Chapters (46)
- COVER PAGE
- PRAISE
- DEDICATION
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- SNEAK PEEK: EXIT .45
Some guys were like this with bad news, edged up on it slow like a kid at a diving board. Marshall leaned to his left and looked past Vialoux’s shoulder to the maître d’ station and the front door. A clean break would be as easy as getting up and walking out. But being asked for help is a special kind of entrapment. To say no would be to forfeit moral fiber. Then again, to say yes would be to forfeit even more, potentially. There’d be a line somewhere. A point of optimal involvement.
Marshall said, ‘What’s happened?’
Vialoux’s foot was pumping under the table. He said, ‘Guys down Brighton Beach running a sports book I been into. Sixty-k deep. Sixty-seven, actually. I owe sixty-seven.’
He glanced over his shoulder as the owner approached their table. He was a tall, beefy guy in his forties who had to walk sideways to get between the tables.
‘You guys good, Ray? You need anything? Another bottle?’
Vialoux stroked an eyebrow with a thumbnail, looked at the tablecloth. ‘We’re good, Paulie. Appreciate it. Maybe just the check, when you got a minute.’
The guy sidled off again, trailing hand raised, finger aimed at Vialoux. ‘Sure, you got it. Don’t you guys hurry, though – all the time in the world.’
Marshall drank some beer. He said, ‘Who’s running the book?’
Vialoux gave it a moment and then looked up again. ‘Mob guys. Italian mob guys. I thought … you know, I thought you might still have some phone numbers.’
‘I have some phone numbers. But I don’t have any seventy-thousand-dollar favors owing.’
Vialoux didn’t answer.
‘Give me some names. Who’s running this thing?’
Vialoux sighed, held his hands edgewise on the table, ten inches palm-to-palm. It seemed to Marshall he could see the whole dilemma framed there, overlapping wineglass stains like a Venn diagram of how life goes wrong.
He said, ‘I talked to a guy. You ever meet D’Anton Lewis?’
Marshall shook his head.
‘Finance guy, gets involved in various things … anyway, he got me in.’
He was nodding slowly to himself, looking out the window, as if trying to sum up how things could start OK and then veer off the rails. He said, ‘I had a … I’d sorted it out with them, I was paying it down. But, yeah …’ He shrugged. ‘They called it in. They called in the whole debt.’