by Dan Taylor
“Why not out on the road by your building?”
“That’s my crazy ex on a moped back there. Messy breakup.”
He looks in his rearview mirror again.
He thinks a second. Says, “So you want me to just wait?” not buying anything I’m saying.
“No. Some young kid, dressed just how I’m dressed now, will come out and get in the cab. Drive him to Loaded. You know the place?”
“I know it.”
“When you take him, drive straight there, keep your speed regular. Drop him off, he’ll pay you, and then come back here. I’ll be waiting out on the street, two blocks west of my apartment building. There are some nice sights to see on Martel on the way back.”
“Martel, right.”
We arrive and he does as I said. I tell him to park in my spot.
I go up to my apartment building. It’s five past eight, but Deus isn’t waiting outside my apartment door when I get there. I walk back past the elevator and through the door to the tenth-floor landing and don’t see him there. He isn’t on the ninth-floor landing, either.
So I dial his number. He says he’ll be here in ten. I tell him to make it in five.
While I wait, I look for a disguise.
Going through my wardrobe, I only find clothing that’s totally Hancock. Then I remember my nephew’s birthday party from last year, in which I played a pivotal role, and think what the hell.
Deus buzzes the intercom just after I’ve gotten changed and I let him in.
“What are you dressed as?” he says upon me opening the door.
“I’ve got a fancy dress party. And you’re late.”
I step aside, letting him in.
He comes in carrying an old leather gym bag. After looking around, he says what he says every time he makes a business call, “Nice place. I bet you get a lot of pussy with a place like this.” Then he turns around, looks at what I’m wearing. “Or not.”
“You don’t seem out of breath. Did you take the stairs?” I ask.
“Relax, Hancock. You worry too much. There was someone in the lobby, waiting for the elevator, so I went two flights up, made sure there was no one on the landing, and then took the elevator after the guy had used it. How many people you know take the elevator up in an apartment building, except from the ground floor?”
He’s got a point, so I let him off the hook.
He takes a seat on the sofa without asking if he could and takes out what I asked him to get. “What are you going to do with this stuff?”
I take it from him and look at it, thinking it doesn’t look how I expected it to.
“Does it dissolve in water?” I ask.
“Fuck if I know.”
It looks like it might, but I’m no chemist.
Speaking of chemistry, the next couple minutes are spent refusing to buy the range of pills and powders Deus has taken with him. I tell him since I’m nearing forty, I’m only partial to organics. Green organics. No mushrooms. After I’ve bought a range of baggies containing different strains of high-grade marijuana—no fertilizer-laced, seed-ridden, outdoor-grown Mexican bullshit—he seems satisfied with his haul.
“Pleasure doing business with you, as always, Hancock,” he says as he gets up.
“What waist size are you?”
“Thirty-two, why?”
“You’re going to need a belt.”
“What the hell for?”
I tell him what I want him to do.
“No way,” he says. “And you didn’t say please.”
Sighing, I take out my wallet again from the ridiculously sized pocket of my pants and pull out a hundred—a little sugar for his coffee.
Thinking ahead of me, he says, “What about the duffel bag? I take it it’s not going to go well with the suit.”
Kid’s got a point again.
So I go through to my bedroom wardrobe and take out a Samsonite business bag.
When I go back and hand it to him, he says, “A man bag?”
“Just fill it up.”
“Is it possible to take off the shoulder strap?”
As it happens, it is. After I remove it for him, I hand the bag to him and say, “There you go. Do you feel less homophobic now?”
Ignoring me, he removes all the narcotics he brought with him from the duffel bag and places them in the business bag. Then he goes and gets changed in the bathroom, into the suit I wore.
He comes out looking like a pipsqueak college graduate wearing a suit two sizes too big for him. But at least his mom would think he looks cute in it.
I show him to the door; he’d literally get lost on the way if I didn’t.
“Remember to rush in and out of the cab. Keep looking down at the ground. It’ll be more difficult to spot that you’re not me. And if you could stay and have a couple drinks at Loaded, it would be appreciated. Buy me some time,” I say.
“Geez, Hancock. You don’t ask for much.”
He takes one step out of the apartment and then stops, turns to me, and says, “Can I use the elevator now?”
“Leave the bag and knock yourself out.”
With a sigh, Tom John leaves.
I figure I’ve got around fifteen minutes before the cab comes back. I send a message to Detective Dukes, letting him know I’ll be a little late. Then I go into the bathroom and start applying makeup. When that’s done, I put on my oversized bowtie.
Like I said I would, I wait two blocks west of my apartment building. The cab comes a few minutes before I expected. I have to flag him down.
Even with me waving both arms at him, as though I’m trying to signal a jumbo jet, he seems unsure. He asks, “Are you the guy with the crazy ex on the moped?”
“Do I look like him?”
“No.”
I look down at my disguise, forgetting I had it on there for a second.
“That’s a fair enough reply, but yeah, it’s me.”
