, she remembered the asshole holding it, taking it away from his face and yelling at her, come on, honey, smile, you're getting rich.

Not knowing the half of it.

On the
TV
she was standing on the back balcony of the club, on the second floor. The place was an old four-storey hotel in La Prairie, been run by the Saints out of Montreal for years, since the '70s, strip club in the bar and hookers in the rooms. On the
TV
Gayle was still staring at the camera, looking so pissed off, and now she was thinking she
was
pissed off, all these people getting in their business. They were all going inside — well, the guys were. Gayle remembered how she and Sherry and the rest of the chicks waited upstairs while they had the ceremony in the bar and then they came down for the party. And that was a fucking party.

Kid stuff, shit, seemed like a million years ago.

Then Danny said, “How come all us guys got old and you chicks haven't changed? Look at Patti, fuck, that could be yesterday.”

Gayle said, “Maybe if you dyed your hair, wore all that make-up, and didn't eat anything you'd look the same, too,” and Danny said yeah.

Then Gayle said, “I've got to go up to Huron Woods,” and Danny said, why?

“Because J.T. shot some guy in the head.”

Danny, staring at the
TV
again said, yeah, so? “Why are you going all the way up there?”

All the way, it was a couple hours tops and then Gayle was thinking maybe she'd swing by West End Exotics and pick up a Porsche or the Ferrari, and she said, “Somebody's got to keep a lid on it, keep things in line.”

“Shit, they're showing you a lot,” Danny said, “and Sherry, look at her, she loves it, smiling at the camera.”

“She even smiled at the cameras the cops were pointing at her.”

Danny was laughing then, saying, look at Boner with the sewing machine, “The look on his face — I asked him he knew how to use it, fucking guy.”

Gayle was thinking maybe she should change: she was wearing tight jeans and a white blouse and her new boots finally came in from Holt Renfrew, the skinny chick with the pinched face brought them over in a cab, looked for a second like she thought she'd be getting a tip and Gayle felt good closing the door in her face. Now she was thinking maybe she should dress up more but then wondering why, looking at her younger self on the
TV
giving the finger to the camera, digitized out, and Sherry's tits when she pulled up her top, shit, and the narrator talking about how in the next six months nine of the guys at the ceremony would be dead, the narrator loving the sound of that, and Gayle seeing herself wearing tight jeans and a white tank top and thinking, had she changed at all?

Then thinking, shit, honey, the jeans you're wearing now cost seven hundred bucks, fit snug to every curve, feel great. Those ones on
TV
you got in a fucking mall in Etobicoke, rode up on you all the time, pinched and then came apart at the seams.

Yeah, you've changed all right.

Danny said, “Holy fuck, look at Mon Oncle,” the French guy who ran the Saints in Montreal before Danny Mac and Nugs and the boys joined up. “You're fucking right he's defiant,” talking to the
TV
now, seeing Mon Oncle in cuffs, the perp walk from the bar where they picked him up with the cop car. Danny found out later that it had all been arranged, worked out between the cops and lawyers — the cops needed the press they could get from it and they made a deal. Danny never got the details, but Mon Oncle was out later that day, didn't spend the night in jail.

Gayle said, “Okay, I'm going,” and Danny, still looking at the
TV
said, where?

Gayle walked around the big recliner and looked down at Danny and said, “Up to Huron Woods.”

Danny said, what for?, and Gayle said, “For fuck's sake, Danny, do you not listen at all? Because J.T. shot some shylock in the head,” and Danny said, so?

Gayle looked at him, slumped in the big leather chair, drinking beer at ten o'clock in the morning, watching himself on
TV
, the old days, and she was thinking pretty soon they'd have to take him out with a forklift, bury him in a piano box.

She said, “We can't have guys running around shooting people all over the place.”

Danny said, no, sure, that's right, “But once in a while it's good.”

Gayle said, “What?”

“Look, we're moving in on somebody else's turf. These Italians, they're not going to just give it up — we have to show them we're serious.” He was still looking past Gayle at the
TV
and he smiled and said, “Look, shit, my fucking hard-tail,” and Gayle glanced back at the
TV
and saw them on a ride, a hundred bikers, two hundred, the narrator saying how they'd soon control drug distribution throughout southern Ontario and then something about how their appetites were as big as their Harleys, and she was thinking, who writes this shit? Then Danny said, “We got to get out on the road,” and Gayle said, what?

“Yeah, you and me, we should just take off, get on the bike and go,” and Gayle thought, shit, this again.

She was staring at Danny staring at the
TV
, the music some rip-off of “Born to be Wild,” Gayle thinking, this cheesy cable documentary, too cheap to get the rights and too dumb to come up with something original, and then Danny said, “That's what it's really about, man — freedom, the open road, just taking off,” and Gayle said, are you fucking serious?

Danny looked at her and Gayle said, “Danny, it's not about the open fucking road — it's about the money. You heard the guy, it's about selling drugs. It's what we do.”

She couldn't believe it, Danny looking up at her like a kid just found out there's no Santa, and she said, “Danny, it's what you've been doing since you were a kid, since you were selling Thai stick and that shitty black hash in high school,” and she looked around their half-million-dollar condo and said, “and you're still doing it. You're good at it.”

“And that's it?”

“That's enough.”

Danny nodded, looked back at the
TV
, the funeral for Richard Tremblay, the guy took over from Mon Oncle and came to Toronto and finally got everybody on board, got them all working together, and he said, yeah, and Gayle was thinking, shit, come on, you just have to keep running this for a little longer, just till they take over this casino.

And then she was thinking, would it always be like that, would there always be one more thing to do?

