The Big Get-Even

by Paul Di Filippo

  “Do the math, Deluca, and write out the check. Sign it, but leave the name blank for whoever’s cashing it.”

  Deluca scrawled out the sum, over 280,000 dollars, then signed, his hand jittering even more than mine.

  “Take the check, Glen.”

  Only after I had the check did Hasso seem to notice his cuts. “Babe, loan me your handkerchief, okay?”

  “Sure, honey. But if you ruin it, you gotta buy me a new one.” Sandralene undid her head scarf, loosing a cascade of scented hair, and gave it to Hasso, who tied it around his bloody hand.

  “Okay, kids, time to go. Bert, it was nice doing business with you.”

  At the door, Hasso turned around to regard the stunned coin seller.

  “Bert, my friend, in case you’re thinking of issuing a stop payment on this check, just remember what I told you I used to do for a living, okay? I’m a little rusty, but hey, it’s just like riding a bike.”

  9

  Our day of financial doings was not yet over.

  “Okay, head to the Maritime Bank on Hobart. That’s a nice branch. I like doing business there.”

  After we had gone a block, and the immediacy of the tense scene at Deluca’s had faded to some tiny degree, I said, “Stan, could you please try not to bleed on the upholstery of my uncle Ralph’s car?”

  Hasso snorted like a congested bull. “The tender way you treat this piece of shit makes me laugh.”

  “If it were my car, it wouldn’t matter, but it doesn’t belong to me.”

  “Okay, I respect that. But when we’re all rich, you can buy your uncle Ralph a half-dozen new cars if you want.”

  Despite his disdain, Hasso stuck his hand out the window, and the breeze of our passage drew intermittent slow drips from his clumsily wrapped hand as if to mark our path.

  The traffic downtown was light, and we were soon approaching the bank. I looked around for curbside parking and found a metered slot.

  “Here’s the deal,” Hasso said. You and Sandralene are going into the bank, and Sandralene will open an account in her name and deposit my fifty money orders for a thousand apiece and also the check, which she is now going to make out to herself. Give her the check, Glen.”

  I sat frozen, despite the warmth of Sandralene’s body laminating my entire right side. The idea of turning over my entire nest egg left me feeling as if I had just been dropped out of a plane, without a parachute.

  “C’mon, give it up! This is the only safe way. You can’t deposit it in your name—not even cash it—because you’re supposed to be broke. Same for me. Paget would have our asses in a sling faster than you can say ‘parole violation.’ But the cops and the courts and the feds and Nancarrow don’t know Sandralene from your Aunt Eudora. She’s clean as a whistle. Sure, the bank’ll file one of those dumb-ass reports ’cuz the deposit’s over ten thousand. But by the time the IRS comes looking, we’ll be long gone.”

  “But … but it’s my money!”

  “It’s our money now, for the scam! Listen, I knew you’d freak out about this angle, so I thought up a safeguard for you. Once again, neither you or me can buy Bigelow Junction outright. Yes, you’re gonna be the public face of the deal, snookering Nancarrow for all you’re worth, just like you did that pitiful widow Evangelides and all the rest of your sucker clients. But you can’t have your name on the actual papers. Paget, remember? So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna have your uncle Ralph make the purchase. Sandralene will control the leftover hundred K in the bank—our operating expenses—but your very own uncle will hold the deed that we plan to sell to Nancarrow. That okay by you?”

  I thought it over. “If Uncle Ralph agrees, then I’m good with it.”

  I gave the check over to Sandralene. Her husky voice seemed to intensify the radiance of her body.

  “Thank you, Glen,” she said. “I knew you’d let me help.”

  With a cheap racetrack-inscribed pen from the glove compartment, Sandralene filled in the pay to designation. Her last name turned out to be Parmalee.

  “That’s my boy! Now, hustle inside and open that account. I’d come with, but I don’t wanna bleed all over the bank’s nice carpet.”

  The customer rep who received us was a studious and personable young black kid, dressed in his best department-store-brand suit and NBA-logo tie. His mustache might amount to something in another couple of years. He looked about nineteen years old to me. Jesus, I was ancient! And I felt even older than my actual age. Nothing like prison to take it out of you.

