The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  “No,” she said. “It’s time to go.”

  They had dinner at the Don CeSar Hotel, a pink Spanish-style castle that had towered over Saint Pete Beach since 1928. They sat in front of a floor-to-ceiling aquarium teeming with candy-colored tropical fish. It was Christmas Eve, and lots of families had gathered at the restaurant. The kids were unsure at first how to act in their dress-up clothes but soon got comfortable enough to chase one another under the tables and yell, “Hey! Hey!” at the moray eels and octopuses in the fish tanks.

  Joanne tried to get Petty to split the grouper with her.

  “I’ll never be able to finish it on my own,” she said.

  “Take the leftovers home and feed them to your cat,” Petty said.

  “No, no. I’ll just have a salad, then.”

  “If you want the grouper, get the grouper,” Petty said. “My treat.”

  “Ha!” Joanne said. “So you’re in the money these days.”

  “I’ve got enough to pay for your fish,” Petty said.

  They went back to Joanne’s condo afterward. She made Irish coffees and kept apologizing for not having a Christmas tree. Petty had planned to check into a hotel, but Joanne insisted he stay with her. He slept in Sam’s old room, in her old bed, and stared at her Foo Fighters and Gwen Stefani posters. He’d worried this might be too much for him, but he held up fine.

  The next day, Christmas, he and Joanne went to a movie that he forgot as soon as it was over and then to a Chinese restaurant. He stayed another night with her and got back on the road.

  Avi showed up at his office bright and early on the morning of December 29. Petty had been staking out the place for most of the past two days but had begun to worry that the guy might have moved his base of operations, even though Golden Triangle Mining was listed on the building’s directory and there was still a sign for the company on the door to suite 304. The building was up toward Aventura, a new three-story stucco box with retro deco lines. The other tenants were mostly connected to the medical field: doctors, physical therapists, a dental clinic.

  Avi lived in a gated community in Coral Gables, and the boiler room for Golden Triangle was in an industrial park near the airport. Avi didn’t spend much time there. The lowlifes who worked the phones disgusted him. He ran the scam from the office, he and a secretary, a new girl every couple of months, depending on when Avi got tired of banging the old one.

  Petty, parked at the edge of the lot, watched him pull up in his yellow Porsche Cayman and go into the building, yammering into his phone the whole way. When the door closed behind him, Petty reached under his seat for the gun Carrie had used in the shoot-out and stuck it into the pocket of his coat. He was supremely calm as he got out of the car. He could have been walking into the supermarket when he entered the building, went to the elevator, and pushed the Up button. He could have been taking out the trash. He’d rehearsed what was coming next, gone over it again and again. He’d even acted out the scene in baby talk, like Beck had that night.

  The third floor was deserted. Golden Triangle was at the end of the corridor. It pissed Petty off that Avi had left the door to the office unlocked, that he was so certain he was safe from blowback. Petty stepped into the suite with his gun drawn. Avi’s secretary wasn’t at her desk, had the week off, Petty guessed, for the holidays. Avi’s office door was open, and Petty could see him standing with his back to him, looking out the window, still on the phone.

  Petty crossed the reception area and walked into the office. Avi glimpsed Petty’s reflection in the window and turned to look over his shoulder. His eyes widened when he noticed the gun, but that was it. He was thicker now than the last time Petty had seen him, on the road to fat. A scattering of plugs dotted the expanse of pink skin between his receding hairline and brow.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said into his phone and ended the call.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” Petty said.

  “This is about L.A., isn’t it?” Avi said. He tried a smile. “I’m in big trouble, right?”

  “On your knees,” Petty said.

  “Seriously?” Avi said.

  “Now,” Petty said.

  Avi dropped to his knees.

  “Whatever this is, we can work it out,” he said.

  “Tell me about the money,” Petty said. “The army money, from the beginning.”

  “The beginning?” Avi said.

  Petty put the gun to his head. Avi wet his lips and swallowed hard.

