their private, closed-door meeting. It’s never been done. I’m maybe the last one they would expect to have the balls, too.
And I’m wearing the full-boat Carr grin. My two immediate
superiors slip into serious shock.
“Sorry, Rags, Vic.” I’m huffing with excitement. “But
you’d better hear what this guy has to say. It’s about the
lawsuit. You won’t believe it.”
Vic’s face is a frozen puzzlement, question marks in both
brown eyes. Rags looks pissed, a red flush climbing his neck like an exotic reptilian pet.
I bend over, flip Vic’s telephone to speaker, then run to the 49
BIG NUMBERS
doorway and wave at Walter. He punches buttons on his
desk, a grin painted on his face like some Sesame Street
puppet.
Vic stands. “Austin...”
“What’s going on?” Rags says.
Same thing that always goes on, Rags. Your ass is mine. A
light flashes on Vic’s phone. I punch up the line and jack the volume. I’ve left the door to Vic’s office open so half the sales room can see inside. That half quickly fills up with faces.
Walter’s on his knees, his cheeks and forehead bright pink.
“Oh, Rags,” a breathless female voice booms from Vic’s
speaker-phone. “I want your prick now. I want your giant
cock deep inside me.”
Vic’s mouth opens.
“Hump me hard,” the sex-phone lady says. “Oh, Rags.
Hump me hard.”
Rags glares at me, his eyes glazed and unfocused. Tight
lips, grim jaw. I snap the bastard’s picture with Walter’s
camera. Rags is going to want to kill me for this.
Rags tried to fire me, of course. He blew himself up like a
balloon, screaming and yelling about the other pranks I’d
pulled on him. Poor balloon-guy almost popped. Mr. Vic had
to slap him on the cheek. Twice.
As for me, I got the full-boat Straight Up Vic Bonacelli
glare, but as far as punishment, I counted on two factors.
One, Mr. Vic enjoys anything pornographic, especially laughs, and two, Vic set up a big-money golf match for us at his
country club next Sunday. He wouldn’t want me sulky.
Austin Carr, strategic genius. Mr. Vic tells me to pay a fifty dollar telephone fine for calling a 900 number, and to take the day off to contemplate the inappropriateness of my disruptive actions.
Not bad, considering Raging Maniac Rags wanted to have
me arrested.
And hey, a day off is fine by me. I’m a little worried about Luis anyway, not to mention thirsty from all that running
between phones, signaling Walter.
50
Jack Getze
Ha.
I visit a client, pick up a small commission from an
addition to the customer’s mutual fund account, then swing
by Luis’s Mexican Grill early that afternoon.
The carved front door’s locked. So is the kitchen entrance.
No sign of Luis. Cruz. Anyone.
Odd.
51
SIXTEEN
Across Highway 35 from Shore Securities, at the
Branchtown Family Pharmacy, I buy six packs of Topps
baseball cards in their crisp waxy wrappers. I love opening
packs of baseball cards. Pure treasure hunting.
On my way back to the office, I rip at the wrapper of the
first pack and step off the curb. Yes, I know, I’m walking
onto a two-lane highway between parked cars. But I checked
both ways. Nobody’s coming. Not a moving car in either
direction.
I’m looking for Derek Jeter, New York Yankee shortstop.
My son Ryan needs another Jeter card so he can trade his
friend for a Mark—
What’s that? Something’s coming. Something big and
frightening, and my body must be worried about it being a car because I jump straight up. It’s instinctive, an involuntary response to the unexpected arrival of fast-moving steel.
It’s a car, alright, trying to run me down. Thanks to my
jump, I’m in the air when the Jaguar’s curved nose collides
with my ass. The blow stuns me from the toenails to the split tips of my hair. I sail and tumble through the air like a
gunned-down duck.
I hear a woman crying for help. Was I unconscious?
Nothing in particular hurts. I remember I was struck by a car, but the pain seems general, like a Monday morning
depression.
“Austin?”
A hand slaps my cheek. It is the first sharp pain I feel. That crying woman is calling 9-1-1. A man’s been hit by a car, she blubbers. She’s definitely talking about me. I mean, how many guys just got spanked by a car in front of Shore Securities?
Some asshole slaps my face again. I open my eyes. The face
above me is blurry. Familiar, but blurry. Huh? Am I
dreaming?
52
Jack Getze
“Where the hell did you come from, buddy?” Rags says. “I
never saw you until you were sitting on my hood.”
Rags? My sales manager? Man, I knew the guy was mad at
me, but...
“You had your face buried in these stupid baseball cards,”
he says. Rags holds up a Derek Jeter. “Hope he’s worth a trip to the emergency room.”
While they’re loading me in an ambulance, I hear Rags tell
a cop he’d just pulled away from the curb when I scooted
between cars ahead of him. No way to avoid me, he says.
Couldn’t even hit his brakes until my ass had already
imprinted itself on his hood.
The cop believed him. I’m not sure I do. It was the way he
slapped me. Called me buddy.
