The Odds (3 page)

“I never got on it,” Nick told him.

Carl had leveled him a look. “Booze, that’s your poison.”

Carl was a funny kid, eighteen, with a big thick head of curly dark hair and big eyes. He was tall, skinny, and sometimes appeared younger than his years. Tonight the boy looked like he had the flu, eyes looked sick.

“Buy you dinner,” Nick said now. He quickly finished up in the shop and he told himself the whole time he picked up stray napkins and swept the floor that he couldn’t wait to be done with Marko, to pay off his debt and be gone. But the truth edged in that he actually liked the simple humble pie of the job. Hot water, yeast, dough, and an accounting for each of his hours.

   THE MODERN WAS ALMOST empty when they went in. He chose a booth away from the other customers. Carl slipped into the seat across from him.

A large-boned woman, proprietary, probably the owner, came over to them. “What’ll it be?”

“Burger?” Nick asked Carl.

“I’m talking drinks. You got a card?” the woman asked the boy.

“No,” Carl said. “Maybe like a Coke.”

Nick looked up at the television. The baseball game was on, but it was only the third inning because the Pirates were out of town.

“Double whiskey. Seagram’s VO. You okay with a Coke?”

The boy nodded curtly. His face was furrowed for a moment; then he asked, “What do
you
do for K? How are you in it? I don’t get you.”

“Me, I just work the shop. It’s one of his businesses. I’m not into your end of things.”

“You don’t seem to be.”

“I’m not. What happens after you get straight? I mean, what, you’d leave town—”

“Maybe. Yeah.”

“I wish you luck, then.”

“Couple of days, I’m going to be ready. I have a plan.”

“Like in the book you told me about?”

“Yes. Weaning, then cold turkey. Why, you planning to tell K what I’m saying? Snitch?”

“No. He’ll find out sooner or later. When customers are looking for you.”

“I’ll be long gone. K can always find somebody to sell.”

Their drinks arrived, and they took a moment to order burgers from the woman.

“How do you know K, then? Huh?” Carl asked. The boy was studying him, not meanly, but with unwavering attention that amounted to suspicion.

“From ages ago.”

“He’s older than you, right?”

“Yeah. Kind of a substitute father. When I didn’t have anybody.”

Carl nodded. “But you came here from fishing.”

“Right. Fishing. New Jersey coast.”

There was a pause as Carl watched him. “They have you driving to Philly yet?”

“Philly?” Nick felt uncomfortable. Carl knew more than he did, it seemed, about Markovic’s operation. “No. So far I just run the shop. Favor to—” He caught himself in time. “—K.”

“You don’t seem cut out for this,” Carl said. He took a drink of his Coke. “Sugar,” he said, tapping the glass. “A drug. Addicts gravitate toward addicts. Addictions come in twos and threes. I have to fight sugar, too, if I’m going to get healthy. See I know one or two things.”

“You know a lot of things.”

“Did I tell you I went to college for a year?”

“I thought you were only eighteen.”

“Right. I went when I was seventeen. I was fucked up, couldn’t study. Very nervous all the time. But—I couldn’t flunk math no matter what I did. Had a British prof.
Maths
, he kept calling it. All the girls liked him. Whatever. I was really good at math. Even if I missed two weeks, I’d go to class, catch up.”

“Hmm,” Nick said.

“You ever hear of Wole Soyinka?”

“No. He one of your friends?”

Carl’s large brown eyes widened. He choked out a laugh. “Maybe. Maybe in a way. He’s a famous guy. Writer. Never met him.”

“Never heard of him.”

“I saw this thing about him on TV. He was cool. He told about being in prison and giving himself math problems to keep himself from going, you know.” Carl tapped his head to illustrate.

“I never pegged you for a college guy.”

“Neither did the dean,” Carl laughed.

Nick watched the game for a bit. The players couldn’t hit anything tonight.

“So you just run the shop, that’s all?”

“Yeah.”

Carl pretended to watch the game, too, then. He said, “Baseball is very mathematical. I can’t explain it. I just know it is.”

“You mean the score?”

“I’m talking deeper than the score.”

They both watched TV for a while longer. “What happened to your friend you were worried about?”

