The Smack Read online

  “Flirt?” the whore repeated, making a “What the fuck you talkin’ about?” face. “You do understand I’m workin’, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” Petty said. “But I also know Nevada law says you get a coffee break.”

  “Ha!” the whore said. “Listen at you. I like you, Old School.” She punched a number into her phone and turned away to speak quietly to whoever answered.

  Petty waited, shifting back and forth from foot to foot. He had a soft spot for hookers. Not the dope fiends or the spooky man haters but the ones who had their shit together and treated hooking as a business. He’d met some smart whores over the years, some truly sharp ladies.

  “I’ll call you,” the whore said into the phone. The person on the other end kept talking, and the whore shouted, “When you gonna figure out I ain’t listenin’?” and ended the call.

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Petty said.

  “Please,” the whore said. “Don’t nobody own this bad bitch.” She slipped her arm through Petty’s and pulled him close. “You got sexy eyes, you know that?”

  “Not as sexy as yours,” Petty said. “Now, mind the ice here.”

  As much as he disliked snow, he had to admit that the feathery tumble of the flakes coming down was a pretty sight. He watched them fall through the dregs of daylight as he and the whore walked toward the casinos and wondered if it was true that every one was unique or if that was just more of the stupid shit they sold you when you were a kid.

  The whore went by Tinafey. “Like that white lady on TV, but all one word,” she said. Petty didn’t ask her real name, had no reason to. They sat at a table in a lounge at the Silver Legacy, where a guy at a piano sang a Beatles song, then something by Neil Diamond. Tinafey ordered Kahlua and coffee.

  “I’ll have the same,” Petty told the waitress.

  “Where you from?” Tinafey asked him.

  “You mean originally?”

  “Sure.”

  “I was born in Detroit, but we moved around,” Petty said. He always told whores the truth. They could spot a lie a mile off. “My dad was a gambler, and my mom was a gambler’s wife.”

  “Poor thing,” Tinafey said.

  “We followed my dad’s luck. A couple years here, a couple years there. Chicago, Vegas, Atlantic City. He ran a back-room casino in Philly for a while.”

  “Did you like movin’ around or hate it?”

  “Would it have mattered? I was a kid. Nobody cared what I thought. Dad eventually dumped us in Florida and took off with a Mary Kay saleswoman. Must have been the pink Cadillac.”

  “And how’d you turn out?”

  “Growing up like that?” Petty said. He shrugged and swept a bit of cigarette ash off the table.

  “So you’re a rambler and a gambler, too, huh?” Tinafey said.

  “I had a place in Phoenix, but I’m between cities now.”

  “That’s okay. The world needs ramblers and gamblers.”

  “What about you?” Petty said. “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from Memphis,” Tinafey said.

  “I hear it in your voice.”

  “Yeah, but I been all over. I even went to Mexico, to Cabo San Lucas.”

  “How was that?”

  “Baby, it was like a dream, the ocean and the desert come together like that. I laid in the sun, drank margaritas, and fell asleep every night listenin’ to the waves, happy just smellin’ the air. I told my friend I was with, I said, ‘Girl, I could be poor here, I swear to God.’ You wouldn’t need nothin’ but a hammock, some rice and beans, and all that beauty.”

  She smiled, thinking of it, and Petty saw her real face for the first time, the one you fall in love with. He smiled, too.

  “You gonna take me to Cabo San Lucas?” Tinafey asked him, spoofing her wistfulness.

  “Grab your purse and let’s go,” he said.

  “A boy down there asked me if I was a model, and he wasn’t jokin’.”

  The waitress delivered their drinks. They had whipped cream on them, like hot chocolate. Tinafey scooped hers up and ate it separately, then played around with Petty, licking the spoon. He got her talking about her customers. Whores always had good stories about their johns and all the kinds of freaky they were. Tinafey leaned in close and spoke quietly. She had class, didn’t want the whole lounge to hear about the Zucchini Man, who liked her to use a squash on him at the same time he was doing her, or the old guy who paid her twenty-five bucks for used condoms. Petty’s favorite was the dude who got on all fours underneath a special blanket he brought with him. He told Tinafey he turned into a kitten when he was like that, and he’d crawl around and mew for a while before she stuck her feet under the blanket so he could lick them with his little kitten tongue.

