by Jack Bunker
As he poured the last third of the bottle into his balloon glass, J.T. heard the news mention Meshulam Razin’s funeral the following day at Forest Lawn. J.T. reached over and picked up one of the disposable phones and called Al.
“Where are you right now?”
“On my way back to the club to give Frankie the vig.”
“Pull over. This is going to take a minute to explain.”
FORTY-ONE
Hector went online to check out the Mira Vista Golf Club and Resort. The website had clearly not been updated since the club opened. He thought about Wanda McMahon’s smile when she’d brought him his lunch. She was just his type. Tall. Athletic. Dark-complected, with those gorgeous dimples. Why did she have to be married to the guy that fixed golf carts?
He’d still never heard back from McMahon’s friend, Buddy. He wanted to try the club one more time in person, but if he were to bump into Wanda again, J.T. would go nuts. But there was no rush. Hector still had weeks to get J.T.’s discovery back to him. There was time.
“Here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to pay Frankie his vig, and you’re going to tell him everything’s still a go.”
“I am?”
“Yes, you are.”
“But I’ll be laid off before this thing gets anywhere near trial. How am I supposed to convince him to hang on? I already told Frankie I was losing my job.”
Fucking guy cannot keep his mouth shut about anything. “Listen to me. You’re going to tell him everything’s a go. You’re going to tell him it was me, J.T., who expressly told you not to mention the new development to a soul. You’re going to tell him how I, J.T., knew that if even a whisper of this leaked out, we’d lose any chance at all of settling short of trial.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not done. You’re going to tell him now that the cat is out of the bag, now that your big-mouth friend Ellis has opened his fucking yap, this thing is going to trial. You can’t sign off on a settlement—hell, you can’t even convince the company they should settle. See? You’re totally telling the truth.”
J.T. wondered if Al caught the dig buried in there. “Now listen: this is the critical part, okay? You’re going to take your cell phone and leave it in your shirt pocket, you got me?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I’m getting to that. Now stay with me, okay? I need you to record your conversation with Frankie using the cell phone. Can you do that? Can you figure out how to record a conversation with the cell phone?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“Guessing will not be good enough this time. I don’t want you to get stressed out, but I gotta tell you, this gets fucked up, we’re both looking at careers in landfill, and I don’t mean shoveling it, you hear me?”
“Yeah. Hang on, let me try it.” Al picked up one of the other disposable phones and fumbled with the buttons. “Testing…testing…one, two, three.”
J.T. threw his head back against the wall of the hot tub. Fucking knew he’d say that. “So did it work?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, this is the very, very important part.”
“Okay.”
“I need one hundred percent of your concentration right now, okay?”
“Okay, fuck!”
“Good, now here’s what you’re going to do. You need to get Frankie to start talking shit about Vinnie Fangs.”
“Vinnie Fangs.”
“Vinnie Fangs.” J.T. sighed loudly and turned off the jets to the tub. “You’re going to tell Frankie that you’ve lost your job and that you can’t influence the case anymore.”
“He knows that.”
“Just fucking listen, all right? Trust me, I’m trying to help us both out of this.” J.T. climbed out of the Jacuzzi and sat down in a patio chair. “You tell him you’re worried about Vinnie Fangs. You do not, under any circumstances, call him Vinnie Fangs. You call him Mister Fegangi, you got it?”
“Got it.”
“I don’t want you to try to memorize anything else. I know this is a lot, buddy, all right? Just try and follow me.” J.T. topped off his glass of wine. “Your objective—your only objective—is to get Frankie to talk shit about Vinnie Fangs. You know Frankie. He’s a loudmouth. Give him enough rope and he’ll hang himself.”
J.T. sipped a big mouthful of wine. He was thinking so fast he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing. He paused while he swirled the wine around in his mouth. Not bad.
“You need to steer the conversation to getting Frankie to say, effectively, ‘Fuck Vinnie Fangs.’ You want him to admit he never told Vinnie Fangs about the scam.”
“That’s it?” said Al.
“That’s enough.”
