Too Lucky to Live Page 3

Now the ticket lay—small and stupefying—between us on the counter. There should have been a full-choir singing sound, like from the monolith in that Space Odyssey movie, but it was quiet as a mouse. I’d carried it to my computer and confirmed on the lottery’s website that this was indeed the winning number. And that there’d only been the one.

  7-9-16-34-57-8. Bingo.

  I had never imagined knowing—let alone kissing—someone who’d won the Mondo. Especially a gigantic one. Especially someone who didn’t seem happy about it. Not at all.

  He was sitting with his elbows on the counter and his chin in his hands. His expression could only be classified as morose.

  “How much is the pot?”

  His voice was…grim?

  “Somewhere around five hundred million, last I heard. Maybe more now. Do you play a lot?”

  “First time.”

  “You bought one ticket in your entire life? And you won? That’s not even lucky. That is an act of God.”

  “That’s exactly what it is. Big and terrible. Like an earthquake or a tsunami.”

  “Aren’t you glad? Aren’t you excited? I mean, five hundred million dollars. That’s going to be something like two hundred million after taxes. Wouldn’t you rather have that much money than not?”

  “God. Allie. I don’t have a clue. You seem to know a lot about the lottery but this is all new to me. I had no intention of winning. I never even thought about that. Just the opposite. There’s this kid….”

  The story came out.

  Tom’s house was next door to the high-rise subsidized housing project, but it had a small beach. There was a kid who liked to come down and play on Tom’s beach. “Runako Davis.”

  “Runako?”

  “African name. He told me it means ‘handsome.’ I don’t know whether he is handsome or not. But I know he’s smart and full of life. Funny, too.

  “He prefers to be called Rune. What is it with my friends? Never happy with their given names.” He brightened in my direction for a second and then his face fell again.

  “Rune’s mother has a lot of what people love to call ‘challenges.’” Mostly she has the challenge of getting involved with rotten men and—here’s where all this started—with gambling.

  “Rune tells me she spends probably fifty bucks a week on Mondo tickets. I guess she believes it’s the only way she’ll ever have anything, for Rune, for herself. For a better life. But it’s a vicious cycle. Two hundred dollars a month would buy—” His voice trailed away and I followed his thoughts onto what five hundred million could buy. I didn’t have to be blind or psychic to read his mind on that one. But I still didn’t understand what the big problem was.

  “So, how—?”

  “So Rune and I were talking yesterday and he tells me he wished he had a dollar for a Mondo ticket. Big alarm goes off for me. So I said, ‘Rune, you’re way too young to play the lottery. It would be against the law. Besides, you’ve seen your mother play over and over again. Has she ever won anything?’

  “And he says, ‘Maybe a hundred dollars once or twice. But she doesn’t play the good numbers.’

  “I fell into his trap and asked him what makes a number good? And he says, ‘It has to be a special number you pick. She gets the auto ones.’ This is the point at which I made the big mistake.”

  “And won five hundred million dollars?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve sowed havoc like you would not believe.”

  “Say more.”

  “Well, then I said to him, ‘You think if you picked the numbers yourself, you’d have a better chance of winning? What numbers would you pick?’ I was just talking, you know. Making conversation.

  “He says, ‘It’s not me picking that matters. It’s that they’re picked. They have to be numbers that mean something to you. That’s what makes a number good. Lucky. If you bought a ticket and you picked numbers that are special to you, like your birthday or your mom’s birthday, and maybe I picked the Mondo Ball number—I’d pick my age, which is eight—then I think we’d have a chance.’

  “All I wanted, Allie, was to talk with him about not gambling. Buy a ticket with our special numbers and then show him how we wouldn’t even get one number right. I wanted him to know there are good, sound ways to make money.

  “I told him I’d get the ticket and we’d plan out the numbers and if—when—we didn’t win, maybe we could talk about some better ideas. How he could save for college. I could help him with that. I’d like to. And of course he answered, ‘What if we do win?’