  “Don called me with his crazy story,” he said. “You were in Reno, so I told him, ‘What the hell, let’s see if Rowan’ll bite.’ The plan was, if the money turned out to be real, we’d take it off you and split it fifty-fifty.”

  “And you actually thought you could get over on me like that?” Petty said.

  “What I thought was that if that money was really there, you’d be the guy who’d be able to get it. Which is a compliment, right?”

  “You were using me. That’s no compliment.”

  “We use people for a living, Rowan. We do what we have to to get what we want.”

  “Finish the story,” Petty said.

  “I had a guy tail you to L.A.,” Avi continued. “He was supposed to keep an eye on you and take the money if you found it, but all of a sudden he stopped calling in. I should’ve dropped the whole thing right then, but I’m a nut. I started really, really wanting that money, and I started really, really wanting to fuck you over.”

  Avi’s phone rang.

  “Leave it,” Petty said.

  Avi squirmed and grimaced, uncomfortable, waiting for the phone to quiet.

  “My knees are trashed,” he said. “Can I sit?”

  “No,” Petty said.

  “Can you at least put the gun away?”

  “No. Go on.”

  “I called Carrie to try to track you down,” Avi said. “She called back and said you were in L.A. and that she and Hug were going there, too, something about Sam being in the hospital. We cut a deal, and that’s the last I heard. So really, it’s me who should be asking what the fuck is going on.”

  Still holding the gun on Avi, Petty tapped at his phone. Avi’s phone beeped.

  “Check your messages,” Petty said.

  Avi opened the text from Petty. Four photos: Avi’s wife and kids at Whole Foods, at Chuck E. Cheese’s, at the beach, and in the front yard of Avi’s house. Petty had followed them for a couple of hours the day before.

  “My family?” Avi said. “How dare you?”

  Petty smacked him with the gun.

  “Don’t talk to me about family,” he said.

  Avi’s bravado disappeared. He crumpled to the floor like a deflated balloon.

  “Please, Rowan,” he said.

  “Facedown,” Petty said.

  Avi stretched out and buried his nose in the carpet. Petty pressed the gun to the back of his head.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m leaving, and the minute I walk out, I don’t exist anymore. Forget my name, forget my face, and forget about the money. If I ever suspect you’re dogging me again, even if it’s just a funny feeling and goose bumps, I’ll be back, and if I come back, your whole life goes up in flames. Are we clear?”

  “My whole life in flames,” Avi said.

  “Same goes for Don. If I ever see him again, I’ll skin him alive with my teeth.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  Petty backed toward the door.

  “You’d have done the same,” Avi said.

  “What?” Petty said.

  “I’m sorry for trying to get over on you, but you’d have done exactly the same thing.”

  “No,” Petty said. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

  “Okay, okay,” Avi said. “But just between you and me and the Staten Island ferry, did you find the money?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Petty said.

  He closed the office door, closed the door to the suite, and took the st
airs at a run.

  The two Mexican soldiers standing in the lobby of the Grand Solmar resort looked Petty over as he passed by on his way to the restaurant. They were just kids, but mean kids carrying machine guns and wearing shiny combat boots. Petty kept a nonchalant grin on his face even though alarms blared inside him.

  Ever since leaving L.A. he’d been checking online daily for more news about Tony and his cousin, but nothing had shown up. He’d relaxed a bit when he had no problem flying from Miami to Cabo San Lucas, but it was going to be a long time before he stopped imagining cops lurking everywhere and panicking at the sight of a uniform.

  The soldiers waved good-bye to one of the bellmen and left the lobby through the front door. Petty walked out the back and passed by one of the resort’s infinity pools, where rich, tanned guests lounged on chaises and in cabanas and nursed tropical cocktails. A blond girl in a tiny black bikini swayed to chill music oozing out of hidden speakers, and a big buff dude rubbed sunscreen on the chest of another big buff dude.

