a friend. I don’t care if it’s three in the morning. And I don’t ever want to hear your grumblings about me showing up on your doorstep, because I remember when you showed up on ours, tears pouring down your face and slobber running out of your mouth as you begged my family for mercy, then begged us for more money. Know what Pete wanted to do? Wanted to cut you loose. Said you were a loser. Asked my father if we could drag your ass out to the alley, beat you, and toss you in the Dumpster like the piece of trash you are. Know who prevented that? Me, Randall. I did. I said we shouldn’t, that you might serve some purpose for us in the future. Sure enough, you did. And you still got your nice family and nice place out here in the burbs. But understand, Gardner, you need to keep serving that purpose. Because once you don’t anymore, I’m gonna let Pete get some exercise on you, you friggin’ minchione. I’m telling you right now—and this is a promise—you will not outlive your usefulness.”
Randall yanked his head from my grip. “You ever think about what I have on you guys, huh? You think you’re impervious to punishment?”
“Don’t let that wine do the talking for you, Randy, or we’re gonna end up taking a different ride in a minute.” I could feel the rage building; I needed fast information and he was impeding my ability to get it. I considered taking the quickest way to making my point, but I really wanted to avoid getting his blood all over the interior of my car.
“Think about who I work for!” he yelled. “I make one phone call and—”
“Randy, let me tell you how we’ve handled gamblers who’ve troubled us in the past. We had this guy, let’s call him Chuck, lived maybe fifteen miles from here, started getting mouthy on us, considered biting the hand that fed him. Drove Peter out of his mind. We gave Chuck a real-life lesson on how odds worked. We took him to a low bridge over the Passaic River in the middle of the night, loosely tied cinder blocks to both of his feet, made him clutch the blocks to his chest as we forced him to jump off.”
Gardner finally shut up. Two cars passed us, kicked up gravel that dinged against my door.
“If Chuck panicked,” I continued, “those cinder blocks would keep him at the bottom of the river no matter how hard he tried to swim up. If he had presence of mind, he could try to hold his breath and undo the knots and free himself to swim to the surface.”
Randall wiped his mouth as he stared past me, lost in the imagery. Then he asked so quietly that I barely understood the words, “Where’s the lesson in odds?”
“My brothers and I stood on the bridge, betting on whether he would live or not.” I looked in my rearview, then back at Gardner. “Odds were ten to one he’d survive.”
Then, louder: “You killed him?”
I stared out the window as the couple with the Pomeranian walked up their driveway. “He would have killed himself, Randy. All he had to do was get control of his mind and think about what he needed to do.” I turned to him. “This is an opportunity for you to do the same. Presence of mind, my friend. Think, and make the decisions that will save your life.”
Randall faced forward and rubbed his face so hard it looked like he was kneading a massive ball of dough.
As I put the car in gear and had us back on our path to the highway, I said, “As for our gambling friend, he beat the odds. He survived. He was underwater for over ninety seconds, but he eventually surfaced. We picked him up at the shoreline, threw him in the back of our car, and drove him home.”
Randall began sniffling, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“Next time you think for even a split second that you can play us, Randall, I want you to imagine what was running through Chuck’s mind for those ninety seconds he was at the bottom of the Passaic.”
Gardner sighed, stared at his lap, whispered, “I hate you freaking people.”
It took significant restraint to avoid turning to him and sounding like a disgruntled child: I hate you, too! Guys like Gardner are the ones you toss into the Passaic tethered to an engine