“BZ … is nervous. K thinks he’s stepping on it.”

“Is he?”

“Nah.”

“I always heard everybody did.”

“I don’t do it. I’m telling you that, and I’m telling you to pass that on,” he said tensely.

“Well, I wouldn’t be too surprised if you did.”

“I don’t. And I don’t want to be killed for something I don’t do. You know about the guy named Carson ran the shop for a while? Your job?”

Nick said, “No.”

“They’ll find him in the river one day. K favors the river as a way to clean up.”

Nick went still, trying to figure out if he believed what Carl was telling him.

“He told me once if I screwed up, he’d make me want to die.”

A large clang came from the kitchen. Nick looked in that direction and then back to Carl. His heart was suddenly tumbling and falling in his chest.

The boy’s face was narrow and sad like a saint’s face. Nick felt an unwanted wave of sympathy. “You want to quit, you should hurry up and leave town, cut your losses. You have someplace to go?”

“Nah.” Carl stared into his Coke, then looked up at Nick suspiciously.

Through his sidelong glance, Nick saw two women come into the bar and sit on the stools up front. Nick watched them shake their hair and take out cigarettes and look around and then begin to talk to each other. He saw one of them catch his eye and then toss her hair and whisper to her friend. The hostess went to the women to take their orders and started back to the kitchen. When she passed Nick and Carl, Nick signaled that he wanted another drink.

The hostess came to them with their burgers. “Get you your drink,” she said.

For a while, Nick concentrated on his food, slopping mustard and ketchup onto the burger and taking big bites. When his drink came, he polished it off quickly. When he looked up from his food, Carl was still watching him. “You selling me out?” Carl asked.

“No,” he said. “No.” He rose up in the booth and excused himself. He went into the men’s room and ran cold water over his hands, then cupped some in his hands and splashed his face. Marko was where he owed his allegiance. Marko had saved his life.

When he got back to the bar, Carl was staring at his untouched hamburger. It sat in a paper basket with a heap of fries. “Can’t you eat?” Nick asked.

“No.” Carl took one of the fries and swallowed hard. “It won’t go down.”

Nick put down money for the burgers. “Let’s get it wrapped. Try later. You have to eat.” Carl shrugged an assent.

The woman who waited on them brought them a bag and some foil and let them wrap it themselves. Then they went out to Nick’s old Pontiac.

“Which way you live?” Nick asked when they reached Brighton. “Left, right?”

“Thought of something. Let me walk. I’ll be okay.”

Nick inched along, watching Carl go up the hill.

   CARL SLIPPED INTO THE OLD house where he sometimes met Mac and Zero, two of his customers. Better to give Nick a red herring, let him see
this
place instead of the right place,
his
special place.

He had liked Nick and that was stupid. Nobody could be trusted, especially not some old pal of K-man’s.

For a while he sat in the old house on the second floor in the dark. He almost didn’t have the energy to go back downstairs, fit in the plywood plug. There was a hole in the roof; moonlight spilled in, enough that his eyes adjusted after a while.

Carl’s secret place where he was going to hole up was a charred house seven up the street from this one—awful looking from the outside, but better inside than anyone could guess. He’d found it five weeks back when he ducked into a yard avoiding K’s van. Before he left the yard, he noticed an outdoor tap dripping water. Every window was boarded up. He felt above the door for a key. Nada. But the trickle of water had his attention. He started looking under stones, bricks. To his astonishment, he found a key under a brick. It was corroded and it threatened not to work, but a push, a tug later, and he was inside the fire-damaged house. There was, of course, dirt from the fire, but other than that, it was usable because most of the fire had been on the second floor. Gingerly, he tried the kitchen tap—water, very rusty, but it was water and it hiccoughed its way out. A person could survive here. He’d known that one day he would need the place, and he didn’t tell anyone about its existence.

He visited it about once a week, thinking, dreaming. He made sure the giveaway outside tap was turned off tight.

Tonight, after another hour of sitting in what he thought of as Mac’s and Zero’s shooting-up place, he went outside and made his way down the hill again. He knew this neighborhood like nobody knew it. He noticed things—who worked when, which cars belonged to which houses.

