by Rich Leder
“What do you do, Jenny Stone?” Danny said, putting his hand out.
She shook his hand and said, “I bring dead people back to life.”
HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SUMMER
Mike Miller stared at the numbers on his computer and drifted back in time. Back then, he was studying to be an accountant, taking the exams and gaining accreditation, and the numbers were exciting to him. They represented blazing profit potential, the hidden secrets of cost efficiencies, the hopes and dreams and lives of the people who built things and bought things and saved things and sold things and made the world turn. The numbers stretched into infinity, and Mike coaxed from them their mysteries of success. The Numbers of Life, he called them.
But with the economic meltdown and the ensuing slog of recovery, particularly in the building sector, they had become The Numbers of Ruin.
“You listening, Mike?” Judd Martin said. He was fifty-five years old and was pacing the floor in Mike’s office, expressing extreme displeasure at how those particular numbers on Mike’s screen were ruining him.
“You don’t like the numbers,” Mike said.
“I can’t finish the third building,” Judd said, angry enough that spittle had pooled in the corners of his mouth. He was a big, loud man with a red-ruddy complexion and was the general size, shape, and color of one of his brick office buildings. He carried construction dirt in on his work boots and left it on Mike’s floor.
“Because you drew down the loan on the third building to finish the second building,” Mike said, “because you drew down the loan on the second building to finish the first building because you didn’t tell the bank your true construction costs up front, so you didn’t borrow enough money to complete the project in the first place.”
“If I’d told them what it cost, they wouldn’t have given me the loan.”
“Then you could have and should have redesigned your plans to lower your costs or raised your rental projections. Instead, you lowballed the bank to get the money.”
“Your numbers are killing me,” Judd said. He had sold his soul and built three office buildings in Studio City and was about to lose them—and everything else.
“They’re not my numbers. They’re your numbers. I’m your accountant.”
“You’re an asshole with bullshit numbers.”
As Judd paced, the numbers on Mike’s computer went away, and his screensaver appeared. It included the time and date, eleven thirty-five in the morning, June 21, with a note that said Happy First Day of Summer, the market reports—stocks and bonds and various interest and mortgage rates—the business world headlines, and the weather.
The weather got his attention because every local and national weather forecaster, The Weather Channel, the National Weather Service, and the Old Farmer’s Almanac, had predicted the hottest summer of the century for Los Angeles, with temperatures averaging well over one hundred degrees for the next three months. Today, Tuesday, the first day of summer, it was one hundred five before noon. There was no humidity, sure, but as Mike’s mother often said, “There’s no humidity in an oven either, but if it’s a hundred degrees in there, I’m not going in. Hot is hot.”
Exactly, Mike thought. On one side of the table were thousands of climate scientists around the world, with no common language other than the science of weather, who had looked at the facts and agreed that global warming was real and the result of mankind’s mad march. On the other side of the table were five guys who denied it. Whether or not you accepted the science, you couldn’t ignore the numbers at the table.
“Hot is hot,” Mike said.
“What?” Judd said.
“We both know that’s not true,” Mike said.
“We both know you’re going to do something about it,” Judd said. He was an asshole and a bully.
“What do we both know I’m going to do?” Mike said.
“Change the numbers so the bank will float me through the summer,” Judd said.
Mike turned away from his computer screen and caught his reflection in the window. He was forty years old, but he looked ten years older than that. His hair had thinned, and sitting in a chair behind a desk in front of a computer, day after day for thousands of days, had made him pale and pasty and doughy. Mirrors were murder on Mike these days. He was five eight and one hundred eighty-five soft and squishy pounds. Had he really let himself go like this? He had. He was twenty-five pounds overweight and without definition—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
His marriage was twenty-five pounds overweight too. He thought he still loved Marcy and also thought she still loved him, but the two of them together had let their marriage get as pasty and doughy as Mike. Stale and pale is what they were.
This was the summer they were going to change all that.
