Interjection here by me, saying I'd never seen a five carat diamond, and him impatiently saying it was big enough it could choke a dog, and maybe she'd choke on it. But he didn't care anymore. That wasn't the point.
Being she was from a family similar to his, only construction and data infrastructure—this time I nodded like I knew the name—the two of them got lawyers involved and drew up prenups before they even told their parents or let word leak to the gossip-web. She was set on having children, so as a condition of the engagement she got possession of his testicles.
“I've been in and out of hospitals,” he says, stroking the patchy beard on his chin, “so I figured what the hell, no big deal, and went and had it done.”
“And then the relationship went bad?” I prompt.
“Like takeout you forget in the backseat on a hot day.”
More rambling here, but the short version is the woman's crazy, the kind who says one thing and does another, wants control of every facet of his life, always has to know where he's been, who he's been with, like she hasn't got his balls already and that isn't enough.
“She's totally freaked,” he says. “She had my testicles dolled up like those easter eggs.”
“The plastic kind?” I ask, thinking about my grandma putting quarters and hard candy in those pastel eggshells and hiding them in her garden.
“No, like the kind they have in museums. All gold and shit.”
“Fabergé eggs?”
“Yeah, I don't know, something like that,” he says, and it's another one of the injustices of the world that I know this and he doesn't. “She keeps the pair of them on a shelf in her living room, or did when we were still talking to each other. Last time we talked, she told me I'd never get them from her, and she had her security guy, Sean, throw me out of the house. I went into rehab after that....”
More rambling here, but the way it ends up is he gives me her addresses, everything he knows about her, and transfers a few token bucks into one of my bank accounts as a deposit. I have it set up so it looks like he bought something from me on eBuy, so we can explain it away if it ever gets traced.
And that's how we become business partners.
* * * *
Truth is, I feel a little bit of sympathy for Beckett. Not that I lost my balls or anything, but I had exactly one piece of bodmod done and it was for Diane.
I figured I'd never have a real chance with her, being short as I was, a couple inches shorter than her anyway, and her going for tall guys. So I cleaned out my dad's bank accounts, what he had left, all for his retirement, and spent it getting four inches added to my legs. Pretty tame stuff, compared to what people do these days. Hurt like hell. Hell, it still hurts sometimes, and I've never quite gotten used to my new height. Center of balance is all off and shit.
It was the last time I ever spoke to my dad. Once he quit calling me up and cussing me out, that is. Served him right for getting fat and screwing things up with mom.
Diane didn't even notice. When I saw her after the surgery, she paused for a second, looking up into my face instead of down, then kept on talking and didn't say a word about it.
There's no way for me to get back my money or give back the pain. So I have to live without the one and with the other. But it's no big deal anymore.
Beckett's job looks it will be a big one, so I break it down into parts. Problem with that is the more parts there are, the more parts there are to go wrong. First part, the hardest part, is finding out where she has his balls. I can't steal them if I can't find them.
But the information he gave me is good. His ex lives in one of those old gated communities on the cliffs along the river, the kind where they took down the gates a long time ago and now just have these big decorative entryways. It's quaint, if twenty thousand square feet with a six-car garage can be called quaint.
I put on a shirt with a nametag—"Elizabeth,” which cracks me up—and a ballcap, and carry around a meter-reader that I stole from a van that was unlocked after I busted out the window and reached in to flip the handle. That's the thing about Have neighborhoods—the Have-nots that make them run are pretty much invisible. Look like you're there doing a job that nobody who lives there would ever be caught dead doing and they never give you a second glance.
The first floor of her house is all windows and no window coverings, in order to show off her possessions to the neighbors. The security systems in these houses, with their live-in guards, make hiding stuff superfluous anyway. Walking by, I see a pair of golden somethings sitting on a shelf in the living room like a pair of fancy Hummel figurines. “Humpty,” I mumble, “If that's you and Dumpty, don't fall before I get there, okay?”
