“Yeah, every other caballero who sits his lazy ass on the stool,” the bartender said as he swiped the bar with a towel. “They can’t figure out why I don’t give ’em credit. Guess I’m just a bad judge of character. But maybe you be the big lottery winner?” He laughed and moved on to a customer down the bar who was holding his empty glass up to the light.
“Can’t win for losing,” Kirchner said, mostly to himself, and reflected on the only time his lottery number had come up. It was 1969, and he had just graduated with a history major from the University of North Dakota. He had stood in front of a black-and-white Philco TV and watched a government man shake a jar full of plastic capsules. Each capsule contained a piece of paper with a calendar date. There were 366 in all because leap year was included. His birth date, October 18, was the fifth capsule drawn. Four months later he was gripping an M16 as a helicopter spilled him out into a soggy green rice paddy in Vietnam.
Kirchner pushed the beer aside and tumbled the pieces of the case around in his head. The Pakistani was probably a small-time player in a big-time scheme. Most likely got caught in a crosscurrent he didn’t even see coming. The lottery jackpot-winning ticket being issued from the convenience store—coincidence, or a critical association?
Gisele’s excitement could be heard throughout Lotto2Win’s telemarketing operation. She exploded into the owner’s office. “One of my clients, the wacko Russian professor, just nailed the BlizzardBall! Every last number. Can you believe it?” She pumped her arms overhead like a victorious prize fighter. “Said he’ll give me a huge tip. We’re talking millions!”
Roddy ignored the interruption, his attention fixed elsewhere.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” asked Gisele, waving her hand in front of Roddy’s face.
“Yeah I …”
“… Heard you,” Kieran finished for Roddy.
Gisele was suddenly aware she’d blown right past Kieran, Lotto2Win’s special projects guy. She threw him an off-center glance, avoiding his acne-scarred face and coal black eyes. Kieran had come to work for Lotto2Win from Belfast, Ireland. His résumé included credit card fraud, smuggling, and tax evasion. But the missing pinky finger on his left hand suggested he had experience in an even more aggressive line of work.
“Well, when the Thorazine wears off,” Gisele said as she bent down to examine Roddy’s eyes, “or whatever you’re on. Come join the party. The professor’s on his way here from St. Petersburg. Took the first flight out. He’ll be here tomorrow morning.”
Roddy’s head jerked like he’d been shocked by a Taser. “You g-gotta stop him,” he stammered.
“Why would I do that?” Warning sirens screamed in Gisele’s head. A wave of nausea washed over her.
“Kieran, you tell her.”
“We don’t as yit, and Aay emphasize yit”—Kieran’s thick brogue filtered through twisted, mud-colored teeth—“hive the winnin’ ticket.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gisele shouted. “This guy purchased over fifty thousand tickets from us and you don’t ‘hive’ the ticket? I can’t believe this.”
“We just need some time, eh,” Roddy said, massaging his temples. “We’ve got confirmation that the tickets for your professor were purchased in St. Paul, but we just don’t have them in hand.”
“You have a shipping tracer on it, right?”
Roddy avoided eye contact with Gisele and jammed a knuckle in his mouth, obstructing a plausible response.
“The tickets were ripped off,” Kieran interjected. “Jamal, our ticket buyer’s dead.”
“Dead?” Gisele stared in disbelief.
“Mexicans,” Kieran confirmed. “We got a good look at one of ’em on the webcam we had installed at the Cash and Dash before it got poked in the eye with a shotgun.”
Gisele stalked around the room, pulling at her hair, and stopped in front of Roddy. “What’s to keep these Mexicans from cashing in the tickets?”
Roddy twisted in his chair. “If the thieves are smart enough to figure out they’re sitting on the winning ticket, they’ll probably try to cash it through a third party,” he mumbled, operating in the dark.
“Third party?” Gisele blurted, fighting the impulse to grab Roddy by the throat.
“Don’t be getting riled,” Kieran said dismissively. “I am on my way to take care of the situation and retrieve the tickets.” His lips curled in a hint of a dark smile. “I’m going to cut the balls off those bloody filchers.”
“Gisele, you’ve got to stall the professor,” Roddy said, squirming, his hands steepled. “Keep him from coming here.”
“Like, shoot down his plane? How in the hell do you stall someone who has just won $750 million dollars?”
Roddy looked to Kieran for a silent read before responding to Gisele. “Meet him at the airport and book him into a hotel, find something for him to do. Tell him it will take a couple of days before our agent can claim the prize on his behalf—ticket validation procedures or some such shit. Hopefully, we’ll have the situation under control by then.”