He had said just those words to Marcy, and they had agreed and conspired to send the girls to the grandparents (Marcy’s parents) in Paramus, New Jersey, for eight weeks, the entire summer, so they could work on themselves and their marriage. Mike was going to get back in shape, like when he put himself through UCLA, studying nights while working days for Paul Bunyan Tree Service, clearing lots and removing stumps, pruning healthy trees and cutting down dead ones, all with a badass chainsaw he’d bought from the company when grad school started, partly so he could do tree work later in life but mostly to remember these good old days, when he was tan and happy and in the best physical and mental condition of his life.
His daughters were headed to Paramus, and this was his summer of rejuvenation. When Marcy got back in a week—she was flying the girls there and staying for a visit—they would renew and rekindle their romance while he did pushups and sit-ups, jogged loops around the neighborhood, gave up cheeseburgers and milkshakes and fries, dropped twenty-five pounds, and redefined his body, his marriage, and his life.
“The bank will not float you for the summer.”
“They will, if you make the rental income from buildings one and two look like it covers my nut.”
“Building one is less than forty percent leased. Building two is less than twenty percent leased.”
“I can produce leases to fill both buildings.”
“But you can’t produce the tenants to fill those leases.”
“How would you know? You’re an accountant; you never go to the buildings.”
After UCLA, when he’d passed the exams and attached the letters CPA to his name, he took a job as a junior accountant at Wasserman and Waddell, a Santa Monica accounting firm that focused on construction companies and mortuaries, a pairing, Mike learned, that had more in common than first met the eye.
This was his fifteenth year at Wasserman and Waddell, and he was a senior accountant, up for partnership.The firm traditionally added partners in the summer, and Stan Wasserman himself had told Mike that, all things being equal, this was Mike’s summer. Partnership would mean more money, which he needed just like everyone else in the world, but more importantly it would mean that all his effort and loyalty had been duly noted and appreciated and rewarded, an ego stroke he had earned (and needed) after more than a decade of managing mortuary accounts and real estate developers who might as well be dead.
He had told Marcy what Stan had said about this being Mike’s summer and had seen a spark in her eyes, the first such spark in a long time. Partnership was an important piece of the puzzle as far as repurposing his marriage, and Mike had decided right there to record the pending Moment of Partnership on his iPhone as a gift to his wife.
“I’ve built my career on hard work, accuracy, honesty, and proficiency,” Mike said. “I’m not changing the rental income numbers so you can scam the bank on Wasserman and Waddell stationary.”
Judd moved to the credenza across the room. Mike had covered it with framed photographs of his family. Judd lifted one, a shot of them all on the Santa Monica Pier, and said, “If you change the numbers so the bank floats me two mil, I will make a two hundred thousand dollar cash donation to the Miller Family fun
d, and no one will know.”
That’s a lot of money, Mike thought, definitely enough to overlook his hard work-accuracy-honesty-proficiency credo. His girls, Bethany and Julia, were fifteen and thirteen. College was on the horizon—two tuitions at the same time. Plus, his house needed a new roof and landscaping. And the girls would want cars. Two hundred thousand dollars was close to the exact amount of money Mike needed. Tantalizingly close. Hypnotically close. He could change the numbers. That’s how close.
No one will know, Judd had said. That was true. Mike was a master with the numbers. He could massage them in such a way that the two hundred thousand was invisible. He could magically input the rental income from the new leases, and the bank would fund the construction shortfall. Bankers never went to the buildings either. And if anyone ever did find out the leases were fraudulent, then that would be on Judd. Meanwhile, the signed leases would be locked in Mike’s file cabinet. No one will know.
The problem for Judd was that he had chosen to lift a photograph that included Mike’s mother, Linda.
She was seventy-two and still working as the bookkeeper at El Caballero Country Club. She had raised Mike and his brother without any help from their father, who had left town early on to live a nefarious life in New Orleans. She had taught Mike everything he knew about hard work, accuracy, honesty, and proficiency. Her DNA was strong in him. She was a saint. That’s how he thought of her. What would she think about Judd’s two-hundred-thousand-dollar offer to cheat the books? He asked her in his head and included the part about no one ever knowing. Her answer was: “You’ll know, Michael. You’ll always know.” Saint Linda.
