The Big Get-Even

by Paul Di Filippo

I did not endorse or dispute her harsh calculus.

  “Ray tells me you’re going to make over your identity. Will you promise to stay in touch with us?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I can’t say right now. But that’s the whole point. You never know what the future will bring. We might need to talk someday.”

  “Not too likely.”

  “Still, what could it hurt?”

  “That’s another thing you can’t predict.”

  “Just consider it, okay?”

  “Consider it considered.”

  I wanted to hug her at least. But with one arm barricading her chest (fingertips clamped under her opposite armpit) and the other holding the lit cigarette in front of her face like a red-tipped spear, there was no possibility.

  I went back to the room. I figured Ray could use my expert help hitting the refresh button.

  When the money showed up on the screen, the victory seemed both real and unreal. Ray quickly followed through as we had discussed earlier, and the money was hidden in a place where Nancarrow could never find it.

  I went back to the front office to tell Nellie some more lies.

  “Nell, I just got a phone call from Nancarrow. He’s coming back from Centerdale, where he went to straighten out this mess with Stan. Everything’s all settled. But he wants to see me for one last talk. Would you mind giving up the office again?”

  “No problem, Glen! I got to help Bethinho with one of the rowboats that sprung a leak. He figures we might as well give both of them some love. They been used hard.”

  The Escalade did not even park in the assigned area but pulled even with the door of the office. Nancarrow got out alone from the back seat while Rushlow and Digweed remained in the idling vehicle.

  “You have your money,” he said inside. “I took it out of petty cash.”

  Right. Although Nancarrow surely had plenty of illicit funds hidden away, his net worth was well known, and twenty million represented a significant hit.

  “Hand me that contract now.”

  I passed it over.

  “As the lodge’s new owner, I am giving you twenty-four hours to leave. And please do not attempt to convince any of my employees, such as your very competent manager, Miss Firmino, to leave with you. That would be actionable under the relevant noncompete clauses of this very agreement. I am relying on the staffing to continue just as it is while I return to the city and prepare to negotiate with Prynne. No sense in shutting down a functioning enterprise prematurely. In fact, the sustainability of this operation will be one of my bargaining chips with Vegas.”

  “Well, Barnaby, I can’t say we’re parting as friends. But I hope there’s no real hard feelings.”

  “Since when does a winner experience hard feelings?”

  We did not shake hands. I watched him go to Vee’s unit and spend about ninety seconds inside.

  Then the Escalade drove off, taking Barnaby Nancarrow out of our lives forever.

  50

  We were celebrating Nancarrow’s monumental gullibility, and his stinging loss of twenty-one million dollars, with his own champagne. He had left two unopened bottles behind in the room after last night’s orgy. We chilled them down quickly in a big ice bucket and were now relishing the sweet taste of victory.

  He had driven off only twenty minutes ago, and already he was receding in importance. In a year from now, lolling on a Caboverdean beach, I would have a hard time even remembering what our benefactor looked like.

  Inside the stand-alone cabin that Stan and Sandralene had occupied from the first (lately shared with Nellie during Stan’s exile), five of us together made for cozy company, as we had when we assembled at the start of this caper. Was it only a few days ago that Stan had been lecturing us on how to bring this off? And now it was over. The time involved seemed both compressed and infinite.

  It felt good to be rich again. I hoped Stan and Vee were enjoying their revenge as well as their wealth.

  Stan clearly was. In rumpled clothes and with bits of leaf and twig in his dense beard, he could nonetheless have been attending the Oscars as the odds-on winner for best actor. He was sitting on the bed with a grinning Sandralene, one arm around her waist, and letting out a series of war whoops.

  “Shhh!” I cautioned. “You’ll have the whole staff over here.”

  “Can’t help it, Glen boy! This is the first time in my life I had a win this big.”

  Vee had not given in to any such displays—at least, not so it showed. She sat meticulously sipping her champagne, one leg crossed over the other knee, the airborne foot oscillating nervously. She had reverted to her natural style and appearance.

