4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

B ack in the sixties and seventies, Colfax Avenue was the place to go in this city if you wanted to satisfy the four biological imperatives: feeding, fighting, fucking, and if you played your cards wrong, fleeing. You could do practically all of them at once if you went to the right bars. Those days were mostly gone now, washed away in the bubbly fervor of urban renewal, but there were still a few places around where a person could get in touch with their primitive side. I was jazzed with adrenaline, antsy and keyed up, and the only way I was going to work those bugs out of my system was with some serious exertion.

The easiest thing would be to find a professional to spend a few hours exhausting myself with, but sex was risky. The odds of looking into the other person’s eyes during the act were pretty high, and during periods of stress—physical, mental, or emotional—fate became a lot easier to see. I could have a normal conversation with someone and walk away knowing nothing more than what they’d given me and maybe what they were thinking about having for dinner that night.

With sex, I almost always got information I didn’t want unless blindfolds were involved, and most of the working guys were too cautious to go that route without being inside a specialty club, which I had no interest in. I had seen way more kink, debauchery, poorly executed sadism, and downright criminal levels of horniness in my mind than I ever wanted. I was no white knight, but a lot of my childhood had been spent running away from people who would have taken advantage of me, and I had no desire to be one of them. Especially not since him .

Fine, so not sex. I bounced on the balls of my feet as I considered the envelope in my jacket pocket, the cut of my suit, and the odds that I’d be able to land a whale today. At the very least, I had the cash to get into the exchange, and at this hour I’d have plenty of time to find myself the right sort of player to attach myself to. Gambling it was.

There was an underground sports betting exchange not far from Marisol’s, housed literally underground beneath a pub that had once been a famous strip club. The exchange catered to the professional crowd, people who made their living gambling. It also acted as a hangout for whatever Irish mobsters happened to be passing through Denver on their way to more profitable cities.

The house controlled the doors, and if you wanted in to play, you paid a flat fee of five hundred dollars. Whether you made the money back or not was your business, not theirs—the house didn’t run any bets. Once you were inside, it was all about working the crowd. In-play betting was huge, and knowing the game was only half as important as knowing how to get your opponent to make the bets you wanted him to.

I sauntered down the street, keeping my walk slow as I passed the unmarked police car. The authorities tended to stare at me whether I was breaking a law or not thanks to my ink, so I generally made myself as innocuous a target as possible.

It had worked so far. Even with all of the shit that had gone down in my life: the drugs, the fights, the kidnappings, I had only ever been picked up by the police once, on suspicion of soliciting. Never mind that I’d only stripped off my shirt to staunch the blood flowing from a head wound at the time. I’d been a young man covered in tattoos, with no discernible gang affiliation and half-naked to boot—had to be a prostitute! The fact that it was in rural backwater Louisiana and not New Orleans made no difference. I’d gotten out in no time, but still―cells were not something I enjoyed, no matter who the owner was.

There was the pub. I walked behind the building, past a man who grunted “Morning” to me as he sprayed the alley wall with a hose to clean off last night’s piss and vomit, and down a narrow flight of metal stairs to a solid black door with the number 8 painted in small white letters in the corner. The Magic Eight Ball. So cute. I knocked, and the door opened up a crack. I was in luck; Phin was the bouncer today.

“Cillian,” he said approvingly, looking down on me from his hulking height. The Irish places tended to give me the benefit of a doubt, thanks to Mom’s creative naming skills. “Here to play?”

“I’ve got the feeling it’s a good day for it,” I replied.

“Not many games going yet. So far’s just some footie, but we’ll have baseball up in a wee moment, and if you can stay until evening, it’ll be American football.” He leaned in close. “Got a good mark for you, someone you could make your whole day with if you don’t mind a few hurt feelings later on.”

Ah, this was the other reason I loved Phin—he understood my situation. He didn’t know the details, didn’t want to, but he had a touch of Sight himself. Nothing like mine, but what Phin was good at was connections. Profitable connections, and if you treated him right, he wouldn’t steer you wrong.

“Sounds good,” I agreed. “Mobster?”

“Better.” He ushered me inside and accepted my six hundred dollars—the extra hundred was his bonus—with an appreciative nod. “Cowboy. You’ll know ’im when you see ’im.”

