by Frank Sibila
“Lie low,” Urich repeated.
“Not too low,” Vanessa told him.
“But low.”
“Yes. No main roads. No major hotel chains. Maybe even a change in vehicles. Maybe even a complete change in directions. We can’t risk getting to New York until after Frank gives me his personal okay.”
“Fine with me,” Felicia said, “as long as I still get my per diem.”
“Me, too,” said Anastasia.
“Ladies,” the woman in the black wig assured them both, “I will personally guaran-damn-tee it.”
At which point there was one of those moments. You know the kind of moment. It happens at parties and busy offices where everybody’s talking over one another and nobody can hear themselves think. Then, for no reason at all, as if on cue, everybody shuts up at precisely the same heartbeat, turning an ear-splitting hubbub into absolute silence just in time to put a great big spotlight over the head of the one guy who didn’t get the memo and was therefore still left talking. That guy, whoever he is, is never saying anything innocuous he wouldn’t mind sharing with the world. He’s always saying something he had counted on the roar of the crowd to obscure, something like, “I wear a thong,” or, “Bernie smells bad, doesn’t he?”
In this case, the part of the guy still speaking when everybody else fell silent was played by George Urich, and the words coming out of his mouth seemed to have no particular relevance to Frank the false alibis magnate, Frank the mysterious fixer from New Jersey, the unknown shadowy conspiracy alleged to be tracking them down, or his own confusion at being roused from a deep sleep in his hotel room with a telephone call from a young woman wanting to know if he was George Urich and telling him that she’d been hired to drive him to New York right away. It was a telephone call he would have hung up on in any other circumstance but which this particular weekend resonated with his own persuasive reasons for buying into any attractively packaged grounds for paranoia. For the rest of the people around him in that diner, the words spilling from his mouth in this one damnable interregnum of silence did not seem immediately germane, but did provide an interesting data point.
“All this for counting cards?”
NINE
ENTIRE TIME ZONES away from both Urich and Yorick, not to mention Monica, her nom de guerre Vanessa, Felicia, Anastasia, dusty Arizona diners, card counting, and Vegas, but still somehow in the thick of it all, Frank confronted a grinning Keith Custer over the naughty things he’d done to his good friend George.
“That idiot,” Keith said. His body language spoke volumes: not just a Presley-like curled lip, not just an epic roll of the eyes, and not just a give-me-a-break shrugging of the sort that demanded to know why any thinking person would devote an angstrom of mental energy to worrying about such an insignificant subject, but all of those things at once, feeding upon each other to evoke the epitome of scorn and apathy. He searched for salvation in the hotel’s vaulted ceiling, his eyes reflecting the running lights of the swooshing scenic elevators. “Don’t tell me you actually care about what happens to him.”
“I don’t. Not particularly. But he is a client.”
Keith spread his hands, palms up, like a man set to receive the offerings of Heaven. “A loser is what he is. I swear to God, Frank, you never saw such an empty nutsack in your life. Worked with me for five years, listening to all my stories, marveling over my exciting life and telling me over and over he wished he could get away with half the shit I get away with. So I said, finally, why don’t you? You’ll get away with it. Just hire my good friend Frank, and he’ll set you right up!”
Frank refrained from wincing in deep abdominal pain over the characterization of himself as Keith’s good friend. “Except that’s not all, is it? You weren’t setting him up; you were setting him up.”
Keith gave a half-grin, the smile on the left side of his face a display of spotless dentistry, the lips on his right clinging as stubbornly as possible to a mere arrogant smirk, eloquent in its disdain for the social niceties. “Oh, I see what’s bothering you. But you’ve got to understand. With the exception of his gorgeous wife, who must have been blind, deaf, drunk, and brain-damaged the night she first agreed to go out with him, a guy like Yucky Yorick couldn’t snag a real hottie with a roofie and a wallet filled with hundred-dollar bills. With his limitations, he needs a little help. So I told him about this real ball of fire I had going down in Vegas. I told him she could suck a golf ball through a length of garden hose and count the dimples with her lips. I told him that if he’d only be nice to her, she’d be nice to him, and even called ahead to make the introductions. I think just flying out to see her was as much excitement as he’d ever had in his entire life. It was, like, something to live for.”
“But he never got to consummate, did he?”
“What, you think I’m such a super-charming guy I can really order an amateur to bed a stuttering macaroni-dick like George Yorick?” Keith snorted. “Please. No, it was all a dodge, something to get him out of town while I went after his adorable missus. If I could get him in trouble and break them up, so much the better, especially since it wasn’t even my own idea.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Hell no, it wasn’t. I may be taking advantage of a window of opportunity here, but I wouldn’t have thought of getting him arrested in a million years. That’s too smart even for me.”
“But you knew it was gonna happen.”
“Sure.”
Frank discovered that he was patting his knee. No, not patting. Slapping, each impact a miniature thunderclap, betraying disgust and anger and a deep abiding desire for the slaps to become punches and the knee to become Keith Custer’s oafish, grinning face. He suppressed the impulse with considerable difficulty, flashed one of his most charming, businesslike smiles, and said, “So. Let’s summarize.”