At that exact moment, Mike’s assistant, Bonnie, opened the door and stuck her face in the room. She looked like her dog had just died.
“Your mother’s in Northridge Hospital, Mike. She had a heart attack. You need to go now. I’ll reschedule your meetings. I’m so sorry.” And then phones were ringing in the background or somewhere, and Bonnie went to answer them or something.
Mike stood and then couldn’t move. He could feel the shock numbing his legs. He knew he had to come out from behind his desk, but he couldn’t do it.
“Hospitals cost money, Mike,” Judd said.
Mike moved around his desk and took the photograph of his family and his mother from Judd’s hand. “I’m not changing the numbers,” he said, and he left his office, not at all conscious of the fact that he was taking the photo with him, though he was gripping it with both hands as if his mother’s life depended on it.
NUCLEAR LOATHING
Harvey Mineral did not like women. He didn’t like men either. And he couldn’t tolerate children. He despised pets too, especially dogs. Originally from London, he was a San Fernando Valley dwarf and the owner of Pacoima Pawn and Loan, located in an L-shaped stucco strip mall on Glenoaks Boulevard near the corner of Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima, a working-class San Fernando Valley town of one hundred thousand predominantly Hispanic Los Angelenos, including a dozen Latino gangs.
He had a violent British mean streak and bad feelings for everyone except Omar Creech, the six-foot-six, two hundred eighty-pound brute he loved like a son. For everyone other than Omar, Harvey had impatience and anger and hostility and malice. For people who owed him money, Harvey had all that and more. For Dr. and Mrs. Donald Greenburg of Encino, he had nuclear loathing.
“Mrs. Greenburg, you and your husband owe me eighty-five thousand dollars in principal plus thirty-five-percent interest, and your loan is past due,” Harvey said, his beautiful British accent softening the ever-present contempt in his voice. “Your jewelry is worth three thousand to me, not even an interest payment.”
Harvey charged interest in the thirty-five percent range, it was true, but he knew her jewelry was worth twelve grand straight up and that he could easily sell it for fifteen. He also knew she wasn’t done begging, which is why he was still speaking to her.
“Screw you and your interest, Harvey. I need to walk out of here with fifteen thousand dollars,” she said, taking the jade earrings out of her ears and putting them in the pile. “My husband paid ten thousand for those in Tokyo.”
Carol Greenburg was a fifty-five-year-old junky. Her drugs were plastic surgery and vodka, and she was addicted to both. Since she had been borrowing money and pawning her possessions with Pacoima Pawn and Loan, she had undergone the following procedures for which she’d paid cash: liposuction, tummy tuck, body contour, breast augmentation, breast reduction, breast augmentation (again), breast lift, face lift (five times), chin reconstruction, nose reconstruction (three times), eyelid reconstruction, forehead lift (four times), buttock augmentation, chemical peels (seven times), lip enhancement, cheek augmentation, upper arm lift, laser skin rejuvenation, Radiance-Botox-Hylaform (dozens and dozens of times), and hair implants. She looked like a plasticized human Halloween doll-woman fabricated by German scientists during World War II to scare the Allies into surrender.
Harvey lifted a jade earring, examined it with the jeweler’s loupe he wore around his neck, and said, “I’ll give you three for the tennis bracelets, seven for the earrings, and loan you five, making your principal loan amount ninety thousand past-due dollars. Tell your plastic surgeon to send me a letter of thanks.” He lowered the loupe and scooped the jewelry, worth twenty-five grand to him, into an envelope.
