The Big Get-Even

by Paul Di Filippo

  “Absolutely! You don’t buy a pig in a poke, I know that. But this plan of mine is genius. And all it needs is your dough and your demonstrated talents for screwing people over. Like you did to the Evangelides broad.”

  I actually felt my face get warm. The elderly Harriet Evangelides, newly widowed and with a sizable legacy, had made the mistake of taking investment advice from yours truly. I had spun a financial web so convincing in its false complexities that even her husband’s expert accountants had been fooled for a long time. As a result, Harriet no longer lived in the fine big house her husband had provided for her, but with a daughter and son-in-law, far from her familiar scene and friends, on a strict budget. The only palliation of my crime that I could summon up was that very feeling I had mentioned earlier, that the dope-suffused, sociopathic Glen McClinton had been another person entirely.

  “Okay, so I can scam people. But Nancarrow is a scammer himself. What makes you think we can get anything out of him?”

  “I know we can. We’re gonna tap straight into his ego and his greed, just like with any mark. In the end, he’s going to write us a check for twenty million or so, and be glad to do it.”

  “Twenty million? How’s that work out to five apiece for us?”

  “We’ve got to bring two other people onboard. And they both got something neither of us got. One’s an expert with computers and shit. And the other one is a babe who hates Nancarrow’s guts.”

  7

  The musty retro-sleaze interior of Danny’s Cavern had seemed much the same at 3:00 p.m., when Hasso was demolishing his sandwich and pitcher of beer, as now, at 11:00, when he chomped his way through a plate of buffalo wings and slugged down an accompanying quart of ghastly-sweet sangria. Perhaps the only difference was that now the ever-rotating but essentially interchangeable clientele seemed more desperate for some kind of connection, whether with the demigods of alcohol, the person on the adjacent chintz-slippery bar stool, or some numinous being that only they could see.

  I wasn’t feeling in top form. It had been an utterly exhausting day, its events too odd and numerous to fit into the same twenty-four hours. First the shock of getting waylaid by this hulking stranger on my doorstep, then hearing his life story, riding about town while being pitched a nebulous scheme to get even with his ex-employer, and realizing that my secret stash of gold Pandas was on the line—all this had left my head awhirl and my gut churning. And my couple of wings and small glass of sangria hadn’t helped.

  Hasso licked his fingers clean and washed down the final remnants of hot sauce with a large belt of fruity wine. “Ah, man, now I can focus on talking. Mind’s no good when the stomach’s empty, am I right? You sure you don’t need nothing else? Jesus, you didn’t eat enough today for an anorexic cheerleader.”

  “No, no, I’m good.”

  “Okay. Get out your phone.”

  Without asking why, I dug out my primitive flip phone.

  “Holy Christ, what is that? Nineteen ninety calling, bro! They want their technology back!”

  Hasso’s gibes pissed me off, and I found myself answering in kind. “Listen, smart-ass, when I was a lawyer, I always had the latest iPhone. Totally connected, always in my hand. I know what they’re all about. But now I’ve got no use for one. I’ve got no one to call, no one to text, no Facebook friends. And I’m just not interested in most online shit. Plus, they’re expensive. And you know what I found out in jail? Those things are a leash. I’m happier without one. The only reason I’ve got this simple model is that Paget said he and any potential employers had to have some way to reach me.”

  Stan Hasso regarded me with a sort of weird vicarious admiration and satisfaction, as if my mild backsass confirmed to him that he had not erred, that I was not a total wuss—competent and also mean enough to be his partner. “Okay,” he said, “I hear ya. You’re probably right—in some useless egghead way. But ya gotta have a smartphone if you wanna be a player. And just remember, a leash can be yanked from either end. Now, scoot over here and we’ll use mine.”

  Reluctantly I came around to his side of the booth and sat down beside him. His large body radiated heat and a kind of animal vitality, along with the dwindling scent of body spray.

  Hasso had his phone out—a glass slab the size of a trade paperback.