“Please don’t screw this up,” pleaded Gisele. “The professor’s not your run-of-the-mill schmuck, someone you can blow off. He won’t be put off for long. You and the leprechaun here better fix this now!”
“Bugger off.” Kieran tossed her a hard look.
Gisele bolted from Roddy’s office, skidded down the stairs two at a time, and charged through the exit. The sunlight flashed like a trip flare, causing her to shield her eyes with a crooked salute. Gisele spotted Claude, the ticket manager, leaning against the side of the building, a cigarette pinched between his thumb and index finger.
“Bonjour, ma jolie l’une. Is there a fire?”
“Not yet.” Gisele caught her breath. “Can I bum one from you?” She fumbled the cigarette into the flame cupped in Claude’s hand. “Jesus, you smoking rope?” she coughed out.
“Brunes Gitanes. Very hard to get, but satisfying, don’t you think?”
“I hate to burst your bubble, Frenchy.” Gisele took up a position on the wall like a bird on a wire. “Gitanes are now made in the Netherlands.”
“What a pity,” he said, as though seriously wounded. “What’s next? Champagne from Saudi Arabia?”
“Claude, you see all the lottery ticket transactions. Please assure me Roddy will pay off the BlizzardBall winner.” Gisele crushed the cigarette under her heel. “I mean, he’s always honored winning tickets in the past, right?”
“I think it’s wise to consider we are in uncharted, shark-infested waters.” Claude hitched his pants as if expecting the sidewalk to flood.
“Are we finding Nemo or lottery tickets?”
“Seven hundred fifty million is a lot of chum, ma cherie.” Claude looked at his watch and walked back inside the building, leaving Gisele to hold up the wall on her own.
In the distance, she could see Vancouver’s gleaming glass towers reflecting the majesty of the distant North Shore Mountains and shimmering with a montage of commerce from the streets below. Deep within that reverberating image, just beyond the gritty auto repair shop and adult video store, stood Gisele and Lotto2Win’s faded-red, four-story brick building with gulls perched on its brittle cornices. She wondered how the hell she had landed here.
Alita could not get back to sleep with the mischief of lottery tickets outside her bedroom door. She trudged through a blanket of new snow on the way to her bank job and stopped for coffee at the Mediterranean Deli. On the opposite side of the street sat the Cash and Dash. The hole-in-the-wall convenience store was squeezed between the Worn-A-Bit and Julio’s Barber Shop. The metal shutters were locked down. A curious amount of ice layered the sidewalk. A Channel 5 TV truck idled at the curb with its satellite boom extended skyward. Alita shoved a quarter in a newspaper dispenser and quickly scanned the Pioneer Press for a notice of a breakin. Nothing. Too early, she concluded. Racked with anxiety, she considered turning herself in and admitting to being a party to the robbery rather than be humiliated in front of the bank staff and customers. She wanted to skip work and go back home and kill those two mongrels. Force of habit, however, carried her into the bank, where she took up her teller position with a pasted-on smile.
“Is it you that’s got the winning lottery number, honey?” her supervisor asked.
Alita flinched. She swiveled her head, expecting someone to step forward with handcuffs.
“Didn’t mean to startle you, girl.” Lasiandra spread her arms wide and inhaled, expanding her already robust figure. On an audible exhale, the suspended weight dropped like a free-fall elevator. “Maybe I do have a career as a cat burglar. Ha!”
Alita felt a headache beginning to sink its talons into her skull.
“Honey, you okay?”
“Yeah, just had a rough night.” Alita yanked at a twist of hair as if pulling the rip cord on a parachute. “And I don’t waste my money on gambling.”
“Good girl, but too bad, because the winning ticket was purchased at the Cash and Dash.”
“Who won?” Alita asked, avoiding eye contact.
“Don’t know, but I can tell you who lost. They found the owner of the Cash and Dash sliced up like a cucumber. That man be dead.” Lasiandra thumped her bosom like an altar boy saying mea culpas.
“Oh, my God.” Alita put her hand to her mouth, trying to keep more words from falling out. A knot squeezed her chest. She fought for air to keep from being sucked into the blackness of panic whirling below the surface.
“What’s that, honey?”
“Just a little faint,” Alita said, trying to hold back tears about to burst a dam. “I gotta call it a day. Coming down with something I don’t think you want me to share with you.”
