Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

In researching the Van Slaters flop, Al had chosen the grocery store as the simplest claim to manufacture. Now that the claim was to be more complicated, the whole strategy was due for a makeover.

  “Are you familiar with El Fuente Dorado in Palm Desert?” Al asked J.T.

  “Where they used to play that Skins game on TV for sixty million bucks?”

  “That’s the one. So these guys have a policy with GSAC. They just did a huge renovation. Spent millions spiffing everything up.”

  “Yeah, so?” J.T. said.

  “We just got a demand letter last week because of a slip and fall.”

  “And?”

  “Next to the exit to the pool, there’s an elevator bank right inside the lobby. Marble floor.”

  “Okay.”

  “The demand letter’s claiming the situation was dangerous because people are coming and going in from the pool and just standing there dripping on the marble floor. There’s no rug, no sign saying, ‘WARNING slippery-as-hell marble floor covered in water you can’t see.’ Get it?”

  J.T.’s personal-injury abacus started clicking away. There were holes in Al’s idea, naturally. There would be a lot more moving parts. On the other hand, if they were going to have to go through with this, as the adipose participation of Frankie Fresh indicated, it would at least give them the chance to start anew. The whole Van Slaters fiasco could be treated as a trial run, a warm-up for the main event.

  “Who sent the demand letter?”

  “Some lawyer from LA. Clint McAuliffe.”

  “I know that asshole. Thought if he raised enough for whatshername’s last campaign, they’d make him a federal judge. Prick just represented one too many gangbangers, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, if we could get Mack out there quick, with his back and shoulder already being messed up from the Van Slaters thing, we wouldn’t have to worry about an MRI.”

  J.T. turned things over in his head. “If we could settle before McAuliffe, that would probably screw his settlement up too, wouldn’t it?”

  “It wouldn’t help. If he came in looking for monster dollars, and we’d already settled ours for a fraction of that, they’d hold the line. Take him to trial.”

  That alone would almost make it worthwhile, J.T. thought.

  “It also gives us cover for the loss of consortium claim,” continued Al. “We hook Mack up with a girl who’ll play ball and not ask any questions. Whip up some backstory. They go to Vegas and get married on the spur of the moment. He and his wife are on their honeymoon at El Fuente Dorado and bam! Right outta the gate, he throws out his back, probably needs an operation on his shoulder, out of work…no chance of banging his new bride.”

  There was no question it was a more complicated scheme. And by no means cost-free.

  “Fuente Dorado’s a fortune,” said J.T. “The cheapest room in the place is like a grand a night. It’s Hong Kong jillionaires and studio heads.” J.T. raised his eyebrows and cocked his head. “Is anybody going to believe Mack had a foursome with Harvey Weinstein, Magic Johnson, and Jack Nicholson?”

  “They’re getting married in Vegas, remember? They won big at blackjack and hauled ass while they were up. They got tired on the drive back and decided to treat themselves to a honeymoon at the spa close to home.”

  “You got the cash for this?”

  “We already got Frankie on our ass. Might as well take on a few thousand more. If it doesn’t get fucked up, it would definitely be worth it.”

  J.T. rubbed his head. Jesus. Going deeper into the hole at a point a week. The saving grace was that the whole thing would be over in a month. Even if they borrowed another five grand and it took six weeks, it would only mean $600 in vigorish.

  “All right,” said J.T. “You deal with Frankie. The less interaction I have with that fat fuck the better. I’ll go have a talk with Mack and give him the good news.”

  J.T. figured he now had significant leverage over Mack. The idiot still didn’t realize how he’d jeopardized the whole plan. Halfway through his second bottle of Malbec the night before, J.T. realized it could’ve been worse. If Mack hadn’t mentioned Hooters and the ticket, J.T. could have sent a demand letter and maybe even gotten a payout only to have some in-house rat bastard at GSAC sniff out the scam. Mack’s admitting his manifold stupidity might have saved J.T. from a stretch in Lompoc.