  “I gotta hand it to you, Glen boy. You’ve been real patient with my meager details. Here I waltz into your life, talking about making millions in some kind of crazy revenge scheme against a well-connected guy, and you don’t even press me for particulars. Well, now your patience is finally gonna be rewarded. And you’re gonna say this is pure genius.”

  Hasso brought up on his screen the front page of the Citizen Ledger Tribune, the local paper of record (a desperate merger of what had once been three flourishing rivals). He scrolled down, found what he was looking for, and jabbed the headline with one big finger.

  LOCATION OF NEW CASINO STILL A SECRET

  “Can you believe this? That Vegas mogul Steve Prynne has everybody shitting their pants out of sheer frustrated greed. He’s as wicked smart as that douchebag Trump imagines his own self to be. Prynne’s swore up and down that he’s definitely gonna build somewhere in the state. It’s a market he wants. Totally underserved. Guaranteed millions in profits. But he won’t say where. And why should he? The instant he names the property he wants, the price for it will shoot sky high. And values for the whole area will rocket up, too. Local owners’ll make a killing. But maybe not the first guy to sell—especially if Prynne uses a front to buy the land for a song.

  Whatever Stan’s scheme was, the presence of Prynne in it confirmed to me that, potentially at least, big money was in play.

  “Now, don’t think Nancarrow isn’t getting a boner over all this happening right in his own backyard. He sees himself pissin’ in the same tall weeds as Prynne, maybe just a few rungs below him.”

  “What kind of weeds have rungs?” I said. “Jacob’s ladder? Ladder fern?”

  “Ha ha, that’s a riot. I had a teacher back in the Gulch who always used to pick on the colorful way I talked. She never came back to the classroom after that time her brakes let go. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. So, Nancarrow would give his left nut to somehow get in on this casino deal and make a killing, establish a connection with Prynne. Convince him they could be partners or something. Believe me, I know him. He can see his name in the headlines already. And that ambition and greed is how we’re gonna hook him. We’re gonna convince Nancarrow that we know Prynne’s pick—that we have the rights to the secret chosen casino land and we’ll sell it to him for the bargain price of twenty million. Now, when I say ‘we,’ I mean you as the legal owner. Ol’ Algy can’t suspect I’m anywhere in the picture, or he’ll smell a scam for sure.”

  We had to interrupt our discussion as Harriet, a barmaid older than television, came by to ask if we wanted more booze. I flashed on how odd it must look for both Stan and me to be occupying the same side of the booth. But Harriet seemed to take it all in stride and left with our orders. Just another late shift at Danny’s Cavern.

  “How are we going to convince Nancarrow our property is the one Prynne wants?”

  “Two ways. First, the old-fashioned way: bribing a state senator. Second, the newfangled way: by futzing around on the internet.”

  “Let’s assume you can do it,” I said. “Where is this land, exactly?”

  “Upstate, in the region that everyone already figures Prynne is most interested in.”

  “It’s got to be a pretty big chunk of land for the kind of operation Prynne has in mind.”

  “Five hundred acres.”

  “Five hundred acres? How can we afford that with my lousy savings and your pittance?”

  Hasso started swiping through several screens. “But we can, no problem! The land’s in a real dead zone—nowheresville with a handful of hicks living on it. Best of all, it’s unincor
porated land. No authorities looking over our shoulders.”

  Hasso angled his phone so I could better read the screen.

  FOR SALE

  BIGELOW JUNCTION

  500+ ACRES

  SEVERAL BUILDINGS INCLUDED

  LARGE DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL

  CLOSE TO INTERSTATE HIGHWAY

  Hasso snorted. “‘Close to the highway’ is true. The freeway runs right through the middle of the land. But they don’t mention that the nearest exit ramp is twenty miles away from the center of the property, down a local road you can’t drive more’n thirty-five on. Of course, if this was gonna be the casino land, they’d put in some new ramps right where Prynne demanded, faster’n a goose can crap. Anyhow, the price is right. Two hundred twenty-five large. Out of your quarter million and my so-called pittance, that still leaves us seventy-five thou for the bribe and other operating expenses, of which we’re gonna have some. But not much, because this whole thing has to go down fast, before Prynne makes his real selection public.”

