Cash Burn

by Michael Berrier

  Fear and sorrow tugged at his groggy mind. His eyes were still closed. He wanted to move to her.

  She rubbed lotion into her hands, their backs, between the fingers, on the supple knuckles as she came to the edge of the bed. Her hands together, passing over one another, lotion soaking into her tight skin the color of creamed caramel.

  He struggled against his own body, trying to move toward her but too tired. He sensed her unsmiling lips, but he knew her brown eyes held a glint of amusement.

  Sorrow swelled deep inside him, burned. Longing for her was like a cord threaded through his chest. But he felt pinned to the bed.

  Red fingernails pulled apart the edges of the robe. She slid out of it and draped it over the covers. She wore thin garments to bed this time of year. She leaned over the bed and peeled the covers back. One knee came onto the sheets first, and then she was in with him, moving toward him. And just before the warmth of her body reached him, he woke.

  Alone.

  The emptiness of the house was a vacuum, sucking the breath out of him.

  She was not there.

  She had not been there for weeks.

  He rolled onto his back, his teeth grinding.

  In the glow of a night light Serena had plugged in long ago, the shapes in the ceiling texture took on forms. He used to lie in the dimness with her, and they would point the shapes out to one another like kids on a hilltop imagining forms in passing clouds.

  He pressed his eyelids closed. Now what he saw was the look on her face when he’d confronted her. After resisting his suspicions so long, trying to excuse her a thousand times, he had no choice when the final proof made its way to him.

  Another man. Her lips on his. Her hands in his. Her arms, the ones he longed for now, encircling another.

  She was gone.

  4

  Senior Probation Officer Tom Cole lowered himself out of his Explorer gingerly to avoid straining his knees. The pressure of the bones rubbing together felt like needles digging deep in the joints.

  He slammed the door and hitched his pants, making sure the tail of his shirt hid the Glock 23 holstered at his kidney.

  Traffic whizzed past him on Melrose, so he held tight to the side of the vehicle. The sun warmed his shaved scalp like a heat lamp. Stepping up to the sidewalk, he ran his palm over the smoothness from his shave an hour ago, back toward his clean crown, and then forward over the ridge above his forehead. The Fu Manchu mustache that framed his mouth was the only hair left on his head other than his eyebrows, and in this heat he thought of shaving that off too.

  This unannounced visit to Flip’s place was overdue. He had it on his schedule every week, but with all his high-control parolees, he always seemed to be playing catch-up.

  Tom moved off the sidewalk into the alley behind Flip’s apartment building. He scowled at the graffiti scrawled everywhere—black, red, blue. The name Trixter in yellow block letters was outlined in red to make it look three-dimensional. Above, way out of reach, someone must have leaned out from the roof to paint the huge initials RF.

  Lower on the wall, less artistic initials were drawn in white over others partially crossed out with black paint.

  He walked past blue cubic trash bins reeking of baked garbage, a door meshed by iron grating, the entrance to an underground parking lot with a black-barred gate closed against intruders.

  Here was the back door to Flip’s building. A keyhole and a handle only, no knob. He gripped the handle and yanked it. Solid.

  Above the doorway, burglar bars covered the second-floor windows. A smile crept across his face. Bars on the windows with Flip inside. It was like a zoo with predator and prey locked in together.

  On the sidewalk at the end of the alley, Tom sidestepped a pair of Goths in long black coats despite the heat. Their faces were pale behind black hair. Transylvanians. Next came three women side by side, sunglass styles branding them as tourists, purses dangling from their fingers. Ready to shop. He passed a tattoo parlor and glanced inside. The artist—spiked hair, arms inked up—sat with his feet propped on the counter in front of images of tat options pasted on the wall. The man reached forward to flick his cigarette against the edge of an ashtray, and their eyes met before the wall passed between them.

  Tom rounded another corner and found handbills pasted the length of a wall like wallpaper insanely repeating the same announcements over and over until you couldn’t help but understand and remember that Kayse Evans was going to be playing at the Gig on August 28 and 29.

