The Raffle I Let the Con Man Run

He looked at me for a second, and I watched the smile start up, like a machine turning over in the cold. It took a little longer than usual to catch.

“Friend,” he said. “What a pleasure.”

“The flat stock,” I said. “And the baby powder.”

The smile stopped.

I will say this for Lanny Spangler. He did not deny it, and he did not shut the door. He studied me with a tired professional interest, like one carpenter looking at another man’s joint.

“You ran a wheel,” he said.

“Seven summers. Fenwick Brothers. Big Six.”

“I thought so. You sit like a wheel man. Too still.” He stepped back and let me in. “My daddy’s deacon taught me the drum. Church bingo, Muskogee, Oklahoma. I was fourteen years old. Do you want some tea?”

I did not want tea. We sat on opposite beds in a room that smelled like carpet cleaner, and I told him I was not calling the law, because the law would do nothing and I did not want to watch his Buick towed off by a man with a clipboard.

“I want something else,” I said.

“Everybody does.”

“I want one more raffle. Saturday night, the biggest. Advertise a nine thousand dollar cash jackpot, real money, in a jar, on a table where every person can see it. And before you draw a ticket, I want ten minutes on the microphone.”

He laughed, a real one this time, short and surprised. “And what would you say, in your ten minutes?”

“Whatever I like. Then you run the drum however you like. It is your drum.”

I knew what he was thinking, because I would have thought it too. The hall loved him.

I was an old bingo caller with a cracked voice. And a jar of cash is called a convincer for a reason.

“You know where my bankroll is,” he said slowly. “You have been counting.”

“Monday is wire day. You are carrying it in the Buick until then.”

He nodded, like I had said the thing exactly right. “Nine thousand,” he said. “That is the number, is it? You have been adding it up.”

“Nine thousand and sixty.”

“Then I will tell you what I think.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I think you will tell two hundred people who love me that they were robbed by a thick ticket, and they will eat you alive. But I will give you the ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Do not thank me. I am doing it because it is going to be the most interesting night of my year.” He picked up his tea. “Now go on home. I need my rest.”

I stood up. I was at the door when I turned around and looked at the photograph on the nightstand.

“Who is she?” I said.

For one second the smile did not come. His face was only a face, old and tired and gray around the eyes.

“Mind your wheel, friend,” he said gently, and he closed the door.

So I told them about the summers with the carnival. I told them about Tully Hosch and the Big Six and the felt brake worked by a knee, and the hall stayed quiet, because a man does not usually confess in the middle of a fish fry.

Then I told them about Sedalia. I told them about the man in the seed cap and the empty pay envelope, and I told them I had shaved a die to put it there.