The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

THE CUT MAN Norman Partridge

I’d forgotten that the knocker on Torito’s front door was shaped like a boxing glove.

I tapped a flurry of jabs on the brass face-plate and waited, my heart thumping a staccato speed-bag rhythm, the desert emptiness swelling at my back. Why Torito lived in the middle of the desert instead of in Vegas was a mystery to me. The sleeping black sky stretching forever, dry sandpaper breezes scudding this way and that like indecisive ghosts, heat waves radiating from the highway in the middle of the night—it was creepy.

I knocked again and listened at the narrow stained-glass window to the right of the door. Just then a zombie opened up, the kind of zombie you see nearly everywhere these days—empty eyes, gray skin, skinny as a bantamweight. He stood there smiling at nothing, his teeth yellow-green from neglect or the weird glow of the halogen porch-light. Finally his eyes did a little focusing trick and he saw me.

“You ain’t Willie,” he rasped. “You bring Willie’s heroin?”

I shook my head, thankful for the succinct way the zombie had explained the situation. “I guess Willie’s gonna be a little late,” I said, checking my disgust, hoping to keep the junkie calm. “I’m here to see Rosie.”

A sharp click echoed in the entryway as a glinting blade disappeared into the hollow of the zombie’s palm. He shrugged, turned, and shuffled to the base of a wrought-iron circular staircase. “Rosie!” he called, his raspy voice straining for volume. “It’s for you!”

No answer from above. The zombie shot me another tired shrug and wandered away, into the shadows.

I stepped into the entryway, brushing past a withered fern that stood guard just inside the doorway. A chill rose from the marble floor that Torito had had installed after the Kalambay fight in Naples. Carrara marble. Michelangelo’s favorite. TV sounds bounced through the house and lingered over the smooth white rock. Pung pung pung.

I guessed tennis. Then I heard the familiar voice of an ESPN announcer and knew that I was right. It was a safe bet that Torito wasn’t watching TV—he hated tennis. Football, basketball, and baseball, too. He said they were kid games, games that you played, and Torito never played at anything. Fact is, you never hear about anyone “playing” boxing.

Someone whispered from above, “Willie? Is that you?”

A bronze foot appeared on the circular staircase, and then a shapely ankle, a gold bracelet shimmering around its delicate circumference. A perfect calf followed, and then a perfect thigh. Rosie’s wispy lavender negligee came into view midthigh, but it hid nothing.

I swallowed hard.

Slivers of shadow melted across Rosie’s face. Her strong Navajo features had shriveled on the bone. Her empty eyes blinked through a private haze, her eyelids too small and dark in deeply hollowed sockets. She smiled, leered really. A zombie smile.

“Richeeee,” she said. “Thank God you came!”

“All the way from A.C.,” I said, sounding like a happy uncle who’d come to visit. “I came as soon as I got your letter. My mail’s not so good, you know. I move around too much. But it finally caught up to me at Caesars. The concierge from Trump Plaza sent it over. And I tried to call first, but no one’s been answering your phone ...”

She wasn’t listening. We hugged. I felt too many bones, smelled greasy hair and too much Anne Klein II.

I followed her upstairs and down a long hallway. My shoes sank into thick mint-green carpet and I worried that I hadn’t wiped them. Rosie was very proud of her carpets and her Italian marble. After growing up in a New Mexico hogan with nothing but dirt under her heels, I guess she had a thing about floors. In happier times, she’d sent her decorator after carpets that would match those at Caesars Tahoe. Drove the guy nuts. Torito told me that the decorator finally bribed some maintenance guys at Caesars into stealing a couple hundred square yards of the stuff.

Better days, better ways, I thought.

I caught up to Rosie at the bedroom door. A framed poster from the Barkley fight hung to my left; blank wall stared at me from the right. While Rosie fumbled with the doorknob, I prayed that Torito wasn’t saving that space for another poster. A comeback was the last thing I wanted to see. Two years ago he'd had nothing left, now he’d be worse.

Gus’s voice: “They always come back. You know that, Richie. They say they won’t, but they always do.”