  “Well, everything’s relative,” she said. “And fucking over Nancarrow and sitting on his money feels better than if we had failed.”

  Ray had made his way through half a glass of bubbly and seemed bemused. Bobbing in place in his chair, he started to hum some disco tune I vaguely recognized.

  Stan was drinking his champagne from an eight-ounce tumbler. After polishing off his third, he wiped his mouth and stood. “Okay, people, this has been big fun. But we can’t hang on here. We’ve got to get going. I don’t really imagine Nancarrow is going to find out he’s been shafted for days yet. But the quicker we’re abroad, the happier I’ll be.”

  He turned to me. “You know what this means, Glen. Time to get your honey bunny up to speed.”

  Maybe it was only the champagne, but I felt confident of success.

  “I’ll go get her.”

  When Nellie entered the cabin, she went first to embrace Stan.

  “Ay, grande homem! It’s so good to have you back. The place was not the same without you. Now we will have some real fun and make the lodge spin.”

  “I hear ya, Nell. There’s plenty of fun ahead, you got that right. But maybe not the exact way you think. Tell her, Glen boy.”

  If I had had to be a con artist with Nancarrow, that applied doubly now. Using all my guile and affability and powers of persuasion, I laid down the cover story more or less as Stan had concocted it for me.

  The only way we had seen to resolve Stan’s troubles, I explained, had been to sell the lodge to Nancarrow. It was too complicated to give all the details right this minute. But we had made a good profit, and the new owner promised to retain all the Caboverde help and run the place just as if it were his own baby from the beginning. Now it was time for Nellie and me to retire to her beautiful islands, yada yada yada.

  I laid down the patter as smooth as locally sourced butter. At first, she looked confused and hurt. But as the prospect of living a life of leisure began to open wide in her mind, she started to come around.

  “Oh, minha nossa, this is all happening so fast! Glen, I want to show you Cape Verde, I do! But I was building this place up into something fine. Not just for me, but for everyone and the whole area. You think it will really be okay without me?”

  I put an arm around her. “Nellie, there is no one as good as you for this job. But there are plenty of people who are almost as good. Look at it this way: you’re opening up a new employment slot for another Caboverdean. The lodge will keep right on improving. And we can always visit whenever we want, just to make sure.”

  “All right, then! I am so in!”

  Ray Zerkin spoke. “But, Mr. Glen, none of that is true.”

  The silence that instantly suffused the room was as thick as cold oatmeal.

  Nellie looked worried and uncertain. “What’s he mean? What do you mean, Ray? Glen, tell me he doesn’t know what he’s saying!”

  Stan stepped forward. “Listen to me, Nell. The kid is right. We’ve been stringing you along for your own good and your own comfort. But you may as well hear the real deal.”

  Stan spilled it all.

  Nellie’s face looked like a china plate that someone had taken a hamm
er to. “You mean Nancarrow don’t really care nothing about this place? He just thinks the land is worth money, and so he’s going to throw everything down the toilet when he learns about the scam?”

  “Well, now, no one can rightly say for sure …”

  The next second, I recalled the original pretext for bringing Nellie here: to give us language lessons. Evidently, she was now trying to make up for lost time. Because the flood of high-speed Portuguese invective that poured forth from those sweet lips was a semester’s worth of instruction. I could not catch more than a fraction. I heard “monte de merda,” “vai para o caralho,” “cabrão,” and “olho do cu.” And then she was out the door.

  I started to go after her. Stan stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

  “No use, bro. You got to let her calm down. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

  And then we heard a car engine roar to life, followed by the sound of gravel spinning up against metal.

  I was out the door just in time to watch the Impala fishtail down the drive.

  I looked weakly at the others, clustered in the doorway. “She had the keys to run some errands.”

  Stan took charge. “Okay, this is no problem. So she’s going home to Mommy and Daddy for a shoulder to cry on. Big deal. Once we’re set up in the islands and she sees what her choices are—go down with a sinking ship, or hang out in the lap of luxury—then you’ll have her sitting on your knee again. I promise you, Glen boy. Have I ever been wrong about anything before?”