  Five doors down, he came to the front of Flip’s building. In contrast to all the security in back, the door here swung open like the place was a drugstore during business hours. He stepped inside.

  No elevator. The climb was going to murder his knees. Calling Flip down would save the wear on his joints, but that would be cutting corners. Tom needed to take a look at this new apartment.

  He leaned on the banister, trying to take as much weight off his knees as he could, but every step grated. Soon he’d have to have the surgeries done. He couldn’t delay it much longer.

  Down the hallway, he passed six doors and came to 312 and raised his knuckles and rapped. The door opened.

  Flip held on to the edge of the door as if he wanted to slam it closed. Recognition of Tom Cole crept onto his face, and a sideways kind of grin replaced the glower.

  Flip was wide enough that Tom couldn’t see past him. The man was shaped like a nose tackle. If you wanted to move him, you’d have a big job. He stood with his feet spaced, letting his black eyes bore under black brows, buzz-cut black hair, the nose a prizefighter’s, squashed onto his face like putty. A scar from an old cut creased his right eyebrow and continued diagonally upward to the corner of his forehead, lifting that brow just enough to give him the look of a perpetually interested observer.

  “Officer Cole,” Flip said, and his grin exuded so much menace that Tom shifted his back muscles to make sure the holster hadn’t suddenly vanished from his belt. “I guess you want to come in.” He wore a wife-beater T-shirt, the kind Marlon Brando wore seducing Blanche. Tom could see the rockiness of his muscled arms and shoulders, the chest like a wall.

  Flip backed away and motioned inside. The gracious host.

  “Step on outside, Flip. You’re going to wait out here.”

  Flip hunched over for an instant, shrugged, and stepped past Tom into the hallway. The man’s smell drifted up to him. Some kind of cologne tried to mask it and didn’t quite succeed. It was a smell like you’d expect to find under a rock where bugs crawled around.

  Tom locked him outside.

  The room was typical of furnished apartments like these, bare except for a cheap coffee table and a brown plaid sofa that sagged in the middle. Beyond it was a kitchen, a refrigerator green as the wall at Fenway. The rank smell of unwashed dishes filtered through the room.

  Tom wandered into the kitchen. No drug paraphernalia. He wouldn’t expect any with this guy. The dishes in the sink hadn’t piled up beyond counter level yet, but they were close. A coffee cup sat on the counter with a line inside that marked where the coffee had been when he’d set it there, a quarter-inch above the black liquid now pooled in the cup.

  On the small bathroom counter, Flip’s toiletries were scattered—a disposable razor, Barbasol shave cream, and a bar of soap worn down to a nub. A bottle of Old Spice was the one nod to vanity.

  The bedroom was nothing to get excited about. A scarred bureau with drawers hanging on at odd angles. No sheets on the bed, just a couple of blankets on top of the bare mattress.

  Tom returned to the door and joined Flip in the hallway. “Tell me about this job.”

  “Working in a soda warehouse. Moving cases around. It’s not bad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I guess you want the guy’s name and number.”

  “You guess right.”

  Flip went inside and came back with a business card.

  Tom pulled out his notepad and copied down the name and numbe
r of the warehouse manager.

  “Does he know about your record?” He returned the card to Flip.

  “He knows I got one. Knows I got released from Lancaster last month. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, that’s enough.”

  Flip kept his hands behind his back.

  “Who you been hanging around with, Flip?”

  Those black eyes held steady, didn’t move off Tom’s face. “Everybody I know’s in prison. Who’m I going to hang around with?” There was no flinching on Flip’s face, no turning of the eyes. “I’ve been keeping to myself. Not going to bars, not hanging around with any known felons. I’ve been staying in town. What else is there?”

  “Let me see those hands.”

  Flip’s eyes betrayed him for an instant. It was like something flew across his brows to narrow his eyes and then was gone, and the face relaxed again. He brought his hands around, palms up.

  “Turn them over.”

  Flip smiled, his lips not parting. It was an animal smile. He turned them over.