  “And I told him, ‘It isn’t legal for you to gamble. You have to be eighteen and you’ve got a whole decade to go. So I’d deposit any money in the bank and I’d pay you a hundred dollars for helping me choose the numbers.’

  “Because, again, I didn’t think it would even be healthy for him to think about how much money it could be if you actually won. Because I knew we wouldn’t win. How could we possibly win, Allie? The odds are….”

  “One hundred seventy-five million to one. I looked it up once. They’re probably worse by now.”

  Tom shook his head and sighed, “We picked my birthday and my mother’s birthday and his age. The Mondo Draw number is Rune’s 8.”

  “You have to scramble the numbers around to make it work.” He smiled. “It took us about forever to figure out how to get it so we had no more than five picks besides the Mondo Ball. Rune made a little chart to keep it straight. He was so proud when we got done. And I promised him…” The smile died.

  “Oh, no. Oh, shit.”

  “What? You promised him what? Tom?”

  He’d started running his hands through his hair, frantic. “I promised him we could go to the drawing together. There’s a TV in the common room at the complex, and people hang out in there on Tuesday nights when the drawing is. I told him I’d come over and we’d watch together. Then the thing on Lake Shore happened and I came home with you. I’m not sorry, Allie, it’s that—”

  “He waited and thought you stood him up. And after you won, that you ditched him and kept his hundred dollars. But you can explain it to him, Tom—”

  He was off the stool, moving with his hands stretched out in front of him, lost as he’d been in the midst of the cacophony of horns. He stopped himself then and stood still, his face gripped by emotion. “No, it’s not that. That’s the least of it. Think about it, Allie.

  “He’s there alone in a roomful of people. He’s a kid. They’re adults. Most of them are perfectly nice. Some not so nice. Some just plain bad. Ruthless. Stupid. Drunk. Stoned, maybe. God. And he’s told them what his numbers are. He would do that.

  “Then, when the number is called, he’s bouncing off the walls. And the bad ones, they’ll want the ticket. They’ll think maybe he has it and try to get it from him, and when they can’t, they’ll figure they can use him to get it from whoever does have it. From me. He’ll be in the middle. That room may be the absolute worst, most dangerous, place to find out you won an obscene amount of money. I have to go, Allie. I have to go. Right now.”

  “I’ll borrow Margo’s car and drive you. But, Tom, you need to put this ticket in a safe place. Even if you only want to use it to help Rune. You go down there with this in your pocket, anything could happen. And he still might not be okay. The money could be his education, a better place for him and his mom to live.”

  “You’re right. I’m not thinking straight. Will you hide it for me? Nobody knows I’m here. Nobody knows I’m with you. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to have anything to do with it. With me. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Sure. I’ll hide it. But let’s go quick.”

  Hide it where? I let my eyes drift around the room. Every place I looked seemed ridiculously obvious. I envisioned a bunch of scary men rampaging through my precious house, overturning furniture, ripping stuff off the walls, stabbing g
iant holes into my couch cushions. Stuffing flying everywhere—

  I stopped myself from envisioning anything else and after a long moment, a promising spot captured my attention. One of the metal doors of the cabinets below my kitchen sink was ajar and in the corner of its upper edge I could see a rubber stopper. It was supposed to keep the door from slamming. I knew this because a lot of those doors were missing their stoppers and they slammed all the time. Each stopper fit into a small hole—a tiny, almost invisible chink through which I could slip a piece of paper, down inside the door. But how to get it in—and still get it back out when we wanted it?

  Think, Allie.

  I rummaged in my overpopulated junk drawer and came up with a spool of thread. I rolled the ticket into a tiny cylinder and tied the thread around it. Tight. My fingers were shaking. I used a kitchen knife to pry out the stopper and slipped the ticket into the hole, leaving a tiny tag of string hanging out. Then I stuck the stopper back in and closed the door. As I went, I described it all, step by step to Tom.

  “Do you trust me, Tom?” I asked, as we grabbed his cane and my purse and hurried, with his hand on my elbow, out the door. “It’s a lot of money and you barely know me.”

