The Stakes

by Ben Sanders

  The Nina in his mind wouldn’t do that—he saw her as a stiff-drink lady, a cocktail to go with the cigarette. He got up and knelt beneath the desk and opened the little fridge. There were two cardboard cartons printed with redundant hipster talk: THIS IS A CARTON OF WATER THAT COSTS $1.80 AND IS INTENDED FOR HUMANS BUT—

  He didn’t bother with the rest of it. He said, “You need a glass?”

  “No, I’ll manage.”

  He passed her the carton and took a bottle of Corona from the lower shelf and popped the cap with the little frosted opener they’d left for him. He sat down again, and the fridge door swung closed with a polite clap, a nice touch, he thought, as if to say: Done.

  Nina leaned forward, carton at arm’s length. “Cheers.”

  He touched it with his bottle, and she watched him as she took a drink, one eye staying with him as her head tipped back, throat working gently.

  Miles said, “Robbed anyone else lately?”

  She dabbed her lips with the back of her hand and shook her head. She had tidy little features all carefully balanced. “No. Not in a little while.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. She had a way of pitching her voice, just light enough that he heard more brevity than honesty.

  Miles said, “Shall we small talk about what we’ve been up to for the last few years, or are we discussing business now?”

  She laughed, and with her head back he saw that nice horseshoe of upper teeth. She said, “My last few years have been pretty ordinary.” He didn’t know how to parse that: she’d seemed to think being investigated for robbery was pretty ordinary, as well.

  Nina said, “The last two weeks were interesting though.” She took a moment, and he saw her swallow, as if making sure she could talk with no emotion. “I weighed up my life and decided it’s time for a change.” A little smile as she said it, signaling the understatement. “But let’s not dwell on the woe-is-me bullshit. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Miles said, “My last few weeks have been interesting, too.”

  “You shot a guy and lost your wife?”

  No, Caitlyn had left six years ago. She’d married an NRA lobbyist with too much money, and they lived up in Kings Point now—not far from the Covey place, actually. Miles had heard the new man’s voice a few times: a stern “fuck off” down the phone whenever he called. He’d been by the house once but didn’t even make it to the door, intercepted on the driveway by the new husband and his new .357.

  Miles said, “Well. I shot a guy.”

  She said, “Did it happen kind of like TV, where you square off, and he had a look in his eye like he knew he was going for a gun, made a grab for it even when you told him not to?”

  Miles said, “I didn’t really look in his eyes.”

  “Shoot and ask questions later?”

  He said, “What do I have to do to get paid?”

  She said, “You worried I’m going to ask you to break the law?”

  Closer still, but she hadn’t come right out with it. He had some Corona to give himself time. “I need to know what I’m getting into.”

  She angled the carton so she could read the dumb shit written on the side. She scanned it idly, still reading as she said, “My husband operates a business with a co-owner. The co-owner’s selling out. I’m negotiating the exit with a New York buyer.”

  “What’s the business?”

  “Various things. All illegal, of course.”

  Getting close to trouble now, but she wasn’t quite across the line. She had another drink and held it for a moment, working through something in her own time.

  She swallowed and said, “His holdings are significant, so the buyout’s nearing ten million. In theory, the people I’m talking to have enough cash on hand to pick up whatever’s being sold. If you follow.”

  He could guess what the plan was, but he wanted to hear her say it. She had that playful look in her eye again, and he thought maybe this was it, but she said, “What’s in the briefcase?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Nina said, “I’m parting with delicate information. I’d be more comfortable if I knew what you were carrying.”

  He guessed that she knew already—or at least knew he wanted to keep it private. No point asking if she didn’t expect a big admission, something in exchange for her proposal. Which brought them to another door, figuratively speaking, and it was a bigger decision than just letting her in the room. There was a difference between letting her in for a drink, and letting her see his lifestyle.

  Although the stakes were different, now she had half a million dollars in play—the reward side of the ledger was looking even brighter. In some ways, the risks didn’t even matter. Five hundred grand plus the Nina je ne sais quoi made decisions much easier:

  He said, “The briefcase is full of money.”