“Listen carefully, dwarf,” Carol said. “The money is not for plastic surgery. I’ve never had plastic surgery in my life. Everything you see is real. The money is for the orphanage in Woodland Hills. I committed to funding their immediate need for cash, and I’m short of funds because I bought a commercial kitchen for a homeless shelter in Sun Valley, and…”
As she droned on about her charitable cash contributions, Harvey considered the Gabrielino Indians, who’d settled this land long before the first white pioneers arrived in 1769 and named it “Pacoima,” which meant “Rushing Water” in Gabrielino-ese and signified the rushing water (of course) from nearby canyons in the Santa Susan Mountains to the west and Santa Monica Mountains to the south. Had the Gabrielinos known Carol Greenburg, Harvey thought, they would have named it Pukecoima after the rushing vomit from nearby Greenburg’s mouth, stretched preternaturally from her left ear in the east to her right ear in the west.
“…and my husband has one of the largest dental practices in the Valley; he’s good for the money,” she said with a finishing flourish. “So give me fifteen thousand dollars in large bills, and make it snappy. I have an appointment in Beverly Hills.”
Harvey gestured across the store to Omar, who was polishing a solid silver tea set that had been pawned not five minutes before Carol Greenburg’s arrival. Omar nodded and followed the counter around the store to where Harvey and Carol were waiting.
Pacoima Pawn and Loan occupied a large double unit that took up most of the short end of the L-shaped strip mall. Its neighbors included a panaderia, a taqueria, a groceria, a zapateria and a peluqueria. Only Harvey’s sign was written in English.
The inside of the store featured a grand and gleaming U-shaped glass counter that stretched along one side of the store from front to back, made a ninety-degree right turn, spanned the entire width, then made another sharp right and ran all the way back to the front of the building. The case was filled to bursting with gold and silver and platinum rings and bracelets and necklaces and earrings and teeth (gold, of course) and watches and cell phones and digital cameras and lenses and CD players and DVD players and radios and laptops and tablets and coins and stamps and baseball cards and gloves and bats and fishing gear and knives and swords and brass knuckles and handguns galore.
Behind the glass counter were shelves displaying golf clubs and bicycles and flat-screen digital TVs and drills and sanders and air compressors and generators and fishing gear and enough shotguns and hunting rifles (all of them locked in gun racks) to arm a militia. At the rear of the store, surrounded on both sides by the shelves, were double doors that led to Harvey’s huge private office. There
were security cameras in the ceiling. There were rollback bars on the front windows.
Also behind the counter, following it exactly around the pawnshop, was a two-foot-tall ramp, built for Harvey, who was three feet, ten inches tall when standing on the floor but was a five-foot-ten dapper dwarf when standing on the ramp behind his counter doing business. He was dapper indeed, favoring fine tailored suits, high-end jewelry, expensive haircuts, and manicures at a Japanese nail emporium in Studio City, where the girls who serviced him were as delicate as porcelain and just as easily broken.
Omar was massive and muscled, with coal-black eyes, a long black ponytail, pockmarked skin, and enormous hands and facial features that suggested a touch of Marfan’s. He wore a shoulder holster under his sport jacket for his fully automatic Glock (as if anyone would anger the giant enough to make him pull his Glock). The truth was Omar didn’t have to be angry to perform insane violence. He simply needed direction from Harvey. Whatever Harvey asked him to do, he did without hesitation.
The giant was devoted to the dwarf, who had raised him like a son since Omar was twelve and nearly beaten to death by a gang in the alley behind Harvey’s store. Harvey heard the commotion and came to Omar the Orphan’s rescue with a shotgun, which he’d used to obliterate the kneecap of the gang leader. Harvey nursed Omar back to health, clothed him, fed him, educated him, and loved him. They were inseparable.
“Omar, please bring me one hundred and fifty hundred dollar bills from the safe for Mrs. Greenburg,” Harvey said. He wanted to add and remove her right arm with your teeth, but he knew that would come later, and later was fine. In the meantime, he thought as she exited the store with his money, I’ll dream about crushing her legs with my Range Rover.
SHE WASN’T HERE OR THERE OR ANYWHERE
Jenny Stone sat on the rattan sofa in Danny’s private office. Danny was behind the Tiki bar. He had suggested they have something cool to drink since it was impossibly hot outside. But really he was stalling for time. He’d suggested a drink because Jenny had said she could bring dead people back to life, and he had never heard anyone say that before, and he had no idea what to do about it.
