The Gambler Read online

Richard narrowed his eyes as if staring at me from a long ways away. “Women are trouble, Tyler,” Richard said, his voice ominous.

  “Not all of them,” I said. I thought of Margot and Savannah. Of Juliette. Some women were gifts. Gifts that you didn’t recognize until it was too late.

  “If we’re not going to search for gems, I’m going to take a shower.”

  I heard it all from a hundred miles away, lost in some dark and desolate place. Alone. Always alone. Thoughts of Juliette stirred the ghosts in my head.

  And I knew, without a doubt, I didn’t want to become my father, casual and hurtful, without a place to call home.

  Without someone to love me back.

  Friday afternoon, I was done babysitting my father and had moved on to babysitting my juvenile delinquent, which was by far the more preferred gig.

  Despite the kid’s attitude.

  Or maybe because of it.

  It was hard to say.

  “You want to get off your butt and help me, Tyler?”

  I leisurely turned the page of the newspaper, stretched out my legs then settled a little deeper into my lawn chair. “Not particularly. You tried to steal my car. I’m holding a grudge.”

  Miguel pushed the skinny edge of the crowbar under the last of the rotten floorboards and leaned into it, pushing as hard as he could until finally the wood splintered, cracked and flew off into the lawn.

  Barely missing my head.

  “Hey!” I yelled, wiping the sun tea I’d spilled down my shirt. “Watch it. I told you, Miguel, you’ve got to be more careful.”

  “And I told you I don’t know how to do this crap!” Miguel yelled back. “Show me what to do!”

  “What makes you think I know how to do this shit?”

  Miguel swore at me in Spanish but I only swore back.

  The boy couldn’t hold a silent grudge, and within minutes he was yammering on again.

  “So,” Miguel said, kicking aside some pieces of porch. “When you had those two aces, you had no idea that the Japanese dude had a straight?”

  I turned the page, hiding my grin behind the sports section. Every day Miguel had some kind of question for me about that World Series of Poker game. The kid must go home and study the clips on YouTube.

  “You ask your teachers as many questions as you do me?”

  Miguel shot me a give-me-a-break look while wedging the crowbar under another board.

  “I’m just saying, if you cared about your books as much as you care about gambling, you could go to college, stop busting up porches for a living.”

  “This is hardly a living,” Miguel said. “You’re barely paying me minimum wage.”

  I swatted at a small yellow butterfly that hovered around me. Nature, so…annoying.

  “Did you go to college?” Miguel asked.

  “No,” I lied—well, partly lied. I didn’t graduate college.

  “So, you’re doing all right?”

  “There’s more to life than money, Miguel,” I said quietly, folding the paper carefully along its crease. Not that I expected Miguel to believe that; I certainly hadn’t believed it when I was Miguel’s age. It takes a whole lot of money to make you realize what you can and can’t buy with it.

  “Says the guy driving a Porsche,” Miguel scoffed.

  I turned my head to look at Sweet Suzy sitting under the late-afternoon sun. She was a pretty wicked car. But this car, my whole damn lifestyle, came at a price. And these days I felt that price keenly, a bitter knife in my gut.

  “I bought that car with my first big win,” I said.

  “Yeah?” Miguel ran his eyes across Suzy’s curves like a sixteen-year-old should, like the Porsche was a woman full grown.

  “I’ve had to sell her twice,” I said. “When I lost it all. I sold her so I could have food to eat. A roof over my head.”

  “But you’ve got her now,” Miguel said.

  “Yep, each time I bought her back for about double what I sold her for. Suzy’s cost me a fortune.”

  “Why didn’t you just buy a new car?” Miguel asked.

  “She’s a reminder.”

  “Of what?” Miguel said.

  “That being a gambler is no way to live.”

  “I don’t get it,” Miguel said. “You’re rich as hell.”

  “Right now,” I said. “I could go back to Vegas and lose it all tomorrow. And probably will.”

  “But you’re good.”

