Lucky(65)

John stepped forward. He tapped on the door. “Gloria. It’s John Armstrong. Open the damn door.”

A moment later, the door flew open. Gloria’s hair was sticking out in all directions and her eyes were wild. “Jesus Christ, could you all just shut up?” She looked down the hall, then stood aside. “Come in. Quickly.”

When they were all inside, Gloria double-locked the door.

“Who the hell are you?” Gloria asked Reyes.

“A friend,” Reyes said.

“I’ve met the kind of friends she has,” Gloria replied, nodding her head toward Lucky. “And they are truly fucked-up people.”

“No greeting, Gloria?” John said. “It’s been thirty years, and you don’t even want to know how I’ve been?”

Gloria just stared at him. “Do you really think I care about that right now? I know what you’re here for, and the ticket is gone.”

Lucky had been looking around the room, at the clothes strewn about, the empty take-out containers. A bottle of Blue Moon was open on the dresser.

“What do you mean, gone?” John asked.

Gloria sat down on the bed and put her face in her hands. Then she looked up. “Look, I’m sorry. She got all pissed-drunk on some hundred-proof I gave her, started babbling on about winning the lottery, so after she passed out, I checked her wallet. Looked the ticket up, saw it was a winner, and I just—lost my mind a little. But when I left the camp, I didn’t get very far. Some crazy bitch and her bodyguard ran me off the road. They asked me what I knew about Lucky. I said, Who the fuck is Lucky?”

“That’s her real name,” John said. “Luciana, actually.”

“Well, I know that now. They knocked me around a bit, until I told them I may not know anyone named Lucky, but I had recently met a young woman named Sarah who fit the description they were giving. And then they made me march toward the river.” Gloria’s voice was shaking now. “They were going to shoot me and push me in, I heard them talking about it. So, stupidly, I told them I had a winning lottery ticket that was worth a lot of money, and they shouldn’t kill me. The big guy got all excited. They took the ticket from me and took off. That was it. I came here. I was too afraid to go back to the camp. I’ve been hiding out here ever since.” Now, she looked at Lucky. “Listen, I’m sorry.”

Lucky shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. It was over. She wasn’t going to be able to get the ticket back from Priscilla. If she went anywhere near Priscilla, Priscilla would just kill her. The odds had always been stacked against Lucky, but now they were insurmountable.

“I’m going to take a walk,” Lucky said.

Reyes stepped forward. “Here,” she said, holding out her car keys. “Go sit in the car. It’s raining again.”

“Okay. I’ll be back.” The lie felt worse than any of the others she had told.

Lucky walked through the lobby. When she got outside, she stood underneath the car park overhang for a minute, looking out at the rain. She forced herself to focus on the tiny glimmer of hope left, in order to keep herself moving forward. Yes, turning herself in would mean prison, but she could also tell the police everything. She could tell them about the lottery ticket, stolen first by Gloria and then by Priscilla. She could see if they’d be willing to investigate that. If she could manage to prove the ticket and therefore the money was really hers, if she could get someone to look at the footage from the Idaho gas station she had purchased the ticket at, maybe it could be held in trust until she got out of prison.

Lucky stepped forward into the rain. She walked a few steps—and saw that ahead of her in the darkness was a woman. The woman’s hair was wet and her face was streaked with dirt. She was sitting on a blanket that was soaked through. She was holding a piece of cardboard over her head. The words on the sign in front of her were starting to run, but Lucky could still read it: BROKE, STARVING AND SAD. A HOT COFFEE WOULD MAKE MY DAY.

Lucky reached into her pocket. She still had the bills from when she had shortchanged the cashier at the grocery store. She handed them to the woman. “Thank you,” the woman said. “Bless you.”

“Hey, is there a police station near here?” Lucky asked.

“Sure,” the woman said. “About eight blocks down that way.”

As Lucky began to walk away, a car pulled up beside her. When she heard the window roll down, she said, “Please, Reyes, it’s over. Pretend this never happened. I’m turning myself in.”

But when she looked up, it wasn’t the white SUV at all.

“Hello,” said a woman in the driver’s seat. “I’m not Reyes.” The woman had red hair, streaked with gray, pulled back in a low bun. Green eyes. Familiar eyes. This was the woman Lucky had seen on television back in Vegas, when she had been in the midst of conning Jeremy Gibson. It was the Manhattan DA. And her eyes—Lucky saw eyes like this in the mirror every day. All the hairs on her arms stood up.

“My name is Valerie Mann. I’m wondering if you might be willing to speak with me for a few moments.”

So this was it. She was being arrested. “It’s okay,” Lucky said. “You don’t need to cuff me. I’ll go quietly.”

“No.” Valerie shook her head. “It’s not that. I want to talk to you because… I think I might be your mother.”