  “It tickled,” Tinafey said, “but he got mad if you laughed.”

  Petty checked his watch and saw he had fifteen minutes to get to his meeting with Don. He took a hundred out of his wallet and slid it across the table.

  “I’ve got to run,” he said.

  Tinafey feigned surprise. “I thought this was foreplay.”

  “This was two friends having a drink,” Petty said. “If we ever get to foreplay, you’ll know it.”

  Tinafey picked up the money and tucked it into her sequined clutch. “When you decide you want somethin’ more, you know where I’ll be,” she said.

  Petty stood and slipped on his coat.

  “You have a happy Thanksgiving,” he said to Tinafey.

  “You, too,” she replied, already on her phone.

  The piano player, a skeleton in an ill-fitting tux, tinkled out a sweet rendition of James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” He probably hated having to sing it night after night, did it on autopilot while wondering how many smokes were left in his pack, but it was one of Petty’s mom’s favorites, something he remembered her humming while she washed dishes, so he dropped a five in the guy’s jar on his way out.

  The cavernous second-floor sports book at Club Cal Neva resembled a homeless shelter, filled as it was this afternoon with bums on the lam from the cold outside. Shaggy, bedraggled men wrapped in greasy parkas slouched on the chairs and couches that faced the wall of big-screen TVs, the plastic grocery bags and filthy backpacks containing their possessions stowed at their feet. Most pretended to watch television, but a few dozed, slack-jawed and snoring, in violation of the casino’s no-sleeping rule. The security guards let them be, giving everyone a break for once, the holiday and all.

  A must of unwashed bodies and mildewed clothing wrinkled Petty’s nose when he stepped off the escalator that brought him up from the casino. He surveyed the human flotsam left high and dry in the room and wished Don had picked somewhere else to meet. Being so close to so much ruinous luck and so many bad choices made him nervous, especially with his own ship racing toward the rocks.

  Don waved from his seat at the big square bar at the center of everything and gestured to an empty chair beside him as if to say, “Look what I got you.” It had been fifteen years since Petty had last seen him. He’d let his hair go gray—he used to dye it black—and wattles of loose skin dangled under his chin.

  “If I’d known you were dressing up, I’d have put on a suit,” he said, fingering the collar of his Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt. He was wearing baggy khakis with it, and grandpa tennis shoes that had Velcro straps instead of laces. Not so dandy anymore. “I keep it casual these days,” he said by way of apology.

  “Whatever works,” Petty said.

  Don chuckled through their handshake, saying, “That’s right, that’s right.” He’d missed a spot shaving, too, left a patch of white stubble on his chin, but Petty cut him some slack. Old folks slow down, he reminded himself. It was natural.

  “Scotch, right? Rocks?” Don said.

  “You remember,” Petty said.

  “Everything,” Don said. He waved the bartender over and put in the order.

  “How’s Reno?” Petty said. “You like it here?”


  Don shrugged. “It’s where I am, where I ended up,” he said. “My options were limited.”

  “I heard about Myra.”

  “I’m sure you did. There’s nothing people love more than passing on a sad story about somebody else and acting like they give a shit. But the bottom line is, it wrecked me. I’m still a wreck, and I’m not ashamed to say it. We were married forty-two years. We raised three kids. She was the only thing I gave a damn about. The kids, but that’s different. I struck oil when I found her. I hit pay dirt.”

  His eyes shone, and his voice went hoarse. The bartender delivered the drinks and melted away.

  “To Myra,” Petty said, raising his glass.

  “Give me a break,” Don said. “You barely knew her.”

  “Yeah, but cheers to anybody who put up with you for that fucking long,” Petty said.

  Don clinked Petty’s glass and said, “And to your old man, too.”

