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  But still, he found himself on his hands and knees in front of the television, tongue basting his lips, nails pressed into the cement floor.

  Next number. Fifty-nine.

  Booker gasped. Turned his head to see if his Numbers were paying attention. Sixteen and Thirty-seven were watching with wide eyes, but the others were still too busy drowning in their own despair to notice what was happening in front of them.

  When the fourth and fifth numbers were revealed, Booker couldn’t breathe anymore. Thirty-seven…Twenty- nine.

  He was on his feet now, chewing on both thumb nails, pacing in front of the television. He couldn’t look at his Numbers anymore, didn’t want to jinx it. His hands shot out, gripped the sides of the TV as if it were a human head. “Come on,” he said through clenched teeth. “Jesus Christ, come on!”

  “And now for our powerball,” Selena Gutierrez said. She stepped aside as the ball flew into the slot, then smiled, waved her hand in front of it.

  “Number one!” Booker’s ears rang and he collapsed backwards, smacked the back of his head on the floor so hard that stars twinkled in his peripheral vision.

  Tears bulged at the corners of his eyes, crawled across his cheekbones down to his ears. When he opened his mouth, laughter exploded out. I won! I fucking won!

  After a few minutes on the cold, hard floor, he forced himself to his feet, faced his Numbers. His lucky little group. He loved them, every one of them.

  Each one of them stared at him now,understanding what had just happened, waiting for him to release them. Just like he said he would. Hope sparkled in their eyes. Not a single trace of pain on their faces anymore.

  “I told you that if I won,” he said as he walked in a circle, letting his fingers brush against their faces as he went. “I’d let you live. I have to be honest with you guys.” He smiled as he strolled toward his tools at the corner of the room. When he turned, he held the ax with both hands, gripping the handle so hard he thought he’d break it. “I never thought I’d actually win.”

  The Numbers screamed and thrashed as Booker approached them.

  Booker couldn’t stop laughing.

  ***

  He held his Powerball to his chest, rocking it, careful not to let it slip from his grip as he studied his ticket. One was a slippery little devil, his mother’s juices still coating his rubbery, lifeless body.

  The other Numbers sat just in front of him, on the other side of the ticket. Lined up in the order that Selena Gutierrez had called them. Fifty, Sixteen, Fifty- nine, Thirty-seven, Twenty-nine. Their bodies still hung from the chains behind him, the concrete beneath them covered in a thick layer of blood that continued to grow as more and more dripped down.

  Booker reached out, fingered the numbers carved into the scalps. He pulled One toward his face, nuzzled him, pressed his lips against the slimy head and kissed him.

  “You’ll all live forever,” he said. “We’ll always be together.”

  Two

  Thinking about the commission alone made Frank’s dick hard.

  Ambulance chasers were a dime a dozen. It took real know-how (and enormous balls) for a lawyer to specialize in lottery chasing. It was hell on his family life, he was always away from home, had missed the birth of not one but two of his three kids, but at least he’d racked up a bunch of frequent flier miles.

  Two hundred million. Thinking about what he could do with that cash brought his mind far away from the subject of family and his Jetblue Sky Miles account and into the land of five-star hookers and Gulfstreams.

  Well. One hundred million and change. Frank was thinking like a mark, not a halfway-intelligent human being who’d studied finance before heading to law school.

  No, the idiot tax is, in fact, full of undodgeable taxes. But Frank had made a career out of dodging as many taxes as humanly possible without landing himself in jail. Not a huge career, but a career. He was still waiting for that white whale. Two hundred million.

  Frank shifted in his seat. Coach was usually just fine, he wasn’t picky, but now that he’d started thinking about private jets, the closeness of the other passengers was making him claustrophobic. A little work would take his mind off it, so he unzipped the leather folder in front of him and splayed the papers out on the tray table.

  ` His private investigator had done a decent job. In Texas of all places, who’d have thunk they had competent P.I.s in Texas?

  “Excuse me, sir,” the stewardess said, touching his elbow.They were flight attendants when they were refilling Frank Lambrick’s scotch and waters, but stewardesses whenever they were bothering him. “We’re beginning our final descent. Please close up your table.”

