Cash Burn

by Michael Berrier

  The old man uncrossed his arms, leaned into the table. “Nah. People just go there to die.”

  “But isn’t there anyplace else you’d want to live? You always liked the ocean.”

  “Sure. I’ll get me a place on the beach. Mansion. Soon as pigs start flying.” He reached for the bottle again.

  Flip wondered if the old man always drank this much, or if it was just seeing his convict son that did it to him. “If you had the money, though.”

  “I don’t. What’s the sense talking about it?”

  “But say you came into some. Say it was a lot. If one of your sons—”

  “Ha!” The word came through another slug of bourbon. A drop spilled onto the crease running between his lips and his chin, and he wiped the back of his hand across it. He was about to say something but stopped, and the expression on his face drew tight. He propped his elbow on the table and a crooked finger pointed at Flip. “Don’t you send me nothing. I don’t need no stolen money.”

  “No, you never needed anything. Anybody.”

  “What do you know about what I needed? Anything I needed I put down for Jason and you. I raised you boys by myself. I didn’t have no help.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I was there.”

  His father’s lips pursed as if a string running between them had been pulled. He took a deep breath and sagged inside his stained coat. And then in an instant, Flip saw his father clearly, all the history between them gone, their roles removed. He saw a lonely old man who’d spent his life repairing air conditioners and piecing university classrooms back together to stave off decay. All his life fixing, fixing, year in and year out, his pension hanging out there at the end of a stick. And two ungrateful boys, grown and gone and leaving him alone to rattle around in this house with his memories of what he’d done wrong, only a silent dog as company in a neighborhood as rundown as his own body.

  “Philip?” His father’s hands were clenched together on the tabletop.

  “Hm?”

  “They’ll be coming by again looking for you.”

  “Yeah.” Flip looked at the dog. Its eyes perked up to regard him, forehead bunching together. This was all Flip’s father had left.

  “I know things ain’t . . .” His father looked down at his clenched hands, straightened his fingers, and tightened them again. The fists were jumbled masses, knuckles wrinkled and knotty.

  “It wasn’t really your fault, Dad. I never blamed you. Forget what I said that one time.”

  The old man nodded, the few hairs on his head shifting in the light. “Okay. I appreciate it.”

  They stared across the table at one another. Flip wondered if his father knew he’d never see him again.

  Finally the old man said, “Well. I’m glad you come by. I won’t tell them you was here.”

  “You can tell them. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “Aww.” He passed a hand like a claw through the air. “What’re they going to do to me? I’ll sic Max on them.”

  The dog lifted its head from the floor at the mention of his name.

  “I’d like to see that.”

  “Maybe you ought to stick around after all.” For the first time, a grin stretched out the wrinkles around the old man’s mouth.

  Flip smiled back. For an instant, they held together. “Well,” Flip said.

  “Yeah.” His father used the tabletop for leverage and struggled to his feet. Max rose and came to the old man’s side. Flip followed them down the hall. His father’s pants sagged at the seat as if hanging from a laundry line. The old man turned. “You wait at the window. I go right at the sidewalk, it’s clear. I go left, you better use the back door.”

  “All right.”

  His father’s face rotated away, and Flip was staring at the back of an old head, two cords of muscle surrounded by lined skin propping up a skull.

  “Dad?”

  A hand on the doorknob, he faced his son again.

  Flip wanted to say something, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be.

  It was as if Jason stood watching them.

  “Good-bye.”

  The old man’s clouded eyes blinked. “Come on, Max.”

  The dog at his side, Flip’s father moved through the doorway, and the hinges creaked against the silence. The chipped panel of the front door closed between them.

  24

  Brad Hathaway snapped his gum twice. Tom Cole heard him before he saw him. Hathaway wore his usual Hawaiian shirt, his blond hair stiff and his face so beaten up by the sun it might have been a turtle-skin mask. He stood away from the foot of the hospital bed as if Tom’s injuries might be contagious.

  A surfer parole officer. Only in LA.

