all that money, eh?’
‘You got it.’
We touched glasses and drained what remained of our beers. It was warm and flat and tasted almost soapy, like watered-down dish detergent. As I finished I heard a buzzer going off, and the TV screen images changed to a close-up of the starting gates, springing open. In the faraway country the horses were racing now. At a nearby table, this beefy guy with a mullet started shouting at one of the horses, telling it to come on, come on. But even before the home stretch he’d given up on that and sat watching morosely. He was all on his own.
‘How’s Ma?’ Jake asked.
‘No worse, but no better, either.’
‘I was thinking of going over there this weekend, if you want to come.’
‘I usually do, when I’m not on the boat.’
‘The model son.’
Jake picked up a bar coaster and drummed it repeatedly on the table, tapping out a rhythm that I recognized but couldn’t quite place. I knew he was holding something back.
I said, ‘Down at the plant you said you needed to talk to me.’
‘I’m going on a little trip and I just wanted to see you and Ma before I go.’
‘What kind of trip?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I’m not worrying.’
‘Worry about your other family, and your little fishing girlfriend.’
‘Her name’s Tracy. And she ain’t my girlfriend.’
‘Sure – she’s your mermaid.’
‘I don’t know what you got against them.’
‘Forget it. Tonight, I just want to have a good time with my big brother.’
Hearing that, more than anything else, made me start worrying in earnest. Jake hopped up and took our empties back to the bar and returned with another round of whisky and beer. This time when he knocked back his shot I left mine standing there.
‘Lefty,’ I said. ‘Are you in some sort of jam or what?’
‘I’m always in a jam, Poncho.’
‘How bad a jam?’
He folded his hands and rested them on the table. He looked at them for a long time and then he looked up at me. Greasy strands of hair hung out the sides of his bandana, and his jawline was shadowed with stubble. Then there was that gap tooth. But he still had this innocent look about him, somehow, which he hadn’t lost since childhood.
He said, ‘We never talked about my time inside.’
‘I wanted to.’
‘I’m not laying a guilt trip on you. I’m just trying to explain.’
Jake jerked his head at the mullet-haired race fan, as if implying he didn’t want the guy to overhear. Jake got up and I followed him out. He led me through the clubhouse to a set of glass doors that opened onto a patio overlooking the training grounds. They had tables and chairs out there, but no heaters or lights. Nobody was sitting in the cold.
We smoked in the darkness next to the paddock and Jake explained what he could. It was as if he needed the shelter of the shadows to let some of it out. He said that a lot of what you saw on TV and in films about being in jail was bullshit. But not all of it. It was true that sooner or later you ended up needing protection, and when you accepted that protection you were expected to repay the favour some other time.
‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’ he said.
I said I did, or thought I did. At the same time, I didn’t understand at all.
‘What do they want you to do?’
‘Just one thing.’
‘A big thing.’
‘Not so big I can’t handle it.’
‘And then?’
‘That’s it. I get paid and that’s it.’
I said, ‘It’s not legal, though.’
‘That goes without saying.’
I leaned my elbows on the railing, and stared at the empty field. It was mostly hard-packed dirt and on the far side a few show jumping obstacles seemed to hover in the dark.
I said, ‘I just don’t get it.’
‘It’s not complicated.’
‘I mean how this is happening. How this has happened to you. We’re not bad guys. We had a decent family. A pretty nice house, even. Hell, we had a fucking vegetable patch.’
‘That’s all gone and you know it. It’s as gone as that hand of yours.’
I flexed my broken fingers, feeling the sting of the cold. Sometimes, I almost get used to the injury. Other times it catches me off-guard and I see it for the first time, or I see how people react to it. Then I wonder: what the hell is this mangled thing at the end of my arm? But Jake was right. It had all happened and this was where we were at, him and me.
I tucked the hand in the pouch of my hoody, warming it.
I asked, ‘What exactly are you supposed to do?’
‘That’s hard to say, at this stage.’
‘Well, when will you know?’
‘By the weekend. Saturday. It’s happening Saturday.’
‘Why Saturday?’
‘It just has to be Saturday.’
‘I hope you don’t expect help from me.’
‘I don’t expect anything from you.’
‘I’m working till Saturday, and then I’m heading up to Albert’s cabin, with Tracy.’
‘I know you got your other life, now. I just wanted to let you know what’s going on in mine.’ He patted me, a little too hard, on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s have another shot and play the slots.’
By the time the clubhouse closed we’d lost about fifty bucks – most of it mine – playing video poker and since we didn’t have enough cash left to pay for another cab we had to ride the night buses back across town, by a route that seemed circuitous and convoluted to me in my drunkenness but which I now suspect was deliberate. Jake’s bartender friend had sold us a mickey of Seagram’s
