Formerly Fingerman

by Joe Nelms

  Giggles stopped giggling.

  “Twenty percent on the cheebah deal and you look the other way on the laundry room thing.”

  “Five percent on the cheebah deal and I get a taste of the laundry deal.”

  “Fifteen and a taste.”

  “Seven and a taste. Final. That’s a good deal, Mitchell.”

  Goddamn he was a cheap fucker. Killing three FBI agents and a key witness to a mob trial for what Frank was offering? That was a terrible deal. But Mitchell, the Swastika-Boner Aryan, didn’t have much of a choice. Fortunato was too powerful.

  Mitchell would take the offer. After the meth deal went down and Chuy turned the laundry room over to him, the Aryans would have a little more clout around here. Then, we’ll see what happens, Frank old buddy.

  “Fine. Seven and a taste.”

  There it was. Frank knew Mitchell was a reasonable man.

  “The main guy’s in Tucson. The rest are around.”

  “No problem.”

  Frank nodded and walked back across the yard toward The Boys. Mission accomplished.

  Mitchell watched Frank amble off and then swept his eyes across the yard. The agents were local guys, so no big whoop. But if Frank was gonna pay shit, then the Aryans would farm the other thing out.

  Where was . . . Ah, there. He made eye contact with the cat who ran the Yakuza wannabes, Jin. Jin shuffled over to stand next to Mitchell for an invisible chat.

  As a favor to Mitchell, Jin took the job in exchange for a few hours of phone time. He promptly handed it off to the Mexican Mafia who owed Jin for the showerhead incident. The Mexican Mafia turned to the Bloods for some help. As consideration for the Mexican Mafia’s assistance in TV room riots, the Bloods agreed to accept the assignment. They passed it on to the Nuevos as part of a truce agreement. The Nuevos were a little short on guys in Tucson, so they subcontracted the job to a reliable fellow outside the gang who had done some work for them in the past.

  Brad Fingerman was as good as dead.

  Isn’t It Bromantic?

  The whole bookmark affair had worked out so well that Alan proclaimed Brad and Stump his new favorite creative team, and piled the work on. Trade ads. Whitepaper tweaks. Promotional materials. The stuff of nightmares for a former rising star like Brad Fingerman became the daily grind of new hire Brad Pitt.

  But that didn’t seem to matter so much, now that he had found a new friend in Dr. Yo.

  “’Sup, Terminator?”

  “He’s in the living room. Ready for your date.”

  “Man, this isn’t a date. I came to humiliate someone. Yo, Brad-LEE!”

  Yo walked into Brad and Stump’s house like he owned the place. He had been dropping by regularly for the last week to hang out and beat Brad soundly at whatever PlayStation game they had in the machine.

  If Stump had his way, Brad would have sat in his house and stared at the walls until the trial. But that wasn’t realistic. He knew how much trouble witnesses with nothing to do could be. That’s why he always got them jobs.

  Jobs were the easy part of the program. Whenever he needed to place someone, he called up a placement from years earlier and, if they were still alive, Stump knew they could keep quiet about the important stuff. Like his new placement. It was a simple, but effective test. The more people he placed, the more favors he could call in. After so many years of making witnesses disappear, he had more contacts than he could ever use.

  New friends of witnesses, on the other hand, were a very different matter. It was a difficult task explaining why Stump was always hanging around, watching. Some would call it lurking. He didn’t drink and was on constant lookout for potential danger. Not exactly the ideal third wheel.

  If the witness was female, he could pass himself off as a jealous boyfriend by giving her an occasional stern look. That worked well, except for the one time he was placing a seventy-two-year-old woman. In hindsight, overprotective grandson would have been the smarter play.

  But with guys, it was tougher. They’re a suspicious bunch anyway, and when you’re spending most of the social hour standing quietly right behind the witness and their new best bud, they don’t love it. Stump found it was usually easier to buy the beer. Get a case, ice it down, and let them drink themselves silly. Soon they stopped paying attention to him, which left him free to keep an eye out while monitoring their conversation.