“But isn’t this illegal? How are the cops going to be able to use this?”
Once again, J.T. counted to five in his head. “Of course it’s illegal. We’re not—never mind.” He looked for the wine bottle. He’d already forgotten it was empty. He tossed it over his head and out into the yard, where it landed in the soft Bermuda grass with a thud. “I need you to do one last thing for me and then we’re done.”
“What’s that?”
“First, how much cash can you get your hands on right now? Tonight?”
“I think I still have four grand from the insurance payout.”
“Shit. That’s not going to get us very far.”
“I lost everything when the house burned.”
J.T. craned his neck and looked at the sun growing buttery in the sky. “Fuck it. Keep it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Listen, after you meet with Frankie, I need you to drive and meet me at the Der Weinerschnitzel on University. You know the one I’m talking about?”
“Yeah, but you said we were never supposed to meet.”
“Did I also mention I didn’t want to wind up tied to an engine block at the bottom of the Salton Sea?” J.T. started drying himself with a gold Ralph Lauren beach towel. “I’ll be there in a booth, reading. Say eight o’clock. You come in; order something to go. Walk by my table, put the phone with the recording on it, and just keep on going. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Okay. Now, listen. Take a deep breath and relax. It’s almost over.”
FORTY-TWO
Al went into the office, but he couldn’t focus on the growing mound of paperwork immigrating to his desk. He’d lost more hair to the point where his scalp was now visible. He thought about buying a rug.
After meeting with Frankie, Al had stuck around the 19th Hole for a couple of vodkas before he drove back to Riverside. He went in to the Der Wienerschnitzel and ordered a dog with kraut. He walked over to the condiment station, got some extra napkins, and laid the phone on J.T.’s table on his way out the door. Alone in his motel room, Al ate his hot dog with kraut, drank some more vodka, and watched Sahara on TV. When he saw Matthew McConaughey moving his fingers from left to right pretending to read Arabic script, Al chuckled out loud.
At least I’m not the dumbest asshole in the world.
Traffic backed up off the 5 onto the Glendale Boulevard exit. As limousines inched up Glendale toward Forest Lawn, J.T. felt like an extra at Vito Corleone’s funeral. He knew there would be a turnout, but he hadn’t counted on quite this overwhelming an outpouring of…relief
With the demise of J. Edgar Hoover, no individual—not the president, not the head of the CIA, not the foremost computer hacker in the country—had access to the kind of information Meshulam Razin had stored in the nautilus chambers of his craggy, white-thatched head.
J.T. parked the rented Taurus behind what seemed like a mile of black limousines. He hung his head, thinking about how far he’d fallen. He’d focus on losing the Mercedes later. He trudged up a hill and down the other side, following the herd of mourners and gawkers to Meshulam Razin’s final resting place. As much as J.T. hated standing around at funerals, for once he was hoping the thing would run long, long enough anyway for him to find, isolate, and a
pproach Vincenzo Fegangi.
He wouldn’t be easy to spot. There had to be two thousand people there. All in dark suits. Men wearing yarmulkes. J.T. had cut a circle out of an old pair of bicycle shorts and affixed it to his hair with a paperclip. It didn’t have to be perfect. It just had to stay on for a few minutes until he could get clear of the crowd.
He hoped Fangs wouldn’t be too close to the casket; otherwise J.T. would never get through. After five minutes of looking, bobbing up and down as he circled the gathering, he still hadn’t seen him. He was just about to climb up on Alan Ladd’s headstone when he spotted Fangs flanked by two younger men built like file cabinets.
J.T. watched. The two guys occasionally said something to Fangs with their hands covering their mouths. Vinnie Fangs either nodded or looked away. J.T. moved a little closer, a few feet at a time, never drawing their attention.
At least he didn’t think he had drawn attention to himself, until he felt someone squeezing his left triceps from behind.
“Who the fuck are you?” a gravel voice whispered from behind.
“My name’s Edwards,” J.T. said. He lifted his chin slightly as though not only was he not surprised, but as if people grabbed him from behind all the time. “I’m a lawyer. Mr. Razin was a kind of mentor of mine.”
