The sorry broke his heart. He swore at the phone loud enough to get a look from the driver, then dialed Sue Ellen’s number. It was three o’clock, the end of the school day at Hayt Elementary, but his call went to voicemail. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said to the recording. ‘Taquería Uptown tomorrow night. If your mom says it’s OK. Extra guacamole. And I’m the one who’s sorry.’
Then he listened to Genevieve Bower’s messages.
She had first called an hour after Sue Ellen, while he was kicking back in his jail cell. ‘Surprise,’ she said. ‘Jeremy just texted. He has the shoes and everything else. He wants fifteen thousand.’ She asked Kelson to call back as soon as he got the message.
She’d called again five hours later, around two a.m. ‘I talked to him,’ she said. ‘He can’t get rid of the stuff. He says he’ll burn it if I don’t pay. He must’ve thought this would be easy.’
She’d called again in the morning. ‘Dammit,’ she said, ‘I paid you to do a job.’
Kelson dialed her number.
She picked up. ‘Where have you been?’
‘After you left, I did a striptease at the restaurant. Then I spent the evening flirting with a jail guard. I hung out in my cell today till my lawyer bailed me out.’
For a moment Genevieve Bower went silent. ‘OK, I get it. None of my business. But I paid you and that is my business. Jeremy’s threatening to burn my stuff if I don’t pay him by six this evening and—’
‘He won’t. He thought he’d unload the things he stole from you, and now that he can’t, he’s panicking,’ Kelson said, and the driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror. ‘Let him panic. It’ll be good for him. He wants two things. He wants money, and he wants out of this. The longer you wait, the more he wants out and the less he cares about the money.’
‘And then he burns the shoes.’
‘Do you want to pay him?’
‘I want to string him by the balls from a light post.’
‘Did he give you a number where you can reach him?’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t call unless you’re willing to pay. Let him call you again, and when he does, don’t pick up. Let him leave a message. He thinks he has power over you. Let him know he has nothing.’
‘He has—’
‘The shoes are worth nothing if no one will pay him for them. Play this out for another twenty-four hours, and see what he comes back with. Unless you want to give him fifteen thousand.’
‘I want to give him a kick in the balls.’
‘I’m picking up on the theme. When he calls, which he will, let me know.’
‘Are you going incommunicado again, or will I be able to reach you?’
‘I’ll be around if I keep my pants on.’
‘If this doesn’t work, I’ll hold you responsible.’
‘You can sue me,’ he said. ‘But you’ll need to get in line.’
He hung up and listened to the message from Rodman, which his friend had left just forty minutes before Ed Davies sprang him from lockup. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ Rodman said. ‘They’re threatening Marty.’ Marty LeCoeur worked as a bookkeeper at Westside Aluminum, a tedious job that didn’t keep him from getting in deep trouble once or twice a year. Though Marty was only five feet tall and was missing an arm, Rodman claimed he’d seen him take apart men three times his size.
‘Huh,’ Kelson said to the recording. Then he called Rodman and asked, ‘Who’s threatening him?’
‘That’s the thing,’ Rodman said. ‘Can you come over?’
When the cab reached Big Pie and Kelson paid the fare, the driver said, ‘I wouldn’t want to be you, buddy.’
THREE
Kelson drove to the southside neighborhood of Bronzeville, parked in an alley by the Ebenezer Baptist Church, climbed two flights of stairs, and knocked at DeMarcus Rodman’s apartment. The door opened, and all six foot eight and two hundred seventy-five pounds of the man consumed Kelson in a hug that left no doubt in Kelson’s mind that, if Rodman wished, he could break Kelson’s ribs and squeeze them out through his nose. When Kelson told him so, Rodman gazed at him with his gentle eyes, set a little too close together on his gentle face, and said, ‘Why would I want to do a thing like that?’
Then Rodman’s girlfriend Cindi, wearing green nurse’s scrubs, stepped in for a kiss on the cheek.
Marty sat on the living room couch between his girlfriend Janet and a skinny man in ripped jeans and a gray hoodie. On the wall behind them, portraits of Malcolm X, Cindi, and Martin Luther King, Jr, watched the room as if they’d seen it all before.
After Rodman poured coffee for everyone, Kelson turned to the one-armed man. ‘Who’s bothering you, Marty?’
‘Buncha fucking idiots,’ Marty said. ‘No big deal. DeMarcus worries too much.’
