Cash Out

by Marshall Thornton

  “Mom!”

  “The thing is… it wasn’t her car. It’s a very big parking lot, after all, and there were a lot of blue cars.”

  “How does Cotton come into this?” I asked, genuinely confused.

  “My insurance company didn’t want to pay the claim.”

  “Because it was deliberate.”

  “Well, yes. I didn’t know what to do and then I called Cotton. He dealt with it. All I had to pay was my deductible. You know, to fix my car.”

  “And the other car.”

  “Yes, that too. The young man who owned the car was really much nicer about it than I deserved.”

  I was about to ask if Cotton was a magician rather than a lawyer, but we were pulling up in front of Lucky Days. We parked under the vast neon awning. The limo already sat next to several other very expensive looking vehicles which got ultraprivileged treatment. Louis climbed out and gave the valet his keys.

  “The hotel is wonderful, Angie. Wait until you see the view,” Aunt Katie said. “It’s all comped, too. Cotton must be very important.”

  “Sonny,” my mother said. “Sonny’s the important one.”

  I began to wonder about that. Was my mother right? Was this all Sonny’s doing? Was he the only mob lawyer? Or were they both—

  Honestly, I doubted a mob lawyer would defend a senior citizen in a case of automotive assault. Even if he did remember her from their youth. No, it sounded exactly like the kind of thing a small-town lawyer would do. Maybe I was thinking about everything all wrong?

  Well, mostly wrong. If Sonny was a mob lawyer, Cotton knew at least that. And by accepting that he, and possibly we, were beholding—

  “Why don’t you boys give us a little time to get settled and then we’ll meet for dinner in about an hour and a half, maybe?” my mother suggested. Then she kissed my cheek and said, “Go lay down. You look peaked.”

  I frowned at her but obeyed. After I made my goodbyes, I walked across the lobby and noted that the Cotton family’s luggage, and presumably my mother’s, were piled onto a shiny brass cart. Six gray suitcases. I didn’t envy whoever had to figure out which suitcase went where.

  It was nearly two o’clock, so I decided I had better call Pinx and see how things were going without me. I thought about finding a pay phone, but I didn’t have a calling card. I could call from my room, but it would be very ex—wait a minute. All the incidentals are taken care of. The call would be free. I found the elevator and rode back up to the penthouse floor. Once in my room, I went directly to the telephone and dialed.

  Mikey answered, “Pinx Video, Mikey speaking.”

  “It’s Noah.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so glad you called.” He inhaled deeply and said, “I’m going to kill her.”

  “Patty?”

  “Who else?”

  To be fair, he could have been speaking about Nancy Reagan, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant or his mother. I was fairly certain he’d threatened all of them at one time or another.

  “What did she do now?”

  “She cashed out last night and—”

  “Wait. She worked last night? Why did she work last night?” Part of the deal with Patty was that she wasn’t supposed to be opening or closing. We’d taught her how to do it, we just didn’t trust her.

  “Carl and Denny went to Hemet to see Denny’s mother for the holiday,” Mikey explained. “She’s very Catholic. I gather she still thinks they’re just good friends.”

  Carl and Denny were in their mid-sixties, which meant Denny’s mother had to be somewhere in her eighties.

  “What did Patty do?”

  “She was under by five thousand three hundred and eighty-five dollars.”

  “That’s not even possible,” I said. Our closing procedures were pretty simple. We started with a drawer of two hundred dollars cash in small denominations. At the end of the night that money was counted out and whatever was left was then matched to the cash amount our computer system had tracked. Then the credit card receipts were added up and compared to the computer report. It was relatively simple, and a negative number was not remotely a possibility.

  “Yes, I know it’s not possible. I’ve spent the whole morning trying to fix it.”

  “Did you call her?”

  “I did. She thinks math is a sort of magic, like voodoo.”

  “So, she was no help.”

  “None.”

  I thought for a moment. “What did we get in the mail yesterday?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have time to open it.”