53
SEVENTEEN
Kelly’s half-wearing a green nurse’s uniform. I don’t know
where she swiped the outfit, or how she got hold of the
hospital I.D. badge previously pinned above her now bare
right breast, nor do I give a rat’s ass.
Not now anyway. The redhead’s nestled in beside me on
the hospital bed, the weight of her on the mattress pulling me close, her back blocking the hallway’s view of her exposed
chest and my naked mid-section. She could have pulled the
floor-to-ceiling curtain around us but said the risk of getting caught would provide extra excitement. Hard to argue with
that, or anything else right this moment. See, Kelly’s giving me the sponge bath of my life, and slowly, lovingly, and finally, Kelly has brought me to the Big Finish.
“I think you’re ready,” she says.
I can only groan.
“Yes...see? Oh, my...what a load. I’m no doctor, Austin,
but I’d say the accident failed to damage your doodad.”
Doodad? “Are you sure you’re not a doctor?”
Ten minutes later Kelly’s cleaned up and changed clothes
in my hospital room’s lavatory. She’s wearing stone-washed
jeans now and a lemon yellow sweater that makes her candy
red hair and green eyes glow with that girl-next-door
innocence it takes studio make-up artists whole careers to
perfect.
“Want to know what I found in the safe?” she says.
The bed sheets rub against my skin like canvas. The pillow
smells of cheap soap and starch. Outside in the hall, a gurney goes by, its wheels clickity-clacking like a tiny train. And though I’m interested in Kelly’s safe-cracking tale, I can’t get over the fact Rags tried to kill me. I didn’t know the son-of-a-bitch was that craz
y.
Jack Getze
“Sure,” I say. “Tell me what you found.”
“I can do better than that,” she says.
Kelly digs into her straw beach bag. She rummages
through a cell phone, tissues, and a red wallet, finally pulls out
an
eight-by-eleven-inch
manila
envelope
stuffed
with...what? Papers?
She tosses the package on my chest. Ouch. It crashes onto
my sternum with the force of a space shuttle returning from
orbit.
I undo the clasp. The metal imprints white marks on my
fingertips. Don’t know whether it’s the thick texture of the parchment, or my stockbroker’s well-trained sense of smell
for money, but I know without looking exactly what Kelly
has dumped on me.
I pull out the three-pound wad of papers from the manila
envelope. What I expected. Registered securities, mostly blue chip stocks and municipal bonds. A big chunk of Gerry’s
portfolio I knew nothing about.
“Using face value on the bonds, and the stock prices
printed in the paper Saturday, it’s about two and a half
million,” Kelly says.
I take a deep breath. I’m feeling better after a good night’s sleep. The doctors say I’m lucky to have no broken bones, no internal injuries.
“I have to ask you something, Kelly.”
She grins, a smile that covers her entire face. Like Julia
Roberts, her happy mouth seems bigger than humanly
possible. Guess Kelly got some kicks playing nurse. “Ask
away,” she says. “But I bet I know what you’re going to say.”
“You do?”
“Uh, huh.”
“What?”
“You’re going to ask, if Gerry’s about to die, why am I
hiding money from him. And why, if I’m going to inherit his
money, am I acting now like I want to steal his stocks and
bonds?”
This woman is not only pretty, she’s almost smart.
“Well...yeah …why? If you’re going to inherit his money
anyway...”
55
BIG NUMBERS
Kelly adjusts the bathroom door and admires herself in the
full-length mirror. She tugs on her sweater, stretching the
yellow material tight over her chest. “Well, here’s the thing, Austin...I’m not going to inherit much of anything.”
I feel my neck stiffen. “But that day in the office? What
Gerry said about his money...it was bullshit?”
“I guess Gerry wants to keep me happy until he dies.”
Can’t blame him for that.
“Only problem,” Kelly says, “Gerry’s dumb-ass lawyer
Federal Expressed a copy of the will to our house last week
while Gerry was sleeping. I not only read it, I made a copy, had my lawyer look at it.”
“And?”
“And basically I’m screwed. He leaves me a hundred
grand—severance
pay
for
my
domestic
labors.
The
cocksucker. But his grown children get the money, the
property, the businesses. Everything.”
“He can’t do that in New Jersey,” I say. “It’s a community
property state.”
She faces me. “Gerry and I were never married.”
I need Walter’s help checking out of the hospital that
afternoon, but before I go, I use another patient’s cell phone to call a reporter friend of mine at the Newark Herald-Examiner. I want more information about Gerry Burns.
I’m not sure where Kelly and I are going, or even where we
are right now, but I can feel the stakes advancing. And I’m
tired of being surprised with new information. This pal at the Herald knows how and where to check public records Google
doesn’t know exist.
“Think Rags hit you on purpose?” Walter says.
I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking.”
Walter’s wheeling me through the hospital’s huge revolving
glass entrance. His four-door Mercedes is waiting just outside.
I can’t wait to get “home,” start living again in my camper
with my leg in a brace. I automatically rub my sore head.