  I thought about the whole scheme. It seemed crazy—maybe just crazy enough to carry its own success in the terms of its outrageousness.

  Hasso sensed I was verging on agreement. “Look, we’re not even really gonna be doing anything illegal. We’re gonna own some land all kosher-like, and Nancarrow wants to buy it. A simple, honest transaction.”

  “It’s the misrepresentation that’s illegal,” I said. “I could cite you a dozen fraud statutes that we could be prosecuted under. Never mind bribing an official.”

  Hasso banged his big phone down with a loud BLAM! on the table and hollered, rousing the abstracted customers out of their alcohol-hazed introspection.

  “Jesus Christ, Glen! Are you afraid to get rich? Or maybe you’re just happy living like a broke-backed dog, lying in the gutter in your own puke!”

  Echoing my own thoughts and even Paget’s accusation of cowardly fecklessness, Hasso’s words pushed me to a place I had never imagined going when this long-ago morning dawned.

  “All right, all right, calm down. I’m in.”

  Hasso offered a fist bump. “Dude!”

  “But I need encouragement, so next time could you tone down the unflattering imagery just a tad?”

  8

  Today would be devoted to finances.

  Driving across town that sunny morning, my lockbox full of gold lying on the archaic worn-velour cushion that had been factory installed flush between the front seats of the old Impala, I wondered for the hundredth time since last night whether I was doing the smart thing. Or, if not exactly the smart thing, at least a potentially rewarding thing—a proactive course of action that would lift up my self-esteem without getting me jailed, killed, or otherwise badly damaged and that also might reboot the failed course of my life.

  I just couldn’t decide. Had I been bullied and seduced into an unwise and self-destructive scheme? Or just alerted to my own sloth and self-pity and jolted into taking the evanescent main chance for a life-changing payoff that was being presented to me?

  I grabbed the can of warming ginger ale from the busted cup holder and tried to soothe my churning stomach.

  Last night as Hasso and I left Danny’s Cavern, I had a brief flash that he was going to ask to stay at Uncle Ralph’s house, having finished up his residential treatment and been left with no place else to go. I was already mentally framing some kind of story to sell Uncle Ralph when Hasso said, “You mind driving me to my girl’s place? Kinda late to get a cab—especially a driver that’ll go to my hood. And that way, you’ll know where to pick me up tomorrow.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  Chalmers Street lay deep inside the district that the Citizen Ledger Tribune often colorfully referred to as “Slaughterville.” I dropped Hasso off at number forty-six, with the only illumination coming from the last functioning streetlight, half a block away.

  * * *

  This morning, Chalmers Street had considerably more activity than last night, none of it especially scary. Truth be told, in my junkie days I had ventured into scenes that were a lot sketchier.

  By daylight, number forty-six revealed itself to be a once-classy brownstone fallen on squalid times. The granite steps up to its front door, featuring colorful graffiti tags and flanked by overflowing trash cans, were chipped as if a bored kid with a ball-peen hammer had used them for a long game of Whac-a-Mole. Rain-stained cardboard substituted for a missing glass pane in the front door.

  I was debating whether to get out and try to discover which apartment held Stan Hasso, when he emerged from the building with a woman in tow.

  A fit match for Hasso’s burliness, the big, tall woman probably outweighed me. But no one would think to call her fat after taking in her mind-blowing topography of bountiful and alluring curves. She wore flare-bottomed camouflage leggings that looked painted on by someone running out of paint, a gingham shirt with the tails tied to reveal a bare midriff; and rainbow high-heeled espadrilles. Gold hoops that could have collared a standard poodle dangled from her ears, and a red bandanna secured her wavy black hair.

  Hasso and the woman came around to the passenger side. Hasso grunted a weary introduction, as if he had not gotten much sleep. Or maybe the sangria had left him hungover.

  “Glen boy, Sandralene.”

