Lucky Bastard (19 page)

I know it’s pointless to argue. It was pointless to come here. It was pointless to think that I could help. I don’t know what I expected to accomplish by telling Mandy she might be in danger. I’d hoped to somehow make things better. Instead, I made them worse.

Which seems to be the flavor of the day.

“I’m sorry,” I say, then I get up and walk down the hallway and out the front door, closing it softly behind me. But not before I hear Mandy start to cry.

A
fter my failed attempt to reconcile with my sister, I’m not in much of a mood to poach. It’s like pretending to enjoy sex when all you really want to do is go to sleep or watch
The Daily Show
. But I don’t have a choice. Not if I want my life back. So I figure if I just suck it up and fulfill my debt to Tommy, maybe things will work out. Maybe I can disappear. Maybe I’ll be able to find a way to keep Mandy out of this.

Or maybe there’s another way.

“Take me to 1331 Greenwich,” I tell Alex.

I don’t know if this is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had or just a really bad one, but I need to find out if young Jimmy Saltzman is carrying Pure. Not that I intend to steal his luck, but I just want to know in case of an emergency. In case I run out of options. In case I discover that I have less character than even my father thought.

Except I wouldn’t be poaching Jimmy’s luck for personal gain. I’d be poaching it for Mandy and for her
family, to keep them out of harm’s way. I’d be justified in my actions. Poaching with honorable intentions.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

When the car pulls up to the corner of Greenwich and Polk, I take a swig of my cappuccino, then I get out and adjust my tie. Even without good luck in my system, I’ve been poaching long enough that I approach every mark with confidence. But as I walk up to the Saltzmans’ front door, I feel like a nervous teenager going to pick up my date for dinner. Only my date is a ten-year-old boy with an attitude and a vein of pure luck running through him.

Or so I believe.

I realize that the superfluous sweating I experienced the first time I saw Jimmy could have been attributed to any number of factors. The weather. The walk from the Tenderloin. Getting drugged by Tommy. But my hunch tells me Jimmy’s the real deal. Which is causing me to perspire just thinking about it.

Imagine that you’ve known about the existence of a magic elixir, a forbidden fountain of youth, and you’re about to get a glimpse of it. To discover if you have the courage to deny yourself the temptation of taking it.

That’s how I feel right now.

And, I have to admit, the thought of having another conversation with Jimmy has me a little freaked-out.

So I knock on the door and settle myself down and remind myself that I’m the adult here. I’m the one in charge. Plus this time, I’m more impressively attired.

When the door opens, Jimmy is standing a few feet from the doorway, staring up at me, a look of exasperation on his face.

“Remember me?” I say, all smiles and charm.

“I’m not a moron.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you were.”

“Then why did you ask if I remembered you?”

I notice I’m already sweating. I don’t know if that’s because of the suit or if I’m just having an allergic reaction to Jimmy.

“I just thought maybe you wouldn’t recognize me because I’m wearing a suit this time,” I say, gesturing toward my threads for emphasis.

“Yeah, well, it’s kind of hard to forget someone with a fake name who smells like cat pee.”

I give him a fake smile to go with my fake name and I wonder if there’s any way I can give him a fake kick in the ass.

“Well, it’s good to know that I made an impression.”

He just stares at me. “What do you want?”

It’s only been a few hours, but I’ve forgotten how adorable he is.

“Is your father home yet?”

“No. He’s at work. He has a real job. Unlike some people.”

For no good reason I can discern, I let out a nervous laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“Nothing. I was just remembering something that happened earlier.”

“What was it?”

“I can’t remember.”

“You’re kind of a freak,” he says.

He has no idea how close to true that statement is.

First sweating, then laughter. Those are two of the symptoms of being in the presence of Pure. But even if I experience a nervous twitch or an unexplained body spasm, I’m going to want something more definitive to prove that he’s carrying Pure. A sense of the quality of luck flowing through him. The only way I can get that is to shorten the distance between us, which is currently about six feet.

“When will your father get home?” I ask, taking a small step forward. Jimmy responds by closing the door halfway and watching me from behind its protection.

“It’s none of your business.”

I sense something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It could be him or it could just be all of the weirdness of the day coalescing into this moment. But I don’t need to be psychic to know that Jimmy Saltzman is seconds away from calling out for his mother or closing the door.

So I decide to see if I can get a better reading and see what happens.

“How about your mom?” I say, taking another step toward the front door until I’m inches from the threshold. “Is she home?”

“She’s busy,” he says, and slams the door in my face. But not before I pick up on something that nearly knocks the breath from my lungs. A grade of luck more powerful than anything I’ve ever sensed before in a mark. An intensity and purity that surpasses anything I’ve ever poached.

The Holy Grail of good luck.

O
n February 25, 1999, Virginia Rivero from Misiones, Argentina, went into labor at her home and walked out to a nearby road to hitchhike to the hospital. Two men offered her a lift in their car, though Rivero was so far along in her pregnancy that she ended up giving birth to a baby daughter in the backseat. But she wasn’t finished.