  “Sure thing,” Frank said, watching her walk back toward the nose of the plane and buckle herself in. When she was out of his line of sight he returned to pawing through the computer printouts. The winner had been smart enough not to go public with the Powerball win, but that didn’t mean that Frank and others like him wouldn’t be able to sniff him out. Frank just hoped that he would be first to show up on the guy’s doorstep.

  There was a lot of intel here. Pictures of the kid walking into the lottery office, a home address, a deed that put the house under one Elaine Walker, a Google maps printout of the front of the house, but Frank still possessed very little information about the guy himself.

  The P.I. had only been able to dig up a first name: Booker. Going from the deed and looking at what a sallow, geeky looking mother fucker Booker seemed to be, Frank was guessing that he was living in his mother’s house. That would make the guy’s full name Booker Walker. Maybe? A great thing to name your kid if you wanted to ensure him daily playground beatings. Maybe old Elaine and her husband (baby-daddy?) had been going for the “Boy Named Sue” effect. It didn’t look like it had worked. Booker was string thin, probably in his thirties but still unable to roust enough testosterone to grow a proper beard.

  The lottery win would be good for him, would probably lead to him losing his virginity or some other depressing first.

  Someone cleared their throat over Frank’s shoulder. It was the same stewardess and this clearly wasn’t her first rodeo. He packed up his papers and folded up the tray. Five minutes later they touched down at Austin- Bergstrom.

  ***

  Waiting in line for baggage claim was for saps—Frank only took carry-ons with him out on jobs.

  Frank felt good about this trip already—he’d made it down here less than thirty hours after the numbers had been drawn. He wouldn’t have to worry about getting Booker to incorporate a limited liability company in another state because Frank was licensed to practice in Texas. This outing was set up to be a homerun.

  Taking the Texas Bar had been worse than it had been in his home state of Massachusetts . It wasn’t that the exam was particularly difficult (the state was called Passachusetts by the area law school grads), just that it was the fourth exam he’d taken in that month, winding his way down the East Coast and picking up every license he could.

  Frank was the first passenger off the plane. Jogging down the ramp into the terminal, Frank’s good luck continued as he walked right up the cab stand and into a taxi. There was no time to lose, but he couldn’t help but smile about how quickly this had come together. He doubted that even the local rubes had figured out where Booker was living, maybe still in the dark that there even was a Booker.

  “I need to go here,” Frank said, handing the driver an index card that he’d prepared with Mr. Walker’s address. He would check into a hotel later—what mattered now was making first contact.

  While they were traversing off-ramps and highways and back roads, Frank changed into a fresh jacket and touched up the shine on his shoes. Crisp as a newly minted hundred-million dollar bill.

  “Don’t be taking me for a ride, guy,” Frank said to the cabbie. “There’s no tip in it for you if you are.”

  “This is the way the GPS is taking me, sir.” Frank was used to dealing with Boston cabbies, which meant he w
as as suspicious as could be about the profession. How could they sleep at night, defrauding innocent tourists like that? Frank giggled at his own hypocrisy, couldn’t help it. He was in that good a mood.

  “Can I ask what’s funny, mister?”

  “Nothing. I just love my job.”

  ***

  “Here’s what I owe you, plus some extra. Do you have a cell phone?”

  The cabbie said he did and gave Frank his number. “Okay, there’s another hundo in it for you if you go park on the next block for twenty minutes and hold onto my suitcases.”

  The cabbie seemed to weigh his options, examining the laptop case in the backseat through the rearview mirror.

  “There’s no computer in it, only papers,” Frank said. He had a sixth sense for sniffing out possible criminal activity. He could have worked prosecution for the state if there was any money in it. “Believe me, the hundred dollars for a twenty minute break is the better deal. It may be sooner than that. I’ll call you.”

  He didn’t wait for the cabbie to agree, just slammed the door and waved the car away, taking note of the plate number, just in case.

  Frank turned to face the house. Shit. First thing on this guy’s must-buy list is a landscaper.

