Payback

by Mike Lupica

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “Anything else you can remember that might help me?” I said.

  “Maybe not something that will help you,” he said. “But something you need to be aware of. There had been this game one time, up in the Hollywood Hills. The usual crowd, just with a couple randos added to the mix. Kind of young guys who said they were friends of somebody. As I recall, one of them had been in a Leo movie. Long story short?”

  “They rarely are,” I said.

  “Ouch,” he said. “Anyway, Eddie apparently caught the other young guy cheating. He was in on it with the dealer. The young guy walked away with about twenty grand. Two days later he’s in the hospital. Face so messed up he didn’t work for six months. I heard it from the kid’s agent. Everybody assumed that it was Eddie got it done.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said.

  “You with anybody these days?” Tony said.

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “Kind of?” he said. “That kind of sounds like my second marriage.”

  “I thought you told me you’d only been married once.”

  “Did I?” he said.

  I heard another buzz.

  “Listen,” he said, “if you’re ever out this way . . .”

  “I’ll have my people call your people,” I said, and ended the call.

  THIRTY

  His name was Matt Dunn. He was the young guy who’d driven away with Emily Barnes in the red Mazda. Now sitting across my desk from me, having told me she was missing, and not just from her uncle and me.

  “How did you find me?” I said.

  “Emily gave me your card,” he said.

  I should have had the cards made up sooner. Clearly just about everybody had one of them by now.

  He said he’d graduated from Taft two years ago, but had started dating Emily when she was a freshman and he was a junior.

  “You guys still dating?”

  “Better than saying ‘fucking’?” he said.

  “Beautifully put.”

  “We didn’t last long,” he said. “But we stayed friends. Poker friends. She still crashes at my place sometimes.”

  “She going around with somebody else now?”

  “‘Going around with’?” he said.

  “A generational thing,” I said.

  “There’s a guy,” he said. “She won’t tell me who it is.”

  I asked if he wanted something to drink. He asked if I had beer. I told him I did, actually, an IPA called Hazy Little Thing. Richie had put me onto it. Matt Dunn told me I had good taste. I told him I was a closet beer nerd, but not to let it get around.

  “But you’re . . .”

  “A girl?” I said. “Let’s have that be our little secret.”

  He popped the tab and drank down a fair amount of beer.

  “When was the last time you saw her?” I said.

  Two nights ago, he said, at a poker game on Comm Ave.

  “I saw her come out of the building,” I said. “Not you.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Following Alex Drysdale,” I said. “Not that it did either one of us much good. He came out that night with Eddie Ross and Emily. Where were you?”

  “Still dealing,” he said. “There were a few guys left at the table still trying to get even.”

  “Is dealer your current occupation?” I said. “Other than card cheat, I mean?”

  He finished his beer. Second gulp. Wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Put the bottle on my desk. Didn’t act insulted. But also didn’t respond right away.

  So I told him then what I’d found in Emily’s closet that day.

  “You broke into her apartment?”

  “I did,” I said. “But just so you know? I come by my lock-picking skills honestly.”

  He asked if he could have another beer. I asked if he had driven to my office. He said he had. I told him he was shut off. He said that beer didn’t affect him. I told him I used to get a lot of that from guys when I was Emily’s age.

  “What are you, my mom?” he said.

  “Don’t start with me, Sparky,” I said.

  He had that scruffy, young-guy look. Long hair, shortish beard, Taft hoodie, skinny jeans, motorcycle boots. He’d pulled up the sleeves of the hoodie to his elbows. I could see the tattoo of a playing card, pretty good-sized, inside his right forearm. As always, I wondered how he’d feel about the tat when he was sixty. Or sooner.

  “How much poker does she play?” I said.

  “A lot,” he said.

  “She addicted?”

  “What does that even mean?” he said. “If she’s addicted to anything, it’s action.”

  “That’s what’s known as a distinction without a difference,” I said.

  “Whatever.”

  “How did she play herself into Eddie’s games?” I said. “Seems like they’d be kind of rich for a college girl’s blood.”

  “I got her in,” he said. “And Eddie didn’t think it hurt to have somebody who looked like her at the table.”

  “Did she lose enough money at one of Eddie’s games to get herself beat up when she didn’t pay up?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We got sloppy. A game in the South End. Not one of Eddie’s. We didn’t even know we’d gotten caught until the guy went after Emily at school.”

  “Why her and not you?”

  “Maybe to send a stronger message by beating up a woman? Who the hell knows? I didn’t have the money to pay him back. Em said she had a way to get it.”

  “A guy I know told me that back in college, Eddie used to let Alex cheat his ass off,” I said. “That still going on?”

  “Occasionally,” Matt Dunn said. “Him and Eddie were boys, and Eddie liked to keep him happy. I think they had some deals going, apart from poker, but I never knew what kind, and didn’t ask. With Eddie, you get the idea pretty quick that he only wants you to know what he wants you to know. He’s always using that line from Rounders, about how if you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, it’s you.”