  That made me feel guilty. I really shouldn’t have taken a vacation after being sick for most of a month. I pushed forward with my thought, though. “You don’t think Patty opened the mail, do you?”

  “Oh my God, that would be a disaster!”

  “I’m thinking we might have gotten a bill from the payroll company.” Each quarter they sent the amount we needed to pay for withholding taxes. It was generally around five thousand dollars. “Patty might have assumed it needed to be added to or subtracted from the daily total.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, you did just say she thinks math is magic. It might make sense to Patty.”

  “Jesus Christ. I wonder where she put the mail. Noah, I have to go look for it.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll figure this out.” I really hoped I was right.

  “I hope the wedding’s fun. Congratulate your mom for me,” he said, then hung up.

  I laid back on the bed. I had nearly an hour and a half before lunch or dinner—or drunch. Was drunch even a word? What do you call it when you eat at three-thirty in the afternoon? And half of you are having lunch and the other half dinner?

  I pondered this social dilemma for a bit and then wondered if I’d even be able to nap. There was really too much going on for me to relax. In order to be at least a little productive, I got out my Louise Hay tapes, slipped one into the Walkman, and put on the headphones.

  I really didn’t think I could “think” myself well. But, as Louis put it when he saw the tapes in my car, a positive attitude never hurt anyone.

  Louise Hay’s calm, solid, motherly voice began to repeat affirmations into my ear. I tried to affirm the things I wanted. I tried to tell myself I was healthy, I was happy, I was—

  The phone rang. My first thought was that it was Mikey calling again, but when I picked it up it was my mother.

  “Noah, can you come to my room?”

  “Um, okay, sure. What’s going—”

  She hung up. That was weird. She’d told me to lay down not twenty minutes before, and now that I was laying down she wanted me to come to her room. It took only a moment to cross the hall and knock on the door to suite 20102. Aunt Katie answered with a strange look on her face.

  “Come in.”

  When I got inside, the living room was empty but the door to one of the bedrooms was open. My mother’s room. I could see that she was standing next to the bed. Marc and Louis were in there, so was Tina. Which meant my mother had called me last? Really? Last?

  Aunt Katie led me into the bedroom. As soon as I got inside, I saw the problem. My mother’s gray suitcase sat open on the bed. It was filled with cash; a lot of cash. I had the feeling it wasn’t hers.

  “Holy shit,” I couldn’t help saying.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Louis said.

  5

  And then everyone was talking. “Why would anyone carry this much money?” “Whose money did we think it was?” “Where were my mother’s clothes?”

  “All right everyone, slow down,” Louis said, raising his voice just a tad. Turning to my mother he asked, “Angie, can you explain this?”

  “It’s not my suitcase,” my mother said, stepping even further away from it. “There’s been some kind of mix-up.”

  “Of course, there has,” Aunt Katie said, patting my mother’s shoulder. “There’s no other ex—”

  Over her, my mother said, “But I don�
�t understand, why did my key even open it?”

  “The keys aren’t unique,” Louis explained. “Even the best luggage-makers only make twenty or twenty-five different locks. And, no offense, but this doesn’t look like high-end luggage. For all we know, one key fits all their locks.”

  “You need the kind with a combination, Angie,” Marc added. “Much safer.”

  “Oh yes,” Aunt Katie agreed. “He’s right.”

  “My suitcase didn’t need to be safe. There wasn’t anything valuable in it. Just a wedding dress I got on sale.”

  “Oh my God, what is the dress like?” Tina wanted to know. While Aunt Katie said, “What will you get married in?”

  “You don’t think this is Cotton’s bag, do you?” I asked.

  “Oh no. It couldn’t be.”

  “Why?”

  Now, finally, everyone was silent. After a moment, Louis said what all of us, or at least some of us, were thinking. “It’s probably Sonny’s. You know, Chicago law firm, mob run casino. They go together.”

  “Oh, that’s just idle gossip,” my mother said. And then, less confidently added, “I mean, it is, isn’t it?”

