Blizzard Ball Read online

  “Hey, everybody. Santa brought you all a little stocking stuffer.” Floyd handed out scratch-off game cards. “If you match three Christmas trees, you could win a thousand bucks. What a hoot.”

  “Uncle Floyd, I got two elves. What did I win?” Jessica waved the game card over her head.

  “For goodness sake,” Maureen said, standing, “I don’t need that scratch-off mess all over my table.” Her hair, styled for the holiday with glitter accents, bobbed like an angry disco ball. “Everybody wants something for nothing. Everyone’s looking to be saved. If it’s not the lottery, it’s unlimited credit card debt, alimony, or some frivolous lawsuit. Well, I don’t need it, not in my house.” Maureen’s gray eyes squinted to a laser focus, ready to scorch anyone who had the nerve to look at her. Even the reindeer on her cable-knit sweater seemed to be looking for a way out. Earl held the silence along with everyone else until Maureen went into the kitchen, leaving bowed heads in her wake.

  “Wow,” Floyd exhaled. “Buzzkill or what?”

  Earl jabbed a calloused finger at Floyd. “Leave it alone.”

  “Look at the time, will ya? Five minutes until the lottery drawing.” Floyd slid off the kitchen chair and dashed toward the living room, claiming the brown Naugahyde recliner. Florence and Jessica quickly followed and threw the accent pillows from the Early American print sofa onto the floor.

  Earl stayed behind and cleared dirty dishes. “This will be over in a few minutes,” he said, looking past Maureen toward the TV as he attempted to kiss her on the cheek.

  “It’s just not right.” Maureen pulled away and slammed a serving bowl with what was left of the cranberries onto the counter. Red juice splashed Earl’s shirt. “What kind of pagans have we turned into? Gambling on Christmas. Nobody gives a damn about anything but money.”

  “Hey, where’s the remote?” Floyd shouted from the living room, sounding desperate.

  “You better find it or there’s going to be a riot,” Maureen said, irritated, as she shoved Earl out of the kitchen.

  “Welcome to tonight’s drawing. The one and only BlizzardBall Lottery is on the air. Hi, I’m Mike Frawley. Hope you’re holding the winning BlizzardBall jackpot ticket. It’ll make your holiday a whole lot brighter. Tonight’s jackpot is worth an estimated $750 million dollars—the biggest jackpot ever.”

  Jessica’s caged African Gray parrot, tucked in the corner of the living room, picked up on the announcer’s elongated consonants and mimicked, “Blizzzzzzzardball, hey Blizzzzzzzardball, hey . . .”

  “Kiddo, quiet that squawk box down.” Florence motioned to Jessica to cover the bird’s cage.

  “Shut up, goddamnit,” Floyd snapped, his eyes glued to the TV, “or we’ll miss the numbers.”

  “Behind me is the BlizzardBall drawing machine. As you can see, it has two chambers. One with red balls numbered 1 through 59; and one with white balls numbered 1 through 39.”

  “Hey, get on with it. We know how it works, for Christ’s sake,” Floyd yelled at the television as he pulled a cigarette and book of matches from his shirt pocket.

  “Here we go. The first number’s a 10.”

  “I got a ten!” Earl shouted. Maureen stopped washing dishes and turned a sharp ear toward the TV.

  “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut here and there,” Floyd taunted.

  Suddenly, the TV seemed to emit a giant exhale. Balls fell out of suspension and dropped dead to the bottom of the clear acrylic chambers. The tuxedoed Mike Frawley squinted into the camera. Sweat was visible on his brow as he paused awkwardly in what was normally a nonstop, rapid-fire monologue. Frawley touched his ear piece.

  “I have just been informed that there will be a slight delay in the drawing. As soon as the technical difficulties are resolved, we will resume with the one and only BlizzardBall Lottery. Hold on to your tickets. I now turn you back to your scheduled program.”

  “What was that happy horseshit?” Floyd asked. “I’m getting a drink. Someone holler when it comes back on.”

  “Build me one, too,” Florence called after him.

  Earl sat with the lottery ticket squeezed into the vice grip of his large work-callused hand. “Come on, come on,” he mumbled to himself through clenched teeth, staring at the TV.

