Bad News

49

So where was Roger? Frank had no idea, that’s where Roger was. No idea. And the hell with him.

Just when you need, Frank thought, and stooped for another bottle of Wild Turkey, and lost the thought. But found the bottle. Straightening with it, slowly, not wanting to get dizzy again, he placed the bottle carefully on the mahogany bar, then concentrated himself to the task of opening the damn thing.

He was here in Roger’s office, later than two in the morning of a sleepless night after that damn session in court, here in Roger’s office instead of over there in his own office, for three reasons. First, he wanted to talk with Roger, who somehow wasn’t here. Where was he?

Anyway, the second reason was, this was the office with the bar with the bottles of Wild Turkey on the shelf underneath. And the third reason was, this was where they kept the books.

Books as in books, the old-fashioned way. The casino had started without computers, just before computers had become ubiquitous, and because of the way Roger and Frank operated their business, it had always seemed to them a good idea to let computer ubiquity end at the reservation border. Computers lose half what you tell them anyway, except that, when the feds show up, everything is still in there all along, particularly the stuff you tried to erase. What with one thing and another, stick with books.

All the books. All three sets of books.

They had to have three sets of books because they had different needs at different times. They had to have an accurate set of books because they themselves at least had to know what the package was they were skimming from, and they had to know enough about the operation to be able to run it efficiently. But those books couldn’t be shown to anybody else, because those books were streaked with the hands of Roger and Frank, reaching in and taking out.

While it was true that the casino was free of federal taxes, it was also true that there were certain taxing and regulatory agencies who did keep track of things here, sales of alcohol and tobacco, gambling income, things like that. These official snoops were mostly from New York State, but also from Ottawa, since the reservation spread over into Canada. For those outfits, there was the second set of books, in which income and outgo were more or less similar to events in the real world, but the skimming hands of Roger and Frank were replaced by other, perhaps plausible expenses.

And then there was the Three Tribes. From time to time, Roger and Frank had to present an accounting of their stewardship to the tribes—it was never a big deal, just pro forma, nobody wanting to rock a very successful boat—and for that purpose, neither the first nor the second set of books would do, because both showed far too high a cash flow, and it wouldn’t take the tribes long to realize they were getting just about 50 percent of the money that was actually due them. So for the tribes, and only for the tribes, there were the books, variant number three.

So there they were, the three sets of books. The straight books, the cooked books, and the fried-to-a-crisp books. And they were all kept in Roger’s office, because that’s where the safe was.

And where the hell was Roger anyway? It seemed to Frank there was only one thing they could do now, but before he got started on it, he wanted to run the idea past Roger, bounce the notion off old Roger, run it around the block with Roger. So where was Roger? Where was old Roger anyway?

Not at home, or at least he hadn’t been home two hours ago, when Frank had last phoned there and had last spoken to Roger’s increasingly irritated wife, Anne, who had said, “Frank, stop calling here. He isn’t here, I don’t know where the hell he is, and when he does come home, I intend to take a baseball bat to him. Tell him that when you see him.”

“Oh, okay,” he’d said, so he knew he shouldn’t phone Roger at home anymore. But where was he?

Here. In came Roger all at once, moving fast, still in his topcoat. “Roger!” Frank cried.

Roger gave him a sour look. “Frank,” he said, “this is no time to drink.”

Frank stared at him in astonishment. “Roger? If this isn’t a time to drink, when the hell is a time to drink?”

“When we’re safe,” Roger said.

“Safe? How can we be safe? Don’t you remember, Roger? That damn woman is coming here tomorrow to look at the books!”

“Today,” Roger said, looking at his watch.

“Today,” Frank agreed. “There!” he cried, having finally gotten the damn bottle open. “Roger, have a drink.”

“No,” Roger said.

Frank paused before refilling his glass. “Roger,” he said, “they want to look at the books. They’re going to look at the books. Do you know what that means?”

“I know precisely what it means,” Roger said.

“That judge—”

“The judge doesn’t worry me,” Roger said. “None of that legal shit worries me. Frank, what we have to worry about is the tribes.”

“Oh, I know that, Roger.”

“Once the tribes find out what we’ve done,” Roger said, “they’ll kill us. They’ll flat out kill us.”

“That’s a very strong possibility,” Frank agreed, filling his glass. “Very strong possibility.”

“I have just fini—” Roger started.

But Frank wasn’t done. “What we have to do, Roger,” he said, “and I’ve just been waiting to discuss it with you, but what we have to do is burn those books. All of them, all three sets. Just burn them all.”

“No,” Roger said.

