The Next Sure Thing (4 page)

“No,” I said and stood up too. Vic and Jerry took a half-step forward. “To be sure that it was the right move.”

“It wasn’t,” Hardy said. “You used my money. You cheated me.”

“Our deal was for me to let you know when there was a sure thing,” I said. “This wasn’t. This could have gone totally the other way.” I looked at the goons. They spread their legs wider and clasped their hands in front of themselves and rocked on the balls of their feet. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to risk your money. So I used the cash you gave me because you said it was mine. That way if I lost, it was my loss. I didn’t think you thought it was still yours.”

“You still made a play without telling me. Disobedience doesn’t earn you any points, Cree. It just earns you pain. Or it earns your friend pain.” He nodded to Vic, and the big guy reached over and hauled Ashton to his feet by the scruff of his neck. There was a large knife in his hand. Ashton looked ready to faint. Vic held the knife to his ribs and looked at Hardy.

“Ever wonder why they use the term ‘blood money,’ Cree?” Hardy asked.

“No,” I said nervously.

“Because it’s earned by blood. Your pal’s blood, unfortunately. You want to mess with me? This is how you pay for that.”

“Why?” I said and took a step forward. I heard Jerry move with me. “Because I took a risk without involving you? Because that risk paid out? Because I took a counter check from the track with your name on it?”

Hardy looked stunned. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. The check’s made out to you.”

“You kidding me?”

“Look for yourself.” I held the paper out, and Hardy stepped around the desk and took it.

“Well, damned if it isn’t,” he said.

“I know about loyalty,” I said. “You got me into a studio where I laid down five tracks for an album. You gave me the first installment on my dream, and I took this risk because it wasn’t a sure thing. I thought you gave me that money without strings. I didn’t want to risk your cash. This way if I lost, it was my loss, not yours. That’s what I figured.”

Hardy smiled. “I knew you were a good kid.”

He reached out and shook my hand. He held on to it tightly and looked over my shoulder and nodded at Vic, and I could hear Ashton collapse onto the couch.

“But don’t ever make a move without telling me again,” he said. “Not even a small one. If you know about loyalty, you’ll take care of your friend.”

All I could do was nod.

CHAPTER EIGHT

W
e sat at a small sidewalk café. Ashton, Hardy and me. Vic and Jerry sat in the Navigator a few yards down the street. It was warm in the late afternoon. The café was filled with people chatting and laughing. There were plates of appetizers in front of us and glasses of good white wine. But neither Ashton nor I were much in the mood for food or drink. Hardy ate triumphantly. He eyed me over his fork, then set it down and wiped at the corner of his mouth with a napkin.

“I got friends that want to meet you,” he said.

“I have friends,” I said.

“Not like these. These are friends that can make your world. Or break it just as easily.”

“Why would I want to meet people like that?”

He smiled and drank some wine. “Mostly because you don’t have a choice. See, I work for these guys, and they’re interested in your talent too. While you were waiting for me in the car, I told them about your five-to-one shot and how you played it. They like your moxie.”

“Moxie?”

“Yeah. Balls. You know.”

“I don’t.”

“Everyone gets scared, Cree. The trouble is that most people don’t move through it. It cripples them. Not you. You push through it. Even if you piss people off. That’s moxie, and my friends want it working for them.”

“I don’t work for anybody.”

Hardy spun his wineglass slowly in his fingers. “You work for me.”

“I thought we had a deal.”

“The deal is you work for me. And you work for my friends. That should be clear by now.”

“I think I want out.”

Hardy laughed then. It was genuine. As though no one had ever told him quite as big a joke before. He fumbled in his coat for his cell phone and punched in a number on speed dial.

“Kid says he wants out,” he said into it and smiled at me and shook his head. “That’s what I did too. Cracked me right up. Hey, he’s a green kid, never done nothing in his life. What do you expect?” He listened for a moment and a deep line appeared in between his eyebrows. He nodded, then looked at Ashton and handed him the phone.

“Guess you get to translate, buddy boy. My friend would like to speak to you.”

“Me? Why?”

Hardy chuckled. “Ask him.”

Ashton gave me a quizzical look and held the phone up to his ear. “Yes?” he said.

