You Get What You Pay For (The Tony Cassella Mysteries)

by Beinhart, Larry

  “Or worse? What’s worse?”

  “Uh … ” I said. Though I believe in frankness, truth, honesty, openness, with the young, I didn’t feel like presiding over a sex-education class at breakfast. “Well, you know, it was actually not the toughest corner I’ve ever been in,” I said. “The toughest corner was when I went out to the Rocky Mountains.”

  “When was that?”

  “I never told you about that?”

  “No!” he declared.

  “There was a bail skip, a bank robber, who went out to Wyoming to hide out. I didn’t know the territory too well, so I hired a local guide. Where I heard the suspect was, was in a cabin hidden way up in the mountains. Well, we traveled two days by jeep. Then the jeep couldn’t go any more. So we hired a couple of mules. Mules are real unpleasant.”

  Wayne was totally fascinated.

  “It was spring, early spring, and the snows were melting. The rivers and creeks were high. The water was really rushing, pounding down through these rocky riverbeds.

  “Suddenly, while we’re crossing this river—well, either a small river or a big stream, somewhere in there—suddenly there’s a wave of water. What can happen, sometimes, is that snow is melting up on the mountain but there’s another section below, in the shade, say, that isn’t melting. That forms a natural, but temporary, sort of dam. Sometimes it lets go all at once. The water breaks through and comes crashing down through the creekbeds.

  “That’s what happened. Rick, my guide, was in the creek when it hit. It swept his mule out from under him. Then it swept him along. I went racing along the bank, trying to keep up.

  “Finally there came a point where the water slowed, and I jumped in and grabbed him. He was hurt medium bad. Concussion, severe bruises. Contusions. I set up camp for him, we talked about it, then I went on, on my own.

  “The last thing he said to me was ‘Watch out for grizzlies.’

  “I should have listened. But I’m a city kid, and what do I know? The next morning, I’m waking up, and I hear a noise. I look and there is a mostly large bear. Actually, he’s bigger than that. There’s big, then there’s big, then there’s bigger? Well, one size larger.

  “Mr. Grizzly is in the act of stealing my food. The idea of being in the mountains of Wyoming, alone, three, four days from my jeep, with no food, does not appeal to me. So I decide to shoo this large and ugly creature away.

  “I jump up. ‘Shoo, shoo!’ I said, except that I used stronger language. The bear mostly ignores me. So I pick up a stone in one hand and my rifle in the other. I don’t want to shoot him, not right away, because that’s against the law, a one-year prison term or a ten-thousand-dollar fine, whichever comes first. I threw the rock. I thought it might get his attention, chase him away. After all, you can chase a shark away by punching him in the nose—”

  “Is that true?” Wayne asked.

  “Tony,” Glenda said, thinking about her son trying to punch sharks in the nose, then dying of a wrong supposition, “is that true?”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s true. Anyway, that’s where I hit the grizz, in the schnozzola. It did get his attention. He roared. He stood up straight. As big as I thought he was before, I now find out he is even bigger.

  “I’m scared. The hell with the ten-thousand-dollar fine. I want to live. I raise the rifle. But apparently this bear has seen rifles. Or been warned about them on forest ranger posters. He doesn’t like rifles, and he is very fast. Before I know it, his giant paw swipes out and knocks the rifle out of my hands.

  “I started to run. I’m going as fast as I can, this old bear coming after me. Then suddenly I’m at a rock wall. Sheer face of a cliff. There’s no climbing it. I turn. I face the bear. The cliff behind me. The bear in front. I’m unarmed. He’s enraged. He wants to kill.”

  “What did you do? What did you do?” Wayne cried.

  “Nothing I could do,” I said sadly. “That bear done killed me.”

  “Oh, boo,” Wayne said.

  “Oh, hiss,” Glenda said.

  Wayne picked up his things and headed off to school. “Oh, booo,” he yelled again on his way out.

  “You didn’t tell me about this case,” Glenda said, walking away.

