The Money Game

by Michael A. Smith

  “If you say so, Ace.”

  Ace continued his religious instruction, although he had to contradict a previous statement. “You know what I think, Country. I think God wanted Hank and Melvin dead so he could fry their asses in hell. And, he used me and you to get the job done.”

  Country mouth dropped open, and he looked truly amazed and perplexed.

  “Never thought of it that way, did you, Country?”

  “No. You think God’s using us to do his work, Ace? Momma said he does that sometimes.”

  “Absolutely. He spoke to me earlier today, in fact. Told me to kill Melvin and Hank so I could save Kandie and her three children. We did God’s work tonight, Country.”

  Country smiled, set up straighter in the driver’s seat, and looked proud.

  “It’s in the good book, Country. That shalt not disobey the Lord thy God, nor those who God appoints to do his work. Didn’t you learn that in church, Country?”

  “I think so, Ace,” Country said, looking as if he actually believed such instruction had been given to him.

  “Well, then, do as God and I tell you, okay?”

  “But what if the cops find out you killed Hank and Melvin.”

  “They ain’t gonna, unless you tell someone. How else would they find out?”

  “I ain’t gonna say nothin’, Ace.” Country used his free hand to zip his lips.

  “And what if they did find out? They’d give us a trial and maybe execute us a decade later. We’d just be helped on our way to eternity a bit early. No big deal, Country.” Ace didn’t reveal that the only fingerprints in the car other than Hank’s and Melvin’s belonged to Country.

  “I don’t want ʼem to stick that needle in my arm, Ace.”

  “If you’ve done everything you want to do in life, it wouldn’t make any difference, Country. The only sin is not doing what you want just because someone says you can’t or you don’t have enough money. ’Cause once you die, you don’t get to come back and do things you missed out on the first time. Forget all that life after death crap.”

  “What ain’t you got to do yet, Ace?”

  They were now back into the suburbs and headed south. Ace felt free and relaxed. He cracked the window a few inches and lit up a Camel to aid his recollection. “A few things, Country. I’ve had the best food and drink and fucked many good-lookin’ women, whether they wanted to or not. But, I ain’t traveled all over the world trying out different food and different pussy. I’d like to fuck a Jap, and a cunt from India. I ain’t never owned a Jaguar or a mansion with a swimming pool. A yacht. Stuff like that. You know why?”

  “No.”

  “Same reason you ain’t got a new pickup, a motorhome, and a fishin’ boat.”

  “’Cause I ain’t got the money?”

  “Bingo! If we had the money, we could do all those things and then die happy. Right, Country?”

  Ace watched the idiot’s defective brain work its calculations. “That’s right, Ace. I could buy all that stuff if I had the money. I wouldn’t be a wannabe no more.”

  “You know what the bonus is, Country? Getting the money that allows you to do what you want is the only real challenge in life. The best game in town. Money won or taken from someone who doesn’t deserve it is a hundred times sweeter than money earned in some drudge job like Biederman’s. Living on the edge and flirting with death is the only narcotic I need. In fact, Country, if you live that way, death is the ultimate prize. If you live life your way and do what you want and get what you want, there’s no reason to fear death. Is there?”

  Country smiled broadly, showing yellow teeth that he never brushed. “If you say so, Ace.”

  “Indeed, I do, Country. Indeed, I do. I am God’s messenger. You do what I say, Country, and you will soon have everything you want.”

  “Okay, Ace,” Country said, smiling. He apparently had forgotten all about Hank and Melvin, just as he’d mourned only briefly the fate of the kittens his daddy dropped into the lake.

  In the days to come, Country did exactly as Ace instructed, but he didn’t get what he wanted. He got what he feared, and possibly deserved.

  18/A Contagion Of Disaster

  After he killed Michael Williams and left the building, Marshon didn’t leave Corporate Woods right away. Instead, he sat in his BMW and watched the front door of the building. He had to know that Widja and his crew got away safely. It would affect his plans. While he waited, Marshon made a phone call.

