The Standard Grand

by Jay Baron Nicorvo

  He told her the first Gizbar had been bred from the daughter of the last known Eastern cougar, the Ghost Cat, trapped in Maine in the thirties. “There’s a chance it’s some other cougar. But if I’m feeding Gizbar with my herd, that’s alright by me. Someone should get fed.” He pointed to a commercial building and had her park the van outside the law office of Ira Lependorf, Esq., & Associates, Estate Planning and Elder Law.

  “I’m gonna ask you to come in.”

  “No.”

  “Sy specializes in estate planning,” Milt said. “He won’t turn you in. He handled the reading of Ada’s will. Then we did it again for her father’s will. When I die,” Milt said, “I want you to be the one called before Sy. To inherit the Standard.”

  She reconsidered the sign. “Is Sy one of the associates?”

  “This is Sy’s law office,” Milt said. “Sy Blackstone. Used to book talent at the Standard. He was Ada’s agent for acting gigs.”

  She pointed to the sign. “Then who’s Ira Lependorf?”

  “Have I been saying Sy?”

  “You have.”

  “I mean Ira.”

  “You alright?”

  After a long moment, he said, “No, Specialist Smith, I am not.”

  She opened the door. “Alright.”

  “Just give me a minute.” He closed his eyes.

  After a minute, she said, “You’ve got to be cocked if you think I could do what you do. Those vets wouldn’t follow one order I gave.”

  “Those who don’t like the succession plan,” he said, “would be dismissed. You find new recruits who know you as commander-in-chief. That don’t work out, you move on.” He rubbed his temple. “You’re good at that.” He opened his door. “Hup to.”

  * * *

  The country club at Cripple Creek was ramshackle in a way that never failed to surprise Ramona Aahal Canek Gómez. Drug-addict gringas and exhausted Mexicans waited the tables. The sunburnt golf course was private but the membership dues were paltry, a formality, and the rabble that played rambunctiously through, bringing their own booze in plastic bottles, was Bizzy’s connection to his dirt-floor past. Edith Rolling, a wonderful golfer, was not a member. She’d come once, decades ago, and refused to return. This, Ramona knew, was the reason Bizzy brought her here.

  They spent an hour drinking the cheap bottle of chardonnay he’d ordered, digesting their light lunches, and catching up in Spanish. Everyone they knew was dying or dead. They discussed their own aches and pains, ailments that brought them to the topic of what to do after lunch. “When I drive you home,” Bizzy asked, “will you invite me in?”

  “I will invite you in.”

  He reached in his blazer pocket, produced a pill bottle and, with some trouble, trouble they both found amusing, he opened it, popped a pill into his mouth, and downed it with the last swallow of chardonnay. He paid the bill.

  * * *

  Inside the law office, no receptionist sat at the reception desk. Stacks and towers of file folders teetered, a few on the floor.

  A middle-aged man, in a loosened tie, entered the room. He seemed harassed and, also, amused by his harassment. “Please excuse the mess,” he was saying. “Fired two temps in three days. I’m winging it here. How you doing, Milton?”

  “I’m dying.”

  “When was the last time you saw your oncologist?”

  “Been awhile.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Want her to have power of attorney.”

  Before Smith could protest, Ira was saying, “Excuse me but who’re you?”

  “She’s with me.”

  “Can she speak?”

  “I can speak fine.”

  “How long have you known Milton?”

  She looked at Milt.

  “Don’t look at him. I’m asking the questions.”

  “About three months.”

  “Ira, please,” Milt said, “no need to cross-examine.”

  “Milt, if you’ll excuse me, let me do the job you don’t pay me to do, because—”

  “You’ll get paid when I’m dead.”

