2 Double Dip

by Gretchen Archer

  “My grandmother’s the wrong color,” Fantasy said.

  “Both of my grandmothers passed away twenty years ago,” No Hair said, “and for that matter, my mother passed away six years ago last March.”

  That shut things down. I walked to the wall of window behind Mr. Sanders’ desk and lightly banged my head against the glass. No. No. No.

  “Besides,” Fantasy said gently. “We weren’t thinking about sending in your granny, Davis.”

  I spun.

  “We were thinking your ex mother-in-law,” No Hair said. “Eddie’s mother.”

  “She’s perfect, Davis,” Fantasy said. “She’ll lap it up.”

  That she would. But if she agreed to be our shill and throw herself at the foot of the So Help Me God cross, at some point, I might have to be in the same room with her. Before I could convince myself it was a good idea or convince Fantasy and No Hair it wasn’t, another voice boomed into the room.

  The computer screen came to life and Richard Sanders filled it. “What is this about Matthew Thatcher’s Porsche? What happened to that man’s car?” Mr. Sanders was mad, mad, mad, and then some. Either the volume was set on XXL, or he was shouting at us. “I have exactly two minutes, and you three had better start talking.”

  We didn’t say a word.

  He kept going, barely stopping for air, for the next five minutes.

  Thatch exited the building last night, saw his car (at least I put it back where it was supposed to be), had a gigantic fit, chased and batted at the twelve-year old valet with a long black umbrella (that boy hasn’t been seen or heard from since), then used the same umbrella to pummel a Bellissimo limo that found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time, fired everyone out there including bellmen, doormen, and cab drivers who didn’t even work for the Bellissimo, destroyed half of the outdoor lighting, threw a hundred sets of keys from the valet stand into the fifty-foot-high fountain, the night, and Beach Boulevard traffic, and in the process, ran off dozens of gamblers with his spittle and rage that the newspaper (Page Six) reported went on for half an hour.

  There was a short pause when Mr. Sanders asked us to speculate as to how much volume we thought Thatch the Great generated for the Bellissimo’s bottom line. We were still too stunned to speak, so he answered for us.

  “Millions! A million in retail alone!”

  He finished up with, “I think the three of you should work valet for a few weeks, and let’s see if you can’t learn to treat people’s property with a little more respect.”

  When it was over and the echoes finally faded, Fantasy and No Hair turned on me.

  “Let’s look on the bright side,” I said. “He doesn’t know about Bianca shooting herself in the foot.”

  FOURTEEN

  “I’ll wait.”

  “It’s going to be hours.” Mary Ha Ha looked at her watch. “Several.”

  Fine by me. It was Friday night, and I didn’t intend to go home to my wild woman houseguest until Bradley Cole understood that regardless of what else either of us had going on, there was nothing going on between me and Eddie the rotten, rotten, rotten snake. When I left the Bellissimo, I drove straight to the Grand Palace to tell him that, but I ran into a wall. A wall named Mary Harper Hathaway.

  I stood at Wall’s desk and got my first good look at her. Note to self: Don’t base relationship insecurities on fifteen-year-old sorority photos. Time had not been this woman’s friend. She didn’t even look like the same person I’d done a thick exposé on.

  “Why don’t I have him call you when he’s free?” (Patronizing.)

  “I’ll wait.”

  “He’s already late for a meeting upstairs,” she said. “You’ll be waiting all night.” (Parent-to-teenager.)

  Which I was perfectly willing to do. I picked a spot on a sofa comfy enough for an all-nighter, where I could keep an eye on her and Bradley’s door. I settled in.

  Bradley’s casino had four attorneys on staff, and they worked behind four different doors off a central reception area full of books, office furniture, and empty coffee cups. Mary Ha Ha, being a fifth wheel, had no door to work behind, so she worked from behind a desk in the big room. Maybe a desk, I couldn’t really tell it was piled so high. One lit match in the middle, and the Grand Casino would go up in flames. I could see the top of a computer monitor, USB cords cascading down one side, and there must have been a landline telephone in there somewhere, because I could hear a muffled ring. One corner held a book the size of a Smart car: GOGO’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EVERYDAY LAW. It seemed odd to me that she would be referring to EVERYDAY LAW written by someone named GOGO for a case that was getting national attention.

