by Jack Getze
“We sell these,” he says. “You want one like it?”
“No. Can you tell me if you sold this particular one? I see it has a serial number.”
His eyes check the floor for mice.
“Would twenty bucks help my cause?” I say.
I clean and jerk a green Andrew Jackson from my wallet, slide the bill onto the counter. There’s no one close by, but this kid is probably too embarrassed to take the money.
Junior snags my twenty, a blur of Jersey hand speed. “Be right back,” he says.
He might be more sophisticated than I thought. That, or he actually grew up right here in central Jersey, where breeding, education and looks mean little. Around here, cash is king.
One other customer occupies the store. He’s in the back, checking pre-paid telephone services—a senior citizen in long sleeves and suspenders focusing on his planned purchase. Pops doesn’t know I exist. Outside in the strip mall parking lot, an eighteen-wheel supermarket truck rumbles past. The TV Hut’s front plate glass window flutters. A cloud of brown diesel exhaust follows the truck through the parking lot like a shadow.
The tall awkward kid shuffles back to me at the front counter. His hands are empty, the big-knuckles swinging back and forth across his boney thighs.
“We sold it two weeks ago,” he says.
“Got a name for me?”
His long face feigns concern. “I could get fired.”
“How about another twenty?”
“Make it a hundred,” he says. “I had to check the credit card receipts.”
“You already looked up the name?”
“Yeah. I checked for another guy yesterday. Charged him two hundred.”
“Another guy like me? Older, younger?”
“Older, I think. He kept his face turned. Wore a coat and hat. So you want the name of the person who bought this Advantage bug for one hundred, or not?”
I consider my situation, the value of one hundred American smackers. A very good dinner for two, with wine. Two cartons of New Jersey cigarettes. The answer to a question you are dying to know.
I count out five more Andrew Jacksons.
The name the kid writes for me on a slip of paper—the guy who bought the listening device—is Rags, Thomas Ragsdale.
THIRTEEN
I key the Camry’s engine. Too late to start hunting for Rags in north Jersey. What good would confronting the lying bastard do anyway? I know what he did, the stuff I said he could have heard and recorded. Also, pretty sure he was wearing the hoodie, punching me in Luis’ parking lot, asking me where’s the cash. Maybe it’s over-confidence, but if I carefully consider his rat brain a few minutes, I believe Rags’ reasoning will come to me. The man has always been easy to figure. More unsettling is the older man who also visited TV Hut, who also knows about Rags and his listening device.
Who was that?
I head back to my condo amid the sounds of Branchtown’s Friday rush hour—horns, engines and squealing moms with kids. Every traffic jam on Front Street begins at St. Theresa’s combined grammar and high schools.
From my bedroom phone, I call Beth. Earlier she said she’d be going to her girlfriend Janie’s house after school, and in fact she’s there when I call, happy and alert, working on an English research paper the two young women were assigned as a team. I can hear Janie, someone outside mowing a lawn. Since I know the family, and because I also talk to Janie’s mother, I say yes when Beth asks to spend the night.
I drop my tie and shoes on the familiar gray tweed carpet, jump on my bed. I’m too tired to take off my shirt and pants. Beyond tired. I’m exhausted, the kind of beat that makes you weak, when fear and sadness bubble up from the past and taunt you with past mistakes. The bed cuddles me like cotton candy, but I can’t stop listening to the crap in my head. My list of troubles seems endless: There’s my junior partner who’s trying to get me tossed from the business. Vic’s been shot, and lies in a coma. How about the woman I might be in love with, Patricia, missing since Vic’s shooting? I know love is a strong word to use so quickly but I have never experienced anything like the feelings I have for Patricia. And since lust is practically my middle name, what else could this be? The feelings are new, overpowering and consuming. If I did not have children, I do not think my life would hold any other interest right now. I swear. Patricia and her freckles are practically all I can think about. Another thing—I could easily be charged with insider trading next month when I talk to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. District Attorney for New York. Nice for the kids if their daddy’s alleged crimes hit the newspaper. What else? Oh, yeah. My worst enemy, Rags, might have the raw material to create phony evidence against me, take my securities license and my livelihood. And what else did Rags hear with his little piece of spy equipment? What did he mean, “Where’s the cash?”