  The kid’s nameplate read “Mr. Ed Gerecht,” and I don’t think he had ever encountered up close as lushly awesome a morsel—make that a platterful—of womanhood as Sandralene. His eyes kept wandering back to her button-straining shirtfront, and I might as well have been invisible. I doubt he could have told an investigator the color of my hair or even my skin. He kept hitting the delete key on his computer when he meant to hit enter, and vice versa, before we left the bank with a debit card and a checkbook in Sandralene’s name.

  Hasso was pleased. “Okay, now let’s go back to your house, Glen, and wait for your uncle. I can get cleaned up, too.”

  Back in Uncle Ralph’s little house, Sandralene seemed to fill the living room to capacity. She took over as hostess, dishing up beer and sandwiches assembled from stuff in the fridge that I could have sworn wasn’t even there. Hasso emerged from the bathroom with a neat bandage on the meaty underside of his palm, and his gray moiré silk shirt dark with water where he had sponged off some blood. His fashion sense might have been strictly Jersey, but he was neat and meticulous.

  No one, me included, seemed to feel much like talking about our incipient scheme. I figured there was nothing really to say until we got Uncle Ralph’s agreement to act as a beard. I turned on CNN to fill the void as we ate. (Somehow, I could almost hear reports of our not-yet committed crime filling the airwaves.) And I thought about where I stood.

  With the reluctant yet irrevocable transfer of my money to this mad enterprise, I was now fully embarked on the scam, and I couldn’t hold back. I had to banish all doubts and summon up some of my old mojo from my dope-fiend, land-shark days, when I had been the glibbest, boldest, most self-assured shyster ever employed by the august firm of Ghent, Goolsbee & Saikiri. If our success rested on my blowing smoke up Barnaby Nancarrow’s ass, then I was damn well going to blow the most perfect smoke rings ever fashioned. And I was going to have to stand up to Stan Hasso as well. Yes, the original idea had been his. But the planning and execution were going to be shared equally between us, or it wasn’t going to happen at all.

  Some of my internal debate must have shown on my face or in my body language. Hasso kept casting covert yet amused glances my way, as if to gauge my reactions to the day’s undertakings. Finally, he said, “So, Glen, you think your uncle will be cool with this?”

  “I can bring him around.”

  “Well, all right, then! Glen the man!”

  Around 6:00 p.m., about the time he finished his seventh beer, Hasso began to droop a little. I was somehow gratified to see he wasn’t a total superman after all. The day’s events had drained him a little, too. And, come to think of it, he had almost died just eight months ago. I thought again about how a chance encounter that December night had yoked our fates. Life was so weird.

  “Where’s your room, Glen?” he said. “I’m just gonna grab a little snooze.”

  I showed him my room. I was still trying to suss out how I felt about being left alone in the parlor with Sandralene when she said, “I’ll crash with you, honey.”

  This was too much. The mental picture of them together in my bed, even just innocently cuddling, was too much for me. And if actual sloppy noises should start to emerge from behind my closed bedroom door …

  “I, uh, I’m just gonna have a little walk around the neighborhood to clear my head.”

  I
stayed away for a couple of hours. That should be enough time to get any savage fornication out of the way. And indeed, when I returned, both my guests were up and around, looking relatively unrumpled.

  Shortly after I got back, around eight thirty, Uncle Ralph and Suzy Lam pulled up in her car, home early. They entered the house roisteringly smashed. Uncle Ralph’s tall, thin frame seemed puffed up, his white-stubbled cheeks aglow, and Suzy’s matronly bulk emanated an earthy vitality.

  “We broke the bank, Glen! Suzy had a hunch, and what a hunch! Fifty to one on Johnny Handsome, and she laid down a thousand! We are in the chips, nephew!”

  Uncle Ralph noticed Hasso and Sandralene only after he had unleashed his glee. I made introductions all around. Everyone seemed fairly relaxed together. Suzy Lam hoisted up a large paper bag that clinked. “You kids ever had a Bermuda mai tai? Peach schnapps! Winner! I got all the fixings here! Just you wait!”

