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What, exactly, is there to talk about Mr. Cervetti?” he asked.
“Lenny.”
“What?”
“You can call me Lenny,” I said. “Nobody calls me Cervetti except for my P.O.”
“Ah, still on parole then?” he asked, “I wonder how your parole officer would feel about what you’ve been doing out here in Iowa?”
“And what exactly have you been doing out here in Iowa, Doctor, owing what you owe?”
The anger in me started to rise as I asked it – both from his nonchalance about his obligations as well as my own helplessness – but as soon as it did the nausea and dizziness rose along with it so I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths.
“My dear boy,” he said. “You really don’t know why you’re here do you?”
“What?”
“Do you really think that employer would have sent you all the way to Iowa for a fifty grand marker? Or that I would have run from him and thought I could have gotten away with it had I owed it to him? I know well how seriously he takes these things, probably better than you do.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said as he placed the cards down on the table.
“Long before you started working for Rosso I was his dentist, back in Chicago. But I was also his lover.”
I laughed out loud at this, even though it hurt. The idea of Johnny Rosso, one of the most stereotypical macho goombah Guido types in all of Chicago being even the tiniest bit queer was about as likely the Pope coming out and marrying them both.
“Oh, of course that was a long, long time ago, so I’m not at all surprised you don’t believe me but it’s true nonetheless.”
“Look, Doc,” I said, “You may be who you think you are and you may even want to think whatever the hell it is you think about Johnny Rosso, but if he’s a queer than I’m . . ., I’m . . .” I couldn’t think of what I was that could possibly be more not what I was than I was at that moment.
What? Laid out half delirious after a heart attack in the kitchen of some possibly gay, possibly homicidally inclined dentist somewhere in sweet fuck all flyover country while my girlfriend’s teenage kid was doped up on God knows what and trussed up like a pig not ten feet away?
Yeah, that would have seemed a pretty unlikely scenario too, if you had told me I’d have been balls deep in it not quite 48 hours prior. But, nonetheless, here I was.
“Lenny, enough talk for now, you still seem weak. Let’s play some blackjack shall we?”
So much for the “villain gives a long speech giving the hero enough time to craft an escape” routine I had seen in so many James Bond movies as a kid and was half expecting here, especially from him, given his accent.
“Sure,” I said, “why the fuck not.”
He dealt me two cards, an ace and a nine, while he was showing a king. I flipped mine over and he dealt himself another. It was an ace.
“Well,” he said, “it looks like you lost, but I’m still in the mood to play, fancy another round?”
“Sure.”
Two more cards, this time two tens for me while he showed an ace.
I flipped mine over and he dealt himself another, this time a ten.
“Blackjack again, Mr. Cervetti, not your lucky morning, is it?”
“You could say that. And it’s Lenny.”
In the corner Kevin let out a small moan and began to sit up before letting out an even larger one and easing back down again.
“The point is, Lenny, that the house always wins and today, you’re in my house.”
“How about one more?”
“Certainly.”
Two more cards: this time a nine and a five. He showed a two.
“Hit me.”
He dealt me a two, putting me at 16.
“Again,” I said.
This time a four.
I flipped my cards over showing 20 and he dealt himself a nine and flipped over a ten putting him right at 21 for the third time straight. It was clear to me that this was not going to change however many hands we played.
“Nice trick, doc, but what’s the point?”
“The point, Lenny, is that you are in a situation where luck or odds will do you no good at all. I am the doctor and you are my patient and nothing is going to happen here that is not of my doing. This, I’m afraid, is one game you will not win. Or any game, for that matter, considering your present state. I can help you, but you’re going to have to help me in return.”
“By doing what?”
“Well, quite a number of things, actually, but you’re no good to do them if you die here in my kitchen. I believe you’ve suffered quite a heart attack and the longer you go without proper medical care the less likely you’re going to be of any use to me. Had I wanted you dead, do you really believe we’d be having this conversation right now?”
He had a point, I guess, one that was only now making itself evident to me.
“What about the kid?”
“Oh, he’s in no danger whatsoever and is very likely having some very pleasant dreams, I might add.”
“No, I mean what happened to him?”
“Oh, he pulled a gun on me while you were flopping around on the ground. I took it from him and knocked him out with it. I’m a mite bit quicker than I might look for someone my age. Running has kept me quite fit, fitter than you I’d say.”
Here, again, he had another point. With so much debt on my head I never figured I’d survive it, going to prison saved me from the mob but I though for sure I’d get shanked in there for being a cop. All the time leading up to it I ate and drank like shit and smoked like a chimney and picked those habits up again the moment I got out because I was so astonished I hade made it through four years in Pontiac that I kind of felt that whiskey, cheeseburgers and Lucky Strikes were my good luck charm. Even if they were, sitting here barely able to breathe I felt that my luck was running out.
“So, Lenny, what do you say?”
“Say to what?”
“My proposal.”
“You haven’t told me what it is yet.”
“Does it matter, really? Right now you’re dying and I’m the only one who can get you to a hospital in time to save your life. You were sent here, all the way from Chicago, to settle a 40 year old lover’s quarrel by murdering an old man who knows too much about too many people to be allowed to live any longer and now, in some twist of fate straight out of some hackneyed Hollywood film, he’s the only one who can save your life. Isn’t life just like that?”
“Not mine.”
“But isn’t it, Leonard, isn’t it?”
Nobody ever called me by my full name except for my parents or the nuns at school when I was a kid but only when they were very happy with me or very angry with me. It was weird hearing somebody say it again, especially since I couldn’t figure out which kind of time this was.
“And the kid,” I said motioning towards the now snoring lump that was Kevin.
“I’ve made arrangements for that.”
“Like what?”
“His mother has been instructed to pick him and her car up at the I-80 truck stop at 11 a.m. I believe you are familiar with the establishment?”
“And how would you know that?”
“Besides the book of matches in Kevin’s pocket?”
“Well, I guess that would do it, huh?” I said, running out of patience with this dance.
“I said besides.”
“What to you mean?”
“Would you like to know how else I knew?”
“I’m . . . maybe it’s the heart attack, doc, but you lost me.”
The dentist cleared his through in an obvious way and I heard slow and heavy footsteps in the next room, familiar ones.
Stan, my partner for the last 3 years walked into the kitchen and smiled at me. His crooked and cigar-stained teeth never looking quite so menacing. Any other day I’d have been relieved to see him but I knew already that he wasn’t the Calvary here to save me, not today.
“Sorry, Len,” he said, “but sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. You understand that, right?”
“Stan?” I said, before the pressure in my chest shot up my jaw and exploded in my forehead and all I saw was the orange-peel textured ceiling of the dentist’s kitchen ceiling before the blackness moved in on me and I slipped into unconsciousness one more time.