  Hathaway’s jaw ground at the gum, popping it twice again in quick succession. “Dude,” he said.

  “I know. It was stupid.”

  “I would’ve come with you, man. All you had to do was call.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Hathaway shook his head, popped the gum, grinned. “Would you wipe that smile off your face?”

  He didn’t. That snapping gum was beginning to get on

  Tom’s numbed nerves.

  “Did you get a warrant on him?” Tom asked. “Parolee at large—my PAL Flip. I went out to his apartment. With LAPD. I ain’t a lone ranger.”

  “You just showed up here to bust my chops, didn’t you?”

  Hathaway’s head tilted, and the smile drifted. “Sensitive. Sorry, man. I’ll go easy.”

  “No, forget it. I’m just . . .”

  The pop-pop returned, Hathaway’s cheek pinching, the jaw working. He waited for Tom to say more, but whatever floated in Tom’s head wasn’t finding purchase. The painkillers.

  “He wasn’t there, of course. We went to his dad’s. Not there, either,” Hathaway said. “I’m going to head over to his brother’s office when I leave here. He doesn’t return my calls.”

  “That’s not good.”

  Hathaway dug his hands into his jeans pockets. The quizzical expression on his face began to make Tom wonder what he was thinking.

  “Is there something else?”

  “I’m just wondering why you’re lying here instead of down at the morgue. Everything we know about Flip Dunn, you’d think he would’ve put you out of your misery.”

  Tom tried to get his body shifted. His limbs weighed about a thousand pounds each. He managed to get his hand flat against the sheet but lost interest in doing anything further. “I’ve been wondering that myself. Maybe Flip has a soft spot for POs.”

  “That must be it.” Hathaway tapped his fingers on the rail at the foot of the bed. “Well, anyway, guess I’ll get over to the bank. Unless you need anything.”

  “Going to go check on all your wealth, huh?” Tom’s voice sounded distant to his own ears. His eyes drifted closed.

  “Not my bank. I told you, I’m going to go see the brother, Jason Dunn. He works over at . . . let’s see . . .”

  Tom’s pulse monitor picked up its pace. Hathaway dug a piece of paper out of his pocket and started to unroll it.

  Through the fog of the painkillers, Tom’s mind made a connection. He already knew what Hathaway had written down. “Business Trust Bank.”

  Hathaway was still trying to unfurl the wad of paper. “Yeah. That’s right. So you’ve already been over there?”

  “Oh . . .”

  “What?”

  “That’s where she worked.”

  “Who?”

  “The mom. The mother of the kid Flip killed. Or I’m pretty sure he did it.”

  Hathaway’s frown bunched up his leathery forehead. The jaw stopped working for the first time since he’d walked into the room. “What are you talking about?”

  Tom laid out the story for him. Flip’s bruised knuckles. His nagging suspicions. The LEADS entry. Then Detective Danton’s call, the possible link, the interview with Kathy Russell.

  Gradually, Hathaway began working the gum again. “Yo
u think he killed his brother’s secretary’s kid? Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ve got a brother, a bank, and a dead kid’s mom that works there. It’s no coincidence. Somewhere in there’s a motive.”

  Hathaway nodded his head slowly. “’Kay. Let me see if I can get to the brother. You heal up. We’re going to work this one together.”

  “Like you have time for that.”

  “Who do you think’s covering your cases while you’re on vacation in here? Besides, we’ll wrap it up quick.” Hathaway turned and went for the door.

  Tom called to him. “Hey.”

  Hathaway’s head came around, jaw flexing, gum popping. The window cast a pale hospital glare over his Hawaiian shirt. Red surfboards, green palm trees and flowers, island girls smiling.

  “You spot him, don’t let him get close to you.”

  Hathaway grinned. “Aw, Cole, I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I’m not messing around.”

  The surfer shook his head, that grin lingering. He could have been paddling out to an oncoming wave. “Just get healthy, huh? Once you’re out of here, you can keep an eye on me. Make sure I stay out of trouble.”