‘The owners of a place called G&G,’ Rodman said. ‘Out in Mundelein. They threatened him. They want some fancy accounting – Marty’s specialty.’
‘A thing I do for friends,’ Marty said. ‘Don’t knock on my door if I don’t know you. The fuck they think I am?’
‘You said no?’ Kelson said.
Marty had a high-pitched laugh. ‘I said fuck no.’
‘They took it hard?’
‘They said I’m the only man for the job. They had another guy, but he’s gone. They had a guy before him, but he’s gone too. I said thanks just the same. They said everyone says yes. I said I’m saying no. They said you don’t want to say no. I said what happens if I do? They said how much you like that one arm of yours?’
Janet stroked the arm as if she felt the insult. She was very large and had what friends and family called a skin condition.
‘What did you say then?’ Kelson asked.
‘What d’you think I said? They hurt my fucking feelings. I told them, they cut off my arm, I stomp their fucking heads. But I don’t mind telling you, these people scared me. I mean, who keeps a fucking hunting knife in a bank office?’
‘G&G’s a bank?’
‘A holding company. G&G fucking Private Equity. Customers gotta buy in big. The website says G&G invests and manages. It doesn’t say if you got cash you need to clean, G&G’s got the machines. Or if you want to hide money from your ex-wife, they got the holes to hide it in. The IRS? Fuck the IRS – compared to G&G, the IRS is a baby.’
‘Sounds like the kind of thing you do,’ Kelson said. ‘But no means no?’
‘So they get out the hunting knife,’ Marty said. ‘Like twelve inches. I think it’s a gag. Or maybe they got it in the office because the boss has a hobby. Fuck if I know. Then this guy – he’s in fucking pinstripes and a tie, a red fucking tie – he holds the knife to my nose. I don’t mind telling you, I still got trauma from my arm, and I was just a fucking kid. I’m sweating. So, like a jackass’ – he glanced guiltily at the skinny man beside him – ‘I tell them ’bout my nephew. I throw him to the fucking wolves. I ain’t proud of it. But he knows numbers as good as I do.’
‘Better,’ the other man said. He had a bowl haircut and the start of a beard.
‘A moment of weakness,’ Marty said. ‘He’s tough as I am, but he has twenty years on me – and he’s got both fucking hands. He’s like two of me. I told them if they wanted a man for the job, they should talk to Neto.’
‘I don’t mind, Uncle Marty,’ the nephew said. ‘I need the work.’
‘Not this work, you don’t,’ Marty said. ‘Now they say, if Neto fucks up, they come after me – and him.’
Kelson turned to Rodman. ‘What do you want to do about it?’
Rodman’s voice was gentle and low. ‘Nothing now. We wait and watch. Marty wants Neto to get in and out quick and clean. The last two G&G accountants – guys Marty knew – didn’t work out, and Marty hasn’t seen them since. Maybe they made their bundle and took off. Maybe not. So we keep Neto safe, and if the G&G people start rumbling, we let them know they should worry about Neto’s friends too.’
Kelson asked Marty, ‘Exactly what does G&G want don
e?’
‘It’s a fund distribution,’ he said. ‘Once a year – more often would ring alarms – they move money out of G&G and shift it around for the clients. Offshore accounts, shell companies, whatever they got. Next distribution is in two days. The accountant – Neto this time – is the firewall. He erases G&G from the money, which is how G&G and the customers both want it. Invisible money. Fucking deniability.’
‘Why not take this to the cops or the feds?’ Kelson said.
‘Why not fuck your mom?’ Marty said. ‘One – I’d cut off my own arm before I’d snitch. Two – what would I tell them? The G&G people live in the daylight. They golf and go to church. Their kids play soccer. G&G owns a building in the middle of a fucking office park. That’s why they find guys like me and Neto. We’re buffers. Throwaways. Dirty gloves. If we go to the cops, the cops say, Who the hell’re you? If we walk into the SEC or FDIC and tell stories about these rich boys, the feds kick us in the fucking asses. G&G looks clean.’
‘Unless they’re scrubbing blood out of their carpet after they cut you.’
‘Sure, unless that, but I figure they buy good carpet cleaners.’
‘You got any names?’ Kelson asked.
‘Yeah,’ Marty said. ‘The three I talked to at the meeting. Sylvia Crane, Harold Crane, and Chip Voudreaux.’
‘How’d they even find you?’
‘Lady I dated a coupla times before I met Janet told them about me. Her name’s Genevieve.’ He squeezed Janet’s hand.
