Hot Scores

by Bud Connell

  This guy Cahoone was some kind of importer all right, and I wondered again if Katya had any inkling that thirty million bucks, give or take, lurked behind the wall. If she did, she certainly wouldn’t have been worried about where the money was coming from to pay for those fancy little seashell designs on her toenails.

  Well, it was then that I had the urge to grab a box or two, seal up the rest and run like hell, never to be heard from again. A million-six would buy a lot of incognito.

  But, I thought of Katya, and she said he’d kill her if he found out about all the damage and me, and all that went on between us. So, my conscience kicked in and I sat down in Cahoone’s big leather chair to think.

  I began to drift toward islands and I could see this picture of myself in cutoffs smiling and paying waitresses and bar tabs with hundred-dollar bills, all the time with Katya in a bikini looking up at me and laughing and leaning on my shoulder. I gotta admit that was pretty damned tempting.

  The buzzing of the front door security system yanked me back into present jam reality. I half ran to the front door, answered the intercom and told the smoke damage cleanup guys to come on up. They did, and they drug in all manner of machines and cleaning gear and went to work, and I went back to Cahoone’s office to sit on guard duty and do some dreaming. Nobody else was going to accidentally discover that mother lode like I did.

  And then I began to think again, something I was doing a lot of the last few days. ––I could take a couple of boxes, leave the crawlspace door open and take off. Anything that was missing could be blamed on the cleanup crew.

  But again, the Katya issue came up. Like she said, he’d kill her and I couldn’t risk that. She was too special in too many ways.

  Back to square one.

  A whole box would be missed. Hell, a stack, or two-thirds of a stack would be missed. But if I took two bills, two C-notes out of every hundred grand batch and carefully resealed each box, I’d have sixty-four thousand. Cahoone could not possibly notice them gone unless he counted it all, and even then he’d think the counting machine was off, or he’d assume whoever packaged up the cash pilfered a couple of bills from each stack. Could I get away with it?

  Hell no, he’s the one who probably counted it into the boxes, and he’d know it had been messed with.

  Back to square one, again.

  At the very least I could borrow the money and figure out a way to replace it as I earned paybacks from my music clients.

  Throughout the day I drifted from island to island as Katya changed bikinis and I kept up the dispersal of C-notes into outstretched hands of widely smiling natives.

  To hell with it. I shook off all my stupid thinking and lofty ideas. I made sure the cleanup guys were in the other end of the condo and I took the box I’d previously opened out from the crawl space and sat it on the edge of the desk. Then I sealed up the rest behind the wall just like nobody had ever shined the light of day on their little brown cardboard asses.

  I could change my mind later.

  27 – One Fine Beaver

  I sat at Cahoone’s big carved desk through lunch and all the way to five o’clock without anything except imaginary seafood and piña coladas hula-hulaing through my head when Milagro, the lead cleanup guy, rapped on the door-facing.

  “Time to go, señor. We come back tomorrow at nine to feenish up, hokay?” Milagro was the guy that put the eye on Katya and spooked her, and right now I was only tolerating him with about half my brain because most of my rapt attention was focused on King Solomon’s mines, although what I was thinking could get me into a whole shit-pot full of trouble.

  “I’ll be right here waiting for you.”

  He flashed a smile by raising his left upper lip exposing a big gold tooth, the second one I’d seen this week. “Where’s the señora of the house?”

  “She’s, uh, out of town.”

  “Are you her husbahnd?”

  “Uh, yeah–uh, no. I’m a worker, just somebody to take care of business.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Uh, no.” Lie, lie, lie. “Never met her. I just work on jobs like this.” What a liar I’d learned how to be. Here I am balling her brains out and setting fire to her house and I can’t even admit I know her. What a Judas.

  “Well, you should get a look, señor. She is one fine beaver!”

  That son-of-a-bitch, I wanted to leap up and punch his gold tooth out. He was now talking about my woman, but I had to keep my cool.