  “No,” I said, looking at her ass, just concentrating on it. Trying to ease on down below the surface tension of householding, down to where the passions flow, muddy waters. “No, I didn’t,” I mumbled, following her bottom into the bedroom.

  She went into the closet to get her coat.

  “Who’s it for?” she asked as I came up behind her.

  My hands began fondling the roundness wrapped in her business skirt.

  “Cute,” she said, apparently unenthusiastic about the paw on her ass. “Involving yourself with Randolph Gunderson could be serious,” she went on.

  “It’s not actually a job,” I told her, my hands sliding around to feel the slight rise of her mound in front, the half swelling in my pants pressing against her back. Please let us find it. She must want to find it too. She’s said so. “Not actually a job. A bet.”

  “What?” she said, turning around, breaking loose.

  “A bet. Let’s fuck.”

  “You’re out getting yourself … almost killed, on a bet?”

  “It’s a big bet.” I wanted to want her enough to grab her, toss her on the bed, skirt up, panties down, and play rape. But I couldn’t find the urgency all by myself. The sea that carries free-floating lust was dry.

  “When are you going to grow up?” she said.

  “Grow up? When am I gonna be young again,” I grumbled, “fight grizzlies, take you to orgies, get stoned.”

  “Our financial situation—”

  “ … is OK. More or less.”

  “OK. But not what you could go out and gamble. How much is this bet?”

  “Four grand,” I said casually.

  “What? What are you dreaming ab—”

  “Cut it, will you? It’s four thousand, to me, when I win. Not if I win. ’Cause I’m gonna win.”

  “You are sure of yourself. Why are you only happy if you’re walking on the edge of a cliff? You can’t possibly afford, we can’t possibly afford, for you to lose four thousand dollars.”

  “In the first place, I am not happy only if I’m walking on the edge of a cliff,” I said. I liked that description of myself, very macho romantic. But it’s not true. “It’s not true. I’ve worked goddamn hard to even our income out, keep it steady. And believe me, I like it that way and want to keep it that way. In the second place, if I lose, it doesn’t cost me four thousand dollars. It doesn’t cost me any money at all. So I know what I’m doing. So cut the crap.”

  “What do you lose? What did you bet against four thousand dollars?”

  “Wayne,” I said, straight-face.

  It almost caught her. But with a little effort, she managed to retain her indignation. “Very funny. What did you bet against four thousand dollars?”

  “Your fucking sense of humor. See, so if I lose, I don’t lose anything.”

  “I have a sense of humor. But not about things that aren’t funny.”

  “Fuck off, Glenda. … I’ll see you later,” I said, grabbing my jacket and my keys.

  She moved around in front of me, blocking my way. In all fairness, she’s a better man than I am when it comes to fighting. I like to storm out. She likes to finalize, get to it, get through it.

  “No you won’t. You tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t have to tell you shit. I’m tired of you being on my case. I’m tired of you watching me all the time. I’m not Wayne. I don’t have to answer to you.”

  “You don’t tell me about this bet. I never know what you’re involved in. I still don’t know how you got away.”

  “What difference does it make?” I said.

  “Oh, forgive me. I’m not entitled to care if you live or die.”

  “I fell down on my knees,” I told her. “I told him I liked the idea. He didn’t believe me. I told
him that I had always had secret homosexual feelings and was ashamed of them. But if I was forced, I might like it. I fluttered my lashes a little, looked fetching. The tension was going out of his trigger finger. It’s funny—you get to a state of mind where you can see things like that, I don’t know how.

  “Then I took him,” I said, gesturing with my words. It still felt ugly. “Knocked his arm aside, came up hard, hit him between the legs. Then I picked up the gun from the floor where he dropped it. He told me he was going to make me pay. He told me he was going to get me. I politely gave him my card and told him to call as soon as he got the report. I gave him a week.

  “There, satisfied? … If I recite my day in the detail you seem to need,” I said, “I would need forty-eight-hour days, ’cause I would have to get through it twice.”

  “Communicate. Why can’t you communicate?”

  I started shoving her out of the way.

  “Don’t you dare push me,” she cried, trembling. “Don’t you ever hit me. If you hit me, we are really through.”

