“Jesus, Tommy,” Burn said. “We were playing for beer and smokes.”
“The cards are still the same, bro. ’Cept now you’ll take dollars from the suckers.”
And he did. He’d walked into the casino with two hundred dollars and was up two thousand by the time they quit.
Tommy laughed as they drove home, dawn already touching the San Gabriels. “What did I tell you? You haven’t lost your magic, man.”
The next day was Susan’s birthday, and Burn was able to buy her the pair of Italian shoes he knew she secretly coveted and take her to dinner at a fancy restaurant. They drank wine and laughed, almost like when they were dating. Then she paused a moment, her face suddenly serious in the candlelight, and asked if he could afford this. Susan was the daughter of an alcoholic gambler who had disappeared when she was ten, and Burn knew how she would react if he told her where he’d got the money. So he looked her in the eye and lied to her for the first time. Said business was good.
What else could he do?
He and Tommy went down to Gardena a couple more times. Tommy, of course, had introduced Burn to the other players as Lucky, and the name stuck. Each time he played, Burn lived up to the name. Sometimes he won big, and sometimes hiwinnings were modest, but he always left with cash in his pocket.
Cash that made things that little bit easier around the house.
After two weeks Tommy started looking restless, and he packed his kit bag and hit the road, leaving a trail of postcards from San Diego, Baja California, Fort Lauderdale, and then Chicago, where he had family.
Over the next two years Burn had carried on making those secret trips down to Gardena. Where he was Lucky.
Until his luck ran out.
Carmen Fortune woke alone in her bed. As she always did, she kept her eyes closed as if she was still asleep, listening for any sound of her husband. The way Ricardo Fortune started the day was an indicator of the treatment she could expect. If he was still passed out when she awoke, his body stinking of booze, tik, and other women’s juices, she knew she had time to put some distance between herself and him. He would drag his body from the bed after midday, demanding food. If he didn’t have any tik, he would be irritable and his fists would talk.
On the rare occasions he was up before her, it meant he had a job to do. Gang-or drug-related business, which meant that he was too preoccupied to bother with her. He would dress, clean and load his pistol, then slam out of the apartment.
But there was no sound when she woke up. All she could hear was the rasp of Uncle Fatty snoring on the sofa. Carmen got out of bed and parted the frayed curtain on the window in the bedroom. The glass was broken, shattered by a rock thrown by one of Rikki’s many enemies, and half the window was boarded up with a Castle Lager box. She looked out into the street, at the spot where he usually parked his red BMW. There was no sign of it. Carmen relaxed.
She went through to the living room and kicked Uncle Fatty in the ribs with her bare foot. He grunted and rolled over, his scrawny frame covered by a filthy blanket. Fatty, whose real name was Errol, was the brother of Rikki’s mother. He had worked for the council for years until he was pensioned off with lung problems. He’d always been a drinker, but when he retired he went from gifted amateur to pro. He gladly handed over his pension to Carmen, wanting only a constant supply of cheap wine and a roof over his head.
Carmen checked on Sheldon. He was in his cot next to the TV, sightless eyes open, hands moving. He had survived another night. She smelled that he needed to be changed. She would deal with that later.
Carmen had three abortions before Sheldon was born. Two were babies from her own father. He’d started coming into the room she shared with her two baby brothers when she was seven. There was no way, in the tiny house, that her mother could not have known. Carmen had fallen pregnant the first time when she was eleven.
Her mother had beaten her, called her a whore, and taken her to the clinic. Her mother had never said a word to her father; she had just quietly hated Carmen. When Carmen got pregnant again a year later, her mother threw her out of the house and Carmen went alone to the clinic.
By the time she was fifteen, she was carrying the child of some guy from the neighborhood, Bobby Herold. The Mongrels kicked Bobby to death in front of her eyes, the day she went to the clinic for the third termination.
Then she met Ricardo Fortune, and it happened again.
Amazingly, he had married her. The skinny little bastard strutted around like a king, Carmen and her swollen belly like a trophy at his side. Then Sheldon had arrived, and the beatings had followed not long after.
Carmen made breakfast. Uncle Fatty dragged himself from the sofa, walking around the apartment in stained briefs. She slapped a plate of baked beans and egg in front of him.
“You better wash today. Your ass stinks.”
He said nothing, pecked at the food. His toxic engine could only be kick-started by his postbreakfast drink.
Carmen fed Sheldon. She couldn’t face changing him now. He wouldn’t know the fucken difference. The downside of Rikki not being there was that there was no tik to take the edge off the day. She would have to go and score.
She washed herself and dressed in her best jeans and blouse. She tried to discipline her coarse hair with a clogged brush, cursing Gatsby for breaking her mirror. Fat fucken boer.
When she heard the knock at the door, she assumed it was one of Rikki’s useless connections. She yanked the door open, ready to give them a mouthful, when she saw Belinda Titus, the social worker who dealt with Sheldon’s case. They usually met at Social Services when Carmen went in once a month to collect Sheldon’s grant.
“I’ve come to check on your son, Mrs. Fortune.”
“You didn’t phone, nothing.” Carmen blocked the door.
“That’s the point of an unscheduled inspection, Mrs. Fortune. Please let me in.”
Carmen stepped back.
Belinda Titus was only a couple of years older than Carmen, also from the Flats, but she carried herself with an air of superiority.
“She thinks she shits ice cream” was how Carmen described her to Rikki in one of their rare conversations. The social worker, by her manner and the way she looked at Carmen, made her feel like trash.
Belinda Titus stood looking around the dingy apartment, wearing a pinched expression on her face. Uncle Fatty chose that moment to emerge from the bathroom, still wearing nothing but his filthy underwear. He looked at the two women, stayed mute, just sat down on the sofa and stared into space.
The social worker walked across to the cot where Sheldon lay. She moved aside the sheet covering him, and her nose twitched. She looked up at Carmen.
“Mrs. Fortune, this child is in a disgusting condition.”
“I was about to change him.”
“That’s the least of it. Without even examining him, I can see he has bedsores. And look at this bedding; it is shocking.”
Carmen felt herself coloring, felt the anger rising. She battled to control herself. “I tole you. I was gonna clean him and change him.”
“I can’t let this child stay here in these disgusting conditions.” Belinda Titus was reaching forv› phone.
“What are you saying?” asked Carmen.
“I’m saying that colleagues of mine will come and collect him and take him to a place of safety. Where he will be properly cared for.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I can, Mrs. Fortune. And if you try to stop us, I will call the police.”
“You can’t just take my child away from me!”
Belinda Titus ignored her and spoke rapidly into her phone, giving the address of the apartment. Then she slipped her fancy little phone into her pocket and fixed a withering look on Carmen. “I have to do what is best for the child.”
The social worker busied herself with filling out an official form she had taken from her attache case.
Carmen sat down. She felt like puking. If Sheldon went, so did his grant. And her tik money with it.
