Devil's Food

by Anthony Bruno

  Suddenly the shower curtain whipped open. She yelped, staring into the mirror, her heart thumping, thinking, Spy!

  Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! she thought. Don’t panic!

  The humongous character standing in the tub smiled at her in the mirror. He was huge. A little braid hung from his bottom lip.

  Oh, God! she thought.

  “How’s it going?” the monster with the braid said.

  She turned around but didn’t say a word, thinking hard, telling herself there was a way out of this, there was a way.

  But then she saw his arms, and her eyes shot open as if she’d seen a ghost. He flipped them over so she could get a better look. Twin torpedoes on the insides of the forearms, one blue, one red. Her stomach suddenly ached like hell. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, she thought. Oh, God!

  “Guess you know who I am, don’t you, Martha Lee?” He scratched his shaved head and laughed through his nose.

  There’s a way out of this, she kept telling herself. She thought about the money in her purse. Bribe him, she thought. But she didn’t want to give up that money. That was her escape money. Then give him something, she told herself. Give him something.

  “Torpedo Joe Pickett,” he said, extending his paw as if he were inviting her in to take a shower with him.

  Her legs were shaking like crazy. Do something! she screamed at herself. Do something!

  “Can’t say hi?” he asked, tugging on his braid.

  Without thinking it through, she pulled her blouse over her head and undid her bra, letting everything drop. “Hi,” she said. She wished she were bigger on top.

  Torpedo Joe stared at her boobs and laughed through his nose. “Hi.”

  11

  Sitting in a booth at the Sunset Diner, a few miles down the road from Rancho Bonita, Loretta inched over toward the window to get as far away from Marvelli as possible. Marvelli was sitting next to her; Lawrence Temple, the IRS guy, was by himself on the other side of the red vinyl booth. She was pissed at both of them, but more at Marvelli for pulling that wife stunt back at the spa and then leaving her alone with Lance.

  She held her coffee cup to her mouth, frowning behind it. These two jerks were screwing up this whole thing.

  “You don’t get it, Marvelli. Do you?” Temple was leaning over the table, getting frustrated with Marvelli. “You think this is a game, playing cops and robbers. But I’m telling you, Laplante is big-time. He must owe the government at least 20, 30 million in back taxes.”

  “So arrest him,” Marvelli said, taking the last dinner roll in the basket and unwraping another pat of butter. “You’re the government.”

  But Temple was shaking his head. “It’s not that easy. We suspect he’s been hiding income, but we don’t have any real proof. It’s all conjecture based on estimates. We have to see his books to prove it.”

  Marvelli bunched up his fingers and did that Italian gesture. “You don’t think this guy has a second set of books? Get real, Lawrence.”

  “I’m sure he does, but that’s okay. All we have to find is a discrepancy between his books and our estimates, and we’ve got probable cause to put his ass in the meat grinder.”

  Loretta glared at him. Two years ago she’d been audited by the IRS. Some dweeb who smelled of BO had tied her up for six hours going over all her receipts and giving her an ulcer. The smelly geek ended up charging her $159 in taxes owed, most of which was the late penalty. Talk about a profitable use of government resources.

  “We suspect that a substantial part of Laplante’s franchise business is unreported cash income,” Temple said. “The local WeightAway places have this thing they call Pound for Pound. Members have to weigh in every week, and for every pound that they don’t lose on schedule, they have to contribute five dollars, which they’re told goes to a local food bank or homeless shelter. Based on the skimpy contributions WeightAway has made in the past, we think Roger Laplante is pocketing this unreported cash.”

  Loretta’s eyes were crossing. Did Temple have to bring that up? She’d almost forgotten about Pound for Pound. With all the money she’d paid in, WeightAway could’ve fed India.

  “Then there’s the frozen foods. WeightAway Food Products claims enormous business expenses on the quality ingredients they supposedly use. But we had some of the frozen dinners analyzed by an independent lab. Considering what’s in them, the markup is astronomical.”