  Mack would be disappointed that the Van Slaters flop was a scratch, but he’d get over it when J.T. doubled his payday to $30,000. Al wasn’t going to have any contact with Mack, so the way J.T. looked at it, Mack’s cut was coming out of J.T.’s end. It didn’t affect Al’s bottom line, so he should have no beef.

  J.T. figured a loss of consortium claim, done right, could raise a $120,000 claim up to $190,000. This would mean after, say, twenty grand off the top for Frankie, and another thirty for Mack, there was still close to a hundred forty grand on the table. Al would be counting on Mack pulling in about $57,000. With J.T. pocketing all but Mack’s promised $30,000, it made J.T.’s end closer to $85,000. With that kind of cash, J.T. would be back in business.

  Among the pesky details, however, was the fact that Mack was single—single with no prospects, as far as J.T. knew. This meant expanding the crew by one. Mack would not only have to get married; some emolument would be required to induce the would-be bride. Assuming one could be found that wasn’t as big a fuckup as Mack.

  “I don’t have to remind you,” said Al, “this shit’s got to happen fast. I gotta take the transfer to Weed or quit. Either way, the whole thing falls apart. And don’t forget, we’re still on the hook with Frankie Fresh.”

  After going over the new and improved plan for twenty minutes, Al begged off, saying he had to find a pharmacy to get something for his rash. J.T. stayed at the club, drinking coffee, doodling on cocktail napkins with circles and arrows representing splits and potential payouts. He was now all alone in the 19th Hole with a wad of napkins in his pocket.

  Feeling superstitious about Moreno Valley, Al drove out of his way to find a Walgreens in Hemet. After buying a tube of cortisone cream, he went out to his car and took two Tylenol with codeine he had left over from getting his wisdom teeth removed a year before, and washed them down with a warm Coors Light that had rolled under the front seat last night. He lifted his shirt and rubbed the cream all over his torso. Christ, this was uncomfortable.

  J.T. had taken the idea for a second run better than he’d imagined. Al congratulated himself on coming up with the loss of consortium angle. Okay, maybe technically Wanda had planted the seed. He should probably apologize to her. The big cow seemed to have had her feelings hurt. He wondered whom J.T. was going to be able to bring in on short notice. He didn’t know how much time he could buy on the Weed thing, but he knew it wasn’t a lot.

  J.T. called one of the cell phones he’d given Mack, who answered it on the fifth ring.

  “You working?” J.T. asked.

  “Yeah. I mean, I’m at work. I ain’t doing nothing right now.”

  “Grab a cart and ride over to my car. Black Mercedes, far end of the lot. Bring a shovel. Anybody asks, tell ’em one of the members saw a rattlesnake.”

  J.T. was out in the parking lot standing in the grass near his car. “You bring the shovel?”

  “Got it right here.” Amped, Mack reached into the back of the cart. “Where is it?”

  “There’s no snake, Mack. That’s why I said ‘tell them somebody saw a rattlesnake.’ I needed to get you out here to talk and we don’t have a lot of time.”

  “So there’s no rattler?”

  Jesus. “No, there’s no rattler. I just want you to hold the shovel and look around the ground like there is a rattler, you got it? This way if anyone sees us talking, we have a plausible reason for being together.”

  “That’s fucking smart, man.”

  “Thanks.” J.T. forced a quick, pained smile. “Now listen. Got a good news, bad news deal here. The bad news is, last night’s flop is a bust. We can’t file a claim.”
/>   “But I really did fuck up my shoulder and stuff.”

  “Yeah. Anyway.” J.T. was trying to stay calm. “You see, we just can’t take a chance that anyone who saw you and Buddy drinking together might have been able to put the two of you at the Van Slaters parking lot.”

  “I don’t think there was anybody.”

  “We can’t take that risk. On top of that, you went straight from what’s supposed to be a serious injury to Hooters, which a jury would see as a glorified titty bar.”

  “But—”

  “Mack, it’s a scratch, sorry. Now, that’s the bad news.”

  Mack hung his head and kicked gently at the blade of the shovel, then grunted and grasped his shoulder.

  “The good news is we have a Plan B.”

  Mack looked up, still rubbing his shoulder. “A Plan B?”

