Blizzard Ball (17 page)

“Guess what?” Brian whispered in her ear. “I’ve just won the lottery.”

His cell phone rang. He reached into his trouser pocket on the floor and fished it out, then got out of bed to take the call into the hallway. “Where? When?” He hung up and hesitated before coming back into the bedroom.

“That was Carlos.” Brian sat on the bed next to Alita. “Eduardo and Rafie were in a car accident.”

“What?”

“They’re gone,” Brian said, and reached for her. “I’m sorry— they both died.” He tried to hold Alita through the screaming, but she fought him off.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “If it wasn’t for my big mouth and the fucking lottery, they would have been safe instead of tired and homeless.” Alita bolted from the bed, snatched her clothes out of the closet, and rushed into the bathroom.

She emerged fully dressed. “I don’t want anything to do with this bullshit lottery,” she said. “Where are the damn tickets?”

“Be cool, I’ll get them, okay?”

Brian pulled on his pants, retrieved a box from the linen cabinet, and set it on the bed. Alita lifted the box lid and looked at the contents. The winning tickets had been sorted and banded by prize value. “Nothing but bad luck,” she said, and dumped the tickets into an oversized tote purse. With the purse on her shoulder, she padded down the stairs, her heels in hand. She collected her coat, stuffed her feet into her shoes, and headed for the door.

“Wait! Where ya going?” Brian said, following Alita out into the snow-covered yard in a tee shirt. “Carlos said the plan was to get the Canadians busted with the counterfeits and off your back.

Then sit tight.”

“Screw the plan. I am going to get rid of this curse.”

“Don’t leave. It’s too dangerous.” Brian tried to block her path. “Who knows how many more ticket scalpers are out there, plus the cops. This is crazy.”

“Move,” Alita said, pushing past him as she got into her car.

Alita drove through Albert Lea toward the interstate. The flat gray cloud ceiling, threatening snow, added to her already dark mood. She mindlessly blew through a stop sign. Startled by a horn blast, screech of brakes, and near collision, she tried to collect herself. Trauma from the news about her cousins had shattered her ability to focus. She pulled into an Amoco station with an adjoining diner near the entrance ramp to 35W.

Darting into the Amoco ladies’ room, she stood in front of the mirror, took a deep breath and splashed cold water on her face. The fog in her brain was clearing, but it only served to amplify the feeling of responsibility for the loss of her cousins. Then too, her reckless temper and flight had probably sunk her relationship with Brian. Her stomach rolled and twisted at the thought. She tried to rub away smudges of mascara but discovered stress had painted dark shadows beneath her eyes. She had no makeup with her, but couldn’t care less at this point. Before leaving the station she collected a bottle of water and a package of Excedrin and brought them to the checkout counter.

The customer in front of her was a tall thin woman wearing a woven Peruvian-style stocking cap. Straggly ginger-colored hair, graying at the edges, peeked out from underneath. A small backpack hung loosely from a single strap on her shoulder. She smelled of sage—an old hippie, Alita surmised . The woman held in her nail-bitten hands a stack of lottery tickets. She was dealing them out one at a time to the heavyset, ruddy-faced clerk who was scanning them for winners.

“Never seen that many winners at one time. It looks like you hit on a pretty good system,” the clerk said, slapping cash on the counter. “This one here,” he said, holding a ticket up between tobacco-stained fingers, “is too big for my britches. You’ve got to go to a lottery office to cash it in. Closest one’s in Owatonna, up the road a piece. Also recommend you sign it.”

Alita watched as the woman turned the ticket over and signed Joanne Finstedt in the signature block. She then collected her cash, stuffed the money and unfulfilled lottery ticket in her pack, and walked into the adjoining diner.

Alita paid for her items and quickly followed. There were only a few customers, mostly truckers deep into their coffee. She spotted the woman in a booth, alone, near the window.

“Excuse me, can I ask where you got those lottery tickets?”

“Is there something wrong?” the woman asked, focusing beyond Alita, to a highway patrolman who had just entered the restaurant and was standing at the entrance surveying the patrons.

Alita took advantage of the woman’s distraction and slipped discreetly into the booth. Both women watched the patrolman take a seat, remove his Smokey the Bear type hat, and light a smile for the waitress. The women looked at each other, sharing a moment of relief.