“We have to, Roger. We can’t let anybody see those books.”

“And what are you going to say?” Roger demanded. “You were careless with cigarettes?”

“We’ll say,” Frank told him, “they disappeared, we have no idea where they are, and everybody can search all they want.”

“You’ll never get away with it,” Roger told him. “The only possible thing for us to do, Frank, is flee.”

Frank gaped. “Flee? Whadaya mean, leave?”

“That’s what flee means, yes.”

“But Roger,” Frank said. He knew that Roger and Anne had been on the outs for some time, that Roger wouldn’t at all mind flight if flight from Anne were included in the package, but that wasn’t Frank’s situation at all. His marriage was a good one, with good kids, and nothing he wanted to leave. “No, Roger,” he said. “This is where I live, I live here.”

“And you’ll die here,” Roger told him, “probably hanging from a lamppost. Frank, don’t you realize what two or three thousand angry Kiota and Oshkawa could do?”

“With some hotheads,” Frank agreed, nodding. Then he drank some Wild Turkey.

“I have just finished,” Roger said, getting back to the sentence that had been interrupted, “cleaning out every account we control, transferring all those funds. I am about to leave this reservation forever, out the back way, into Canada, and be on a plane out of Canada in the morning. Frank, we’ve been partners for a long time. I’m telling you, this is the thing to do. Put that damn glass down and come with me. We’ll be rich, we’ll be happy, we’ll be on an island somewhere.”

Frank felt very sad. “Roger,” he said, “I don’t want to leave Silver Chasm. This is my home, Roger.”

“Last chance, Frank,” Roger said.

Frank shook his head. “I can’t do it, Roger. That’s why I gotta burn the books.”

“Well, good luck to you,” Roger said, and came over to stick out his hand. “We had a good long run, Frank.”

“Yes, we did,” Frank said.

Solemnly, they shook hands. Then Roger pointed at the glass, as Frank picked it up again, and said, “I wouldn’t drink any more, Frank, if I were you.”

“Oh, Roger,” Frank said. “If you were me, you’d drink a lot more.” And he proceeded to.

When he next lowered the glass, he was alone in the office. Roger had gone.

Could he get away with it? What other choice did he have? Roger had always been the sophisticated one, taking the long vacations, learning French. Frank had just liked the soft life at home. Was it somehow possible to keep that soft life, even after this disaster?

We should have had her killed, he thought, and took our chances.

He was suddenly feeling nostalgic for himself, as though he, too, had gone, like Roger, and now he was missing himself. Putting down his glass, he left Roger’s office to take a slow amble around the casino. He liked to do that almost every day, just walk around his domain, watch the gamblers slide their money into his pockets.

That’s what he did now, as though for the last time, though he certainly hoped it was not for the last time. This late on a Monday night in winter, there was very sparse action, but that was okay, there was always some. One blackjack table open, one craps table, no roulette. Three or four players among the platoons of slot machines. Restaurants closed, coffee shop open but empty. Frank considered having a cup of coffee, then decided against it. Time to get to work.

Back in Roger’s office, he dragged into the middle of the room the big mahogany coffee table with the large round hammered copper disk in the center of it. Then he went to the safe behind Roger’s desk, knelt before it to open it, and pulled out all the books, all those heavy ledgers—black for the true ones, red for the officials, green for the tribes—all those pages full of tiny inaccurate writing.

They wouldn’t burn in clumps. They were in loose-leaf binders, and he had to open the binders and take out pages and feed them to the fire he’d started in the copper disk in the coffee table. He pulled up a chair, set the bottle and glass on the floor beside him, fed pages to the fire, fed more pages to the cheery little blaze in the middle of the coffee table, and when he woke up the office was on fire.

This is where Frank made his Mistake. He’d made a number of mistakes before this, but this one was the Mistake. He opened the office door.

What Frank did here, he completely forgot to consider the fact, which normally he well knew, that, like most casinos in America, between midnight and eight in the morning, the air pumped into the windowless gambling areas is sweetened with just a little extra oxygen, just enough to make the players feel awake, happy, positive, uninterested in quitting, unneedful of sleep. Just a little extra oxygen.

Frank opened the office door, thinking to run to Security to come put out the fire, and the fire behind him lunged at that oxygen. All at once, he was running in the middle of the blaze, his clothes were catching fire, his hair was catching fire, and out in front of him the few employees and customers still around were fleeing for their lives.

Everybody ran, the customers and employees from the fire, Frank with the fire, and when he got outdoors, he flung himself into the nearest snowbank and rolled there for quite a while. And when next he sat up, the casino was gone.