I study the stucco ceiling until it’s too dark to see.
The sun wakes me gently, its warm golden light sliced into diagonal stripes by the window blinds above my head. I’m in a much better mood than when I went to sleep, so maybe my problems were illusions of fatigue. Probably not, but things still feel better. I roll onto my side, establish bare feet on carpet and shuffle into a steaming shower, looking forward to my Saturday morning ritual of grinding coffee beans for an extra-big pot. I can hear in my head an ancient Ink Spots tune my father used to play on plastic record disks as big as Frisbees: I like coffee, I like tea. I like the java jive and it likes me.
A thump from inside my condo lights a spark on my spinal column. Something fell in the kitchen, a relatively small and light item—a nearly insignificant thing, say like my retirement fund. I’m a statue, my head and one arm wearing a clean T-shirt, the other arm reaching inside the stretched cotton to find the shirt’s other arm hole. Half a straight jacket for a half crazy man.
I wait for another sound, and ten seconds later I get one, a squeaky footstep on my kitchen tile. I take three deep breaths in preparation for combat. Oxygenating my blood. Ha. Where’s my Captain Stockbroker uniform? Quietly, I get my arm through and pull the T-shirt over my head. I don’t like guns, and would never keep one at home because of the children. But right now I wish an AK-47 rested under my bed instead of a baseball bat. That Vargas guy is more than I can handle.
I hit over three hundred in high school, however, and know how to use the aluminum swatter I snatch from the floor. Gripping my Willie Mays Autographed Model with both hands, I tiptoe into the hall, halfway down the corridor and stop. Four or five more paces will bring the half of the kitchen alcove into view on my right, the sofa and TV on the left. I’m waiting for another noise. My lizard brain needs one more reading to accurately program the thrust of my bat. All I hear is my own heart.
Enough time passes, I wonder if I dreamed the whole thing, or heard a neighbor move a piece of furniture. Then someone—a person—shifts their weight in my kitchen.
Four fast strides put me at the end of the hall. No one is visible in the kitchen, at least above the counter. I can’t see the floor. In the living area, a teak lamp is lighted when I’d turned it off. I snap my gaze back to the kitchen. My programmable Mr. Coffee is running. The green light’s on. I smell the Colombian...
From a low place behind the kitchen counter, an odd human shape rises into view. My gut dives off a cliff, then parachutes to safety when I recognize Patricia in black eyeliner, fake lashes, purple lipstick, and a new hairdo—five-inch long, silver tipped spikes.
“Good morning, sweet talker,” she says. “Ready for coffee?”
My hand covers my chest in mock despair, though the ticker is definitely pounding. Patricia wears a sleeveless black halter top with a short black-leather skirt. Her belt and necklace are made of razorblade dog chain.
“How did you get in?” I ask.
She shows me a key on the chain around her neck. “You gave it to me, remember?”
Actually, I’d forgotten. My hands tingle to touch her and I half run around the kitchen b
ar to grab her. Her body crushes against mine, warm and giving. “Are you okay?” I say. “I’ve been worried.”
“I’m good. Scared, but good.”
Her weight comes against me fully, her flesh pressing in special places. Powerful emotions and predictable physical responses develop. But what I notice most is the electricity. I don’t remember this kind of thing before. Even the first year with Susan when I thought I was in love. The air around Patricia and me buzzes when we touch.
“What’s with the dominatrix look?” I say.
“It’s a disguise. The guy who shot Vic shot at me, too.”
“You saw it was a man? How about his face?”
“I heard him more than I saw him. He rang my apartment doorbell ten minutes after you left. Vic opened the door like he was expecting someone, and then—bang, bang—Vic stumbled backward and fell.”
“Jeez.”
“Two bloody spots in the middle of his chest. Red on white. I can still see it.”
Patricia pushes tighter against me, lays her head on my shoulder. I want to wrap up this woman like a birthday gift or a Christmas package, let the electricity between us warm my soul until all human fear goes away. I want an end to that cold loneliness I felt last night when I went to bed.