  Dr. Yo, on the other hand, was an entirely unique situation that Stump very much liked. Here was a guy who was clearly tightlipped. Brad had explained the context of their meeting (although he had swapped “secretly making a phone call” for “really had to clear my head”) and Yo’s unique position at the company. Truth is, Yo probably would have found out about Brad on his own anyway. Better that Stump was aware of who knew the details of their circumstance.

  Stump chatted him up a few times and, once he got a bead on him, gave Yo the thumbs up. Yo was a pretty smart guy, despite the fact that he smelled like Shaggy and Scooby’s van. And while no one is completely trustworthy, based on the muscle action in his face, Yo seemed to be on the up and up.

  Brad and Yo began what would likely be an entire evening sitting on the couch with game controllers.

  “You check out that girl on four?”

  “The whale or the scarecrow?”

  Yo shook his head in disgust.

  “No eye for talent.”

  It was quite the bromance Brad and Yo had begun. Arrogant, white New Yorker meets mellow, black suburbanite. They got along easily from the start and unlike most of the male babysitting Stump did, this friendship actually helped matters. Yo stopping by meant Brad would be safely occupado for hours.

  “I’m about to beat you like you owe me money.”

  “What’s your cell number? I want to text you when I get to the end zone.”

  There was plenty of empty trash talk, but as they sat there in the tractor beam of the PlayStation, completely mesmerized by their game, there was a tremendous volume of real and honest conversation. Defenses came down and their life stories flowed easily. Plus, Yo had really great weed. Not the shit Brad would occasionally smoke in Manhattan, but sticky Purple Haze. And Yo loved to chat when he was high.

  Yo had dropped out of society proper six years earlier, forsaking his given name, credit score, and position on the fast track to the American dream in the process. He had a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale, a master’s from NYU, and was on his way to a doctorate from Berkeley when he discovered the wide and wonderful world of conspiracy theories. Shadow governments. FEMA internment camps. The truth behind 9/11. Voter-machine fraud. New World Order. And don’t get him started on the Masons. Or Amway.

  It was his belief that we are all being set up, and that it won’t be long before the civilized world and every sucker putting money into a 401(k) and buying MP3s online will be subject to some horrible new global totalitarian government that’s been in the works for centuries. According to Yo, the same government that was so busy spending seventy-five million dollars on a bridge to nowhere had simultaneously been helping to unify jurisdiction of every country on the planet under an elite group of foresighted leaders.

  “If they’re so smart, why does the DMV take so long?”

  “That’s their front. You’re falling for it.”

  “What about the Witness Protection Program? That’s run by the government.”

  “I don’t know about them.”

  Yo snuck a look back at Stump.

  “But I’d watch my back.”

  Since becoming “aware,” as he referred to it, Yo had remained completely off the grid. There were records of his existence, but only up to 2009.

  He didn’t have a bank account, rented a room from a half-deaf widow who didn’t ask too many questions, and used the Internet only from the safety of his office at work, and then always under an encrypted alias. He had no driver’s license. He didn’t vote. He paid no taxes. Yo had, in effect, set up his own Witness Protection Program.

&
nbsp; He had talked himself into the job he currently held with a fake ID and somehow arranged to be paid off the books. Every check he got from Assure was taken to the bank from which it was issued and cashed within an hour of receipt, and each time at a different branch.

  When the pizza guy rang the doorbell, Yo reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of twenties the size of a baseball.

  “I got it.”

  “What’s with the pimp roll?”

  “That’s from my side job.”

  “Spying on your coworkers isn’t fulfilling enough?”

  “On the weekends I drive a tow truck.”

  “Why?”

  Yo shrugged.

  “Free money.”

  Yo had bought an old truck at a junkyard and fixed it up on his own. He cruised around Tucson looking for illegally parked cars and then took his time hooking them up.