  “Beaver, yeah.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen it.” I spoke before thinking, common for me lately.

  “Huh?” Milagro looked a little puzzled.

  “–I, uh, what time are you coming tomorrow, nine?”

  “Yeah. Nine, señor.”

  “And you’ll be finished by…

  “Three.”

  “Good, goodbye.” Get the hell out before I lose my mind. I’m sitting here guarding thirty million dollars and a woman that turns every head within oogle-distance and she isn’t even here.

  “We see you then, señor. And we require payment in full before we leave. Cashier’s check.”

  “I’ll pay in cash.” Crap, I shouldn’t have said that. His eyes lit up like the Jumbo Screen on Times Square.

  “That’s good, señor! That’s good. Do you have it weeth you now?” Robbery time. Joe Oaks found dead in lover’s husband’s study with a letter opener up his ass.

  “Hell no! I gotta go to the bank tomorrow, just before you finish, and the work better be great.”

  He changed his tune. “Yes, señor. It weeill be, I promise.” He backed out of Cahoone’s study, bowing like one of Prince Charles’s manservants after serving a little who-who.

  “See that it is,” I barked.

  When I heard the front door shut, I bounded out of the all-day chair, picked up the ten-by-twelve cardboard box that I had bravely left out from behind the concealing wall, and found a grocery bag in the kitchen. With loving care I placed the box deep down inside, hugged the bag tightly to my chest and headed for the Toyota presently parked in one of Mr. Darragh Cahoone’s empty spaces.

  I remembered on the way down in the elevator that Katya said he was in Colombia, so he was either laundering drug money or he was legit and he didn’t like banks. Fat chance on the banks. It was drugs.

  If I lived through this crap, it would be fricking worthy-of-being a supernatural, unearthly, blessed by the Pope, mind-blowing miracle.

  28 – New Zippers to Lower

  In the car, my first thought was of Katya.

  No, hell, my first thought was of the eight hundred grand in my watchful care. The stupid bank closed at five, and I’d have to guard the cash with my life until morning when I could get a nice big safety deposit box. Nobody with a brain would leave four-fifths of a million bucks in a car or in a hotel room.

  On the way to the hotel, I had to jog south a few blocks and gas up the Toyota. It was close to dry and it took almost forty-four dollars of go-juice. My wallet was dry, too, except for seventeen bucks, so I reached in the little brown box and helped myself to one of the many new crispy critters bearing Benny Franklin’s picture. Why use a credit card when you’ve got cash? I set the box on the floorboard and locked the car up nice and tight, walked up and got in line at the cashier’s window just a few yards away. The harried teenage attendant behind the glass looked around his cage, probably for his purple pen, but whatever it was he couldn’t find it.

  “Don’t ya have anything smaller?” he yelled and I just shook my head.

  He shoved my fifty-six dollars and change at me and yapped out, “Next!” to the guy behind.

  I’d been buying gas here from the same kid at least twice a week, so you’d think I’d at least get a smile or a thank you.

  I settled in behind the steering wheel and started back up Collins Avenue. I popped a Milk Dud and dialed Katya on her cell phone, or in her closet, and it rang her cell while I was enjoying my caramely little t
reat. She answered and said she was waiting for me in the Carousel and keeping Tylerfrank company. What a doll.

  “Joe, darling, I miss you so much! When are you coming?”

  Ooh-boy. I wanted to come back on that one, but I had to be the gentleman, and especially so since I was temporarily married to the little brown bag on the passenger seat. It was then that I remembered the answer to my immediate problem. There was a good size safe in the closet in my hotel room. I’d stash the cash there and meet Katya in the bar. “I miss you, too, doll. Is Tylerfrank being good to you?”

  “He’s getting me drunk on champagne cocktails and I want my Joey baby.”

