21 Tales

by Dave Zeltserman

  “I-I’m s-sorry.” Pete swallowed and tried again. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, his eyes cast down to the floor.

  “You think that means anything?” Carbone demanded rhetorically.

  Langely had taken the paper bag from Pete and handed it to Carbone. “Please,” he interrupted. “He’s deeply sorry and would like to offer this as a show of respect.”

  Carbone dumped the money from the bag and counted it. “This is only ten thousand dollars,” he said with disbelief. “How is this showing respect?”

  Pete sat quietly, trying to look as sick as possible. He couldn’t help but rate the performance as poor. If he had been running the scam he would have tried to impart real fear and loathing before starting with the yelling and chest-beating. Langely argued Pete’s case. “I agree he’s a brainless imbecile,” he implored. “But he meant no disrespect. This is all he could come up with.”

  Carbone had some of the money clutched in his hands. He waved it menacingly at Pete. “I look at you as garbage,” he snarled. “And you know what I do to garbage? I burn and bury it!”

  Pete lurched forward as if he were going to vomit and then pretended to hold it back. That sped things up. It’s one thing to enjoy the last few moments of a scam, but quite another to have clothes needlessly ruined. Carbone spat on the floor. “You’re not worth wasting time on,” he said. “But if I ever hear of you again, I’ll kill you.” He grabbed a baseball bat from under the table and stood up. “I will kill you!” he yelled, reaching forward.

  Pete fell back in his chair and just about crawled from the restaurant as Carbone bellowed after him. Toni was parked across the street and by the time he got to the Caddy he was laughing so hard he could barely talk. He plopped down on the passenger seat. “Boy,” he gasped. “That was fun.”

  Slowly, his laughter subsided. He lowered himself in his seat so he couldn’t be seen from the outside. Toni was looking at him with amusement. “I’m glad you had a good time in there,” she said.

  “Worth the price of admission.” He saw Langely and Carbone step from the restaurant and he gave Toni a nudge with his elbow. The two men seemed to be enjoying themselves. Carbone’s body convulsed in a wheezing type of laugh while Langely kidded around, his thin face displaying a big smart-alecky grin. They shook hands and separated. Pete nodded to Toni. “You take the large one. Will you be okay?”

  Toni had already slid out of the car. She turned to him and flashed her killer smile. “Don’t worry about me, lover,” she said, her eyes shining brightly. “If I have to wrestle a dozen of him to get you to the altar, I will. See you in church.”

  She was wearing a tight-fitting leather skirt cut only a few inches down her thigh. Pete watched the delicious wiggle of her rear end as she approached Carbone, and felt his heart skip a beat. Toni could take care of herself. He slid over to the driver’s seat, put the car into Drive, and followed Langely.

  He did a lousy job tailing Langely. Not knowing the Boston streets well enough to take any chances, he stuck close behind Langely’s white Oldsmobile, most of the time leaving only one car between them. Fortunately, the small man was oblivious to it. He led Pete right to a small wooden colonial in East Boston. Pete noted the address and drove off, thankful that Langely didn’t live in an apartment building. An apartment building would be tougher for what he had planned.

  He barely got back to his hotel room when the phone rang. It was Toni, informing him that Mr. Carbone was really Mr. Carl Boronski. “I’d put him on the phone,” she said, “but I’m afraid he’s tied up at the moment.”

  “Just you and him alone, huh?”

  “Just the two of us.” She hesitated, and when she continued her voice had changed, sounding almost scared. “Pete,” she said. “I found the briefcase. There was thirty-three thousand dollars in it. I also found five thousand dollars on him.”

  “I’ll be over as soon as I can.” Pete got the address and hung up. He then drove back to where he had followed Langely. The house lights were off, and as he left the Caddy he took with him a roll of duct tape he’d bought earlier in the day. Standing in the darkness by the front door, Pete strained himself, trying to listen for any voices coming from within the house. Finally, he heard what sounded like a man and woman celebrating. He pounded on the door, and muffling his voice with his hand, shouted, “It’s Carl. Open up!”

