The Bad Beat bn-4

by Tod Goldberg

  “That would be my call,” I said.

  “What did he mean about the killing part?” Barry asked.

  “Language barrier,” I said. “Nothing to be worried about.”

  “He’s actually very polite,” Fiona said. She didn’t bother to wait for the last guy to be dragged off and instead stepped over the man with the crushed chest plate and headed down the hall toward the door Yuri left open. The rest of us did the only thing left to do: We followed her.

  16

  When you’re a spy, it’s important to believe the worst about everyone. That way, you won’t be surprised when they do something awful.

  The problem, however, is that you never expect the best, never exactly plan for the contingency of decency in the face of strife.

  So when the five of us walked into the salon room Reva had reserved for us to shake Yuri Drubich down in and actually found him sitting there with his family, just as he said, it took all of us by surprise. His wife was there, as were his three young children, two boys of about twelve and ten and a girl no more than five. They were all dressed to the nines and looked… happy. Like normal people. Each child had a PSP and was quietly blowing up the world, presumably, but it was hard to tell since they also all had white earbuds in.

  “Hello,” I said to the wife. “I’m Dr. Bennington.”

  She smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “She doesn’t speak or understand English,” Yuri said. “She grew up in Moldova and never had the need to pick it up.”

  “And your children?” I asked.

  “Kids,” he said, “they know a little. What they learn in rap music.”

  “They are adorable,” Fiona said and they really were. “It’s a shame you won’t be able to play catch with them for, what, three months?” Fiona looked around the room with great exaggeration then. “I don’t see your associate Gina.”

  “You burst her eardrums,” Yuri said. “And broke her jaw.”

  “She shouldn’t have used my lipstick,” Fiona said.

  Yuri didn’t respond to this. Instead, he walked up to Brent and stood in front of him without speaking for a long time before finally saying, “You are the one?”

  “I am,” he said.

  He turned to face Barry. “And you,” he said, “you are the gambler?”

  “I’m getting help for that,” Barry said. “And technically I am the loser.”

  “You took a great deal of my money and delivered me shoddy goods,” Yuri said. “Did you think you would not pay a price for this?”

  “Technically,” Barry said, “you blew up my office and all of my notary equipment.”

  Barry’s motivation of “not to die” seemed to be giving him plenty of hubris in the situation. Either that or he was emboldened by seeing Fiona take out three men with literally one hand.

  “I did,” Brent said. “And I am sorry. I was trying to do the best for my father, just as your own children probably would for you.”

  And a boy becomes a man, I thought. I also thought: This is one of the oddest exchanges of government-or about-to-be government-secrets I’ve ever had.

  “This Web site, you design it?”

  “Yes,” he said and then he lied and said, “Mr. Lumpy and Dr. Bennington provided me with the technical expertise.”

  “But it was you who absconded with my money and attempted to defraud me?”

  Brent shot a glance in my direction and I nodded once.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And why don’t I kill you?” Yuri asked.

  “Because,” Brent said, “I’m not worth anything to you dead. I’m still alive, there’s always a chance I’ll have something else to sell to you.”

  “I could use someone like you,” Yuri said. “You have any interest in working for me?”

  “He works for me,” Sam said.

  “Hmmm, yes, the lumpy one,” he said. “So you are the brains, Lumpy, and you are also the muscle? I have heard all about you. People in Miami, they say your name like it is a threat.”

  “I believe you’ve met my muscle,” Sam said. “She can be very persuasive.”

  “And which of you did I speak to on the phone?” he asked.

  “That would be me,” I said.

  “You are smart,” he said. “If you weren’t, you’d be dead.”

  “You found my phone?”

  “You have small operation here,” he said. “But effective. Lessons to be learned.” Yuri looked at his watch. “I have twenty minutes before I need to receive my guests.” He sat down at the table where his wife and children were. “Please, have a seat, show me what you have. Convince me Kineoptic Transference is what will make me even richer.”

  We all sat down as well and Sam set up the laptop in front of Yuri and began running the PowerPoint presentation Big Lumpy had prepared, the whole time providing a running dialogue on the different aspects of Kineoptic Transference, starting and stopping the presentation when Yuri had questions. Yuri would periodically whisper something to his wife in Russian and she would nod, or grimace, and once she said, “Nyet” in a tone that seemed to suggest a level of frustration one reserved for one’s children.

  When it was over, Yuri crossed his arms over his chest and exhaled slowly. “My question,” he said. “This works?”

  “Of course,” Sam said.

  “And you?” Yuri said to me. “You who are a doctor, no?”