  She waited, like she was expecting more, and then said, “Are we going to talk figures?”

  Miles shrugged and said, “It’s six figures.”

  She drank some hipster water and nodded to herself, like his confession was matching with her guesswork, and she knew the whole story. She said, “I’ll come by tomorrow night. If you’re still interested, I’ll take you to see the money.”

  “You still haven’t told me what I have to do.”

  She shrugged. “You haven’t told me no, so I imagine you’ll do as you’re asked.”

  “Up to a point. But if you give me the lowdown now, I can tell you if it’s within my risk threshold, and then we won’t waste time.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Miles said, “There’s a bar downstairs. Maybe a real drink will help you part with the details.”

  “I think the bar’s closed.”

  “This is New York City. I’m sure we’d find something.”

  “Probably.” She raised one eyebrow a touch. “But then what happens?”

  Miles said, “Well. I guess we’d share a cab.”

  “And then you’d drop me at my room, like a gentleman.”

  “I guess so. Though you don’t strike me as a gentleman.”

  Nina laughed and looked away. “I think this’ll do for now.”

  For now. He wondered if she’d given those last two words slight emphasis, or if wishful thinking warped his hearing.

  He nodded and said, “Yeah. Getting into taxis together might be a bit much at this stage.”

  She was still smiling as she placed the carton on the floor beside her.

  Miles said, “You going to take me to a meeting so I can rip someone off?”

  She drew a long breath as she rose from the chair. “Well. It’s your call. You can decide what’s in your purview as a cop.”

  That was a tidy way to handle things: if he sold her out and arrested her, she could just claim she was giving him a tip-off, that robbery was never her intention. Although the five hundred grand would be harder to explain.

  She said, “I like the new look, by the way. Are you trying to blend in with your clientele?”

  Meaning the long hair and the beard.

  Miles said, “I transferred to narcotics for a while, so it was part of the costume.”

  Nina said, “Do people tell you more if you look like a yeti?”

  “Yeah, sometimes. Do I still get my five hundred grand if I just come with you and arrest everyone?”

  She was crossing the room, paused as she reached his chair and looked down at him, like giving genuine thought to the matter. She said, “We might have to renegotiate.”

  They were veering away from how he’d seen things going a moment ago. Drinks at a bar, the cab together, maybe into bed if he was very lucky. But the real Nina wasn’t on that wavelength just yet. She had the front door open.

  He said, “And what are you going to do in the meantime?”

  She turned back to him with the door half-open. “Probably the same as you: wonder whether I’m making the right decision.”

  She was still watching him as the door closed.r />
  FIVE

  LOS ANGELES, CA

  Bobby Deen

  Ever since the thing on the boat with the fat man, he couldn’t get the woman out of his head. He’d see girls on the street that had her hair or her walk, accidental mimics that always made him double-take, and then put him back on the launch. Girls’ voices too: he’d catch some turn of phrase, or a laugh, maybe hear someone say his name—Robbie misheard as Bobby, that kind of thing—and it was like she was right there with him.

  All of that was fine, having her slip in at the edges of his thoughts, but he was finding now that the Daydream Nina was getting bolder, starting to show up front-and-center. Even at the funeral this morning, everyone either somber or in tears, he couldn’t help but skew things slightly in his mind, wonder what would happen if the funeral was for her: Nina’s face on those little program booklets, no Photoshop required. And how would the eulogies go? Did people actually know her, or would they just show up and sit there mute, everyone speculating?

  She was with him again now as he was driving, heading up through the Bird Streets with Sunset behind him. There she was at the helm of the launch, plastic cuff still hanging from one wrist and her hair blowing straight back in the headwind. She’d stood out at the stern with him and watched the fat man submerge, the corpse hovering two feet under like some slack-jawed ghost, but if she had any thoughts on the matter she didn’t share them.