  I knew by that admission that I better get my ass to the bar before dear Katya got so juiced that she started looking for new zippers to lower. Shithouse mouse, I was already exhausted from doing guard-duty all day, but I was absolutely sure I could still get it up for Miss Poland of 1996.

  “I’ll be there before Tylerfrank can refill your glass.”

  “I need something filled real soon, Joey baby-man.”

  “Watch the door. I’m walking through it any time now.” My girl needed me.

  “I’m watching–and, o-ooh, I’m getting so dizzy.”

  I hung up and mashed the accelerator.

  29 – A Bird Dog Over a Pork Chop

  Last night was a hot time. I thought I’d died and gone straight to heaven. Tylerfrank had given my phony Polish princess the right amount of glow and we ordered dinner in the room, which we barely touched. I was too busy getting personally touched and vice-versa. I had a hot score in the safe and a hotter score in the bed. If life could get any better than this I didn’t know how.

  Anyway, morning came and we woke up in each other’s arms. I told you I had died and gone straight to heaven didn’t I?

  My wakeup call came with room service breakfast. Then, I had to convince Katya to go charge another new hairdo to which she showed her dimples and didn’t have to be talked into it.

  She left me with a kiss and a long hand-stroke all the way down my pants and I almost took her again. But I had to count out thirty-four grand, six hundred and some change and be on time at the condo. I’d hide the cash in the Toyota and hang around until the condo was finished. Then I’d fake going to the bank and come back and pay off Milagro and his boys.

  +++

  I guess cash made the difference, because they finished early and Milagro proudly showed me around at the great job they had done. The place looked just like it did before.

  I called Milagro into the kitchen and counted out three hundred and forty-six crispy hundred-dollar bills while he alternately watched the stack grow and looked up at my face as I counted them out one by one. I swear he was salivating like a bird dog over a pork chop. Then I dug down deep in my pants for my dwindling wad and counted out two twenties and the final seven singles. We were square.

  “Is this, uh–off the record, boss?”

  “It’s cash, isn’t it?” I shrugged my shoulders and looked at him like he was a nine-year old.

  “I work for you any time, boss!” He grinned wider and wider as he tried to fold the thick stack, but stopped, and with his right hand, slicked back his black hair, and then put half the bills in each pocket. I swear when he stashed the cash he was smiling even broader and his gold tooth had a brighter sparkle. That five-figure windfall would never make it to the company books, of that I was abso-frickin’-lutely certain. Money sure makes people happy.

  I inspected the repair job on the den’s door facing that the firemen busted, and it looked good, like nothing ever happened. Then I stuffed the hole behind the door lock’s strike plate with part of a folded up Milk Dud box so I could push the door open or spring the lock with a credit card in case I needed back in before the big man came back to town.

  Next, I had to get my ass across the causeway to the body shop and check on the cars. Maybe a little extra cash would produce similar results and get things back to normal faster so I could concentrate on finding more promo business and replace the money before one Darragh Cahoone discovered anything was missing.

  First, I had to go to a hardware store and make an extra key to the condo so I could get my ass in and replace the cash when I got it together. That would be tricky, but with my close relationship with Miss Katya herself I would not have any trouble knowing when her fake husband was out of town.

  Now, why did I take an entire box-load of hundreds? Besides having the uncontrollable urge, I’ll tell you why. Cahoone might check a box and find it short a stack, but I honestly don’t believe he’d count the boxes, especially with everything looking so nice and normal. And that’s just the way I planned on making it from here on out. Nice and normal.

  +++

  With the condo’s spare key on my ring, I left Ace Hardware and headed for Precisely the Best Body & Paint Shop west of downtown Miami.

  Emilio walked me to the finish room and proudly showed off the Escalade and the Bentley, and I gotta say he and Carlos know their business. The two super cars looked showroom new, and parked between them was the sweetest little red Porsche convertible I ever saw and which I openly admired.

  “That’s señor Ramon’s Porsche,” Emilio said. “I’m buyin’ it from heem with what you pay me, and he’s getting a new wahn.”