“Sorry to barge in. It’s just that I was curious about the source of your lottery tickets.”

A waitress in a black tank top and white apron dropped menus on the table. “Coffee?”

“Black for me,” Alita said.

“Leave room for cream,” the woman added and waited for the waitress to trail off. Then to Alita, “I don’t recall extending you an invitation.” Her face screwed into annoyance.

“This will just take a minute. I’m Alita.”

“So, I’m Joanne. What do you want?”

“You probably think I’m bat-shit crazy, and you’d be right, but …” her chin quivered. “My cousins are dead because of the fucking lottery.” Her voice was a strained whisper, the words tasting like copper pennies, metallic and acrid. She took a breath and continued, “I noticed each of your lottery tickets had the number 21 as the BlizzardBall pick.” Alita fumbled through her purse and extracted a bundle of lottery tickets. “What’s a little puzzling is, so do these.” She laid the tickets on the table. “I was considering there might be a connection.”

“What are you accusing me of?” Joanne shot back, lifting her arms in a gesture that invited all the customers to witness this craziness.

Alita braced for a skirmish. The woman’s outburst had caught the attention of a few customers and the patrolman.

The waitress interrupted, dropped the coffee on the table, and tapped a pencil to her order pad. Alita flattened her hands over the bundle of lottery tickets and swept them into her purse. “Nothing for me,” she said. Joanne likewise waved away the waitress and kneaded her temples.

A silence sat between the women while they took a measure of each other. Joanne’s face was tan and crinkled like a walnut, but it seemed to Alita there was a fragileness about her that belied the tough weathered look.

“Your cousins. One of ’em a skinny wisecracker, the other tall, serious?” Joanne asked, her defenses softening.

“Rafie and Eduardo.” Alita’s eyes moistened. “Killed in a car accident.”

“Oh, my god,” Joanne blurted, bringing a hand to her mouth. She closed her eyes and held them shut for a long while. When her eyes finally opened it was as though she had returned from another place. “You know, the desert is quite remarkable in its beauty,” Joanne said in a low even voice, as if guiding a meditation. “The stars are so bright you can practically reach out and pluck ’em like ripe apples. If you look deep enough into the flowers you can see the whole of creation.”

Joanne paused and looked at Alita through eyes wary and narrow that seemed to hold too much disappointment. “I spent the last month wandering around just such a place with an Indian charlatan. I wanted a mystical experience that would allow me to access a portal of healing and wellness beyond the consciousness and capabilities of our ‘doc-in-a-box’ system. I wanted to save myself. Ultimately I became discouraged, and on my way home I got into a jam and landed on Eduardo and Rafie for help. Couple of days ago. God knows what could have happened to me with two roughnecks on the road in the middle of nowhere. Not that Rafie didn’t want to party.”

A crooked smile broke across Alita’s face. “That would be Rafie.”

“They listened to my whiny story about an inoperable brain tumor. Took me to a bus station. The bus got me this far, and I’m waiting for a friend to pick me up.”

“Where were they headed?

“Didn’t say. Tell you the truth, I don’t think they knew. But before we parted they gave me a handful of lottery tickets.” Joanne dug into her backpack and extracted the remaining ticket along with a wad of cash and clutched them in her fist.

“Maybe it was dumb luck, twisted fate or mercy. Or maybe I was in the right place at the right time, or the whim of a couple of highwaymen that resulted in this gift.” Joanne pushed the ticket and cash toward Alita. “But I’m going to consider it an act of love, plain and simple. And girl, that’s something been few and far between for me.”

Alita started to push Joanne’s hand back, rejecting the offer, but instead of a tug-of-war, their hands softly folded upon one another. “They’ve helped me too,” Alita said, tears running down her cheeks.

Kirchner steered his Crown Vic into the parking lot of the strip mall on Robert Street, heading for the West Side Bowl and Liquor. After the lottery siege press conference, he had considered going back to the office to file a report. But he was too wound up, and needed to hit something. Squeeze out the venom. In the past he’d drink, kick down a door, or both. Now, he would go bowling.