  “Nah, fuck him,” Petty said.

  “He did his best.”

  “That’s everybody’s excuse.”

  The two men sat in silence, pretending to watch the pregame show on one of the TVs, until Don finally said, “Anyfuckingway, what about you? You and Carrie split up, right? And you kept Samantha?”

  Petty hid his frown behind his glass. So people were talking about him, too.

  “That’s pretty much it,” he said. “Carrie took off with Hug McCarthy twelve years ago, and I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Hug McCarthy?” Don said. “He’s a bad penny. What was she thinking?”

  “You’d have to ask her,” Petty said. “I dragged Sam around with me for a while but ended up sending her to live with my mom. It was better for school and everything. She’s going to college in L.A. now.”

  Don moaned. “I remember her in diapers,” he said.

  Petty was irritated at the old man for making him think about the past. Enough small talk; time to get to it.

  “What did you want to discuss?” he said.

  Don glanced at the bartender, at a passing waitress, at a derelict ordering a dollar Bud Light. “Let’s move somewhere more private,” he said, as if everybody in the place were eavesdropping on them.

  They relocated to a booth at the edge of the room, as far from the crowd gathered around the bar as they could get. Petty waited with gritted teeth while Don spent five minutes trying to shim the wobbly table with a cardboard coaster. When the old man finally had it to his liking, he straightened his stupid shirt, took a sip of his drink, and leaned in to speak quietly.

  “This is the big one,” he said.

  “All right,” Petty replied.

  “Avi’ll be sorry he didn’t listen when I brought it to him.”

  “He’s a busy man.”

  Don snorted. “Don’t give me that,” he said. “I don’t know how you swallow it from that prick.”

  “I’m not swallowing anything,” Petty said. “I’m helping him out temporarily.”

  “That’s not what he says. He says you came crawling to him, begging for some action. He says you’re desperate.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “‘I’ve got all I can handle right now,’ he said, ‘but Rowan’s desperate for a score. Why don’t you take it to him?’”

  Petty kept his face blank, acted like it wasn’t anything, but inside he was knotted up. Fuck Avi. And fuck Don. A year ago he’d have been on his way out the door by now, and even in a slump there was a limit to how much shit he was willing to stand for.

  His voice sounded angrier than he wanted it to when he said, “I’m not desperate, Don. Things are slow right now, but I’m not fucking desperate. So don’t think you can pull some rinky-dink something on me because I’ll grasp at straws.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Don said. “This is legit, I swear.”

  “All I’m saying is, I’ve been grifting long enough to know that guys like you—like me, okay?—are cannibals who wouldn’t think twice about gnawing one of their own down to the bone if they got hungry enough, and for all I know you might be that hungry.”

  “I’ll sketch it out for you,” Don said. “If it sounds like something you can do something with, we’ll talk further. If not, hey—we shake hands and part friends.”

  Petty picked up his drink and swirled the ice in the glass. “You’ve got three minutes,” he said.

  Don leaned in even closer. “You know I did a little time recently, right? I’m sure word went around about that, too. Well, while I was inside, I met this kid, your typical fuckup, your typical junkie, in again as soon as he got out, one of those, but we became friendly. Okay, not friendly, but you’re in there, you’re bored, so we used to shoot the breeze sometimes, swap stories.

  “Now, this kid didn’t have the brains God gave a fucking billy goat. I mean, he was constitutionally incapable of keeping his mouth shut about shit he should’ve been keeping his mouth shut about. Ninety-nine percent of it was jibber-jabber, useless, him bragging about all the badasses he knew on the outside and all the jobs he’d supposedly pulled. But one day one of his stories caught my attention. No. More than that. It got my heart going. It made my palms itch. So I set about reeling him in. I gave him stamps, made deposits to his canteen, and gradually I dragged the details out of him. And what I got—well, let’s just say that if you took what he told me and were willing to do a little legwork, you might be looking at the score of your life.”

  Petty sat back with a sad smile. “Seriously, Don?” he said. “Off a junkie’s jailhouse ramble?”

