by Davis Bunn
He realized the clerk was watching him and asked, “You mind if I sit here?”
“Do I mind?” The clerk showed genuine humor. “I been working this job, what, five years now. That’s the first time a guest ever asked me permission.”
“You’re the boss here.”
The clerk’s reply was cut off by the ringing phone. He answered and began speaking in a low voice. But his gaze remained steady upon Val.
The Internet search had taken Val from the blue-flagged headline to an article in that morning’s Orlando Sentinel. As soon as Val had seen the newspaper banner, he had known he was looking at his hometown. Not Des Moines. He lived in Orlando. The new memory and the newspaper article formed a heat pungent as steam rising from a lava bed. Val watched the clerk talk quietly into the phone and felt pummeled by the words he had read. According to the report, Valentine Haines and Marjorie Copeland, executives of a company called Insignia, had apparently been killed by a massive bomb blast. Terrorists were not believed to have been involved.
The blast had demolished the top two floors of a building within the Rockefeller Center complex. The floors were home to the Syntec Investment Bank. The only reason there had not been a bloodbath was that the blast had occurred at six forty-five in the morning. The bank’s premises, however, had been completely destroyed.
The clerk set down the phone. His eyes remained upon Val’s face, inspecting, gauging. “Looks like it’s my turn to ask permission, Mr. Smith.”
“What for?”
“See, there’s some guys, they want to do a little business. Maybe you’d be better off heading upstairs.”
The prospect of entering his solitary cell held no pleasure whatsoever. “Do I have to?”
The clerk’s name tag read Vince. His eyes flickered through an instant’s change, something that might have been humor. “There you go, asking me what I never heard before. Do you have to? That ain’t the question. The question is, are you trouble?”
“Not for you. Definitely not.” Val waved in the direction of the stairs. “I just don’t . . .”
A pair of young men pushed through the outer doors. They crowded the lobby with uptown swagger and noise. The atmosphere palpably condensed. One of the men was rail-thin, dressed in a vest and no shirt, with a thick gold chain bouncing on his chest as he walked. “Man, this is some place, right, Jamie?”
“Sure.” His partner was thicker in every possible dimension. He wore an off-white sweater and cotton boat pants. But his swagger was the same, as were the wraparound shades. “It’s something, all right.”
The thin man stalked to the counter. “Hey, Vince, my man.”
“Long time, Arnold.”
The desk clerk’s tone stopped the slender man just as he was reaching out to shake hands. Arnold kept his hand moving up and swept off his sunglasses. “Jamie, meet Vince. As in, the man you need to know.”
“Vince.”
The desk clerk nodded once. Val felt as if he had aged into one of the old men normally dressing up the lobby. Pretending that by watching somebody else live the moment he could lay claim to a life himself.
Arnold went on, “I was just telling my buddy how midtown is moving into Harlem. The prices they’re asking up here these days, it’s unreal.” He did a nervous feint in front of the counter. “A guy wants to do business, uptown is the place to come. Give you a for instance. How much you got out these days, Vince?”
The desk clerk scowled. “What kind of question is that?”
“Hey, we’re all friends here.”
“Correction. You I know.” Vince turned to face the stockier man. “You can’t be too careful these days. You got undercover cops dressed seriously street, looking to do business.”
“I’m telling you, Jamie’s a friend.”
“That’s not the issue here. Are you telling me you vouch for this guy?”
The dance grew more nervous still. “’Course I do. Why else would I bring him in here?”
“Stop this two-step you’re doing and look me in the eye. I asked you a simple question. Do you or do you not vouch for this man I don’t know?”
Arnold grew utterly still. Even time seemed trapped in the amber force of Vince’s gaze. “Yeah, sure. I vouch for him.”
“All right, then.” Vince offered his hand. “Jamie, good to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“Do me a favor. Lose the shades. I’m talking business, I like to look a guy in the eyes.”