Did I ever. The betting exchange was a mishmash of lounge-style comfort and theater seating, all of the focus on the series of enormous televisions that lined the far wall. The only thing up right now was the soccer game, which a small group of fans was paying attention to, but my eyes went to the man sitting at the bar. Oh, wow…it was Steve McQueen reborn, right down to the expensive TAG Heuer watch on his thick wrist. He had the cowboy hat, the boots―his hair was even dyed the right shade of blond. Perfect. Looking at him, I felt a frisson of energy in my head that meant work could be done here.

I saw fates. It was my talent, my gift, my curse. It was what came easiest to me―it was what stayed with me forever, living on in my head. My mom had a much vaster ability, and while we’d been able to live together, she’d worked with me on mine, teaching me how to step back and take in less, to feel the energy in a room and let it guide my vision of where things were going to go, to let the fates I saw in other people—just glimpses—compel my own actions to manipulate circumstances in my favor.

You couldn’t think about the epistemological implications of that for long, the whole “chicken or egg” thing would drive you mad. Needless to say, there were times when I could work a whole room to my advantage, and I could already tell today was going to be one of those times.

I sat down next to the cowboy at the bar. He glanced my way, and as soon as I saw the glimmer of his eyes, I knew the tack to take. How about that―a true Southern gentleman in an Irish-run Denver betting exchange. I could see the arc of his trip: the cattle ranch he owned, the way his private jet was tied up in Baja thanks to the missus, her admonishment to have a good time…he’d be fighting a few preconceptions with me, but I could get around those.

“Howdy,” he said after a moment.

“Good morning,” I said, rounding my vowels a bit, letting my accent both elevate and harmonize with his own to make me seem more familiar. “It’s a little early for whiskey, isn’t it?” I asked, gesturing toward his glass.

The cowboy sighed. “Never too early for whiskey. Especially when there’s nothin’ good on TV.”

“Not a soccer fan, then.”

“That ain’t a sport worthy of the name, in my opinion. Buncha runnin’ around, kick kick, jog jog, ooh no I fell down…nah, not my game.”

“So I guess you wouldn’t be interested in a wager?”

“On soccer?” He looked at me askance and then laughed. “Hell no, boy! Nah, I’m here to bet on real American sports, something I can sink my teeth into.”

I shrugged. “No stakes, then, something just for fun.”

“Ain’t no fun if there’s no stakes.”

“Oh, I see,” I said knowingly. “You’re afraid. It’s fine, I understand. A lot of men have these sorts of troubles when it comes to performance as they age. Don’t let it get you down.”

He gaped at me. “I…what? Listen here, boy—”

“One bet. C’mon, I’ll make it worth your while.”

He looked me up and down. “That better not be a roundabout offer to suck my dick.”

I laughed, attracting the attention of the cluster of men in front of the soccer game. One look and I knew how to play it. “No blow jobs,” I promised. “I’m not hitting on you, I swear. I’m just passing the time. Here—how about this. I predict the team that makes the next goal, and you get me a drink with your next round. Not whiskey, though.”

The cowboy stared at me for a moment and then shrugged. “Fine. Let’s play.” We turned around so we could see the screen. I’d already seen the group’s reactions, largely dismay within five minutes, and one of them was wearing a Manchester United jersey, which meant… “AS Roma gets the next goal.”

“If you say so.” He sipped his whiskey, and we sat in silence for a while. I could feel him getting bored, but about thirty seconds before he seemed ready to tell me to buzz off, there was action on the television. The group of men groaned, and as the replay flashed across the screen and the score changed, I smiled.

“Well, damn,” he said. “There it is.”

“I believe you owe me a drink, sir.”

“I reckon I do. What’ll you have?”

“Gin and tonic.” Light on the gin, heavy on the tonic—the last thing I needed was to get drunk right now. Fortunately, the bartender knew my preferences, and a minute later, I was sipping a drink of my own.

“What’s gonna happen next?” he asked me.

“I can’t say without a bet,” I told him.

“Fine.” He pulled a leather wallet out of his jacket pocket and unwound a hundred-dollar bill from his stack. “What’s the bet?”

“Oh no, a hundred is a little rich for my blood,” I lied. “Besides, it’s hardly fair. I feel like I’m taking advantage.” I emphasized it while he was still sober enough to appreciate my honesty. “You know nothing about soccer, and I’m generally a lucky person.”

“Lucky, huh?”

“Very lucky. I hardly ever lose.”

