Page 192 of Sweet Ruin

Kane holds the storm door and we go out onto the stoop into the cold. He takes a folded sheet from his inside pocket.

“For you,” he says.

I unfold it under the porch light. It’s a printout.

One column contains the names of casinos. Atlantic City. Foxwoods. Mohegan Sun. Bethlehem. A block of them in Vegas. Places I’ve never heard of in Connecticut and upstate and Louisiana and Mississippi.

And in the last column, beside every single one: BARRED — SUBJECT: BOYD, CONNOR J.

“This is—” My breath comes out white. “Kane. This is every casino in the country. You…”

“Got Connor 86’d from every one of them, yes.”

I’m in shock. “How?”

“A phone call to a man who owes me. Then a phone call from him to a man who owes him.” He looks out at the street. “His name is on a list now. He will not get through a door with a card table behind it. Not in Atlantic City, not in Nevada, not in a basement in Marine Park.”

“Why?”

“Because he sat at that table tonight with his hand on the back of your sister’s chair,” Kane says, “and he thought that the worst of it was over. I intend to show him just how wrong he is.”

I fold the printout up. “You keep taking things off him.”

“Yes.”

“Are you doing that for me, or for him?”

Before he can answer, the storm door bangs behind us. Connor comes out onto the top step with his jacket half on and his keys in his fist. He looks at Kane, then at the printout in my hand.

“So you know,” he says.

“I just found out.”

“Great.” He laughs miserably. “That’s great, Dee.”

He comes down two steps. He stops on the one above me, which puts him at Kane’s shoulder height, though he keeps his eyes on me and only on me.

“You think this is you winning,” he says, bending close and speaking fast. “You think he’s doing all this for you.”

“Connor—”

“Ask him why me.” His jaw is trembling. “Four million dollars, Dee. To me. A guy who plays forty-dollar hands in a basement. You never asked yourself why he ever said yes?”

Beside me, Kane is silent.

Connor looks up at him and then away, fast. He looks more terrified of Kane than ever.

“You still don’t know why he picked me,” he whispers. “You still don’t fucking know.”

Then he turns around and goes back inside.

34

DELILAH

A week goes by, and I do not ask.

In my defense, I’m busy. Valentine’s Day is the Super Bowl of bakeries like mine, if that Super Bowl was also mixed with the Kentucky Derby and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. It’s war, and a race, and you also have to look good while you’re doing it.