No one answers. And for a moment, I think the topic has been dropped.
“But, so, dead like what? Parasailing accident? Autoerotic asphyxiation?” Pan smirks at his own joke, draining whatever watery booze is left at the bottom of his glass. “No one’s going to fill me in?” he says.
“Fuckin’ house burned down,” someone says. The hand ends. Pan loses, his chips swept away into the pot. He sucks his teeth.
“Jesus,” he says. “They cooking meth or something or…?”
Again, silence. Just the flip of cards being dealt across felt.
“Think it was uh…” someone puts in. The newcomer. Gold tooth. The guy I recognize.
Hook’s guy.
“…more personal than that,” he finishes.
“Oh ho ho,” Pan says, rubbing his chin. “You don’t say.”
“I don’t,” the guy says a bit bluntly. “I don’t know more than that, just that uh…” He blows out a breath. “I don’t know. Good riddance, I think. Someone trying to get their kid.”
“Kid?” Pan says it so quickly that I can tell he’s genuinely surprised. He darts a glance at me, and I widen my eyes as much as I can.Don’t,I think.Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, just let it fade away. This is a bad line of questioning.
“Apparently. That was the whole problem. Custody shit? I’m not really sure.”
“What do you mean?” Pan says again, too fast, too curious.
“I can’t say, man,” Gold Tooth says again. “It’s not the kind of thing I want to be involved in, and I would think you too. Especially if you owed them money.”
That shuts Pan up. He leans back, arms folded, a sulky expression on his face. “It’s not why I was asking,” he mutters, glancing at his hand and sulking even more.So much for poker face,I think. “I fold,” he says. He gets up, smiling, but in a way I can tell is hollow, almost fake, and ambles across the room, sticking his neck in the kitchen first, muttering something I can’t hear to one of the girls, and then making his way over to the desk, to me.
“Yo,” he says, opening his hand again. “Hit me. Rake me up some more chips.”
I don’t move. “You got more cash?”
Pan gives me a look. “Oh, don’t be like that,” he says, grinning. “Just borrow from the house. It’ll all come out in the wash.”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “You should probably just cool it.” I lower my voice a fraction. “On a number of fronts.”
Pan scowls. “What do you mean?”
“Imean,” I say, “that’show you’re going to ask people about this?”
His expression tightens. “Sure, why not? People answered.”
“Yeah, and now they’re suspicious as hell,” I breathe out, looking at the game, half-listening for a normal rhythm of mumbled conversation to pick back up. “If people figure something out and connect us, then we’re worse than where we started.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Pan says. “I’m fine. Um, thank you,” he says as Ruby appears with her tray again. He takes the glass off, sips, and then frowns. “The hell is this?”
“Soda water with lime,” she says, tilting her head. “Think you need a little break there, honey.” She grabs his cheek and pinches.
“Hey!” He swipes her away, looks from her to me. “What is this, daycare all of a sudden? I can’t make my own goddamn decisions?”
“No,” I say, glancing up at Ruby and trying to transmit thanks to her for having some common sense here. “Just?—”
“Tink?”
The faint voice behind me on the stairs is like ice water down my back. I whip around to see Wendy halfway down in her little Wyld-n-Tru pajamas, holding a can of Coke.Shit, I think. I look at the table; no one’s noticed, I don’t think, but…
“Here.” I push a hundred bucks’ worth of chips at Pan, hoping that’ll tide him over. “Drink your fucking soda and go play. I’ve got to…” I jump up, and as if he can sense what I’m doing, Fox, from the lounge, gets up too. Walks over and leans against the archway that divides the landing to upstairs from the shop proper, blocking me and Wendy from view.
