Chapter 171: 171. A Talk With The Landlady’s Stupid Husband Who Screw Things Up!

The casino was twenty minutes from Harwick Lane, which made Callen Street a midpoint, and Gerald was standing outside the pharmacy that stayed open late with the posture of someone who had been standing in the same place long enough to start feeling visible about it.

He saw Mike from half a block away and something in his shoulders went through a very specific sequence of developments.

Mike reached him and looked at him for a moment without saying anything. Gerald had the face of someone who had been standing on a street corner at midnight running through scenarios and arriving at worse ones each time.

"Are you hurt?" Mike said. ’Fucking god...! Why do I have to say bullshit like this?!’

’But this is all just an act... I need to become the Mike who cares, but deep down... he doesn’t give a fuck at all because he only cares about fucking his wife.’

"No," Gerald said.

Then he said to him, "Are you though? You’re so brave for doing that, you know."

"I’m fine." Mike said while patting his own body. "Big G is not that big."

Gerald looked at the cut on Mike’s cheek, the one he’d had since Thursday, and then looked at the rest of him with the particular attention of someone checking for damage they hadn’t been told about. He found none and seemed unsure whether to be relieved or more confused.

"What happened in that alley," Gerald said. "After I left?"

"We’ll talk about that later," Mike said. "Now come on before they spotted you and it’s going to be another stupid-ass talk."

They walked to the small outdoor tables of the coffee place two doors down, the kind that stayed open as long as the neighborhood needed them to. Gerald ordered something and held it without drinking it.

Mike ordered nothing and sat with his hands flat on the table.

Gerald looked at the cup. He looked at the street. He looked at Mike.

"I owe you a conversation," he said.

"Nah, it’s more like you owe me several conversation," Mike said. "Start at the beginning."

"The beginning... oh shit..." Gerald exhaled slowly through his nose. "The beginning is embarrassing."

"Well, most beginnings are," Mike said. "That’s not a reason to skip it."

Gerald started at the beginning.

...

The beginning was three years ago. The Phoenix had been operating in the casino ecosystem of District 4 for a longer period than three years, a fact that Mike had started to suspect due to the efficiency with which Big G moved through the casino and into the alley without drawing any noticeable attention from the staff.

They established an arrangement, not directly with the casino, but with enough of its operational environment to manage their presence rather than exclude it.

The arrangement with Gerald had started small. A contact suggested a solution to Gerald’s losing streaks at the slots.

In exchange for a percentage of the winnings, Gerald would receive longer hot streaks when they occurred. Gerald had agreed, because the logic of it made sense to someone who had already been losing for long enough to be desperate for a different outcome.

"Who made the introduction?" Mike said.

"Man at the slots. I’d seen him there a few times; we’d talked."

"It’s nothing serious actually... but just the way you talk to people at a casino." Gerald turned his cup in his hands. "He said he knew people who could make the runs go a different way..."

"I thought he meant he knew which machines were about to pay out... yeah... that kind... of thing."

Mike’s mind screamed at him, ’YOU STUPID ASS-LICKING MOTHERFUCKER!’

’WHY WOULD YOU BE A DUMBASS AND TRUST THAT EASILY?!’

"Why the hell did you do that?! Why didn’t you ask more specific questions to make sure of it?!" Mike asked without raising his voice. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"Good question... that’s where I fucked up because I didn’t want more specific answers," Gerald said. "That’s the honest version... it’s just me being desperate for an easy way out to get money..."

"And then you lost anyway," Mike said. "Great. Petricia is going to fucking kill you because of that."

"More than winning," Gerald said. "That’s how it works..."

"I know that now... The arrangement isn’t about making money with you, but it’s about creating debt."

"When you look at it that way... they rig it both ways," Mike said. "They give you enough wins early to confirm the arrangement is real, and then they let the losses run and the debt accumulates, and by the time the number is large enough to matter, you’ve been in it long enough that walking away isn’t simple."

Gerald looked at him. "You’ve seen this before...?"

"Variations of it," Mike said. "Different cities, same structure."

"The product is always the debt, and the casino is just where they build it."

Gerald was quiet for a moment. He put his cup down and looked at the street, displaying the expression of someone who is finally understanding something they had always partially known but had not allowed themselves to articulate.

"The longer you lose, the more you owe them from the theoretical winnings that haven’t happened," Mike said.

"Yes," Gerald said. "They keep increasing the amount owed, and eventually it reaches a level that cannot be covered by your casino winnings, leading them to discuss other assets."

"The apartment..." Mike said.

"Yes... that building." Gerald’s jaw moved. "Big G was the one who brought it up first."

"About two months ago... he’s very chill about it... like it was just a practical solution we’d both been thinking about, and he was the one willing to say it."

"What did he say specifically?"

"He said the building was a reliable income stream and that there were ways to structure an arrangement that would let me pay down the debt over time using the rental income."

"He made it sound like a payment plan." Gerald looked at his hands. "Petricia doesn’t know... but still... She knows about the money, some of it."

"She doesn’t know about them, and I know that she’s going to find out... sooner or later about it..."

"She knows something is wrong back then," Mike said. "She’s been knowing it for longer than you realize."

Gerald looked up. "How do you—"

"I listen," Mike said. "It’s one of my qualities."

Gerald held his look for a moment. He seemed to be revising something about his understanding of who exactly had moved into Unit 6.

"She thinks it’s just the casino," he said. "The gambling addict that you had."

"But... She doesn’t know there’s a third party involved."

"She thinks it’s a habit," Mike said. "She doesn’t know it’s a trap."

"It started as a habit," Gerald said, and there was something defensive in it, not aggressive, just the instinct to clarify that the first step had been his own choice even if the subsequent ones hadn’t been. "That part was mine..."

"The rest of it came after."

"I know," Mike said.

Gerald wrapped both hands around his coffee cup. He was a man sitting at an outdoor table at two in the morning on a street corner, and whatever he had been carrying for the last three years was sitting on the table between them now, visible in a way it had not been before.

"The money she found out about," he said. "The savings account."

"The one from last night."

"That was... the Phoenix gang’s money... I was covering a payment they were expecting, and it wasn’t enough, and I went into the building account to make up the difference." He paused. "I didn’t plan to do that to my wife..."

"I was going to put it back before she noticed... and maybe face some consequences from them...."

"How long has she been noticing?" Mike said.

Gerald pressed his lips together for a moment.

"A while," he said.

"How long, Gerald? Be specific."

"Three months maybe... and she hasn’t said anything directly..." Gerald sighed. "But she checks the account statements more than she used to, and she asks me questions that sound like regular questions but aren’t."

’What a fucking dumbass.’

"She’s been building a picture," Mike said.

"She’s always been sharper than I give her credit for," Gerald said. "That’s one of the things I did... Consistently, I guess... by underestimating how much she saw."

He said it without anger at himself, which was worse than if he’d said it with anger. It was the observation of someone who had been looking at a pattern long enough to be past the stage of feeling guilty about it and into the stage of simply knowing it was true.

"There was an account," he said. "For a specific reason."

"I know," Mike said.

Gerald looked at him. "She told you."

"Not directly... but enough for me to know."