by Bud Connell
“Do this–”. A plan hatched in my agile and fertile brain, coming as I spoke it. “Call him from your cell to his cell. Tell him you got his message, and that you’re out, and you want to pick up a hot dinner to have ready for him when he gets home. That’ll give us time to think things out.”
“Good idea.” She dialed and he answered on first ring.
All I heard was her side of the conversation. She gave her pitch and stopped.
“Uh-huh. Un-huh.” An overlong pause while she listened; then, “Un-huh, I’ll call him– I’ll find him, we’ll be there.” Katya punched the phone off and just looked at me.
“Shithouse mouse, what, what?”
“He sounded okay, calm; and he said he’s already in town.”
“We know that!”
“And he wants to see us both at ten o’clock.”
“Why? Why tonight?” I felt the hot flush of blood rising in my face. A ten o’clock meeting made no sense. Something was wrong, and lots of things could be. I still had collections from the past few days’ drug sales, a stash of cash in my hotel room safe, ready to deliver with my resignation, but…
“Did he say I should bring money?” I asked.
“He didn’t mention it. He just said he wanted to have a family meeting, and he actually sounded sweeter than usual. We’ve got about an hour. I’m so confused.”
It was Thursday night and I sure as hell wasn’t going to work tomorrow, so I decided the best course of action was to settle up early by giving Darragh all but my cut of the week’s sales so we wouldn’t have to deal with it on Monday when I had planned to officially resign.
I left Katya in the lizard lounge with Tylerfrank while I retrieved the bag of cash from my room safe. Then we sat in the corner at the Carousel and chucked down a couple of drinks in between carefully laid plans. If he said this, then I’d say that. If he said that, then she’d say this. Katya acted like Nervous Norvus and could barely concentrate.
I was ready to begin our little charade, but we were not ready to face what came next.
44 – That’s Why They Call It a Bentley (Premature Evacuation)
On the way up the elevator, Katya kept repeating, “Let’s not do this, let’s just leave now. I don’t want to see him.” I had to practically drag her into the condo.
The door to Darragh’s office stood open with the light spilling a bright v-shaped shaft on the carpet as Katya and I advanced down the darkened hallway. Darragh obviously heard us coming.
“Come in, you’re right on time.” Darragh’s voice sounded friendlier than usual. He stood up and smiled as I entered with Katya trailing behind, and he motioned us to take a seat in front of his desk.
I felt like I was sixteen and about to be interviewed for my first job, but Darragh turned his attention to Katya.
“Are you feeling okay?” he asked her.
Katya looked down, avoiding eye contact, while I hoisted a brown paper sack containing a tally sheet and the week’s receipts, minus my percentage, to Darragh’s desktop. I held out my right hand to shake, but Darragh ignored it. He glanced inside the bag, scrunched it up, and locked it in his side desk drawer. Then he looked up and his smile disappeared. Something was wrong.
“You like to drive expensive cars, Joe?”
“Well, yeah, but I like–”
“You wanna tell me what happened to my Bentley?” A little pause, and he looked away. “No, don’t bother. I already know why it pulls to the side. It seems to have a bent frame.”
I almost died right then and there.
Darragh tapped a cigarette out of a pack, lit it, and blew the first big puff of smoke up toward the ceiling, which reminded me of how smoky the condo was when the fire happened.
“Do you know what it costs to fix a bent frame on a Bentley, cousin? No, don’t tell me; the Rolls dealer told me, so I already know.” Darragh took in another deep draw and blew the big puff upward as he moved his gaze back toward me, and I thought about all that condo smoke again. “Now, I wonder how my Bentley got a bent frame? Care to tell me, cousin? No, don’t; I already know.” Darragh reached inside his top desk drawer and pulled out a DVD. “Do you know what this is, cousin? It’s not a CD with frickin’ teenage music crap on it; it’s a little item from Channel 5 containing a news story about how my Bentley got its bent frame. Maybe that’s why they call it a Bentley, huh?”