  God, it was like talking to a dachshund. “Remember the fifteen thousand you were going to get for the gig last night? Well, it just got doubled. Thirty grand.”

  “You serious? Thirty grand?”

  “Yep.”

  “But I wasn’t even supposed to get hurt last night.”

  “Well, that’s true. But come on, you’re going to take harder knocks than that up at Cape May, am I right?”

  Mack rolled his shoulder and gritted his teeth. “I reckon.”

  “Listen, just think of it as a mulligan. It’s a piece of cake. Hell, you might even enjoy it.”

  “So what do I have to do for this performance?”

  “Nothing. Just enjoy an all-expenses-paid honeymoon.”

  SIXTEEN

  J.T. had to remind Mack a half-dozen times to keep looking at the ground as if they were looking for a rattlesnake. As J.T. unfolded every wrinkle of the plan, Mack would stand upright and lean on the shovel like a fence post.

  “So let me get this straight: You want me to go to Vegas tomorrow night. Get married. The next day drive back to Palm Desert, then slip and fall in the lobby by the pool?”

  “The beauty of it is, you’re already banged up, so it will make the claim that much more plausible.”

  “You keep saying plausible. What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means believable. Like it could really happen. Unlike the whole thing with you fucking up the last one by going to Hooters with Buddy.”

  “Okay, okay.” Mack nodded. “I just didn’t know what the word meant’s all. I got it now.” He squinted at J.T. “So why do I have to get married?”

  “This is why you’re getting bumped from fifteen thousand to thirty. It makes the claim more valuable if your wife can show what we call a loss of consortium.”

  “All right, I know you must think I’m a dumbass, but what the fuck is loss of consortium?”

  “It means the loss of services, usually between spouses. Let’s say you’re an old married couple. You’re the husband, naturally you take out the trash at night. You cut the grass. You drive to the Home Depot to get a bag of birdseed. But if you’re injured or bedridden, you can’t do all those things.”

  “I get it, but if I was married—”

  “See, you’re not a dumbass.” J.T. couldn’t believe he had to hold this guy’s hand like this.

  A pickup drove through the lot down to the cul-de-sac by the pro shop.

  “Remember, keep looking down like you’re looking for the snake.”

  As the driver pulled his clubs from the truck bed, Mack looked down at the ground.

  “Loss of consortium has another important component,” J.T. continued. “It means that you’re unable to have sex anymore, or at least like you used to.”

  “And this will make the claim more plausible?”

  “More valuable.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Yeah. Loss of consortium is what we call a derivative claim. Her injury is that she’s lost the use of your services. It’s tied to the same set of facts, but it’s technically her claim.”

  “I gotcha.”

  “Now I need to ask you…I don’t want you to be embarrassed; I want you to be honest with me, because believe me, if you’re not, this whole thing will blow up in your face.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You aren’t gay, right?”

  “Sheeeiit.”

  “Mack, I’m not judging, I just have to know. If you are, that’s your business, it just means you would not be the right guy for this job.”

  Mack stood up straight and leaned on the shovel. “No, man, I ain’t gay.”

  “Look for the snake, Mack.” Sigh. “And you’re not married, right? No high school sweetheart you hooked up with and just never bothered to divorce?”

  Mack shook his head and dropped down into a crouch to examine the bush. “No. Not married, never been married.”

  “Okay, I had to ask.”

  Mack looked up at J.T. “To make sure it’s plausible.”

  “There you go.” Maybe he was getting it after all.

  “So who would I have to marry?”

  “Well, if she’ll go along with it…”

  “Who?”

  “You know Wanda from the 19th Hole?”

  “You shittin’ me?” Mack hopped up on his feet. He straightened his elbow out and grimaced.

  “What?”

  “Shit, she’s bigger’n I am!”

  “So what?”

  “I got a thing about chicks that can kick my ass.”

  “Listen to yourself. Wanda’s a pretty girl.”

  “I don’t know’s I’d call her a girl. She’s gotta be pushing forty. Is this what you mean by plausible?”