“What are you doing creeping over this way?” Still no face. Still a firm grasp on J.T.’s elbow.
J.T. knew this was the point where he needed to pull away or he’d never get close to Fangs. J.T. jerked his arm from the grip of the guy behind him and turned around. “I told you.” J.T. scowled at the guy, who was about his size but years younger. “I’m a lawyer. Here.” J.T. pulled a loose card from his pants pocket. “I have something urgent I need to talk to Mr. Fegangi about.”
“You don’t get to decide what’s urgent—”
“Look, I don’t know who you are. I’m sure you’re doing your job. But do not fuck me on this, you understand?” J.T. stared at the guy the way he had at a thousand hostile witnesses. “I told you who I am. I told you I’ve got some important business that I need to share with Mr. Fengangi.”
“Tell me what it is and I’ll go tell him.”
“What am I, an asshole?” J.T. saw Vinnie Fangs turn his head to look at the minor disruption. J.T. knew this was his shot. If he didn’t get to Fegangi right here, right now, he never would. “Gimme that.” J.T. yanked his business card out of the guy’s fingers. J.T. tore it in half twice and threw it at the guy’s chest. “Just remember: I tried to reach out to warn Mr. Fegangi, and it was you that fucked him, not me.”
J.T. stomped off in the opposite direction of Vinnie Fangs and his associates. He made sure that he also walked in an indirect path leading nowhere near the Taurus. He zigzagged around the perimeter of the crowd like he knew where he was going until he heard “excuse me” from behind.
One of the two file cabinets that had been standing with Vinnie Fangs walked briskly up to J.T. “Come with me.”
J.T. followed the guy, who didn’t say a word. The service was over and the mourners started to break up, the crowd slowly, thickly dispersing down the path leading to the bank of limos over the hill. Well back of the crowd, Vinnie Fangs and the other file cabinet were walking toward him. The guy J.T. had yelled at was three steps behind them.
The file cabinet walking with J.T. stopped, so J.T. stopped with him. Vinnie Fangs looked at him and didn’t say anything. J.T. knew this move. It was the same polonaise he’d been through with Frankie Fresh. It was designed to throw someone off balance; get him to start talking, say something he didn’t mean to say.
Vinnie Fangs blinked first. “So you came here to warn me about something?”
J.T. smiled slightly. It had worked. “Yes, sir.”
“So who are you?” asked Fegangi.
“My name’s Edwards, Mr. Fegangi. J.T. Edwards. I’m a lawyer.”
“Uh-huh.”
Fegangi had just reversed the gambit and stared ahead. J.T. knew he needed to have Fegangi maintain face. “You know we’re being watched here, right?” J.T. said.
“You came to my friend’s funeral to warn me I’m being watched? Thanks, pal, but I got drones flying over my patio twenty-four hours a day. My grandson shoots his BB gun at them. You couldn’t have come out here for that.”
“No, sir. It’s just that I want to tell you up front that I’m here in my capacity as an attorney. The subject matter of what I have to discuss with you is highly confidential.”
“You billing by the hour, counselor? Get on with it.”
J.T. pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “What I need to discuss with you is recorded on here, Mr. Fegangi. Now,” J.T. said, returning the phone into his jacket pocket, “is there somewhere I can play this for you where we won’t be disturbed?”
The guy who’d grabbed J.T. held the limo door open for Fegangi, who got in the car, followed by the two file cabinets opposite him. Fegangi slid over to make a space for J.T., then nodded at the guy outside the car, who closed the door.
“As I was saying, Mr. Fegangi,” said J.T., not wanting to try his host’s patience, “I have a client who is concerned—deeply concerned—that a recent indiscretion of his may not have had your full sanction.”
Fangs picked a leaf from the cuff of his pants.
“Anyway, this client of mine has just been laid off from an insurance company where he worked. Just before his exit, however, he—rather unwisely, if you ask me—participated in a settlement of a personal injury claim that may have been…less than wholesome.”