I get in the cab.
“Where to now?” the cab driver asks.
I give him the address.
“A bar?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Dressed like that?”
“I’m the entertainment.”
“For who?”
“Never mind that. Did she follow you to Loaded?”
“The woman on the moped?”
“Yeah.”
“She did.”
“And did she stay there, waiting outside?”
“How would I know that?”
“If she did, she, suspecting a trap, wouldn’t have followed you.”
“I didn’t see her.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
18.
DETECTIVE DUKES AND I go way back. Not so much in a time sense: I’ve only known the guy for just under a year. But he’s saved my life two times. One time from a trio of hapless criminals hell-bent on manipulating me into getting back some money my ex-wife’s now-husband had stolen, and another time to save me from The Agency super bitch Gerry Smoulderwell, who wanted to kill me to stop me from uncovering the mistakes I mentioned.
When Detective Dukes spots me, he starts laughing his ass off, and says, “A clown?”
“Laugh it up. I’ve had a hell of a day.”
I take the stool next to him.
Then he says, “Were they out of Groucho Marx glasses at the party store?”
“It’s the only disguise I had in my apartment.”
“You said that like it’s the most normal thing in the world.”
“You going to get me a drink or do I have to order it myself?”
“What are you having?”
I glance at the taps, finding only domestic.
“They serve proper beer?”
“Sure.”
Detective Dukes orders me a bottle from one of the refrigerators. And just as I think we can get down to talking seriously, Detective Dukes asks the barman, “And can Coco get a curly straw with that?”
With my face both super-se
rious and made up with ridiculous clown makeup, I ask, “Are you done?”
“Just one more. I promise.”
I take a sip of beer as I wait for it.
Then he says, “If I stop talking during the show do I get a balloon animal?”
“That’s a good one.”
“I’ll stop busting your balls now, Hancock. Were you followed?”
“Would I be sitting here if I had?”
“Good.”
“You had something to tell me? I take it Greg didn’t put me as his next of kin on his gym membership form.”
“No, you were on there. But yeah, like I tried to imply, subtly, Greg wasn’t killed in a hit-and-run accident.”
“I figured that much out. I also figured out that The Agency most likely had Greg whacked, thinking he was me.”
Detective Dukes looks at me strangely. “Why’d you figure that?”
I don’t want to mention the details about Cole Baxter, so I say, “It made sense, with you asking me to make sure I wasn’t followed by ‘You know who.’”
“‘You know who’ isn’t The Agency. Far as I know, they don’t want you whacked.”
“Who is it, then?”
Detective Dukes looks around. Then says, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, Hancock. But I figured I’d do you a favor, seeing as though you’ve helped me a couple times. The only reason I don’t have to get up and iron my uniform at stupid o’clock on a morning is because you helped me catch those three murderin’ bastards.”
I glance at his non-uniform shirt to see it is indeed crinkled. The perks of promotion.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
“Anyway, you were half right.”
“About what?”
“About Greg getting whacked and them mistaking him for you.”
I wrack my brains about who it could be. It can’t be a hit ordered by my ex-wife. I was visiting her at the time.
An ex-girlfriend, maybe?
If I start going down that avenue, listing disgruntled ex-girlfriends as suspects, I’d be here all night, so I won’t.
My shrink maybe did it. Last session, she seemed a little upset. How was I to know her makeshift office isn’t a place “to use oversized marijuana inhalation devices”?
Detective Dukes interrupts my thoughts by clicking his fingers in front of my face. “This hit isn’t about you at all, Hancock, you narcissistic fuck.”
“But you just said—”
“I know what I said.”
“So how am I half right?”
“Think about it for a second.”
I do.
“Nope, I still don’t get it.”
He sighs. “You amateurs… I’ll hold your hand through Investigation 101, if you like.” He pauses. “Think about it for a second. How could you be half right, meaning whoever whacked Greg thought he was you, but it not being about you?”
I hazard a guess: “All of the above?”
“No, dummy. Whoever whacked Greg mistook him for you, but it was you who they were after, but only they weren’t.”
“Is that some sort of riddle?”
Detective Dukes rolls his eyes. “Let me ask you something. You ever been involved in a Ponzi scheme or Pump and Dump?”
“What was the first one?”
“Ponzi scheme.”
“Never heard that term in my life. The second one?”
“Pump and Dump.”
I hold up my hands. “Guilty.”
“It’s not what you think it is. But you’ve done it, in a phony investment scheme sort of way, or at least Jake Hancock has done it.”
I frown. “Is all this supposed to be making any sense yet?”
“Think about it for a second.”
“Stop saying that. You haven’t given me enough information for it to be reasonable to expect me to make even a remotely accurate guess, so stop acting like I’m stupid.”
“Pull your head out of my ass, Hancock.”
“I’m not sure you’re saying that correctly.”
“Let me make this simple for you.”
“Please.”