  He needed medical attention for the gunshot wound, although he couldn’t just show up at any hospital emergency room. They would be required by law to call the police and file a report. He punched speed dial number two on his cell phone, and Jemmy Shoemaker answered on the second ring.

  “I got trouble, brother. Need to see The Knife, or someone like him if he ain’t available. Can you make the arrangements for me?”

  “What happened?” Jemmy asked.

  Marshon worried about a tap on his phone. “The insurance sale fell through. I’ll tell you the details later.”

  “Okay.”

  “A couple of other precautions — just in case, you understand. Get into the wall safe in my apartment, brother. The combination is my birthday. All eight digits. The only thing that’s in the safe is a zipper pouch, about eight by four. Put the pouch and a change of clothes in that small overnight bag of mine. Throw in my toothbrush, too.”

  Marshon then waited for the call back, knowing he could be bleeding internally, cutting down the odds of a successful recovery. If something went wrong in the next hour or so, the police could broadcast his name and picture, and then everyone might back away from helping him, even if he doubled their fee.

  Marshon took deep, relaxing breaths to implement a form of yoga he learned years ago. If he could control his emotions, he could control his pain and make rational decisions. Never let emotions dictate thought or action.

  In about twenty-five minutes, Angela and Leon come out the front door, smiling and pushing the cart leisurely ahead of them toward the van. Widja then appeared in the doorway along with the elderly guard, who towered over Widja. They appeared to be having an amicable conversation. Widja was doing his best shuckin’-and-jivin’ routine.

  Then, the security guard pointed at the cleaning cart and all three janitors stiffened. Leon tried to move to the side, so they had the old man flanked. But the guard put a hand on his gun and waved Leon back. Angela slowly opened the van’s sliding door and then unobtrusively walked around to the driver’s side door. Thin as a shadow, Widja held up both hands in an expression of defeat as if to say, Go on and look inside the damn cart if you want, old man. It was Widja’s last bluff. Marshon wasn’t overly worried since Williams’s body had been covered with paper and other trash.

  Then, the unimaginable happened. The security guard produced a telescoping probe and began moving around the trash. About the time he jumped back as if snakebit, Widja and Leon rushed through the open side door into the van as Angela sped away. The security guard tried to draw his gun but dropped in on the sidewalk. Then he put a cell phone to his ear. Marshon shook his head, started the BMW and drove toward the parking lot exit leading to 119th Street.

  He soon got a call from Jemmy and drove north on Grumman Parkway to Memorial East Hospital, which was only about five blocks east of his apartment building. He parked in the physicians’ parking lot and again called Jemmy.

  When his first lieutenant answered, Marshon asked, “Where you at?”

  “Standing outside the emergency room entrance.”

  Marshon got out of the car and walked toward Jemmy, who stood outside the double automatic doors near an evergreen bush that shielded him from the wind. He rubbed his hands together and blew on them to ward off the cold.

  “Anybody come looking for me at the apartment building before you left?” Marshon asked.

  “No, man,” Jemmy replied, his breath turning to fog in the cold night air. “What happened?”

  “Turns out Williams
was just as crazy tonight as he was with Boudra. I was on his bucket list, as in kill a nigger and mount his head in the reception area. He shot me in the back, but I stabbed him to death.”

  Jemmy shook his head in a gesture of confusion. “What didn’t you use your gun?”

  “I can’t get into the details, now, man,” Marshon said, wearily. “So, The Knife agreed to see me?”

  “Yeah, he’s expecting you.” Jemmy handed over a small valise. “The pouch, your clothes and toothbrush are in the bag. What else can I do?”

  Marshon looked up at the night sky, obviously struggling to think. “Call Boudra and tell her there’s the possibility of a police raid. The women should get all the video recording equipment out of their apartments and take it down to the hallway just inside the front entrance. Call your brother, Darieon, or whoever’s available that you can trust, and tell them to get over to the building, pick up that equipment, the laptops, all the disks, and put them into one of the storage units where we keep our gambling equipment. Be sure and get my other laptop out of my apartment. It’s laying on the coffee table.”

