* * *
GameCorp Industries owned and maintained the thirty-eight ATM machines scattered throughout the Bellissimo. With thirty of the machines congregated in the casino, I guess they weren’t so scattered. Between the Bellissimo and our fourteen neighbor casinos, GameCorp managed more than one hundred and fifty ATMs in Harrison County, Mississippi alone, and more than three thousand ATMs in casinos nationwide. For each and every casino transaction, be it a ten-dollar withdrawal or a ten-thousand-dollar transfer, GameCorp charged a seven-dollar convenience fee.
Highway robbery.
They charged an additional three dollars on the back end to cover the issuing bank service fee.
I wasn’t after the three dollars.
At an average of two hundred transactions per ATM every twenty-four hours, GameCorp was clearing more than five million a day during the week, and up to seven million a day on the weekends. In casino convenience fees.
I stopped to wonder if Bradley’s next career move shouldn’t be casino ATMs. They made more money than Wheels.
The casino ATM fees in thirty-nine states routed to one dedicated account in Detroit. I chose four hundred random ATMs in thirty states, starting in Nevada and ending in Mississippi—no pattern, there’d be no dots to connect—and rerouted the convenience fees to an anonymous offshore account. From there, I sent the money to MD Anderson. It wasn’t like I took a sledgehammer to one of GameCorp’s ATMs, which they’d notice right away. What I did was more of a slow leak, seven dollars at a time, one hundred and fifty thousand times, and so scattered across America, it would take a team of forensic accountants six months to find the problem and another six months to find the ATMs with the glitch. I only needed two and a half days.
Or, rather, His Fakeness needed two and a half days.
And I’d have six months to somehow, some way, repay the money.
I set it up, checked it ten times, then hit enter.
The fees began pouring into Greene Gully’s patient account immediately.
I shut it down and went to bed, having left most of the uncertainty about the right and wrong of what I was doing at the bottom of Jay Leno’s indoor pool.
Still, though, I didn’t get much sleep.
Because what I’d done was mostly wrong.
* * *
Bex and Quinn slept soundly all night, so naturally, they were awake at the crack of dawn. Jumping. On my felonious head. “Bite, bite, bite!”
I rallied. My girls were hungry. I needed to talk to Bootsy anyway.
Leverette Urleen was sitting at my kitchen table sipping coffee from my favorite mug like he owned the place. “Urleen,” I said, “do you have any other clothes?”
“Good morning to you too, Davis.” He crossed his seersuckered legs the other way. “And no. I was called here on a quick consultation. I’m afraid I didn’t pack for an extended stay.” He straightened his bowtie, a total waste of time. The bowtie, along with the rest of him, was beyond straightening.
“Why don’t you go downstairs to Cuffs, the men’s shop, and find something else to wear? Then go to your hotel room, shower, and put it on.”
“A stellar idea,” he said. “One never knows when one might be in the company of the fairer sex, and one must always be prepared. Might I have an account established at this men’s shop?”
I clicked Bex and Quinn into their highchairs and poured myself a cup of coffee in Bradley’s favorite mug. “An account?”
“A house account. Credit. A reimbursement-for-services-rendered wardrobe stipend I could apply to purchases.”
“No, Urleen, you don’t. Get off your wallet and buy yourself some clean clothes.”
“Would your husband be anywhere near my size?”
“No, Urleen, you’re not wearing my husband’s clothes.”
Bex and Quinn said, “Daddy, daddy, daddy.”
“And another thing, Urleen, hit the road. if I need you, I’ll call you. Don’t come back here.”
Bex and Quinn said, “Bye, bye, bye.”
“Will your children ever speak in sentences?” he asked.
Vree spoke in sentences. Long run-on sentences. She started one in the kitchen door, wearing pink shortie pajamas with pink slippers. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Davis.”
Princess. On the loose again.