He dug his double ball bag out of the trunk and entered the one-story bowling alley. Built in the 1950s, the place had undergone little in the way of physical remodeling. He was met with the smell of stale beer and moldy shoe leather. The entry was flanked by a lane and shoe rental counter on the right and a dark cocktail lounge on the left. Deep inside the bar, lounge lizards nursed Manhattans and rarely ventured into the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights illuminating the eighteen lanes. The familiar air and rumbling of balls and pins almost relaxed Kirchner. Almost. He was eager to throw the first ball. At three in the afternoon, the lanes were empty; league play was not until five. He had bowled on a police team but, over time, found it more to his liking to bowl alone. From his bowling bag he lifted a pair of Lind bowling shoes with adjustable glide pads on the bottom, laced them up, and set his two bowling balls in the ball return tray.

The blue-black marbled reactive resin strike ball weighed sixteen pounds and looked like the earth spiraling out into orbit when Kirchner launched it. The spare ball, of the same weight, was blood red. Although the equipment was first-rate, Kirchner refused to wear a fancy bowling shirt, gloves, wrist braces, or any other nonessential accessories.

“Turn off the overhead electronic score board, will ya, Cheryl?” Kirchner shouted from the lane up to the counter. The computerized scoring system was the West Side Bowl’s one nod to modernization, and Kirchner hated it. He wanted to be left alone without a window into his world.

He launched the first ball with such force it bounced down the alley like a rock skimming on water. Kirchner could barely hear the crash of the pins. His head was still filled with the ringing noise of the blast and thoughts of Bonnie’s horrific death. “Goddammit.” He held tight to the cusswords and kicked his empty ball bag. “I fucked up, let that woman down,” he scolded himself. “Why did she come in so damn early?” He knew there was no direct linkage between the meeting he had scheduled with the lottery database security manager and the hostage taking, but he felt responsible just the same.

The next ball hit the head pin dead on and left a hopeless sev-en-ten field goal split. Questions spilled in as he waited for the pins to reset. How in the world did Bonnie get caught up in the cross fire between a disgruntled lottery player and a lottery winner attempting to redeem a ticket? Did Bonnie have accomplices in the manipulation of the Lottery database? Maybe Morty, as Tyler theorized? Or was Bonnie just an out-of-tilt pet lover trying to generate a run-up to boost the Lottery’s revenue for animal care?

Kirchner had never taken to the social side of bowling and resented those who discounted the physical and mental aspects of the sport. As a left-handed bowler, he had an advantage over righties. The floor path of the left-handed bowler received less traffic, resulting in better floor conditions and a truer ball roll. Winter bowling was also to his advantage. The low humidity made the pins lighter and more active. He wished he had an equally informed strategy for the investigation.

Still over-amped from the day, he let the ball fly halfway down the sixty-two-foot, ten-and-three-quarters-inch lane. It bounced once and leaped into the three-pound seven pin, ricocheting it like a penny in a clothes dryer. Kirchner finished his third game and exchanged his sweat-soaked polo shirt for a clean one in his bag.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the bat-cave darkness of the cocktail lounge. He laid a twenty on the bar and ordered a Schweppes bitter lemon soda and two five-dollar pull tabs. He hadn’t eaten all day. The citrus scorched his stomach lining. His cell phone rang—it was Tyler, the boy wonder BCA analyst.

“Game on,” Tyler blurted.

“What are you talking about?”

“We discovered an abandoned rental car in the Lottery headquarters parking lot,” Tyler said. “Inside we found plastic bags filled with counterfeit lottery tickets.”

“Counterfeits?” Kirchner said loudly. The word hung in the dark thick air of the bowling lounge, but no one reacted.

“Stuffed in one of the bags was a computer printout. The winning ticket was listed. Wild, huh?”

“Call in the lab.” Kirchner attempted to take control of his loose-cannon analyst.

“Done,” Tyler said, skipping ahead of Kirchner’s grasp of the situation. “The lab’s dusted the car, plastic bags, and tickets for prints. We’re also trying to run down the paper and ink on the counterfeits.”

“Have you ID’d the car renter?” Kirchner asked, and held his empty glass up to the barkeep, hoping to drown the relentless bomb-blast-induced headache.

“A Roddy Pitsan from Vancouver,” Tyler said. “Presume this is the same guy that got shredded in the explosion, ouch! Won’t know for sure until we get a forensic report.”

“Vancouver,” Kirchner said, snapping open a pull tab, “no doubt from the same outfit running tickets through the Cash and Dash. But why counterfeits?”