  The fat man’s name was Lenny Burke, and he was still missing. He’d been muscle—or, as Lenny himself sometimes put it: mostly fat—for the Garcia crime family. Bobby had worked with him on and off over the years, so he knew him a little. It wasn’t that he’d always aspired to shoot him, but when it came down to Lenny or Nina, it was pretty clear which way the scales leaned. But that was the funny thing as well: he never even had to weigh it up. There was only ever one option.

  He hadn’t even known she was in trouble until two days before the thing on the launch. He kept calling it that—“the thing on the launch,” or “the thing on the boat”—instead of “the day I shot Lenny.” If it really didn’t bother him, he’d call it what it was. Anyway, Charles Stone called Bobby up and told him the situation: the Garcias had bought out a couple places in the Valley that still owed Charles money—circa two hundred K, so not exactly small change. The catch of course was that the Garcias weren’t honoring the loan. Charles had sent Nina in to negotiate a buyout, and then heard nothing for twenty-four hours. He managed to keep it together on the phone though, and he was pretty succinct: “Kill them all if you like, I just want my wife back.”

  Bobby said he could do it.

  He’d never worked for the Garcias—his cousin Jack had handled their shit. But with Jack dead now, he figured Lenny Burke would be running their cleanups.

  He called Lenny and asked if he had any work on.

  Lenny said, “Matter of fact, I do.” Something about his tone, Bobby pictured him with his feet up on a desk, swinging back and forth in a swivel chair. Lenny said the Garcias had him on retainer, and that he had a cleanup job tomorrow that might be a two-man task. Bobby dropped by the next day, and sure enough, Nina Stone was the job. He’d met her a few times, but she didn’t show it. She had a World Series poker face, and it never slipped. He wondered if she’d had a plan of her own, given how long she went without looking rattled. Maybe she assumed he was in Lenny’s corner. Maybe she’d been lining up a double hit.

  Looking at it now though, it surprised him, how easily he’d committed to killing Lenny. Not that he regretted it, but clearly he was risking fatal penalties, stepping in on a Garcia job and smoking one of their guys. He could live with the risk, but he’d never thought about it at the time. As if everything was blurry beyond that tense little sphere: the three of them, out on open water.

  He went up North Doheny and took a left at the top of the hill, heading for Charles’s place. He could’ve told him the time didn’t suit, almost ten P.M. on the day of cousin Jack’s funeral. But a visit to Charles might mean a visit to Nina too, and that was the kind of possibility that canceled inconvenience. And here was the other funny thing: it was only since the day on the boat that she’d been on his mind. It was like the danger had brought it on, like they’d shared a tight situation, and now part of her was stuck to him. He didn’t have another way to explain it.

  He slowed just before the gate and pulled his hat on, tilted it just right so he wouldn’t have to fuss with it getting out of the car. He was in a red Camaro Charles had hooked him up with—Frank Garcia himself had called to tell Bobby he was a dead man, so a change of ride seemed like a good idea. Frank actually seemed more pissed off about the boat, which was AWOL along with Lenny, but the thing that stuck in Bobby’s mind was Frank’s sign-off: “Tell Charles I was doing him a favor by getting rid of the girl. All she wanted was a side deal for herself, so you pass that on, see how happy he is to have her back. If he can’t live with it, say he can just return to sender: we’ll handle it right second time around.”

  He never passed that on, and he wondered if Frank had delivered the message himself.

  Maybe that’s what this was about.

  He pulled up at the gate, and through the bars he could see the fountain in the middle of the turning circle, and behind it the house in its shallow curve, looking back down the canyon toward Sunset. Charles had another place up by Coldwater Canyon, on the north side of Mulholland. That place had better views, but this was the better zip code. The old man liked the prestige of the Bird Streets. He liked telling people he was in the same hood as DiCaprio.

  Bobby lowered his window and pressed the intercom. “Hey. It’s me.”