‘Genevieve Bower?’
‘Fuck you – you know her?’
‘I’m doing a job – because you mentioned me to her. She hired me.’
‘Careful around her,’ Marty said. ‘She’s a crazy one.’
‘So, how does it work with G&G?’
‘The accounting’s done offsite,’ Marty said. ‘No way to trace it back. Two days from now, they send Neto to a Holiday Inn or a DoubleTree or somewhere with public computers. They give him a password. He follows directions. Four or five hours, and he’s done. The last transfer is ten grand into his own account – pay for a half day’s work. They say it’s easy. It ain’t easy.’
‘We don’t do anything right now,’ Rodman said. ‘We’re on standby. Maybe the thing goes smooth and Neto takes us to dinner at Gene and Georgetti. Or maybe it goes bad.’
Kelson asked Neto, ‘Are you up to the job?’
‘Yeah,’ Neto said, ‘I’m a genius.’
Marty said, ‘When he was in high school, MIT wanted him. Caltech. Princeton.’
Kelson said, ‘Why didn’t you go?’
‘Too busy,’ Neto said.
Marty laughed. ‘They found out about his criminal record. Fucking kid redirected funds from Banco Santander Río when he was fifteen. Had all of Argentina pissed off at him.’
Neto gave an ah-shucks grin.
Kelson eyed his shabby pants and hoodie. ‘Looks like you invested your earnings badly.’
‘FBI took the cars,’ Neto said. ‘The judge made me pay back the rest.’
‘Fucking feds,’ Marty said.
Neto smiled the way some men smile when they have nothing to lose. ‘I’ve got expenses.’
Marty said, ‘You do this job. You take your pay. You get out. If you go in deeper, you’ll never come back up.’
‘Right – you said.’
‘I ever tell you wrong?’
Neto gave him a loving punch on the shoulder without an arm. ‘Wasn’t Banco Santander Río your idea?’
‘I might’ve said I heard something about their electronic security. I might’ve. I didn’t say a hotshot fifteen-year-old should go climbing through the hole.’
Neto spoke to Kelson. ‘I was always impressionable.’
‘Well, impress this,’ Marty said. ‘We get you in, we get you out, and you never go back.’
At five that evening, Cindi left for a nightshift at Rush Medical. The others ordered Chinese from Little Wok. Kelson picked wood ear mushrooms from his moo shu pork. Rodman ate pounds and pounds of egg foo young and shrimp fried rice with the delicacy of someone picking at tea-party finger sandwiches. Marty spooned some of everything on to his plate and stirred it into a mash with a chopstick.
Neto ate nothing at all but stared at Kelson. ‘Marty and DeMarcus say you’re good,’ he said, ‘but I don’t see nothing so special about you. What’s so special about you?’
Kelson ate a dumpling and said, ‘I don’t think I’m so special.’
Marty laughed that high laugh. ‘He’s nothing you wouldn’t see at Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Between the two-headed cow and the fucking Chinaman who drilled a hole in his head to carry a candle.’
Neto wrinkled his eyebrows.
Kelson ate another bite and said, ‘Is Neto your real name?’
‘Nah,’ Neto said. ‘James. But when I was little I couldn’t ever hold my excitement.’
‘So you said “neat” or “neato”?’
‘I said “fuckin’ A”. Marty taught me. But my mom and dad figured a nickname like that would get me in trouble.’
Kelson said, ‘So, Neto?’
‘So, Neto.’
‘Me, I’ve always been Sam Kelson. In court, Samuel. Thing is, since I got shot in the head, I’ve got disinhibition, which means you can’t shut me up and I’ll tell you the truth even if I really, really want to lie. But I’ve also got autotopagnosia – I sometimes don’t recognize myself. I look in a mirror and say, Holy shit, who’s he? So, sure – I’m a two-headed cow.’
‘So you’re like Jason Bourne in those movies?’
‘Yeah, I wish. That’s dissociative fugue. He doesn’t know who he is. Me? I know, sort of. But I don’t always recognize myself – and I can’t stop telling people about it. Did you know Jason Bourne is named after a real guy – Ansel Bourne – who also forgot who he was?’
‘Nope, I didn’t know that.’
‘Neither did I, until Dr P told me.’
‘Who’s Dr P?’
‘My therapist. She’s putting the cracked egg back together.’
‘Wow,’ Neto said.
