I stepped closer to her. She didn’t flinch away.
“Okay, so you developed some real hatred for humanity, and a mission of revenge. Me, I’m just in it for the money. I can’t really grok the getting-even part. But Stan’s out to get even, too. Nancarrow screwed him over pretty bad—a couple of years in jail. But you don’t see Stan hating life because of a bum break. Just the opposite. This mission has made him even more stoked for success. How are you even going to appreciate getting even if you can’t take joy in anything else?”
She shook her head and squeezed out the last tears. “Stan took the hit when he was all grown up. It’s different for kids. But happiness is not part of the plan, Glen. I just want revenge, pure and simple. To hurt Nancarrow bad. I can’t hurt him as much as he hurt me, but maybe hurting him even a little will help me feel better.”
I got a little disgusted then. I wasn’t going to change Vee’s mind or disposition, dispel her monomania, or heal the wounds of a lifetime. I couldn’t even start, because she wouldn’t let me or anyone else inside her fortress. Maybe some of my disdain for her willfully self-punishing stance came through in my tone.
“All right, then. You tell me that’s how things stand, so I have to accept it. You’re like some unfeeling robot bomb with one purpose—a heat-seeking missile with one target. What the hell are you crying for, then? Cowgirl up, for Christ’s sake, and let’s get the goddamn job done!”
Vee stood silently for a moment. “But that’s just it. My part is finally coming up. I’ve got to whore myself out to Nancarrow. Make him want me. Seduce him and get him off his guard. Help convince him that buying this place is the best deal he’ll ever make. That’s how I’m going to earn my share of the money.”
“Right. So?”
“So, I’m not sure I can do it.”
I thought I saw where she was heading, but I had to pretend not to understand. “What do you mean? You’re morally opposed to acting like a whore?”
“No. I don’t think I can fake it well enough. I—I haven’t slept with anyone in three years. I’ve forgotten how.”
“It’ll come back to you,” I said. “I didn’t think I remembered how to con anyone, after getting caught and sitting in jail for a while. But so far, I’ve managed to fool two parole officers, several bank managers, and practically the whole town of Centerdale. I believe I can fake out Nancarrow, and so can you.”
“I just don’t know—”
I laid both hands on her shoulders. “Look, Vee, you are a beautiful, sexy woman. You can do this. Nancarrow will be all over you. Trust me.”
“But I—”
I pulled her against me, and my hands slid down her back and onto her ass. I smelled her unperfumed animal scent. She clamped her arms around me, and her slick, salty lips mashed mine hard against my teeth. Her tongue drove against mine, and I shifted my right hand under her cotton shirt, onto her breast.
Everything went fast from there.
Bent forward with her palms and left cheekbone against the rough bark of the pine, her capri pants and underwear around her ankles, Vee took me inside her with a sharp cry that I prayed no one else could hear—a visceral sound full of mingled exultation and despair, rage and resignation, satisfaction and resentment.
If Nellie hadn’t been pumping the urgency out of me for weeks now, I would have lasted about ten seconds. But I managed to bring Vee to an evidently satisfactory climax before abandoning all control.
Enervated, I sagged forward onto her for a few moments before I recovered and realized how uncomfortable this must be for her, braced against the hard, unyielding surface. But as she had done all her life, she bore the weight without complaint.
Disengaged, we put our clothes back on in silence. I was realistic enough not to expect some momentous realignment or epiphany on her part. I didn’t imagine myself that spectacular a lover. But I did imagine us going forward on some new and friendlier basis. So I was unprepared for what Vee next said, in her old familiar tones of inviolable self-assurance.
“That helped. It really did. I think I can do it now. Congratulations. You’ve ensured the success of the plan—or at least removed one roadblock. But if anyone ever hears a single word about our little refresher course, well, just remember this.”
The tip of something sharp pricked the skin of my belly. I looked down and saw a thin blade in Vee’s hand—a stiletto, perhaps.
“I have this in case Nancarrow gets wise. I’ll have my revenge one way or another. But I can use it on anyone.”
“I, uh … kiss and tell? Moi?”
The blade vanished as if it had never been there. Vee ran her fingers through her hair to straighten it. “You leave first. I’ll see you around.”
The well-lighted grounds, full of revelers, seemed like some other dimension—an alternate reality where everyone was well adjusted and understood how to enjoy life. I tried to fit in.
I met Nellie, who had left her family at a picnic table with plenty to eat and drink. The happy Firmino clan quickly became the nexus of an ever-changing swirl of partygoers, all of whom seemed intimate friends of the family. I suspected that they would be partying deep into the night before settling down into the several rooms of the lodge we had reserved for them. I put away plenty of booze, until all the lights acquired a soft nimbus. At intervals, I saw Vee, being social in her own formal way, never giving off the faintest clue to what had just happened.
The party accelerated, and I witnessed things I never anticipated. Or did I only imagine, for instance, bank officer Harriet Kilmer twerking with Kirwan Allen?
When the bonfire was finally ignited, I found myself hollering wordlessly with the rest of the spectators, as if we were pagans at some turning of the seasons.
