Tough Luck Read Online Free PDF Page B

ignore him.
    Mickey knew Harry was just being a prick, but he also knew it was true—the girl probably didn’t like him. She’d just acted nice because his finger was bleeding. If he hadn’t cut his finger, she probably wouldn’t have said a word.
    Later in the day, Mickey’s finger still looked bad, and he decided he definitely needed stitches. Before he left work, at around seven o’clock, he called his father to tell him he would be home late because he had to go to the emergency room. As usual, he wasn’t sure if his father understood him. Suddenly angry and frustrated, Mickey hung up.
    Mickey walked about ten blocks to Kings Highway Hospital and had to wait over an hour before a doctor would see him. The doctor sewed four stitches into Mickey’s finger and told him the stitches would have to stay in for two weeks.
    On his way home, Mickey stopped at John’s Pizzeria on Flatbush and bought a pepperoni pie and two sodas. His father was waiting for him by the door when he walked in.
    “Where the hell’ve you been?” Sal Prada asked.
    Ignoring his father, Mickey put the pizza on the kitchen table then went into his room and changed out of his dirty work clothes into clean jeans and a Rangers jersey with “ESPOSITO 77” written across the back.
    Mickey left his bedroom and went into the kitchen where his father was sitting at the table eating a slice of pizza. Mickey took one of the slices out of the box, held it with a few napkins, and then left the kitchen.
    “Where you going?” Sal asked.
    Mickey didn’t answer. As he headed down the stairs, he heard his father’s muffled voice screaming something at him.
    MICKEY GOT IN his car and went to talk to Artie in Artie’s “office,” a bookie joint above a shoe store on Kings Highway and East Sixteenth. Mickey only went there once in a while, to see Artie, or on Friday and Saturday nights when the OTB around the corner got too crowded.
    As usual, there were about twenty guys packed into the small room, filled with cigarette and cigar smoke. Bridge tables with strewn Racing Form s, Sports Eye s, and betting slips were set up all around the place, and Max, an old guy, was taking bets at a table to the left. A TV attached to the wall in the corner was showing odds from the Meadowlands, where, Mickey noticed, it was three minutes to post time.
    Mickey went up to Artie, who was sitting at a table in the corner, bent over a Sports Eye. Artie had turned fifty last year. He was short and bald, and he wore thick glasses. He had a wife he sometimes talked about, but Mickey had never met her or even seen her. Mickey sometimes wondered what any woman could possibly have in common with Artie, who seemed to spend all of his time at racetracks, bookie joints, and OTBs.
    “Hey, Artie,” Mickey said.
    Artie didn’t look up from the Sports Eye.
    “You got my money?” Artie said.
    “That’s what I need to talk to you about,” Mickey said.
    “I don’t want to talk about anything except money. What happened to your finger?”
    “Cut it at work.”
    “Sorry to hear that. Where’s my money?”
    “Come on, Artie, just hear me out, will ya?”
    “What’s the matter?” Artie said. “It’s not your money, it’s this guy Angelo’s, right?”
    “Right.”
    “So what’s the matter? He won’t pay up?”
    “I wouldn’t say ‘won’t.’ ”
    “Look,” Artie said seriously. “I asked you if he could handle that kind of action and you said he could. I even let him put in another dime on the Rangers and now I expect to see that money.”
    “You don’t understand,” Mickey said.
    “I don’t want to understand,” Artie said. “I made it very clear to you over the phone. I said, ‘Angelo has this kind of money?’ and you said, ‘Yes.’ That’s all I heard and that’s all I wanna hear now. He has to come up with the money and that’s it.”
    “I asked Angelo for the money yesterday, and he said he’ll pay it when he feels like it.”
    “That’s not