Rosie flipped on the light. Torito was sitting up in bed, staring at a big screen Mitsubishi that stood to the right of the door.

Dried blood on the padded leather headboard.

Spots of fresh blood on Torito’s silk pajama top.

The stink of sweat and blood hit me as I stepped into the room. Heavy, worse than the stench of a slaughterhouse. Reflexively, my eyes darted from Torito to the spinach-green wallpaper above his bed; the flocked pattern squirmed like a tangle of snakes and I wiped my eyes and looked again. This time I saw a wooden crucifix nestled in the mossy velvet above Torito’s head, the figure of Jesus red with paint or Torito’s blood. A rusty nail had been hammered through Jesus’ chest, pinning the crucifix to the wall, splitting the icon from breastbone to head, but the old wood scissored tightly around it as if clinging there.

Rosie took my hand. “Richie, you gotta make it okay again ... I need you . . . Toro needs you ...”

She kept talking, but I couldn’t hear her over the blaring Mitsubishi. It shouted, “BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARKLEY!”

Torito looked at me through swollen eyes. “Help me, Richie,” he said, his voice barely audible. “You gotta help me ... I can’t see the punches.”

The ice in the bucket had melted in the Vegas heat, but the Enswell iron was still cold. Gus pressed it against Torito’s swollen cheek and begged him to follow his jab with a double-hook to the body. “You can’t stop Barkley unless you take his legs,” he said.

I was working on the cuts. Torito was a mess. I’ve saved fights for lots of guys who had tender faces—Saad Muhammad and Antuofermo included—but Torito made those two look like they had skin of iron. After four rounds, he had deep slices over both eyes and the bridge of his nose. I mopped off the blood, pressed a Q-tip soaked with adrenaline chloride 1-1000 into the cuts, and glopped Vaseline over Torito’s brow.

The ring doctor tried to elbow past Gus. “He’s fine,” Gus assured the man, not giving an inch. “If you want to look at cuts, go check Barkley.”

Gus was right. Iran “The Blade” Barkley’s face was a mess, too.

The warning whistle sounded. Gus ducked between the ropes. I followed, pulling the stool as Torito rose. “Remember, Barkley’s trying to take your title!” Gus yelled, as if Torito needed reminding.

Round five. Torito came out jabbing, driving his fist into Barkley’s bloody nose. Barkley bent at the middle, but he was only ducking under the jabs, not going down, and then Torito pivoted and threw the money punch—a big left hook to the ribs. Again. The Blade spit blood and gasped, then came back with a twohanded body-attack that sent Torito into the ropes. Jabbing his way to the center of the ring, Torito bent and delivered another left hook, but Barkley’s right was already on its way and it caught Torito high on the head. Blood geysered from Torito’s brow and spattered the referee’s white shirt, and as Torito stumbled backward, Barkley nailed him with another chopping right that shattered his jaw and sent him to the canvas.

The referee didn’t bother to count.

“You see why I asked you to come,” Rosie said innocently. “I can’t call anyone else. Not with him around . . . not the way I am.”

That last part came in a whisper, like a confession. Turning away, I opened my snakeskin bag and set my gear on the walnut nightstand. Then I turned off the TV, my hands shaking.

“How can you let Torito watch that?” I asked.

“He makes Toro watch it all the time, because just watching it makes Toro bleed now. He says it’s the only way he can find Toro’s weak spots.”

Junkie logic. I couldn’t follow it, no more than I could imagine the zombie I’d met downstairs making Torito do anything. I asked Rosie if that’s who she was talking about, but she ignored my question.

“You got to hurry,” she said. “You got to fix Toro and then we got to get out of here before he comes back. He went looking for wood a couple hours ago. He probably won’t be back ’til morning. That’ll give us a head start. If we can get to New Mexico, to the reservation, my family will hide us.”

“Rosie, who the hell are you talking about?”

“Ask Toro,” she said, slipping through the doorway.

Torito’s hand closed over mine. “I don’t want to go to New Mexico,” he whispered.

“Jesus, Torito, how could you get mixed up with this shit? Who did this to you? Do you owe money or—”

“It ain’t like that. The horse, that’s Rosie’s thrill. I don’t mess with it.”

