God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (22 page)

Bird shrugged. "Seven, eight thou, I don't know.
Whatever I could get my hands on. You know how things been."
Mickey watched the sixth race thinking about Aunt Sophie. She'd asked
him to keep an eye on Arthur. He didn't know if that meant to take
his money away before he could lose it or not. He didn't know how
he'd do that in the middle of the reserved section of the clubhouse
either.

The tote board flashed up the seventh race and turned
Leaf, the two horse, opened at eight to one.

"Three to one," Bird said. "They made
her the second favorite in the program, and all these fuckin'
cannibals never would of seen her are going to bet her down. You wait
and see .... "

Mickey looked at the board and Bird's fil1y—the
six—was three to one. “C'mon, Bird, I'm responsible," Mickey
said. "I told Sophie I'd keep an eye on you."

Bird said, "Responsible? There's nobody
responsible for each other."

Mickey leaned back in his seat and watched the board
a few minutes, then he stood up to bet. "Be right back," he
said. He went to the fifty-dollar window and put the stack of fifties
on the counter. “Two win, forty-five times," he said. The man
behind the window was smoking a cigar. He sighed and punched up the
tickets and never looked up. Mickey thought he had a future as a bank
teller if he wanted it.

He put the tickets in the pocket where his money had
been and bought himself a watery Pepsi-Cola. He took a swallow and
checked the cup, wondering what kind of people Jeanie's family was to
drink that kind of shit night and day.

When he got back to the seats, Bird was gone and
there was a jockey change on Turned Leaf. They'd put a Colombian
named Charles Suaite on her, and Mickey didn't like the looks of that
at all. Bird had left two beers on the door and his racing form on
his seat, and the smell of hair oil up and down the aisle. When he
came back, he was carrying three inches of tickets, most of them
exactas with the New York filly on top. "Not the whole eight
thousand," Mickey said.

Bird sat down next to him, picked one of the beers up
off the floor and took a long drink. "It turned out I had a
little more," he said. He split the tickets into two
piles—exactas and win tickets—and put one pile in the left pocket
of his suit coat and one pile in the right pocket. Then he patted the
pockets. “George ain't never going to say no to Bird again,"
he said. George was the automatic twenty-four-hour bank teller at
Girard Bank.

"You're fuckin' crazy," Mickey said.

Bird nodded. His filly went to Eve to one, Turned
Leaf stayed where she was. Mickey closed his eyes and waited. There
wasn't anything he could do about it now. Not about horses or jockeys
or people, alive or dead. It was out of his hands.

A few minutes later, just after they'd announced one
minute to post, he heard Bird say, "No, no . . . Fuck." He
opened his eyes and looked at the board, and somebody had dumped
enough late money on the six horse to drop her to five to two. “The
fuckin' cannibals," Bird said. Down on the track they were
loading the gate. The two men pushed them in, one at a time.

Horses didn't like the starting gate, neither did
jockeys. That's where you got killed.

"Cannibals," Bird said again. That was what
he called anybody that knew less about the horses than he did, but it
wasn't ignorance behind that kind of late money, it was the opposite.

Mickey had a feeling that seemed to continue from the
moment that morning when he'd looked down at Jeanie's hair and the
curve of her head and thought maybe he'd lost her. It was part of the
same thing.

The race was only six furlongs, which was a good
thing for the Colombian. He couldn't have held her much longer. He
put Turned Leaf on the outside and pulled her head that way all the
way around. And she ran anyway, looking sideways. She came six wide
around the last turn, fifteen lengths behind, and still closed so
hard that the Colombian had to stand up to keep her from finishing
second.

Mickey watched the finish standing up, without
moving, and then he sat down. "They ought to break his legs,"
he said, not to anybody in particular. "That spic couldn't of
been plainer about it if he'd of nailed her dick to the starting
gate." He noticed Bird then. He'd taken the exactas out of the
side of his coat and begun to separate the winning tickets from the
others. All of the exactas had the six horse on top, so everything in
the other pocket would be a win on the six.