  “Is anyone following her?” I asked.

  Mary Ha Ha peered between the mountains of folders. “Excuse me?”

  “Do you have anyone following Bonita Jakes?”

  “Who is Bonita Jakes?”

  “The no-smoking woman suing the Grand? The pre-cancerous dealer?”

  “No,” Mary Ha Ha laughed out the word. “We’re not following the plaintiffs.” (Silly you.) “We’re a little busy.”

  “She’s Plaintiff Patient Zero, though, right?” I asked. “Hers is a stand-alone case coming up next week, and then the big tort one? Right?”

  Her eyes narrowed to slits.

  “So if you win the first one,” I speculated, “won’t you have a better chance of winning the big one?”

  Her nostrils flared.

  “What does her husband do?” I asked.

  Mary Ha Ha took two deep breaths. She pressed her lips together into a thin line. “I wouldn’t know what her husband does. If anything.” (Kindergarten teacher.) “Or if she even has a husband.”

  “Where do they live?” I kept going.

  Mary Ha Ha slammed a desk drawer. “Davis, right?” She stood. “It’s Davis?”

  I smiled (sweetly), nodded.

  “I’m really, really busy.” She gestured wide to display the chaos on her desk. “We’re all busy, including Brad.”

  Brad?

  “What about Jerry Springer?”

  She walked around to the front of her desk, perched, crossed her arms and ankles, then stared at me. “Jerry Springer.” (Deadpan.)

  “The attorney. Jerry Somebody.”

  “McAllen.”

  “Right.”

  “No, we’re not following him either, Davis. This is a class-action suit, not a television crime drama.” (Condescending.)

  Brad’s door flew open. He took in the scene. “Davis.” I could tell he was stunned to see me right there, right then, but Bradley Cole is a rock. Very professional. Very handsome. Very the man of my dreams. “Come on in. Have a seat.”

  Like I was his 6:30.

  Of course, I totally lost it.

  He jumped between me and Mary Ha Ha, probably so she wouldn’t see me falling to pieces, and ushered me in, his hand burning through the small of my back.

  Behind the closed door, I started blubbering. “Bradley!” I sucked in a huge gulp of air so that I might throw myself at his feet in one breathless ramble, and he stopped me with both palms.

  “Davis, I can’t talk right now, I have to get upstairs.” He tipped my chin up, looked straight through to my heart for Eddie the Dog Crawford, didn’t find him (because he’d never been there), then pulled me into a half-second hug before he let go. “I might make it back down here before tomorrow morning, and I might not. You can wait if you like.” And then he was gone, but I could still smell him—sandalwood soap, the starch on his shirt, Christmas, a new pack of Crayons, puppies, home.

  I sat in his chair, still warm, indulging in a few seconds of hysterical relief that clearly, enough time had passed that Bradley was willing to at least hear my side of the story and work this out, but that led to twice as much
anxiety about what my side of the story was, and what it might take to work this out. To keep myself from taking the stairs two at a time and bursting into his meeting to profess my eternal love, I thought it better to take advantage of my surroundings. Since he’d invited me to wait. I began nosing around for clues, omens, signs, or anything edible. There wasn’t a crumb of anything on his desktop, so I tiptoed to the door and quietly clicked it locked. I might as well look a little harder while I waited, and I didn’t want Mary Ha Ha to catch me.

  The Grand’s Human Resource database said Bonita Jakes was indeed married, to a man named Earl Hump. Bonita and Earl Hump. No wonder she didn’t use his surname. Her employment agreement was standard casino stuff: I won’t steal, I’ll tell you if I see someone stealing, and the moonlighting clause; I won’t have another source of income. I hacked three local banks (not easy to do, thank you), before I found a joint account—a very nice one, a super-nice one, a little more than $600,000 sitting in it—listed under two names: B. S. Jakes and E. Z. Hump. (Here’s hoping neither of them have monogrammed stationery.) The deposits were all blind, just transactions which traced to another account from yet another (hacked) bank.

