Free The Town: A Novel by Chuck Hogan

$1,050 into his zippered pocket and moved on to a $100 table, washing another quick $1,300 there before cashing out and rotating again.
    It took him less than three hours to roll over the entire eight grand, ending hot, dropping a total of $320 in play and tips, a minuscule 4 percent commission to what the papers said was the most profitable casino in the country.
    He met up with Dez again by a revolving red Infiniti. They made two complete circuits of the floor before an Indian war cry brought them to Jem, finding him doing a rain dance around the $50 roulette table, having finally scored on double zero. They cashed him in and steered him away.
    Jem wanted to stop for a quarter-hour massage at one of the jack shacks near the casino, but Gloansy refused. “The red man just jerked me off for nineteen hundred dollars, I’m not going to pay some greasy geisha half a yard to do the same.”
    Instead, Doug drove them a few exits north to a steak house, where they filled a booth by the window in sight of the back-finned Monte. Soon the table was cluttered with steaks, High Lifes, and Doug’s large no-ice Mountain Dew.
    “So what’s next, Duggy?” asked Gloansy.
    “Strip club,” chewed Jem.
    “I mean, for us. For the team.”
    “I don’t know,” said Doug. “Think we need to mix it up a bit. I’m looking at a few things.”
    Jem said, “You talked about hitting a can.”
    “Maybe. Might be looking at something softer first.”
    Jem waved that off. “Fuck softer.”
    “Hitting a can means daylight. Armed guards, crowds, traffic. Going in strong like that, I don’t know. We need a win.”
    Jem pointed his steak knife. “You’re losing your edge, DigDug. Startin’ to worry about you. Used to be you were the first one to throw down gloves and go.”
    “Used to be I got a hard-on every morning, homeroom. But now it’s 1996 and I’m thirty-two, and I got that shit together.”
    Gloansy said, “Whatever it is, I’m ready. Anytime you say, Duggy.”
    Jem speared one of Gloansy’s pinkest morsels and pushed it into his own mouth. “Anytime
I
say, corn hole.”
    Gloansy watched his steak get swallowed, poured ketchup on more. “I’m sure that’s what I meant.”
    They ate and drank and got loud and stupid as usual. Doug tried to hustle them along like children, like he was running a fucking field trip outside the Town.
    Gloansy said, “If I had to go one hundred percent legit? One of those batting cages things. Indoor/outdoor. Snacks and shit. Town needs something like that. What about you, Jem?”
    “Liquor store, man. Also sell smokes, lottery, and porn. That’s one-stop vice shopping.”
    Gloansy said, “That was Duggy’s brainchild once upon a time.”
    “Duggy don’t drink anymore. So that million-dollar idea goes to me.”
    Dez said to Jem, “Maybe put in a photo-developing booth too?”
    Jem stared at him, Dez holding the look for another few seconds before cracking, Doug too, both of them falling into snorts of laughter.
    “What is that?” said Jem. “The fuck is that, ‘photo-developing booth’? It’s not funny. He’s not funny. It makes no fuckin’ sense.”
    Jem’s fury only made them laugh harder, the nearby tables starting to get annoyed. Doug went to use the head, and on his way back he saw what the other diners saw sitting there at the side booth: Gloansy and Dez playing goalposts with a packet of butter, Jem draining another longneck and staring out the window, bobbing his head to some interior tune. The glamorous life of the outlaw; the majesty of being the prince of these thieves.
    The waitress delivered the check as he returned. “Let’s split,” Doug said.
    “Got a stop to make on the way back,” said Gloansy, grinning. “In Providence.”
    Doug was tired, he wanted to get back to Dodge. “Losers.”
    “No,” Gloansy corrected him. “
Horny
losers.”
    The munching sound next to Doug was Jem eating the food bill.
    D OUG RECEIVED A BEAUTIFUL lap dance from a