I know it's not all going to be this easy. When I see somebody walking around inside, I take the next step on impulse and go knock on the door. I'm looking down at the meter, clicking buttons, when the door opens.
“Yeah?” the guy says.
Whatever I was going to say, I forget it for a second when I see his face. He's obviously one of those old ultimate-fighting guys. His nose has been made flat so it can't be broken, flaps hang down over his ears, and he's got thick leathery pads on his jaws like protective headgear. Makes him look like a bulldog. For a second, I'm ready to ask him if he wants to sniff my ass to make sure I'm okay.
Instead, what I say is, “Says here the meter's behind the garage. Didn't see it there. Maybe it's down in the basement?”
I look up and meet his eyes challengingly, but bored. Like a guy who gets paid by the hour and has seen it all before, including JoJo the dog-faced houseboy. Then I look past him, like I'm trying to find the meter on the wall, like he's not even there, that's how bored I am, how much I want to get my job done and move on.
“I dunno,” he says, starting to be angry, then catching the name on my shirt and wondering if he should make something of it. “Gotta be outside, ‘cause we been here three years and nobody ever knocked on the door ‘bout it before.”
“So show me where it is then.”
We troop around the house, and he leads me toward the garage where I said it should be, but as we walk around the side of the house I spot it behind the spirea bushes, and tell him thanks for the help while I'm typing numbers into my meter, then walk off to the next house without looking back. Because I already saw exactly what I needed to see: yes, those were the eggs sitting right there on a shelf by the windows. It's the ego thing, gets in the way. People who steal stuff, they always show off the bling and it catches up with them. Trust me, I know. Those two golden eggs gotta be the ones I'm looking for, look like Fabergé, just like Beckett described them.
Knowing where they are doesn't make me any happier, even though finding them was easy. First off, she's got JoJo the security guy living in the house. Maybe she lets him out in the yard to shit, but I'm betting he doesn't go much farther than that. Second, the windows are all shatterproof glass and hooked up to an alarm system. So, even if I dodge her guard dog, I can't do a smash-and-grab, because the windows won't smash and if they did the cops'd be on me even before I could grab. The extra bonuses they pay cops in these neighborhoods are quaint too—private industry at its best.
I sit on that for a couple weeks, making plans and discarding them, watching the neighborhood. In the end, because I'm dead broke and need the payday fast, I decide to try the invisibility trick again. I see work vans bringing Have-nots from the suburb apartment complexes into the neighborhood to work—landscapers, maids, carpet-cleaners. A regular one-stop shop, every Wednesday, contracted out by the homeowners association. There's one supervisor who walks around between several houses all subscribed to the same service.
Dressed up in drab colors, a little dirty, and carrying a keypad, I wait until the supervisor has hit Beckett's ex's house already and is down at the other end of the block in the cul-de-sac. The door to the ex's house is open while the vacuum guys—all bonded and carrying headcams—shoot through the rooms. JoJo the dog-faced bodyguard is out back in his dog
house with his head under his food bowl hiding from the sound. I walk in studying my keypad and when I notice nobody noticing me, I scoop the eggs into a pocket I've got hidden in the front of my work shirt. Usually I look around and filch a little something for myself on jobs like this one, but there's really no time and I don't want to end up on any of the headcams. I notice, however, some blown-glass unicorn sitting on the shelf beneath the eggs—I pick it up, snap its neck, and lay it down. Then I waltz out.
I stop on the front steps, tapping furiously into my keypad. One of the lawncare guys looks up from where he's raking mulch into the bushes and I say, “We're behind schedule. Pick it up or you won't be home in time for dinner.”
Guy mutters a curse word or two, but makes a big show of putting his back into the mulch-spreading. I hardly even see it because I'm walking down the street, shedding my hat, tearing the nametag off my shirt. Then I'm in the car, and out through the gates.