I stared at his swollen brow, trying to see his eyes, trying to see if he was lying. Torito’s grip tightened. “He wants to help me, Richie. Just like he said he would. You remember. A long time ago he told Gus that he’d help me when I was through . . . Gus told you about that, didn’t he?”

I cleaned Torito’s cuts and stitched his face together. I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him, but I couldn’t get him to shut up, either.

“You should have seen Gus the first time he met him,” Torito laughed, his swollen lips twisting into a lumpy grin. “You know Gus, by the book and everything. Well, he had to get the devil to sign some papers—”

“The devil? Cut the bullshit, Torito. Tell me who did this to you.”

Torito’s voice was impatient: “That’s what I’m doing.”

I shook my head. “Whatever you say, Toro.”

Okay. I can't tell it like Gus, but let me try. See, when I was a boy, the devil lived in a little adobe behind our house. Even when my mother died and we moved away, he still lived there. He liked to carve; he could put the Santeros to shame. Of course, the devil didn’t make holy things. He made statues of demons, the death cart, coyotes . . . even La Llorona. He gave them to my brothers and me, but we didn’t like to play with them, and we locked them in a footlocker at night.

“Anyway, Gus didn’t want to make the trip because we had to drive all the way up to the Sangre de Cristos, but there was nothing else that he could do because he had to have the devil’s signature before he could enter me in the Junior Olympics at Colorado Springs. You know Gus, he complained every inch of the way.

“It's early afternoon when we get to the old adobe, but the devil’s already awake. He’s sitting outside with a bucket at his feet and he’s whittling away with a carving knife that he stole off a Penitente man. Anyway, I know better than to bother the devil while he’s busy, but Gus up and asks him ‘Whatcha makin’?’ You know Gus, can’t keep his mouth shut. So the devil holds out his hand, palm up. It’s empty. Then he rolls it over and Gus can see how he’d carved his fingernails down to nothing.

“The devil shoves his bloody fingertips under Gus’s nose. 'I’m making me,’ he says.

“Gus almost threw up. He looked green enough. Then the devil pointed down at the bucket, at the little bits of fingernail floating in the pink water. Richie, you should have heard the devil laugh. And then he said, ‘When you’re done with my boy, bring him back and I’ll fix him, too.’ ”

I was sweating. I didn’t want to hear this kind of talk, and Torito could see that I thought he was crazy.

His eyes cut at me from beneath swollen brows. “You don’t believe me, huh? You just look at that first contract, Richie. You’ll see the bloodstains there.”

Torito fell asleep at that point. I checked his arms for tracks but didn’t find any. There were three cherry-red scars in the hollow of his right elbow and another bunch on his left forearm, but they were about the size of thumbtacks—much too large for needle scars.

I packed my gear, trying to figure who’d done this to Torito. Maybe Rosie’s heroin connection had gone sour; maybe Torito didn’t want to admit that he’d been busted up by an ordinary fingerbreaker. Then I remembered that the zombie was expecting a guy named Willie. And Rosie had mentioned Willie, too, so I doubted that there was a connection problem. That left the promoter and the cable TV people. Both had lost big dinero when Torito pulled out of the Barkley rematch. And they’d both made threats, admittedly the kind of tidy threats that you’d expect from incorporated organizations. But even tidy threats have a way of turning nasty in this business.

I stepped into Torito’s bathroom to wash my hands and almost slipped on the wet floor before I could turn on the lights. Blood was everywhere, smeared on the green tile, the mirror, and the counter. Antuofermo and Saad Muhammad could have gone a few rounds in the tiny room and it wouldn’t have looked any worse.

But the mirror wasn’t broken. And the bath towels hung neatly on lacquered teak racks. No sign of a struggle at all.

The pea-green basin was splattered with scarlet gore—thick, sticky blood dotted with little tan flecks. I pushed at the flecks with a toothbrush, not wanting to touch something that I couldn’t identify. I remembered Torito’s story about the devil and suddenly knew what I was looking at. Bits of wood, splinters and curls. And tiny chunks of flesh.