  “The kid was useless. I stated that right off,” Don said. “But if he was even halfway on the level regarding this thing, it’d definitely be worth looking into.”

  “What thing?” Petty said. “What’s the deal?”

  “Just like that?” Don said.

  “Why’d you bring me here if you’re not gonna tell me?”

  “I…well, I…” The old man was flustered. Dandy Don, the smoothest talker Petty had ever met, tripped up in the middle of a pitch. Unmasked. Man, Petty thought. We’re all going down.

  “Okay, all right, sure,” Don said, regaining his composure. “I’ll tell you. Why not? The whole thing starts in Afghanistan, with a soldier stationed at Bagram Airfield, the main base over there. This soldier is in charge of paying Afghan trucking companies for deliveries they make to other bases, supplies and shit, and the payments are all made in cash, dollars, because cash is all the towelheads trust. What eventually happens—and I don’t know what sort of idiots we’ve got running things there, because a blind man could see this coming from a mile off—what eventually happens is, this soldier cuts a deal with the trucking companies where he pays them for deliveries that never happen, and the companies kick back a percentage of these payments to him.

  “He then passes the money along to another soldier at the base, a guy whose job is packing containers with gear for shipment back to the U.S. This second guy hides the cash in the containers, slaps a special military seal on the boxes so they won’t be inspected by customs, and sends them to an army base in North Carolina. A soldier there retrieves the money from the containers and sends it to another guy, and this guy—get this—stows the money in a safe in his apartment, the plan being they’ll divvy the take when everybody gets back from overseas.”

  His story finished, Don sat back and grinned.

  “So what’s your play?” Petty said.

  “Well, obviously, someone needs to get into that safe,” Don said.

  “Someone.”

  “You!”

  Petty shook his head. He sipped his drink and said, “Not that I believe a word of this, but how much money are we talking about?”

  “If you don’t believe what I’ve told you so far, you’re definitely not gonna believe this.”

  “Try me.”

  “Two million.”

  “Two million dollars?”

  “So my buddy said.”

  “Your buddy the junkie. And where did you say he got his
information?”

  “His brother was the soldier in North Carolina, the one in charge of getting the money off the base. He got lit one night and laid the whole thing out for my pal. Diarrhea of the mouth runs in the family, apparently.”

  A commotion erupted near the betting windows, two bums going at it over a D cell battery. “Gimme that, motherfucker,” the big bum screamed, then punched the little bum in the face. The little bum dropped to the floor, and the big bum raised his boot to stomp him, but a security guard stepped in to wrestle him away. A second guard yanked the little bum to his feet and walked him to the escalator while a smart-ass at the bar applauded.

  Petty watched the ruckus while thinking about two million dollars sitting in a safe in some stooge’s apartment somewhere, thinking how insane that sounded. And he couldn’t help it; he started thinking of ways to get hold of it.

  “The safe complicates things,” he said to Don. “It means you can’t just break in while the guy’s out and make off with the cash.”

  “Right,” Don said. “So?”

  “So you’d have to do it while the guy’s there,” Petty said. “You’d have to get him to let you in, then you’d have to persuade him to give you the combination. And that means a gun.”

  “That’d work.”

  Two million dollars. The kind of score Petty had always dreamed about. Abracadabra, and all his problems solved in an instant and forever. But the reality of the situation was something else.

  “The thing is,” he said to Don, “I’m pretty sure this junkie was yanking your crank.”

  “But what if he wasn’t?” Don said.

  “Then we come to number two: that’s not my line. Robbery, rough stuff. I talk chumps out of their money.”

  “You’re a smart guy,” Don said. “You’ll figure something out. Hell, you wouldn’t even have to grab all of it for it to be a great score. Getting your hands on just some would make you a happy man.”

  True enough, but Petty still couldn’t see himself drawing a gun on some dude and putting on enough of a badass act to convince him he’d pull the trigger if he didn’t get what he wanted. He wasn’t that desperate.