The two eggs weigh more than I expected. I don't know how much sperm weighs, but I don't worry about it. I figure Beckett will plug them back in, they'll go back to work, and that's that.
In the end, it's one of the easiest jobs I've ever done.
* * * *
At home, I spend the whole evening studying these eggs. They're gorgeous—heavy, gold-enameled spheres, one decorated with dancing cabana boys or whatever they're called, the other with naked nymphs, look like porn stars, all in silver filigree and ornamented with tiny gems. I figure even if it's all fake, it's still worth a bundle.
It reminds me of the gold globe I was wearing when I went to meet Beckett. I go back to my bedroom and pull it out of my sock drawer and hold it up to the light. It's a tiny world on a gold chain, a present from Diane to Joe. It had been on the list of things she wanted back from him.
Had been on the top of the list, actually. But since it had been a gift, I figured she didn't really have a right to it and I kept it for myself. A little something for ignoring the surgery I went through to be taller for her. Maybe I even planned to return it once she dated me, only then she never did.
The world twirls at the end of the chain, throwing reflections off the silver surface between the porcelain-enamel continents. It's elegant and looks like it should screw in half to hide something inside, but I've never been able to take it apart and after Diane moved on, I lost interest in trying. It sat in a drawer for a couple years until I needed to impress people with money.
I lay it on the table, coiling the chain around it like a nest, and go back to the eggs. The read-sockets are hidden underneath. I try plugging in my computers but it's security locked, and all I get are tiny flashing red lights that go away when I unplug. I figure if there's any kind of tracer in them that I've activated, it's best to turn them over to Beckett. So I call him and tell him we need to meet right away.
Beckett is grinning and chuckling when I hand the eggs to him at an Opie's Family Restaurant. We're in the booth at the end of the counter that's lined by barber chairs—they look great but they're not so comfortable to sit in, so they stay empty most of the time.
“You're amazing,” he says, drinking a big malted shake. “How'd you do it?”
I tell him it's a professional secret and ask him to show me the cash. I like cash because it's harder to trace. He hands over a duffle. I drop it beside me on the seat and count the money out under the table. When I'm satisfied it's all there, I say, “It's been a pleasure doing business with you. Keep me in mind for any future needs you may have.”
He chuckles again, like this is the greatest thing ever, and I'm thinking that Haves are different than the rest of us, because they have more money. But now I've got a piece of that for myself. “How you gonna spend that?” he says, grinning.
Since it's none of his business, I smile and say, “Dunno. I'll come up with something.”
He laughs and tells me not to spend it all in one place, then we shake hands, promise to keep in touch, part friends.
I hate that downhome Opie crap, so I go through a drive-through Thai King to get some tom ka gai on the way back to my place. I pay them with one of the small bills Beckett gave me.
Alarms go off as soon as it hits the cash drawer. The money is fake. Counterfeit. The lady in the food window is old as my grandmother, and she's staring at me with that old lady mixture of disappointment and contempt while the tire spikes pop up in front and back of my car.
I lean my head forward against the steering wheel to wait for the private cops to show up. I'm hoping they take a while so I can figure out how to get even with Beckett.
* * * *
Turns out, I get out of the drive-through situation by pretending to be stupid. Way I feel right then, there's not a lot of pretending involved. The money isn't marked or tied to any other crime. When I hear that, I feed them some bull about getting it for change at a Chopstick Charlie's crosstown. While they badmouth their competitors, I dig up enough clean cash from my pocket to pay Thai King again for the meal. I also talk to the manager and pay upfront for the drop-in call from the coptractors. Of course, they keep the counterfeit bill. We all know one of them is going to spend it somewhere else, which is how the stuff stays in circulation. Everybody's happy. Even the grandma in the pickup window favors me with a complimentary smile and everything is forgiven.