  My heart was broken. But I wasn’t about to throw away everything we had worked so hard for.

  “I guess you’re right …”

  “Damn straight I’m right! Okay, now that we got the soap opera stuff out of the way, let’s think about how we’re going to work this. There’s no way the five of us are going to cram into Vee’s bug. So this is what we’ll do. Vee will drive me into Centerdale and I’ll rent a car for us. It’s only three o’clock now. We got plenty of time. With luck, we’ll all be on the road by seven.”

  It seemed like a decent plan. But I was so distraught over losing Nellie, even temporarily, I couldn’t really focus on it.

  “All of you wait out here for me. No splitting up. I just gotta shave and shower. No one would rent a car to me looking like this.”

  Stan went into the cabin’s tiny bathroom. The champagne had lost its appeal for the rest of us. We sat listening to the shower run. Eventually, Ray said, “Did I do wrong, Mr. Glen? I know we had to lie to Mr. Nancarrow, but I thought the rest of us were all friends. Vee taught me never to lie to my friends.”

  “No, Ray, you did the right thing.”

  The shower stopped, and I could hear Stan humming. I had to admire his unflagging enthusiasm, although I could not match it.

  About forty minutes had passed since Nellie’s stormy departure when we all heard a car pull up outside, skidding on the gravel.

  “It must be her!” I said, and hurried to open the door.

  I was knocked flat by Buck Rushlow, bowling through like a human tornado, with Needles Digweed right behind him. Some steps behind them, moving at a more leisurely pace, was Barnaby Nancarrow, dragging Nellie by the wrist.

  As I got shakily to my feet, I focused on the compact but lethal-looking pistol in Rushlow’s fist. I had always figured him for a .45, but being on vacation, he must have felt safe traveling light.

  Stan came out of the bathroom then with just a towel around his waist. “Hey, what the—”

  Without a second’s hesitation, Rushlow conked Stan on the side of the head with his gun, which proved heavy enough for the job. Stan went down like a poleaxed steer.

  Nancarrow came into the cabin with Nellie and shut the door. The little room was packed tighter than a sardine mosh pit.

  He addressed me first. “Mr. McClinton, your girlfriend was most naively informative, in hopes of persuading me to do the right thing. For that, I am most appreciative.”

  Nancarrow took a moment to size up the rest of us.

  “Haul Mr. Hasso up onto the bed. Put the boy and the other two women inside the bathroom. But leave Miss Pomestu and Mr. McClinton where they are.”

  Sandralene, Nellie, and Ray wisely put up no resistance to being stuffed into the tiny windowless bathroom, and Digweed locked them inside.

  Stan looked woozy, rubbing his head where Rushlow had bashed him. I grabbed some ice from the champagne tub, wrapped it in a cup towel, and had him hold it to his seeping wound.

  “Mr. McClinton, allow me to congratulate you. And kudos to my old employee and schoolyard pal Mr. Hasso as well. Who would ever have believed that either of you had the imagination or the skills to bring this off? Your ruse appealed cunningly to all my ambitions. All my buttons were duly pressed. Well played. Not many people can say they bested Barnaby Nancarrow, even temporarily. But now this mildly amusing game is over. I will take back my money, and that will put an end to our intercourse.”

  Nancarrow smiled as he said the final word, and leered at Vee. “I don’t mean to minimize your part, either, Miss Pomestu. You played your role quite well. In fact, you showed definite talent as a whore.”

  Throughout the invasion, Vee had exhibited a superhuman unflappability. I don’t think she even jumped when Rushlow barged in, although I had been in no position to observe. Now she stood slowly up, drawing the attention of Rushlow’s gun barrel.

  Her voice seemed like a steel rod. “That is not my name. My name is Varvara Aptekar. And you caused the deaths of my mother and father.”

  Nancarrow actually blanched then before recovering his aplomb. But he didn’t show quite the same seamless sangfroid as before.

