The Next Sure Thing (2 page)
“You’d guess right then.”
“Well, isn’t that amazing.”
“How so?”
He hands me a business card from an alligator-skin wallet. There’s at least half an inch of money tucked in there. The card features a metal-flake comet in the top corner and says
Win Hardy Talent Management
. The card stock feels hefty, assured, confident.
“You’re a talent agent?”
“Well, let’s just say I have an interest in people that can make me money.”
“At the track?”
“I’ve found that talent isn’t limited to a specific area.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“It means if you tell me who you like in this race and convince me to like them too, I’ll add to the ten bucks you’ve got to bet with.”
“How do you know that ten bucks is all I have to bet with?”
He smiled again. “Well, for one thing, you just told me. For another, you’re a blues player in a town with no blues scene, so you’re not gigging much. Lastly, you have the look of someone looking for one good hit, not someone out at the track for an enjoyable afternoon in the sunshine.”
“But you’d throw in with me if I tell you about this horse?”
He laughed and clapped me soundly on the back. It felt good. It felt all buddy-buddy and masculine. “See, I knew you had a line on something. So if it’s not Majestic Image, who is it?”
I wound up telling him everything, and for some reason it didn’t really surprise me.
H
e gave me twenty dollars, and when Ocean’s Folly won by three-quarters of a length over Majestic Image, I collected almost nine hundred dollars. He did better than me. He won enough that they had to pay him by check. The first thing I did was pay him back the twenty. He studied me a moment, nodded, pocketed the money and led me upstairs to the clubhouse, where we sat on plush seats while a waiter served us drinks.
He sat back in his chair like a king. He spread both arms out over the backs of the adjacent seats and puffed on a long Cuban cigar. He had the expensive look of a Cadillac fresh off the lot. When he drank, he held the glass with a thumb and two fingers, and I thought it was a very delicate move for such a large man.
I watched people watch him. He had a way of drawing their eyes. It wasn’t in any way I could determine. He just drew people. They couldn’t stop looking at him. The men eyed him with envy, and the women offered coy looks over the tops of their programs or the rim of their drink glasses. I felt proud to be sitting with him.
“Well, Mr. Cree Thunderboy,” he said. “That was very nice. Thrilling, even. You got any more aces up your sleeve?”
“Nothing that steps up and asks me to dance.”
He laughed and waved at the waiter for fresh drinks. I never drank scotch. In fact, I hardly drank at all. It was the one bluesman thing I could never get a fondness for. I liked being clear. But the stuff he was buying was smooth and warm and smoky-tasting, and I liked it.
“Come on. You got the touch, kid. I can tell. Who do you like in the fifth?”
I shook my head. “No one.”
“Come on.”
“No. All the way up to the tenth, there’s nothing. Sure things don’t come around all that often. Most people think there’s one in every box, as if life is like Cracker Jacks. It’s not. You got to ride a lot of rail before the train hits the station again.”
“You mix your metaphors. But I get you. You’re saying, take the money and run. Grin all the way to the bank.”
“I suppose. I never had a lot of loot in my time. So I tend to treat it carefully.”
“Wise,” he said. “I wonder, though, what you would do if you had a lot of loot, as you say?”
“That’s not a bridge I’m likely to cross anytime soon.”
“You tend to talk like a song lyric, do you know that?”
I laughed. “Comes with the territory, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, if you stick with me, you might not be singing the blues too long. I can use a bright kid like you.”
“I’m not a kid.”
He turned and fixed me with that blank unreadable look again. The scotch left me able to hold it.
“You’re right,” he said. “You’re not. I apologize. Figure of speech is all. I sometimes have too much of a Humphrey Bogart fixation.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “But what do you mean, if I stick with you?”
“Well, Cree, I’m in the business of making money. I hire people who can do that for me. People with a talent. People with a dream. They work for me and use their talent, and I make their dreams come true.”
“You’ve never even heard me play.”
“No, but you know how to pick a winner. That’s the talent I want. You do that for me, and I’ll get you into a recording studio and promote your music. Hell, I’ll even ante up for a video. The whole works. You just need to make your other talent available to me.”