By the time it's over, I'm not as mad at Beckett either. Thing is, I realize how lucky I am to get caught spending the counterfeit for small change. If I dropped a roll of it at a dealer for a new car or something, they'd have to cart me off to jail. So the big question is, is it all fake, or was that just one bad bill? Is it an accident, or have I been set up?
I'm hoping it's the former, because once I've calmed down I still want to like Beckett. It's hardly the first time I've been bagged with a bad bill. Everyone gets one now and then.
When I get home, I check out the rest of the finder's fee in the bag.
It's all fake.
Every bill.
I know, because after a few random ones turn out fake, I get methodical, like a freaking bank teller, and check every bill.
Which means Beckett is fake too. He's fooled me better than I thought.
I'm sitting here, on my futon, planning ways to get even with him, trying to figure out how I'm going to pay my bills, when the phone rings. I don't even bother to see who it is before I answer.
“Yeah, what?” is what I say.
“Still the charmer, I see,” says a voice on the other end that I don't quite recognize anymore and also can never forget. When I'm completely silent, she says, “Hey, this is Diane. You still in your old line of work?”
“No,” I say. “I retired recently. Apparently I'm too stupid to do it anymore.” But what I'm thinking is, Diane? What the hell? I can't really concentrate on anything else.
“Well, get back into it. I need a serious favor and I can't turn to anyone but you to do it.”
And I'm thinking, I can't possibly rip my heart out and leave it on your doorstep again because I've already done that once, and it was one time too many. “What is it?”
“A friend of mine had something incredibly valuable stolen. She needs somebody she can trust completely to get it back again.”
“Look, Diane, I don't really do that anymore.”
“This is a special situation,” she says. “Some asshole stole her ovaries.”
I shut up. I already know the next line before she says it.
“She had them stored for safekeeping in a couple of jeweled eggs, like Fabergé—”
“And her name's Patrina Solove.”
That shuts her up. And gives me time to think.
Of course they were eggs. Beckett lied to me about the whole thing. If they'd been his testicles, they'd have been a couple golden nuts. He played me twice.
“How'd you know that?” she asks finally.
“Word gets around.”
“It gets around fast then! I knew you were the right person to call. You know who has them?”
�
�Maybe,” I say, thinking I don't really know much about Beckett at all, and whether he even is who he said he was. I'm thinking this whole thing is seriously screwed up and I'm better off if I don't have anything to do with it. What I want to say to her is, hey, listen, there's not enough money in the world to pay me to be part of this mess. But she gets tired of waiting for me to speak.
“That's fantastic,” she says. “Look, if you do this as a favor for me, I'd be very grateful.”
“I don't know, Diane. I'm out of that line of work. I'm back in school, trying to finish my degree.”
“That's great. God, you've got so much determination.”
“I've got my mom's role model to follow,” I say. “She worked really hard all her life. I'm just trying to, you know, do something I can be proud of.” I don't even think of it as a lie, when I'm saying it to her. I believe it. It's the chance I should have had, the chance I still deserve to have.
“That's really great,” she says. “Look, if you've changed and you don't do that stuff anymore, I understand that completely.”
“I didn't say that, exactly.”
“It's just that it would mean a lot to me. For my friend's sake. That's something this guy took from her that can't ever be replaced. It's like taking her whole world away. Do you have any idea how that feels?”
“Why would she do something like that anyway?” I ask, trying to change the subject away from me and Diane, because I don't want to think about us, and about all the stuff I deserve that I don't have.
“I know,” she says. “It's a terrible idea because something just like this can happen. I told her it was a bad idea, but she wouldn't listen. She's completely devastated. Are you sure you can't do anything to help her?”
“I don't know. Maybe I could talk to her.” I don't know what makes me say that, but as soon as I do, Diane's all over it.
“Oh, I knew I could count on you. Maybe after you talk to her, we could get together for dinner or something. Catch up on old times.”
“What old times are those?” I mumble, frowning at the bitterness I hear in my own voice.
The Year's Best Science Fiction (2008 Edition) Page 8