  Bingo.

  The money was pouring in from Earl’s Diesel Delivery, your one-stop-shop for barge delivery of diesel fuel to yachts and ships, serving Mobile, Biloxi, Gulfport, and New Orleans. He was a licensed USCG Captain, and his partner Bonita J. Shoof Hump, past secretary of the Mississippi Biodiesel Board, delivered truck-only fuel—tanker direct pricing—in the Gulfport area only, and only by appointment. They lived together in a mobile home in Gulfport, hardly distinguishable on Google Earth, because of the fence surrounding it. The fence was constructed of nine heel-to-toe diesel storage tanks.

  Let me make four important points.

  One: At the time she filed the suit, Bonita Jakes was in violation of her employment agreement with the Grand by having a second job, not to mention she was part owner of said second job.

  Two: Computer hacking isn’t for the faint of heart, and you can’t march into court with anything obtained illegally, which, technically, hacking is. (Illegal.) I have an undergraduate degree in Computer Information Science, although I didn’t learn all this in Hacking 101. I learned it after it happened to me once (someone cleaned out my checking account buying Europasses and one of everything at a Hello Kitty store in Prague), out of boredom when I was a police officer in a city of four hundred (for the most part) law-abiding citizens, and going through the mother of all divorces. Now if you’d like to learn how, and you have some free time, or you’re going through a nasty divorce, here’s what you do: First of all, you have to have good Internet Protocol (IP) scanner software on your computer, which Bradley doesn’t, because he’s honest, and all other things good. Think of IP scanner software like an electronic 411 operator. (“Information for what city and state, please?” Then the operator gives you the number.) IP scanner software will do the same for a computer. (“Name of company, principals, locations, and any other keywords, please?” Then the software gives you a string of specific electronic address to choose from.) My favorite scanner software is Mad IP, because it’s fast. You download it from the Internet onto your own computer (well, in this instance, Bradley’s computer), then start stabbing in the dark. Once you locate the address, you temporarily replace your own computer’s address with the new one (just a whole bunch of numbers and symbols, but you have to know where to find them in their system and where to put them in yours/Bradley’s), then ask your computer to find an empty port on a computer, any terminal, at the new place, because you’d like to network your computer. There’s always an empty one somewhere, usually an unused printer port. When you locate it, hook up, and just like that, you’re in. You may as well have your own cubicle. While you’re there, go into payroll and give yourself a raise. (Kidding.) (You don’t really work there.) Nose around, gather the information you need, take screen shots of the really important stuff, don’t change a keystroke, then—most importantly—walk out backwards, step-by-step, the opposite of how you came in. Undo everything you just did, or you (in this case, Bradley Cole) will get into trouble. Some people take wandering around their databases very seriously. Among them, the federal government. They call it high treason.

  Pffffft.

  Third very important point: Mary Ha Ha might be steering the Grand in the wrong direction. Their focus was on the tort case, because it was so big. At last count, one hundred twelve pre-cancerous souls. At her expert insistence, they were taking the offense. Trying to curtail the bloodshed. “Okay. We’ve been bad. We’re installing a smoke-sucking system that will literally pull the hair out of your head. And we’re going to pass out cash, cars, and Caribbean cruises to each and every one of you. Form a single line please.” It looked to me like they should shut it down at the gate, with the single case coming up, and from a different approach—defense. Because last I heard (fourth and most important point), diesel exhaust and diesel fumes were way up on the list of carcinogens. Prolonged exposure might cause one to be pre-cancerous.

  There’d be no way to pick between breathing second-hand smoke all day or inhaling diesel fumes all night as the source for Bonita Jakes’ condition. I doubt a doctor could definitively determine it, and a jury wouldn’t even try.

  It had been almost two hours. I wrote Bradley a note, taped it to the frozen home page of Earl’s Diesel Delivery on his computer monitor, put his door in the locked position before I pulled it closed.