I had to laugh in a phony sort of way to match the kind of wry chuckle Darragh put in the pauses of his disastrous revelation.
“And,” he continued, “this DVD has a mighty tasty shot of the little woman here displaying her nips and her electronically fuzzed-out beaver for all of South Florida to see.” He tapped the ash off his cigarette and I bowed my head and avoided eye contact.
“Thank God for editors in the newsrooms, huh? Huh, pal? Otherwise, our wives and girlfriends might be showing their goodies to everyone on the planet.”
Katya had begun to sniffle and let out little pieces of sobbing from her chair behind me and to my right. I stayed quiet with my eyes bugged open and my mouth partly agape; but Darragh continued…
“Now, let’s talk about a fire, a great big fire in my penthouse here. Would you like to tell me all about that, Joe-boy? Or, how about you, Katya?”
I started to say something, I didn’t know what, but Darragh held up both hands, palms up toward my face and kept talking.
“No, don’t. I already know. Seems like the super here knows all about it too, since he had to explain it when he shoved the bill for cleaning the vestibule carpet in my face a few days ago. So, while staying here the last three days, shacked up at the Sheraton, my attorney pulled the police report on the fire and I learn about two nude people dancing all over the penthouse here, and being told to move out into the hallway while the fire boys knocked down the flames. Hmmm, I wonder who those two nude people were. Let me see now, I think they may be sitting right here in this office.”
Katya let out a long slow loud moan. All I could do is stare straight ahead while I came completely unglued at my seams.
“Finally, and aren’t you glad—the piece of resistance. Sorry, I don’t do frickin’ French, cousin.” Darragh fired up another cig and stumped out the short one in the crystal ashtray. “Take a look at this, butthole, and you, too, butthole’s mistress.” That was the first heavy salvo at Katya and I stood up ready to unleash a punch in Cahoone’s face.
“Sit down, Joe!” Katya screamed. “He knows all about us; just let him say it.”
“Yeah, I’ll say it! The truth is you’re freakin’ crazy, Joe Oaks. Now, let’s see. You wreck my Bentley, you burn my house, you queer big deals, and you’re dickin’ my wife.”
“I don’t know what deals your talking about and she’s not your wife.”
“For your purposes she’s my wife. So, you want to keep breathing?”
I shut up and listened.
“I counted the boxes, Joe, a week ago. There was one missing. You tell me why you should keep on breathing, because I don’t frickin’ know!”
Not what I wanted to hear. More complications than I could bear in one lifetime pressed into a small sliver of time with “The End” prominently displayed on my tombstone.
The truth, crap. I’ve been balling your play-wife every time you catch a plane; and, oh, by the way, I’ve also been driving your cars, spending your counterfeit money, and burning down your house, all bonuses for no additional charge! Yeah, right, the truth. I sat back down.
“What else do you have?” I practically whispered, resignedly knowing more was coming.
“Just this, asshole.” Darragh pushed a button on a black remote, and his plasma TV came to life showing a wide angle of the room and his closed office door from the inside. It opened after a few seconds of scraping and punching noises, which I recognized as me trying to get in from the other side.
The door opens and there I am, the star in a secret movie, holding a small brown box and looking like a James Bond character. I went immediately
to a panel on the wall, set the box down and… well, it was an entire replay of what I had done to replace the phony money, complete with Katya catching me in the act. The play was over and the curtain drawn. All that was left was the epilogue, which is what happened to the characters after the story concluded.
I didn’t want to think about that.
“There’s not a dollar missing.” It was right then I remembered the hundred I took out for gas on the day I took the box, but I decided not to mention it. “I paid for all the repairs, everything, with the commission money I earned.” I tried to sound all truthful and convincing.
“Earned, past tense. You won’t be working for me anymore. Besides, you’re not Katya’s cousin. I checked you out.”
I didn’t have much starch left in me, but I managed to blurt out a small rebuke. “I was gonna quit Monday morning anyway.”
