by Tod Goldberg
“If Big Lumpy’s ghost comes back and wants to hurt you, I’ll be there to stop it.”
“Oh, you’re a ghostbuster now?”
“He’s dead,” I said. “And even if he wasn’t, he would be soon.” I explained to Barry the condition Big Lumpy was in when last I’d seen him. And then I decided it was best to tell him the rest of the story, from the Web site to Brent’s deal with Yuri Drubich, to Big Lumpy’s role in this and, finally, that Henry Grayson was now in a safe location. The more I told him, the more pale he became.
“You know what would be nice?” Barry said. “If one day you just called me and said you needed to launder some money.”
“It’s a more complex world than it was when you first started in business,” I said. “You should be happy you haven’t been left behind.”
“I guess so,” he said. He examined the letter again. “Well, this Iceland thing is a pretty good idea. After their banks collapsed in 2008, they’ve been hungry for American dollars, so they relaxed a lot of their regulations. You ever seen one of their bills? The krona? It’s got one of the ugliest men in a wig on it I’ve ever seen. It’s like a drag show you can buy food with.”
“That’s not helpful in the least,” I said.
“It’s still a good place to stash money,” Barry said,
“as long as you don’t mind a low interest rate. The American dollar to the krona is almost as bad as the euro to the krona, which makes it not a great place to invest, but a good place to stash.”
“So you can take care of that?” I said.
“Sugar could do it.”
“What else?” I said.
“How much does Henry Grayson owe?”
I pulled out a handy Excel spreadsheet Big Lumpy had been kind enough to provide me-which also included Nate’s debts-and gave it to Barry. He examined it for a few minutes. “This guy should not bet,” Barry said. “He shouldn’t be allowed to make any decisions whatsoever, really.”
“Hence the conditions,” I said.
“It says here he’s already paid off a couple hundred thousand and he still owes, what, another four hundred thousand?”
“And that’s not with any further vig,” I said. “Big Lumpy cut off the vig at his death.”
“That’s proper,” Barry said. “Can’t take it with you, I’ve always been told. It says here Nate owes… two hundred dollars?”
“Correct,” I said. “A purely symbolic gesture by Big Lumpy.”
“You sure he’s dead?”
“Sure.”
“Well, everything he lays out here, I can get it all set up for the kid. Big Lumpy’s got some guy who’s still breathing who’s taking care of it from his end?”
“You know an Asian guy named Monty?” I said.
“Wears white all the time?” Barry said.
“Yes,” I said. “Where do you know him from?”
“Couple years back he was in a hot stone massage class with me at the junior college. We bump into each other periodically on the circuit.”
“The circuit?”
“You know, galas on the Fish that are just veiled pyramid schemes, casino yachts run by Cubans in the Biscayne, parties with Jay-Z, that sort of thing. He’s an ex-something-supersecret.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what I got from talking to him.” I thought for a moment. “You took a class in hot stone massage?”
“It’s a fascinating art, Michael,” he said. “You learn all about pressure points that can be manipulated for the release of tension. It can be a very useful technique for a single man.”
“Or someone who needs to torture people periodically,” I said.
“No, there’s an oath you take that you’ll never use the art for ill. A whole creed you have to say before class. Something about using might for right. I remember that part.”
“He’s Big Lumpy’s guy Friday,” I said. “What’s his reputation?”
“You work for Big Lumpy, perception is that you’re best of the best, but that could mean best at breaking arms or puncturing lungs or whatever.”
“I’m asking if he’s someone to worry about.”
Barry thought for a moment. “Worry? No. At heart he’s a gentle soul. He liked to paint these very small poems onto his hot stones. Said they gave the stones emotional power, too.”
“You think you can work with him?”
“I can work with anyone,” Barry said, “provided their money is green.”
“You’ll be compensated.” Across the street, Sugar was already dodging oncoming traffic again as he made his way back to Odessa. Maybe, I thought, remembering my impressions of Big Lumpy, some kids never did get the “look both ways” thing down pat. “I need you to be Henry Grayson,” I said.
“Doesn’t Yuri want to kill him?”
“Yes,” I said. “But he also wants to kill Fiona, so you’d be in good company.”
“You’re not making this sound any more appealing,” Barry said. “Besides, I’m not old enough to have a nineteen-year-old kid.”
“No?”
“No,” he said. He didn’t sound all that convincing.
“How old are you, Barry?”
“That’s confidential information,” he said. “You can’t ask me that.”
“I’m going to guess forty-three,” I said. “Normal person, by the time they’re forty-three, they’ve got a kid.”
“I’m not a normal person and I’m not forty-three,” he said. “Do I look forty-three?”
“Right now you look about fifty,” I said. “The Crocs aren’t doing you any favors.”
“These pants make me look fat,” Barry said.
“Pleats do that,” I said.
“What would I need to do?”
“You’d need to come with me and Sam and Brent to meet with Yuri. While you’re there, you’re going to apologize for doing some untoward things and then we’ll all go home.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” I said. “Essentially.”
“What does ‘essentially’ mean?”