“No problem.” Jamie used his sunglasses to point toward Val. “Who’s the stiff?”
Vince’s gaze shifted and drilled Val where he sat. A measuring instant, then gone. “Nobody. He’s cool.”
Val resisted the urge to probe his chest, see if Vince’s gaze had punctured a lung.
Arnold asked again, much more subdued this time. “So how much you got out, Vince?”
“Not a lot.” Vince looked back at Val again, communicating something Val could not understand. “Couple hundred, round there.”
“Two hundred large, you call that not much?”
“It’s nothing, compared to some guys I know. Keeps me under the radar screen of the big guys.”
“You hear that, Jamie? Vince don’t pay nobody but Vince.”
“I go much bigger, I got to sit down with the man. He’d slap me around a little for working somebody else’s territory. They’d shake me down, tell me they got to get a piece of everything I do.”
“They slap you around?” Jamie tried an ingratiating grin. “Man, they must be some kind of tough.”
“They’re pros is what they are. I get any bigger, I got to sit down with them. These guys, a smack in the face is cheaper than a cup of coffee, and it wakes you up a lot faster.”
Arnold was grinning now too. Eager to be part of whatever was going down. “Nothing personal, right?”
“Just making sure they got my attention. Just doing business. Speaking of which.” Vince made a point of looking at the wall clock. “That about does it for the chit-chat, fellows.”
The two on Val’s side of the counter exchanged a look. “Jamie’s looking to do some business, Vince.”
“Yeah?” He showed no interest whatsoever. “You two want to rent a room?”
“No, man. Not like that. Tell him, Jamie.” When his friend hesitated, Arnold hurriedly added, “He’s good for it, Vince. He’s an expert down at the phone company. What he does, I can’t even explain it. But he’s making good money, I know that.”
“Wait a second here. You bring in somebody I don’t know, tell me he’s got a straight job, but somehow he’s blown everything he makes, and I’m supposed to be impressed?”
Jamie cleared his throat. “I got this problem, see. My old lady—”
Vince sliced the air with his open hand. “You can stop right there. I don’t know what kind of line you spent the trip over working up, thinking you’re gonna walk in here and lay it out. So let me tell you up front. Your problem, it don’t mean nothing to me.”
“This is for real, what I’m saying.”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I don’t care either way. You could be the worst gambler to ever hit Atlantic City for all I know. That’s your problem. All I want to know is, can you pay what you owe?”
“I’m good, man.” He was visibly sweating now.
“Yeah, Vince, he’s a straight-up guy.”
“Straight, curved, crooked, looped like the Jersey Turnpike, it’s all the same to me.” He took aim with his forefinger. But he might as well have leveled a pistol at Arnold, the way the guy flinched. “You know what you’re doing, vouching for this guy?”
“He’s good, I tell you.”
“For your sake, he better be. You hear what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, Vince. I hear you.”
“Okay, then.” Vince turned to the stockier guy. “How much you need?”
Jamie sniffed and backhanded his nose. “Twenty large.”
“You want to get into me for twenty t
housand dollars?”
“Yeah, see—”
“No. I told you. Whatever your business is, you left it outside.” Vince tapped the counter once, twice. “Okay, here’s how it’s gonna play. I’ll give you the twenty.”
“Thanks, man. You won’t—”
“Just shut your mouth and pay attention. You work the phone company, so your payday’s Friday, right? Don’t talk, just nod your head. Okay. So every Friday for the next seven weeks you’re gonna be down here with forty-three hundred cash.”
Both men gaped. Jamie recovered first. “You’re charging me fifty percent for seven weeks?”
“That’s the rate.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Oh really. Let me tell you why you’re here in my place of business. You know other guys on the street, they’ll give you the twenty large. But then they own you. They’ll keep you paying for the rest of your life, which with a lot of these guys won’t be that long. They’ll get all you got, then take you out. After that they’ll put your old lady on the street. Tell me I’m lying.”