  “So you got the idea that Eddie and Drysdale were partners?” I said.

  “That was the weird part,” he said. “Drysdale was the rich guy, but sometimes he acted as if he worked for Eddie.”

  Dunn reached into the side pocket of the hoodie, came out with his phone, checked it for the first time since he’d knocked on the door, put it back in his pocket.

  “No messages from her?”

  “Not since I woke up the morning after you saw her and she was gone.”

  “Do you have the ability to track her phone?”

  He made a snorting noise. “She’s got more than one phone.”

  “Why?”

  “So people can’t track her, that’s why,” he said. “Starting with her uncle the cop.”

  “Are you here because you want me to find her for you?” I said. “I’m already trying to find her for her uncle the cop.”

  “I’m worried that something has happened to her,” he said. “That maybe she ended up at the wrong table, or screwing with the wrong guy.”

  “You think she might have gotten beat up again?” I said.

  “Or worse,” he said. “Let’s just say that Emily will play poker with just about anyfuckingbody.”

  “You know I’m going to tell her uncle that you came here,” I said.

  “Do what you gotta do,” Matt Dunn said. “Just find her. I know she dumped me a while ago, but I still care about her.”

  He stood, checked his phone again, disgustedly shook his head.

  “Gonna need your number,” I said, “and your address.”

  He told me and I wrote them both down.

  “Is that your only phone?” I said.

  He assured me that it
was.

  “Where are you going now?” I said.

  “Check out a couple places where she might be.”

  I walked across the office and opened the door for him.

  “Before you go?” I said. “Where does Eddie live?”

  “What the hell do you mean where does he live?” Matt Dunn said. “You were there the other night.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Richie called as I was cutting across the Public Garden and asked where I was. I told him. He asked if I was on my way home. I told him I was, and he asked if he could stop by.

  “Somebody I want you to meet,” he said, “who might be useful to your sleuthing.”

  “Sleuthing?” I said.

  “You’d prefer private-dicking?” Richie said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Sleuthing it is.”

  I made it home quickly enough to change clothes and fuss with my hair and makeup and generally make myself look made for my ex-husband, while telling myself I wasn’t trying too hard to look good for my ex-husband.

  When I was checking myself out in front of the full-length mirror in the upstairs bathroom, I noticed Rosie staring at me.

  “What?” I said to her. “A girl can’t want to look her best?”

  She continued to stare.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “You got me.”

  When I opened the door Richie was standing next to a young African American guy about his size, cute as hell, hair cropped close, no beard, a white tee showing underneath a zippered sweater, white Stan Smith sneakers that looked as if they’d just come out of the box.

  “Hi,” Richie said.

  “Hi,” the young guy said.

  “This is Jalen,” Richie said.

  “Jalen,” I said.

  “I told you about him,” Richie said. “He works for Desmond. That Jalen. The up-and-comer.”

  “I wish,” Jalen said.

  Everybody smiled at everybody else.

  “Oh,” I said. “Jalen.”

  “I believe that’s been firmly established,” he said.

  “I don’t want this to come out wrong,” I said.

  “Y’all didn’t expect me to be black,” he said.

  I put my hands out in a helpless gesture.

  “Think of me as black Irish, that work for you?” he said as I showed him in.

  It wasn’t yet six o’clock. Close enough to the cocktail hour for me. I asked if anyone would be opposed to me opening a bottle of wine. Richie and Jalen said that would be fine for them. I asked if they preferred red or white. Richie said I could decide. I went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of Malbec and came back with three glasses.

  “Sorry about my reaction,” I said. “But I just assumed that everybody who worked for Desmond looked like they’d just walked off the set of Peaky Blinders.”

  “That’s about the English, that show,” Jalen said, “not Irish. But I get your meaning.”

  He and Richie sat on the couch. I pulled up a chair and sat across from them. We all leaned forward and clinked glasses.

  “It’s Jalen Washington, by the way,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you, Jalen Washington,” I said. “How’d you end up working for Desmond Burke?”

  “I won’t wear your ass out, all the details,” he said. “But the bumper-sticker version is I was working as a lookout for Gino Fish when I was in high school. Running some numbers for him when Gino turned that into a side business. Even helping him out, his books, not that he ever told anybody that. This was right before Gino took himself out. You know about all that, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, if you did what I did, you got to know all the players,” he said. “Like lookin’ out was a full-time situation. One day I saw a couple of Mr. Burke’s men, who did look like Peaky Blinders, walking into a trap on collection day over at Blue Hill, in Roxbury, near where I live.”

  “At which point Jalen promptly saved their asses,” Richie said.

  “Anyway,” Jalen said, “Mr. Burke found out what I got done in that situation. He tried to give me money. I told him I’d rather have a job. He gave me one. An upgrade from Gino, you ask me, even if I didn’t say that to Mr. Burke.”