“I woke up this morning, and first thing, Harley and Princess and I went to the balcony, you know, where the grass is? And it’s so pretty out there. It’s a really nice morning. I mean, the sun is up, and there’s this little breeze, and I watched the beach and watched the beach, and I would have watched the beach all morning but I thought about coffee. And there’s no coffee on the balcony. So Harley and Princess and I came back inside—”
Where was she going with this? I served apple juice sippy cups, wheat toast triangles, sliced peaches, and little mountains of dry Lucky Charms, then poured myself a second cup of coffee during her preamble.
“—after I washed my face and brushed my teeth, I thought I’d better check on Bootsy. Because one time—”
“Vree!” I slammed my mug down. “Cut to the chase. What about Bootsy?”
“She’s gone, Davis.” Vree waved a note.
I grabbed it. I have a score to settle and a man to see.
Wednesday would be no better than Tuesday, which was more stressful than Monday, which was worse than Sunday, and it all went back to Saturday, when Meredith didn’t come. I dreaded Thursday. And Bootsy Howard was the world’s slipperiest witch.
From the kitchen phone, I called July.
“Another long day?”
“Yes,” I said. “Can I bring them to you?”
“Of course.”
“Ten o’clock.”
“I’ll see you then,” July said.
I’d no more put the phone down when it rang again. It was No Hair.
“Davis, I’d like to see you and Fantasy in my office this morning, and don’t bring the girls. You’re not going to use them as an Uncle No Hair smokescreen. I need to talk to you. Be here at nine.” Then he hung up.
I called July back.
* * *
“Your house is destroyed.”
He was right. It was. No Hair’s office, on the other hand, was its usual pristine man cave. It smelled like leather and cars. Cold leather, and cold cars, because No Hair kept the air at meat-locker. The only thing that didn’t belong was a revolving tie rack full of neckties. In five years, I’d never seen No Hair wear the same tie. The two, three, forty, or zero times I’d seen him that week—halfway through the week and it was such a blur—his ties had been dog themed. The night before, when we’d sent the sheik to the hospital, my unwanted guest to jail, and he’d apparently noticed the chaos that was my home, his tie had been all wagging tails. That day, he was mixing it up. His white tie had a disturbingly large black flea on it.
“Who is the goofball in the seersucker suit?”
“He’s a doctor from Pine Apple,” Fantasy said.
It was very much like being in the principal’s office. No Hair was behind his desk, we were in straight chairs across from him.
“What’s he doing here?”
I opened my mouth to make up something, but Fantasy took that one too. “The dead woman. We didn’t know what she died of.”
“What dead woman?”
“The caregiver,” she said.
“Whose caregiver?” No Hair asked.
“The dog’s.”
“Which dog?”
“The black one. Harley.”
No Hair put a hand over his eyes and shook his bald head. When he returned, he told Fantasy to shut up. He’d heard enough from her. He aimed at me. “Start talking.”
“Well, No Hair, there’s this man. Greene Gully. He owns Jesus Water.”
“He owns what?”
/>
“Jesus Water.”
“What the hell is Jesus Water, Davis?”
“Blessings in a bottle. Drink the water, be blessed.”
No Hair inhaled sharply, and the look on his face said he didn’t like my answers any better than he’d liked Fantasy’s. “Does this Jesus Water man have anything to do with anything anywhere remotely related to this property? Or is this all you, Davis?”
I scratched my head. “Could you rephrase the question?”
“The Smuckers,” Fantasy said.
“What about them? The Jesus Water man has something to do with the Smuckers?” No Hair looked hopeful.
“No,” Fantasy said. “I was asking what’s going on with the Smuckers.”
“Don’t do that to me,” No Hair said.
“Do what?” she asked.
“Change the subject.”
“What was the subject?” I asked.
No Hair slammed a fist on his desk. We jumped.
“We’re going to start over,” No Hair said. “And I want straight answers.”
Our heads rolled compliantly.
“Why were you in the Leno suite?” he asked.
“Tossing to Davis,” Fantasy said. “I wasn’t in the Leno suite except to lock up and get the wine.”
“Is that the problem?” No Hair asked. “Are you two drunk?”