I tried to rinse the horror away, but the bloody water drained too slowly and the flecks of skin stuck to the green porcelain as if glued there. I wiped the faucet clean. My throat was gritty-dry but the thought of drinking from the tap revolted me.

I poked around the room. The bathtub was filled with wood, kindling really: broken survey stakes, greasewood twigs, stunted Joshua tree branches, and stubby bits of mesquite. On the floor behind the toilet, I found a claw hammer smeared with blood. Next to it was a tin can filled with rusty nails.

Suddenly I thought of Jesus on the bedroom wall, split down the middle.

I hefted the hammer. Had the blood spattered it? Or had Torito stood before the mirror, looking at himself like I was looking at myself now, hefting the tool, wondering what it would feel like crashing against his skull again and again?

The cuts healed, at least the ones that you could see. Torito looked fine, a hell of a lot better than Barkley. Even Ell admit that.

In training camp for the rematch, everybody else ignored the warning signs. When Torito refused to wear headgear in sparring, they said he wanted to be macho. Same story when he started hitting the heavy bag without handwraps. And when he ran eight miles instead of his usual four, everyone said that Torito only wanted to improve his endurance.

Early one morning, I learned the truth. Torito came limping back from a run, couldn’t even make it past my cabin, which was on the edge of camp. He sat on the front steps and pulled off his shoes, not knowing that I was watching. His sockless feet were wet with blood. He upended his shoes and tapped the heels. Something red sprinkled over the dirt, and then Torito rose and limped away.

I stepped outside. Little red flecks, like bugs, dotted the ground. I scooped up a handful and blew away the dirt. The hard, bloodstained slivers of pine that remained felt warm in the palm of my hand.

I realized then that after a while pain is just pain, and there’s nothing you can do to make it into glory ever again. I told Torito what I thought, and even though he denied trying to hurt himself, he decided to pull out of the rematch. Gus and the promoter and the TV people gave him a hell of an argument. But with Rosie’s help, Torito held firm.

My heart thundered. I looked at my reflection in the blood-streaked mirror and saw a sweaty old guy who was about to have a heart attack. I’d done that once already, and it hadn’t been fun.

I sucked a deep breath. Okay, hot shot. You re out in the desert, surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of cactus and nasty reptiles. Maybe there’s a sadistic mob-enforcer out there, too. And a candyman named Willie. Hell, maybe they’re one and the same. For company you’ve got a couple of junkies and a masochistic former middleweight champion who’s in presently undefinable deep-shit trouble.

What next?

Number one: Torito needed help, but he needed help that knew how to keep things quiet. Number two: Vegas wasn’t my turf. In this case, one plus two equaled Gus. He’d spent lots of time in Vegas over the years. He wasn’t a saint, but Torito was always “his boy.” I fished through the business cards in my wallet and found his number in L.A.

It was quiet downstairs. No sign of Rosie or the zombie. I flipped on a light in the kitchen, lit a smoke to mask the stink of old grease and moldy Spanish rice, and dialed Gus’s number.

“Whoever the hell this is had better be makin’ me money, callin’ at this time of the night. ”

“No money, Gus,” I said. “It’s me, Richie.”

“The crazy Italian cut man! What’s up, Paisan?”

I sucked on my cigarette. Briefly, I explained what I’d found.

“Doesn’t sound good.”

“No shit. And it isn’t over. Rosie says that someone’s coming back to finish the job. She wants me to take Torito to New Mexico.”

“What does Toro say?”

“Not much. At least, nothing that makes any sense.”

Gus broke in with a few choice words. “Jesus, this is perfect fucking timing. Can you believe that I was talking to Barkley’s people today? The crazy S.O.B.s want to go pay-per-view. They’re offering two mil for Toro on marquee value alone. I haven’t even put the screws to ’em yet. I mean, if Duran and Hearns and Leonard can make five-ten mil, why not my boy?”

“Gus, there’s no way. The kid is drowning. Something is very wrong out here, and the last thing we can worry about is Toro climbing into the ring again. That’s crazy. If you could see him—”

“Christ, it’s that bad?” For the first time, he sounded truly worried.