  “Earl, it’s time for church,” his wife called out.”

  “Go on without me.”

  “Earl, don’t be a pain. It’s Christmas.”

  Earl exploded off the chair. “What, so I can embarrass myself, and this family when the collection plates pass by, and they skip over the poor Swansons. Bullshit!” He turned from his wife and daughter and dropped hard into his TV chair.

  Floyd and Florence fell in silently behind a furious Maureen and left for church.

  Earl sat and waited for the drawing to return, and thought about the financial abyss he was in. He’d get even with those cheap bastards who sold out his mining job to the Chinese. A crack of a smile appeared on Earl’s face as he remembered the dynamite he had smuggled from the mine, secured in a metal box in the basement. He wouldn’t be screwed over again.

  Cash and Dash

  Rafie and Eduardo slipped through the door of the Cash and Dash, located on St. Paul’s Lower East Side. On a snowy draft the pair scampered down the grocery aisle like cockroaches under a bright light.

  The clerk looked up to the convex security mirror mounted in a nearby corner and returned to his column of numbers.

  A shotgun blast brought a hiss and a shower of water from overhead.

  “Rafie, what you doing, man?”

  “Taking out the camera.”

  “That’s a goddamn sprinkler head.” Eduardo raised his hand to shield against the torrent of water flooding the store.

  The convenience store clerk ducked below the counter. Unhurt, he caught his breath, gripped a short baseball bat, and sniffed the burnt gunpowder. “Please, no more shooting!” the clerk shouted.

  “No weapons! Stand up!” Eduardo ordered. “What’s your name?”

  “Jamal,” the clerk said as he dropped the club and emerged. His clothes smelled like wet wool. “The register is open. Please, take the money. I will be no problem.” He opened his hands in a gesture of giving. “Cigarettes, beer, anything.”

  “Turn the sprinkler off, Jamal.” Eduardo ordered. The soggy hood of his sweatshirt dropped like a monk’s cowl.

  “I must then call the landlord. I am just a tenant and I have no such understanding.”

  “No comprendo?” Eduardo shoved the barrel of the gun into Jamal’s chest, knocking him backwards into the snack food shelf. A bag of Doritos broke open, spilling onto the flooded floor. The triangular pieces bobbed about like a regatta. “Where’s the FedEx boxes of cash?”

  “I only have the cash in the register. Please take it and go.”

  “Rafie, look around!” Eduardo shouted over the food aisle. Rafie had removed his soggy itching ski mask and was huddled in the corner with a grocery bag over his head as an umbrella against the sprinkler shower. The leather soles on his shoes had separated, and water wicked up his pants to his knees.

  “If we don’t find the cash, we’re gonna blow that rag off your head.” Eduardo’s dark-brown eyes fixed hard on Jamal and his braided skullcap.

  “I do not want any harm. Tell me, where did you hear about such great money?” Jamal dropped to his knees in prayer, sinking his forehead into the water.

  “Hey, Eddie, I found it!” Rafie yelled out from the back room.

  “Hurry! Load ’em in the car!” Eduardo swung the shotgun barrel hard across Jamal’s head. “I’ll take care of this pescado.”

  Rafie swiped his forearm over the windshield in a half-assed attempt to clear off the freshly fallen snow and jumped in the car. “Eddie, cra-a-nk up the car heater!” Rafie stammered, his blue lips quivering. “My pa-a-nts are frozen, I can’t straighten my legs.”

  “Open a box and sniff some cash, that’ll warm you up.” Eduardo flicked on the overhead dome light.

  R
afie reached into the back seat, retrieved a FedEx box, and stripped back the sealed flap. “Hey, man, something’s not right here.” He dug deeper into the box, tossing off small bundles of paper.

  “What?” Eduardo hit the brakes; the car fishtailed and bounced off the curb. He grabbed the package and shook the contents onto his lap. Neat bundles of pink tickets bound with rubber bands tumbled out.

  “What is this shit?” Rafie ripped open another box, then another and another. “No money.”

  Eduardo struck a Bic lighter to get a better look. “Fucking BlizzardBall Lottery tickets.”

