José Latour

For­mat: Hardcover

Launch date: Jan­u­ary 29, at Sleuth of Baker Street

Dimen­sions: 320 Pages, 5.95 x 8.67 x 0.95 in

Pub­lisher: McClel­land & Stewart

July 31

The man who sashayed into the Pair-a-dice Bar and Lounge, strad­dled the stool next to the gloomy-looking Tommy Jones, and asked for a beer. He took a cou­ple of swigs, extracted a pack of cig­a­rettes from the left pocket of his shirt, shook one free, then started pat­ting the pock­ets of his jeans.

“Fuck,” he said, then looked over at Tommy. “Gotta a light?

Tommy picked up his lighter from the bar top, handed it, and cast an incu­ri­ous glance at the guy. Medium height, copper-colored skin, beaked nose, raven-black hair. Short-sleeved green shirt over a gray T-shirt, jeans. A Mohawk, Tommy guessed.

“Thanks,” giv­ing back the lighter.

“It’s okay.”

The newly arrived took another swig.

“Saw you ear­lier at the wheel. Bad day, right?” turn­ing his head to
eye the mark better.

Tommy detected an unfa­mil­iar accent. “Bad for me; not for you, dude.” Then said again, “Not for you,” shak­ing his head and eye­ing the cir­cles he was mak­ing on the bar top with his glass.

“Whad­daya mean?”

“You guys are mak­ing a killing here.”

“You guys?”

“You Mohawks.”

“I ain’t Mohawk.”

Tommy frowned, let the glass alone, stared.

“You ain’t Native Indian?”

“I’m Mex­i­can.”

The white man shook his head and chuck­led. “Well, sorry ’bout that. You looked Mohawk to me.”

“I know. Up here peo­ple think any­one looks like me is Mohawk, or Iro­quois, or Oneida. But I’m Mex­i­can. You Cana­dian, right?”

Tommy smiled, nod­ded, sipped from his Mol­son, puck­ered his lips.

“Yep. From Corn­wall. You’ve been to Canada?”

“Every year for the last five. From August to Octo­ber, I tend bar in
Que­bec. Make some money, haul ass back home. Patri­cio Tirado,” the man said and extended his right hand.

“Oh, hi. Tommy Jones.” They shook.

“Like the actor?”

“Minus the Lee.”

“And minus the pineap­ple face too,” Patri­cio said with an engag­ing smile.

Tommy nod­ded and took another sip; Patri­cio drew on his cig­a­rette. The Akwe­sasne Mohawk Casino, on Route 37, was a mostly pink, single-story build­ing with a green roof, the sole attrac­tion in Hogans­burg, a New York state town close to the Cana­dian bor­der. Oper­ated by the Mohawk Tribal Coun­cil, it had almost a thou­sand slot machines, tables for roulette, craps, poker, black­jack, and a money wheel. Those actively play­ing on the gam­ing floor could order alco­holic drinks at a reduced price. Tommy Jones was cor­rect; by toss­ing together gam­ing, spir­its, food, and state-of-the-art secu­rity, the Mohawks were mak­ing a bundle.

“I’m not a gam­bler, you know?” Patri­cio said, “But every year, just before going into Canada and when I head back home, I come here, gam­ble a hun­dred or so, and watch other play­ers. Mostly watch. Relaxes me. And you know what? I’d never seen seven blacks in a row before.”

“You were there?”

“Right behind you. It’s like toss­ing a coin and get­ting tails seven con­sec­u­tive times. I mean, what are the odds?”

Tommy Jones con­sid­ered the ques­tion for a few moments, then launched into a four-minute-long tirade on ran­dom­ness: red/black, odd/even, three columns, 00 to 17, 18 to 36, prov­ing he knew noth­ing about the law of inde­pen­dent trials.

“How much did you lose?” Patri­cio asked, once Tommy’s out­burst on the vagaries of luck concluded.

“Almost five Cs,” with a sigh. Then he lit a cigarette.

“Wow. Oh, well, next time. What do you do for a living?”

Once he’d ordered his third beer, Tommy said he owned two bed and break­fasts, one in Corn­wall, the other in Hogansburg.

“So, you have one foot in Canada, the other in the U.S., right?” Patri­cio, smiling.

“That’s right.”

“Lots of driving.”

“You bet,” agreed Tommy.

“You are in the Nexus, I suppose.”

“‘Course.”

Patri­cio nod­ded approv­ingly, ready to make his pitch.

“Tommy, would you like to make five Cs?” crush­ing the butt.