  He was grinning from ear to ear when the door opened and the redhead stood in front of him in her stocking feet. As recognition hit her, her mouth gaped open, but before she could utter a peep, he had tape covering her mouth. A split second later he had her on her belly, and with his knee digging into the small of her back, wrapped both her wrists and ankles with the tape. He grinned wolfishly, studying the sheer negligee she was wearing. “Fancy finding you here,” he whispered softly into her ear.

  As he pulled away, he noticed she still had on the same diamond earrings. He reached down to take them and then thought better of it. Langely called down, complaining about what was taking so long. Pete moved the redhead from sight.

  When Langely walked into the room, he walked straight into a hard sucker punch. Pete had put more muscle into it than he had to, and the small man crumpled onto the floor. He bound the small man’s wrists and ankles, and then started searching the house.

  He found the five grand he was expecting to find, and not wanting to keep Toni waiting, decided to call it quits. He used a blanket from the bedroom to transport the redhead and Langely to the trunk of his Caddy. Langely was still out cold. As he shut the trunk, the redhead glared at him furiously. For the hell of it, he hit every pothole on the way.

  The address Toni had given him was for a small Colonial with an attached garage. A beat-up Volvo occupied the garage. Pete knocked on the door and gave Toni a squeeze as she let him in. She shot him a worried look. “What kept you so long?” she asked.

  “Had a pickup to make. You know where the keys for the Volvo are?”

  She shrugged. Pete spotted an overcoat, checked the pockets, and with a big smile, held up a set of car keys. He rolled the Volvo out onto the street, and brought the Caddy into the garage. Toni watched all of it with an impatient frown. Pete opened the Caddy trunk, and with a grunt, lifted Langely onto his shoulder. The small man had woken up and was groaning miserably.

  “Well, honey,” Pete winked. “You want to show me our host?” Toni stared in disbelief and then started laughing. She led the way to the upstairs bedroom. There, Carl Boronski lay on the bed, his hands and feet secured by handcuffs to brass bed posts. Besides a pair of socks that were stuffed in his mouth, the only other article of clothing he head on his body were jockey shorts. Pete raised an eyebrow at Toni. “The handcuffs were his idea!” she argued defensively.

  “I’m sure they were,” he answered, dropping Langely onto the bed with his partner.

  Pete went back to the garage and hoisted the redhead onto his shoulder. As he carried her upstairs, Toni’s eyes lit up. “You got yourself quite an armful,” she said with a vicious smile.

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” he responded, sidestepping a kick she had aimed at his posterior. He carried the redhead into a bathroom and dumped her in the tub. She shot him a look of pure murder. The tape across her mouth stifled the curses she tried to unleash. Pete smiled to himself, noticing that her skin had blushed a deeper red than her hair.

  Toni was waiting in the hallway. “What next?” she asked.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Pete led the way back into the bedroom, and then took out his switchblade. Langely was looking awful woozy, and when he saw the opened knife, he squeezed his eyes shut. Boronski’s eyes bulged as he stared at the blade. Pete walked over to Boronski and cut his jockey shorts off. He then used the knife to free Langely of his clothing.

  “What’s the point of that?” Toni whispered to him after he had walked back to her.

  “Later I’m going to call the cops,” he said somewhat spitefully. “I want them embarrassed when the men in bl
ue show up. Payback for trying to play me as a chump.”

  “And they won’t tell the cops anything?”

  “Not a thing.” He smiled wryly. “They can’t afford to, unless they want to admit to the rip-off scheme they’ve been running. It’s going to be some show later.” He broke out laughing. “The cops are going to want to know why they’re naked and tied up, and our friends are going to sweat bullets trying to explain it’s all one big misunderstanding. Man, I wish I could watch it. Oh, well,” he showed the knife. “Can’t leave our redhead overdressed.”

  Toni snatched the knife away. “In your dreams,” she muttered out of the side of her mouth. The bathroom door slammed behind her. When she came out, she carried the remains of the redhead’s negligee.

  “It seems fitting,” Pete offered philosophically. “That they should be stripped both figuratively and literally of their worldly possessions. And speaking of which, why don’t you show me the money?”