  “If I’m lucky, if I’m quick, I might get a fraction of what’s owed me.” Ira sniffed and suggested they stick with the will the way it was. “When time comes, we’ll hold an estate auction. Raise some capital. The bankruptcy proceedings are slow-going. County’s so far behind that a delay may work, unless you live another five years. There’re liens on the property. I’m talking with a couple land trusts. They’re concerned about the debt. I’m talking with a forester. Have the plat logged before a sale. If the auction and the logging get you close to black, Mountainkeeper might move in and make up the difference. Because if they don’t, and the plat passes into foreclosure, at the bank auction, a gas company will snap it up. If the Marcellus ever opens, they’ll develop it for drilling the following day. That or a gaming company. So we’re copacetic? We’re not changing the executor?”

  Milt shook his head.

  “Power of attorney? Not sure you’re capable of making that decision at this point, Milton. What I’m seeing here is evidence to the contrary. Doesn’t look good.” He shrugged at Smith, who was desperate for a chair she knew wasn’t going to be offered—they were all occupied by stacks of files. “Sorry, sweetheart. Nothing personal. But I don’t know you. I’ve been working with Milton and his family for half my life. I owe it to them to be a bulldog.”

  Smith said, “Might it be alright if I ask a few questions now?” When Ira shrugged again, she asked, “You used to be Ada’s agent?”

  “Me? No.” He looked at Milt. “That was Sy Blackstone. Sy’s been dead for years.”

  “Milt told me his wife died in a car accident. But he’s hazy on the specifics.”

  “With Milton’s permission.”

  Milt nodded.

  “This was before I went into estate planning. They’d gone for a drive one summer night. Milton’d been drinking. That right, Milty? This was in the bad, old days. Ada wanted to try driving at night. One of a—”

  “She’d get behind the wheel,” Milt said, rallying some, it seemed, now that they were talking about the past, “and you’d tell her do this, do that. She’d do it, but she’d do it while driving five miles an hour.”

  “Well, Milty let her drive, and they hit a deer.”

  “A deer, right. Forgot about the deer.”

  “How could you forget the deer? The deer got him off. That deer saved your life.”

  “Deer ruined my life.”

  “Not for that deer, you’d still be in prison.”

  “I was aiming for the deer.”

  “You were not aiming for the deer.”

  “Think I might’ve been.”

  “You couldn’t’ve been. Ada was driving, Milt. A fact he failed to mention during questioning. They were both thrown from the car. Officer on the scene assumed Milt was driving. Bit sexist of him. Milt here didn’t bother to correct him for the record.”

  “Worst night of my life, and I’ve had some bad ones.”

  “Ancient history. Case closed.”

  “Tell that to my conscience.”

  Ira told Smith that the 1970s were a different age, up here on this side of the Hudson especially. Milt was under suspicion just for being black and alive standing over a dead white woman, even if she was a Jew. Cops spent a week investigating, and they turned over what looked to them like a motive. “You alright for me to continue, Milton?” Without waiting for an answer, Ira said there was a nice insurance policy. “That upped the ante of suspicion. Then they conducted interviews. She’d been having, shall we say, a dalliance.”

  Milt closed his eyes and pushed his temple.

  “It was the end of the seventies, Milt. Everyone was wife swapping.”

  “Not you.”

  “Yeah well, I don’t go in for all that woman nonsense, no offence. Anyway, long story interminable, cops interview Milt here, and they don’t buy the deer story—this was before deer were everywhere—and they did
n’t buy that he didn’t know about the … well.”

  “Dalliance?”

  “And, Milt, you stubborn ass, you didn’t do much to help convince them. He was hurting. His young wife—sorry I’m talking about you as though you’re not here—is killed. Week later, investigating officers tell him he’s a suspect in her death? This they do by cluing him in that she was fucking around? The dirt they dug up was, it was smutty but in a very seventies way. I won’t go into gory details. I’ll just say, Ada was a free bird on the edge of extinction. No one else like her.”

  “All these years later,” Milt said, eyes closed, “I’m still trying to get a clear picture.”

  “Well,” Ira continued, “I called in a favor. Had someone go over the car with microscopes. They turned up the tiniest tuft of fur. Found in the undented fender of that indestructible Toronado. Don’t make em like they used to. Carcass of the deer was a few hundred feet from the crash site. Cops relaxed after that. We settled for reckless endangerment. What year was that?”