  I watched him and listened to him talk and thought of what Tony Marcus might have looked like and sounded like at his age. More than anything, it was Jalen Washington’s attitude, the cool way he presented himself, the way he streeted his language down, just enough, to let you know where he came from.

  “I became Mr. Burke’s eyes and ears in that part of town,” he said. He grinned. “What you call your black community. Paying attention to which criminal en-ti-ties were doing what.”

  He stretched out the word as if it were a rubber band.

  “And the more things I saw on the street, the more I thought that there were several growth opportunities for Mr. Burke’s operation, and likewise opportunities for someone with my, ah, skill set, I guess you could call it, if so inclined.”

  He smiled. He was probably older than he looked, the way Chris Rock was.

  “I figured out something young,” he said. “You don’t have to be the smartest guy in the world. Just the smartest guy in the game.”

  “What game?”

  He smiled again. “Whatever game you in,” he said.

  “How would you describe your skill set?” I said. “You don’t mind me asking.”

  He tapped the side of his head with a forefinger.

  “I got a head for numbers,” he said. “And for those, ah, opportunities I just referred to.”

  “Richie made you sound more like your field was research.”

  The smile held, bright as his kicks.

  “Think of it as research and development,” he said.

  “Jalen finally convinced my father to do something that Uncle Felix could never quite convince him to do,” Richie said. “Diversify.”

  “Think of me as his one-man diversifying program,” Jalen said.

  “All legitimate, I’m sure,” I said, looking at Richie.

  “Little of this, little of that,” Jalen Washington said.

  “And so how is this going to help me in my sleuthifying?” I said, addressing both of them.

  “I think Jalen could do a deeper dive into Eddie Ross’s business relationship with Alex Drysdale,” Richie said. “I told him what you had going on and asked him if he might be able to help you out.” Richie grinned. “Knowing that you most certainly do not have a head for numbers.”

  “You acting as his agent?” I said to Richie.

  “Yours,” he said. “Same old, same old.”

  “I told Richie,” I said to Jalen Washington, “that there was much more I needed to know about the old Stanford buds.”

  “Which I explained to Jalen,” Richie said.

  “Did you really volunteer to help me,” I said, “or did Richie and Desmond draft you?”

  He shrugged. “Little of this, little of that,” he said again.

  “You really want to help?” I said.

  “What Mr. Burke wants, I want,” Jalen said. “He also believes that there might be a way for him to come away with a piece of whatever Eddie might have going on, apart from poker.”

  Then he stood up, thanked me for the wine, and said he’d be in touch. “When I have a better sense of the lay of the street,” he said. Then he was gone.

  “Interesting young man,” I said.

  “He’s really only afraid of one thing,” Richie said.

  “What’s that?”

  He smiled. “My father,” he said.

  “Who isn’t?” I said.

  I walked him outside.

  “I don’t like the idea of you going after Russians,” he said.

  “I really haven’t.”

  “Yet,”
he said.

  We were facing each other on the front walk in the gathering twilight. I thought he might try to kiss me. Hoped he would not. And he did not.

  “Think of Jalen as a forensic accountant,” he said.

  “I’m still not sure that Eddie is fronting for the Russians,” I said.

  “But he is a Russian,” Richie said. “His father, by all accounts, was a bad one.”

  “Sins of the father don’t always get passed on,” I said, smiling at him.

  “Be careful,” Richie said.

  “Always.”

  “You know you’re not as tough as you think you are, right?” he said.

  “If you really think about it,” I said, “who the hell is?”

  THIRTY-TWO

  I thought about taking a walk over to what I now knew was Eddie Ross’s brownstone. Maybe poker was already being played there. Maybe if he answered the door I could ask him if Emily was the one who could come out and play. But I decided to wait. When I next got face-to-face time with him, the real thing, I planned on knowing a lot more about what kind of games Eddie might be playing apart from poker than I did now.

  I decided to go over to Spike’s instead. Private-dicking, as my ex-husband called it, could resume in full in the morning. For now I just wanted to have a drink with Spike, and hope for at least one night that things felt the way they used to at his place.

  I took an Uber over there, in case I wanted to have more than one drink. When I walked in, Jack the bartender waved me in the direction of the back room. Spike was at his usual table near the door, good view of the big crowds in both rooms, sitting with a man I did not recognize.

  They looked like a doubles team, just from the gym, both of them wearing black T-shirts that were at least a size too small, showing off as much of a ripped upper body as you could with your clothes on. The other guy also showed off two sleeves of tats. Spike had never been a tattoo guy. The other man seemed to be in Spike’s general age range. I thought he might be a date he hadn’t told me about, even though Spike generally told me about all romantic possibilities—or realities—as if I’d injected him with truth serum.

  Spike pulled out a chair. The other man stood and extended a hand that looked as big as an oven mitt.