She put that out of her head and said, okay, I'm going, and Danny said, why?

“Fuck, I told you he shot some guy in the head,” and Danny said, oh right, but that's good.

“What?”

“Yeah, it's good. You take somebody out, start the negotiations.”

“In the parking lot? It's all over the news.”

“Some dope dealer at a casino on a fucking Indian reservation? It was on the news for five seconds.”

“You think that's it?”

“On
TV
, yeah. They don't even know what it means. Fuck, look at this — they don't know what half the shit going down means until years later they put it together, way too fucking late by then. No, honey, this is good. J.T.'s good, he knows what he's doing.”

Gayle said, okay, and got out of the way of the
TV
thinking it made sense, they were moving on someone else's territory, of course they wouldn't just give it up. She said, “I had lunch with the Mafia wives. You know, they don't have a clue what their husbands are doing.”

Still looking at the
TV
Danny said, “Don't be so sure about that,” and Gayle said, “Well, one of them maybe,” and Danny said, no, “Probably more of them, they just know enough not to talk about it.” He turned in his big leather chair and looked at Gayle, saying, “These Eye-talians, it goes so far back with them, you know. They all know what's going on, but they have all these traditions — it's part of the culture.”

Gayle said, “But these are Italians from Toronto and we're moving on Italians from Philadelphia.”

“I know, look, they don't always get along. There's differences between them, different parts of Italy, Calabria, and Sicily, and shit, I can't keep it straight, 'Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra or some shit. They fight with each other all the time but they know how to make a deal and keep doing business.”

Gayle said yeah, and Danny said, “Yeah, but they all need to know we're serious motherfuckers.”

She said, “Yeah, okay, good.” Then, walking to the door she was thinking maybe Danny knew more than she realized, maybe he was more on the ball. She stopped at the door and said, “I'll be back tonight, maybe we can go out to dinner.”

Danny said, yeah okay, sounds good, and then he said, “Honey,” and Gayle looked back.

“It's J.T. We're lucky he hasn't popped half a dozen of them by now,” and he winked.

Gayle walked back to the recliner and kissed him.

• • •

Cliff was looking past Frank's desk at the wall of glass, the fantastic view, all those trees and the lake, and Frank said, “Boring as shit, isn't it?”

“I was thinking how you could put up a development there, cottages right on the lake, condos.”

Frank said, condo cottages? and Cliff said, yeah, “Call it fractured ownership now so it doesn't sound like time share, but same idea. Putting them up all over Muskoka — would look great right there.”

“Can't build anything here,” Frank said. “It's a fucking Indian reservation. We tried to bring in a private medical clinic,
MRI
s and
X
-rays, shit people are lining up months for, but no way.”

“So, just a casino?”

“Yeah, just a casino.” Frank in his big office, always liked being the boss and Cliff was thinking, this is more like it for Frank, old-fashioned. He never really did live the rock'n'roll life; this being a mobster was more his style.

“Look at you,” Frank said, “all businesslike. I don't get into town much these days but when I do I usually see your billboards: Getting You the Highest Listing. You still working the High, Cliff?”

And Barry said, “Have to make some money from the High somehow.”

Cliff watched Frank and Barry looking at each other, like they were sizing each other up. Shit, like when they were kids.

Frank said, “You're doing all right on this tour,” and Barry said, yeah, we are.

This is what Cliff was worried about, how this was going to go. They had no plan, no idea at all. Barry said, let's go talk to Frank, and Cliff said, what are we going to say? Barry said he'd think of something, but Cliff knew he wouldn't, knew it wouldn't be clever, thought shit, might as well try the direct approach, get it over with.

“It's good to see you guys buried the hatchet,” Frank said. Then he laughed and said, “There's an Indian joke in there somewhere — all this Indian shit around here.”

Barry said, “We were never pissed at each other,” and Cliff was thinking, what the fuck, that's bullshit — we were
always
pissed at each other, just not as much as we were pissed at Frank, and Frank said, well whatever, “Just good you're back on the road.”

Barry said, “We want our money.”

Cliff watched Frank take a moment, knowing exactly what Barry was talking about, but saying, “You get paid by Head Office, not by me — you know how it works,” and Cliff thinking, okay, here we go.

“The money you made off us.”

Frank said, “You mean after I found you, cleaned you up, busted my butt to get you gigs and a fucking record contract, U.S. fucking distribution, not just the fucking beaver pile in Canada, and now you want
my cut
, too?”

“You know what I mean.”

Cliff thought, yeah, good Barry, don't get into it too much. It's like negotiating a house sale, biggest mistake people make is to talk too much, go on and on about how much they love the place, then they say it's fifty grand too much thinking they can make a deal and Cliff tells them, well, if you really love it you're going to be here twenty-five, thirty years, raise your kids here, all those family memories, an extra fifty grand is less than a hundred bucks a month.

But Cliff knew you could never pull that kind of bullshit on Frank. It was just now that he was thinking about it, he didn't know Barry all that well, didn't know what he'd do in a negotiation.

Frank said, “Fuck you. You're lucky I let you play my casino.”

Barry said, “Your casino,” and Frank said, yeah, “My fucking casino. I run the place.”

“You want to run the place,” Barry said, “but you don't. Mobsters from Philly run the place, except you're hooking up with the bikers out of Toronto to get rid of them.”

Cliff looked at Barry, thinking, what the fuck? Are they getting in the middle of a fucking Mob war? And how the fuck would Barry know anything about it? Shit, Cliff wanted to take a minute, step outside, get his head together, but he heard Frank saying, “You don't know what the fuck you're talking about,” and he knew it was true, he knew what Barry was saying was true.