“For how long?”
He reached out an arm and clenched me around the shoulders. I could feel the bulk of his muscles and the strength of him. “Time is relative where loot is concerned.”
“You can actually do all that? Recording, videos?”
“I have certain friends who can make certain things happen.”
“There’s no way I can find you a winner every day.”
“Maybe not. But you do it often enough, like you just did today, and I’d be a happy man, and my friends would be too. Everyone likes the easy money. Keeps things simple.”
It made me uncomfortable. Still, the idea of actually getting into a recording studio and making the album I’d always dreamed of was too hard to resist. His confidence was magnetic. “So what do I do?” I asked.
“You get the form, you make your pick, you come down here, check out the animal, and if it looks good, you go.”
“With what? I’m a ten-dollar bettor.”
He reached into his wallet and handed me a quarter inch of hundred-dollar bills. “Let’s just call this an advance on your commissions. Your grub stake. You work the sheet tonight. Call me. I get the money to you. You come here, make the bet and bring me the winnings. Easy.”
“How do I reach you?”
“The number’s on the card. And here’s a phone.” He reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a small cell phone. “The number’s speed-listed. Just press
One
.”
“You carry phones to give away to people?”
“They’re phones for my talent. I’m telling you, Cree, I take care of details. You take care of your end, I’ll have you out on cd in no time.”
“Sounds too easy.”
He laughed. “The best things always are. And what you said about sure things? Sometimes they just walk right up and introduce themselves.”
A
shton Crooker is my best friend. He used to bring his djembe drum and give me rhythm backup while I played on the street. The funny thing about that is we never talked the first three times. He’d just show up, drum behind me and leave. He never asked for any of the tips. It always seemed like he found joy in the playing and that was all he wanted.
So one rainy day when there wasn’t a lot of action, we headed for a coffee joint to warm up. We found out that we shared a passion for music. Ashton liked all kinds and filled my ears with talk of African, Brazilian and Cuban bands and drummers I should hear. We’d sit around his bachelor apartment and listen to music and talk long into the night sometimes. I told him about my life on the reservation and how the blues just reached out and touched me. He told me about growing up poor in a trailer park on the outskirts of Montreal and how drumming always seemed to make him feel better. He said he could even drum away hunger. That was the power of music. We were friends after that.
Now we sat in the same coffee joint, and he looked at me wide-eyed. “So he just gave you all this money?”
“Yeah. Just over three thousand.”
“Commission?”
“That’s what he said. An advance.”
“That’s too radical to be real.” Ashton studied the card Hardy had given me. “Did you even call this number? See if it’s a real office?”
“No. Why would I? The guy just wants fast money. Who doesn’t? I mean, if I met a guy like me and figured he could get me some easy winnings, I’d go for it too.”
“You’d hand off three grand to a stranger?”
“Well, maybe not that. But it shows he’s got money. Guys with that kind of money have connections, and he said he’d get me a recording session.”
“I’d be careful about who his connections were.”
“You know what, Ash? I don’t even care. If it gets me into a studio, that’s all I want.”
“Yeah, but nobody’s real name is Win.”
I riffled the edges of the bills. “I won this.”
“Maybe so,” Ashton said with a worried look. “But guys like you and me, Cree, we don’t get breaks like this. Not this easy. We’re working-class guys who play a little music. Dream, yeah. But stay real, buddy. Stay real.”
Just then the door opened, and two very large men walked in. They had heads the size of basketballs and eyes that stared straight ahead, unreadable like the eyes of dolls. They strode right over to our table and stood there looking down at us. I was suddenly very scared.
“Which one of you is Thunderboy?” the biggest one asked.
His friend punched him in the shoulder. “Well, gee, Vic. Would it be the Indian guy or the pasty-faced white guy? Hmmm. I wonder.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the one named Vic said. “Mr. Hardy asks that you sign these papers.” He held out a sheaf of legal-sized papers to me.
“What are they?” I said. “And how did you know where to find me?”