  The skin on the knuckles was broken and bruised, the injuries a few days old. A laceration an inch long ran across the middle knuckle on his right hand. “I scraped them moving some cases of soda.”

  “Cases of soda.”

  “Sure.” Flip dropped his hands.

  Tom saw no marks on Flip’s face. Nothing but the battered knuckles. “All right, we’re going to take some pictures. Keep those hands out.” Tom pulled his camera out of his pocket and snapped two shots of the hands. It was mostly for show, but there was no harm putting Flip on notice. He slipped the camera back into his pocket. “You know I’ll check the hospitals. I’ll find out what really happened.”

  Those eyes didn’t flicker. “There’s nothing to find out. I just told you. Moving cases of soda. Nothing else to it, Officer.”

  The eyes held too steady. This guy had been lying all his life. Just like the rest of them. They were all as good at it as they were at survival inside.

  “Okay, Flip. I’ll see what I can find out from our database over the past few days. When I find a guy you put in a hospital, or if this job turns out to be bogus, you’re going right back inside.” He turned away.

  Having his back turned to Flip flared up every nerve ending. But no blow hammered into his back or neck. Flip only said, “I don’t get many visitors, Officer. You come back real soon.”

  Tom turned. “You’re pushing your luck.”

  That animal smile came back, nothing happy about it. “I ran out of luck a long time ago.”

  5

  “What do you think of the news, boss?” Billy tapped a toe.

  Committee was in five minutes. Jason didn’t have time for guessing games. “What news?” He undocked his laptop and stood.

  “About Vince. You didn’t hear?” Jason halted. “Spit it out, Billy.”

  “They put him on loan committee.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Billy just shook his head. He looked like he was afraid of getting skewered for being a messenger with bad news.

  “Well, no worries. I’m sure he’ll make the right calls for the bank.” Jason stepped past Billy into the commotion of the open area outside his office, where his staff bustled about their morning routines. Jason’s mind went to the technicalities of the deal he was about to pitch to committee. Nine million in fresh loan outstandings. With the company’s line of credit and the other term loan, the bank would be on the hook for twenty-three million if they approved this one, making Northfield Industries one of the biggest exposures in the bank and just seven million shy of BTB’s legal lending limit.

  But Vince Kalinsky on loan committee? This was no good. Vince would love to torpedo the home office’s biggest customer relationship. Jason was sure of it. They’d been at each other every day since Jason had lured Patricia Wise away from Vince’s branch system to lead one of Jason’s home-office lending teams.

  He parted the doors to the suite. The chairman’s prehistoric assistant sat at her desk across the room, her eyes obscured behind opaque glasses that reflected the light from her computer monitor. She didn’t acknowledge him.

  Jason approached the boardroom. Both doors were pinned open.

  Across the room, Vince shuffled his piles of papers.

  Jason’s jaw tightened at the thought of Vince maneuvering for voting rights. If anything, Jason should be voting on Vince’s deals.

  He stepped into the boardroom.

  The walls were lined with analysts and lenders from outlying branches who knew better than to take the few remaining seats at the table.

  Cornwall wasn’t there yet. Jason looked at Cornwall’s vacant seat, and his chest tightened.

  Vince didn’t look up.

  * * *

  Vince shifted in his chair, his starched shirt ballooning to the right as his belly piled over like a sack of Jell-O. “They’re paying too much—Mr. Dunn.” He made Jason’s last name sound like an epithet. “Why should we put out nine million to buy a revenue stream that walks out the door with their producers every night? It’s too rich. This management team’s lost its mind.”

  Jason held his voice level. “They’ve got employment contracts with every key producer. The management team knows what they’re doing. They’re the best customers we’ve got.”

  Across the table from Jason, Scotty Inverness’s eyebrows perked up. He plucked the reading glasses from the tip of his nose and lowered them onto the stack of papers before him. The chief credit officer’s diminutive size and the wide cut of his ears earned him the nickname of the Leprechaun, but no one called him that in this room.