  “Little Vee. How you’ve grown! If only your worthless parents could still be around to witness their daughter’s accomplishments. I’m sure they would be immensely proud.”

  Vee sat stiffly back down, saying nothing.

  “Okay, Glen, you are going to go online and transfer my money right back, this instant. After that, I will allow you all to depart, although, naturally, I will insist that all of you bid my state goodbye forever. If I ever learn that you are anywhere within a hundred miles of these borders, it will not go well for you.”

  Somehow, I found the courage to say, “I won’t do it—that is, I can’t. The money’s locked up tight behind a lot of crypto.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You have access to it for yourselves, I’m sure. That means you can send it back to me.”

  “And—and what if I refuse?”

  “Mr. McClinton, I have never found it necessary to have any of my rivals killed. But I will admit that I have caused several of them intense pain. Oh, not by my own hands. I leave that to Mr. Digweed.”

  I looked to Needles. His scarred face split into a wicked grin as he reached into a coat pocket and took out a long, narrow metal case. He opened it to reveal a glittering array of slender chrome lances, like the kit of some satanic acupuncturist.

  “Mr. Digweed is capable of causing intense pain and even crippling outcomes while leaving barely a mark. I have known eminent physicians who were unable even to determine the original points of entry when their patients dragged their shattered bodies in. Now, do I get my money back, or does Mr. Digweed start his, um, probing?”

  Stan leaped up then, aiming to tackle Rushlow. But his injury slowed him just enough for Rushlow to get off a shot. In the tight space, it sounded like a lightning strike. Nellie screamed from behind the bathroom door as once again Stan went down like a sack of potatoes.

  “That was most entertaining,” Nancarrow said. “But now back to business. Needles, please proceed.”

  Digweed made a show of selecting just the right lance and examining it for any imperfections, then brought its tip up to my eye. This close, it looked like a twenty-penny nail.

  Then, from the corner of that same imperiled eyeball, I caught a blur of moti
on—Vee, hurling herself onto Nancarrow.

  I jumped back from Digweed, who was now intent on helping his boss but was stymied by the flailing whirl of bodies in close quarters.

  Vee was on Nancarrow’s back, with her legs wrapped around his waist. She had her left arm around his throat, and the stiletto in her right hand.

  As the blade arced down toward Nancarrow’s chest, Rushlow’s gun boomed again. The bullet hit her upraised arm somewhere between elbow and shoulder, and she fell to the floor to join a white-faced Stan Hasso. Blood was everywhere.

  Incredibly, Nancarrow seemed more concerned about his appearance than anything else. He brushed himself off, straightened his clothing, then turned to Digweed. But before he could order the torturing to commence, a voice outside boomed from a bullhorn.

  “This is Sheriff Broadstairs! I want everyone in that cabin to come out with your hands up!”

  “Someone must have called the cops,” Digweed theorized. “Just our luck, this douche musta been close by.”

  Rushlow peeked around the drawn curtain. “It’s just Andy of Mayberry, all alone. No backup. Guess he figures that toy-soldier SWAT helmet he’s got on is s’posed to scare us. What a fucking idiot! Let me take him out, Mr. Nancarrow. There won’t be any witnesses. The rest of these people are holed up tight, and it’s pretty dark out there. Even if they claim they saw our car here, we can bullshit our way out of it.”

  Nancarrow’s composure seemed to be cracking a bit. Vee’s assault was probably the first time in years he had found himself in personal danger.

  “Do it. Then we will depart with Mr. McClinton, to continue this discussion elsewhere.”

  Rushlow eased the window open just enough to poke the gun muzzle through. He took his time aiming, then squeezed off a shot.

  “He’s down! Right in the chest! I’ll finish him before we leave if I hafta.”

  Digweed had put away his kit and now had my arms pinned behind me by the wrists, both of which fit into one big hand, leaving the other free to bash me if needed. He marched me ahead of him. Rushlow followed, with Nancarrow bringing up the rear.