  Nine times out of ten, their owners came running over, crying for him to give them a break. He would let them beg and plead, and then tell them there was nothing he could do. After all, he could lose his job if he took their car off his truck. It was company policy. Eventually, every one of them offered to pay the tow charge in cash and Yo would accept. Somehow this morality play didn’t compromise his job. Some tow escapees were so grateful, they even tipped him. He could clear two or three grand in a weekend.

  And as an added benefit, the cops never ever stopped him regardless of his plates being out of date and the truck not being registered.

  “They just wave when I drive by. I’m on their team.”

  “Why spend your weekends doing that, though?”

  “It’s only for another two years. ’Til my mattress gets full.”

  “What happens then?”

  “I disappear.”

  Stump had done his share of undercover work (My, that’s a large towel boy), eavesdropping (Wow, Stump! How did you know I’d be at this particular drag queen showcase?), and plain old spying (Somebody’s been in my underwear drawer!), but he had never learned so much so fast as when he simply stood behind Brad and Yo and listened to them yak.

  Stump made a few calls back East to find out what he could, but this Yo guy didn’t show up anywhere, although “a security guy named Dr. Yo” wasn’t exactly a lot to go on. Apparently Yo knew what he was doing.

  Maybe he really would disappear one day.

  Sal Gets the Call

  Switching that wireless phone plan was the smartest thing he had done in years. The overage charges were killing him, and his wife had been going over every line on the bill to find out why it was so high. It was getting tough to explain all those calls to Jersey City.

  How the hell did so many guys keep their wives in check so well, anyway? Bobby Oatmeal never had this problem. He just told his old lady to mind her business and go make him a sandwich. Big Pete smacked Gina around a little bit a few years back and she learned some respect. Concrete Jimmy had that look he gave his wife and, oh Nelly, she wouldn’t say a word.

  Sal had tried the look. Marie asked if he was having a seizure. He told her to mind her business and she threw her compact at his forehead. Three stitches. He hadn’t hit her yet. It was under consideration, but he wanted to work things out through diplomatic channels if at all possible. He wasn’t an animal.

  All it took was switching plans. Now instead of a two to three hundred dollar bill, he got more minutes and a consistent ninety-nine dollar bill. She left him alone.

  He also figured out that in case she did look closely at the bill before he could throw it out, he’d give her the seizure look and she would start panicking and dial 911, forgetting all about the Jersey calls.

  Now when his phone rang three weeks into the billing cycle, he no longer winced.

  “Hello.”

  “Sal?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “A friend of Tiko.”

  Yes! Sal was in debt up to his eyeballs, even before the whole cell-phone crisis. That friggin’ gumad was expensive. What was it with twenty-six-year-old women and handbags? His Maraschino crew couldn’t steal enough to cover the cost of this new relationship, so he took on the occasional freelance job. Pretty basic stuff. Collect some money from this guy. Burn that guy’s garage down. Break some other guy’s collarbone. Work for hire. It wasn’t going to get him anywhere politically since it was overflow from other gangs and if Frank ever got wind he’d be pissed. But what was he gonna do? Keep living paycheck to paycheck? Fuck that.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Tiko’s wondering if you’d like to sit down with him.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Sal took the meeting at Tiko’s restaurant up in Spanish Harlem. The greasy-spoon dump of a diner served as a front for the New York City chapter of the Nuevos. Which explained why every employee in the place had the same tattoo on their neck. Nobody really came for the food.

  Over Cuban sandwiches and juice coolers, Tiko explained that some friends of his needed Sal to kill a man located in Tucson, Arizona. They had already dug up a picture and the address of where he was probably staying.

  “Tucson?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Nothing. It keeps popping up lately is all.”

  “I hear it’s an up-and-coming city. Great schools. Solid real estate value.”

  Sal shrugged off the coincidence. He wasn’t one to overanalyze. It usually didn’t help and he wasn’t that smart anyway, so what was the point? That’s what made him such a good soldier.