As Alita hurried back toward the apartment, she felt like she was being dragged along a chamber of horrors, one monster after another jumping out at her in the form of a question. Did her cousins hurt the convenience store owner? Did they steal the winning ticket? Is someone looking for them, for her? Did her big mouth trigger this stupidity?
As the apartment came into view, Alita could see Eduardo’s feet sticking out from underneath his car. Grabbing a wrench from his tool box, she banged on the fender.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Eduardo scrambled out from under the muffler.
Alita squared up, fists on hips. “I thought I told you to clear out.”
“Jesus, I’m just doing a little repair. We’ll get those boxes out of the apartment, don’t worry.”
“Where’s your dirtball amigo?”
“He’s on a beer run.”
“Get in here.” Alita marched into the apartment, dragging Eduardo along by the shirt sleeve, all while reading him the riot act.
“You talk crazy,” Eduardo protested. “No way did we kill that man.”
Kieran pointed through the windshield of his parked car at the scarecrow figure exiting the liquor store. “There’s one of the tacos,” he blurted into his cell phone to Roddy, “that we saw on the webcam. I’ll call you back, got some persuading to do.”
The top three buttons of the man’s ragged denim shirt were unbuttoned and exposed his chest to the winter chill. Earlobe-length hair sprouted out below his soiled Caterpillar ball cap. He stopped on the sidewalk to fish a bottle of Grain Belt beer out of a brown paper bag.
Kieran gunned the engine, hopped the curb, skidded on the icy sidewalk, and sideswiped his target, knocking him into a boulevard tree.
Blood streamed from a cut above Rafie’s right eye. He weakly attempted to retrieve the unbroken beer bottle rolling on the sidewalk next to his knee.
Kieran jumped from the car, grabbed the crumpled man, and tossed him into the back seat. The tires spun in reverse, burned to the pavement, and caught. The car lurched back to the street and sped away.
“You ripped off the wrong people, mate!” Kieran yelled. “Where’s the lottery tickets? Where?” He stopped the car, swung his right arm into the back seat, and clutched Rafie by the throat.
“If you got any respect for breathin’, you’ll direct me right to those tickets.”
Alita opened the door of the garden-level apartment. Rafie stumbled across the threshold, followed by Kieran, who had him in a choke hold. The air had a greasy cooking smell. Beer bottles overflowed the kitchen wastebasket. A nervous bull terrier with a muscular neck stood with its legs apart and barked aggressively at the visitor.
Alita was still wearing her bank uniform. The gold-banded epaulets sewn to the shoulder of her starched white blouse gave her an air of authority. Kieran paused momentarily, cautious until he spotted the Minnesota National Bank logo on her breast pocket. He pushed his way into the living room, skirting past the dog. He surveyed the torn FedEx boxes and strewn lottery tickets. “You maggots are in some serious shit.”
“Eduardo! ¡ayuda! ¡ayuda!” Alita screamed.
A shotgun barrel emerged from the bedroom, with Eduardo at the trigger. He pumped a shell into the chamber.
“Be cool, mate.” Kieran produced a knife and pressed the razor point to the side of Rafie’s neck. “Or I put a shank into this edjit.”
“Talk Engleesh. What’s he saying?” Eduardo shouted at Alita, confused by Kieran’s thick Irish brogue.
“How about I draw ’em a picture?” Kieran ratcheted up the choke and Rafie’s face turned purple. He flailed his arms as if drowning.
“Stop, stop!” Alita pleaded over the frenzied bark of the dog. “Take your packages and get out of here.” She shoved a FedEx Box at Kieran.
Kieran grabbed at the box, providing an opening for the terrier. He heard the brown dog’s toenails click on the linoleum floor like castanets just before it sank its toothy grip into his leg. “Call the fucking dog off!” Kieran snapped a hard kick forward, sending the dog airborne. The canine landed on Eduardo’s chest, knocking the shotgun out of his hands onto the floor, butt first. The sound of the discharge vibrated off the apartment walls and stunned the scene into slow motion. Kieran raised his hand to shield against the errant close-range shot in the millisecond before the blast ripped his chest. He collapsed in a rag doll heap on the dirty beige carpet, leaking blood like a colander. A diagonal plank of light escaped through a gap in the dusty Venetian blinds and illuminated the twisted body. Eduardo and Rafie dropped to their knees and made the Sign of the Cross. The dog hid under the kitchen table. The stench of blood and intestinal matter enveloped the room. Alita gagged, tried to close her throat to the surge in her stomach, but lost the battle, adding the sickly perfume of vomit to the air.