  The gate hummed and began to open. All the times he’d been here, he never had an answer when he pushed the button. He rolled through and parked on the far side of the fountain, and then got out and locked the car. It was quiet up here. No traffic noise, the night cool with a trace of pine. That was the tough thing about L.A.: you had to be rich to live in the clean air.

  There was a light on in the foyer, shadows moving in the strip of frosted glass by the front door. He felt a little jolt, thinking it was Nina. He tried to dream up something clever, greet her with a pithy observation, but he was still stringing words together when the door opened. It wasn’t her anyway. It was Charles’s security chief, decked out tonight in full ballistic gear and an AR-15. He was Serbian or something, according to Charles, and he seemed to communicate solely by nodding. He nodded at Bobby as he stepped in, and then nodded to his right, meaning the boss man was in the living room, apparently.

  Bobby gave him a nod in return and headed down the corridor as directed, and there was Charles incoming, the old boy hunched forward in his wheelchair for speed. Seventy-one years old with osteoporosis, but you wouldn’t call him an invalid.

  He coasted a few feet and said, “Thanks for coming up.”

  “It’s all good.”

  “And sorry about your cousin, that’s real shitty. I forgot you had the funeral this morning.”

  Bobby doubted that, but it came close to a genuine apology, and close was about as good as you got from Charles. He said, “It’s fine.”

  The old boy pulled a neat one-eighty. There was a lump in his pocket Bobby knew was a Ruger .22. He packed heat, even at home. He said, “You heard any more on it?”

  Bobby laid out the basics: Cousin Jack flew to New York to kill an NYPD informant. The informant knew about the contract, and snitched to a robbery cop called Miles Keller. Keller lay in wait and clipped Jack on the job.

  Charles said, “Well, his name’s out, so he can’t have long.”

  Well, that was all up to Bobby, really. The Garcias wouldn’t try anything. It wasn’t their fault Jack fucked up, and revenge hits brought massive heat—especially if you took out a cop. The best tactic was to wait a year and then do it. Not that he was anxious to get it done—he didn’t know Jack well enough to care—but honor was a different issue. Jack was family, and you had to be able to look in the m
irror and say you’d done your best to balance the score. So he had Miles Keller on the black list in his head, awaiting action. The Garcias had got him the intel—a photo and the name. Detective Miles Keller, NYPD. He didn’t have a firm plan yet, but that had its benefits in a way. He liked turning scenes over in his head: Keller coming out of some cop bar—the last patron at three A.M.—Bobby following him somewhere dark and then giving him the bullet. The setup needed work, though. Couldn’t have Keller so drunk he didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know it was vengeance for Jack. There was no point to it, unless they died wishing they’d done things different.

  He followed Charles to the end of the corridor and into the living room. Full-height windows faced down the canyon, the black hillsides studded randomly with the lights of other houses.

  Charles said, “Never thought I’d have a problem, being cooped up in here. You know, watch DVDs, eat fast food all day. But it’s shit, I tell you—doesn’t matter how big the place is, you still go stir-crazy. Done so many laps I’ve got a squeaky wheel. Got the chair guy coming tomorrow.”

  There was a swimming pool out of sight on the slope below them, but the water made reflections on the ceiling—a shifting blue-vein pattern that blipped his Nina radar. He stood at the glass in case she was down there—nada.

  Charles misread it as caution: “Yeah, don’t worry, I got another guy down in the trees. I’m not taking any chances after the other week. They told me stay away from the windows, but you can’t in this place, it’s a fishbowl.”

  Bobby didn’t answer. There were old film posters on the wall opposite the window, nineties moneymakers from Stone Studios’ heyday: Bloodhunter, Bloodhunter 2, Bloodhunter: Vengeance. There was a TV in the corner playing some sci-fi show, and a guy of about thirty asleep on a sofa under a blanket.

  Charles saw him looking and said, “Yeah, he’s all good. Big day on the spirits, now he’s sleeping it off.”

  The curve of the house meant he could see into other windows. A shadow moved, and his Nina radar blipped. False alarm—just a security man.