  The briefcase was in the kitchen. Looking at all the money in it made Pete’s palms start to sweat. He took the five grand he had found at Langely’s and added it to the briefcase. “Why don’t you put this in the trunk,” he told Toni, handing her the money. “I’m going to give the place a quick search.”

  Toni nodded. Pete knew she had already searched the house, but he checked places he knew she would’ve missed. Like the underside of shelves, and the back of drawers, and inside of book jackets. He found three hundred dollars hidden in those spots.

  Toni came back from the garage and grabbed him, pressing her slim body hard against his. She gave him a long kiss. When she pulled away her eyes sparkled. “Let’s go,” she said, “we got vows to exchange.”

  They walked to the garage together, hand in hand. Pete stopped suddenly and slapped himself against the forehead. “The diamond earrings!” he swore, shaking his head.

  Toni gave him a questioning look. “The redhead’s got diamond earrings that I want to give you as a wedding gift. I’ll be right back.” He turned but Toni stopped him. “I’ll get them,” she insisted. She gave him an odd look as she walked back into the house.

  When he heard her on the stairs, he started up the Caddy and drove off. An uneasiness started to work its way into his stomach. He had almost left behind a few hundred dollars for Toni, but hell, he was leaving her the diamonds – wasn’t that enough? If they turned out to be fake, she’d still find a way to get back to New York. With a body like hers, how could she not? And besides, Toni was as resourceful as they come.

  Still, the look she gave him bothered him. It was something other than simple jealousy – almost like she knew what was going to happen. Well, what choice did he have? If he was going to use the money to run his Hollywood scam he had to ditch Toni.

  With a little bit of luck he should be able to return ten times what was in the briefcase. Maybe even more. In six months, a year tops, he’d come back and make it up to Toni, marrying her on the spot. He’d give her a diamond so big she’d need a wheelbarrow to cart it around.

  No, he rationalized, it was unfair to expect him to do anything but what he did. The Hollywood scam was finally within his reach. And also, he thought with a warm smile, so were all the beautiful and hopeful actresses he’d be meeting.

  First he’d drive down south, maybe to Miami, and rest up for a few days. Work on a good suntan. Buy himself a flashy wardrobe. After that, he’d get rid of the Caddy and fly to Hollywood. And then …

  As plans whirled through his head, any guilt he had been feeling faded. He drove until morning, finally stopping at a roadside motel in Virginia. Bleary-eyed and exhausted, he opened the trunk and stood confused, not believing his eyes. There was no briefcase. All there was was a note written in the cherry-blossom-pink lipstick Toni liked to use.

  The note read: “You lousy creep. When you marry me you might see a dime of the money. Drop dead, Toni.”

  If he hadn’t been so damn tired, Pete would’ve gotten a long good laugh from the whole thing.

  Man Friday

  Man Friday is the sequel to Money Run, and starts with Toni having flown the coop with the all the ill-gotten gains from Money Run, and our hero, Pete Mitchel, finding himself down and out in Miami. Ever resourceful, Pete will find a way…

  Pete Mitchel instinctively rolled to his side when he felt the wetness splash on his face. Even in the semi-dream state he had drifted into, he found himself wondering why it tasted so much like stale beer.

  Before his unconscious mind could put two and two together, he found himself jerked off the park bench and kicked in the gut. As he lay on the dirt ground, dazed, gasping for air, he slipped an eight inch switchblade from his pants pocket and had it pulled open beneath him. Standing over him were two punks, both grinning. Neither of them had seen the knife.

  The larger of the two punks poured more beer on Pete. He looked like a Nazi. His neck redder than a strawberry and thicker than Pete's thigh. Short thick blond hair stood up like a brush bristle from the top of his head.

  "We don't like bums in our town - do we, Rat?" he jeered. His mouth was big and pink and filled with bad teeth.

  Rat, his associate, chortled in response. He was a fat, sloppy punk with reddish greasy hair and bad acne. Snake tattoos ran up both arms. "That's right," he joined in with a squeaky voice, his eyes sparkling with mirth. "We smash them up, right George?"