  “I can get Darieon to do all that,” Jemmy said.

  Perhaps Marshon was being overly cautious, or maybe he was just being prudent. Time would tell. As a professional gambler, Marshon always calculated odds, including the likelihood of ordinary and extraordinary events. The old security guard would have to be senile not to have gotten Widja’s company name and number off the truck. The snoopy bastard probably jotted that information down when Widja and his crew first showed up. If he weren’t snoopy and/or a racist, he’d never have asked to look inside the canvas trash bag. The cops might not immediately recognize Marshon from the building surveillance video. Once they had Widja’s name, they’d make a connection to him. Among Widja’s acquaintances most likely to have killed Williams, Marshon stood head and shoulders above everyone else.

  Marshon calculated that the odds were two-to-one that the police would show up at his apartment building within forty-eight hours. Ten-to-one that they would have a search warrant at the time, although the search would be fruitless, in terms of connecting him to Williams. He probably had three days to get safely out of town. He only had one-chance-in-three of getting away scot-free.

  Marshon already was concocting a statement of innocence if the police picked him up. He would deny everything. Immediately ask for Saperstein. Tell the lawyer to tell the cops that Marshon visited Williams to hire him to design a new bar or restaurant. Someone must have killed the architect after he left. That would explain any fingerprints in Williams’s office suite that Widja and his crew didn’t wipe out.

  If they discovered his wound, that story wouldn’t hold up, though. He could claim to have been accidentally shot. But, if the police found traces of his blood and DNA in the architect’s office, that would be another complicating factor. If, in their investigation, the police discovered that Williams had visited Marshon’s whorehouse, that would be yet another dent in his alibi. They might find the bullets he fired, but they’d never find the gun, although he couldn’t lose it right now. What if the cops got Boudra or any of the other women under the hot lights in the police interrogation room? What if Widja, Angela, and Leon rolled over on him to save themselves? All these thoughts bounced around in Marshon’s head. It might be best if he just went with a slight variation of the truth. He confronted Williams about beating on Boudra, admittedly in hopes of compensation, and then the diseased maniac went off on him. Would an autopsy reveal a brain tumor, or was that just a story? Marshon recalculated his odds of getting away at ten-to-one against.

  Ending his calculations with a philosophical acceptance of the likely outcome, Marshon told Jemmy, “If everything goes south, I’ll say you accidentally shot me when you were cleaning your gun while I visited in your apartment.”

  “And I lost the gun?”

  “It happened right before I went to see Williams in his office in Corporate Woods.”

  “You got shot and took a business meeting before seeing a doctor?” Jemmy asked, skeptically.

  “It’s always hard to get a doctor appointment right away.” Marshon shook his head and laughed at the ridiculous alibi. “It’s the only thing I can think of right now that would explain my blood in Williams’s office.”

  “I’ve heard worse alibis — I think.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna go see The Knife now.”

  “While you’re inside, I’ll take care of everything we talked about.”

  “See you later, man.”

  Marshon walked into the emergency room and approached the reception desk. He told the nurse there he needed to speak to Dr. Maxwell Cunningham — a black surgical resident known in the African-American community as Max the Knife. He augmented his meager income by working off the books treating stab and gunshot wounds, drug overdoses, sexual diseases, and any other injury or malady a patient wanted to keep private, especially as far as the police were concerned. The Knife usually did his repair work in the dark recesses of the hospital or in the back room of a chiropractic clinic where he had an arrangement with a brother who realigned spines.

  Marshon sat in the waiting room along with a woman holding a wailing child, a young man with a bloodied and obviously broken nose, and a street person who appeared dirty, drunk and diseased. A security guard standing across the room made Marshon especially nervous.

  Dr. Cunningham soon appeared, considered the patients and then walked over to Marshon and said, “I’m Dr. Cunningham. You asked for me?”

  Marshon stood and whispered in the doctor’s ear, “Yeah, I need some special treatment. My friend called you. I’m Marshon Johnson.”