"I tried to tell you, Mick," he said. "It
was a lock .... " The prices came up on the board then. Bird's
filly paid seven dollars to win, and the exactas, six-one, was
$54.60. Bird sorted his tickets. "Sometimes you just know,"
he said. "Sometimes you're so sure it ain't real."

Mickey didn't say anything. He took the tickets out
of his own pocket and dropped them on the floor, that was how easy
you got left behind. "You notice that race my filly run in New
York?" Bird said.

"Yes, I seen it," Mickey said.

"I figure they wouldn't of kept her out this
long if they wasn't going to bring her back ready. I figured they had
her ready to run that same race again .... " Mickey closed his
eyes.

Bird was talking and sorting, Mickey was imagining
what he would say to Smilin' Jack. There must of been people in the
neighborhood before that died and the families didn't have the money
to cover it. He'd ask him for a couple of weeks, a month to get him
his cash. Bird was still sorting. He must of had eighty ten-dollar
exactas that said six-one.

The ones that had the six over some other horse he
was flipping into the air, one at a time, watching them blow in the
wind and drop into the seats around him. A few of them dropped on
Mickey, one landed in his chair. "When I get like this I ain't
real .... "

Mickey went with Bird to cash the tickets. It came to
just over $32,000. Bird divided the money and put half of it into one
side of the suit coat and half of it into the other side. "You
ready to go?" he said.

Bird gave the kid he'd almost killed on the way in a
twenty to get the car, and then drove out of the parking lot at
thirty miles an hour, just like somebody normal. On the way back to
I-95 he said, "What was that job Monday? Seven hundred?"

Mickey shook his head. "It's old business, Bird.
I took the meat." It was one thing to lose your ass, it was
something else to have your `friends feeling sorry for you.

"Seven hundred, right?" Bird reached into
one of his coat pockets and pulled out about two pounds of
hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Mickey. "Take seven of
them," he said. "Take ten, for the interest."

Mickey gave them back. “Keep your money, Bird,"
he said. "I took the meat."

"Fuck meat," he said. "Look, I got
maybe thirty thou here. I got to give six back, which I borrowed, the
rest is clear. I'm goin' to They got trailer parks down there, you
can buy one of them things for what, twelve, thirteen thou? That's
what Sophie wants, to live in one of them trailer parks with her
buddies, grow some shit in the yard."

Mickey said, "You borrowed six and bet the wrong
horse? What were you going to tell them if you lost?”

Bird said, "Five. You gotta give six for five,
the fucks, but I been tryin' to tell you. It couldn't happen. Now
take your grand and gimme my money back." Mickey took seven
hundred-dollar bills and put the rest back in Bird's pocket.

"I'll give you the meat," he said.

"Fuck meat," Bird said. "You always
gotta be movin' it in or out or sideways, so fuck it. They can't
touch you when you don't give a fuck." They drove with the
traffic then, neither one of them saying anything until Bird turned
off the Interstate into South Philadelphia.

"I think I'm done
now," Bird said. "I think I'm used up in Philly. These new
people takin' everything, they don't own Miami. The people that own
Miami know what their business is about."

* * *

Vinnie Ribbocini was sitting behind his desk with a
glass of milk and a package of Oreo cookies when they came in;
without knocking, and stood one on each side of the door staring at
him. Vinnie knew one of them. The new people had him overlooking his
business. His name was Sally. "So what do you want, comin' in
here like this?" he said. "You want to put smack in the
jelly donuts, what is it?"

The one he knew came across the room to the desk. The
other one stayed where he was. He had that look like he had them
fuckin' little earphones on, that you couldn't hear what everybody
else could hear. He was standing with his feet wide apart and his
coat open. The shooter. Vinnie laughed out loud. The one he knew
reached across the desk and slapped him across the face.