  It was a squat single-story building. The online listing had it as two bedrooms, two bath. It wasn’t a complete shithole, but if the Taurus in the driveway was hiked up on a few cinderblocks, it could be.

  There were no news vans, no rental cars, nothing except for Booker’s draggin’ wagon. No competition. Frank’s luck continued.

  He opened the front gate to Booker’s unkempt yard, took a deep breath, and walked up to the door.

  Shock and awe baby, here we go.

  Frank knocked. He could hear the TV inside, desperate male grunts accompanied by a muffled female voice. A Brazzers subscription with your newfound cash, Booker? You dog.

  The grunts stopped. Frank knocked again. You didn’t want to be too insistent, but you wanted to stand your ground. Sometimes he wished that he grew up Mormon so he’d be better at this part of the job, then he remembered how much he liked fucking, drinking, and cursing.

  As he readied the third knock, the door cracked open and Booker’s sweaty face filled the divide. He was wearing a shirt but it wasn’t buttoned, his chest was as sweaty as his face.Either he really needed an air conditioner or Frank had interrupted the kid in the middle of getting his dick wet. This was Frank’s first strike: nobody wants to talk business with a guy who just interrupted them in the middle of screwing.

  Fuck it. It’s too late, push forward.

  “Mr. Walker?” Frank said, taking a gamble on the name.

  “No, sorry.” Booker said, starting to close the door but it wasn’t budging. Frank already had his foot wedged

  against the jamb.

  “Booker? Booker Walker?”

  The kid looked confused, the light in his eyes turning off and on like someone had reset his circuit breakers.

  “Oh, yeah. That is me. Walker’s my mother’s maiden name.”

  He was a weird one all right. That was fine, though, most of the weird ones didn’t already have in- house legal representation.

  “My name is Frank Lambrick. Before I say anything else, let me first offer you a hearty congratulations.” This first part never changed. It was good to have immutable lines of dialogue, allowed Frank to focus on presentation rather than content. The door opened a bit more, allowing Booker to take a step toward Frank, then closed behind the kid. He wasn’t getting invited inside, yet, but that wasn’t a big deal—he had the guy’s attention.

  The kid’s eyes were sunken, but despite the post- win wear and tear he looked even younger than he had in the picture. Maybe Booker was in his late-twenties instead of his early thirties. If he were smart, he’d have taken the money on annuity. He was young enough to see it all paid out. But most people that played the lottery on the regular went with the cash value option.

  “Are you from the state?” Booker asked, calm, almost supernaturally calm, but still with something in his voice that sounded like concern. This, or a variation on it, was a first question that Frank encountered quite often.

  “No, nothing like that,” Frank said. “Don’t worry. There hasn’t been a mix-up at the office, you are still a multi-millionaire, mister,” he let the word dangle, hoping that Booker would give him a real last name to use, if he wasn’t going with Walker.

  “Just Booker is okay.”

  “Well, Booker, I’m not from the state, truth be told I’m more important than that. Did you know that half of the folks that win the lottery in Texas are penniless five years after they get their check?” It wasn’t true, at all, but it was the kind of lie that nobody was going to call him on.

  “I did not know that, no,” Booker said, pushing the bottom of his shirt into his khakis. Frank caught a quick look at the kid’s happy trail, which looked to be caked in brown goo. If you needed a surefire way to get your girl to try anal, a lottery win was probably high on the list.

  “That’s why I’m here. Now I know that you opted to keep your win out of the public eye, which was very smart, Booker, but the state gave me your name.” Another white lie that was almost the truth, as stated. The state gave him Booker’s name by making it so easy for his P.I. to snap a photo of Booker entering the building. “You still need the help of someone with experience with these things. Legal help.”

  “Oh,” Booker said, realizing that he was talking to a lawyer. “I think I’ll be okay, thanks.”

  Frank took his hand, shaking it like it could have been a goodbye, letting the little twerp think that he’d won whatever skirmish he thought he had entered into. “I mean, twenty-seven million dollars is a pretty big chunk of your winnings, but if you’re fine giving it back to Uncle Sam, good for you. Most of that money goes to the school systems, so that’s very charitable of you.”