  “Scientist,” I said. “It works. Our government is too beholden to Verizon and AT amp;T to consider it now. Which makes it gold for you. You take this to Europe, to the Middle East, you’ll be a billionaire.”

  “How much?” Yuri asked.

  “I told you,” I said. “Six million.”

  “Crazy,” Yuri’s wife said. She pushed herself back from the table then. “Six million dollars for wind.”

  “I guess she does speak English,” I said.

  “I turn that into six billion,” Yuri said.

  “You make your own choices,” she said. “This woman breaks your wrist and you let her live. These men come here and sell you air and you let them live. This is a disgrace.” She clapped her hands in front of her children’s faces. “Come,” she said. “We have guests to meet.” She turned to her husband. “I expect you in ten minutes. My father? My father would kill these men. And this woman, too.”

  You can spend your entire life in covert operations and never feel as uncomfortable as when you see a couple air their dirty laundry. That Yuri’s wife did it in English meant a simple thing: She wanted us to hear it, too.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Fiona said, “I’m happy to tell your wife that you put up a valiant fight.”

  Yuri glared at Fiona but didn’t say anything. In fact, he sat there at the table in perfect silence for three full minutes before he finally said, “I send you four million dollars now. If the technology works as you’ve shown, I send you another two million. If the technology fails, I kill you all. Slowly.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Sam reached into his bag and pulled out the three zip drives that contained all of the information Big Lumpy had provided and slid them across the table. “You’ll find what you’re looking for there.”

  “And I need the death certificates,” Yuri said. “My associates at home will want to know that I am not getting soft, even on children and degenerates. A head or a pancreas would be better, but they are both difficult to get through customs. Official paperwork from the United States is much easier to believe. I can’t be losing my reputation for violence, can I, Mr. Lumpy?”

  “Maybe don’t let anyone talk to your wife,” Sam said. He produced the death certificates for Brent and Henry and handed them to Yuri. He put the certificates and the zip drives into the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket, as if they were nothing at all, as if they did not cost him four million dollars. As if they were not about to cost him his freedom. “It’s why I’ve stayed single.”

  “Hmm, yes,” Yuri said, “I’m sure
that is the most compelling reason.” He looked at the death certificates and then at Brent and Barry. “How does it feel to be dead?” He frowned slightly even though neither of them responded and it occurred to me that seeing father and son together in such a situation-even if they weren’t really father and son-might be causing this strange melancholy. Or maybe it was because his wife was waiting in the hall, waiting to call him a failure again. “You have an account ready for a transfer?”

  “Yes,” I said. I slid the computer over to Barry and he pulled up the banking information.

  “You trust him with your banking?” Yuri said.

  “Like you said,” I said, “we’re a small operation.”

  Yuri shook his head but gave Barry his account information. Two minutes later, four million dollars had been transferred from an account in Ukraine to the account in Iceland that Big Lumpy-the real Big Lumpy-had given us.

  Yuri Drubich, one of the most dangerous men in the world, at least by reputation, stood up then. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I am to be honored for my philanthropy. It would be a shame to be late for my own coronation.” He then walked past us all and out of the salon without another word. He opened the door and his daughter stood there with one of his beefy-looking security guards. Yuri put his good hand down and his young daughter grasped it and off he went to be celebrated.

  I watched them walk down the long hallway, past the circus going on between the kitchen and the ballroom, and then heard a roar of clapping as he turned the corner and disappeared from view. Tonight would probably be the best night of his life and the very worst.

  I detached my cell phone from the magnet in my pocket and called Monty. “The money is there,” I said.

  “I see it,” he said.

  “Make your deductions and transfer the remaining amount to this account.” I gave him the numbers for the account Barry had set up for Brent.

  “And what is Mr. Grayson’s decision regarding his money?”

  “You know,” I said, “why don’t you ask him?” I handed the phone to Brent. “It’s for you.”

  I walked out into the hallway and Fiona, Sam and Barry followed me.

  “We should get in there,” Sam said, “so I can make my splash.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s got his kids here. We’ve done all we need to do with him. He’ll be in prison by tomorrow morning.”

  “Michael,” Fiona said, “he’s a terrible human being. Why not have the gratification of him being photographed with a huge check from a company that is going to be found to belong to Big Lumpy? The shame alone will be enough to drive him mad.”

  “Because,” I said, “those kids who sat in there with us thought we were his friends. His daughter doesn’t know anything and she’ll remember tonight as beautiful. I’m not the person who’s going to ruin that. I’m not willing to make that choice just for spite.”

  Brent came out to the hallway and handed me back the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “He says he wants the money,” Monty said. “And that he accepts all of the conditions.”