“Quit? You don’t get a chance to quit. You’re fuckin’ fired, Cuuuuz.” Darragh made the last word sound like the sleaziest, slimiest word ever voiced on the planet. “Now both of you get your butts outta here; and, Katya, take only as much of your personal shit as you and Cuz here can carry. Anything left I’m sending to the dumpster. Get goin’! And don’t think I can’t have both of you snuffed in a milly-second, I can and I will if you give me any lip. Go, go, go!”
Cahoone let out a short burst of hot breath and looked out the window. I think he was genuinely hurt by having to send Katya away.
Katya doubled over in her chair with her forearms on her thighs and her face buried in her palms. She looked like she was crying on her knees.
“Straighten up! Get going!” Cahoone yelled. “Out, out, out!”
I pulled Katya up and she shook me off. “I can help myself,” she said in a liquid sort of way, and with that she stood up straight and yanked at my lapel and coerced me quickly out of the office and into the hall. She had regained her composure.
“We’ll take as many loads as we can to the hallway by the elevators, and then load the car,” she blurted. I can’t wait to get out of this place. It’s been a prison.”
Darragh’s voice came booming from behind his desk. “What’d ya’ say? What’s that ya’ say out there? I’m being a good guy letting you keep your stuff that I bought, but you want me to come throw you out now? Push me and I will!”
“Let’s move fast or he’ll do something we’ll all regret,” she said in a hush.
I got up my high-end nervous energy and put it to work. “Show me where your stuff is.”
45 – Offloading & Bellman’s Hernia
In less than ten minutes, we had all Katya’s clothes, shoes, jewelry, makeup, and luggage all sitting by the elevator ready to be loaded for the trip down. I doubted the Mustang would carry all her personal stuff in one load, but we moved it to the front lobby and I paid the doorman to guard it while I brought the car up from downstairs. Then I hired an SUV cabby to load up while Katya and I loaded the Mustang. Within five minutes we were ready to go and I led the caravan down Collins on the short trip to The Plage.
Katya alternately cried and pleaded for me to find another hotel so we’d be safer, but I insisted we could do that in the morning. She was not happy with me.
I noticed Katya had two medium-sized suitcases that were heavy as hell, and she wouldn’t let the cab driver take either one, and she insisted that they be in the back seat of the Mustang where she could see them. I thought they probably contained her phony jewelry and other irreplaceable valuables, but I was out of breath from all the action and didn’t give the cases any more thought.
When we offloaded at The Plage, my efficiency suite looked like the back room at a clothing store. Dresses and pantsuits, fur coats and negligees hung on everything, and there was just enough space for a path between the front door and the bathroom.
Katya looked relieved that we’d gotten it all, but then she glanced around the room and panicked. “Where are my suitcases?” She struggled for breath.
“The bellman said they were too heavy to carry, and he’d put ‘em on a cart and bring them up the freight elevator. I guess he’s busy with check-ins.”
“Oh, no, no, NO! We have to find them, we have to find them now.” Katya’s face had turned to gray concrete determination and she went sailing toward the front door just as the bellman knocked. I went ahead of Katya and snapped open the door.
“Sorry,” the bellman said. “I had to take a couple to their rooms first. He struggled the two suitcases off the cart. “Gaaa, these things are heavy!”
I pulled off a twenty and pushed him toward the door before releasing my grip on the bill.
“Thanks for all the help getting this stuff up here.”
“Looks like you’ll be needing a bigger room, Mr. Oaks.”
“Yeah, right. Goodnight.” I was rude, but I didn’t care. For the moment we were both safe with at least one wall between us and Mr. Darragh Cahoone.
I turned the deadbolt lock, slipped on the burglar chain, and faced my as-of-now legal live-in girlfriend who was busy relocking her suitcases after apparently unlocking them and taking a quick look inside at contents somewhat out of my view. Then, she flopped down face first on the king size bed.
“Okay Catherine Lucille Bobo, what’s in the suitcases that gave our bellhop a hernia?” I sounded demanding, even to myself. “I want to know now why you panicked when they weren’t here. Tell me.”