  The open-air restaurant was tucked under a circular thatched roof, the poles and palm fronds of which framed postcard views of an endless beach, a sparkling sea, and a pale blue sky. Petty took off his sunglasses and scanned the dining room. The restaurant host appeared, his smile as white as his guayabera.

  “One for lunch?” he said.

  “I’m meeting someone,” Petty replied.

  He spotted Tinafey at a table overlooking the ocean and crossed the restaurant to join her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.

  “You made it,” she said.

  “You, too,” Petty said.

  He hadn’t seen her since L.A., since he’d put her on a plane to Memphis and set out for Florida. The plan had been to meet here for New Year’s if everything worked out. Every day he’d worried there’d be a glitch, but now here she was next to him, and he never wanted to be away from her again.

  The waiter came over to take his drink order.

  “What’d you get?” he said to Tinafey.

  “This here’s a piña colada,” she said. “It’s delicious.”

  “I’ll have one of those,” Petty said to the waiter. He reached across the table with both hands and twined his fingers in Tinafey’s. She looked great, her dark, dark eyes, those sexy lips, her nails painted bright red. She wore a gauzy wrap over a pink bikini and had a flower in her hair.

  “I missed you,” Petty said.

  “I missed you, too,” Tinafey said.

  They watched two workers who were putting up decorations for the New Year’s Eve party. There would be a band, Champagne, a countdown. One of the men hit his thumb and dropped his hammer. The other man laughed so hard that he let go of the ladder and doubled over.

  “You take care of your business?” Tinafey said.

  “I did,” Petty said.

  “And how you doin’ otherwise?” Tinafey said. She was talking about Sam.

  “It comes out of nowhere sometimes, knocks me on my ass,” Petty said. “But I’m doing all right.”

  “And the bad dreams?”

  “Less and less. What about you? How are you doing?”

  Tinafey shrugged. “Nobody in the world knows where I am,” she said. “I disappeared.”

  “Same here,” Petty said.

  “It’s interestin’. It’s excitin’.”

  Petty sat back and took in the view. Perfect waves slammed into the sand not fifty yards away, but swimming was prohibited because of the treacherous currents, which could drag a man under in seconds. Luckily, swimming was the last thing on his mind.

  “You want to lay in the sun for a while after lunch, then go to the room? Or go to the room, then lay in the sun?” Tinafey said.

  “Guess,” Petty said.

  He felt Tinafey’s bare foot in his lap.

  “I’m guessin’ the room,” she said.

  “Tinafey, Tinafey, Tinafey,” he said. “You read my mind.”

  She took her toes out of his crotch and had a sip of her drink.

  “Yvonne,” she said.

  “What?” Petty said.

  “Call me Yvonne.”

  “Okay,” Petty said. He knew this was a big deal, her letting him use her real name, but he also knew it would embarrass her if he called attention to it, so he played it cool.

  “You could be a model, you know that?” he said.

  “Shit, son, that line is tired as hell,” Yvonne said. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

  The waiter delivered Petty’s drink. He lifted the glass for a toast.

  “To us,” he said.

  “And to everybody else,” Yvonne said.

  Sure, Petty thought. Why not? To everybody else. To Sam and Joanne, to Beck and the French kids, to poor Tony and the cowboy, who got caught in the middle, to Hug and Carrie, and—you know what? What the hell—to Don and even fucking Avi, to the lucky and the unlucky, the swindlers and the swindled, the living and the dead. To everybody.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my team: Henry Dunow, Sylvie Rabineau, Jill Gillett, and Peter Dealbert. Thank you to Asya Muchnick and everyone at Mulholland Books. And thank you to Bryan “Breezy” Petty for the inspiration.

  About the Author

  Photograph by Maria Foto

  Richard Lange is the author of the story collections Dead Boys and Sweet Nothing and the novels This Wicked World and Angel Baby. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the International Association of Crime Writers’ Hammett Prize, a Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association, and a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Los Angeles.

  Also by Richard Lange

  Sweet Nothing

  Angel Baby

  This Wicked World

  Dead Boys

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