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning,” I said. “No one’s drunk.”
“Answer the question,” he said.
I couldn’t very well say I was there to steal a laptop, I wasn’t about to open that bucket of worms, so I went with something safe. “I heard a noise.”
“You didn’t hear anything in the Leno suite unless you had your ear to the door, Davis. Why would you have your ear to the Leno door?”
I scratched my ear.
No Hair slapped his desk with both hands. “We’re getting absolutely nowhere. And I, for one, have work to do.” He turned to Fantasy. “Since you asked, the Smuckers were released.” Then to me. “You were right. The judge said we didn’t have enough to hold them on.”
“What about IGT?” I asked. “I thought they were pressing charges.”
“They were. They are. They will. But the drunk tank was past capacity, so in an effort to lower the body count, a judge was called in for middle of the night arraignments. At the time, IGT’s lawyers were just landing, they certainly didn’t have time to file charges, so the Smuckers are ours again.”
“That’s terrible news,” I said.
“Hang on to your hat, Davis. It gets worse. The man we took from you, the one you had cuffed to the bedposts who you call His Phony?”
“His Fakeness,” I said.
“What the hell ever, Davis.”
No Hair’s face was red. So red.
“He’s not in jail either,” No Hair said. “The officers took him to the emergency room first, where the man’s bloodwork came back with toxic barbiturate levels.”
Urleen was the worst doctor ever, ever of all the bad doctors ever.
“Do either one of you think this man drugged himself?” No Hair asked.
Our heads rolled uncertainly.
“No?” No Hair asked. “Do either one of you know who drugged this man?”
“I’m taking the fifth,” I said.
“I’ll take the sixth,” Fantasy said. “Because I don’t want to incriminate Davis either.”
“Okay,” No Hair said. “I get it. You two had such a beef with this guy you pumped him full of barbiturates to the point of almost killing him, then chained him to beds, and yet you either don’t remember what he did to piss you off or you don’t care to share. How about I share?”
I had a feeling I didn’t want to hear what No Hair had to share.
“The drugs wore off in the emergency room,” No Hair said. “The man came to. He knocked an orderly over the head with a suction aspirator machine and helped himself to the orderly’s clothes and wallet. He walked right past the two patrolmen sleeping in the waiting room, then out the door. The good news is we know his name.”
I wanted to hear the name. I hadn’t had time to run the print on my phone, and when I’d set up the ATM con on his MacBook, the username I’d bypassed was initials and numbers.
“Rod J. Sebastian.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Does that mean anything to you two? And if it does, would you give me a straight answer? No? Let me connect the dots for you. The man you tried to kill was Rod J. Sebastian, Hiriddhi Al Abbasov’s personal secretary, who all but killed Al Abbasov when he pushed him into the pool to spend three days bobbing like a cork with his hands and feet bound and a pool float around his neck barely keeping his head above water. Which means we want him. And we’re not the only ones. We ran Mr. Sebastian’s prints through the system and found out he’s wanted under an alias for child abandonment in Florida, for impersonating the sheik and embezzling donations from a non-profit organization for the blind in Atlanta, and get this,” No Hair said, “Animal Control wants him too. The police raided his home and found an illegal dogfighting operation he and two of his cousins are running on a farm just outside city limits.”
Any lingering doubt I had about what I’d done on Rod J. Sebastian’s laptop flew out the window.
“And not a little operation,” No Hair said. “They rescued forty dogs from appalling conditions.”
Then out to sea.
“So we want him,” No Hair said. “The sheik wants him. The blind people want him. The mother of the two abandoned children wants him. Animal Control and the feds want him. And you two are the reason we don’t have him.”
I was having trouble breathing.
“Be warned.” No Hair shook his finger at us. “Sebastian’s on the loose. And you’d better watch your backs. He might, like me, be more than a little irritated with you.” He turned to Fantasy. “I’ll see you at noon in the doghouse.” Then me. “I’ll see you at two for the dog show. And call your husband. He’s coughing his head off.” No Hair sat back. “That’ll be all.” He pointed at the door.