  Partly with my dope-ola money, no doubt.

  Well, that gave me a hot idea, and I had the dinero in the Toyota to back it up. I should’ve pulled this number on Milagro and the clean-up boys, but I was too anxious to get their asses out the building.

  “Say Emilio, if I pay you cash, will that get me a big discount?”

  “Ah, you beehn talking to señor Ramon. Cash money do talk to me!”

  “How much?”

  “Ten percent discount. Off the record, though, no records.”

  “Minus three thousand even.”

  “Hokay, you gotta deal.”

  And just like that, I saved myself three thousand bucks, three big ones, three Gs. I was beginning to like this high finance, I thought to my clever self as I headed for the Toyota and the little brown paper sack with twenty-eight thousand and some change in it. I took it all except three grand, and gave it to a smiling Emilio with instructions on where to deliver the like-new, formerly hopelessly wrecked Cahoone Bentley and the blue hairs’ Cadillac Escalade. I was beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel, and I hoped it wasn’t another train heading straight at me. No, I thought, the worst is over.

  30 – Overheating Body Parts

  I casually drove back toward the Beach and took a few deep breaths of salt air warmed by the late afternoon Florida sunshine.

  Biscayne Bay looked better than I’d ever seen it, but I felt empty. Something was missing. Someone, I meant.

  I needed my girl, and I called her closet knowing it would ring her cell, since she was still hanging around my ancient hotel and did not yet know the good news.

  She answered in her coolest accent and transported me to Warsaw. I almost forgot what I wanted to say.

  “The condo’s finished. The car will be delivered tomorrow, and everything’s back to normal. What d’ya think about all that, doll face?”

  “Oh, Joe, you are the most precious man ever. How do you do so much so well?”

  I wanted to say something cocky, like it comes naturally to a winner, but I still had a loose end, a big one, to tie up before I could start bragging about my unsurpassed expertise.

  “Tell you what, tonight we celebrate. Where are you now?”

  “Tylerfrank is feeding me little caviar snacks and chocolate martinis, and I’m waiting for you, just waiting for you, Joe baby.”

  “I’m just a mile away.”

  The celebration began in my head.

  +++

  And a fine celebration it was. We didn’t wreck a car or set a building on fire. All we did was wreck ourselves on good booze; and, of course, we overheated a few body parts.

  When I blinked awake, Katya was on her side looking at me
with her dimples showing, and deep– the kind of smile on a woman that makes you want to reach over and take her. But the smile I thought was sweet was something else. She had something on her mind that she needed off.

  “He called me yesterday.”

  “Who?”

  “Darragh, of course. He said he was tired of traveling and that he was looking forward to spending a few weeks at home.”

  I wasn’t prepared to discuss that one. So I just laid there until words formed. It took awhile.

  “Joe––?”

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “I dunno. This is all new for me.” She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “I think maybe we play the game until we both maybe know what we want to do.”

  “He doesn’t know anything, does he? What would he want to do anyway?”

  “I’m talking about you and me, Joe. Until we know what we want to do. You and me.”

  And that’s when the dead seriousness of this whole thing hit me.

  31 – In a Family Way

  The next morning I took Katya on a tour of her newly refurbed condominium and she let out ooos and ahhs at the fresh, clean, new look. The repaired Bentley was delivered while we were there and she just smiled and shook her head and kissed me several times on the cheek. I gotta admit, I’m a softie for that kind of… well, you know.

  “I’m gonna sell you as my cousin.”

  “What?” I had no idea what Katya was talking about.

  “To Darragh, I’ll tell him you’re my cousin so you can be around, until we make up our minds what we’re going to do.”

  “Your cousin, from Poland? You gotta be kidding, I’m not a good actor.”

  “Oh, for cripes sake, he knows I’m from Detroit.”

  “So I can be Joe Oaks from Detroit, your mother’s older sister’s kid, or something like that.”