  Mary Ha Ha was still at her disheveled desk. She smiled at me. (Cat-to-mouse.)

  * * *

  The day was gone, replaced by a moonless night featuring thick, low clouds over the Gulf. The past year had taught me many things, including low clouds at night over the Gulf meant grab your Burberry rain boots tomorrow morning. Gulf rain was determined, purposeful, blowing in horizontally from the southeast, and, several times a year, running people out of their sea-level homes. A large slice of the Biloxi population pie gambled around the weather: If the forecast called for anything more than an inch, they checked in to the casinos to ride it out. If the rain had a tropical-storm chaser somewhere out there in the Atlantic, they packed heavily. The locals loved their rain, because the locals loved their casinos.

  Beach Boulevard was packed with Friday night casino-hopping gamblers when I pulled my Bug into traffic. What I wouldn’t give—my RED Valentino Paillettes tote, my mother’s secret lemon pound cake recipe—to go home and sleep for twenty straight hours, but my new condo was minus Bradley Cole to warm the bed, and plus Peyton Beecher Maffini. She would be my houseguest for the foreseeable future, because without her insider knowledge, the So Help Me God monster might eat us alive, or worse, take six months to resolve. In addition to Peyton, I had a Bellissimo watchdog in residence, too, and he’d better get ready to sleep in a chair, because he wasn’t sleeping on my new white sofa.

  Fobbing myself into the parking garage at the Regent, it occurred to me that with Thatch the Great in residence too, I’d better remember to duck my head going in and out, so he wouldn’t pull a “Don’t you know me from somewhere?” Our parking spaces were miles apart, and instead of driving straight to mine, I idled around the parking-level corner and took a look at his.

  Occupied. Thatch’s parking place was packed out with a canary yellow Porsche 911 Carrera. I could smell his new car from inside my old one. He should write me a thank-you note. And put it in a muffin basket.

  The guest-room door was closed. “What’s she been up to?” I asked the Bellissimo bulldog, a guy named Baylor—mid-twenties, built like a bulldozer, dark hair, dark eyes, baby face—who No Hair had pulled off vault-guard duty for condo-guard duty. I’m not sure if Baylor was his first, middle, last, or all of his names.

  “As far as I can tell,” Baylor said, “she’s watched about eight seasons of Entourage and eaten popcorn and ice cream all day.”

  I’m
hanging out with her tomorrow.

  “Other than that, nothing.” He rocked his substantial weight from foot-to-foot.

  “Nothing?” I asked. “She didn’t ask for a phone? Didn’t try to sneak out?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did the doctor come by?”

  “Twice,” he said. “Gave her thumbs up both times.”

  I staggered down the hall, waving goodnight to him, locked myself in my bedroom, kicked off my shoes, then pulled open all six French doors to let the ocean in. Next, I dug through my purse and located Laura Kasden’s burner phone, something I’d been meaning to do all day. I powered it up to see that it had just enough juice left to listen to the three messages.

  Message one, from the only person who had the number—Laura, I’m going to be a little late for dinner, but one thing you need to know about me is I’m worth the wait.

  Message two—I’m going to be tied up just a few more minutes, gorgeous. You wouldn’t believe what jackasses these gamblers can be.

  Message three, obviously a butt dial from the Bellissimo entrance—What the--?—and then the longest streak of cursing and threats I’ve ever heard in my life. If I repeated it, I’d have to wash my mouth out with soap for a month. Not only that, I knew he’d gone home to find his prisoner had escaped, and he couldn’t have reacted to that with anything less than hellfire and brimstone.

  Matthew Thatcher had himself a bad, bad night.

  Time for my next chore. I turned, walked to the bathroom, opened the linen closet, grabbed the ticking bomb in a First Response Gold Digital Pregnancy Test box that was screaming at me from atop a stack of hand towels, walked back to the French doors, and sent it sailing into the first sheets of rain.

  The burner phone surrendered with one last beep, then went black. I dropped it into my purse. A clap of thunder cracked over the ocean. I reached back into my purse, retrieved the phone, then threw it out after the box.