“Yeah . . . can you get someone over here?”

“I’ll see what I can do. I know some Italian boys over on the Strip. I’ll give them a call, tell them a fellow spaghetti-bender is in trouble.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Gotta go.”

“Richie?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t get all weepy on me. I need you strong, pal. I’m counting on you to protect my investment.”

I started to curse him, but Rosie screamed, and I dropped the phone and headed into the dark hallway.

Bleached-out halogen light spilled through the open door, silhouetting Rosie and the zombie. A man came over the threshold, his moccasined feet silent on the Italian marble. He grabbed a handful of the zombie’s hair and kicked his legs out from under him. The zombie went down hard.

“I told you not to come back,” the man said, kicking the zombie’s stiletto across the floor.

The knife hit the wall and snicked open.

You don t know nothing about blades, ” the man said. “You don’t know nothing about my family, either.” He drove the zombie’s face against the cold Italian marble, shattering his front teeth. “You get out now, or I’m gonna teach you about blades.”

Whimpering, the zombie crawled outside. The man slammed the door and scooped up the stiletto. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, frowning at Rosie. “I met a guy named Willie down the road, and I had to straighten him out on a few things.” He stared at me then, and my chest tightened.

“Rosie,” he whispered, “is this the man you told me about?”

Her eyes brimmed with tears. She looked at me. “I ... I didn’t tell.”

“Just because you didn’t say anything doesn’t mean that you didn’t tell.” He closed the blade and pocketed it. “Aren’t you going to introduce us, then?” “Richie, this is Toro’s father.”

I looked into the old man’s eyes, and something exploded in my chest.

I came to in a chair in Torito’s bedroom. At first I thought the old man had shoved the stiletto into my heart. But the pain was familiar, something I’d felt before, and I tried to sneak careful breaths around it, tried to keep alive.

The old man bent over me. His hair was as white as the marble floor downstairs and his eyes were a polished, sparkling brown. “I think you’re gonna make it,” he pronounced, the cool scent of pinon on his breath. “I think you’re gonna be fine.” He sat down on the foot of the bed, a carving knife in one hand, a fist-shaped piece of mesquite in the other. Torito watched him from behind, saying nothing. The old man whittled away, his blade whispering over the wood. Every now and then he looked up at me or stared over at the big Mitsubishi, which was still showing Torito’s fight with Iran Barkley.

Its a funny thing, the old man said as Barkley trapped Torito against the ropes. “When wood is alive, it’s strong. You can drive a nail into it . . . doesn’t matter, it 11 keep growing. But dead wood, wood that’s seen too many seasons, that’s different. Drive a nail too hard, dead wood splinters on you.” He flicked shavings over my lap. “After a while, you don’t even have to use a nail. You just put that wood out under the sun, the sun that it’s seen a million times before, and it rots and falls apart.” He glanced at Torito, and then at me. “You understand.” The bell rang. Torito dropped onto his stool, his eyes closed, his cuts swelling.

I watched myself working with adrenaline chloride 1-1000, with Vaseline, blood smeared on my fingers.

“You understand.”

I looked at the TV. Torito taking punches. I glanced at Torito, helpless in bed. A line of stitches split open on his brow and his cheek turned the color of a rotten plum.

The old man smiled. “You understand. The TV, it’s like the sun.”

The fist was taking shape. Thick at one end. Almost pointed at the other. The old man worked the knife like a gouge, carving a network of veins over the top.

The bell rang again. Torito rose from his stool. His face was lumpy, smooth, slick with Vaseline. ’ ’

In bed, Torito grunted and spat blood.

“You did good work,” the old man said. “You know, you could have learned to carve.”

I sucked a shallow breath. “Torito says that you’re the devil.”

Flick flick flick. The old man worked the knife like a sixth finger.

“Rosie says that you want to hurt your son.”

He grinned. “She’s wrong. She doesn’t want me to help her ... she doesn’t want me to help my boy. She doesn’t even know what he is.”

The veins were finished now. The old man started on the fingers. But they were bent and arthritic, turning back on the hand, and they ended at the first joint.

The crowd screamed, “BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!”