  No one said anything as she stared at the suitcase full of cash on the bed. I looked at it closely, too. Sewn into the sides, were cloth pockets held shut by elastic. I ran my fingers through them. There was nothing but a leather tag with a piece of paper inside for you to write your name on. Once you did that, you used a little chain to attach it to the handle.

  “So, Mom, why didn’t you put your address on the tag?”

  “Cotton said not to. He explained that it’s just an invitation to burglarize your home. Baggage handlers collect addresses and then, bam, you’re burgled that night. He wouldn’t let any of us use a tag. He made sure the girls knew that too.”

  “And your baggage claim?” Louis asked.

  “We pulled them off at the airport. They’re so messy looking. Don’t you think?” I could see that something was occurring to her. “That means the bags must have gotten mixed up later. Here at the hotel. I’m sure we had the right bags at the airport.”

  My mother looked at Louis and asked, “You think Sonny’s transporting this money for the mob? Is that right?”

  “Well, I mean, it’s a possibility,” he admitted.

  With a frown, my mother asked, “But, if this money does belong to the mob, wouldn’t it be going in the other direction? Doesn’t the mob make money from casinos?”

  “The money goes both ways. They send it down to be laundered,” Tina said. “It’s turned into profit and the casino sends a check back to Chicago.”

  “But—” my mother started. “We’re making a lot of assumptions. There could be a reasonable explanation.”

  “This is probably a million dollars. In cash,” Louis said. And that in itself was unreasonable.

  “How do you know that?” Aunt Katie asked.

  “I’m guessing. An inch-thick stack of hundreds is probably twenty-five thousand dollars. Just multiply—”

  “Not everyone likes banks,” my mother said. “That’s certainly a reason to have this much money.”

  “But if that’s the case, why is it here?” Marc asked. “Why isn’t it under a mattress somewhere?”

  “Mom, if you don’t think it’s Cotton’s money then why isn’t he here? Why didn’t you call him?”

  That caused another moment of silence. She took a deep breath before answering. “Well—the only people who have the same bag, besides me and Cotton, are his children. If there isn’t a good reason for one of them to have this much money—he’ll be devastated. I thought—I thought we should try to figure this out before I talk to him.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. Something had just dawned on me. “How long have you been in the room?”

  “I don’t know. Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour.”

  “That means whoever has your bag has opened it by now and they know you have their money. So why haven’t they—”

  “I didn’t have a name tag on the suitcase, though,” she said, pointing out the obvious.

  “Your wedding dress is in there,” I said. “That’s better than a tag.”

  “Is it a traditional wedding dress?” Tina wanted to know. “Is it beautiful?”

  “It’s a simple, silver suit.”

  “Oh, that sounds wonderful.”

  “It’s close enough to a wedding dress, Mom. Whoever this money belongs to knows you have it. So why haven’t they come down to exchange bags with you? I mean, if there’s a good reason.”

  We took a third ominous pause, no one really wanting to look at the others.

  “What should we do?” my mom asked. “We’re all supposed to have dinner in twenty minutes.”

  “I think we should respect your wishes and not say anything,” Louis said.

  “Louis is right,” Marc agreed. “Let Sonny make the first move.”

  “What if he doesn’t say anything?” my mother asked.

  “How do you feel about being rich?” I asked.

  That made my mother frown. After that we went back to our rooms to freshen up before meeting in the lobby to pick a spot for lunch or dinner or drunch. Marc and Louis stepped into my suite for just a second.

  “Where’s Leon?” Louis said. “We haven’t been able to find him.”

  “Did you call his mobile phone?”

  “I don’t think it’s turned on,” Marc explained. “He told me he’s afraid of roaming charges.”

  “The last time I saw him he asked for my complimentary chips,” I said.

  “Ah. He’s gambling.”

  “I didn’t give him the chips,” I said. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Maybe he’s found a loan shark,” Marc guessed, facetiously.

  “He probably just got an advance on his Mastercard,” Louis said. “And I don’t think Mastercard would appreciate your calling them a loan shark.”