“Huh.” I could see the wheels in his head turning. “Tell you what. You win a few more of these little bets and maybe we’ll see what we can do together once there’s a crowd in here, yeah? I’ve got the means to bankroll a nice run, if you’re lucky as you claim.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “AS Roma again in…” I let the tension build in my mind, saw the time at the bottom of the television screen as the men in front of it moaned their derision, “about four minutes.”

“We’ll see. I’m Roger, by the way. Roger Vandermoor.”

“Cillian Kelly, and we will.” We shook hands and turned back to the screens.

Four minutes later and I was vindicated. The soccer fans groaned, Roger whooped and smacked his knee, and I got another drink for my troubles.

Apparently once Roger made a friend, he went all in. As the place slowly filled up, he paid for the drinks, the awful bar food that tasted far better than it should, and told me all about ranching and oil and natural gas and his dozen other businesses. I met his eyes every now and then, enough to get a glimpse of where things were going. It looked like he would stay even-tempered right up until the end, so I figured I was good.

When the baseball started, things got more interesting. The way to make money in an exchange like this was to play against the other gamblers, and Roger had all the bearing of a golden goose waiting to be plucked. The professionals flocked to our table, and he drew them in with his Texan affability and liberality with drinks, while I fed him the bets to make.

We didn’t play standard and completely ignored the spread—we made bets based on what I could see of the back of a particular player’s jersey as he slid into third, or on the quadrant of the stadium where the next home run would land. Goofball bets, stupid bets, and people took them out of curiosity and contempt and then kept betting to save their pride.

By the time the football game started, I was two thousand dollars and one Cartier watch richer, and everyone was drunk except for me. The mob gents who had joined in our fun had lost most of their good humor, though, and the only one still laughing was Roger.

“What’s the trick?” one of them demanded, looking like he wanted to shake me and see if my secrets poured out of my head. “How’d you do it?”

“He’s a lucky charm,” Roger said expansively. “Some folks just got that shine to ’em, ya know?”

“Nah, I don’t buy it. There’s something goin’ on here. Phin!” he shouted angrily toward the door. “You giving this fucker a leg up? Delaying the games so he can look things up early?”

“You want to watch your damn mouth, Morris,” Phin growled. Any sane man would have stopped then, but this man had clearly lost his inhibitions. “Check your phone and see if I’m lyin’.”

“We don’t get service down here, you know that,” Morris snapped.

“Then leave and check it outside.”

“No! I want to know what kind of racket you have going with the rent boy and the hick.”

“Now, now,” Roger said companionably. “Ain’t no need to fight about this, guys. We can all be civilized here, right?”

In response, Morris threw his drink across the table at both of us. “Fuck you!”

Most of the beer hit Roger, who calmly wiped his face and took off his broad-brimmed hat. “Not a nice thing to do, throw the drink a man bought you back in his face.”

Morris’s friends were starting to lean back in their chairs, finally cluing in to the fact that things were going to go very badly. I set my hat aside as well—I liked that hat, damn it—and took off my stained jacket and waistcoat.

“I don’t play nice with cheats!”

“Luck ain’t cheatin’, and you coulda stopped betting at any time.” Roger rolled up his sleeves.

“Fuck you, you cow-fucking hillbilly piece of—” Morris’s insult was cut short as Roger snapped his long legs up under the table and kicked it, and everything on it, into Morris and his friends’ faces. I heard Phin groan and get up from his chair at the door, and I stood up and shook out my arms as I picked my target. Two seconds later, bedlam broke out.

There was something cathartic about being in a brawl. A one-on-one fight could be nerve-racking―there was an element of ego that came into play and made things personal. In a brawl, though, it was just you in a press of people, striking who you could where you could, and my betting buddy was clearly an experienced brawler. He was trading punches with two different men, his grin bloody and bright on his face. Phin was doing his best to sort things out, but that only lasted until someone broke a glass against his head. Then he became a rage monster that would put the Hulk to shame.

And me? I preferred to be a little more vicious, less about trading blows and more about kneeing people in the crotch and then following them to the ground with punches, because I’d learned to fight from my mother and she’d had no compunctions about teaching me to go for the jewels. My blood was pumping, fists were flying; I was finally lost in the moment, and it felt gorgeous. We slid around on spilled alcohol and broken glass and generally had a delightful time until one of Morris’s buddies finally lost his temper and pulled a gun, aiming vaguely at where Roger was still gleefully tussling with a couple of guys. A second later, a shot went off.

A second after that, I fell down.