The slap spun him around in his chair. "I oughta
fuckin' kill you right here," the man said. Vinnie straightened
himself and stared at him. He promised to kill him for that. "Before
Angelo got wasted," he said, "if I spit in your face, you'd
a asked if it was all right to wipe it off." Sally slapped him
again.

This time the old man saw it coming and moved with
the hand. His cookies sprayed into the wall, the milk stayed where it
was. He picked it up and took a drink. His hands were shaking, ' and
he was ashamed. The left side of his nose was bleeding down into his
mustache, and he dabbed at it with a Kleenex he took out of a box on
the side of the desk that hadn't been disturbed.

"You set me up," Sally said.

The old man laughed at him. "If I set you up,"
he said, "you'd be where you belong."

Sally said, "I sent my brother-in-law on that
job yesterday. Him and another guy just as good. I sent him over
there with two eyeballs, Vinnie, and when they find him he's walkin'
around Broad Street holdin' one of them in his hands." He
grabbed the old man's shirt and pulled him across the desk. "You
told me it wasn't no problem,"

The blood filled his mustache and began to drip on
the desk. He stared right into Sally's eyes.

"The other guy, they got his ass in the
hospital, tied to the ceiling in six places on account of his back's
broke and his leg's broke, and they can't give him no painkiller
because they don't know if his fuckin' head's broke too."

He let go of the old man and straightened his
clothes. Vinnie used another Kleenex to clean the spots off the desk.
"So?"

"So you said it wasn't no problem, Vinnie. And I
sent my brother-in-law over there with another guy, just as good, and
they run into a fuckin' gorilla. I mean a real fuckin' gorilla.
What's that make me look like?"

The old man saw that they hadn't noticed him shaking,
and Sally's voice began to change, like he wanted to talk now. If
they'd seen he was afraid, they'd of beat him half to death before
they wanted to talk. . .

"So shoot the gorilla," the old man said.
His nose began to swell, he could feel it. It had been broken before
and he knew better than to blow his nose, but he did it anyway.

"It ain't him we want," Sally said. "We
ain't got no business with him, never did. Not until you asked us to
go to the hospital."

"So shoot me," he said.

Sally shook his head and sat down on the comer of the
desk. Blowing his nose had pushed some of the blood up into the
cavities under the old man's eyes, and they were swelling now,
cutting off his vision. "To tell you the truth, that crossed our
mind," Sally said. "Comin' over here, me and Mike talked
that over, right, Mike?" Mike smiled, distracted, almost polite.
He'd be the one to do it, if that's what it came to.

"My sister calls me up and says they found
Ronnie walkin' around carryin' one of his eyeballs, it crosses my
mind to come over here and cut your head off. She's real upset,
screamin' all over the neighborhood that nobody can get away with
that. You know how they are. So I promise her I'll take care of it,
but, like I said, on the way over, me and Mike talked it over, and we
figure it don't have to be you. I mean, somebody told you it was no
problem and you told us. So it's him .... "

Vinnie saw his nephews was working both sides—they'd
talked to these two—and he shook his head. The reason these two
wouldn't cut off his head, they was afraid. The old man was the one
Angelo had listened to. Angelo loved him. They might kill him, but
they wouldn't cut his head off. Scarin' was one thing, but you didn't
want nobody scared and pissed at the same time. That would be bad for
everybody.

"I done business with this guy since before the
Japs bombed Pearl Harbor," he said.

"He fucked up," Sally said. "Somebody's
got to make this good."

"So shoot the goril1a," he said again.

Sally said, "We ain't goin' near that
motherfucker." The old man laughed at them again, and Sally
slapped him. His eyes had swollen almost shut now, so he didn't see
it coming and it knocked him out of his seat. Then there were hands
on his collar, lifting him back up. "It's him, or it's you and
him," Sally said. The old man could smell his breath, and his
legs were shaking like the palsy.

And he saw what they would do, and gave them the
address. Sally wrote it down and then, without another word, they
walked out the door. The old man heard them get into their car
outside.