  “I trust you with my life, Alice. And I promise to start kissing you again as soon as we get this mess straightened out.”

  Chapter Five

  Margo handed me her keys without the slightest hesitation. No explanation required. No questions asked. I repaid her trust by driving her battered Volvo faster and way more recklessly than the law allows, up to the fateful stretch of road where this whole lively new chapter of my life had begun mere hours before. The bus stop was empty. Joe’s Super Market was closed. The McDonald’s, too. It was 11:45 on a hot, muggy August night, and this darkened world was cashing it in for the evening.

  We parked in the lot at the high-rise and I rushed us straight in through a dismal lobby and down a dim hall to the common room. Two old black guys and one old white guy—all three in wheelchairs—were watching Jimmy Fallon’s show and not laughing. No sign at all of an eight-year-old kid.

  I was filling Tom in on the visuals as we went. Him with his cane, but with his hand on my arm. Walking into this place, I was glad to feel him there. I could see that there’d been some confusion. A couple of chairs and a table were overturned, but I had no way of knowing if maybe that was the way it always was.

  I led Tom to where the men were sitting and knelt down next to one of the black guys. I took in his tired, wrinkled-up face, his old man smell. It cost me a few seconds to coax his eyes away from the screen, but when I did, his gaze rolled on by and up to Tom, standing silent behind me. What he said to me then chilled me but good.

  “Is that the blind guy ’ut won the Mondo?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. I could see he was computing one degree of separation from five hundred million dollars. I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. He slid his focus back down but my hold on it was tenuous. I needed him to talk to me and stop glancing up at Tom. Maybe if we exchanged names…

  “Mister.” I began. Mister—?”

  He regarded me with fresh interest, due to my having shown up in the company of the Mondo blind guy, no doubt. “Grant,” he answered, “Ulysses A. Grant. That A is a switcheroo, ain’t it? For Aeneas. My dad was a jokester. And a reader. Ever read The Iliad and The Odyssey, Miss…?

  “Harper. Al—Alice Harper. Yes. Yes. I read them. Please. Mr. Grant. There’s a problem. Do you know Runako Davis? The boy who was here?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but don’t nobody ’round here call him Runako. It’s Rune. Nice kid. He’s gone now. Ran out yelling like a house afire. Don’t know where he went.”

  His expression deepened into concern.

  “People followed him out, though. People always follow the big easy money. It’s a dam’ curse y’know. Prob’ly worse than being poor and crippled and having to live here. Although I wouldn’t mind havin’ the chance to find out. For a change of scenery, y’know?” He stole a hopeful glance up at Tom but Tom appeared oblivious, so he continued.

  “You might try his mom’s place. She’s up on fourteen. One floor down from the top. On the lake side. 1415 mebbe?” He gave me a knowing wink and his mouth worked around into the parody of a smile, exposing an ill-fitting set of yellowed false teeth. “I’m good with numbers, y’know. Like 7-9-16-34-57-8.”

  Damn.

  The first elevator we got to was broken and the second one was scary slow. It reeked of urine and not very appetizing food. I wondered how Tom was enjoying his enhanced senses now. He hadn’t said a word since we left the common room. His whole being was concentrated on finding the boy and there was nothing for us to say. We just needed to get up to fourteen.

  The elevator jerked to a stop on the tenth floor and a guy got on. Rail thin. Faded Hawaiian shirt. Tight black pants, white shoes, large dark glasses, even more incongruous in the dead of night than the ones Tom was wearing. He offered me a smarmy smile.

  I don’t know what he intended by this smile, but the impression it made on me was predatory. I wanted not to be in a slow, smelly elevator in public housing in the middle of the night with this man. I saw how he was looking at Tom. Like Tom might be the blind, white LeBron James. Five hundred million is instant celebrity.

  Hawaiian Shirt Guy’s grin widened. Yeesh. I scanned his outfit for a gun, but it didn’t look like there was room to hide anything substantial anywhere. Except maybe in the back waistband of his pants. Where I couldn’t see. I fervently hoped to keep it that way.