  “That’s not a guarantee of anything,” I said, the truth undeniable. “I’ve beaten the best players in the world and I’ve been beaten by grandmas playing with their pensions. Being good doesn’t mean anything against luck.”

  “I still don’t understand what’s wrong with teaching me a few tricks. It’s not like I’m asking you to teach me how to cheat.”

  “That’s good, because I don’t cheat.”

  Miguel kept working on the porch, hopefully thinking about his career options and not how he could steal Suzy again, and I went back to my paper.

  The sun had dipped down below the chimney and that’s when Juliette usually came around to pick up Miguel.

  I braced myself for the other part of my day.

  The Juliette part.

  Equal measures torture and bliss.

  Her voice, both soft and rough, like rubbing up against velvet the wrong way, had the ability to make Miguel jerk upright, all but saluting.

  Made parts of me want to salute, too.

  She barely talked to me on Tuesday which maybe I should have expected, but I sort of thought she’d go and talk to her Dad. It had been a weak move, cowardly to blame that old man for the decision I made, but she didn’t know the whole story.

  It felt like it mattered.

  Yesterday she’d worn a green jacket with khaki pants that made her legs look a mile long. The color of the jacket made her eyes more green than brown and they practically glowed against the gorgeous brown of her skin.

  Today I was hoping for a skirt. A short one.

  No matter what, she was beautiful and real and so full of hate toward me it made my skin hurt just being close to her.

  “Excuse me,” a woman’s sharp voice said from behind me and I turned in my chair, shielding my eyes from the remaining daylight.

  A woman stood there, a black shadow against the low blaze of the setting sun, but I could tell already that she was the kind of woman that made my balls curl up into my belly for warmth.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, standing up to face the older woman, hoping, truly hoping, this had nothing to do with my father.

  “My name is Nora Sullivan. I’m from the Beauregard Parish Office of Community Services.” She pulled a card from the front pocket of a charcoal pantsuit that made her look like a big gray box and handed it to me. “I’m looking for Miguel Pastor.”

  I took the card, my neck tingling, a terrible foreboding that what was happening here was bad. Very bad.

  All I could do was stall, so I took my time reading the card and then shoved it in my back pocket.

  “I’m Tyler O’Neill,” I said, getting my hand crushed in the woman’s vice grip. “And Miguel is—” I turned back around but the porch was empty, the crowbar lying in the grass.

  Miguel was gone.

  “Not here at the moment,” I said quickly, panic beating its wings against my chest.

  “Our office got a call that he is usually here after school in some kind of community service capacity. And that there was some concern about the boy’s recent experience with local police.”

  There were a few times in my life when I was literally struck dumb. This was one of those times.

  “You really need to talk to Police Chief Tremblant about that,” I said lamely.

  “So I’m gathering,” she said. She checked her watch and pulled out another card. “I’ve left her a message at the station, but I’m on my way over to Calcasieu DOC. If you see her, can you have her call me?”

  “You bet,” I said, perhaps a bit too eage
rly. Nora Sullivan watched me with cagey dark eyes. Eyes that had seen every trick in the book.

  I felt about thirteen again.

  Nora nodded and left, crossing the wide front lawn to her sedan parked at the curb. I waited until she was gone before running through the house, yelling Miguel’s name.

  No sign of the kid. Not even Richard had seen him.

  I grabbed my phone and dialed Juliette’s number with fingers that shook.

  JULIETTE

  * * *

  “He’s gone?” I asked on Tyler’s front lawn.

  “I turned around for a second, I swear.” To his credit, Tyler looked a bit freaked out. Wild-eyed and worried, which wasn’t helping the state of my nerves. If Tyler O’Neill was worried, the world was about to end. “He must have run when he saw the social worker coming.”

  Social worker. I glanced down at the card in my hand. Nora Sullivan. Child Welfare Investigator/Counselor.

  Miguel, I’m so sorry.