Another palms up gesture. “Whatever floats your boat, chief.”
“You revved up a harmless schmoe with a rich fantasy life and pointed him toward a cliff. You used my business to make him think it was going to be safe. You knew it wasn’t. Then, while he was flailing around in the mess you made for him, you moved in on the wife because you thought she’d be better off if he had nothing to come home to. Is that more or less the situation we’re faced with here?”
Keith’s grin was rich and insolent, an open dare for Frank to take any further offense at anything he had done. “The chronology’s a little fucked up, but pretty much yeah. Are we done? Can I go upstairs and have my omelet now?”
Frank considered any out of a number of possible responses, some of which included physical violence. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do until he actually went ahead and did it.
He stood up and held out his hand.
Keith, not knowing why, wary that this would be the next challenge after everything else that had passed between them, took it.
They shook.
Frank said, “You’ll be receiving a check with a full refund of your retainer and service charges.”
Keith’s eyes widened, but only for a moment, before he burst out laughing. “That’s it? That’s your big dramatic gesture? That’s supposed to hurt me?”
“Not in and of itself, no. But you will have to do without my company’s services in the future.”
The smile never left Keith’s face. “That’s okay. I’ll do without you. As long as you recognize that you and I had a contract until a second or so ago and that if you say anything to George or Monica about what I’ve been doing, you’ll be breaking that contract, and I’ll be well within my rights to sue your ass. Not that I’d put your stupid company out of business, but it would sure be nice to own it.”
Frank said, “Understood.”
That’s all he said.
He didn’t let go of Keith’s hand yet.
Keith pulled, failed to extricate his hand, and gave Frank a look that was equa
l parts wariness and anger.
“What?” Keith said.
Frank told him, “It’s also important that you understand our liability covers our knowledge of all your activities up until today. It even covers what you’re doing today. It does not cover any knowledge that might fall into our hands tomorrow or in the conceivable future. From this moment on, if you do anything else to hurt any of our clients, a group that now includes George Yorick, we will be perfectly justified in answering any direct questions we’re asked.”
Keith pulled his hand free and massaged it. “But that doesn’t include anything I do today.”
“No. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.”
“Good.” Keith leered. “That means I still have a few hours to play with.” He bowed, tipped an imaginary cap, and started off to the elevators, whistling in mocking anticipation.
Frank just stood there watching him go, his head bowed in just as ostentatious defeat. He looked outthought, outmaneuvered, out manipulated, and outkidded—clearly a man reduced to a joke by a superior gamesman, or a fox backed into a chicken coop by the invading wolf. He had been reduced to delivering gormless threats while the man who had brought him to this sorry end strode away laughing, eager to enjoy the fruits of his victory. Any observer seeing him brought to this sorry pass would have expected him to complete the picture by stamping his foot and bursting into tears.
Instead, he smiled, reached into his pocket, and took out his cell phone, which had been vibrating for almost a minute.
“Talk to me.
“… Very funny. Now tell me something relevant.
“… Uh-huh.
“… Uh-huh.
“… Uh-huh.
“… Where?
“… I could kiss you.
“… Because it would be sexual harassment, that’s why.
“… It would matter to me.
“… All right. I’m on my way.”
He closed the phone and jabbed it back in his pocket before resuming his prior dejected stance. Woe was him.
Over at the row of scenic elevators, the car carrying Keith Custer emerged from the bunker at the base of the shaft and raced upward at a speed that suggested a concerted attempt to leave the planet’s gravity well behind. Its sole passenger was Keith Custer, who had taken advantage of his privacy within that glass booth to position himself in a manner that mocked the fresh enemy being left behind at lobby level. He was pressed against the glass, his legs planted wide apart and his arms raised above his head, producing a stance that resembled a rough approximation of the letter X. He’d curled both his hands into fists except for his middle fingers, which flew tall and proud, hailing Frank with the official salute of the Asshole Marines. He was even shouting something, something that might have offered him a significantly reduced level of satisfaction had he realized there was no way for Frank to hear him from behind the elevator’s transparency. It could have been anything, but Frank knew its essential meaning: some equivalent of “Nyaaah, nyaaah, nyaah, nyaah, nyaaah.”
At least four people in the bar area wondered what the fuck that was all about. Two of those, paranoid types who always assumed everything to be their own fault, wondered aloud what they had done to merit such a random act of public defiance from a total stranger. Frank considered laying their minds to rest by assuring them that he was the sole target of Keith’s theatrical bird-flipping, but decided against it. It was not his responsibility to clear the air. His job was to lie, to bullshit, to obfuscate, to draw vast curtains of artifice and distraction between the sin and those who would otherwise observe it. Explanations were not his thing. They were, in fact, the polar opposite of his thing, the eventuality he was so successful at helping his wayward clients to avoid.
He would not win by resorting to them now, just because they seemed to be the most convenient egress from the dilemma Keith Custer had constructed for him.