  “Then he wants the money,” I said.

  “It will be sent within the next twenty minutes,” Monty said.

  “When are you going to let the government know what Yuri has possession of?”

  “How long will it take you to leave the consulate?”

  I thought about that little girl holding her father’s hand and said, “An hour.”

  “An hour? Are you dining?”

  “We just might be,” I said.

  “Where is the information?”

  “He has the zip drives in his jacket pocket and we’re leaving the laptop computer Big Lumpy provided in the salon down the hall from the ballroom.”

  “Very well. Then I will let Mr. McGregor’s contacts know of the information Mr. Drubich has in approximately forty-five minutes. Chew quickly,” he said and was gone.

  I clicked my phone off. “Let’s go,” I said.

  “But… when does the shooting start?” Brent asked.

  “It’s not always like that,” I said.

  “I thought there was going to be a bunch of explosions and that maybe someone would die,” Brent said. “Isn’t that what being a spy is all about?”

  “Not if you’re any good,” I said.

  Epilogue

  Life, it turns out, is full of repetition whether or not you’re a spy. There are some things that happen over and over again irrespective of who anyone thinks you are, really. So I wasn’t surprised when, a few weeks after Yuri Drubich was found to have purchased “state secrets” as part of a long-range espionage ring involving a rather charismatic (and dead) former government agent named Mark McGregor, I found myself sitting in the waiting room of my mother’s podiatrist’s office while she had her corns shaved. My mother had a standing appointment for the second Tuesday of every month with Dr. Klinger, and if I wasn’t being held at gunpoint somewhere, or didn’t have someone held at gunpoint somewhere, she expected me to take her.

  I was surprised, however, when Big Lumpy walked in and sat down beside me, oxygen tank, white-on-white outfit and all. He looked as awful as he had when I’d seen him last. Maybe worse.

  “You’re not dead,” I said.

  “Not yet, no,” he said.

  “Did you follow me here?”

  “No,” he said, “Dr. Klinger is my podiatrist. The last time I was here, I saw your mother, so I made the appointment after hers.”

  I didn’t bother to ask him how he knew who my mother was. Clearly, he knew more than the average dead person. “Are you dying?”

  “Surely,” he said. “And according to the coroner, as you found out, I’m certain, I already am dead.”

  “Brent has been keeping your grave clean,” I said. “He’ll be disappointed to know you’re not inside it.”

  “As will many others,” he said. “I understand he is already doing very well at MIT.”

  “He’s a smart kid,” I said.

  “What is he going to do with the money?”

  “I suspect he’ll give it away. That’s what he told me, anyway. His father’s care isn’t cheap, but other than that, I don’t see him blowing it on strippers and blackjack.”

  “Then he’s missing out.” Big Lumpy smiled and I could see that his teeth had large gaps in them, a common side effect from intensive and long-ranging cancer therapy.

  “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?” I asked.

  “You owe me two hundred dollars, cash, for your brother.”

  “I thought that was just in the game, Mark,” I said, using his real name to let him know I was onto him.

  “A debt is a debt,” he said, “and I always collect.”

  “I do want to keep my eyelids,” I said. I took out my wallet and pulled out all of the cash inside-it totaled sixty-seven dollars. “I’m going to need to owe you a hundred thirty-three dollars.”

  He took my money, counted it and then stuffed it into his pocket. “We’ll call it even,” he said.

  “How much time do you really have left?”

  “Maybe I live out the year. But probably not.”

  “So why fake your death?”

  “I thought,” he said, “that I might live like a normal person for the rest of my days. And no one was going to let me do that as the ruthless Big Lumpy. So I’m back to being Mark McGregor for what I’m calling my coda. You should try it, Michael.”

  “I’m already who I am,” I said.

  “Really? Helping the helpless? That’s you?”

  “It is now,” I said.

  A nurse came into the waiting room and called Big Lumpy’s name, so I helped him out of his chair. “For how long do you intend to do this?” he asked

  “As long as it takes,” I said. I extended my hand and Big Lumpy shook it weakly. “Enjoy the rest of your life.”

  “I already have,” he said.

  My mother came out a few moments later, a shoe in one hand, a ci
garette in the other. “The doctor takes a perverse joy in my pain,” she said.

  “I doubt it, Ma,” I said.

  “I thought I heard you talking to someone. Was it that strange man in all white?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Who was he?”

  Who was anyone, I thought. “His name,” I said, “was Mark McGregor. He was a bad guy. He was the one who got Brent in trouble with the Russians, in a roundabout way.”

  “And you just let him go?”

  “No,” I said. “He’s dead.”

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