  Down at the bag drop, an old guy J.T. recognized struggled to haul his clubs out of the tiny trunk of his red Kia.

  “She won’t be thirty-five until December. She’s not that much older than you.”

  “Still, you see the shoulders on her? Godamighty, she’s like a fuckin’ lumberjack.”

  “Did you know she almost qualified for the Olympics in swimming? That’s where the shoulders come from. She was one of the top high school swimmers in California until she was in a car accident her senior year.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “She’s a pretty girl. Smart. Works hard. Besides, nobody said you’ve got to stay together forever. If this thing settles like I think it will, you’ll be going off to Cape May with thirty thousand dollars in your pocket and you two can just get the thing annulled. Like it never happened.”

  Mack cocked his head, bit his lip, and nodded slowly. “Okay, man. I guess you can count me in.”

  “Great. Now one more thing. We’re treating last night like a scrimmage. We can’t have any more fuckups, you got me?”

  “The rattler!” Mack jerked the shovel up like a spear.

  J.T. jumped a foot in the air. He fell backward on his ass and started scrambling like a crab.

  “Oh, wait…nope…hang on.” Mack bent down and picked up a lizard trying to hide in the shade beneath a bush. “Just a lizard,” he said, smiling.

  J.T. scowled, brushed off the back of his pants, and turned to walk back to the clubhouse. Asshole.

  J.T. stepped out of the bright morning sun and back into the dark room, where he had Wanda set up a bloody mary on the bar. The situation was not ideal. Golfers trudged in and out. Fortunately, no one else sat down at the bar or lingered longer than it took Wanda to pull beers from the cooler.

  J.T. pulled up his barstool and smiled. “What are your goals, Wanda? What are your dreams?”

  “Pay off my credit cards. Take care of my mom. Buy a little duplex by the beach and rent it out.”

  “No kids?”

  “I think that train’s already left the station.”

  “C’mon…pretty girl like you? I bet you had plenty of chances.”

  Wanda blushed and sucked in her stomach, causing her breasts to push forward.

  “Who are you kidding, J.T.? Why do you think I give Frankie such a big breakfast? That guy makes me look like a gymnast.”

  J.T. chuc
kled at that and Wanda smiled back.

  “Where are you going with this, J.T.?”

  J.T. laid out the barest sketch of the plan. He didn’t mention the Van Slaters attempt, and he said nothing about Frankie Fresh being involved. Al was never mentioned as a part of the scheme, but J.T. knew Wanda was bright. She’d read between the lines.

  “Look, even if you could talk somebody into marrying me—even for money—that’s not really the way I’d envisioned spending my life, you know?”

  “First of all, Wanda, let’s assume I already have somebody. Somebody you know and like. Somebody who thinks you’re pretty.”

  “It’s not one of these old retired guys, is it?” Wanda shook her head and wiped some water off the bar.

  “Mack McMahon.”

  Wanda threw her head back and laughed. “He never told you his ‘thing about girls that can kick his ass’?”

  “I’ll be the first to concede that Mack’s not the sharpest pencil on the desk, but deep down he’s okay. Besides, you know he’s joining the Coast Guard, right?”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Okay, he joins the Coast Guard, the first thing they do is ship him off to New Jersey for a couple of months. After that he could be stationed anywhere. If this thing goes like I think it will, it’ll be over in a few weeks. If you two turn out not to be Gable and Lombard, you just get the thing annulled right after the settlement.”

  A twosome walked in and asked for some coffee before they sat down at a table across the room. Wanda held up a finger to J.T., then carried a carafe over to the customers.

  Returning the carafe to the warmer, Wanda turned around and blew a curl from her forehead. “What’s in it for me, J.T.? How does this get me closer to those goals you seemed so interested in a minute ago?”

  J.T. knew Wanda would be sharp enough not to take him up on his first offer. “Ten grand.”

  “What’s Mack getting?”

  “Yours would just be based on a derivative claim, Wanda, you can’t—”

  “I’m sure with an offer as attractive as this, you won’t have any problem finding someone discreet—especially on short notice.” Wanda walked a couple of menus to the players she’d just served the coffee to.