  The only issue Sal had with the job of murdering a perfect stranger was leaving Frank. His best friend was sitting in prison facing life, and here was Sal running off to raise a little cash that would inevitably be used to buy earrings for the dumbass stripper he was banging. That wasn’t exactly the stuff of blood brothers. And then he got a call from Jersey City.

  The dumbass stripper had a few dumbass friends from the club she danced at sleeping over at her house. They were pretty drunk already and she asked if he could pick up some coke and drop by. Odds were there was going to be a foursome.

  Sal took the job.

  Brad Kneels

  The debate was whether or not the pretzels were worth it.

  Brittany was down five pounds and loving the way she was looking. But she hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch of miso soup. Was this really hunger, or was it boredom from sitting in a forensic edit bay all morning watching Jarvis try to rebuild her lost surveillance footage?

  As she stood in front of the vending machine ogling its bounty of processed, food-like products, her mouth started to water. Most doctors would consider the reaction an indication of hunger. Brittany decided it was weakness.

  Do you want to eat or do you want to be famous?

  She wanted to be famous and famous people were thin. Famous people didn’t eat Mounds bars. Famous people looked great on camera when they were testifying in open court on live television. Like she would be in a matter of weeks.

  Sorry, fatty. You’ve got some ell beez to drop.

  She put her single dollar away and opted instead for another cup of the anorexic’s best friend, coffee.

  “Hey, you want to take a look at this?”

  Brittany almost dropped her unopened no-calorie sweetener packet into her mug when she heard Jarvis call down the hall from his bay. He wouldn’t be yelling if he didn’t have something to look at, right? He would have kept working if he still had a bunch of digital cubes and fuzz and buzzing, no?

  She grabbed her steaming cup of dinner and speed-walked back to Jarvis.

  “So, this stuff you’ve seen. He’s in the elevator making goo goo eyes at Carmine. Then we drop out for a while. Then there’s this . . .”

  Jarvis slowed the footage down so Brittany wouldn’t miss a thing and walked her through what he had made out so far. On his monitor, the digital detritus turned to his latest recovery, a fairly clear picture of Brad standing next to Carmine.

  “Okay, then they stop.”


  In the elevator, Brad bent down on one knee and leaned forward toward the ground as the doors opened. The screen turned to a mess of digital artifacts.

  “That’s what I’ve got so far.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he dropped something.”

  Or maybe he was ducking because he knew what was coming.

  Brittany had to assume it wasn’t the lightheadedness from her rigid diet that sent her reeling. She knew what she saw. She just wasn’t sure what it meant. Had she grabbed an accomplice and convinced herself that he was a witness? Had she shot herself in the foot because she was overambitious? Was she limiting herself to four hundred calories of pure protein a day for nothing? She sat down to compose herself and review the situation.

  She had spoken to Brad. Looked into his eyes. Rifled his stuff when he was out of the room. She really thought she knew him. And now maybe he was in on the murder?

  Impossible. She was too good of a judge of character to make a mistake that big.

  Brittany Calls Stump

  “Do you think Brad is lying?”

  Brittany didn’t sound nearly as surprised as Stump might have expected.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “I was going to. I just had to write this headlin—Hey, wait, why are you asking, anyway?”

  Not quite the call Stump expected to get, but exactly what he had been wondering himself. Aside from punching up the copy on those instructional inserts and tightening the disclaimer on the new sport-package mock-up, Stump’s to-do list included calling Brittany to discuss a few things that had been bugging him since they put Brad on video.

  “We found something wonky in our recovered surveillance footage. Either Brad is lying or he might be epileptic. Have you noticed him acting epileptic at all?”

  “Not really. But tell me about the lying part.”

  Brittany told Stump about Brad’s furtive movement and the suspicions it had raised. She probably exaggerated the nefariousness of it a little too much, but it didn’t matter. Bending over can only look so evil.