  He licked his lips and cleared his throat. “Hey, man? Like. Show me the money? You got that ticket on you? I’d sure love to see me a winner ticket. Just once.”

  Tom shook his head. I would have bet it was the headshake he used when one of his students asked if she could turn a paper in three weeks late. And although his grip on my arm tightened, his voice was steady as stone.

  “No. Of course not. Sorry. I don’t have it here.”

  Tom’s “here” clearly communicated how inappropriate “here” would be as a place for such a ticket. I gave him a lot of points for that.

  Shirt was a man who’d learned to take no for an answer. He paused, perhaps considering his options, and then shrugged. “Too bad. Well, have a nice evening folks. You all enjoy being rich, now.”

  The bell dinged. The elevator heaved to a stop. We got off on fourteen and the guy didn’t follow. An unexpected blessing.

  The hall was poorly lit which was maybe also something to be thankful for. It was tidy enough. No actual debris anywhere. But the beige-y carpet and the beige-y walls were stained with something I didn’t need a better look at. I guided us along as quickly as I could and stopped outside 1415.

  I looked up at Tom, searching his pale, worried face for reassurance. “Do you think the old guy was right about 1415 being Rune’s mom’s place?”

  “Well, we know he’s ‘good with numbers.’” Sardonic. “And it’s all we’ve got. Go ahead. Knock.”

  So I took a deep breath and rapped smartly on the door. Like all those times I’d seen on TV, it moved under my knuckles. Not good. I’d have assumed everybody in this joint locked their door. Deadbolt. Chain. Metal bar. And much, much more.

  I muttered to Tom, “It’s not locked. I’m going to push it open.”

  “Go for it.”

  I pushed, and the door sagged inward with the sickening screech of ripping wood. What I hadn’t seen, due to the stress-induced fuzziness of my head, was that it was damaged. There were a couple of ugly black scuff marks in the center, and it had broken away from its hinges. That’s one way to bypass a lot of locks. Someone had set it back into place so that in the half-light it had looked okay.

  Every individual brain cell I had was telling me not to go in. How many times had I made fun of people on TV for going in? Hundreds? Thousands.
But the look on Tom’s face was now so strained and terrible I shoved the door out of the way and pulled him in behind me.

  A lamp with no shade was lying on the floor. From what I could see by its weak, stuttering light, the room was a torn-up mess. This was bad.

  Even worse was the body of the plump, youngish black woman sprawled on the floor. What if whoever had done this was in here with us? The place was so dark and wrecked—who could tell? No doubt there were closets, too, and at least one other room for someone to hide in. No sign of Rune.

  “Tom.” I tried not to let my voice tremble. “I don’t see Rune, but there’s a—There’s an unconscious woman here. I’ll find out if she’s…if she’s okay.”

  I paused, waiting for my guts to kick in.

  I have always felt that with some training, I’d make an excellent P.I. A cross between V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone, with a dash of Stephanie Plum, Bounty Hunter, thrown in for insouciance. In the real world—before I started working for The Cleveland Public Library and disqualified myself from further entries—I’d won a “Behind the Scenes” contest the library threw to encourage people to read. My first-prize choice was “Behind the Scenes at the Medical Examiner’s Office.” Not good. I’d wanted to run, scream, cry, and throw up all at the same time.

  So now I was supposed to ignore the fact that I was in an apartment with a kicked-in door, fourteen floors up in public housing, in the middle of the night? And walk over and touch a dead woman?

  But there was Tom, waiting with his face set like cement. And his Rune kid, God knew where. And I believed this woman was Rune’s gambling-addicted, crappy-man-picking, almost-certainly-dead mom.

  His one and only mother.

  I had to do it.

  So I did. I took a deep breath.

  “Stay here.”

  I left Tom standing like a statue by the door while I made my way over and around the stuff that was scattered all over the place. I knelt down and put my fingers on the dead woman’s neck. Her skin was cold. Now that I was closer, I could see dark smudges that sure looked like blood on her face and blouse. I swallowed hard and felt around for a pulse. No success. Right then, however, she groaned.