“I’ll pay you as soon as possible. Really!”
“That promise won’t elicit more ‘n a hollow laugh from my hollow tooth,” the goon said.
I wondered about a graduate word like ‘elicit’ from such an uncouth mouth.
“Look, if I had the money, I’d give it to you – gladly. I don’t like debts.”
“Neither do I, neither do I, my dear boy. That’s why I’m here.”
He moved his right hand to his back, and it returned holding a gun.
My mouth dried up another notch, and I instinctively retreated a step.
He clucked with his tongue.
“If you weren’t Don Caprese’s son, my boy, and thus family, so to speak, I’d shoot you in the knee now.”
I felt like saying, ‘glad you’re not gonna,’ but he might have thought that too flippant and done it after all, so I just stood there.
“That gambling streak runs in the family, and it’s all right ‘s long as one’s lucky. But you ain’t. And that’s the crux.”
He sighed.
“As I said, I’ll pay it back ASAP. I’m already working on it.”
He gave a laugh that sounded indeed as if it came from a hollow tooth.
“I know you’s working on it. You been playing the races again.”
I swallowed.
“But let me tell you it’s not gonna happen that way. You gonna be my slave from now on, my boy, and do as I tell you, until every penny of that 5000 is paid back.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“You know, I’m like a modern-day southern sheriff, ‘cluding the rattlesnake whip. I run a bunch of slaves that owe me money. … I’m having another house built right now, and I can use your hands, my boy. At five dollars an hour. So you’re gonna work your sorry little gambling ass off for me for a thousand hours. How many weeks is that, my boy? Eight hours a day, Sundays off?”
“I don’t quite know. … But you can’t do that … it’s illegal!”
He chuckled and made a nasty metallic noise with the gun.
“See you there tomorrow. At 7:30 on the dot.”
He put the gun away behind his back, pressed a card with an address into my hand and left.
– James Steerforth (© 2012)
Posted for Trifecta and ‘hollow’.
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