  “Seventy-seven.” Milt shook his head.

  “She was how old?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Terrible tragedy. But Milt cleaned up his act, eventually. You were a mess for—I’d go up and check on him a few times a year—you got it together in the end, and you’ve had a good run doing good work.”

  “Already using the past tense on me.”

  “Well, good thing you came by. I need to update you. There are interested parties, Milt, parties with vast legal resources, which means vast financial resources.”

  “Young woman? Canek?”

  “No. Local lawyer, says he’s working for a development firm. Been making inquiries for a year now, and we’re not counting them as a legitimate part of your estate plan, but it’s ramped up over the last month or so. In your best interests, I’ve been forthcoming, providing them information, none of it confidential.”

  “Is this interested party SW&B Construction?”

  “Don’t know who’s behind the Kingston lawyer. He hasn’t been transparent. Gives the sense it’s big. Could be gas. Could be a Native American tribe backed by one of the international gaming cartels. But that casino vote this time next year’s a big gamble.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got another client coming by in five. If either of you have any more questions, you know where to find me.” He sighed. “Power of attorney.”

  * * *

  Bizzy, aided by his Viagra, and Ramona, helped by her plug-in consolador, made old love, love-making that was flatulent and fearsome—threat of heart attack or stroke a presence in the room, like the third party in a ménage à trois who, at the last moment, decides he just wants to watch—and their achy, inflexible sex was all the more pleasurable for the fear.

  * * *

  In the passenger seat, Milt shook out five, six pills from a bottle of aspirin, popped them into his mouth. With eyes closed, leaning back in his seat, he chewed. “Don’t want you to tell any of the others what just happened in there.”

  “Howbout you tell me what just happened in there.”

  “Not entirely sure.” He looked at her with sad, sick eyes.

  “You think you have the start of Alzheimer’s?”

  “Got a feeling what I’m feeling between my ears won’t be slow-going.”

  She wasn’t sure what her duty was. Confronting Milt with the facts wouldn’t fix anything. She’d seen enough death, as it was happening, to know that facts had no place at the end. At the end, the truth was whatever you needed to help you over to the other side—the Saydabad boy, his torso crushed by the tremendous HET tires. She kneels over him. He’s saying, Z’ma mor. Z’ma mor. The boy’s not asking for his mother; he’s calling Smith his mother, and she plays the role. Tells him it’s alright, repeating again and again, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, until he’s dead.

  She didn’t want to play any more roles. “Milt, look at me.”

  He did.

  “Are you the one who killed Ada?”

  His response started as a nod. The nod grew vigorous. He winced, a spasm twitching one closed eye, as if a current surged through him.

  “It was an accident, Milt. Even if you were the one driving. An accident.”

  He shook his head, and then his whole body began to shake, convulsing, his arms paddling, his mouth contorted. A sound came out of him, and that, more than his thrashing, scared her, made her realize he was having a fullblown seizure. He was passing gas, drooling, and wailing all at once. She looked for something to force into his mouth. By the time she had his hat brim at the ready, he was easing up. Relaxing. Then she smelled him, knew she’d need to get him cleaned up.

  She held his hand, petting him. The seizure subsided. After ten or so minutes, he said, “Sammy I’m fine with, but Sy’s another story.”

  She didn’t engage him. She waited for it to pass like a storm, the heat lightning in his head. Tiny tumors like raindrops taking shape in his cloudy brain.

  He opened his eyes and found hers, was able to focus. The look there was horrible—terror and anguish—the dread of a child, the confusion absolute—and he squeezed shut his eyes. Two tears dropped, missing his sunken cheeks, catching in his white goatee. “I killed Ada?”

  The question in his voice split Smith. “No, Milt, you didn’t.”

  “Who then?”

  “He did.”

  “Who?”

  “Her lawyer, Sy.”

  “Suspected they were having an affair. But it was far worse.”

  * * *

  Ellis Baum woke whimpering, sounding to himself like an old, overweight Weimaraner. When he raised his head, a drooled-on brief stuck to his cheek, and he peeled the sodden page off his face. He needed to leave for his midnight meeting on the Ashokan.