  “Hey, maybe we win the lottery,” Rafie cracked.

  “Shut up.” Eduardo examined the FedEx shipping labels, all addressed to Vancouver, Canada. “Alita, she set us up for some bad luck, man.”

  Alita Torres could never have imagined that her big mouth was responsible for what lay outside her bedroom door at 4:00 a.m. Nor could she have foreseen that her two roommates would pawn her silver-turquoise bracelet to buy a shotgun, or that they would stake out the local convenience store for over a week on a path to robbery.

  She emerged from her bedroom to find FedEx boxes stacked throughout the living room and kitchen. She cinched her bathrobe and swept back a twist of raven hair. Pink slips of paper stuck to her bare feet as she made her way into the kitchen. She tried to rub some understanding into her eyes. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “A mistake,” Eduardo said, tearing off an end of a breakfast burrito and feeding it to the dog.

  “You’re a mistake, all right!” Alita raked a FedEx box off the kitchen counter. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you and your cerveza-guzzling shadow better run it right out of here.”

  Alita was twenty-four, single, attractive, and serious enough to be left alone—although that didn’t stop men from staring at her long after she had passed them by. Alita had taken control of her life, unlike her ass-backwards idiot roommates. They treated her like the virgin queen she wasn’t, then expected her to be their personal housekeeper. Respected her sobriety, but drank like fish around her. Were in awe of her job at the bank, but couldn’t save a dollar.

  “We found the boxes scattered on the street, fell out of a truck or some other shit vehicle,” Rafie said, leaning back on a kitchen chair and tipping down a long-neck beer. “So, we brought them here for safekeeping.”

  Alita gave the chair a quick pull. Rafie tumbled to the floor and spun like a break-dancer, adeptly saving his beer.

  “It’s your fault.” Eduardo said. “You said the Pakistani at the convenience store was cashing checks at your teller window trying to avoid the IRS and carrying money out of the bank in FedEx boxes.”

  Alita tried to make sense of the accusation. Eduardo and Rafie were both day laborers with a keen curiosity about money and an even keener interest in rich people. She ignored most of their inquiries. But as needed, she would parcel out bank customer information to her overbearing machismo roomies just to keep her household status buoyed.

  “Yeah, bum steer,” Rafie said.

  “I relay a simple story about a nice man who has silly banking habits and you asnos see it as an invitation to rob him? I can’t believe this.”

  Eduardo kicked a FedEx box. Tickets burst forth and littered the carpet like spent cherry blossoms. “We’ve been totally fucked over.”

  “Been through every one of the boxes, no cash,” Rafie added.

  Alita’s hands fluttered as though she were shooing blackbirds out of a corn patch. “I want you crazies out of my apartment,” she said, “and take this crap with you, right now!” She swatted a box of tickets toward the door. “I’m not going down for your stupidity.” Her anger swirled in the air along with the tickets.

  Rafie twisted the cap off another beer. “Hey, you can’t kick us out. We’re cousins.”

  Alita’s tirade trailed her into the bedroom. When she slammed the door, another poof of tickets rose and settled on the floor.

  Peppermint

  Kirchner sensed the Christmas storm had the makings of a terrible mess. He pulled up his coat collar and trudged towards the house. Ice pellets stung his face like a stirred-up batch of hornets. Before going inside, he paused on the top stair step. What had been footprints on the walk only moments ago were now hardened indentations filled with the wintry mix. The snow, heavy with moisture, settled in with the consistency of wet concrete. It stuck to his car, molding it into the proportions of a great white whale. Across the street a blow-up snowman stood in front of a neighbor’s house. It was surrounded by a lighted Santa, elves, and reindeer. Plastic blight, he thought and had half a mind to use the decorations for target practice. With any luck the crap would blow away in the storm.

  He listened for the scrape of the plows. Nothing was moving. The rigs were holed up in the sheds waiting it out. Nobody was going anywhere.

  There had been a Christmas night like this not long after he’d been married. As a young cop, he had been a law enforcement junkie. Every day brought a new experience. He was hooked on the action, absorbed in it and totally alive. It took a lock-down snowstorm to make him relax even a little. He fidgeted and stressed about being trapped that night—he looked out the window, then settled into the button-tufted wing-back armchair.

