Free Lucifer's Lottery by Edward Lee Page A

hooker really pisses me off. One of these days I’ll find a
decent
one.”
    “Most of those girls are drug addicts,” Hudson affirmed. “When you solicit them for sex, you’re helping them remain in an environment of moral bankruptcy, degradation, and misery.”
    “For fuck’s sake,” Randal sputtered.
    “If you give them money for drugs in exchange for action, it’s the same as if
you’re
buying the drugs yourself. It all goes to the same place, the same evil. Besides, hookers
and
johns offend God.”
    “Here we go with
this
shit again.” Randal grabbed a broom and whisked it around the store, half assed. “If there was a God, then there’d
be
no drug addiction, so then there’d be no girls offering to do you for money.”
    Hudson frowned. “I think God is about free will, Randal. It’s about the
choice
. Does one choose to do drugs or does one choose not to? Do they choose to consort with prostitutes or do they choose
not
to? God’s really got nothing to do with it.”
    “Whatever . . .” Randal swept some dust beneath the counter. “So, what? You came in here tonight just to try to con me into going to
church?
”
    “Well . . . I wanted to ask a favor.”
    “Fuck no, man. Get out of my store.” Randal hooted. “Relax! I’m kidding.” Then his eyes darted. “Damn, I forgot.” He opened the glass door on the rotisserie, then spat on the hot dogs.
    “What the hell!”
    Randal smirked. “Those fuckin’ things are a buck a packwholesale. But if you spit on ’em every hour, they last longer. Only people who buy ’em are the bums and illegals. Big deal. Besides, the heat kills the germs.”
    Hudson didn’t know what to say.
    “So what’s this pain-in-the-ass favor?”
    Hudson didn’t like to lie but in this circumstance—
A nude deaconess?
—he could surmise no other option. “I found a hundred-dollar bill today in the street but, I don’t know—it feels funny.”
    “Funny?” Randal questioned. “As in fake?”
    “Well, yeah, I guess. It’s, like, brand-new. But I’ve seen you check bills here with the funky pen . . .”
    “Anything for a friend.” Randal got it. “You want to make sure it’s not funny money before you try to spend it.”
    “Exactly.”
    Behind the counter, Randal produced a fat black pen whose body read SMARTCASH — COUNTERFEIT DETECTION MARKER. Hudson gave him one of the ultracrisp bills.
    “I get a 20 percent commission if it’s real, right?” Randal posed, holding the uncapped marker.
    Anything for a friend, my ass
, Hudson realized. “Yeah, sure.”
    Randal rubbed the bill between his fingers. “Wow, that
is
new.” He grinned up. “You sure you’re not printing these up in your pad?”
    “With what? My oyster board?”
    Randal chuckled. “Or maybe in the church! That whacko Father Darren’s probably printing his own funny money and getting you to pass it!”
    “Hilarious.”
    Randal drew a quick notch on the bill, then gave the iodine-saturated ink time to dry.
    It’s fake
, Hudson knew.
It’s got to be fake. It’s just some scam I haven’t figured out yet
. Six grand landing in his lap out of the blue like this?
Too good to be true
.
    Randal shrugged, deposited the bill in the register, and gave Hudson eighty dollars back. “It’s real.”
    “You’re kidding me . . .”
    “It’s as real as my coffee is bad.”
    “That’s
real.”
    “I’m gonna spend my end on another hooker tonight, but not that ratchet-job knocked-up cow that just left. What’cha gonna spend the rest on?”
    Hudson wavered, suddenly hard-pressed to conceal his excitement.
But this is avarice, isn’t it?
He’d been given a very mysterious $6,000 via a very mysterious scenario. Nevertheless, the money was real, and the arcane note she’d left indicated that he could keep it under no obligation. “I’ll probably put it in the church plate.”
    Randal bristled. “Fuck that! Put it in
my
plate! That damn church gets all kinds of money!”
    “Tell you what,