  So much for this ludicrous plan working. I felt the consequences of my decisions like a two-ton rock rolling downhill right at me.

  The girders were back, my brain being squeezed to mush by the metal bands.

  “My car is here, so he’s on foot,” Tyler said. “We should leave now—”

  “I think I know where he is. Give me a second,” I said, and pulled out my cell phone. My first call was to the friend with whom Louisa was staying. Miguel wasn’t going anywhere without Louisa.

  “Patricia,” I said, and switched to Spanish when the older woman answered. “Has Miguel picked up Louisa?”

  “No, Chief Tremblant. Louisa is here alone.”

  “When Miguel comes, please keep him there until I come get him,” I said. “It’s very important that you don’t let him leave.”

  “Sí, señorita.”

  I hung up and contemplated the card in my hand. Nora Sullivan. I took a deep breath. I didn’t need to be forced to be accountable. I’d gone into this situation with my eyes wide-open. The mistakes were mine—so, then, would be the punishment.

  I dialed the number and—thank God—got an answering machine.

  “Hi, Ms. Sullivan,” I said, keeping my voice tight, “this is Police Chief Juliette Tremblant over in Bonne Terre. I’d like to make an appointment with you to discuss Miguel Pastor at your earliest convenience. Please give me a call Monday morning at this number. Thank you.”

  I hung up and rubbed at my forehead. The pain was killing me. I wished I could just go home, pull down the shades and find a dark corner to lick my wounds.

  But that wasn’t my style. Not anymore. Not since Tyler had left.

  Tyler.

  I turned, all my frustration and anger searching for a vent and a worthy victim.

  And there was none so worthy as Tyler O’Neill.

  9

  TYLER

  * * *

  I could tell Juliette’s fuse was lit and she was a live bomb looking for a place to explode.

  And it’s gonna be all over me. And fair enough, I lost the kid, after all.

  “Miguel’s going to be fine,” she told me. “But is there anything else you haven’t told me?” she asked in full-on cop mode, putting my teeth on edge. “Something you might have forgotten?”

  “Miguel and I were talking,” I said. “And the social worker just showed up—”

  “What were you talking about?”

  “What in the world does that have to do with anything?”

  “She probably overheard you—”

  “She didn’t,” I insisted. “I’m telling you, as soon as her car rolled up Miguel must have left.”

  “What were you talking about?” she demanded in a way that gave me no out.

  I sighed, bracing myself for the blowup. “Cards. We were talking about gambling.”

  “You are not teaching this boy to gamble.” She practically shook with anger.

  “Is that really what’s important here?” I asked, but it was obvious she didn’t care.

  “I didn’t bring him here to learn how to play cards.”

  “The boy is interested, Juliette. That’s all.”

  “The boy,” she snapped, her eyes shooting sparks, “is in need of good influences.”

  I blinked, a little stunned at her viciousness. “I’m just doing what you needed me to do.”

  “No, what I need is for you to babysit this kid, not teach him how to gamble.”

  “I was just talking—”

  “I don’t want you to talk to him! I don’t want you to look at him. If I had my way, he’d never have met you.”

  Her words echoed in the silence.

  That I was surprised was stupid. That I was a little hurt was even more stupid. I knew what she thought of me, but her words had blown a hole through my chest.

  I’d just been trying to help.

  I took a step back and then another, the anger rolling off her just a little too painful.

  “Tyler,” she sighed, as if she was about to offer an apology she wasn’t even close to meaning.

  “No, no, of course. You wouldn’t want me to rub off on your kid. God forbid I teach him—” he shrugged “—what? Car theft?”

  “No,” she said. Her eyes narrowed and I knew she wasn’t done. She had something she was dying to get off her chest. She stepped closer and the air sizzled and crackled, as though there was a stick of dynamite between us.

  Here it comes. I should never have accused her of being cold.

  Juliette was fire. She always had been.

  “How to not give a shit about anyone but himself,” she spat. “How to hurt people. How to walk away when someone cares about you, when someone has invested themselves in you.”