  His wife, whose sense of timing was always perfect, saw the beast was at rest and appeared with two tumblers. The air soon filled with the scent of peppermint. Peppermint schnapps with a touch of brandy was her holiday drink of choice.

  As the grog loosened the tension of police work, they spoke easily about their future. You can’t be in the law enforcement business for the money. His wife would finish her graduate work in American Indian studies, get a teaching job, so they would be in position to have children.

  “What position would that be?” his wife teased as she hiked her glass to signal refills.

  “Make mine a double. I’ll put a record on,” Kirchner said, and watched the hypnotic, graceful sway of her skirt.

  He had put on Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind.” It was the closest he could come to apologizing for letting the job take priority over the relationship. They danced right there in the living room next to the twinkling backdrop of the Christmas tree lights. He held her close. His fingers combed her thick dark hair and glided over her soft, overripe lips. They played her favorite, “Light My Fire,” the Jose Feliciano version, and laughed all the way to the bedroom. Kirchner never knew time to stop like that before or since.

  Now, standing in the night air like an abominable snowman, Kirchner sniffed at the snowy sky, hoping to catch the scent of peppermint. She had passed away seven years ago.

  His house insulated with snow, seemed extra quiet tonight. He hung up his coat and walked into the kitchen over squeaking planks. A half-eaten bowl of cereal sat on the counter. He made himself a cup of coffee and put on the Willie album. His cell phone rang and he hesitated, too tired and exhausted to answer. He could use the night off. It was Tyler, a young pain-in-the-ass BCA analyst, but he clicked him in.

  “Whattya got?” Kirchner groused.

  “Our money-laundering suspect has been murdered. Found him dead at the Cash and Dash. No immediate suspects. One other curious note...”

  “Give it to me.”

  “The convenience store was the source of the winning BlizzardBall jackpot ticket.”

  “Somebody won?”

  “And it looks like somebody lost.”

  BCA

  Morty announced himself to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s receptionist, who sat behind a bulletproof acrylic window and managed communications through a microphone. The BCA was an umbrella law enforcement agency. It provided investigative crime lab resources and aggregated criminal records to local police, sheriff ’s departments, and citizens throughout the State of Minnesota. The Lottery director was not pleased with having had to navigate through the half-plowed roads and now being made to wait. He paced a bit before taking an open spot among other visitors
on a hard wooden bench bolted to the terrazzo floor. To pass the time he scrolled through the e-mails on his BlackBerry.

  “Morty Frish?”

  “Yeah.” Morty stood, wearing a double-breasted camel-hair topcoat, looking like a mafia boss.

  “Appreciate ya coming in on short notice.” Kirchner extended a quick firm shake and led the way into the secure chambers of the BCA.

  “This better be important, goddamn snow Armageddon out there,” Morty said. “Where’s the coffee?

  “No lattes, but caffeine we got.” Kirchner dropped four quarters into a vending machine. “Cream, sugar?”

  “Black.” Morty winced as the sludge plopped into a paper cup.

  “Got a room for us.” Kirchner padded soft-soled wing-tip shoes down a long narrow corridor and opened the door to a small conference room. A thick report folder with a pair of reading glasses on top sat in the middle of the table.

  On the way in Morty had observed the large bisected stones that flanked the entrance to the BCA building. “Nice pile of rocks you got out in the yard,” he said. “Where’s the inmates with sledgehammers?”

  “They’re glacial-age granite boulders, split clear through,” Kirchner said, and looked out the window at the rock sculpture. “Suppose to be a metaphor. Something about the insides of those rocks revealing unique patterns, similar to fingerprints and DNA,” he turned his attention back to Morty. “But that kinda thinking makes my head hurt. Nothing seems to be what it is anymore.”

  “Interesting tour note, but as you are aware, I’m in the middle of a high-profile Lottery offering.”

  “What did you do before you ran the Lottery?”

  “I was an accountant in New York before being dragged out to the tundra by my ex, whose sole mission was to make my life miserable.”