  Hasso opened the door, and Sandralene deposited her generous left haunch onto the seat, then slid it and the rest of her over in one fluid, sensuous motion, butting up against me as if she were trying to mold an impression of my shape with her own sumptuous flesh. She had on some kind of tropical musk that conjured up the rich wet soil of a primeval forest.

  Sandralene’s voice mixed the smokiness of Lauren Bacall with the brassiness of Fran Drescher.

  “Hi, Glen, real pleased to meet you,” she said, sticking out a beringed hand.

  Somehow, without even knowing I was doing it, I had lifted up the box of coins as the woman slid in, and held it now on my lap, in a stupefied embrace. I managed to unclench enough to shake hands. Her grip was strong as a python’s.

  Hasso climbed in, and his bulk shoved Sandralene even closer to me. He slammed the door and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  I had forgotten how to activate the car. Being without a woman for so long had left me an empty vessel now overflowing with Sandralene’s carnality.

  “Wake up, stupe! What, are you at a middle-school dance looking at the girls or something? Here, gimme that box and drive.”

  Hasso took the lockbox from me, and I managed to get the car going and pull out into traffic.

  “Where … where are we going?”

  “First, to your guy Deluca.”

  I headed to Bert Deluca’s coin store, saying nothing. Hasso was quietly stewing in the aftermath of last night’s excesses, and Sandralene proved not to be a chatty gal. She stayed pressed against me in a nonflirty way that bespoke a simple comfortableness with her own Amazonian body.

  At Deluca’s Coin and Stamp Emporium, we all got out. Hasso said, “Let me handle this,” and led the way into the store.

  * * *

  Bert Deluca resembled a character actor chosen by Central Casting to play “Morose Cop on Verge of Retirement.” Balding and potbellied and with no fashion sense whatsoever, he always looked as if he was bored with the whole thing and just waiting for something less strenuous to come along. But when he saw Hasso, his expression became more animated by a high level of trepidation.

  “Deluca, you remember me, right? We had a nice little private talk about your best customer, Mr. Glen McClinton here, who, as you can now see, is a good friend of mine. Me and Glen are here to cash out the rest of his gold. And we plan on getting somewhat more favorable terms than you have offered in the past.”

  Deluca looked nervously around the cluttered store, which was otherwise empty of customers, as if for help or reassurance. He certainly got none from Sand
ralene, who was admiring a sheet of Princess Diana commemorative stamps. She uttered small coos of pleasure at Di’s classiness. And all I had to offer was a nervous grin.

  Deluca ran his wrist across his brow. “Well, uh, yeah, sure, always happy to help out a good customer. But I’m afraid I really can’t offer more than I’ve offered in the past.”

  Hasso whipped his phone out of his pocket, making Deluca flinch. With swift fingers, Hasso brought up the spot price of gold, then thrust the screen in Deluca’s face.

  “Fourteen twenty-five an ounce. You’re gonna buy these coins at fourteen hundred each. The shitty profit you receive today makes up for how bad you rooked my pal in the past.”

  “But, but—”

  “But shit! These coins aren’t hot. You’ll be able to sell them aboveboard for more than you’re gonna pay if you’re just patient. The only hook you had into my buddy was that Glen wasn’t supposed to even have the gold in his possession. And you screwed him plenty because of that little indiscretion. But those times are over. Now, get out your checkbook. And don’t tell me you’re not good for the whole amount, ’cuz I know better.”

  “Wait a minute,” Deluca spluttered. “You can’t just—”

  Hasso slammed his naked fist through the fragile glass top of an antique display case, sending shards flying. I jumped almost as much as Deluca. Sandralene didn’t even flinch.

  “Now, are we gonna conduct business like fucking sensible, honest people or not!”

  Blood dripped from Hasso’s cut hand onto a black velvet tray of silver dollars. He seemed unconcerned.

  “Glen, open up the box.”

  With shaky hands, I dialed the combination and got the box open.

  “Count ’em.”

  I made piles of ten Pandas each atop the wooden counter next to the busted case, for a total of 201.

  Hasso’s hand still bled onto the antique coins. Sandralene had moved on to page through some sheets of stamps in transparent protectors, showing various Disney characters.