  She left for the kitchen, and soon the blender whirred.

  “Uncle Ralph,” I said, “I have to ask you for a favor.”

  I laid out the bare bones of our plan. Not the full extent of the scheme, the name of our victim, or the hoped-for payoff—just the fact that Hasso and I stood to make some real money if Uncle Ralph could act as our front in a certain real estate transaction, for a modest guaranteed recompense. He listened with growing sobriety, then said, “Well, hell, Glen, this sounds like something I would’ve pulled in my salad days! Count me in!”

  Suzy emerged from the kitchen with a tray of colorful drinks, and a cold pitcher holding the rest of the cocktail.

  “Why so serious, kids? Time to celebrate!”

  Uncle Ralph boiled down my explanation even further for Suzy. She got more excited than before.

  “I want to invest! I’ll put in a thousand, just like I did for Johnny Handsome!”

  I balked. “I don’t know—”

  Hasso said, “We’ll take your money, Suzy. Same payout as your lucky horse if we bring this off.”

  Uncle Ralph looked a little sheepish. “You can knock a thousand off anything you were gonna pay me. I owe Glen that much already.”

  “How do you figure that, Uncle Ralph? If anything, I owe you for putting me up in the house all these months.”

  “Well, you see, Glen, I borrowed one of your gold coins a couple of months ago, when I needed a stake.”

  My brain stalled out for a moment. “You knew they were down in the basement all along?”

  “Why, sure. How dumb do you think I am? You left a trail of ashes every time you dug ’em up. Then one day, you forgot to spin the lock good on the box, and I helped myself. But just to one coin, I swear!”

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  Hasso’s laugh boomed through the house.

  “Glen boy, you’re gonna have to be a lot slicker with Nancarrow, or we are well and truly fucked!”

  10

  When I worked for Ghent, Goolsbee & Saikiri, I dressed like a prince. Ermenegildo Zegna suits, Stefano Bemer shoes. The rich fabrics and exquisite tailoring boosted my confidence and assurance. Clients automatically respected me and believed whatever I said, no matter how full of shit I was. Never mind that I was really wearing their stolen money and should have been awash in guilt and remorse. That part never bothered me until I got caught.

  Such luxe clothing had long since disappeared from my life, of course. Most days since my release from prison found me wearing a pullover golf shirt from Big Lots and cargo pants or shorts, plus cheap knockoff running shoes in winter, Teva sandals when the weather turned warm. My morale and self-esteem had dwindled under the onslaughts of justice. I had been existing without spirit, one step above tracksuits on the Great Chain of Fashion Consciousness.

  That’s why today I felt so different, upbeat for the first time in years. Even the lousy J. C. Penney suit and tie I was wearing, augmented by the Dockers oxfords from Famous Footwear, left me feeling more on top of the world than I did in my usual slovenly attire. I had forgotten just how good taking care of my appearance could make me feel.

  Stan Hasso looked me up and down approvingly as we stood outside the downtown Licklider Federal Building where Anton Paget, our mutual parole guy, had his office. Freshets of people flowed through the doors and around us.

  My sizable partner had chosen not to follow my sartorial lead. “I ain’t dressing like no deacon or court clerk,” he had informed me. “Never have, never will. That’s all right for you. But on me, that look would just shout ‘fake.’ You can take the boy out of the Gulch, but you can’t take the Gulch out of the boy. But never fear, you can count on me to look all proper-like and business ready.”

  That description manifested now before my astonished eyes in new ankle-peg black jogger pants possessing an unnatural synthetic sheen, black chamois shirt from L. L. Bean, red Kangol bucket hat, and high-top Nikes with Day-Glo detailing. His outsize Italian good-luck horn on its gold chain stood in for more formal neckwear.

  Yet Stan was open-minded enough to compliment my own look.

  “You’re truly styling, Glen boy. I am beginning to see a side of you I never knew. I useta wonder how you conned so many business guys who weren’t exactly dumb themselves. But now I can see you got some kinda special charm on you once you clean up. I think we are gonna take Mr. Nancarrow for the ride of his life.”