“Won’t know until it happens,” I said. I poured Barry another cup of tea and pushed it toward him. “Put some honey in it. It will calm you down.”
Barry took a sip and grimaced. “The honey only makes the bitter things stick together,” he said. “So this Brent. What’s he like?”
“Shrugs a lot. Says ‘like’ every other word.”
“Is he worth all of this trouble?”
“He’s a smart kid. Big Lumpy thought he was the real deal, obviously. He’s had a bad life,” I said. “I think everyone deserves a chance for a better one. Maybe this will give him that.”
“In the end, it’s just money.”
“You saying money can’t buy happiness?”
“Personally,” Barry said, “I derive great pleasure from money, but you know how kids are today.”
“I guess you’d know better than me, being closer in age to most children,” I said.
Barry didn’t respond to that. “And I’m to portray his father?”
“Yes.”
“Will I get a script?”
“Do you need a script?”
“I did a bit of theater in high school,” Barry said. “Thurber and the like. So I at least need to know my motivation.”
“Not to die,” I said.
“That’s easy enough,” Barry said.
Sugar finally navigated his way across the street, the parking lot and the tea shop and found his seat back at the table. He still had the fifty-dollar bill in his hand, along with a flyer for some event.
“Bro,” he said, “you won’t believe what I found out.”
“That this isn’t a pedestrian state?” I said.
“Our boy is gonna be all up in some black-tie shit tonight.”
Sugar handed me the flyer. Across the top it said THE CONSULATE OF MOLDOVA SALUTES ITS PHILANTHRO-PIST OF THE YEAR. In the center of the flyer was a huge photo of Yuri Drubich, his lovely wife and three
lovely children. There was even a dog in the photo. Some kind of spaniel with a very pink tongue. It was suitable for framing or turning into a Christmas card. At the bottom of the flyer it said that the evening’s black-tie celebration would begin at eight p.m. and that Drubich would be honored for his “tireless efforts in expanding technology to the children of Moldova.” To reserve a table of five was a mere $10,000, though ten people got you a discounted rate of just $15,000. Checks payable to the Drubich Trust for Electronic Education.
I showed the flyer to Barry. “You have a cheap tuxedo?” I asked.
“If I wear black tie, I go all-out,” he said. “I prefer Armani.”
“We’ll get you a nice rental,” I said.
“Nothing with ruffles,” he said. “My senior prom I went ruffles and I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“Do you have any bad checks you’d like to pass?”
“Cashier’s or certified?”
“Let’s go cashier’s. More cachet. Make it from InterMacron Industries.”
“You’ll need to give me some time,” he said.
“How long?”
Barry looked at his watch. “Best guy in town is just down the street,” he said. “Factor in schmoozing and gossip, I can be back in fifteen minutes.”
“Go,” I said.
“How much you want the check for?”
I took a sip of tea and looked out at the street. The number of consulates in the same building as the Moldovan Consulate would make things difficult security-wise, I suspected. Bringing guns inside would be nearly impossible, yet I knew for certain that Yuri’s security detail would be fully loaded, which presented some problems. If we met privately with Yuri and his men were forced to kill us, it would be easy to cover up under the guise of an attack on the Moldovan Consulate by a burned spy, an ex-Navy SEAL and an Irish terrorist; Brent and Barry would be more difficult to explain, but they were also two people not many other people would miss, just as Barry feared. Plus, I’d need to find a place to stash Sugar where he couldn’t hurt himself or others.
This would take some planning, but I had some ideas.
“Make the check for a hundred thousand,” I said. “That should be enough money to ensure the opportunity to make a toast at this event, don’t you think?”
“Why not make it a million?” Barry said.
“Yeah, boy,” Sugar said, apparently feeling that he was allowed to speak again. “Go big or stay home. That’s how I roll.”
I hated to agree with Sugar. But even a clock is right twice a day. “Do it,” I said and Barry was up and gone.
It was just after noon, which meant I had a little less than eight hours to make it all airtight. I texted Fiona with some of the new details and then called Sam.
“Thank you for calling InterMacron,” Sam said.
“We’ve had a slight change of plans,” I said.
“Don’t tell me I learned all of this for nothing,” he said.
“No,” I said, “you’ll need it.” I told Sam about the event honoring Drubich that evening and about the generous donation I thought InterMacron should make in his honor. “How do you feel about doing a little public speaking tonight?”
“As long as they have an open bar,” Sam said, “I’m prepared to speak at length on any number of subjects.”
13
College boys, Fiona thought, were the worst of their species. Aesthetically, there was very little wrong with a twenty-one-year-old male at the peak of his conditioning, his body healthy and able to withstand punishment. Fiona was happy to admit that. And she couldn’t resist staring at a few of the particularly lovely specimens as she walked with Brent across the campus of the University of Miami. In fact, if college boys could just learn to keep their mouths closed and their bodies toned, they’d be perfect chew toys for a woman like herself. Fun, disposable, not terribly annoying.