Vinnie Fangs sucked his teeth and raised his eyebrows.
“My client, as I said, had been told that his participation in this venture had your implicit approval. He later learned, as you’re about to hear, that it had not.”
Fangs shifted in his seat. He didn’t say anything, but J.T. now had his unalloyed attention.
“My client had been told that the Inland Empire fell within your quote-unquote ‘sphere of influence.’ He’s worried that your associate—”
“What associate?” said Fangs.
“A Mr. McElfresh. I understand Mr. McElfresh is a sportsman.”
Fangs looked across the limo’s open space at File Cabinets One and Two, then back to J.T. “Maybe you’d better play me what’s on that thing.”
“Of course.” J.T. turned the phone on, hoping that the battery had been charged; that he hadn’t picked up the wrong phone; that his edits to the conversation weren’t noticeable. “One of the voices is my client’s; the other I’m sure you’ll recognize as being that of Mr. McElfresh.”
—Well, what does Mr. Fegangi say about all of this?
—Mr. Fegangi don’t say anything about all of this ’cause Mr. Fegangi don’t know about all of this.
Fangs shot another quick look at File Cabinets One and Two.
—But I thought you worked for him. What’s he going to say when he finds out? I got no money and no job, Frankie.
—I see where you’re confused. You think I work for Vinnie Fangs. I don’t.
J.T. watched Fegangi’s molars grinding in his cheeks at the sound of Frankie calling him “Vinnie Fangs,” a name he was known to despise.
—Th is is my deal out here. The day I start asking some diaper-wearing old guinea for table scraps…
Fangs stared at the cell phone, but J.T. noticed File Cabinets One and Two look at each other with eyes as big as CDs.
—Listen, boyo. I’m telling you—you ain’t gotta worry about Vinnie Fangs. He’s never gonna find out. Who you do have to worry about is your good friend Frankie. You hear what I’m saying?
After two seconds of silence, J.T. switched off the phone. “And that’s it. That’s what my client gave me.”
File Cabinet One shook his head and set his jaw tight.
“From what I understand from my client,” J.T. continued, “he himself was under the impression that the settlement of the claim in question was to be several hundred thousand dollars. Mr. McElfresh insis
ted on a ‘finder’s fee’ of fifteen percent.”
“That greedy fuck,” said File Cabinet Two. Fangs scowled at the younger man.
“Yeah, well, there were serious defects in the claim that turned out to make it not such a gold mine after all. The claim was a dog and the company settled it for nuisance value. A total of twenty-four thousand dollars.”
J.T. looked around the limo for a reaction. Getting none, he resumed his story. “My client paid Mr. McElfresh his fifteen percent finder’s fee off the top—thirty-six hundred dollars. Mr. McElfresh, however, apparently had been expecting a far greater fee. You don’t need me to do the math, of course, but a fifteen percent finder’s fee on a mid-six-figure claim…”
“You’re right, counselor. I don’t need you to do the math.”
“Right. Anyway.” J.T. cleared his throat. “My client, in addition to being unemployed and not particularly clever, is now very much afraid that Mr. McElfresh wasn’t being forthcoming when he said that he hadn’t told you about the scam, and that you would likewise be expecting a finder’s fee for a half-million-dollar claim.”
J.T. reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He started to hand it to Fangs, but Fangs tilted his head toward File Cabinet One, who reached across the limo’s open space to take the envelope.
J.T. knew Vinnie Fangs was his only chance to get out of this thing with that malignant walrus, Frankie Fresh. He also knew that showing up empty-handed to talk to Fangs would be suicide. Fangs or one of the File Cabinets would call Frankie and Frankie would hold a mirror in front of J.T.’s face while he stuffed J.T.’s testes down his throat.
He needed what the French called une douceur. He couldn’t take it from Al. Not after the poor bastard lost his house and everything in it, not to mention his job. An envelope with cash, even though it was small potatoes to Vinnie Fangs—especially because it was so embarrassingly light—was J.T.’s only hope to convince Fangs of his story’s truthfulness.