  Tom managed to lift a hand and wave it. The next time his eyes opened, he was alone.

  * * *

  Jason keyed the number six on his phone to toggle to his next voicemail message. As soon as the caller identified himself, he pressed six again. Five messages, and no one he wanted to talk to. The pieced-together words of the automated voicemail attendant told him he was back at the main menu and gave him the option of listening to saved messages. He hung up, removed his earpiece, and slotted it into his shirt pocket.

  Billy’s hands twisted at the steering wheel. “I think that meeting went pretty well, don’t you?”

  The light turned green, and Billy hit the gas. They sped through the intersection. The kid drove like he couldn’t wait to get back to the office and out of the car, away from Jason.

  “It went fine.”

  “I’ll do the call report for Vince.”

  One of Vince’s new rules. Every meeting with a customer or potential customer had to be documented, and the report had to be on his desk the following day.

  The light ahead turned red, and Billy leaned into the brake pedal. His Acura plowed to a stop with the front end in the crosswalk. The only pedestrian crossing wore rags. He slumped toward the fender, mouthing to himself from within a bush of a beard, open shirt the color of dust revealing a shriveled torso. His pants were held up with a rope he’d lined through the belt loops and knotted underneath his puckered belly button. He stopped at the edge of Billy’s car and stared down at it.

  Jason pressed the button in the door panel, and his window sliced down. “Hey.”

  The old man turned his eyes, taking in Jason with a look between frenzy and disgust. “What do you want?” His hands hung at his sides, limp.

  “You hungry? You need something to eat?”

  “Hm.” He turned from Jason and looked down at the hood in front of him as if calculating the distance Billy had encroached into the crosswalk. Apparently it was impossible for the old man to move outside the lines to cross the street.

  Jason turned to Billy. “You need to back up.”

  Billy looked at him as if Jason was the one operating on a brain off kilter. But he didn’t ask any questions, just shifted to reverse. A horn blasted behind them. One hand on the back of Jason’s seat, Billy inched the Acura back.

  “That’s far enough.”

  The old man moved with ginger steps to avoid the lines of the crosswalk like someone moving through a minefield. He made it to the other side of the street before the light changed.

  Billy shifted back to drive, and the horn behind them silenced. “Since when are you a homeless advocate, boss?”

  “You haven’t called me that for a while.”

  Billy’s head turned, but Jason didn’t meet the kid’s eyes. Two weeks since the confrontation with Mark, two weeks with Vince setting up shop in Jason’s department, and the allegiances of the teams had shifted already. He stared out the side window. Another homeless man sat on the sidewalk, his back resting against a concrete wall. This one’s afro was the shape of a charcoal briquette, his skin so dark he could have been burned into that spot long ago. Billy’s Acura passed by, and the man became only a shadow in Jason’s mind.

  The city was full of them. Black, white, Hispanic. Couples, teenagers, children. They pushed shopping carts or slogged along the concrete, toted paper bags the shape of the bottle inside, languished in alleys. At night, on his way home, a couple routinely pitched an old blue nylon tent at the gated front of a Lube & Tune, setting up housekeeping for the night with the gravity of slaves.

  After the meeting with Mark and Scotty, Jason had made some phone calls to other bankers he was acquainted with, just to test the job market. But before he could even drop a hint, it became clear to him that the other guys were looking too. They danced around the subject, positioning themselves and their banks, each of them not wanting the other to know exactly how dire a situation they were hoping to escape. But desperation nibbled at the edges of every word.

  And when Jason had exhausted every contact and every headhunter who had called him over the years, the homeless seemed to appear. Why had he never noticed them before? They swarmed the streets.

  The Acura passed into Beverly Hills, and Jason had the sense that the streets were paved with strange yellow bricks, swept clean overnight by munchkins no one ever saw. No homeless here—at least not today.

  Billy steered into the underground lot and cruised to a vacant space. Before he could switch off the ignition, Jason was out of the car.