  I could’ve told you that, Loretta thought with a frown. The memory of WeightAway’s pressed-sawdust veal Parmesan patty haunted her whenever she passed the frozen-food section at the supermarket.

  Marvelli bit into his buttered roll, chewing as he talked. “Sounds like you’ve got more than enough on Laplante to make his life miserable.”

  Temple shook his head. “The frozen foods are a rip-off, but they’re not illegal. That’s the whole problem. On the surface WeightAway is on the up-and-up, but there’s a lot of room for hanky-panky in an operation that big and that diverse. And given Roger Laplante’s lifestyle and his public image, malfeasance seems very likely. The only thing is, he’s clever. He doesn’t use a big accounting firm. Everything is done in-house, which is all part of his evangelical I’m-only-doing-this-for-the-health-and-happiness-of-America bullshit. He has the spa, a house in Palm Springs, a co-op in Manhattan, a vacation condo on the Baja, and twenty-eight hundred acres of investment property outside Montreal, and he’s not in it for the money.”

  Loretta’s stomach growled just thinking about her hard-earned money going to Roger Laplante’s fat-scam empire.

  “And that’s not all,” Temple continued. “He’s got a—”

  He abruptly stopped talking when the waitress came with their orders. She was a white-haired, lacquered-hairdo granny type with no personality at all. She set down the platters without a word: grilled cheese and bacon for Temple, shrimp salad on rye for Loretta, meat loaf and gravy with mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and a side of coleslaw for Marvelli.

  “I’ll be right back with more coffee,” the waitress said as she hurried off.

  “And another Coke,” Marvelli called after her.

  That would be his third, Loretta noted as she pulled out one of the toothpicks from her sandwich. They had crinkly cellophane ruffles on top—one blue, the other green. She took off the top slices of bread and sprinkled salt on the lettuce and tomato.

  “I’ll tell you what I really need,” Temple said after the waitress left. “Someone to go undercover at Rancho Bonita. Someone who could get into the WeightAway headquarters and find something I can use against Laplante. Something on paper.” He sucked the straw in his iced tea. “Yeah, that’s what I need. Someone who could get into the spa and get the goods on Laplante, Not a plant who’d go to work for them. That could take months, maybe years. I need someone who could do a quickie black-bag job. In and out. Just find something, anything that I could use to start building a case. But it would have to be someone who could blend right in over there.”

  Loretta was biting into her sandwich when she realized that Temple and Marvelli were both staring at her. A glob of shrimp salad tumbled out the side of the sandwich and plopped into her plate. She glared at their stupid, eager faces. “Don’t even think about it,” she said with her mouth full. “Forget it.”

  Temple played it cool, biting into his grilled cheese and chewing deliberately as he stared at Marvelli. “You owe me, Marvelli. For Paul Gaines.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t owe you,” Loretta said. “So just forget it.”

  “You’d be passing up a rare opportunity, Ms. Kovacs.”

  “Opportunity for what?”

  “Interagency cooperation. If, down the line, you ever need a recommendation, or perhaps you might want to transfer to a federal agency, I could be very helpful.”

  Marvelli was remashing his mashed potatoes, mixing in the pool of gravy that had been sitting on top of the mound. “That’s the name of the game, Loretta. You scratch his back, he’ll scratch yours.”

  Loretta gla
red at him. The only scratching she felt like doing was scratching his eyes out. “Are you telling me I should do it?”

  Marvelli shrugged, noncommittal. “I’m not saying you should or you shouldn’t. That’s up to you. I’m just pointing out that it could be beneficial to you down the line. I mean, you told me you want to go to law school, didn’t you? A good recommendation from Lawrence wouldn’t hurt. Lawrence, you must have better connections than the people in Corrections. Don’t you?”

  The IRS agent sucked on his straw before he answered. “I know some people, sure. And one of the good things about working for Internal Revenue is that people tend to pay attention when you ask for favors.” He raised his eyebrows at Loretta and shrugged.

  Loretta didn’t like being ganged up on. “I am not going back there to act like an idiot, posing as some pathetic housewife who hates the way she looks. I could never pull it off.”