We slinked out. We slinked to the elevator. Neither of us had the energy to push the call button, so we slinked down the wall to sit on an upholstered bench in the cold empty vestibule. Fantasy’s fog lifted first. “We found Bootsy, then we lost her again. We found the secretary, who we didn’t know was a serial-criminal secretary, and his name is Sebastian, just like the fake housekeepers Sebastian, so there’s the connection between Al Abbasov and the Smuckers, a serial-criminal-secretary connection we didn’t even know we were looking for, but now he’s in the wind again, which puts all three Sebastians and the witch and the dead caregiver in the wind. The Smuckers are out of jail, we can’t find their dog’s collar, and there’s no million dollars.”
“About that.”
“About what?” she asked. “Which part?”
“The million dollars.”
I looked right and left, making sure there were no eavesdroppers. I cupped my hand over her ear and whispered.
She stopped me to whisper in my ear, “He deserves it, Davis. For the dog fighting alone, he deserves it.” She stopped me again to whisper, “Seven dollars for a convenience fee is outrageous. GameCorp had this coming too.”
When I finished, she said, “Brilliant.”
TWENTY
For the final round of the dog competition, the contestant interviews, Bianca had me in a Shetland pony dominatrix getup. The dress looked wet, as in liquefied, and felt like Jell-O. I think it was made of rubber. It was as white as the driven snow, covered just enough of me to be street legal, took twenty minutes to skid into, and that was just the half of it. The other half were the accessories. One was a purse. Or a clutch. I didn’t know what to call it, because it was a horse’s foot on a gold chain. A whole horse’s foot. I didn’t know if it wa
s real or not and I didn’t want to know. The other accessory went over the dress. The whole wet white dress. It was either a harness or bridle. Whichever, it was silver spiked black leather and laced all the way up the back. Or maybe it laced all the way up the front. Vree was trying to help. “I think this part goes in your mouth.”
“In a million years, Vree, I am not walking around with leather straps in my mouth.”
“Then they’re going to have to hang down. And hanging down, they look, well, they hit you in a bad place. They look like black leather tassel headlights. You know what I mean? They fall right on your…girls.”
“Let them fall.” I’d be falling with them soon enough. The over-the-knee black leather boots with sliver studs and spurs Bianca sent had eight-inch needle-thin heels. The accompanying note said, Updo and smoky eyes, David. Very up and very smoky.
We studied the final results in the mirror.
“In a way, you look pretty,” Vree said.
In every other way, I looked like I’d escaped the mental facility I called home.
When I hobbled into the competition arena carrying a horse’s foot and hanging on to Vree for dear life—who wears eight-inch heels?—one of my fellow judges spotted me, startled, then spun around. I could see his shoulders shaking. He turned back around, took a second look, then took a keen interest in the floor. His head started bobbing. At first it was just a chuckle he tried, and failed, to hide. After a few minutes, he was openly laughing to the point of tears. Then through the entire round of dog questions, every ten minutes or so he would lean forward, take another peek at me, then double over again. Near the end, he gave up, laid his head down, and pounded the judges’ table with his fist. “Sorry!” he choked out. “I’m so sorry! I can’t help it!”
I found his name on the score screen. Menton Williams.
When the last question was posed to the last pooch—“How old are you?”—and he answered with four barks, I slipped my phone out of the horse hoof and checked Greene Gully’s MD Anderson account. It had almost three hundred thousand dollars in it, and his patient status had been changed from inactive to pre-op. I read a quick email from my sister. Four Seasons was accommodating the iron-rich diet Greene’s doctors had her on. She couldn’t do the oysters or lentils, but everything else was fine. She’d check in at MD Anderson at five Friday morning, she’d finish by eight, but wouldn’t be released until two. Observation. After, it’d be back to Four Seasons to pick up Bubblegum, then on to the airport for their four o’clock flight to Gulfport-Biloxi International. She’d see me at six Friday.
Double Dog Dare Page 18