When he passed the house where Nick had his apartment, the Pontiac was parked outside. A fifteen-year-old car. Not worth much. Pennsylvania plates. Inexpensive apartment. Carl catalogued it all. Was Nick in there reporting to Marko?

They’d be fishing Nick out of the river someday, too.

He headed back to his apartment on Veto. When he got inside, he could see someone had been there. He went straight to his mattress. His two hundred dollars was gone.

For the better part of an hour, he stood listening. He peered out the window. Something was coming down. This wasn’t random. He knew, suddenly, how unsafe he was. And Nick—watching him, asking about BZ.

BZ
was
stepping on it, and heavily, too. The kid had laughed earlier today and said, “I got to get mine, you know?” BZ had moved his fingers as if sprinkling powder, dust.

He should try to warn BZ again.

He began to gather things: two large jugs of water, an old coffee can, soap, towels, loaf of bread, peanut butter, pills. He looked outside. It had just begun raining.

   FRIDAY MORNING THE detectives on Homicide sat around talking. Their commander was in the hospital. The news about Christie had spread quickly last night, as bad news does. Colleen Greer had been one of the ones to visit the hospital, to stay and listen. Then she went home, where she sat at her computer most of the night. Now she was an expert on different kinds of leukemia, prognoses, treatments.

Last night Christie asked his young doctor what was the longest anybody had lived with it. The doctor said the average was five years. Some made it to ten. The bad-luck version was two. But there was a story about a guy who lived with it for forty years. “That’s what I want,” Christie told the doctor. “Forty.”

Colleen told him to go for forty-five, fifty
at least
. And also, she requested that he never retire. She’d made Christie laugh to think of himself, hobbling around the city at a hundred, cleaning up crime.

The detectives traded stories about people they’d known who had had leukemia.

“He’ll fight it,” said McGranahan.

“Rotten luck. And with young kids.” That was Coleson.

“And he was a clean-liver, too,” Hrznak grunted.

“Christ, you don’t have to bury him yet,” Potocki grumbled.

“Who’s in charge?” Nellins asked. “He tap any of you?”

“He’s orchestrating from the hospital,” Colleen said testily. “It’s good for him. To keep working.”

“You going to be okay?” Potocki asked her in a low voice when they moved aside from the group.

She knew her eyes were red-rimmed. She loved Christie, and to see him being brave … worried about his kids … Well, it had hit her hard. “I was just up late.”

A siren sounded in the distance. She sat at her desk and stared at the litter of papers.

She was aware of Potocki taking a phone call. “C’mon, partner,” he told her moments later. “We got one.”

She got up from her desk. “What is it?”

“Drug overdose. Very dead. A young kid.”

“Let’s go, then.” They started down the steps for the parking lot. Work was the only cure.

“You talked to Boss a lot last night?” Potocki asked.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Chemo’s the worst of it. My mum had it. You might as well be a drug addict. I hate chemo.” Potocki went around to the passenger seat of the fleet car, a Monte Carlo, and let her take the keys from Pete. “Up to Garfield Street,” he told her when she’d started the car up.

“Boss
has
to do the chemo. He doesn’t have a choice. He has a family.”

“Oh, I know.”

It was still raining some, but the day was supposed to get nice— birds singing, sunlight. She put on the windshield wipers and started out.

Soon enough they were climbing Garfield, where an ambulance and a patrol car sitting outside led her and Potocki right to the aluminumsided small frame house. The rain had lightened to almost nothing, just mist.

“You can take it,” Potocki said. “The lead. If you want.”

Potocki was not his usual self. He hadn’t made a joke all morning.

An old man with light brown skin and very white hair met them at the door. Colleen showed her credentials.

The patrol cop appeared from the back of the house. He was about twenty-five, white, gaining weight, face already florid. “Just an addict,” he said, shrugging.

Just
was a word Colleen found dangerous. Just this, just that. People said it when they didn’t care. To the cop, a needle in the arm meant the kid did it to himself, suicide by accident, suicide by error.

“Show me,” she said to him.

“It’s around back. A back entrance.”

Everybody, including the old man, trooped around back. The old man was saying, “I don’t know. He musta done something. Drugs or something. I don’t know about what he was up to. He seems dead. Is he dead?”