  “Hit you?” I snarled. “What kind of crap is that? Standard woman weakness crap. I’ve never hit you. And I never will, so don’t fucking worry about it.”

  “You’ve raised your hand to me,” she declared. As proof of something.

  “Raising my hand and hitting are two different things. You idiot.”

  “You’re the idiot. You’re an emotional idiot. You don’t share anything. I don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t tell me anything. Except to scare me, like that story you told me last night.”

  “Scare you? I told you that story because it’s funny. It’s funny; don’t you understand that? Me as the reluctant virgin—I thought you would find it funny.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she snapped. “I know how much of a virgin you’re not. I know all about your conquests. Oh, tell me again about all your other women.”

  “I didn’t say anything about other women. You’re a nightmare. You’re a goddamn nightmare. With your goddamn jealousy. You’re jealous of the past. You’re jealous of … of I don’t know what. Now let me outa here. And maybe I’ll think about coming back.”

  “No. No.” She started to cry.

  “Not that; not the tears,” I said, even as I knew I was climbing down off my anger to be sorry, maybe even guilty, that I had hurt her. I reached out for her. She pulled away. I reached again, trying to hug her. She moved back again. Me forward. Her back. Until she was against the wall. Then I got her. I shoved my hands around her back, between her and the wall. She was trapped. She made herself small, tight, inward.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said.

  She sniffled. I tried to raise her head. She fought that.

  “Oh, come on, Glenda,” I said.

  “Let me go,” she said.

  I grabbed her chin in my hand and forced her face up. She struggled.

  “Please, baby,” I said.

  “Let me go,” she said.

  So I bent my face to hers and put my mouth on hers. She kept her lips tight and cold. I softened mine. She went limp. The I-won’t-respond-you-are-kissing-a-dead-fish defense. My tongue forced its way between her lips, then pressed against her teeth. They pried open. The whole length of my body pressed against her slenderness.

  Then she was sucking on my tongue, her hips moving. That thing I was looking for was finally in the goddamn room. I hauled us both to the bed. Her skirt hiked up to her thighs and rode up to her waist as she spread. I was thick inside my pants and pressed into her center.

  She had on panty hose, the unfortunate successor to the horror of girdles. There’s only one way through. I grabbed the fabric in my fingers.

  “Don’t. They’re seven dollars,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said, tearing them.

  “Oh, good,” she said.

  I unzipped. I pushed her panties to the side. She was wet and I was in, pressed tight and furious. Our mouths came together hard, and her fingers dug at my buttocks.

  “Fuck me,” she said.

  “Fuck me,” I said.

  “Oh, love me, love me, Tony,” she said.

  It was good for me. It was good for her. So good she even made it without the vibrator. But if our only successful form of foreplay was a fight plus tears, it was going to get real enervating.

  7.

  Rubbers

  DIMMER-LODES, PETER: 234 Third Ave. NYC // Emp. Wharton, Scully, Fundament & Elhaus // salary $58K // outside income $60K (’83) // outside income $12K (’82) // Mortgage, 234 Third Ave. // Auto, leased, Saab. // Age: 28

  Mohammed Salim, headhunter by profession, specializing in the financial fields, blew me off the squash court. He does that a lot. He’s Pakistani, like the Khan family. A Khan has been number one in the world for three generations. It’s a genetic thing, or a cultural thing, or a biochemical thing, like Jewish lawyers, Black basketball players, Irish cops, Italian designers, and French women.

  Afterward I asked him if I could have several of his business cards. I told him that I knew a couple of people looking for jobs. Mo works on commission. He was happy to give me as many as I wanted.

  Then I called Peter Dimmer-Lodes. I told him that we, at the firm of Search Inc., had heard very good things about him and might have a position for which he would be suitable, at a considerable raise in salary. To let him know that we were serious in our search, I invited him for lunch at Smith & Wollensky, an old-timey steak house on Third Avenue.

  I arrived first, and the maître d’ showed him to my table. Peter was a big guy. I imagined that he wrestled in high school, then switched to beer in college. He had a power wardrobe.