  The CCO’s glare told Jason he’d overstepped by calling Northfield the best customer in the bank. “The comps seem to bear out the acquisition price,” Scotty said, and he brought the reading glasses back to the point of his nose.

  Billy spoke up from Jason’s right. “The comps are on page fifteen, Vince. We’ve got three public company valuations, and we found two private company purchases in the past twelve months. This price isn’t way out of range.”

  “It’s not out of range at all.” Jason threw a glance at Billy and leaned forward, facing the CCO. It was Scotty’s vote he needed. As long as Cornwall showed up, Vince could vote against the loan all day long, and it wouldn’t matter a bit. But if the chief credit officer didn’t vote for it, Jason’s deal was dead. “The purchase price could be twice this much. But that’s not the point.”

  “Well, tell us what the point is, Mr. Dunn.” Vince again.

  “I’m about to.” Back to Scotty. “The point is, these guys know what they’re doing. We’ve watched them execute this roll-up strategy for five years. The CFO’s heartless when it comes to cost-cutting, and the CEO knows how to pick a target and negotiate a good deal. Every company they’ve bought has generated enough cash to repay the debt we’ve advanced them to buy it. And this one will too.”

  The boardroom door opened. Jason knew who was entering without glancing up.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Cornwall’s voice. He hustled around to the other side of the table, his tie caught in the stack of loan reports in his hands. He appeared to be tugging himself along by the neck.

  “Morning,” Vince said to their boss.

  Jason thought Scotty would vote for the deal, but the chief credit officer was tough to read. Vince would vote against him, but who cared now that Cornwall was here? The three other committee members in the room had been silent for twenty minutes, waiting to see which way the tide would flow before they voiced their opinions. With the president’s support, Jason would get committee approval— if Scotty went along.

  Scotty waited for Cornwall to take his seat. “We’re still on Northfield, Mark.”

  Cornwall plopped the stack of papers onto the table and slipped the end of his tie free from the reports. His gray hair was thinning on top, and his eyes were losing some of their sharpness, but the energy in his movements and the power in his voice hadn’
t changed much over the years. “How many deals we got this morning, Scotty?”

  Scotty took his time. He always took his time. It drove Jason nuts, but Scotty’s answers were usually right. “Eight.”

  “At this rate we’ll be here all day. Anything come up that isn’t covered in Jason’s report?”

  Jason answered before anyone else could. “No, Mark. Nothing.”

  Scotty kept his eyes on his reports. Vince was still and silent as a bowl cooling in a refrigerator.

  “We okay to vote then, Scotty?”

  Without revealing his own vote, Scotty polled the other committee members, who guessed the proper vote by Cornwall’s mood. Scotty came to Vince. “You a no?”

  “I’m a no.”

  Cornwall’s head turned an inch to the right as he looked at Vince. “Anything Jason can do to get you there, Vince?”

  “It’s just too rich for me. The purchase price is too high, and they’re not even done bringing their last acquisition in yet. They’re bingeing, and we’re taking all the risk.”

  “Jason,” Cornwall said, “how long have you known Northfield’s CFO?”

  “Eight years.” Here they came. The same questions Cornwall had asked him yesterday afternoon in private. It was beautiful how Mark did this.

  “He always been straight with you?”

  “Always.”

  “You been out to kick the tires at this company they’re acquiring?”

  “Week before last. It’s for real.”

  “How solid are the numbers?”

  “Audited by EY. The numbers are good, Mark.”

  Cornwall turned to Scotty. “I’m a yes. You okay with this?”

  The chief credit officer’s gray eyes held on Jason.

  “I agree with Vince’s concerns,” Scotty said, “but Northfield’s always performed.” He lifted the loan report and flipped it facedown on the table. “I’m okay. Let’s move on.”

  Jason stared across the table at Vince, but Vince didn’t register any emotion at being outvoted. He merely went to the next report in his stack.

  Jason folded down the screen of his laptop and stood. His teams had no other deals for committee’s review today. “Thanks, everybody.”