“Rosie just wants the drugs,” the old man said. “She’s afraid of the things I can do for her . . . and for Torito.” He looked at his son and smiled proudly. “Torito’s not afraid, though. He’s brave. He wants me here.”

“BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!” A left hook from Torito. “BARKLEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!” Barkley’s punch already on the way. . . “BARKLEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!” Torito’s blood geysering through the air . . .

Blood spattered the padded leather headboard.

Torito screamed.

A bitter metallic taste washed over my tongue. I clenched my teeth against the sour pain.

The old man watched his son go down. “He was beautiful when he was young. One day I took a burro and a cart, went up into the mountains. I found a big old tree up there with roots that ran so deep you wouldn’t believe it. I burned it down, dug a trench around the stump, peeled it back and hauled the green core down the mountain. Let it season for five summers.” He smiled, “Then I went to work. In another year I had my son.”

I doubled over. My face came near the mesquite fist, and I saw that it wasn’t a fist at all. It was covered with veins, but what I had taken for fingers were actually arteries.

The old man patted my shoulder. “You’re lucky that I found this piece today. I don’t think that anything else I have would’ve worked.”

He passed a strong hand over the smooth wood, and the mesquite heart began to beat.

I awoke in another room. The old man stood over Rosie, who lay unconscious on a low couch. Soft light filtered through a heavy green lampshade to her right, bathing her sharp features in a liquid glow.

He moved away, wiping his bloody blade on a white handkerchief. Rosie’s right arm was laid open to the bone. Blood dripped from what remained of her fingers and splattered on the heavy carpet, the Caesars Tahoe carpet, and on the smooth wooden arm that lay in the green shadows.

The old man saw that I was awake. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “I had to cut the poison out first, but soon she’ll be ready to be whole again.”

I looked away.

He ignored my disgust. “Feeling better now?” he asked.

I glared at him.

“Good. You can help me with Torito.

I climbed the stairs on my own. My chest still ached, but the pain had reduced to a dull throbbing and my heartbeat felt even and strong. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. I hoped it had been a very long time, because I figured the longer I’d been out, the sooner Gus’s Vegas buddies would come to my rescue.

I didn't know what kind of trick the old man had pulled with the mesquite heart, but I was certain that what he’d done to Rosie wasn’t an illusion. I followed him down the hall, my left hand sweaty on the grip of my snakeskin bag. Inside was a straight razor. It was too late to help Rosie, but I was going to make damn sure that the old man didn’t try the same thing on Torito. I dipped into the bag with my right hand and came out with the razor. One quick slice across the jugular and it would be over. I followed the old man into the bedroom.

A pistol came down hard on my wrist and I dropped the razor.

Another pistol poked under my chin, prodding my gaze to the ceiling. Footsteps whispered across the carpet. I smelled expensive cologne.

“Well, well, this must be Richie.” A deep voice, with just the slightest hint of an Italian accent. “Gus has told me all about you.”

He was a thickset man with a fresh haircut and fashionably graying temples. He introduced himself as Jimmy Gemignani.

“So my friend Gus calls me,” Gemignani said. “ ‘Jimmy,’ he says, ‘we’ve got trouble out at Torito’s. A good friend of mine is over there, and he’s got the wrong idea. I’m afraid that someone might get hurt.’ ”

I started to rise from my seat, but Gemignani’s two toughs dropped big hands on my shoulders and stopped me. “Look,” I said. “I don’t know what you know, but if you go downstairs and take a look at Torito’s wife you’ll see that you’re roughing up the wrong guy.” I pointed at the old man, who was examining Torito’s swollen brow. “Get him away from Torito. Please.”

Torito’s father seemed amused by my concern. “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t understand yet.”

Gemignani nodded. “Then make him understand. I don’t have a lot of time, and neither does Gus. He needs Torito for a press conference next week.” Gemignani’s lips curled in disgust. “And we can’t use Toro like this.”

The old man shook his head. “That wasn't the deal. I got a contract. It’s very specific. Besides, nobody’s paid me yet.”