  First, he checked email: two from the IRJ executive assistant he’d done most of his dealing with, Marisol Soto-Garza. He skimmed them. Still no word from Canek. Maybe that’s why Tyro’d called this meeting. Maybe he had information on, or had, the landman.

  He sent himself an email: Going to meet Ray Tyro for a midnight rowboat ride on the Ashokan—Ellis Baum, 10:55 PM, 2 Nov. 2012.

  He loaded the car with gear, allowing a half-hour at his office to count out and ready for transport the cash that would be Tyro’s final installment.

  As he swerved around the reservoir in a dark, steady snow collecting on the white roads, Ellis tried to spot police cruisers and DEP SUVs. There were none. Only a snowplow, its amber lights flashing, its plow raised, scattering salt. He’d exaggerated the official presence to deter Tyro, but the authorities were here and in force, just never when you needed them. They jumped out the moment you unzipped your fly to relieve yourself against a tree you had no idea was on the endangered timber list.

  He turned onto Onteora Trail and parked, worried that if the steady snowfall kept up, he wouldn’t be able to pull out of the spot. Here it was weeks before Thanksgiving, after one of the driest summers in recent history followed by the annual superstorm of the century, and he already needed snow tires. He left on his brights, kept the car running. He didn’t want to give the impression he was staying.

  A man emerged from the trees holding a head-high walking stick. Whitened vapor rose off Tyro in thick wisps as snow whirled down around him. Ellis was afraid of the kid and in awe of him. At that age, Ellis had been studying sixteen hours a day for the bar.

  In camo cargo pants and a khaki buttondown shirt with the sleeves perfectly rolled, his jacket under his arm, his head uncovered, he wore a small pack slung over his shoulders and clipped high on his narrow waist. He flashed his hand, more halt than wave.

  Ellis powered down his window.

  “Cut the lights,” Tyro said. “Let’s not attract attention.”

  Ellis turned off the headlights.

  “Parking lights, too. Come on, Baum, this isn’t amateur hour.”

  “Volvo doesn’t see fit to let me turn off the parking lights without cutting the engine.”

  “S
o turn the damn car off.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I’ve got your payment in the trunk, but I’m not getting in a boat with you.”

  “Mr. Baum, I’m offended. I’ve never even considered hurting you.”

  “Why are we meeting out here like this—and don’t tell me it’s about your replacement. I know she’s arrived.”

  “Want to run something by you,” Tyro said. “It’s sensitive. Need to be sure there aren’t prying eyes and ears. Sides, I like to scare you. It’s easy but it’s fun.”

  “So run it by me.”

  “Let’s fish. I could use a little R&R. I’ve earned it. We’re here and I’m hungry.”

  “We could’ve met for sushi.”

  “It’s a glorious night and it’s—shit.”

  “It is shit.”

  “Hope you wore your tango shoes.” A wash of yellowed light swept through the car and over Tyro, who squinted against the glare. “Just DEP. Not real cops.”

  “DEP’s more real than real cops. He goes through the trunk, we’re done.”

  “Relax, we’re fine. This’ll be a blast.”

  The white SUV parked behind Ellis, blocking escape, flooding them with its high beams.

  “Prick.” After a minute, Tyro, standing at Ellis’s window, said, “What’s taking him? You got any outstanding warrants?”

  “Do me a favor, just don’t say anything.”

  “My record’s immaculate, man. Makes Mother Theresa look felonious.”

  A clean-shaven cop, jowly and ruddy, a face like a just-smacked ass, climbed out and left his vehicle running. Ellis felt relieved, calmed by an interaction with someone heavier and more out of shape than he was. Over a white shirt and a loosed black tie, the DEP official pulled on a green parka but didn’t zip it. Training a flashlight on Tyro, he approached, leaned down and shone the beam of his Maglite into Ellis’s face. “Gentleman. Inclement weather for night fishing on the Ashokan.”

  Tyro said, “We’re diehard.”

  “Two must be. Got permits?”