I watched his face change. It went from curious to worried to shocked right in front of me. He held the phone so tightly that his knuckles went white, and he breathed through his mouth like a kid. I could hear a thin seam of voice from the phone. It was regular, straight, without rises or changes in pitch or volume. Ashton just listened, and when he handed the phone back to Hardy, he couldn’t look at me.

“Tell him,” was all Hardy said. He said it coldly. Ashton stared at him a moment before turning to me.

When Ashton looked at me, his face looked like he’d been slapped. It was white and strained.

“Leo Scalia,” he said.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Leo Scalia,” Ashton said again, more urgently. “Hardy works for Leo Scalia. He runs book for the mob. Hardy’s connected. He’s made. You can’t quit.”

I looked at Hardy, who sat back in his chair with his legs crossed, grinning at me. “You’re connected?”

“Big-time,” he said. “But hey, my friends are your friends, Cree. You’re our pony now. Or at least, you’re mine. Quitting? Well, no one likes a quitter, do they?”

“I can’t do this,” I said.

“Can’t do what? We’re only asking you to do what you already know how to do. This is no stretch. Hell, if you want, you don’t even have to carry any action. You don’t have to make the bets. You just make the tote, give us the number. We play the horse, and you get your commission and our endless high regard. Besides, I own the paper on your whole friggin’ life. So what’s ‘can’t do’?”

“What are you talking about?” Ashton was shaking his head beside me. Hardy waved a hand in the air. I heard the doors of the Navigator slam and the footfalls of Vic and Jerry. Hardy stood and shrugged and straightened his jacket with both hands. Then he leaned forward on the table toward me. His eyes were hard. I could smell cigar smoke and wine. He put one knuckle under my chin and lifted my head. I heard the goons step up behind me.

“Call me your proud new papa, Cree. I paid your rent. I’m footing the bill for your first cd and video. You want new gear? You got that too, because I got you a gig at the Purple Onion starting next week. You’ll need a bigger amp, and me, I figure the blues sounds best on a Gretsch semi-hollow body with a nice stack of Fender amps behind it. Red, maybe. I like red. What you think, Jerry?”

“Red is good, Win. Real good,” Jerry said from behind me.

“And if you do ever decide to get cute, Cree? Call your folks on the rez. Ask ’em how they like the new truck. Ask your sister how she likes having her tuition paid for. I own all of them. Not just you. So your moves are their moves now. Remember that next time you think you can quit on me. Vic? Give him tomorrow’s form.”

He let my chin go, grinned at me and gave me a light playful slap on the cheek.

“He’s a good kid. Green, but good,” he said to Vic and Jerry. Then he turned and walked away.

Ashton and I sat there in silence. I was stunned. “Can it get any worse?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Ashton said. “It can.”

“How’s that?”

“I didn’t tell you what else he does for Scalia.”

I looked at him. He looked sad and scared. “Are you kidding me?”

“No,” he said. “He’s a collector. A knee-breaker.”

I suddenly felt like drinking the wine. All of it.

CHAPTER NINE

A
s it turned out, Hardy’s people had been to the reservation. They’d arrived in a row of three black suvs and made a big display of friendship. My family was told that Hardy was my boss and that I was working as an investment counselor. I was doing such a bang-up job that he wanted to reward me as much as he could, and helping to take care of my family was the way he had chosen. Somehow he talked the chief and his councilors into giving my family a house of their own. He furnished it too, as well as parking a new half-ton pickup truck in the driveway. All of this was fine with my father. When I’d walked away to pursue the vague dream of being a blues musician, he hadn’t been thrilled. But with the arrival of Hardy’s people and the outlay of goodwill cash, he seemed more willing to believe that I was actually worth something in the world.

“You work hard for this man,” he said over the telephone. “He can obviously do a lot for you.”

I couldn’t tell him what the real score was. He had the new house, the truck and furniture, and my sister had her tuition paid for at the college where she was studying nursing.

“They left a thousand dollars that they said you would earn back in no time too,” my father said. “That kind of man is someone you hold on to. Anyone can see that.”

Ashton just looked at me blankly when I told him later at the coffee joint. He hadn’t said much since the encounter with Hardy and the knife at his ribs. I was worried about our friendship.

