The Good Kind of Bad

by Rita Brassington

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Yeah. Us. You and me. You had a message for me? I’ve got one for you. The half a mil is for both our lives. If I don’t pay . . . the debt is yours.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ I understood him perfectly. I just didn’t want to believe it.

  ‘He means after he puts a bullet in me. It means after I’m dead, he gets to have some fun with you too.’

  The room was spinning, like I was back on my ceaseless carousel. I was half-asleep, half-hoping I was dreaming. I had the real desire to throw up, and not for the first time.

  I looked at his chest, his bleeding chest. ‘What about this?’ I pointed to his tattoo, the Chicago Metropolitan Police crest slowly swallowed by the blood. ‘There’s a reason it’s there. What about standing up for what’s right? What about justice? When Joe attacked me, you were all about the justice.’

  He laughed. ‘Honey, we haven’t done the right thing from day one. Does anyone if their life, their freedom, is on the line? It’s the way things are, so we don’t become victims ourselves. You need to help me. We need that money. This is real, right here; this is the same man someone said took a finger for each day a guy didn’t pay. If I don’t bring him the money, there’ll be a bullet in my back and one in yours too.’

  I choked. ‘A finger? No. Evan, this has gone far enough. We have to go to the police. We have to tell them what he’s doing.’

  ‘And what’ll you say? What’ll you say when they ask why he’s blackmailing us? Because he knows we killed someone? Because he knows Joe is buried out in the woods? We can’t go to the cops. All we need is the money, to keep him quiet.’

  ‘And you trust him to?’

  ‘More than I trust him not to.’

  The game had changed. Evan hadn’t thrown himself against a wall, he hadn’t done this to himself. And now the inevitable had arrived ‒ I’d been named by Mickey. I didn’t have three hundred grand in my account, at least, not in my main account. It would mean delving into the one with Eagle First, the forbidden five million one. Evan had bled for me, and from the state of his chest, probably suffered some broken ribs too. To top it all off, I now had a price on my head. After Evan, I was next on Mickey’s list.

  ‘I think I can get the money. It’s in a savings account, but it’s not mine, technically. I don’t know if I can get to it.’

  ‘You’ve got to try, honey. Please. It’ll be one million and then two if we don’t get that money to him. Jesus, I am a dead man. I need your help here. I don’t have anyone else. You’re all I’ve got.’

  After punching the wall and swearing the house down, Evan grabbed the full bottle of Glenmorangie whisky from the drinks cabinet and locked himself in the study, leaving me alone in the miasma before I stumbled back to my bedroom.

  By the bed, the pretty pink pill rested in my palm, acutely reminding me of my disturbing history. As I tipped my hand, it scraped the back of my throat. In a lump it congregated, blocking my airway, ready to suffocate me.

  All things considered, I was still going to die a beautiful death.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The following morning I vacated the apartment early, leaving Evan to sleep off his hangover as I headed for Jodi’s on East Delaware.

  He’d emerged from the study at around 6am while I’d lain wide-eyed between the sheets, like I had all night, waiting for Evan to make excuses for trying the wrong door, my door, bathed in the stench of booze and cigarettes; though I was mistaken, that was somebody else.

  In Jodi’s, I ordered pancakes and juice from my window seat, fooling myself the specials menu wasn’t one big blur.

  ‘Hello again. Can I join you?’ As William Edelmann stood smiling by my table, I first assumed he was another hallucination.

  Though when he failed to vanish, I nodded and he slid in opposite me in the booth. Now facing Will once more, it felt like the last few Chicago months had been one intense, bizarre dream. That smile, I’d forgotten that smile. Why hadn’t I noticed it at Evan’s apartment? Why did I only see now how much I’d missed it?

  After a lengthy pause, I managed a rather shaky, ‘Have you ordered anything?’

  ‘Coffee,’ Will replied.

  He sported another tailored suit and waistcoat, this one in a chocolate hue. The hair had been chopped further, but he still had that posh-boy side parting, now with an edge of Twenties Prohibition cool. He looked different. He looked good. Maybe I had been poison to him, and only now with the vines cut could he show his real self, his real potential.