The next thing I knew, someone was shaking me awake in the warm daylight on the other side of my closed eyelids. For a startled moment, I had a delusion that it was Vee, come to slit my throat.
But when I opened my eyes, with Nellie snoring softly beside me, I discerned, of all people, Ray Zerkin, who had entered our room with all the naive impropriety that was his nature.
“Mr. Glen, you have to look now. Mr. Nancarrow—he’s all over our honeypots!”
PART FOUR
31
The following week brought us all together to discuss the crux of our plan one last time before it was set in motion.
Nellie, of course, was not privy to this crucial meeting. Just the five of us coconspirators sat crammed into the efficient but comfy stand-alone cabin that Stan and Sandralene had chosen all those weeks ago when we first got here. That day seemed an eternity ago, on the far side of a welter of crazy activity. And now, with the imminent arrival of Nancarrow’s scouting party, that vanished day also seemed a time of uncomplicated ease. I would have liked to go back there, before meeting Vee and Nellie set me up for such a storm of feelings. Before the actual moment when testing our harebrained scheme against our opponent would surely reveal all its flaws. I recalled a favorite saying of the professor in my trial practice course: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” But returning to that innocent time was no more possible than running my whole criminal life in reverse, spinning the clock back to the day I passed the bar exam and my folks took me to dinner at the fanciest restaurant they knew. (It was a place I would sneer at only a few years later, in the midst of my new high-rolling lifestyle.) And now here I was, in a cabin with four people I had known for barely a month, about to set in motion an intrigue there would be no coming back from.
Stan and Sandralene sat side by side on their bed. Vee and Ray had taken the only two chairs (upholstered in the tasteful burnt orange selected by Aphrodite Fabric Creations). That left me to park my butt on the corner of the tiny writing desk that Brenda Bethune had cloned for each cabin.
Stan said, “Okay, I’m gonna go over this once more just to be sure everyone knows what’s what. We ca
n’t fuck up. Everyone has to do their special thing perfect the first time, because we ain’t gonna get no do-overs. Understand?”
We all nodded.
“Okay, let’s hit the high points again. That sucker Nancarrow took the bait. All them big-ass graphs and numbers on the computer prove it. Thanks to Ray and Glen for bringing that off. And that phone call we got from Senator Almonte clinched it. Algy’s rarin’ to ride—thinks this deal will earn him some serious dough and get him in good with major-league players like Prynne. But despite him being so hot to trot, you’re not gonna see the big dog himself up here right away. I know him, and he’s always mighty cautious. First, he’s going to send some guys to scope things out. I’m betting he sends Rushlow and Digweed, ’cuz they’re his best men, but it could be someone we don’t know.”
I thought back to that distant-recent day when we left the city for the mystery lodge, watching Nancarrow leave his office building, flanked by the two toughs named Buck Rushlow and Needles Digweed. I didn’t relish the thought of them on the premises.
“Whoever he sends, you’ll be able to spot him, because he’ll stand out like a nun in a cathouse. He’ll be asking his questions all subtle-like and scoping everything out, so’s he can report back whether things are like they appeared online. Your job is to give the impression that you’re just trying to earn an honest buck with this place. Nobody knows nothing about Steve Prynne and his casino plans. That part comes later. We’ll tip our hand at just the right moment. But for now, you all have to look like you’re living out your life’s dream by investing in this place and catering to a bunch of squalling families and boozy fishermen.”
Vee said, “Having Little Miss Sunshine at the front desk will bring that off.”
I bit my tongue not to respond to Vee’s gibe. I knew she didn’t really take to Nellie. I couldn’t call it jealousy, because nothing existed between Vee and me after that one anomalous incident under the beech tree. Vee’s disdain was merely part of her soured take on life, her attitude toward everyone in general. I only felt sorry she had to express it, and wished I could make her see life in a different light.
“Yes,” I said, “Nellie is totally into her new position and doing a bang-up job.”
That morning nine days ago, when Ray barged into my hungover sleep with his news, things had instantly kicked into high gear.
Once Nellie was awake and sensible, I told her to start the wheels going for hiring staff. She was stoked, and got out her phone right away. The applicants, many more than we could actually hire, arrived in a borrowed school bus twenty-four hours after getting the call. It took just a day to vet them, and another couple of days to bring them on board with paperwork. Luckily, though I had never done any payroll or bookkeeping before this, I could decipher the government requirements easily enough. Withholding forms and immigration checks and all that. My law school professors would have winced to see me using my expensive education for such menial tasks.
The Bigelow Junction Motor Lodge now had a staff of twelve: six in the kitchen and dining room, a groundskeeper, a handyman, two registration clerks (one for a twelve-hour day shift, one for the twelve-hour night shift), and two housekeepers. We avoided hiring a lifeguard, because swimming season was all but over, and we posted the newly graded and resanded beach with several swim at your own risk signs. I had to memorize a lot of oddball Caboverdean names to go along with a set of happy faces, and was still trying to keep my Nouhailas straight from my Evandros.
Since our workers could not feasibly make the long commute between here and Centerdale every day, I had engaged in some illegal discriminatory policies and hired all young unmarried people. Then we had bought two used double-wide trailers, set them up with water and electrical connections (Tighe and DiPippo, happily at your service), and dubbed them the male and female dorms.