“I figured out your relationship to Mr. Hewter-Pickle as soon as we found the fake ID in his wallet with your name on it. In what capacity did you hire Gregory Hewter-Pickle?”
“I hired him to pose as me when… Ohhhhh, now I get it.”
19.
AS THOUGH HE’S MAKING the situation clearer, Detective Dukes says, “Greg, when he was given the reins to your life, wasn’t just taking dumps in your toilet.”
Before I can ask him for more details, he adds to the metaphor, or at least thinks he does: “He took a load of dumps in a load of other people’s toilets.”
I think a second, all the while trying to keep Detective Dukes’s piss-poor metaphor out of my mind. “Greg committed identity theft, and what, ran a load of phony investment schemes under my name?”
“Houston, we’ve landed on the moon.”
“Am I right?”
“One small step for a mentally deficient person, one huge leap for Hancock.”
“Can I just get a straight answer?”
“Hancock, congratulations, you’re the first person to have taken a dump on Mars.”
“I’ll go ahead and assume that makes sense and assume I’m correct.”
“Damn right it makes sense.”
I take a sip of beer and think a second. “And I was supposed to figure all this out from that one confusing conversation while I was drunk on mojitos in the Caribbean?”
“My niece would’ve figured it out faster than you.”
“How old’s your niece?”
“Fifteen, quite precocious.”
“You really need to work on your insults. My sister’s better than you.”
“What is she, a nun?”
“No, she’s actually pretty decent at insulting people.”
“Touché.”
“Let’s stop this bullshit. What are you saying? My life’s in danger?”
“Eight fingers.”
“Say what?”
“Jimmy ‘Eight Fingers’ Blumstein was one of the guys Greg, posing as you, ripped off.”
“Who’s that?”
“Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to get caught banging his grandma.”
“I take it from the nickname, and while discounting the fact no man under the age of forty would want to get caught banging anyone’s grandma, that he’s some sort of wise guy.”
“Right, crime boss of Western Minneapolis.”
“He’s the guy that put the hit out on Greg?”
“No, he put the hit out on you.”
“And got Greg killed?”
“Right.”
“ So, I’m in the clear?”
“You were, until he found out he got the wrong man, who was actually the right man, only he doesn’t know that.”
I think a moment. “And now he’s after me, thinking that I’m Greg, or that Greg was me, even though he got the right guy in the first place?”
“Exactly.”
“Seriously, I was supposed to figure this out from you mentioning that it was a pro hit?”
He waves it off. “Child’s play.”
Shit, this is worse than the time I mistook the mayor’s daughter for a hooker.
But I see a way out, so I say, “All I have to do is phone the guy, explain the whole sorry mess to him. Right?”
“I wish it were that simple.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“You can’t just phone up a crime boss and explain to him he’s mistaken. That he doesn’t have a clue who ripped him off.”
“Why not?”
“He’s not exactly the most humble person in the world, if you didn’t catch that from his nickname.”
I frown. “Why do they call him Eight Fingers?”
“Think about it—”
“For a second, right.” I do. “I don’t know… Maybe because he… Is it because… I have no idea.”
“But wasn’t he technically right about the guy he got whacked?”
“He was, but he won’t want someone to tell him he was right in the first place and wrong now. And even if he were willing to accept that explanation, which he won’t, he wouldn’t accept it from the guy who he’s put a hit out on.”
“Jesus, I’m getting a headache.”
“That’s not all you’ll get when Jimmy’s guy catches up to you.”
“Am I supposed to be able to pull his name out of my ass, too?”
“No, you get that one for free. Goes by a couple names. Sweet Potato, Johnny Sleep Tight, and Fish.”
A forlorn expression on my face, I start undoing my oversized bowtie, as I’m feeling hot under the collar. But then I remember it’s a clip on.
Detective Dukes downs the rest of his drink and says, “Anyway, Hancock. It was nice catching up with you. But if I go to work tomorrow and hear that some guy phoned up, complaining that the same guy who whacked Gregory Hewter-Pickle, some guy called Fish Pie or some shit, is trying to kill him, I won’t be best pleased.”
“I’m confused. Why isn’t that an option?”
As Dukes takes bills out of his wallet and lays them on the bar, he says, “Because Greg was killed in a ‘hit-and-run accident.’ That’s what Captain Horse is chalking it up as and that’s the way it’s going to stay. You’d understand if the mayor was your boss.”
I do understand. I got aggressive letters from his secretary for a week after the aforementioned incident. All I’m saying is someone in the family should’ve showed her how to apply makeup properly.
Detective Dukes pats me on the back and then leaves.
20.
GREAT. ON TOP of having to think about how I’m going to get Megan back, I’ve got a guy with a ridiculous nickname hiring a guy with an even more ridiculous nickname to take me out, and not for sushi.
Remembering my father’s saying, I put it to the back of my mind and start putting the rest of my plan in place. I dial my boss, enigmatic maniac Andre.