  Marc shrugged at him and said, “We should watch Cotton and his kids closely at lunch. If I lost a million dollars, I’d be sweating bullets.”

  I tried again for a nap, but it didn’t work. I suppose I was foolish to even try. My head was spinning with questions. Was my mother right not to call Cotton? He really should have been her first call. But he wasn’t. She’d called us instead. Should I say something about that? I mean, he’s her fiancé, the man she’s going to marry. On the other hand, she was trying to protect him. And wasn’t that basically the same as my not telling her I had the flu? Was it? No, I was hiding sniffles, she was hiding that one of his children or one of his children’s… one of his…

  Okay, I guess I did fall asleep for a short while. I woke up and it was twenty after three. At first, the suitcase full of money seemed like a dream, and I wished it had been even as I realized it wasn’t. I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to be at dinner at three or three thirty. Either way, I needed to hurry. I was either late or really late. I threw on a red-and-black striped shirt from SFO and my black jeans. That was as formal as I got. My look was not exactly grunge—though I did have a pair of ripped jeans I often wore—and not exactly preppy. Probably somewhere in-between. In-between was the story of my life.

  Downstairs in the lobby, it didn’t take long to find everyone. Tina, Becky—still in the gaudy daffodil dress—Marc and Louis, my mother, and Aunt Katie were all standing together. Marc was already filming as I came up, holding the video camera out in front of him almost like a stop sign. I raised a hand over my face and tried to get away from him.

  Given that Becky was there we couldn’t talk about the money in my mother’s suite, so I asked, “Mom, where are you going on your honeymoon?”

  “Yes, Angie, tell us where you’re going,” Marc said.

  “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  She’d told me this already, but you can’t blame me for trying.

  “It is?” Becky asked. “Aren’t you going to The Cayman Islands?”

  She looked awfully calm. Placid even. I doub
ted she could know anything about the missing money and still be so unconcerned.

  “Well, yes,” my mother said, looking a bit displeased. “Cotton told you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “He never keeps secrets from us.” And that made me wonder why my mother had been keeping that secret from her child—me. Clearly, she’d thought she and Cotton were both keeping the secret. So why had he told his daughters?

  “It’s so lovely there,” Becky said. “Sonny and I have been a couple of times. You’re going to love Seven Mile Beach.”

  As she said that, I could hear Tina whispering into Louis’ ear, “Oh my God, I just read the script for the new Tom Cruise movie, The Firm. The Cayman Islands is where bad people hide money. Do you think we’re wrong? Could it be C—”

  “I’m sorry what did you say?” Becky asked.

  “I said, I think I saw Tom Cruise in the casino,” Tina quickly covered.

  “Where?” Marc asked, turning the camera on the casino.

  “Oh my God, really?” Becky said craning her neck. “He’s so dreamy.”

  “I think he’s over by the craps table,” Tina said, looking at us and shrugging.

  The Cayman Islands? Maybe Cotton wasn’t as innocent as my mother wanted him to be. Could it be his suitcase? Was he delivering a large amount of money to an offshore account for the mob?

  If that was true, then the comped rooms and the VIP treatment made a lot of sense. Maybe it wasn’t Sonny getting us the deal. Maybe it was really Cotton. Of course, if it was Cotton then he’d be bringing the money from Grand Rapids and that didn’t make a lot of sense.

  Or did it? Illegal things had to happen there—even if my mother didn’t think so. They happened everywhere. But were there enough illegal things happening there to fill a suitcase full of cash? An illegal million-dollars worth of it? That was the part I wasn’t as sure of.

  Then I remembered Cotton saying his suitcase was older than the others, that it was a little banged up. Was the suitcase in my mother’s room banged up? Was it showing any signs of wear? I couldn’t remember.

  I was about to pull my mother aside and ask her, when Reba and Cotton joined us. Marc jockeyed to get a better angle. Looking a tiny bit happier, Reba had her arm hooked into her father’s.