  The Knife gave him the once-over and then led the way down several hallways to a supply room. He used a key to open the door. “We’ll have complete privacy in here,” the doctor said, leading the way to the back of the room where twin beds were arranged in an L-shape. “Interns and residents sleep in here sometimes.”

  The Knife, a thin man with delicate features, helped Marshon take off his overcoat, suit coat and shirt. Marshon tried to control his shivering by attempting to calculate the doctor’s extralegal income. How many unreported gunshot and knife wounds occurred each week? Did the doc do other surgical procedures off the books, such as appendectomies and abortions? Did he harvest kidneys from donors selling their organs in the black market? Marshon wondered how much he could make as a broker, if he set up an underground medical clinic and put the word on the street.

  “It looks like the bullet hit a rib and exited out the side,” the Knife said, “but we won’t know for certain until I see some X-rays.”

  “There can’t be any paperwork on this.”

  “That’s possible, if the pay is right. My colleague in X-ray will want to know his cut.”

  “Give me an estimate, including maximum insurance coverage that makes certain no one, and I mean no one, hears about this.”

  “The X-rays will tell us whether you’ll need surgery. Without surgery, five thousand. With surgery, at least twenty grand, ’cause then, you see, we need a surgical suite, anesthesiologist, nurse, et cetera.”

  Ever the businessman unwilling to buy a pig in a poke, Marshon said, “I have the money with me and I’ll pay you when you have a final diagnosis.”

  The Knife wheeled Marshon to the X-ray department where a technician took several X-rays. While he and The Knife examined them and deliberated, Marshon lay on a table used to take overhead X-rays. Eventually, The Knife appeared and said, “You were lucky. There’s no internal bleeding or damage to organs or major blood vessels, at least none we can see at this time without an MRI. The bullet apparently hit at an angle and exited. Fractured and splintered one of your ribs. Some doctors might open you up to clean out the splinters, maybe put some screws and a plate in that rib. But given your circumstances and the inherent risks of surgery, I say we clean and suture the wound, bandage it, get you started on antibiotics, and let your body repair the damage.”

/>   “What if something goes wrong?”

  “We’ll know that within a few days. Then we do an MRI and operate.”

  Right there in the X-ray department, the Knife deadened the area around the wounds, sewed it shut, and applied a bandage around Marshon’s torso. The doctor gave him a box containing pill samples, a prescription for more, and said, “Get started on these antibiotics and take to your bed. I can come by, check the wound and redress it, if you give me a location. You need to be down for a couple of days and close by. There also are some pain pills in the box.”

  While The Knife busied himself putting away various items, Marshon opened the zippered pouch, which contained $75,000, Marcus Jones’s I.D., including a U.S. Passport, and an eight-gigabyte flash drive containing all his important computer documents. There was also a second USB flash drive that contained highlights of action at The Wheel and the apartment over the last three years. Marshon had shown some of the video to the County Attorney’s lead investigator, in hopes of heading off the grand jury investigation. Now, the County Attorney might amend the charges to include the murder of Michael Williams.

  Marshon gave The Knife $5,000 and said he’d get back to him with his location for the post-operative checkup.

  Outside in the parking lot, Marshon looked around until he saw Jemmy leaning against his black Cadillac.

  Marshon walked over to his friend and said, “The good news is that there’s no serious damage. I can recover on my own. I just got to find a place to lay low for maybe two, three nights until everything looks okay. I’ll probably need that time to make arrangements, anyway.”

  “It’ll have to be a safe place, nowhere the cops would automatically look.”

  “I know. I don’t think they can make an iron clad case against me for days, maybe weeks, especially if I get Saperstein involved. Even if they were to arrest me, I’d make bail and skip then.” Marshon thought about that possibility and concluded that he might lose the apartment building, if he had to put it up as collateral for a high bail. Even if the bail was $1 million, he could raise the 10 percent down payment somehow. Maybe sell his business investments to his partners.