  “Well, thanks, Stan,” I said. “Your own authentic fashion sense, while not exactly congruent with my standards, renders you bulletproof against criticism. In short, you look totally like you belong in the VIP box at one of the classier strip clubs, swilling directly from the neck of a bottle of Cristal, with several affectionate large-assed women crawling all over you.”

  “I thank you kindly, pard.”

  “All right, then. In we go, to brace Paget.”

  What we intended was a plan we had put the finishing touches on after concluding our business at Aspinwall Realty. There, in the office of agent Martin Bookstaver, a hearty suburban guy with the depth of a birdbath, Uncle Ralph, Hasso, and I had secured the title to Bigelow Junction. Uncle Ralph had played everything at the top of his game.

  “Yessir, Mr. Bookstaver, after a lifetime of hard work, I have put a little money by, and now I want to invest it in an enterprise that has long been close to my heart: innkeeper at a fine country establishment. I understand that one of the buildings that accompany the sale of Bigelow Junction is a former hotel.”

  Bookstaver had the honesty to look slightly uncomfortable. “Well, Mr. Sickert, not so much a hotel as a motel. And I’m afraid it’s become a little shabby over several years of idleness.”

  “No matter. My nephew and his partner are not afraid of good honest hard work, and they intend to help me out every step of the way. We will have those lodgings up and running before you know it. In fact, you’ll be our first guest—for free!”

  “I’m sure you will succeed, Mr. Sickert. Now, if you’ll just sign here, here, and here …”

  Once Uncle Ralph had handed over the cashier’s check that Sandralene had drawn, we were the proud owners of five hundred and more acres of upstate scrub forest, which included a pond dubbed Nutbush Lake, as well as the communal properties enfeoffed thereunto.

  After closing costs, we were left with just under a hundred thousand in the bank account bearing Sandralene’s name.

  On the way out the door, Mr. Bookstaver had beamed in a weird manner at Hasso and me and said a bit too enthusiastically, as if to convey his unreserved benediction, “I’m sure you two lads will be very happy helping Mr. Sickert with his interior decorating.”

  Outside Aspinwall Realty, Hasso suddenly halted. “Did he think you and me was gay?”

  “I believe it was mainly due to Uncle Ralph’s calling us ‘partners.’ But honestly, Stan, there’s more to it than that. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before, but you just give off that unmistakable gay vibe.”<
br />
  “Fuck you, wise guy!”

  Uncle Ralph said, “C’mon, now, boys, don’t fight. Let’s go have a drink to celebrate before I get myself back to the track and Miss Suzy.”

  At our practically reserved table in Danny’s Cavern, while Uncle Ralph chatted up Harriet and a couple of other superannuated bar girls, Hasso laid out his vision for our next few weeks.

  “We have to get out of the city and go live at this place. We can’t look like we’re stalking Nancarrow here on his home turf. Even arranging an ‘accidental’ meeting would put him on the alert. He may be hoity-toity these days, but he’s still got his Gulch radar for scams. No, we gotta make him come to us.”

  “And you think we can do that with your crooked politician and your computer guy alone?”

  “I know we can! Then, when we get him on our turf, some place that’s unfamiliar to him, you can go to work on him—grease him up for the kill.”

  * * *

  Walking into the Licklider Building, we got ready to face the last hurdle in the way of our leaving town: getting Anton Paget’s permission.

  We had debated approaching him separately, keeping up the charade that Hasso and I were unacquainted. But our common destination of Bigelow Junction—which, as parolees, we had to reveal to the authorities—would quickly have rendered such a pretense transparent. So we decided to take a chance that he wouldn’t find our new friendship suspicious or in violation of some parole technicality. I had figured that, as always, mixing some truth into the stew of lies would help the whole goulash go down easier.

  The stumpy, bearded parole officer, today wearing an especially riotous patchwork shirt, regarded us from behind his desk with a gaze that I chose to regard as darkly anticipatory rather than outright jaundiced against us. Paget had heard so many cock-and-bull stories in his career that he had become inoculated against them without losing his ability to appreciate the desperate motives and ingenious creativity behind such tales.