The two men were now very pale and utterly still.
“So you come to me. And I give it to you straight. Just like you heard before you got here. The twenty will cost you ten.” Vince pointed with his chin. “You don’t like it, there’s the door.”
Jamie’s voice was down to a hoarse murmur. “No, no, it’s good.”
“Right.” Vince reached under the counter, came out with a cracked leather pouch. He unzipped it and began unpacking banded notes. “Check it out.”
Arnold tried for weak levity. “Hey, Vince, if you say it’s good—”
“I’m telling you to count the bills.”
Jamie ruffled the notes, but from his expression it was unlikely anything really registered.
“It all there?”
Jamie nodded.
“When am I gonna see you?”
“Friday.”
“Right. Good doing business with you.” Vince pointed at the door. “Stop by anytime.”
After the pair left, the desk clerk refused to meet Val’s eye. Which meant Val could openly study the man. He was fairly certain what would happen if he told Vince about the bar and the bomb and the attacking memories. “Deal with it,” the guy would say, and shrug away the trauma.
He rose to his feet, driven by a restless urge to get on with doing just that. Vince gave him a single measuring look, then went back to his records. Val crossed the lobby and pushed through the outer doors. If only he could adopt a bearing so severe and cold nothing could touch him. A Kevlar vest to shield him from the next rain of mental bullets.
Val entered the night. He was filled with a bitter envy for the clerk and his world chopped down to emotionless little squares. A life spent running under the radar. Val understood him with unique clarity.
TERRANCE AND DON DROVE TWICE AROUND VAL’S NEIGHBORHOOD, an old development overlooking the Rio Pinar golf course. The night was utterly still. Live oaks formed a canopy over the road. Most homes were sprawling ranch-style, built when property was measured by the half-acre rather than the square meter. They parked a block away, just one more SUV in a world of minivans and tricycles. Don breathed heavily as they trotted down the empty street. This was the part Terrance hated the most, being out in the open and risking it all on a sleepless neighbor. But they needed to do this themselves.
While Don scoped the night, Terrance drew the manila envelope from his pack. Forging copies of the house keys had been easy enough. Like many commercial road warriors, both Val and Marjorie had kept extra sets of house and car keys with their secretaries. The lock turned easily. They entered, shut the door, and waited. Terrance had searched Val’s desk and his secretary’s and come up with no alarm code. As hoped, the old place was not wired. Terrance slid on a pair of surgical gloves and pulled the flashlight from his pocket. It was just like Val to hide in some old-fashioned neighborhood and pretend he was shielded from time. Sit behind his plate-glass armor and hope the world’s changes afflicted everybody but him.
Terrance did a slow sweep of the front rooms. This was the first time he had entered the enemy’s lair. Val’s home had the impersonal nature of a hotel. There was nothing on the walls save bare shadows where pictures had once hung. The mantel and the window recesses and the side tables were empty. The living room carpet still had deep imprints where large pieces had once stood.
Don moved up beside him and studied where the flashlight’s illumination fell. “Looks like the wife pretty much cleaned him out.”
Terrance shook his head. “Stefanie only took what she brought with her.”
Don aimed his flashlight into Terrance’s face. “So how come you two aren’t an item?”
“The clock is ticking, Don.”
“This is not a difficult question.” Don’s tight grin was illuminated by the pair of flashlights. “You won the round hands down. Knocked the other guy out of the ring. So how come you and she aren’t doing the happy couple thing?”
“She needed time alone.” Terrance gave the room another sweep. “Stefanie was too good for Val.”
“Yeah, looks like she’d agree with you on that one.”
Terrance pushed Don’s light out of his eyes. “Let’s get to work.”
They moved into their planned routines. Don hunted for hard evidence. Terrance attacked Val’s home computer. He did not have Val’s personal ID code. So he wiped clean all files dating from the past six months. Terrance did not need to know what Val had. He simply had to be certain nothing except the evidence he had planted would show up when the official investigation opened. Evidence that showed how Val Haines and Marjorie Copeland had stolen more than four hundred million dollars from Insignia’s coffers.