  I’d been remembering an uptight businessman, a spoilt brat of a man. I’d recalled the dreadful parts of our lives together, the mundane tedious days where I’d dreamt of something more. The shopping, the parties, the cocktails, the coke . . . it’d been filler, a lazy sheen to hide the truth. My life with Will had felt empty. But had it been?

  Had wishing for something else made me ignore what we had? As Edmund Edelmann always said of his son, Will was a genuinely nice chap. But I hadn’t wanted nice, and I hadn’t wanted safe. Deep down I knew I hadn’t wanted him.

  Though I’d not only abandoned Will when I’d run, but severed ties with an entire social network, a whole family. His parents, the cast of spoilt, rich-boy bankers, carefree bachelors and their ladies-who-lunch girlfriends . . . they’d all been ripped away when I’d boarded that plane. Upon meeting Joe I’d become someone else, revelling in his day-to-day existence, but if I’d known what was coming, I never would have enlisted.

  Four days had passed since Will’s visit to the apartment, shaking Evan’s hand and telling us how fine he was that I’d left and found another man to marry before he’d found me: when he’d wondered if we still had a future and I’d persuaded him to let me go. If he was still in the city, had he really forgotten me?

  Four days later, and everything had changed.

  I picked up my napkin. ‘What are you still doing here, in Chicago I mean?’

  ‘I’m here on business. Bryson’s has an account with Toby Little on Wacker Drive. There was a problem with the contract I delivered on Thursday so I’ve had to hang around. I’m leaving today. I make a couple of trips out here a year now, to check in. On the business I mean, not you.’

  He hadn’t travelled thousands of miles in an attempt to win me back, I’d been a last-minute addition on his to-do list. My mouth dropped as Will repeatedly cleared this throat, disturbed by my fascination for the balled napkin, but I didn’t care.

  ‘You should get something for that throat,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Isn’t it funny, running into you like this? Of all the gin joints in all the towns . . .’

  It was his stolen line, from when we’d first met. It was my cue to laugh, like I used to, like all the times I’d indulged him.

  He lowered his head, trying to meet my eyes. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Me? I’m fine.’ I was unable to tear myself from the napkin. ‘It’s . . . it’s nothing.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

  ‘Things aren’t going how I planned, that’s all.’

  ‘You mean with Joe?’

  I laughed a little. Things were great with Joe. He was either haunting the apartment or my mind.

  Will’s mouth twitched. ‘Is something funny?’

  ‘Joe is dead.’

  As if on cue, the waitress arrived with my breakfast and Will’s milky coffee. She took an age to serve my pancakes and drizzle over the maple syrup as Will’s mouth hung open wider than a barn door.

  ‘How? When? My god. How terrible for you. You have my sympathy. All things considered, he was a good man,’ Will offered after the waitress departed.

  ‘And how would you know he was a good man?’

  He gave me a curious stare. ‘I know I only met him once, but he seemed like a genuinely nice chap. It’s so sudden.’

  ‘You never met him, Will. Joe’s been dead for over a month.’

  Will’s cup didn’t make it to his mouth.

  ‘That wasn’
t Joe at the apartment, it was Evan.’

  ‘And who’s Evan?’

  ‘He’s . . .’

  ‘Your new boyfriend? Your new boyfriend you pretended was your dead husband so you didn’t have to tell me you’d moved onto a new guy already?’

  ‘No, I . . .’

  ‘You were embarrassed you left Joe so soon, so you made Evan play along and pretend he was your husband? It was too complicated to tell me the truth, right?’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me, Will.’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘Joe kicking me in the face, calling me a whore and threatening to stab me in every little hole was the reason I left. Yes. I left him. I left Joe . . . but he found me.’

  Will looked like a puppet, a Punch and Judy doll. His mouth was moving but nothing was coming out.

  ‘Joe found me, kidnapped me and threw me out of a moving car before . . .’