  I held up my hand, stopping her tirade. “I get it. You’re scared I’m going to teach him to be like me.”

  She paused before nodding. That little nod, the play of light in her hair, in her eyes—the reflection and refraction, a world upon a world—destroyed me.

  Juliette was close enough to smell, close enough to touch if I really wanted to watch her explode. And her standing there, thinking the worst of me, counting the minutes until I left made me want to lose my mind.

  It made me want to ease her to the grass, take off those pants of hers. Feel those legs, endless and strong, wrap around my back. I wanted to cover her smart mouth with mine. I wanted to lick her and bite her, feel her breath in my ear, her nails in my back. I wanted her under me, to remind her that even with all that smug superiority, bad, bad Tyler O’Neill could make good girl Juliette Tremblant want me so bad she’d scream with it.

  Juliette stepped away, a blush on her cheeks, and I guessed I didn’t hide my desire very well.

  “I need to go find Miguel,” she said.

  “You want help?” I asked, knowing the answer before I asked it.

  She shook her head and I nodded, keeping my mouth shut. There was no telling what would come pouring out of me right now.

  I didn’t watch her drive away. Instead I stepped up to the front door, now two feet above the ground with no porch.

  Stupidly, it had never occurred to me that having torn the damn thing down we’d have to rebuild it. And if this situation with Miguel was somehow over, I’d have to do the work myself.

  Great. Just freaking great.

  Once inside, my father crept out of the shadows, a bizarre housewife with a tumbler full of amber liquid at the ready. I shook my head, waving off the glass.

  “What do you say we drive over to Franklin Parish,” Dad said. “Get ourselves some catfish and watch the dancing girls at Sully’s.”

  I didn’t answer. I pulled my shirt over my head and draped it across one of the stools in the kitchen. My skin felt too tight, my head too full. The house was getting dark, night bleeding in moment by moment. Hours of time stretched in front of me with just my father for company.

  I’m going to lose my mind.

  “Son?”

  “I’m going out,” I said.

&nbs
p; “Where?”

  “Remy’s.” The old dance hall out in the bayou was exactly what I needed. Music. Beer. Beautiful women. And Remy. I wondered if Priscilla Ellis still worked the bar and I really, really hoped she did. I could use some kindness, a happy word in my ear.

  “Good idea. Let me just get—”

  “You’re not coming,” I said.

  JULIETTE

  * * *

  I found Miguel pacing a hole in the carpet in Patricia’s living room. I was barely through the door and into the living room that smelled like laundry soap and cooking ground beef before he was charging down the hallway toward me.

  “You said no social workers!” he yelled, anger making him somehow younger and older at the same time.

  “I didn’t call them,” I said, watching out of the corner of my eye as Patricia disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Then who did?” he demanded and I shook my head. I’d been wondering the same thing, torn between Dr. Roberts and Ms. Jenkins at school. His face was still pretty messed up; the burn had faded, but not the worst of the bruises, and Ms. Jenkins might have finally had enough of Miguel’s half truths and cover-ups.

  But something in my gut said the surprise visit from the social worker had Owens’s dirty fingerprints all over it. It was just a hunch, but it felt right.

  “I don’t know,” I said, wishing I could hug him and convince him that I would keep him safe.

  But I couldn’t lie, because the truth was, I might have screwed this up for everyone. My mistakes might end up sending him into foster care.

  Maybe my father was right. I was too soft for this job. Perhaps what I wanted to accomplish couldn’t be accomplished from the Office of Police Chief.

  “But I am going to talk to the social worker and we’ll get this all squared away, I promise.”

  “Yeah, you promised me shit before and it ain’t worked out so well, has it?” he spat.

  Louisa, his sister, crept out of the dark hallway to come stand by her brother. Her pretty black hair was pulled back in braids framing a round face, so sweet in its youth. In its innocence.

  My heart cracked.