  “You’re Mohammed Salim?” he said.

  “You bet,” I said, and handed him Mo’s card with a flourish.

  “That’s an Arab kind of name,” he said.

  “It is indeed,” I said, as if I wasn’t insulted. “My father was from Pakistan. A ranked squash player. But he moved to America and married an American woman. I was raised here.”

  He peered at me. “I can see it now,” he said. “When I heard your name I was expecting an Arab. But I can see where you look Pakistani.”

  We ordered steak and brew. Then we talked about Peter’s favorite things—Peter, money, mergers, and acquisitions. He was eager to tell me the part he had played in B&D’s merger with Watkins Steel, Pontraine Chemical’s takeover of California Micro, T&A’s divestiture of Carolina and its acquisition by People’s Products. The partners, as always, had taken all the credit, while Peter did all the work. Peter said.

  I made dutiful notes. I asked if he’d worked in any other areas. He had. It had taken him a couple of years to maneuver himself into mergers and acquisitions. His arrival there marked the time when his outside income made its phenomenal jump.

  Although I hadn’t said a word about insider trading, he volunteered definitive reassurances. “If you run the game films of any of those deals,” he said, “you won’t see any significant market action until the principals went public. No insider trading on our club.”

  “Of course not,” I said, wishing that I were with the SEC. I would have subpoenaed his broker’s records in a minute. If the trades didn’t show up there—if he was half smart enough to have had his father or brother or best friend or girlfriend make the trades—it would still show up in his bank records. Then let him explain the extra money under oath.

  “The reason I’m willing to talk is that considering the order of magnitude of the deals that I’m putting together, I am actually undercompensated.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “You belong in six figures.” Which he was, counting his side action. I was wondering why he was considering giving it up.

  “But just salary is not where it’s at. A guy gets traded from the Raiders to Tampa, he’s not going to be happy about it, even if they raise his salary. You want to be on a team that’s got a shot at the Super Bowl. I want to be with a championship team. I like the big deals.”

  “W
hat I can tell you is that it’s a major financial … umm … group. Very major,” I said. He frowned. “Until recently they have been rather passive investors. T-bills. Gold. More a matter of protecting their earnings then maximizing their leverage. Now, with the price of oil down … ”

  “Ah hah,” he said, feeling terribly shrewd. “It is the Arabs.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I said, “although I did mention oil. In any case, there is a great deal of money that is looking for action. Real action.”

  “That’s what’s important to me,” he said, outwardly under control, neither drooling on his tie nor barking. “More important than the money. Being where the action is.”

  I was certain. If I had subpoena power I could’ve opened him up on the spot. I didn’t have it. I had to figure out something to bluff him with. And I couldn’t yet.

  BRONSTEIN, ALICIA w.: 182 Hicks St. Brooklyn, N.Y. // Emp. District Attorney, Kings Co. // salary $28.7K // outside income $0 // Auto loan $3.6K, Mitsubishi. Age: 30

  “Welcome to Brooklyn,” Alicia Bronstein said. She was full in the hips and thighs. She wore a full skirt and a jacket that hung over the skirt.

  I was at a fund-raiser for Fernando Santana, a reform candidate running for City Council. It was classic New York insurgent politics. Independent versus The Machine. Housing versus Real Estate Interests. Civil/women’s/gay/minority rights versus everything else.

  Gene Petrucchio had done well, arranging for Fernando himself to make the introductions. There was something odd about it, since Gene was most definitely part of The Machine. Brooklyn politics has a Byzantine aspect. Fernando had laid it on thick with Alicia. The correction officer thing again. How I’d gone undercover, then testified and put some people away. Usually it’s a story that works against me. This was one of the times it worked for me. Mostly I think of it as a previous life, like the one in which I did drugs, and wish that other people saw it that way as well.

  I gave Alicia one of my sweeter, laid-back smiles, and looked at her like my interest might be erotic. I wanted me and Alicia to get along real good. “Are you involved with Fernando’s campaign?” I asked.