“Your uniform,” she said.
“Yeah. My uniform.”
Gloria looked at her watch and stood up. “I need to run. I have an interview with one of the poker players in ten minutes. Stay and finish breakfast, if you like.”
She grabbed her jacket off the couch and hurried to the door. He followed her, not certain what she thought of his story. He hoped it didn’t make him sound too eccentric.
“Will I see you later?” she asked, stopping at the door.
They were the sweetest words she could have said. Valentine started to answer, then remembered what he’d wanted to talk to her about.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
She put her jacket on, and tossed back her hair. “What’s that?”
“There may be another hitman gunning for me.”
“That’s awful, Tony. What are you going to do?”
“I need to change my room, maybe start wearing a disguise when I’m in the hotel. I wanted you to know in case—”
“In case what?”
“In case you didn’t want to be around me.”
“But I enjoy being around you,” she said. “Do you think I invite every guy I meet up to my room for break fast?”
He did not know what to say. She put her arm on his shoulder and rested it there—something a good friend might do. She crinkled her nose. “Thank you for telling me. May I make a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
“Move in with me. You can sleep on the couch.”
His napkin escaped his fingers, and fell to the floor. Gloria was the nicest woman he’d met in years, but that didn’t change the fact that he was investigating the tournament, and she was covering the tournament for her network. He never mixed business and pleasure, which was why the words that came out of his mouth surprised him.
“Okay.”
“Just okay?”
“I mean, yeah, that’s great.”
She gave him a kiss, then consulted her watch again.
“Now I’m late. Talk to you later.”
She was out the door before he could say good-bye.
15
Al “Little Hands” Scarpi was pumping iron in the weight room at Ely State Penitentiary when an inmate named Big Juan came in. Six six and about three hundred pounds, Big Juan walked with a strut that came from having his way most of his life. Little Hands was six inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter, but not easily intimidated.
Sweat poured down Little Hands’s face as he curled a pair of fifty-pound dumbbells. The weight room was quiet except for the belching guard reading a comic book in the corner. In exchange for additional time in the weight room, Little Hands waxed the guard’s car every week, using nothing but a can of Turtle Wax and a rag. It was boring work, but got him out of his cell for a few hours. Sometimes, that was all a man needed to keep from going insane.
Big Juan came over to watch. He had a towel slung over his shoulder and a teardrop tattoo beside his left eye—meaning he’d killed someone. Little Hands had killed plenty of people, but had never done anything as stupid as write it in ink on his body. He continued to curl the dumbbells.
“You Little Hands?” Big Juan asked.
Was the guy blind? Al’s hands were the size of a child’s, the fingers thin and delicate, and had caused him undue hardships growing up. Kids in school had made fun of them, and as he’d gotten older, guys in bars had picked fights with him. The hands were his handicap, and why he’d taken up weightlifting.
“What do you think?” he replied.
Big Juan stared at his fingers, then over his shoulder at the guard.
“I need to talk to you,” he said quietly.
“About what?”
“A deal.”
Little Hands had gotten a head of steam going with the dumbbells, and his sweat made a small puddle on the floor. He started every day like this, sweating so hard that he was able to forget he was a prisoner, a man going nowhere for a very long time.
“I’m available next Tuesday morning at nine,” Little Hands said.
Big Juan gave him a dead-eyed stare. Little Hands had tried to develop a sense of humor since coming to the joint. It made the day go quicker.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a joke. You like jokes?”
“Fuck no,” Big Juan said.
Little Hands had run into a bunch of humorless guys in Ely. Nearly all came from the streets and acted like a different species. He kept pumping the dumbbells.
“You want to hear my deal or not?” Big Juan asked.
“Sure.”
Big Juan lowered his voice. “I can get you out of here.”
Little Hands didn’t slow down or pause or do any of the things that inmates did when someone mentioned freedom to them. Lawyers did it all the time, as did wives and loved ones and cops who wanted you to cooperate with them. They talked about freedom like it was something that could be pulled out of a top hat, and handed back to you. Little Hands knew better. The system was the only thing that could give a man his freedom back.
“How much is it going to cost me?”
“That’s the good part,” Juan said. “It won’t cost you nothing.”
Little Hands put the dumbbells on a rack, then walked over to a weight bench. There was a barbell across the bench with three hundred pounds in weights fitted on it. He always ended his sessions doing bench presses with the barbell.
“Keep talking,” he said.
Everything cost something in the joint, especially a favor. Little Hands suspected that Big Juan was playing him for a fool. He didn’t like that.
He asked Big Juan if he lifted. It was a dumb question, but Little Hands liked to play stupid sometimes, just to see where it would get him.
Big Juan said yes, and Little Hands asked him to spot for him.
“Sure,” Big Juan said.
Little Hands lay down on the weight bench. The bench was made of steel, and had uprights to hold the barbell in place. He lifted the barbell off the uprights, and pressed it five times over his head. Finished, he asked Big Juan to help him, and the bigger man lifted the barbell off Little Hand’s chest and fitted it into the uprights.
“Your turn,” Little Hands said, rising from the bench.
Big Juan hesitated. Three hundred pounds was a lot of weight, even for someone who lifted every day. But Big Juan was a macho man. He wasn’t going to take weight off the barbell and humiliate himself in front of Little Hands. He was the
Big Juan pressed the barbell above his chest, and the effort made his face change color. Little Hands stood over him.
“Come on, you can do it. Four more.”
Big Juan blew out his cheeks and strained to press the barbell again. His arms began to tremble, and Little