“There’s got to be a way to get out from under all this,” he said. “I just don’t know what it is.”

“I’m sorry, Ash,” I said.

He shook his head.

“It wasn’t your fault. These guys look for people to trap all the time. They don’t have the skill set or the brains to do anything themselves. How were you to know the guy was bad?”

“I should have been more careful.”

“You were doing what you do. There was never any inkling that it would go sour.”

“Well, it has. Now he has my family in his pocket. They all figure he’s the best thing that ever happened to me. But what scares me is how much he knows about my life and how much of it he controls now.”

“He’s got your back to the wall. What bothers me is the threat.”

“Yeah. Everything I do, win or lose, means someone close to me will get hurt.”

“Or killed,” Ashton said. “They’re talking big money here now. Leo Scalia doesn’t play around.”

“So what do I do?”

“Make your record. Make your bets. Hope for the best.”

“Hope for the best?”

“I guess. There’s no way out that I can see.”

“How big is Scalia?”

“He’s the biggest player in this town. I don’t think he’s got much reach beyond that, but he has his fingers in a lot of pies. There are a lot of people who only move when he lets them move.”

“Like me?”

“Like you.”

“For now.”

He looked at me, and I could feel him searching me for a clue to what I was thinking. The truth is, I didn’t really know for sure what I was thinking. I only knew that this wasn’t the way the dream was supposed to go. As thrilled as I was about being able to record my album and the plans for shooting a video to put up on YouTube and maybe attract some attention from the big boys in the music biz, I hated the idea of being owned like a prize cow or something. It irked me that I couldn’t make a move without Hardy now. The fact that he worked for a criminal, and that he wasn’t shy about causing pain or even getting rid of people who wronged him or stood in his way, made me feel that Hardy, with his oozing charm, was evil. The devil. Or at the least, a major demon. I wanted to exorcise him from my life somehow.

“He’s gotta have a weakness,” I said.

“Sure,” Ashton said unconvincingly. “And a couple of shlumps like us are going to find it and bring him down?” He took a long drink of his coffee and drummed his fingers on the table, watching me.

“Sounds impossible, I know. But someone like Hardy has to have hurt somebody along the line. He can’t go through life pushing people around without there being someone somewhere who wants to get back at him.”

“True enough, I suppose,” Ashton said. “But how are we ever going to find that person? I’m no detective. Neither are you.”

I stared out the window at the street. There were a lot of people out enjoying the sun and the warmth, and everyone looked happy and busy. They seemed so casual. They walked as though they had no worries, no cares, no burdens. It felt like a blues song to me and made me feel even more trapped. I scribbled a line of lyric on my napkin.

“What are you doing?” Ashton asked.

“Just scratching down a thought. This whole deal might make a good blues song.”

“Like about selling your soul to the devil to be a blues giant? Robert Johnson already did that.”

“Some things never go out of style,” I said.

“Pain and confusion,” Ashton said.

“Love and frustration,” I said.

“The blues is just a good man feeling bad.” We both laughed.

“Well, the thing is that at least I get to make a record. And if I make it the best I can possibly do, then maybe the music is the way out from under all of this. He can’t own me forever.”

“You get to be some big music hot shot, you might be able to buy him off.”

“You think?”

“Ain’t no percentage in thinking, brother. It’s not a poor man’s game,” Ashton said.

“Good lyric,” I said. “Who wrote that?”

“I did,” he said and grinned.

It made me feel better.

CHAPTER TEN

I
told Hardy to go big on a roan mare called Dizzy Flash. She came in at seventeen to one. A few days later I found a real sleeper in the third because it was raining buckets and the gelding really loved to run in the slop. There were no signs in actual races to show that, but I found great times in his workouts while the track was poor. He went off at sixty to one, and Hardy was over the moon at the results. Then, after a ten-day dry spell, I found him a last gasper. That’s a horse that’s almost ready for the pasture but has one last great race in him. He’d always been a come-from-behind thriller. I remembered him from his younger days and how exciting it had always been to watch him come flying from the back of the pack. Now, though, Falmouth Circuit was old. He hadn’t won a race in a long, long time. He was in a race against inexperienced youngsters who had only won one or two races by the time they were four. He was listed as a forty-to-one shot.