Nor could he win by surrendering to that dark side of the human equation that lying represented. He could not be corrupt, could not be exploitative, could not be predatory or parasitic. That way represented everything that put together a person like Keith Custer.
He had to honest about this. He had to be dishonest about this.
But he had to be honestly dishonest about this.
He had to lie truthfully.
In short, he needed to be perfectly Frank.
The pub was just down the street and around the corner, a testament to hard woods and tile floors and the kind of lighting that encouraged intimacy by ensuring that nobody could recognize anybody else except by touch and smell. The TV hanging over the bar was a concession to the sports-bar vibe in that it was always kept tuned to a game of some kind in the theory that somebody somewhere was always playing against somebody for something, but the volume was muted, and nobody seemed to care except when the players on screen suffered injury serious enough to evoke sympathetic pain. This was a place for people to decompress, not one where they worked at revving themselves up.
Frank, who had availed himself of this establishment’s unique ambience more than once when circumstances required it, strode in happy to see that the local population comprised the usual silents and close-to-silents. He made eye contact with a denizen of a rear booth, who had positioned herself facing the door in expectation of his arrival.
Destinii was wearing one of her usual shapeless T-shirts, this one white except for a simulated yellow stain and the words MUSTARD EATER in Dom Casual font. Her earrings were little figurines of Elmer Fudd. She jumped up to greet him at the threshold. “Hey, boss. Nice to see you outside the office.”
“Hey, Des. Have any trouble?”
“Naaah.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “She was where we expected to find her, Custer’s room. She didn’t want to come with me until I told her who wanted a meet. Then she said something like, ‘Oh, he does, does he?’ She seemed downright eager to meet you. Once we were here, I tried to steer her away from some of the fruitier daiquiris, but you’re still likely to need some dry cleaning.”
He winced. It wouldn’t be the first drink some irate wife had tossed in his face in a public place (there had been a veritable tidal wave of such incidents following the Oprah appearance), but they’d always been ambushes, taking him by surprise. Under normal circumstances, he never would have thought of inviting one. More situations like this and he might have to invest in a rubber suit capable of being cleaned with a direct spray from a garden hose.
Destinii said, “Need some help?”
“Maybe at the beginning,” Frank said.
She took him over to the booth now occupied by an elfin redhead with a slight overbite of the sort that guaranteed bright teeth in every picture unless she deliberately conformed her lips to contain them. Her hair, cropped close to the head in the one photo Frank had seen, now reached as far as her shoulders. Her eyes were kryptonite green, complete with glow, and her expression neutral, even as she registered Frank’s approach.
Frank said, “Hello. Mrs. Yorick?”
She lowered her white wine. “I’m Beth Yorick.”
Frank slid to a seat opposite her, Destinii cutting off his exit by sliding in after him. “I’m Frank Sibila. You may—”
To his astonishment, she smiled. There was bitterness and more than a little annoyance in it, but no actual hostility. “I know who you are. I saw your appearance on The Clark Dilton Experience.”
He did not thank her for watching. “Well, I—”
“I also know that my husband’s put you on retainer so he can cover up a nice, romantic weekend in Vegas.”
“Really? Who told you that? Keith?”
She smirked. “I take it that you consider me an innocent victim in danger of being taken advantage of. No, I didn’t need Keith to tell me anything. George told me even before he packed for Vegas.”
“He what?”
“Oh, not intentionally.” She seemed to enjoy being one step ahead of him. “A little business advice, Mr. Sibila: From now on, when you take on a new client, make sure that he’s halfway competent at telling the lies you concoct on his behalf. If he is, well then, fine, he has use for your services. If not, he’s my husband.”
He winced. “Bad, huh?”
“We used to have a poker night with neighbors. You should see him try to play. He pulls the cards, looks at them one a time, and mouths them while figuring out what he’s got. You can actually read his lips saying, ‘Ace, ace, king, king, king.’ It’s downright pathetic.”
Frank winced again. “Not good at deception, huh?”
“Not even remotely.” Beth Yorick lifted her wine glass, placed her delicate lips on the rim, and sipped an amount so miniscule that it might have required a molecular scanner to measure. “A trip to Vegas to meet up with some bimbo so he can have a one-night stand behind my back? I knew what was up the night I caught him modeling Hawaiian shirts and seductive looks in the bathroom mirror. He’s a terrible liar, which is why he’s always done so little of it.”
“Until now,” Destinii said.
“Until now,” Beth echoed. She turned toward the colorful but silent images playing on the TV over the bar. For a few seconds she allowed the blue light to flicker over her delicate cheeks like cold flame before turning back to them and saying, “But that’s the silly thing, isn’t it? If you’re too incompetent to get away with something, you stop trying. And then somebody comes up to you and tells you it’s all right, that you can get away with it. That there’s this wonderful new Internet service that will do all the hard work for you so you don’t have to worry about all the parts you’re bad at. And then you say fine. If it’s going to be that easy, I might as well give it a shot.”
Frank had another moment of déjà vu. “I haven’t said that your husband’s a client.”