“I think you’d better start looking,” Walter says. “Rags is
a whack job, and you really pissed him off with that phone-
56
Jack Getze
sex gag. Embarrassed him in front of everyone. You’ve been
on him good for months.”
“Really?”
“Really. Telling you straight.”
I slip easy into the soft leather of my friend’s new
Mercedes. “Hey, Walter, when we get to Broad Street can you
do me a favor and stop at that athletic goods place?”
“Sure. You gonna buy a gun?”
“Not a bad idea. But I was thinking more of a football
helmet.”
57
EIGHTEEN
It’s after six when Walter pulls into Shore Securities.
Sunday evening, there’s three cars in the lot besides my
camper; Rags’ Jaguar with the dented hood, Straight Up Vic’s Beamer wagon, and a dirty white Lincoln Mariner SUV with
fishing poles clamped to a chrome rack on the roof.
“Shit.”
“What’s the matter?” Walter says.
I nod toward the Mariner. “That fisherman is my client,
Psycho Samson.”
“The wrestler with two bond defaults?”
“That’s him. He’s suing.”
“Maybe he’s here negotiating a deal with Vic.”
“Or maybe he’s hiding,” I say, “waiting to jump me.”
Walter makes a fist. “So we’ll kick his ass.”
This puts a smile on my lips. In California, skinny un-
muscled guys like me and Walter accept our fate. In New
Jersey, everybody acts tough. Faccia rozzo. “I did better
against Rags’ Jaguar than you and I would against Psycho.
Two years starting tackle at Notre Dame, ninety percent of all running plays went directly behind his block.”
Walter makes a show out of checking the near-empty
parking lot, stretching his long neck, creeping his Mercedes forward like a turtle. Takes us two or three minutes to check all sides of the Mariner and my camper.
“Why wasn’t he an All-American, an NFL draft pick?”
Walter says.
“Drug busts, sexual assaults, and worst of all, a bad
attitude with the coaches. The school tossed him his senior
year. Didn’t graduate, although I don’t think he cared too
much. The World Wrestling Syndicate offered him a six-figure signing bonus.”
“Get out.”
58
Jack Getze
“He’d probably be as famous as Hulk Hogan now if he
hadn’t strangled a guy in practice.”
No sign of Psycho, and I can’t even see a place where he
could hide. I mean, the man is gigantic. Maybe Walter’s right and Psycho’s inside, threatening Vic into making full
restitution on those St. Louis hospital bonds.
I crack open the passenger door. The evening is oppressive
with heat and moisture. “Thanks for the ride, Walter. I’m
going to miss your air-conditioning.”
“I’ll miss your hot air. See you tomorrow, pal.”
Hobbling across the warm asphalt, my knee starts to
throb. The temperature has to
be over ninety. Bruise-blue
thunderclouds build in a gray sticky sky.
Good thing I don’t need a left knee to drive. What the hell
would I do if I couldn’t captain my camper?
I’m slipping the key into my lock when a vise clamps shut
around the back of my neck. The pain is excruciating, then
paralyzing, numbness radiating down my spine to the tip of
my big toes. A second clamp grabs my belt, lifting me off the ground, my body weightless and disassociated. I feel nothing as I am slammed against my camper’s window.
Under painless pressure, my face and neck are flattened
against the glass. Never have I felt so helpless. Like a bug under some kid’s thumb.
Thunder booms in the distance. Remnants of that
hurricane. A dead fish smell permeates the tiny amount of
warm humid air I’m able to breathe. A gagging fog of bait,
blood, and fish guts. Just a hunch, but I think I’m in the grip of Psycho Sam.
“Hello, puke.”
I can see his left shoulder, that skull and crossbones tat.
Plus the voice is unique. Real high, like a nine-year-old. But hey, and even if I couldn’t see the shoulder tattoo, even if I didn’t recognize the smell of dead fish or the little league voice, who the hell else could lift and hold me up like this?
There’s no doubt I am in the clutches of Psycho Samson
Attica, proud owner of fifty thousand dollars in St. Louis
hospital bonds, current value forty-five hundred.
“Mr. Attica?”
59
BIG NUMBERS
“I want my money back. Every freaking penny.”
“You’re hurting me, Mr. Attica. And this isn’t going to get
your money back.”
“I whip your ass a while, it might. You’ll believe me when
I promise to bust your freaking neck. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do if I don’t get back that fifty grand.
Understand? I will twirl you by the head, snap your freaking neck like my Momma did her chickens.”
Is that how they kill chickens on the farm? Yuk. I heard
Psycho grew up between cornfields, inhaled too much of those chemical fertilizers. But breaking chicken necks?
“Mr. Attica?”
“Yes?”
“Listen. I understand you’re pissed off. Heck I would be,
too. It’s a lot of money.”
Ouch. My face is pressed so hard against the glass, my
teeth cut into my cheek. That’s the bad news. The good news, I feel pain again. The numbness is leaving. Little yellow lights pop on and off inside my flattened eyeball.
“It’s difficult to talk like this, Mr. Attica. How about
Big Numbers (Austin Carr Mystery Book 1) Page 6