by Greg Rucka
“He’s alive,” Parka Man said, and he used the gun to indicate Tommy. “Remember that. Bad as he looks, he’s alive.”
I could see that Tommy’s hands were cuffed together behind his back.
“You want him to stay that way, you’ll listen to me,” Parka Man said.
The blood that I’d feared would run into my eye turned right, flowing along the ridge of my brow, and I could feel it trickling along my hairline, down my jaw.
Parka Man came closer, holding the gun casually in his hand, pointed down. I waited for him to stop, but he didn’t, kept coming, until he was standing over me in the chair. I stared at his middle, at his parka, at all the shiny metal of his zippers and buttons and clasps.
His free hand came up to my face, and I flinched, but kept silent. I felt a gloved thumb touch my brow, follow the line of blood, wiping it away. I could feel the stitching that surrounded his finger. When he reached the end of the blood trail, he dragged it across my cheek, toward my mouth. He touched my upper lip, pressed, then flicked his finger away.
It felt like something inside me would explode. Somewhere beneath the edge of the parka was his groin, and I thought about kicking, striking out hard.
Then I remembered the gun.
He made a noise, like he was happy with the way things looked, like he was satisfied. He backed away, toward Tommy, and used the toe of a black work boot to roll him onto his belly.
“Didn’t want to have to do it this way,” Parka Man said. “But he was being stubborn. I’d have settled for a hundred thousand, honestly, but he had to get a spine or soul or whatever you friggin’ drunks discover in AA, so now we’re doing it the hard way. So the price goes up, too.”
I stared, confused, terrified, trying to make sense of the words. It was as if he wasn’t really talking to me, more to himself. I told myself he was crazy, but he didn’t sound crazy; he sounded like someone who enjoyed having power, enjoyed using it.
“Straight to the source this time,” the Parka Man said, and his black-toed boot kicked Tommy in the gut. It wasn’t savage, almost absent, and I thought I heard Tommy groan. “No middleman.”
He looked up from where Tommy sprawled, the emptiness inside his hood settling on me.
“A million dollars. Not too much, not for you. You’ve got until noon Friday to get it, in cash. Soon as you have it, you go home, turn on your porch light. Leave it on. I see the light, I know you’re ready, and I’ll tell you where to bring it. I don’t see it on, the next time you see your daddy is when the Detective Division comes and asks you to identify the body. You understand me?”
Tommy made a cracked sound that died in the carpet.
“Yes,” I heard myself say.
Parka Man slid his gun back in his pocket, crouching. He grabbed Tommy with both hands, one on the cuffs, the other on his upper arm, hoisting him to standing. Tommy’s legs seemed like they were hollow, like they were crazy straws beneath his torso, and they bent with his weight, unable to support him.
“Believe me when I say this,” Parka Man told me. “I’ll know if you talk to the cops. I will know if you even whisper to them. If that happens, I’ll kill Tommy, here. I’ll take my time about it. Then I’ll come and kill you, too. You understand that?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Who says celebrities are unreasonable, right?”
“Right.”
“You just sit there and catch your breath, think sweet thoughts for a couple minutes after I’m gone. You’re in no hurry. You’ve got until noon on Friday, like I said.”
He grunted, turning Tommy and then hoisting him onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. They went down the hall, out of sight, and I heard the front door open. A couple seconds later I heard it close. An engine started outside, and I supposed it was the Parka Man’s SUV, and it sounded like it was coming closer, and then it was moving away, and then it was gone.
The shaking started in my hands. It ran up my arms, it slid into my legs. My stomach went wild. It felt like stage fright, and it felt nothing like that, because this was terror, and it was different.
I was certain I was going to vomit, steeled myself for it, but it didn’t happen. Then the shakes went away, just as they had come, and I thought about getting up, but didn’t. My stomach settled, and I started to feel heavy and strangely euphoric, almost postorgasmic. All of the adrenaline, I guess, leaving me high.
The room had huge windows on the east side, to allow the view of the city. The room had been tidied after Mikel’s death, and the fresh bloodstains on the carpet looked grotesque next to the ones that had refused to come out.
There wasn’t really any doubt, anymore.
It didn’t matter if Tommy was everything he had claimed when he’d come and asked to be my father again. It didn’t matter if he was as sorry as he said, as sad as he seemed. Maybe he wasn’t. It didn’t matter.
I couldn’t be the reason he died.
He was all I had left.
Outside, I heard a siren coming closer, and I didn’t think it was coming here, and I didn’t know what I would do if it did. The wail climbed, fell, climbed, and then receded, passing by.
I made my way into the bathroom, turned on the light over the sink. There was a gash on my forehead, not very deep, but long. The skin was torn, and in the opening I could see red flesh, still seeping. The blood that the Parka Man had smeared was already dry, tight on my skin. There was some bleeding on my scalp, too, showing through the curls where the Parka Man had torn hair.
I splashed water on my face, and the cut stung, but in its way that made me feel a little better, made me focus a little more.