Tommy Lee frowned in con­fu­sion and stared at Patri­cio. The cash he had lost belonged to his wife and his sister-in-law, co-owners of the bed and break­fasts. The women occa­sion­ally trans­ferred dol­lars across the bor­der to take advan­tage of fluc­tu­a­tions in exchange and inter­est rates. He was sup­posed to hand the green­backs he’d lost to his wife for her to deposit in the company’s US-dollar check­ing account at a TD in Corn­wall tomor­row morn­ing. Two days ear­lier, after he’d blown $325 at this same casino, Emma had given him a stern warn­ing: Next time he gam­bled away her and her sister’s dough, she would sue for divorce and find a new guy to do the rooms and take out the trash at both B&Bs. For this Tommy was paid $200 a week; the 1996 Buick Le Sabre in the casino’s park­ing lot was his sole mate­r­ial pos­ses­sion. Before the talk­a­tive Latin Amer­i­can came in, Tommy had been con­sid­er­ing which used-car dealer would pay most for his jalopy and what good rea­son he could give Emma for sell­ing it, so she wouldn’t sus­pect it was because he had lost the $460 Dar­lene had given him that after­noon.
Patri­cio — real name Vale­rio de Alba, a Peru­vian national who had never set foot in Canada — didn’t know all this, but he and his lover, Chris Daw­son, had spent three days check­ing out vehi­cles enter­ing the U.S. across the Sea­way Inter­na­tional Bridge. In their 2003Cadillac De Ville they had fol­lowed cars with Cana­dian plates to the casino, scru­ti­nized the dri­vers as they parked, then tagged them inside. Quickly dis­card­ing the notice­ably afflu­ent, those who bet small amounts for fun, and the big, mean-looking ones, they focused on the eas­ily iden­ti­fi­able patho­log­i­cal gam­blers: folks who were excited when win­ning, depressed when los­ing, and des­per­ate when the loss was insur­mount­able. Chris had spot­ted Tommy on their first scout­ing day, when the dude lost $325. They tailed him when he left, jot­ted down the plate, watched him cross the bridge to Canada, and the fol­low­ing morn­ing saw the Buick return to New York state.

In his early for­ties and not too bright, Tommy wore his shoulder-length hair in a pony­tail, shaved maybe once a week, didn’t seem par­tic­u­larly keen on show­er­ing daily, and wore cheap pants. In denial of his thirty-eight-inch waist, Tommy kept buy­ing thirty-four-inch pants –the size he wore in his twen­ties– and fas­tened them three inches below his navel.

The Peru­vian and Chris had watched with great inter­est as Tommy emp­tied the bed and breakfast’s garbage cans, took orders from a tall, over­weight woman in her late thir­ties, later wolfed down ham­burg­ers at Wendy’s. Two hours ear­lier, as he hur­ried into the casino, Tommy had ripped open a white enve­lope, pulled out a sheaf of bills, and lost it all in an hour and a half. Then he had padded to the Pair-A-Dice to brood. From the slot machine where he had been drop­ping coins to pass the time, Chris had stared at Vale­rio and raised his eye­brows, word­lessly ask­ing his part­ner whether this was the right moment to make their move. The spu­ri­ous Mex­i­can, stand­ing thirty feet away, had given three fast nods. Then Chris had shrugged and nod­ded once.
“Of course I’d like to make five Cs,” Tommy said, won­der­ing if, for the first time ever, God was show­ing com­pas­sion for him, “but it depends on the risk. I’m not going to prison for that kind of money.”

Vale­rio shook his head and averted his eyes to show how sad that remark made him. No decent Mex­i­can would ask any­one to do any­thing illegal.

“I’m a good judge of char­ac­ter, Tommy,” he said, strug­gling to over­come his sor­row. “You ain’t stu­pid. I can see that. Only a stu­pid man would risk his free­dom for five hun­dred bucks. On the other hand, I come from a poor but prin­ci­pled fam­ily. They raised me right. I have a con­science,” –tap­ping his chest with his right thumb– “and I don’t want to end in jail either. Other Cana­di­ans have done what I would’ve asked you to do today ten times over, and noth­ing bad hap­pened. But if you think I would ask you to do some­thing that would get you in trou­ble, I with­draw my offer. It was a plea­sure to meet you. Barman!”

Vale­rio pulled a thick wad of fifty-dollar bills from the right pocket of his jeans.

“No, wait,” Tommy said, and Vale­rio knew the lit­tle fish was hooked and now it was just a mat­ter of reel­ing it in gently.

“Sir?” the barkeeper.

Vale­rio eyed Tommy questioningly.

“Bring my friend a beer and put it in my tab,” the Canuck said.

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