  “Twenty-seven million? I’m not giving that away.” “Okay then, I didn’t know you knew about gift taxes and capital gains. Those are the best little tricks, am I right?”

  “Where are you from again, Mr. Lambrick?”

  Frank had listened to a Louis L’Amour audiobook for part of his flight, hoping that he’d be able to fake at least enough of a Texas accent to cover his haaaad Everett accent.

  “I’m from Lambrick and Partners, we’re a small firm, but we specialize in getting lucky folks like you the most out of their money. We’ve been in that business for twenty-five years, and I’ve got to say,” he motioned down at his shoes, not the most expensive item of clothing that he was wearing, but the shiniest, “business is good.”

  Booker’s eyes didn’t dip down to the shoes, maybe he was less of a hick than Frank initially thought. “No, I mean what area of the country are you from?”Booker asked. There was something sharp about this kid. He looked like a complete geek, but there was danger behind those eyes that only someone like themselves could recognize. Frank took an immediate and unreserved liking to him. Then promised himself that he wouldn’t completely fleece the kid, not only because he liked him, but because it didn’t seem possible.

  “Boston, originally.” Another deception made concrete by the usage of ‘originally.’ He’d always lived in Boston, always would, even if the Sox never again managed to win the pennant. “But don’t worry, I am fully accredited to practice in the fine state of Texas.”

  “One more question, Frank,” Booker said. Frank had preferred Mr. Lambrick, but wasn’t going to correct the kid. “If you were my lawyer, how confidential will you be about what I spend my money on?”

  Frank smiled. He was pure gold liquid-luck today. “I’d never tell a soul.”

  Three

  Booker closed the door behind him, leaving the ink drying on the contract.

  The lawyer looked positively ready to break into song when he’d agreed to sign. The fucker was looking to make a buck off of Booker, but anyone sleazy enough to fly across the country to chase down a lotto win was pr
obably sleazy enough to keep their mouth shut about what their clients bought. And Booker had plans, lord did he have plans.

  Anyway, there were always ways to terminate that contract that didn’t involve ink.

  Booker wasn’t much of a drinker, but he did go on quite a bender after leaving the lottery office. He was lectured by the people from the state for over an hour, but his excitement kept him from paying close attention. Joy wasn’t an emotion Booker was used to feeling when there wasn’t a sharp object involved.

  They’d told him to seek legal counsel, set up a trust and not tell anyone other than his immediate family. He didn’t do any of that. Booker didn’t have any immediate family to tell. Well, unless you counted Elaine, but she wasn’t going to want to hear it anyway. What he did do was troll the ads on Craigslist, had two girls and a guy meet him down at a bar three blocks away, then invited them all back to his place once they’d had a few drinks.

  They’d made quite a mess. Booker felt no special affinity for these three. He just wanted some abject cruelty to celebrate, so he’d allowed himself to be savage. While one of the girls was still alive, he’d even brought Elaine out from his bedroom to show her off.

  The old woman’s skin had turned to leather, but that wasn’t a mistake, that was exactly what he’d wanted.

  It had taken Elaine a year and a half to die, her lips completely fused by the end, a smooth line of scar tissue. After she’d passed, he took great pains to preserve her body, doing extensive research and experimentation before he was able to get the process right. There had been failures before her, to be sure, but human taxidermy wasn’t something they taught at The Learning Annex.

  Some of his mother’s parts were replacements, but the skin was hers, her skeleton bleached and dried and stuffed back in (along with a dash of sawdust, for form). Her eyes were glass, but the color was a close enough approximation that even Booker couldn’t tell the difference, in the right light. The soft folds of her vagina couldn’t be preserved, though. There was just no way to tan the flesh and have it maintain its peculiar moisture and elasticity, so he’d had to visit a sex shop and find a silicone replacement. He’d attached the pocket pussy with a cross stitch, securing it to the inside of her pubic mound so the stitches didn’t show from the outside.