A million dollars, that was a lot of money, but I had more than that. It couldn’t be that hard to get the cash, and Parka Man had given me most of four days to do it.
I’d get the cash.
Explaining the cut, that would be something else. It looked like I imagined a gash from the edge of a piece of furniture might look, if for example someone had tripped and not caught themselves in time. Something a drunk might not even remember doing to herself if she had gotten really hammered after her brother’s funeral.
I can do this, I told myself. I can do what needs to be done.
I didn’t think I was lying this time.
CHAPTER 25
It was stupid, but it was the only disguise I could think of, so I wore a ball cap and sunglasses when I went to the bank. I’d bought both of them at a Walgreen’s down the block from my branch, and maybe it was the cut, or maybe I just didn’t matter that much anymore, but no one seemed to recognize me when I made the purchase.
There was a small group waiting in the teller lines when I got to the bank, the last of the lunch crowd, and I stayed out of their way, trying to be inconspicuous, and it totally backfired and people stared. Maybe sunglasses and a ball cap would do it at the movies, but in a bank, it just made me stick out a little more. I got a withdrawal slip from the stand and filled it out precisely, and waited until the line died down before attaching myself to the end. That didn’t work, either, because another three people came in right after I’d done it, and assembled behind me. They were all women, professionally dressed, and none of them looked much older than I.
Four people in front of me, and the line had just shortened to three, when I heard one of the women say, “You know who she looks like? She looks like the girl from Tailhook.”
“That’s not her. She’s too short to be her.”
“Not Van, not that one, the other one, the one whose brother just got killed.”
“That’s not Mim.”
“I don’t know, it looks like Mim.”
“It could be.”
“No it couldn’t, she doesn’t live in town, she lives out in Lake Oswego.”
“That’s Van, Van lives in Oswego. She has that big house they showed on television that time.”
The line had shortened to one, and I really wanted the women behind me to shut up.
“Did y
ou hear about the photos? There was this bit on the news about these photos.”
“Oh, God, I know! My boyfriend showed them to me, can you imagine letting someone do that to you?”
“You could ask her, you could ask if that’s her.”
“I wouldn’t want to be rude.”
There was a teller open, and I moved to his station. He was middle-aged, balding, and he smiled at me when he took my withdrawal slip, then looked at it and laughed and handed it back to me.
“I think you need to fill out a new one,” he said with a very amused smile.
I checked it, shook my head, slid it back. “No, it’s correct.”
“I think you wanted those zeros after the decimal point, not before.”
“No, it’s correct.”
He stopped being amused. “Young lady, you’re not very funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny. I need it in cash, please.”
The teller took the slip once more, went over it again, then frowned at me with suspicion. He asked me to wait a moment, then began tapping on the terminal to the left of his cash drawer. He scowled at the figures on his screen, and I figured he was just making certain that the money was there. Then his posture changed, and he leaned forward on the shelf, gesturing for me to come closer.
“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Bracca,” the teller said. “I’ll get the manager.”
I started to protest, but he was already out of the station and heading down the row of fellow tellers. I told myself not to worry, that he probably needed the manager’s permission to access that much cash. I was a little surprised he hadn’t already asked to see some identification.
Along the line of tellers, one of the women was finishing her transaction. I caught her staring at me, and when I caught her, she blushed and turned away hastily.
My teller came back, flanked by an older woman. The woman wore glasses, and had red hair, and it was obviously dyed.
“Miss Bracca,” the woman said. “I’m Catherine Lumley, why don’t you come with me?”
“Fine,” I said, and got out of line. Catherine waited for me at the end of the counter, and she pulled the short door back, allowing me through. With her free hand, she pointed to her office, past the vault door, and I headed inside. She followed close behind me.
The office was carpeted, and then had an Oriental rug on it, to add to the plush. There were four filing cabinets and a big desk and three leather chairs. The cabinets and the desk were some dark wood, like the rosewood used in fretboards, and all of the handles for all of the drawers were brass and shiny. I could almost feel the money.
“Please have a seat,” Catherine Lumley said. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Water or anything?”
I took one of the chairs facing the desk, and she surprised me by staying on my side and taking one of the seats beside me.
“I’m fine,” I said. Even knowing the balance in my account, I was starting to feel like an imposter.
“You should have come to me right away. As a valued client, if you ever have any trouble with any of our personal bankers, you should never hesitate to speak to the manager.”
I looked at her blankly. Then I took off my sunglasses and repeated the look.
“If you’d like, I can call Mr. Rodriguez in here.” She added it in the same apologetic tone that the teller had used.
“You mean the teller? No, I mean, he was fine, everything’s fine.”
“He should have recognized you, of course. But I can call Mr. Rodriguez right now.”
“Okay,” I said. “I give up. Who is Mr. Rodriguez?”
Lumley chuckled, then stopped when she realized I wasn’t kidding. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought you knew. He’s your banker.”
“I don’t have a banker. I have a bank, this bank. This is the bank I’ve been using since high school.”