  He waited for Billy at the elevator. When they entered and the doors sealed them inside, the silence of a tomb filled the space between them. Then the doors parted, and all the sounds of the office assaulted Jason’s ears—voices, keyboards clacking, phones chiming. They reminded him that he was alive.

  Billy left without a word.

  Across the lobby, no one waited outside Jason’s office. He knew without looking that Vince’s office door would be crowded.

  Brenda sat at her desk, her neck at a swan’s angle. She was focused on her computer screen while her fingers tapped a flurry on the keyboard. Her blouse was trim against her ribs, and before she noticed him approaching he took in the shape of her.

  She turned, and a moment later her fingers stilled. “Here you are.”

  A smile. A magnet for his eyes. She scooped up a couple of slips of paper and followed him into his office, crossed to his desk while he hung his jacket on the hanger behind his door. She waited for him at attention, feet together and hands at waist level with the small slips of paper in her manicured fingertips.

  “I didn’t write down every time she called.” She held out the message slips.

  Serena.

  “How many?”

  “Three. She doesn’t like voicemail, does she?”

  He didn’t say anything about the messages Serena had left on his cell. He looked at the way Brenda had scrawled Serena’s name on the slips of paper. The handwriting was precise, every angle measured. It could have been a computer script. But she’d dug the pen into the paper hard enough to nearly cut it. The first one had the date and time of the call noted, but the second one was blank except for the name. The S was darkened, stenciled over a couple of times, like she’d doodled it.

  When he looked up again, Brenda was half-seated against the corner of his desktop, feet together and knees bent, palms on the desk with her arms straight to tilt her shoulders up.

  Serena had cheated on him. She had stomped their marriage vows into the dirt. Why call her back? He owed her nothing.

  Brenda’s eyes glinted green with mystery. The space inside the room drew close.

  He went to the door. Still no one waited outside to see him. He closed the door, and his jacket swung on the hook like an empty skin of him.
<
br />   The latch on the doorknob drew his fingertips to it, and he twisted it to lock it.

  He wadded up the slips of paper and threw them into the corner.

  Brenda rested against his desk. She didn’t look away.

  He approached her.

  She stood to face him. Her chest rose and fell with quick breaths. Those eyes held his, determined.

  Jason’s knees prickled. Weakness plucked at them and threatened to take him to the floor.

  His left hand rose from his side. She took it.

  25

  “I’ve wanted you since I first saw you.” Brenda’s voice was soft, earnest. “I knew I couldn’t have you. I tried telling myself to let it go and move on. But nobody else would do. I kept comparing them to you. I couldn’t help myself. It was like you were always there in the back of my mind, like something everybody else had to measure up to, and they couldn’t get there.” Brenda looked away from him for the first time. She had returned to her usual chair and sat with her normal posture, the desk separating her from him. But everything was different now. Jason had the taste of her lips on his, the feel of her arms around him leaving an impression of warmth deeper and more lasting than the sunlight angling in against his back.

  She went on. “I remember the first time I saw you. It was right out there. I’d only been with the bank a week or so. I was up here with Margaret. She had a presentation to do with Mark and wanted me along. I saw you across the room, walking with a whole entourage around you. There was something about you. I just kept staring. It was embarrassing.” She smiled, and the dimple in her right cheek was lovely.

  The smile faded. “Jason, can we really do this? Please don’t play with me. I couldn’t bear that. But there’s so much against us. The rules of the office, Serena—”

  “Serena left me.”

  “But she keeps calling for you. I can tell by her voice she still feels for you.”

  “Forget Serena. Whatever she feels, she destroyed it with what she did. I don’t want to talk about her.”

  Brenda nodded. “Okay. I’ll never mention her again. I won’t even give you her messages anymore.”

  “Good.” Jason pushed Serena out of his mind. It was easy with Brenda so near.

  “But it would be bad if they found out around here, wouldn’t it? I know the HR rules, and you do too. They could fire us.”