“When did the guy shoot at you?” I ask.
She leans back from my chest to look at me. The spikes in her hair tickle my cheek.
“He stood in the entrance, with Vic lying there. Told me to throw him the briefcase. So I did. Hard, too—right at his head. When he ducked, I ran for the back door.”
So it was Vic’s briefcase Mr. Hoodie—maybe Rags—punched me about in Luis’ parking. “Smart. And that’s when he shot at you?”
“Right. I felt the bullet fly past my head before I heard the shot, honest to God. It splintered the door jamb the same second I ran through.”
“Did he keep the briefcase?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Remember that guy I told you about, Tom Ragsdale, my former sales manager?”
She nods.
“He knows about the briefcase. He had a hoodie on, but I’m sure it was him. He sucker punched me in Luis’ parking lot, asked me where the cash was—the cash in the briefcase.”
Silence.
I remove myself from Patricia’s embrace. The coffee smells good, plus if I don’t let go soon I might try something rude. My favorite coffee mug—Bugs Bunny inside a Merry Melodies yellow circle—waits for me in the cupboard.
“If this man Rags has the briefcase,” Patricia says, “then he’s the guy who shot Vic and took my ruby.”
“Ruby?” I say. “What ruby?”
FOURTEEN
Patricia ushers me to a chair at my own kitchen table. She is about to explain why my former boss, now my junior partner and rival for Patricia’s affections, Mr. Vic possessed a ruby while being shot inside her apartment. Should be a fun story.
“Vic and I had a relationship for twelve years, sweet talker. Before I explain about the ruby, you need to understand Vic and I have been lovers a long time. But remember, I dumped him for you after one day on the beach.”
I pour myself a cup from the coffee pot. “You loved him?”
“Still do,” Patricia says, “for what he is. A good old friend, a romantic bullshitter. But I wasn’t in love with him anymore. Not for six months, maybe longer.”
“You told him about us?”
“How could I deny it? I’d just brought you home.”
I glance outside my condo’s kitchen window at a maple tree, its few remaining leaves orange and yellow while my gut turns hot and green. This woman keeps surprising me, saying things that change the landscape. I don’t like hearing about Patricia and Mr. Vic. I don’t like to think about her and another man. When did I get like this? I hardly know this woman.
“So what’s this ruby?” I ask.
“It’s my commission for my brother’s information. It’s what was inside that briefcase you saw when we came to my place.”
“Pretty big briefcase for a ruby.”
“Pretty big ruby, but the briefcase also had a lot of cash at one time, Vic said, but not when he showed me.”
“How big a ruby?” I ask.
“So big it has a name—the Big Mojo. It was part of an even larger ruby discovered in Africa over a hundred years ago, then smuggled out in two pieces. One piece—Big Mojo—was cut, sold, then stolen and sold again within its first year in Havana.”
I sip my coffee. “Okay. So Vic made a pile somehow on Fishman stock, obviously, because he paid you off. Not in cash, but with a big ruby he had some great stories about. Are you sure Big Mojo wasn’t a proposal of marriage? Maybe he was shot before he could ask the question.”
“Vic told me twelve years ago he would never break up his family. Like I said, I think he went overboard trying to keep his comare—me, especially since his rival was you.”
I stare at my coffee.
“I know Vic,” Patricia says. “The ruby was a show, at first I thought for me. But him carrying the gun, what he said to you when we came home, that tells me the ruby wasn’t about his love for me. It was about his own ego.”
“Did he say where he got the ruby?”
“A friend of his introduced him to people in Vegas,” Patricia says. “Vic said Big Mojo was part of a heist that...you know...fell off the truck.”
Las Vegas, the city of inside traders, according to my attorney.
“Too bad the ruby was in the briefcase when I threw it at the guy’s head,” Patricia says. “Think the man in the hoodie was really your ex sales manager Rags?”
“It looked like him, but I don’t know for sure.” I open the fridge and show Patricia a carton of eggs. “You want some breakfast?”