“Yes, and we do appreciate your continued patronage, Miss Bracca. But in cases of accounts in excess of one million dollars, we always provide our clients with personal banking facilities. Alexander Rodriguez has been handling your account since February.”
“Doing what?”
“Ideally, whatever you require.”
“I see,” I said. “Well, I require withdrawing a million dollars in cash, if that’s all right.”
She hesitated, and I was afraid she was going to ask what I needed it for, and I realized with a little feeling of panic that I didn’t have a good lie ready. “I hope this doesn’t mean you’re closing the account?” she asked.
“No, not at all.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“So . . . it won’t be a problem?”
“No.” She smiled at me, then got up and went around to her side of the desk, to her computer. She clacked keys for a couple of seconds, and the smile remained, even seemed to grow a fraction. “Will hundreds do? Or smaller bills?”
The Parka Man hadn’t specified. “I think hundreds will be fine.”
Lumley straightened, beaming at me. “Then I’ll have Mr. Rodriguez call you Monday, as soon as the cash is together.”
“Monday?”
“Yes, it’ll take until then for us to get that much cash.”
Someone living in my belly inflated a balloon, painted the word “panic” on it, then let it go to ride the currents up to my head.
“I need it sooner,” I told Lumley.
Lumley began to look concerned again. “I’m afraid there’s no way we can do that.”
“Who can? There must be someone who can, right? I have the money, I have more than enough money.”
“Your combined balance currently stands at four million, six hundred and eighty-seven thousand, nine hundred and eleven dollars,” Lumley said. “That’s not the problem, Miss Bracca. We’re a bank, not the Federal Reserve. We simply don’t have that much currency here, in fact, we never do unless we know there will be a need for it.”
“Can I open an account at another bank?” I asked, trying to keep the balloon from going higher. “Do a wire transfer?”
“You misunderstand me, I’m afraid. It’s not us, it’s the amount. Any bank in the region will have the same problem. What you’re asking to withdraw is a very large amount of currency.”
It was Tuesday afternoon. If I believed Lumley, and I didn’t have a reason not to, then it wouldn’t matter where I went. I suddenly realized I’d have the same problem no matter who I banked with. Which meant that come Friday noon, I wouldn’t have the money, and I didn’t believe Parka Man would give me a reprieve. Clearly, he’d anticipated this problem, but not how long it would take; that was why he had given me the time. If four days later I still didn’t have the money, he wasn’t going to be happy, and his unhappiness would probably manifest itself by inflicting a lot of pain, and probably death, on Tommy.
The beating had looked so painful, the damage so much, and sitting in Catherine Lumley’s office, I saw Tommy again in my mind’s eye. All the times I’d wished him to suffer, and now that he was suffering, I felt sick.
Lumley was waiting for me.
“How much can you get me by Friday?” I asked.
“I’d say five hundred, perhaps six hundred thousand dollars.”
“Which?”
“Six hundred thousand,” Lumley said. “Yes, I should think that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Then I’d like you to do that, please.”
“We’d be happy to. I’ll have Mr. Rodriguez call you as soon as your cash is ready.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“No,” said Lumley. “Thank you for banking with Four Rivers.”
Graham’s apartment was in the Pearl, and that’s where I headed next. During the last few months I’d been with the tour, he’d made a habit of traveling with cash, upward of fifty thousand dollars at a time on some legs. He’d kept it in his briefcase, used it to pay for incidentals and emergencies and shopping sprees, but mostly it was for travel. Cash was the best way to get around the paparazzi and their penc
hant for digging through credit card receipts.
There was no way he was carting four hundred grand around in his briefcase, but he’d know where I could get it.
I took Burnside across the river, back into downtown, then up toward Powell’s. The Heineken Brewery used to be on Burnside, this huge old brick building that had stood since the bad old days, when Portland was renowned by sailors the world over as “the worst port in the world.” But Heineken sold the property a couple years ago, and some developers bought it and promptly tore the whole thing down. Now there were expensive condos and yuppie health food stores.
Graham’s apartment was in an earlier iteration of the process, a twenty-odd-story collection of new apartments with an Art Deco feel. He’d bought it after Scandal, when it had become clear that Tailhook was staying together, and that he was part of the package. Prior to that, he’d lived exclusively in L.A., and he still kept a home there. He’d bought in the Pearl because it was considered the trendiest damn section of town, full to the popping with young urban professionals, all of them beautiful, all of them eager, and most of them looking for a date. Click had his place just a little farther north from Graham’s.
I parked the Jeep and hopped out, and there was a security guy at the desk in the lobby, and he wanted to know who I was visiting. I told him I was Miriam Bracca to see Graham Havers, and the guard got all flustered and begged my pardon and told me he hadn’t recognized me.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Mr. Havers has some company there already, I don’t think it’ll be a problem if you head on up without me calling first,” the security guy said.
“If it is, I’ll tell him I snuck past you.”
Security Guy grinned like we’d just become the best buds in the world. “Cool. And if anyone asks, I’ll say I’ve never seen you.”