Ray had cooked up a homepage for the lodge, advertising our relaunch, with booking apps and rates. I had contacted local media outlets—radio and newspapers, no television—and placed several ads. We quickly hit 70 percent occupancy (ten of our fifteen rooms and cabins, thanks to the residual goodwill and happy memories of the lodge). With three units taken by us, that left only two open, and I planned to keep them empty for Nancarrow’s scouts.
The lodge now had a payroll of about sixteen thousand per week, offset somewhat by our paying guests. The rents from our year-round tenants had come in. All in all, figuring in utilities and other purchases, we were operating splendidly at a substantial loss. Uncle Ralph’s line of credit was getting its workout. But who cared? The facade was in place for Nancarrow’s inspection, and that was all that mattered.
Once all this was in place, I went to Nellie and told her I was making her the manager of everything.
“Oh, minha nossa! I can’t believe it, Glen! This is my most important job ever! I’ll do such good work! You will be so proud of me, and the lodge will earn us all such big money!”
She’d thrown her arms around me and planted a few dozen kisses all over my face. I felt like the worst jerk alive. Yes, the lodge will earn us big money, and you’ll share the loot, Nellie. But it won’t come the way you think.
Interrupting my reverie, Stan continued with his coaching. “Great. Everything’s running smooth, and this part of the deal will be a piece of cake. We just have to look innocent to draw the rat into the trap. Then, bang-o! Everyone has to look innocent except for you, Vee. If I know Algy—and I do—his boys will be keeping their eyes open for local trim, as part of their regular marching orders. Nancarrow’s got no main squeeze back home, so far as the grapevine tells me. But even if he did, he’s always on nooky lookout whenever he’s on the road. So you’ve got to impress his scouts. Come off sexy and available. Not like no hooker or bargirl. More like the bored-widow type.”
Vee did not seem upset by these instructions. “I understand perfectly.”
Stan turned to Ray. “You dig what this is all about, how you gotta not let anything slip? I just want you to stay in the background and work on those assignments we gave you.”
Ray had three tasks before him. He had a certain document he had to fake up, using some dark-web resources if necessary to create an air of authenticity. He had to establish for us a secure, untouchable foreign bank account that could accept without question the large wire transfer that we expected Nancarrow to pay us with when he took over the property. And he had to work up a watertight bill of sale for the lodge and get Uncle Ralph’s signature on it, via FedEx. (Uncle Ralph and a tearfully happy Suzy Lam had bidden us goodbye a couple of days after the night of the bonfire.)
“Mr. Stan, you know I don’t like talking to strangers, especially bad ones. And with the postseason games coming up, I am highly engaged most of the time.”
“Okay, Ray for the win! I guess if we got all our ducks in a row, it’s time for me to take a hike.”
Stan stood up and hefted a loaded backpack from the floor at the foot of the bed. A small tent and sleeping bag were strapped to the outside.
He couldn’t stay here and risk being seen by Nancarrow or his hired guys. Neither could he relocate to Centerdale, because then Schreiber would have to be informed, and with what excuse? So the plan was for him to camp out, unseen and alone, not too distant from the lodge, on the far shore of Nutbush Lake.
We all trooped outside.
“Remember,” Stan said, “I’m just fifteen minutes away. Send Sandy for me if you need me. Don’t phone me, because people get careless with their phone talk, and you could get overheard saying something compromising. She knows the spot. Send her even if you don’t need me, with some hot food. She can make it a goddamn conjugal visit, too, just like in minimum security.”
Stan grabbed Sandy and kissed her extravagantly. Then, with no warning, he hugged me! It was like being grabbed by a bear that had bitten into a can of body spray.
Setting me down, he said, “Thank Christ that godda
mn Paget ain’t here to see us hugging, Glen boy, or he’d think we was queer after all! All right, good luck to us all. We’ll be spending Algy’s dough before he even knows he’s been screwed.”
Stan strode off like some ghetto Johnny Appleseed, and the rest of us went to work.
32
Nellie looked quizzically at me, and I had to remind myself of her sharp native intelligence. She might be unschooled, but she was far from dumb.
“Stan wants to meditate? What’s he gonna meditate about: his stomach or his dick? Or both? Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy. But he doesn’t seem like Buddha material to me.”
“Maybe ‘meditate’ is the wrong word. He told me he just wants some quiet time.” I ransacked my mind for something convincing. “Prison does strange things to your head. Sometimes, you get used to being in a cell by yourself, and crowds make you crazy. This has been a stressful ordeal, getting the business off the ground. You have to admit that. I think he just needs some Stan time.” Inspiration struck. “Also, I think he and Sandy had a little argument. Maybe he figures he can make her miss him this way.”
This bit of gossip intrigued Nellie. “An argument? What about?”
“I don’t really know. I keep my distance from that relationship. It could be like Clash of the Titans, where the mortals get squashed. You’ll have to ask her.”
I knew that with Nellie tied up, hour by busy hour, with managing the lodge, I could get to Sandy first and warn her about my invention of an argument between her and Stan. Let her come up with some likely theme.
The Big Get-Even Page 15