But when they opened their mouths…
It was as if they forgot they had mothers, or sisters, or even beloved pets, since surely they didn’t treat their dogs as poorly as they treated women. What base form of human, other than boys in college, thinks it’s appropriate to walk up to a woman and ask her if they could “get with that”? Or ask if she was “down for it” or if she’d be interested in “getting your drink on with me at the frat house” as if any of those invitations weren’t little more than veiled requests for sex?
It was just before noon and Fiona was escorting Brent to lunch before she’d be forced to sit through yet another class. She’d spent the previous two hours and thirty minutes in a lecture hall listening to some crusty professor in a tweed jacket telling complete and utter lies about history, to the point that she’d finally raised her hand to ask a question, but fortunately for the old cud behind the lectern, he didn’t bother to look up from the text he was reading. Fiona would have let him know, in exacting detail, how American education was apparently predicated on misperception.
It was more than she could take, really, listening to the professor butchering the past. He’d gone on some long-winded jag about how the British had attempted to oppress their colonists living in America and that’s what started the Revolutionary War, a war that was scantily discussed in the history books Fiona recalled, though her memory was very precise on the minimal material she was taught about the issues related to that particular war: the colonists were a wanton band of separatists, an issue she was well versed in, but unlike the Irish, they didn’t have the advantage of being right.
It was just madness, though it did help her to understand Michael a bit more (and, to a lesser extent, Sam), who wore their patriotism like both a badge and a shield. A false history can do that to you.
And if suffering through the indignity of that experience wasn’t bad enough, the boy sitting beside her for those one hundred and fifty minutes of revisionist drivel kept “accidentally” brushing his hand along her thigh. She’d intentionally sat in the back of the lecture hall, a few rows behind Brent, so that she could keep the entire room in her vision at all times. It was set up with stadium seating, but the two doors into the hall were at the bottom of the room, on either side of the lectern stage, so from her vantage point in the back Fiona would be able to take out anyone who might wish to do Brent harm long before he or she laid eyes on him.
So Fiona found a seat next to a boy in a light blue Oxford shirt, with combed and parted Republican hair and a fair complexion. The kind of boy she presumed called women “ma’am” and men “sir” and probably grew up in a city like Savannah, Georgia, and was filled with Southern courtesy and wouldn’t try to look into her purse and thus wouldn’t have questions about why she was on campus with a chrome-plated Glock.
She sat down beside him and he smiled at her wanly-the kind of smile she’d expected him to give her. A gentle declaration that she was, indeed, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, but also that she was so far out of his league that he’d just let her know, by showing his perfectly white teeth, that he’d be no bother to her at all.
For the first ten or fifteen minutes of the dreadful lecture, the boy beside her bounced his left hand off his knee as if to a beat in his head. It was annoying, but far less annoying than listening to Sam chew, for instance. And then Fiona felt a slight… nudge… on the middle of her right thigh. She looked down and saw that the boy’s pinkie was touching her; she scooted over a bit.
“Pardon me,” the boy said quietly and without even turning to look at Fiona.
“No problem,” Fiona said.
Then, five minutes later, he did it again and Fiona scooted again.
“I’m sorry,” the boy said. This time he turned to look at Fiona and flashed a more active smile. He got his eyes involved. “Listening to him drone on makes me jumpy.”
“No problem,” Fiona said, because she truly empathized with the boy.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” he said.
“I’m just sitting in,” she said.
“Cool,” he said.
Thirty minutes later, Fiona felt a bit more pressure on her leg and looked down to see that the boy was essentially resting his pinkie and his ring finger on her thigh.
“You have really soft legs,” he said. “I thought I was touching my chinos.”
Fiona leaned toward the boy and the boy leaned toward her, taking up most of the middle distance with what Fiona now discerned was far too much cologne. Polo or something else meant to make nineteen-year-old girls swoon in their Dress Barn rompers.
“If you touch my leg again,” Fiona said, “I’m going to dislocate your fingers.”
“Dislocate,” he said and gave her that smile again. “I like that word. I’m sorry. I’ll move them myself if you like. You don’t need to dislocat e them.”
Fiona got the sense the boy didn’t know what “dislocate” meant, since he was still trying to flirt with her. Another failure of American education. She’d be happy to show him the word’s precise meaning.
A few minutes later, Fiona felt a tapping on her knee-this time it was clear that it was intentional. Fiona decided to give the boy the benefit of the doubt that he wanted something from her and thus was tapping her with a purpose. Maybe he needed a pen? Some paper? A punch to the neck?
“Yes?” Fiona said.
“You smell really great,” he said.
“It’s called sweat.”
“Then your sweat smells like lavender and freshly cooked beignets.”
Some people, really, didn’t deserve the gift of speech.
“I am trying to concentrate, if you don’t mind,” Fiona said, because she just didn’t want to create a scene in the lecture hall. She might overreact and cause a compound fracture and no one wanted to see that. Plus, she didn’t want to be splashed with blood.
“Would you like to get a beer sometime?”
Did no one have common decency anymore?
The boy had left his index finger on her knee, so Fiona reached down and very casually sprained it by shoving her thumb in between the last joint and the fingertip. The boy let out a little yelp and then immediately shoved his finger into his mouth and scurried out of the classroom. The professor still never looked up.