“Personal services agreement. Standard talent stuff,” the other one said. “And we can always find you. Trust me.”
Ashton and I exchanged a look. “Can I read them over?”
“I told you, standard stuff. You agreed in principle when you took the advance. So just sign the papers. We got work to do.”
“What kind of work?” Ashton asked.
“Tell him, Vic.”
Vic straightened up and stood as tall as he could and cast a sweeping look around the café. Then he leaned forward, his full weight on his arms. We could feel the tabletop bend. He looked right at Ashton with those bright, depthless eyes.
“Me and Jerry are commission agents. Thunderboy here pays us, we pay him. We get to be friends, have a few drinks. Maybe take in a ball game now and then. He don’t pay us, the story takes a slightly different tack. You get my drift?”
“I get it,” Ashton said. “I get it.” He slid back in his chair.
I signed the papers and handed them to Jerry, who folded them without looking. He put his hands in his pants pockets, and his coat flapped back to reveal the butt of a gun in his belt. We stared at it. Hard. When we looked up at him, he was grinning.
“Sometimes things get tough in the commission business. We wouldn’t want that to happen to you, Wonderboy.”
“That’s Thunderboy,” I said.
“Same difference from what I hear. Be ready at nine am. We’ll pick you up.”
“For what?”
Jerry slapped Vic playfully on the back, and the bigger man curled up his fists and ducked his head and shoulders down in a boxer’s shuffle step.
“For what, the kid asks.”
“Dumb kid,” Vic said and stood beside Jerry. “You signed the deal. You should know the play. We pick you up in the morning and deliver you to the studio, where you cut some tracks. I hear you’re some kind of whiz kid on guitar.”
“I’m recording? Just like that?”
“Just like that, like it says in the deal,” Vic said. “Then in the afternoon we deliver you to the track and you do your thing for the boss man. Here’s tomorrow’s form.”
He laid the racing form on the table. Ashton and I both stared at it without moving. This all seemed to be happening very fast. The two large men watched us. When we didn’t offer a response, they turned and walked toward the door. Then Vic turned on one heel and marched back, irritated.
“Don’t forget to do your homework. The man needs your call before we pick you up. Got it?” he asked.
“I got it.” I said. “I got it.”
Ashton and I looked at each other a long time without speaking.
M
oms met me at the door when I got home. She was the next thing to giddy. I’d never seen her so happy. When I walked through the door, she hugged me, and I could feel her shaking.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“More than okay,” she said and stepped back to look at me. “It’s so amazing what something like a little prayer can do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean my sister has been off work for a year after her hip operation. Things weren’t looking very good, and she really needed money just to get by while she was off her feet. This place keeps me going, but it doesn’t give me extra to pass around. But I prayed and asked for a way to help. And the next thing you know, your boss, Mr. Hardy, shows up and pays a whole year in advance.”
“He did that?” Things were happening too fast.
“Yes. He just left a half hour ago.”
The cell phone in my pocket rang, and I walked out onto the porch to take the call.
“I take it you’re home by now.” There was a touch of a laugh in Hardy’s voice.
“How did you know where I live?”
“I’m the kind of guy who likes to know everything about the people he hires.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is in my book.”
“Not in mine,” I said.
“Well, the thing is, Cree, you’re not writing the book. I am. You’re walking around with a fistful of my green. And you got a date to lay down some tracks in a studio just like you always wanted to do. What’s with the attitude?”
“I don’t like being followed.”
“No one’s following you. I just like to know where my money’s walking to when it walks out the door.”
“Are you happy now?”
“Extremely. Nice lady, that landlady of yours. Seemed happy to have a little extra to work with. Glad I could help.”
“I didn’t ask you to pay my rent.”
“No need. I’m your new BFF.”
“Best friend forever?” I asked, irritated.
“Best friend with firearms. Just remember that.” The phone went dead in my hand.
I sat in my room mulling over the events. Suddenly I didn’t like Hardy much. Beyond the charm and the dazzle was a coldness that worried me. His henchmen were buffoons, but there was a hard ugliness behind their playful natures. Still, the roll of bills felt good in my hand.