At eight that evening, Kelson drove to his building. He rode the elevator to his floor and went down the hall to his apartment. He fumbled his keys outside his door and dropped them on the hallway carpet. Then a sound came from inside. He reached for his belt – but he’d left his guns in his office. ‘Dammit,’ he said, and the lock tumbled. The knob turned and the door swung open.
An eleven-year-old girl stared at Kelson and said, ‘Gotcha.’ His daughter Sue Ellen.
FOUR
‘What’re you doing here?’ Kelson said, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Why aren’t you at your mom’s?’
‘I needed to feed the kittens. Mom said they locked you up again.’ She held Payday in her arms. The kitten purred like a little engine. ‘Someone needs to be responsible. Payday has a cough.’ With her long black hair, Sue Ellen looked more like Kelson’s ex, Nancy, than him.
‘A cough?’
She squeezed the kitten to show him. Payday purred louder.
‘Cat’s don’t cough,’ Kelson said.
‘I think Painter’s Lane gave her a cold,’ Sue Ellen said, and at its name the other kitten emerged from the kitchenette. ‘Or she might be starving.’
Kelson lived in a bare-walled studio two miles from the house he once shared with Nancy and Sue Ellen. He went to the kitchenette and peeked in. Sue Ellen had filled two cereal bowls to the top with Friskies Surfin’ & Turfin’.
‘So you’re running around the city after dark but you want me to feel guilty,’ he said.
‘Yep.’
‘Grab your stuff,’ Kelson said. ‘I’m taking you back to your mom’s.’
‘What are you doing tonight?’
‘Driving you to your mom’s, thanks to you.’
‘Thanks to the kittens I saved.’
As they drove to Nancy’s house, she asked the question she asked almost every time they got into a car together. ‘Can we pla
y Stump Dad?’ She’d invented the game when she realized Kelson’s cross-wired brain made him answer every question she asked.
‘No.’
His answer mattered little. ‘Next time they put you in jail, can I visit you?’
‘There won’t be a next time,’ he said. Then, ‘I hope.’ Then, ‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because Mom says I can’t. But I want to see what it’s like.’
‘It smells.’
‘If you could be any kind of fish, what would you be?’
‘Enough.’ Then, ‘A tiger shark. And I’d eat anyone who asked annoying questions.’
After dropping off Sue Ellen – and explaining the ass-in-pizza, night-in-jail, and starving-kitten episodes to Nancy, stopping only when she closed the door in his face – Kelson turned back toward home but then decided, since the kittens had eaten, to go to his office.
His desktop was clean. A gray metal cabinet stood against the wall behind his desk chair, out of sight unless he turned to look at it. A plain light fixture stuck from the ceiling. The walls, like his apartment walls, were white and bare except for a framed eight-by-ten picture of Sue Ellen and another of Payday and Painter’s Lane. The pictures also hung behind his desk chair. Ever since he took a bullet in the head, clutter gave him headaches bad enough to knock him to the floor, which, in his office, he’d covered with gray all-weather carpet. Percocet helped – and some days he dropped six or eight blue tablets – but as an ex-narcotics cop he knew the dangers.
Now he checked his guns – the Springfield XD-S he kept in the bottom desk drawer and the KelTec he strapped under the desktop. He popped the magazine from each gun, checked that it was loaded, rolled it in his palm, and snapped it back into the pistol housing. As he checked the Springfield, he said, ‘Mmmm,’ as if the gun soothed him, and, catching himself in the feeling, added, ‘that’s just – odd.’
He put the guns away and took his laptop from the top drawer. When it booted up, he spent a half hour on the Genevieve Bower job. The JollyOllie.com website showed Jeremy Oliver’s menu of DJ services. Oliver promised to ‘bring out the boogie’ at weddings, bar mitzvahs, corporate events, and birthday parties. He could do special effects like strobe lights, ‘Dancing on a Cloud’ dry ice, pin-spot lighting, and fireworks. He listed his hundred favorite Eighties party songs, leading with Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’, and Van Halen’s ‘Jump’. His JollyOllie blog included images of Eighties Camaros and Corvettes, Bruce Springsteen album covers, and girls with big hair. Kelson clicked one of the video links. A middle-aged man sporting a white tuxedo spun his date to ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ under lighting suited for a high school prom. ‘Ain’t Joan Jett,’ Kelson said when he froze the video. He clicked on the video of a corporate holiday party and watched office workers let loose as they did the Macarena.
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