  I stopped, watching the coffee cup rest between Will’s fingers. Always a gentle soul, his outlook on life was almost naive. Recounting my story in all its graphic detail felt like the shocking corruption of an innocent mind.

  ‘Stop a second. What are you saying? That he did these things to you? Things like that don’t happen to people like us; to good people.’

  I scoffed. ‘What is good? I don’t know. There’re only straight lines in your blinkered view of the world, Will. There always was. You want to know the real reason I left? You were too afraid to cross that divide. You wanted to play it safe. There’s no thrill in safe. Joe and Evan . . . it’s like they became the good kind of bad.’

  ‘I can’t listen to any more of this, I have to go.’

  Will reached for his satchel but I grabbed his arm. He regarded my knotted hair, the eyes that hadn’t slept and the depression I knew lingered about me like a stale smell.

  ‘What happened to you? I mean, what happened? You already look like a different person from Thursday. This is what you wanted to run away to? I know our life together wasn’t thrilling, but at least I kept you safe. You used to be so elegant, so poised. You were so much more than beautiful. When you entered a room, people stopped to look at you. You used to shine.’

  ‘What, and now I don’t?’

  ‘You look different now, like it’s been taken.’

  ‘Like what’s been taken?’

  ‘I barely recognised you today. I had to look twice to believe it was you. This . . . it’s something else.’

  I stayed silent, staring down at my pancakes drenched in too much sticky syrup.

  Then Will leant back on his chair, a wave of recognition passing over him. ‘You’re back on medication.’ It wasn’t a question, it was a realisation.

  I knocked over the salt shaker with my fist. ‘If I denied it, would you believe me?’

  ‘Well, look at you! You’re a mess. Your eyes look like you’ve been rubbing them for days. You look ill, and are you wearing pyjamas?’

  I looked down, tightening the coat over my nightclothes. This time, Will did stand to leave.

  ‘I fly back out this afternoon. You made your decision, and now you have to live with it. And thank you, for helping me make mine too. I don’t know if anything you’ve told me is true, but lies are dangerous things. Please remember that. They’ll choke you ’til there’s nothing left.’

  Then Will walked away, in my greatest hour of need, when I needed him most, and like I deserved. I had been forgotten.

  On my return to the apartment I took clumsy steps, stumbling and juddering as the onlookers stared. I didn’t belong in the good part of town anymore. People didn’t stumble there.

  ‘Hey, you’re home.’ Evan stepped into the hall looking every inch of suave in a tailored deep-navy suit. So much for a whisky fuelled hangover. ‘I was getting worried. You can’t be running off like that. I need to know where you are at all times.’ A pair of new silver-framed glasses dangled from his fingers before they were folded and returned to his shirt pocket. His beaten face appeared tender; a grazed and scabbed cheek, a patch of yellow skin and a plum-coloured bruise to the left of his mouth.

  ‘I only went out for breakfast. Relax.’

  ‘But I made your breakfast.’ He pointed to the kitchen, forcing his smile to remain. ‘Didn’t you see it? The fruit smoothie?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I replied, slipping out of my long coat and hanging it in the hall cupboard.

  ‘You went out in your pyjamas?’

  ‘Yes, I went out in my pyjamas.’ Turning into the kitchen, I slumped down on the nearest chair.

  ‘So, where did you go?’ Evan walked over to the refrigerator after following me into the kitchen. ‘Come on, honey. You can’t be going AWOL now you’re on Mickey’s hit list. We have forty-eight hours, tops.’

  My head rose to a face as blank as my mind. ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before he kills us? That’s what’ll happen if we don’t get the money.’

  Yes, Evan was being blackmailed, yes, he’d been beaten up, but Evan was beginning to sound like my mother, and that was no mean feat.

  ‘Have you heard anything from Zupansky? The police?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, huh? Nothing. Nada. So, if you’d not told Nina, and she’d not told Mickey, I’d be in California by now.’ He leant back against the fridge, folding his arms. After a minute of silence, he must’ve thought better of his words and moved over to the table, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . It’s just we don’t have a whole bunch of time to save our asses. We need to get this done. Why don’t we go to the bank for the money together?’