"You’ll get your money,” Gemignani said shortly. “Now, make him understand. If this thing’s going to work, we’re going to need his full cooperation.”

Torito’s father put the straight razor in my right hand, and then he raised my left and placed it over my heart. I felt it beating . . .

. . . pounding a staccato speed-bag rhythm. I felt the sleeping black sky stretching forever, dry sandpaper breezes scudding this way and that like indecisive ghosts, heat waves radiating from the highway in the middle of the night. The old man in the desert picking up a piece of mesquite, me knocking at Torito’s door. The old man grinning. Me closing Torito’s wounds. The old man carving, flick flick flick.

I concentrated on the sound of the knife. In a few moments, my heartbeat was even, steady.

I looked at Torito’s ruined face. He tried to grin. “C’mon, Richie,” he said. “It’s the only way. You got to help me.” He stared at the TV, watched himself fall under Barkley’s fists. “I can’t go out like that.”

Gemignani’s toughs moved away. Gemignani himself handed me my snakeskin bag.

“I guess everybody wants it,” I said, as if I’d forgotten all about Rosie.

“He understands now.” The old man winked at me. “We got a deal, you and me. We’re in this together. That’s the way it’s got to be.”

“Okay,” Gemignani said. “Let’s do what needs to be done.”

A smirking bellboy opened the limo door and Gemignani handed him my bag and a ten-dollar bill. The bellboy scurried away, whistling, his polished black shoes silent on red carpet. He slapped the marble knee of a statue of Hercules and disappeared through a revolving door. For a moment I heard the jingling music of slot machines, but then the door’s rubber seals caught and I heard nothing.

Vegas. When it was quiet, it was nothing more than a piece of the desert.

Gemignani patted my knee. I could feel his wedding ring through my thin slacks. I wanted to shove his hand away, but I knew that would be a mistake.

“I never saw anything like that before,” he said, a tinge of admiration in his voice. “I never did.”

I got a cigarette out of my jacket pocket and planted it between my lips.

“We don’t have a reservation in your name,” Gemignani said. “Just tell the desk clerk that Jimmy G sent you. Torito’s press conference is gonna be on Wednesday at noon—that’ll give you three days to rest up. Check with the concierge on Wednesday morning and he’ll give you the details.”

Another pat, and then Gemignani’s hand slipped away. “You do good work, Richie. I’m glad you’re part of the team.”

I climbed out of the limo and closed the door too hard; the slam sounded like a hammer blow. My lips quivered and I almost lost my cigarette. I waited for a scream of pain, but it didn’t come.

I patted my pockets, searching for a match. Gemignani’s driver offered a lighter, but I was shaking so badly that I could barely catch the flame.

The driver flicked his fingers against my chest. “Don’t get to close. A man in your condition shouldn’t play with fire.”

I blew smoke in his face.

He looked hurt. “Just a piece of friendly advice,” he said, handing me a thick envelope. “Here’s some more: stay away from the roulette wheel, and never hit when the dealer is showing a six, no matter what you’ve got in your hand.”

I took the envelope and started up the red carpeted stairs. Hercules stared down at me, a hunk of dead marble.

I thought about wood, dead and seasoned, smelling of muscle and blood. Claw hammers and carving knives stolen from Penitente men, adrenaline chloride 1-1000 and Enswell irons and Vaseline. All the rotten pieces of Torito that the old man cut away and flushed down the toilet. All the surgical thread and bloodstained sandpaper and rusty nails. Rusty nailheads fading to cherry-red scars. Avitene and thrombin, whittled survey-stake ankles and knuckles made of ironwood. Slivers and shavings that writhed and died like worms on the green tiled floor, my cramping fingers fighting to grip a surgical needle slick with blood. I thought about wood that splits, and men with knives, and men who never see the punches coming.

And then I didn’t want to think anymore.

My heartbeat was strong and even—mesquite is a damn tough wood—and I knew how to keep it that way.

The desert whispered behind me, but inside the hotel there’d be noise. I ditched the cigarette. Opened the envelope. I had three days of nothing, money to burn, and a new ticker that could keep the pace.

The rest I’d learn to live with.

I wasn’t going to worry about the scars.