  “Sure you could,” Marvelli said, shoveling meat loaf into his mouth. “We’ve already laid the foundation.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Loretta could feel her blood pressure rising. She was going to kill him.

  “Don’t you remember?” He paused for a drippy forkful of creamed corn. “We told that aerobics guy that we were checking the place out because you were considering a stay there. Don’t you remember?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She sipped her coffee, refusing to look at him.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” he insisted. “What the hell’s his name? Vance, Lance, Prance—you know.”

  If they had to stay over another night, she’d kill Marvelli in his sleep, she swore to God.

  Lawrence Temple stayed poker-faced through all of this, calmly eating his grilled cheese. After he finished half of his sandwich, he propped his elbows on the table, linked his long fingers, and leveled his gaze on her. “You want Martha Spooner, right?”

  “I’m not going undercover—”

  “Yes or no—do you want Martha Spooner?”

  “Of course, I want her. What the hell do you think we’re doing here?” She glanced at Marvelli feeding his face. She’d already given up on the other thing she had wanted, the From Here to Eternity night.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” Temple said. “You help me get La-plante, and you can have Martha. Very simple.”

  “And who the hell are you to make deals like that?” Loretta said, her voice rising. “These are people we’re talking about, not trading cards.”

  “You and Marvelli are from a state agency, and you’re out of your jurisdiction. I’m federal; the whole country is my jurisdiction. That’s number one.” Temple bent back the thumb of one hand with the forefinger of the other. “Two. You and Marvelli can try to snatch Martha Spooner, but I can detain her first, along with anyone else I can find in the WeightAway offices, which is precisely what I will do if you choose not to cooperate.”

  “What! You can’t do that.”

  Marvelli forked up some coleslaw. “This is what they call ‘playing hardball,’ Loretta.”

  She made a face at him. “Thanks for the insight, Einstein.” Then she pointed at Temple. “You’re full of it, you know that? Do you think I’m stupid or what? You can’t just barge into the spa and start rounding up people.”

  Temple was grinning, nodding his head up and down. “Oh, yes, I can. The IRS is not bound by the same restrictions that all other law enforcement agencies must comply with. If Uncle Sam thinks you are withholding monies due to the government, the IRS is empowered to do whatever it deems necessary to recover those funds. In other words, we can act first and worry about the details later.”

  “So if you can do that, why do you need me?”

  “Because, Ms. Kovacs, my primary goal is to recover money, not put people in prison. The government does not want to put Roger Laplante away. We want all Americans to thrive and prosper and continue to make profits, so that they can continue to pay taxes. Which is why I want you to help us. If I can get some indication of how much income he’s hiding, I will have a basis for recovering his back taxes. If we simply arrest him, the money will stay hidden and we may never get our share. That’s not what we want.”

  “So what you’re telling me here is that you want the money, not the man.”

  Temple nodded. “Essentially, yes.”

  “But if I say no to you, you’re gonna pick up Martha Lee and keep us from getting to her.”

  He nodded again. “Essentially, yes.”

  Marvelli sopped up gravy from his plate with the rest of his dinner roll. “He’s playing hardball.”

  Temple pulled out a folding cellular phone from his inside pocket and laid it on the table. “We have an arrest team in the area. All I have to do is call them, and Martha Spooner is ours.” He picked up the other half of his sandwich. “But you take your time and think about it, Ms. Kovacs. Just give me an answer by the end of lunch.” He took a bite. The rest of his sandwich wasn’t that big, and she had a feeling he wasn’t going to have dessert.

  Of course, Marvelli’s plate was already clean, and he was looking at her with those sad puppy-dog eyes. He wanted her to do it. She picked up half of her shrimp salad sandwich, then put it right down. She’d lost her appetite. For him, too, the son of a bitch. Why was he siding with Temple? Why wasn’t he taking for her? She’d thought he was a nice guy. Why did he want her to make a fool of herself posing as a “fat lady”?

  “Excuse me,” she suddenly said, sliding out of the booth toward Marvelli. “I said, excuse me,” she repeated, plowing her hip into his.