Midway through his work, Don appeared in the doorway. “I think I found something.”
Terrance followed Don back through the house. A narrow hallway opened at the rear of the kitchen, led them past the laundry room and into the double garage. One half was empty, Val’s car no doubt still in the airport parking lot. The other half was a mess of woodworking equipment. Terrance steadied his flashlight on a half-finished cabinet. The work was good.
“Over here.”
Don had shifted a long trestle table doing duty as a workbench. Thumbtacked to the wall was a world map. Terrance’s flashlight picked up a number of underlined locales—Tahiti, Kuala Lumpur, Costa Rica, Java, New Zealand, Cape Town. With the table out of the way, a set of floor-to-ceiling doors to a recessed cabinet came into view. The doors were padlocked shut.
“Help me move this map.” When that was done, Don gripped a set of heavy-duty shears and took a bite on the padlock. He grunted with effort and squeezed the handles shut. The padlock finally gave and rattled against the concrete floor.
Don twisted the handle, then gave a shout of alarm and jumped back. Books and boxes tumbled out, so tightly packed in the tall cupboard they might as well have been spring-loaded.
The two flashlights played over the pile. Don shoved an album of wedding photos with his shoe and said to no one in particular, “Do you believe this?”
Upended boxes revealed mementoes of a lost life. Dozens of music CDs spilled over a cedar chest of wedding silver. Dusty frames held the frozen lies of once happy faces. Terrance stared down at Stefanie laughing beside his enemy. His gut churned at the sight of her happy with the wrong man. “We can’t leave it like this.”
“It’d take us days to cram it all back inside.” Don began cramming stuffed toys into the nearest box. “Stack the books that fit on that empty shelf.”
The books were a mixture of marriage counseling, Bibles, and crisis resolution. By the time they were finished and the map repinned to the wall and the table moved back into place, both men were breathing hard.
Don stepped back, surveyed the blank space, and asked, “What happened to this guy?”
Terrance went back to Val’s office.
When he was finished with the computer, Terrance op
ened the rear French doors in the living room. He stood listening to the night. The overcast sky was illuminated an orangish yellow by the city’s false dawn. A rising wind blew in from the south. The palms rattled like angry observers, irritated by his calm. Terrance wondered if this was how triumph was supposed to feel. Like a barrier had been erected between himself and all of life. Perhaps this was why warriors of old paraded through the streets and danced around mammoth fires. They sought to create externally what they should have felt inside.
“Val doesn’t even have a safe.” Don came in with a trash bag full of papers. “All the interesting stuff was in a shoe box on the closet’s top shelf. Have a look at this.”
Terrance turned his flashlight onto the paper in Don’s hands. “A false birth certificate?”
“Unless he’s done a name change and forgot to tell us.” Don shook his head. “He’d use the birth certificate to apply for a passport, right? Looks like our guy was getting ready to fly.”
Terrance read the name on the birth certificate. “Jeffrey Adams.”
Don shone his flashlight down on the photograph dangling from Terrance’s hand. The picture was of a laughing infant, held by an adult excluded from the frame. “That Val’s kid?”
Terrance stared out at the night and declared, “Mine. The child is mine.”
Saying it often enough almost made it so.
THE NIGHT ACTED AS AN AMPLIFIER TO THE STREET’S ENERGY. Everything outside Val’s hotel was louder, faster, harsher. He walked back the three blocks to the cyber café. Cars cruised the avenue, their salsa rock and hip-hop punching the air with pneumatic fists. Val was just another solitary guy walking the concrete in search of his fix. Just another mark.
Val reentered the café. A spiky-haired youth with spiderwebs tattooed on both forearms had replaced the young woman. The guy accepted Val’s deposit and directed him to a computer without seeing him at all.