  ‘Is that all you can think about? The money?’

  ‘In a word: yeah.’

  When the phone began to ring in his pocket, I took an educated guess at who it was.

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ I warned.

  Pulling the phone out, he turned the screen to face me. Sure enough, MICKEY was emblazoned across the screen.

  ‘Let me reason with him, see if I can work something out.’ With that, Evan carried his phone out of the kitchen and down the hall.

  After five minutes of trying to listen from the other side of the lounge door, I pushed it open to find Evan by the fireplace, still with the phone to his ear. His voice was low and his expression grave, before he hung up the phone and put a hand to his bruised jaw.

  ‘He wants the cash tonight. The price is one million now.’

  I felt like I was going to pass out. ‘One million? No, Evan. He can’t do that.’

  ‘He can do what he likes! If we can find half a mil on the bounce he knows we can stretch to seven digits. If we pay that, then . . . you get the idea. It might be another million by the end of the day. He’ll keep pushing until he bleeds us dry. Shit!’ he yelled, kicking over a dining chair.

  ‘Then we don’t pay,’ I murmured.

  ‘And spend the rest of our lives in prison, eating shit from a tray and getting raped in the shower? I’d rather Mickey shoot us, thanks.’

  ‘But one million?’ I asked again.

  ‘Yes. One million dollars. Doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it isn’t going to change. Can you see now, how desperate I am? We have to get to the bank, so I don’t get killed. That all right with you?’

  THIRTY-TWO

  As I arched my neck toward the car window, I watched a clear sky stretch to the city horizon, a glimpse of azure here and there between the buildings.

  I looked at Evan, sitting comfortably behind the wheel of his Lincoln, his eyes hidden by a pair of black-framed aviators.

  ‘Which bank did you say it was? Eagle First on South Derber?’ He shot me a mega-watt smile, almost like he was trying too hard, before rolling his shoulders under his blazer and smoothing down his thin tie, like he was James Bond or something. ‘That’s a cute blue shirt-dress. Better than fluffy pink pyjamas. How about I take you to dinner tonight, to say thanks for saving my ass? I’ll get my zoot suit on and book a table at The Doralia. No expens
e spared for my baby.’ He patted me on the knee, like a dog. ‘What would I do without you?’

  I flinched at his touch before Evan then swung the wheel sharp to the right. Outside the bank’s concrete façade, right in the heart of the city, Evan’s Lincoln stuck half into the road while the horns swerved his rear lights.

  ‘I don’t think you can park here.’

  ‘What’re they going to do, give me a ticket?’

  ‘I don’t feel good, could we please go back?’ The last place I wanted to be was Eagle First, but Evan had been more than insistent we came, threateningly insistent as we’d journeyed down to his car in the garage, and now his fleeting smile was fast becoming a grimace.

  ‘I’ve taken the trouble to drive us down here. We may as well go in.’

  I sat perfectly still, with a hand to my forehead.

  ‘Get out of the car, honey.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Well, we can’t go home without the cash, not if we want to keep breathing.’

  Clinging to Evan’s shoulder, if only to remain upright, decidedly lacking any grace we stumbled up the stone steps and through the entrance of Eagle First, into a vast hall of offices, desks and cashiers. Meeting head on with a wave of sickly peach, it was like the air was dripping with the stuff, turning my stomach inside out.

  With Evan gripping my waist tight enough to prevent escape, I soon tripped over my feet and stuttered to a halt. An unimpressed Evan pulled me over to the side wall, sitting me on the edge of a concrete pillar and crouching down beside me.

  ‘What are you doing to me? The whole bank is watching. Who’d give you any money acting like this?’

  It felt like he was shrinking, or I was growing, or the whole world was in some type of flux. ‘I told you. I need to go home.’

  ‘Look, I’m kinda having a bad day,’ he muttered, with a sharp tug on my arm. ‘So, please, let’s just get this done so we can go back to pretending we’re not about to assume room temperature.’