  "That's right," the blond punk, George, agreed. "It's disgusting how they come into our town expecting to sponge off of us good folk. Nothing but cheap garbage. Makes me sick to my stomach."

  Pete braced himself. He sat up slowly, keeping the knife hand behind him. With a quick sweep of the blade and a little luck he’d be able to sever arteries in both punks’ legs.

  George edged closer. His features darkened. "Now," he said. "If they were gainfully employed, or at least willing to become productive members of society, that would be a different story."

  Pete closed the knife with his thumb. "You got a job for me?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  George nodded. "Yeah, I do. How does two hundred dollars sound?"

  After thinking about it, Pete told him it sounded fine. The fat, sloppy punk, Rat, offered a hand which Pete ignored. He stood up slowly, his stomach tight and sore from the kick he took. The two punks got alongside him, sandwiching him, hanging their arms loosely around his shoulders. Their body odor was stifling. It had been two months since Pete had outwitted himself and lost forty grand to his fiancée, Toni. Since then things had gone from bad to worse. The last three weeks he had been living off the streets of Miami, unable to raise the bus fare to get back to New York. He prayed he didn't smell like these two.

  The two punks led him out of the park. As they walked, George explained how he knew Pete wasn't just a shiftless lazy bum, but a down-and-out soul who was looking for a chance to pull himself up from his bootstraps. Rat found something amusing in that and broke into a wheezing laugh, followed by a coughing fit.

  They walked a quarter of a mile before stopping in front of a pink and white art deco ranch in an exclusive neighborhood near Coral Gables. Rat hustled over to the front door, jiggled with the lock, and then hurried back, his face a bright red. "All set. Door's unlocked," he grunted.

  George took Pete aside. "Here's the story," he said in a soft monotone. He was standing very close to Pete. His breath felt unpleasantly hot and smelled a lot like rotting fish.

  "My boss has a problem with the guy who lives here," he continued. "We want to teach him a lesson he won't forget. How's that sound?"

  "Sounds okay."

  George nodded, handed Pete a wad of bills. "That's two hundred," he said. "All you got to do is knock off the guy's wife. And you're going to do it with him in bed with her. It will be a lesson he won’t soon forget."

  George explained more of the situation. Pete stood listening, his features marble hard, his eyes half closed. George took a gun from his waistband and handed it to Pete, holding it so Pete had to look down the barrel as he took it.r />
  "We'll be waiting for you," George told him. "You better not screw up in there."

  Pete looked at the gun. A thirty-two caliber revolver. He reversed his grip and then swung it hard, slashing George across the mouth with the barrel. The blond punk fell back a couple of steps and grabbed his mouth. Rat took a step forward, then stopped.

  "That's for the beer bath and the kick," Pete explained softly. "And for not brushing your teeth."

  "We'll be waiting for you," George said, slurring his words. He had both hands pressed against his mouth.

  "As a friend I got to recommend you start flossing," Pete said with a wink. He turned and followed the slate path to the front door. Before going in, he looked behind him and saw both punks standing frozen, blood in their eyes.

  Inside, he pushed aside the front curtains and watched as the two punks hightailed it out of there, scampering away like hyenas. Pete bit his tongue to keep from laughing. He took the money out and counted it. Two hundred as advertised. Enough to run a few scams with so he could get back to New York in style. He was about to start looking for a back window when a thought stopped him. On a hunch he cracked open the revolver. There was only a single bullet in the cylinder.

  As Pete stared at the gun his lips pressed into a harsh, thin smile. A minute passed before he moved and pushed the cylinder back in place. After that he turned on the lights.

  The kitchen was off to the right. He rummaged through the refrigerator and found beef tenderloin in the freezer. He used the microwave to defrost it, and cooked it up with some eggs, taking his time eating. A bottle of Dom Perignon accompanied his meal.

  It was almost two hours after entering the house that Pete walked into the bedroom and turned on the lights. The wife was lying on her back, her mouth open as she snored uncomfortably. Pete guessed she was drugged. The husband was lying on his side, the blanket pulled over his head.