He leaned closer to read: five sets of numbers for April 7, the Wednesday after Easter. Hell, he thought, why not? He shoved the tickets into his pants pocket.
As he left the kitchen he looked down the hall to their bedroom. The door was shut. It’s like those movies, he thought, where you want to yell “Don’t open the door!” at the dumb babysitter but you want her to open the door, too, because you can’t turn back, you have to know. Dudek wanted to see where it happened. lt’d make a good story later on. So he set the six-pack on the seat of an easy chair and stepped down the dark hall.
Idiot, he thought even as he knocked. Embarrassed, he twisted the glass knob and shoved the door so it banged against the wall. Then he switched on the ceiling light, looking suddenly on an unmade bed, sheets blotchy and stiff, an explosion of blood against the yellow vinyl headboard, and more in two smears across the planks of the floor. The dogs. Mattress stuffing drifted from the stir of air that followed Dudek’s hard push of the door. He shut his eyes, felt afraid, so looked again. Some blood had started to dry and it was brown on the wall, dark purple on the headboard, but still red where it soaked into the sheets and where it pooled thickest on the floor. He backed away, having seen enough, but stopped when he noticed cardboard boxes stacked along the nearest bedroom wall, so many boxes they covered the wall itself. There was a desk, too, and when he stepped closer, careful to avoid the smears on the floor, he saw above the desk a bulletin board with a chart tacked to it, high enough and far enough that it had stayed clean, untouched by the splattered blood. On the chart, in handwriting perfect and small like it came from a machine, Dudek read numbers, listed in series of six, no number over forty-five. Each series was marked with dates, some highlighted in yellow marker, others circled with red. Lottery numbers.
The clear packing tape — yellowed with age — shrieked as he peeled open a box. Shaking his head, he lifted out bundles of lottery tickets that he thumbed at the corners. Each bore that same picky script as on the bulletin board chart. Thousands of tickets, hundreds of thousands of numbers repeated over and over, twelves and twos, sixteens and thirty-sevens, loser after loser after loser, most with Xs through them but some circled, the ink long faded from red to pink. He tore open a second box dated on top “Aug. 76-Nov. 79,” it too stuffed with lottery tickets, numbers circled or crossed out. Then another box — “Feb. 92-May 95” — and another. Dudek laughed. He felt sick, lightheaded, and he backed away from the boxes, wanting space between him and them as if the craziness that rattled the Tuckers had started with those boxes and could spread to him, too.
Shit! He remembered. Quick out. He grabbed the beer. Lights off, he locked the door, slid the key beneath the mat, and wrapped the yellow tape around the nails.
The Tuckers drank out of bottles. They bought fancy beers, dark like molasses, more bitter than Dudek liked, but beggars and choosers and all that crap. He shed his shoes and socks, turned out the lights, raised the blinds, and sat by the window to drink. Across the street, the colors on the rabbit banner washed gray in the dark, so Bunny’s never-ending grin shined too bright, too happy. Dudek knew the rabbit couldn’t mean it.
Between sips, Dudek heard now and then the lonely, panicked siren of a cop car, saw red lights flash and speed over the walls of buildings as far away as downtown. All those lights in all those rooms. He wondered if in one of them, or even two, someone was killing somebody. Odds were good.
He pulled the tickets from his pocket, creased them, then smoothed the fold. He read the numbers by the glow of a nearby street lamp, though he had to squint; the beer fuzzed his focus. Such bizarre patterns: a stray 12 among 31, 33, 36, 38, and 39. Another with 01, 02, 04, 05, 07, 08. Probably worthless, every last one. Dudek reminded himself to check them against the winning numbers in Thursday’s newspaper, then slipped them into his wallet.
He opened another beer, then another, flipping the bottle caps toward his trash can and missing so the caps clattered across the floor. He tried to think, but he couldn’t fit the boxes, the numbers, the charts with everything else he knew — or thought he had known — about the Tuckers. Then he remembered that guy shaking Tommy Lasorda’s hand. Poor sap. Now every painted egg would remind the guy how his dad shot his mom. It was like Easter backwards, what the old man did, passing around his pain and confusion like burned toast at the breakfast table, with Tucker junior swallowing the biggest slice. Dudek imagined him on the plane, pictured him in black with sunglasses on, thought of him landing at Bradley International the next day and picking up a paper, looking for an obituary or something and seeing the reporter’s story. He’d read what Dudek had said. He’d read that his parents were drunks, fighting all the time. Probably wouldn’t be news to the kid, but Tucker junior would know that everyone else in Hartford was reading it, too.
And Tucker junior would be the new landlord.
Dudek chugged a mouthful, betting on eviction. Flush the security deposit. And what could he say? He could already imagine the kid downstairs putting his parents’ stuff in boxes. Dudek could see himself sitting on the couch listening, not daring to walk downstairs, not even willing to flush the toilet, wanting just to disappear. His stomach felt sour. That fancy beer. Too damn bitter.
His head felt mushy, so he leaned way back in his chair. Even in the dark, he could make out the watermark that spread across his ceiling. He remembered the torn screens on the back porch. Dumps like this all over the city. Plenty of places to live. So it wasn’t the eviction that bothered him. And it wasn’t the security deposit. He’d never gotten one back anyway.
He set the beer down. Lousy sludge. He wondered if Tucker junior drank that stuff, too. Jesus, the kid would need something. Dudek wondered if the reporter right now was writing what Tucker junior would read, what Dudek had said, and he pictured her at her desk. Long legs, heels, fake pearls.
Switching on a light, he found her business card. Maybe she’d think he was being a nice guy Concern for fellow man, you know? She answered on the first ring. That hot fudge voice. Over the phone, he liked it more.
He hesitated saying his name, then asked, “Would you mind not using what I told you? It, well — it makes them look bad. Like kicking dirt on them, you know? Haven’t they had enough trouble?”
He bit the tough skin along his thumbnail while waiting for her reply. He thought he could hear her breathe in, about to say something, but then she didn’t. He pictured her smoking. Tapping the cigarette against an ashtray. Didn’t all reporters smoke? He liked that about her.
“I can’t do that,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I told you who I was, and you agreed to talk. Once you agree, what you say I can put in the paper. That’s how it works.”
“But think how this makes them look. What if they’ve got kids?”
“I can’t worry about that, Mr. Dudek. Listen, there won’t be a lot of what you said in the story, but I can’t say I won’t use any of it.”
“That’s shitty.”
“You might have thought about that before you talked.”
Dudek had turned in slow circles until the phone cord had wound around him. Now he circled the other way, unwinding. All wrong. He’d gone about this all wrong. Not the nice guy stuff. He remembered how her throat had flushed red. She liked the creepiness. Sure. What reporter likes sunshine and light?
“Okay,” he said. “Look. There’s stuff I didn’t tell you. Stuff you wouldn’t believe.”
“Mr. Dudek, I’m on deadline.”
“Wait. Let me tell you this. Lottery tickets. Boxes of them downstairs. They even kept track of the numbers. Wrote on every ticket. When I say boxes, I mean boxes. Like a warehouse. You should come by again. Check it out.”