When Rivero told the two men she was about to have a second baby, the driver sped up, overtook the car in front of him, and collided with another vehicle. Rivero and her newborn daughter were ejected through the back door of the car, suffering minor injuries. Rivero flagged down another car and finally made it to the hospital, where she gave birth to a baby boy.

Virginia Rivero’s daughter holds the record as the youngest survivor of a car accident.

Chances are, both Rivero’s daughter and son were tracked down by luck poachers and relieved of their
good fortune at some point before they reached the age of ten. I can only imagine what it would have felt like to have such virginal good luck flowing through me. The euphoria and the sense of power. The wonder of absolute purity.

I’m thinking about my grandfather and the look he would get when he told me his stories about Pure. How his cheeks would flush with color and the corners of his mouth would turn up into a soft, wistful smile. How his eyes would grow distant and misty, as if staring off at some fond memory.

Even though I don’t have a mirror in the backseat of the Lincoln town car for me to see my reflection, I know now what it means to own that look.

Problem is, right now, the look is all I have. While poaching Jimmy’s luck could conceivably help me find a way to keep Mandy and her family safe, there’s no guarantee things would work out the way I hoped. Even if they did, I’d have to live with the shame of what I’d done. Plus there’s the problem of actually getting close enough to grab his hand. So it’s not like I have a valid dilemma. Still, it’s tempting to think that if I could find a way to poach the Pure from Jimmy, I could solve all of my problems, get the half million from Tommy, and then live happily ever after in personal disgrace.

At least I’d have my health.

Instead, I’m poaching luck from people on a list given to me by a power-hungry Mafia sociopath while being
chauffeured around by a militant vegan douche bag with a superiority complex.

“Hey, you know that factory-farmed pigs are confined in narrow cages and become crazy with boredom?” says Alex. “They’re very social, affectionate, and intelligent, and they spend their lives in a space so small they can’t even turn around.”

“Why don’t we play the quiet game?” I say. “You stop talking, and that way I won’t have to scream at you to shut up. How’s that sound?”

He gives me a quick glance in the rearview mirror, then stares straight ahead, sulking.

I’d give anything right now for a pulled-pork sandwich and a side of bacon.

Yummy.

We drive through Pacific Heights, past Lafayette Park and the Spreckels Mansion, home to romance novelist Danielle Steel. I tried to poach her luck once, but you seldom see her out in public without a pair of gloves.

I don’t know if it’s just a fashion statement or if she believes the tabloid stories about luck poachers, but it seems as though more people today are wearing gloves than they used to. Mostly movie stars and high-profile professional athletes, along with the occasional career politician. But not your average Joe or Jane. Even if they believe in the stories about us, they can’t be bothered to take the necessary precautions. After all, people believe in earthquakes and epidemics and venereal diseases, too.

When it comes to disasters and tragedies and personal health, most people don’t believe that whatever
might
happen
will
actually happen to them. It’s just human nature. So they don’t take precautions. They don’t plan for the worst.

They don’t get vaccinated. They don’t practice safe sex. They don’t keep an emergency supply of food and water.

So expecting everyone to walk around wearing gloves to protect themselves against luck poachers is about as realistic as expecting everyone to use a condom.

After the fiasco at my sister’s and my encounter with Jimmy, my mood is subdued, so I decide to try to cheer myself up by altering the order of marks on the list. Instead of saving the best for last, I figure I could use a little pick-me-up right now.

Donna Baker, thirty-nine years old, lives in a blue, two-toned Victorian at 2470 Broadway, between Steiner and Pierce in the heart of Pacific Heights. According to Tommy’s list, her luck is top-grade soft.

That’s about the extent of what I know about Donna Baker.

I don’t know what attributes she exhibited to warrant her grade of good luck. I don’t know her history—personal, health, sexual. I don’t know if she’s liberal or conservative. Religious or spiritual. Vegetarian or carnivore.

All of these details make a difference. Not so much from a philosophical standpoint but from a physiological one. Political, religious, and dietary preferences have a significant
influence on a person’s mental and physical health and, consequently, on his or her luck. You get a conservative Republican and you end up with good luck contaminated with self-righteous hypocrisy. Poach from a fanatic born-again Christian and you get luck polluted with intolerant irony. And if you take your chances with a blue-collar noncarnivore, you could end up with someone like Alex the Vegan Douche Bag.

The last thing I want to do is poach luck from some uptight Christian conservative who doesn’t get enough protein in her diet.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or option to find out any of this, so I just have to hope Donna Baker is a moderate liberal, does yoga, and eats bacon every once in a while.

Still, in spite of everything, I have to admit I’m excited and even a little anxious. It’s been a long time since I’ve poached top-grade soft. It would be like not having sex for three years and then meeting someone special and hoping you remember what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to do it and that you don’t do it too soon.

Nothing screws up your confidence like a premature poaching.

WE’RE PARKED ACROSS
the street from Donna Baker’s. Alex sits in the front seat and alternately stares at me in the rearview mirror while reading a copy of
Vegetarian Times
as
I drain the last of my cappuccino and finish off my apple fritter with a smile and a long, drawn-out “Mmm.”