  “All right, all right, take it easy.” Marvelli got out of the booth.

  She slid out and headed straight for the ladies’ room without looking at either of them. She wasn’t going to cry, she told herself. She was just going to pee.

  “Ladies’ room is right back there.” The granny waitress pointed with her hairdo as Loretta whizzed past.

  Loretta paid her no mind. She found it herself and went right into a stall, undoing her jeans, pulling down her panties, and sitting down. The room reeked of disinfectant. She ripped off a piece of toilet paper from the roll and blew her nose. She wasn’t going to cry, she told herself. Kill maybe, but not cry.

  But just as she started to pee, she heard the door opening.

  “Loretta?”

  She clenched and stopped peeing. It was goddamn Marvelli. “Get the hell out of here, Marvelli.”

  “I know you’re mad, but—”

  “Get out!”

  “Don’t yell. People are eating out there. You’ll get them upset.”

  “I said, get out. Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it.” She could see his black loafers under the stall door.

  “What about your master plan, Loretta? Did you forget about that?”

  Her face turned red. She’d forgotten that she’d told him about that on the plane. She was astounded that he’d remembered.

  “What about all that stuff you told me about?” he said. “Going to night school, passing the bar, going into practice with your sister? Did you forget about that?”

  “Shut up, Marvelli. I’m still mad at you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But what about you? What about your plan?”

  “You think Temple’s right? You think I should go back to the spa and play the fat lady?”

  “I think we should play ball with him, get Spooner before he changes his mind, and get the hell out of here. That’s what I think.”

  “You’re only saying that because you want to get home to your wife.”

  “You’re right. I do want to get home to Renée. But I want you to get what you want, too.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “Loretta, you’re making a big deal out of this. It’s not.”

  How do you know? she thought. She ripped off more toilet paper and wiped her eyes. Shit, she thought with a sniff. She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to cry.

  “Loretta? What do y
ou say? Should I go tell Temple you’ll do it?”

  “Can I have a little privacy here, Marvelli? I’ll let you know when I get out. Okay?” She stared at the back of the gray stall door. She hated it when people turned nice on her just when she was ready to hate their guts. Goddamn Marvelli. Why was he worrying about her plan? What did he care? Why was he being so nice? Was he trying to make her like him or what?

  She wiped her eyes again and tried to pee, but now she couldn’t.

  “Loretta?” His voice echoed into the stall.

  “Are you still here?”

  “I was just wondering about something.”

  “What?”

  “Are you gonna finish your sandwich?”

  12

  Marvelli was behind the wheel of the rented Ford, peering under the edge of the visor, driving into the sun on a four-lane highway. Loretta was in the passenger seat, her overnight bag on the floor by her feet. They’d just come from the motel, and now they were heading back to Rancho Bonita.

  “Why are you so quiet?” Loretta asked.

  “Hmmm?” Marvelli was distracted.

  “You’ve been quiet all afternoon. Something wrong?”

  “No.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. Lawrence Temple’s gray Cutlass was two cars back, following them. The SOB didn’t trust Marvelli. But that was okay, he thought. He didn’t trust Temple either.

  He pushed his sunglasses up his nose and changed lanes, wishing Temple would disappear. This whole thing was a bad idea, he thought. Maybe they should reconsider it. Loretta didn’t have any undercover experience. She had no business doing this. What if she got into a jam in there? Would she know how to handle herself? What if she got hurt? He glanced over at her. She’d been right on the money when she’d said that he was only going along with this caper because he wanted to get back to Jersey as soon as possible. He was worried about Renée.

  But part of him was having a good time here, and that was making him feel guilty. He sort of liked being with Loretta, even when she got nasty with him. She was proving to him that it wasn’t so bad being with a woman other than Renée. Not that he had anything in mind. It wasn’t like that at all. He just liked hanging out with Loretta. Nothing serious. Even though it had taken him a long time to fall asleep last night. He’d been thinking about her in the next bed, wondering if something could possibly happen in a situation like this—if he weren’t married, of course.