I waited for the answering machine to pick up. After the third ring, I heard a click and then my voice said to leave a message at the beep. When the beep sounded I heard a semi-familiar voice.

"Mr. Klein?"

I sat up. The woman on the answering machine tried to stifle a sob.

"This is Edna Rogers. Sheila's mother."

My hand shot out and snatched the receiver. "I'm here," I said.

Her answer was to cry. I started crying too.

"I didn't think it would hurt so much," she said after some time had passed.

Alone in what had been our apartment, I started rocking back and forth.

"I cut her out of my life so long ago," Mrs. Rogers continued. "She wasn't my daughter anymore. I had other children. She was gone. For good. That's not what I wanted. It was just the way it was. Even when the chief came to my house, even when he told me she was dead, I didn't react. I just nodded and stiffened my back, you know?"

I didn't know. I said nothing. I just listened.

"And then they flew me out here. To Nebraska. They said they had her fingerprints already, but they needed a family member to identify her. So Neil and me, we drove to the airport in Boise and flew here. They took us to this little station. On TV they always do it behind glass. You know what I mean? They stand outside and they wheel in the body and it's behind glass. But not here. They brought me into this office and there was this… this lump covered with a sheet. She wasn't even on a stretcher. She was on a table. And then this man pulled back the sheet and I saw her face. For the first time in fourteen years, I saw Sheila's face…"

She lost it then. She started crying and for a long time there was no letup. I held the receiver to my ear and waited.

"Mr. Klein," she began.

"Please call me Will."

"You loved her, Will, didn't you?"

"Very much."

"And you made her happy?"

I thought about the diamond ring. "I hope so."

"I'm staying overnight in Lincoln. I want to fly to New York tomorrow morning."

"That would be nice," I said. I told her about the memorial service.

"Will there be time for us to talk afterward?" she asked.

"Of course."

"There are some things I need to know," she said.

"And there are some things some hard things I have to tell you."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"I'll see you tomorrow, Will. We'll talk then."

I had one visitor that night.

At one in the morning, the doorbell rang. I figured it was Squares. I managed to get to my feet and shuffle across the floor. Then I remembered the Ghost. I glanced back. The gun was still on the table. I stopped.

The bell sounded again.

I shook my head. No. I was not that far gone. Not yet anyhow. I moved toward the door and looked through the peephole. But it wasn't Squares or the Ghost.

It was my father.

I opened the door. We stood and looked at each other as if from a great distance. He was out of breath. His eyes were swollen and tinged with red. I stood there, unmoving, feeling everything inside me collapse away. He nodded and held out his arms and beckoned me forward. I stepped into his embrace. I pressed my cheek against the scratchy wool of his sweater. It smelled wet and old. I started to sob. He shushed me and stroked my hair and pulled me closer. I felt my legs give way. But I did not slide down. My father held me up. He held me up for a very long time.

23

Las Vegas

Morty Meyer split the tens. He signaled the dealer to hit both. The first came up a nine, the second an ace. Nineteen on the first hand. And blackjack.

He was on a roll. Eight straight hands had gone his way, twelve of the last thirteen up a solid eleven grand. Morty was in the zone. The ever-elusive winner's high tingled down his arms and legs. It felt delicious. Nothing like it. Gambling, Morty had learned, was the ultimate temptress. You come after her, she scorns you, rejects you, makes you miserable, and then, when you're ready to give her up, she smiles at you, puts her warm hand on your face, gently caresses you, and it feels so good, so damn good… The dealer busted. Oh yes, another winner. The dealer, a hausfrau with over treated hay like hair, swept up the cards and gave him his chips. Morty was winning. And yes, despite what those bozos at Gamblers Anonymous tried to peddle, you could indeed win at a casino. Someone had to win, didn't they? Look at the odds, for chrissake. The house can't beat everyone. Hell, with dice you can actually play on the house's side. So, of course, some people won. Some people went home with money. Had to be. Impossible any other way. To say no one won was just part of the overreaching GA crap that left the organization with no credibility. If they start off lying to you, how can you trust them to help?

Morty played in Las Vegas, Las Vegas the real Las Vegas, the city itself, no strip-strolling tourist trade in pseudo-suede and sneakers, no whistling and hollering or squeals of joy, no faux Statue of Liberty or Eiffel Tower, no Cirque du Sole, no roller coasters, no 3-D movie rides or gladiator costumes or dancing water fountains or bogus volcanoes or kid-appeal arcades. This was downtown Las Vegas. This was where grimy men with barely a mouth of teeth per table, the dust from their pickups still coming off them with each shoulder slump, lost their meager paychecks. The players here were bleary-eyed, exhausted, their faces lined, their hard times baked on by the sun. A man came here after slaving at a job that he hated because he did not want to go home to his trailer or equivalent, his abode with the broken TV, the screaming babies, the let-herself-go wife who used to stroke him in the back of that pickup and now eyed him with naked repulsion. He came here with the closest thing that he would ever know to hope, with that wispy belief that he was one score away from changing his life. But the hope never lasted. Morty was not even sure it was ever really there. Deep down, the players knew it was never meant to be. They would always be on the toe end of the kick. They were destined for a lifetime of disappointment, for slouching with their faces forever pressed against the glass.

The table changed dealers. Morty leaned back. He stared at his winnings and the old shadow crossed over him again: He missed Leah. Some days he still woke up and turned to her, and when he remembered, the sorrow consumed him. He would not be able to get out of bed. He looked now at the grimy men in this casino. When he was younger, Morty would have called them losers. But they had an excuse for being here. They may as well have been born with the loser L branded into their behinds. Morty's parents, immigrants from a shtetl in Poland, had sacrificed for him. They had sneaked into this country, faced terrible poverty an ocean away from everything familiar, fought and clawed all so their son would have a better life. They had worked themselves to an earlyish grave, hanging on just long enough to see Morty graduate medical school, to see that their struggle had meant something, had steered the genealogical trajectory for the better now and forever. They died in peace.

Morty was dealt a six up, seven down. He hit and got a ten. Busted. He lost the next hand too. Damn. He needed this money. Locani, a classic leg-breaking bookie, wanted his cash. Morty, a loser's loser when you really think about it, had stalled him by offering up information. He had told Locani about the masked man and injured woman. At first, Locani did not seem to care, but the word spread and all of a sudden someone wanted details.

Morty told them almost everything.

He did not, would not, tell them about the passenger in the backseat. He did not have a clue what was going on, but there were some things even he would not do. Low as he had sunk, Morty would not tell them about that.