With that simple command, she rolled over on the bed, looked at the ceiling for a few seconds, released a breath of resignation, stood up and walked over to where the suitcases were flat on the dresser. She let out a half-sob, half-moan, inserted her key, and popped one of them open.
No wonder they were heavy; they were loaded top to bottom, front to back, and side to side with C-notes. My little bit of experience with estimating cash in stacks of hundreds came in handy. There had to be at least seven, probably eight million dollars in the two cases, and it looked all used and worn, like the real thing.
I just stood there with my mouth open. “Where–”
“Don’t make me talk now.”
“Why’d you take it?” I asked.
“I couldn’t help myself.”
“But, just tell me what this–”
“I’m so tired, Joe. Let me explain it in the morning.”
I couldn’t come back on her. My goddess was rescuing both of us; or getting us both in deep dooky with Darragh Cahoone’s felonious money in our possession. Her wish to talk in the morning was, at least, mostly okay with me, but not here.
We spent the balance of the night making multiple trips, loading and unloading the car at a little resort type motel in Pompano Beach, where we registered as Mr. and Mrs. Joe Olson from Daytona, only one hour after I’d checked out of the Plage as a single man. Good grief.
We fell asleep in each others’ arms, half nude and completely exhausted with me recalling right out of the sleep-gate a tiny piece of trivia: 454 C-notes ($45,400) make a pound, and I spent the rest of the night dreaming about weighing suitcases on bathroom scales.
46 – No Conundrum Here
While I made a little wake-up coffee, Katya fired up one of her long brown cigarettes and gave a little single-digit feminine cough before she started explaining from her propped-up position in bed.
“Three mornings ago, before Darragh supposedly left town, a guy named Louie brought up two large brown suitcases. I overheard Louie tell him ‘Same deal as last time, four to one, noon Tuesday at the warehouse.’ Louie left and Darragh wrapped the suitcases with a ton of plastic tape and locked them in his clothes closet.”
She drew in a little drag and coughed again.
“Well, I had this need to know come over me, so when Darragh supposedly left for the airport I went out and bought what looked like the same kind of tape. Then, I picked the lock on his closet door and got the tape off one of the suitcases. When I opened it, I just stood there for I don’t know how long, looking at it like a crazy woman, and then it hit me. I knew what I had
to do. I loaded all the money into my own suitcases, and wrapped the brown ones up with tape just like they were before. So, you see, Darragh thinks the money was delivered all safe and sound.” She stirred powdered cream in her coffee.
“Baby, it was.” I lit up a Camel and engaged my reasoning power. “And he’ll know the money is missing the moment he lifts a suitcase and it’s light as a balloon.”
“Handled. I filled them both with a bunch of books I bought yesterday morning. I was gonna leave him, Joe. I was gonna pack up and move out before he got home, and he came back early. And I was gonna call you from where I was hiding.”
“Well, same deal. When he opens a suitcase, he’ll know we took the cash.” I pulled in a longer than usual breath, and I wondered if she really would have called me.
This was no Chinese conundrum. Drug-dealer Cahoone was also in the counterfeiting business and he’d obviously made a big sale at the laundry; all his phony money behind his phony office wall for all the real money in Katya’s suitcases––yeah, four to one, that was it. And last night, Cahoone obviously didn’t check the suitcases or we’d be laying on cold slabs in the morgue.
“Won’t he think Louie and his friends somehow made a switch and are stiffing him?” Katya rationalized.
“No, doll, he’ll figure it out, and he’ll know that we took the money out with your stuff, if not before. Right now, our lives are probably worth around thirty cents apiece, depending on what kind of frickin’ bullets he uses.”
Katya sighed and began lightly sobbing. She looked exhausted, totally drained. A few minutes later, I looked over and she was asleep again.
We were hours, minutes, or seconds from drawing our last breaths, or we had to change appearances and move around, or get the hell out of South Florida, fast.
47 – Give a Little, Get a Little
I laid in bed smoking, staring at the flaws in the ceiling, while I put together a preliminary checklist. Somebody had to take charge in this new family, and we needed a go plan.