“Sounds good. Mind if I hang around here today?” Patricia says. “The police were finished yesterday investigating their crime scene, but I couldn’t hire anyone to clean up Vic’s blood until this afternoon.”
“Stay as long as you like. But I’m not sure you’ll be safe while I’m at work and Beth’s in school. Whether it’s Rags or someone else, Hoodie Man knows a lot about me—where I hang out, probably where I live.”
She slips her arms around me. “I’m safe.”
Mama Bones loves the new office part of her basement kitchen—sitting at a desk behind a door she can lock—but she hates using the stupid computer. She can’t figure out the darn thing. Like what is a spreadsheet. Sounds like dirty laundry at a sex motel. Mama Bones has been writing down her weekly bet totals on a piece of paper for twenty-seven years.
“This computer program sucks,” she says.
Gianni shakes his head. “You going to keep complaining about the new boss’ reporting requirements, or you want to hear what Eddie Flukes called about?”
Couldn’t be much info or Gianni would have already said. “Sure,” Mama Bones says. “Tell me.”
“Patricia has been smart. He hasn’t picked up a lead yet. But Eddie did dig up something on Vic.”
Mama Bones takes her gaze off the computer screen. “What?”
“Eddie says Vic was working a deal with people in Las Vegas.”
“People?”
“Business people,” Gianni says. “Our thing business people.”
Mama Bones shakes her head. “No way Vic would work Our Thing without telling me.”
“Eddie says he did, that Vic used your name.”
“My Vic knows he has to come through me for that.”
“Eddie said his information was confirmed. Tom Ragsdale even blurted about it in front of one of our bookies. Vic arranged some deal in Vegas he didn’t tell you about.”
“What would Vic hide from his own mother, huh? And how would that drug addict Tommy Ragsdale know?”
“Eddie doesn’t know yet but I bet he will after he talks to Ragsdale.”
Mama Bones checks the clock in the upper right of her computer screen, pushes back from her desk to snatch her purse off the back of t
he chair. “Why wait? Let’s go ask Tommy ourselves. He’s all alone on the night shift in one hour.”
Gianni doesn’t look happy. Tough.
“Come on,” she says. “Thirty-five, forty minutes up the Parkway.”
Inside the night watchman’s tiny office at the industrial bakery, Tommy Ragsdale tied up in a chair, Mama Bones stares at Carmela’s ex-husband—his throat in particular—as she reaches for the hunting knife. Gianni put a nice big blade on the table.
Tommy’s eyes get real big—like a little boy watching a horror show. It’s a mean thing she’s doing, sure. But this bastard used to hit her granddaughter.
“Don’t worry, Tommy,” she says. “I’m not going to stab or torture you.” Mama Bones smiles. “You used to be family.”
She watches hope flicker in Tommy’s eyes.
“We’re going to shoot you,” she says.
She nods at Gianni, and her nephew shows Tommy the big Sig Sauer. Gianni says it’s a P226 X-FIVE, but Mama Bones thinks he should call it Truth Serum. Looks like a hand-held cannon.
Tommy moans. Mama Bones would feel sorry for him if he hadn’t beat up Carmela once a week the whole time they were together. Two black eyes and a broken cheek bone in less than three months. If she thinks about it too much, Mama Bones feels like using the knife to cut off his balls.
She says, “That is, we gonna shoot you with that Sig Sauer if you don’t tell me what I want to know. Okay?”
Tommy nods. Happy now he’s still got a chance.
“My boy Vic was doing business with people in Las Vegas,” Mama Bones says, “and I want to know who these people are.”
“The only name I know is Santo Vargas,” Tommy says. “I heard Vic mention the name in his office.”
Gianni thumb-cocks the Sig’s hammer, then brings the gun closer—until the barrel touches Tommy’s nose. Mama Bones hopes Tommy or Gianni don’t sneeze. “We don’t believe you,” she says. “You know more than you’re telling.”
His eyes bulge. His upper lip spouts beads of sweat. He’s going to say more now for sure. “I know Santo Vargas brought Vic’s payoff from the Vegas people,” Tommy says. “Vic’s payoff for information he gave them. But there was something else Vargas wanted to do while he was in town.”