by Rich Leder
Gary took the gag out of Mike’s mouth.
“I’m having the worst fucking week ever,” Mike said.
Gary put the gag back in Mike’s mouth, turned to Martin, and said, “Put him in your truck, cover him with a blanket, take him home, and follow him like a shadow.”
The detective still had his gun pointed at the zombie, so Martin lifted Mike up and over his shoulder like he was a bag of feathers instead of a naked accountant, walked to the trailer door, and said, “Monstrous doesn’t begin to describe what’s in my mind.” Then he left the Airstream.
Gary watched them go and nodded to himself. While eating Oreos in his car after leaving Santa Anita, he had felt it was time to get rid of the zombie, and the zombie himself had just confirmed that feeling. He had also been thinking it was time for him, as a comedian, to become proactively involved in writing his new act. Up to now, he had been reactive to the hilarity, but he had responsibilities as a professional funnyman to do more than report the proceedings. It was time to insert himself into the story.
He looked around the Airstream and thought, How can I zero out the zombie and keep the comedy coming at the same time? And then he smiled because his comedic engine was firing on all cylinders.
He took the envelope with the seventy-five grand out of his backpack, put it in one of the myriad empty fast food bags strewn across the floor, and buried the bag at the bottom of a pile of other radioactive refuse.
We’ll let Harvey handle the zombie, he said to himself.
HOWEVER, THERE WERE ALSO NO ABSOLUTES ANYWHERE
After Georganne died, Harvey cancelled the high-stakes poker parlor she ran in the back room (now his office) and started loan sharking. He also considered becoming a bookie and had taken a trip to Santa Anita to explore the possibility of joining forces with a dirtbag named Morton Minder (known by all as Morton Mindy), who knew the trainers and grooms and jockeys and had weaseled his way into the kind of all-access, behind-the-scenes permanent pass that, as he told Harvey, “gave gamblers a boner.”
Morton Mindy took Harvey on a tour of the park, and while they were strolling through a stable, a groom and a bug boy entered from the other end, leading four thoroughbreds back to their stalls.
As Morton Mindy and Harvey and the horses approached each other, one of the fillies could not identify Harvey as a human being—as opposed to a wild boar from the woods—and was spooked silly and reared up like a madwoman. She freaked the other racehorses, and Harvey found himself surrounded by the massive and powerful animals, all of them up on their hind legs, all of them kicking and snorting and screaming and bucking like broncos.
Harvey was terrified and stood frozen like a yard statue until the groom and the bug boy restored order. Morton Mindy told Harvey that he was lucky to be alive, that if one horse had clipped him with one hoof, he’d have been one dead dwarf.
Harvey had hated horses ever since that day. He hated Santa Anita Park too. And right now he hated the idea that Danny Miller was betting his seventy-five grand at this track after ripping off Greenburg with smoke and mirrors and a PetSmart poodle.
After Harvey and Omar had left Greenburg’s house, passing the police as they pulled up Escalon Drive, they had stopped by Mike’s house in Woodland Hills and by the small yellow house in Canoga Park and by Danny’s old office in the distant northern reaches of the San Fernando Valley. They didn’t find him in any of those places.
Knowing Santa Anita was Danny’s regular haunt, his home away from home, Omar had called a Club House bartender that owed Harvey money and told him to call back if Danny showed up. Omar’s cell phone rang as Harvey was heading back to Pacoima Pawn and Loan: Danny was in the Clubhouse.
Harvey had driven the Range Rover to Santa Anita and cruised the parking lot until they found Danny’s Pathfinder. They had waited an hour for Danny to emerge. When they spotted him coming across the lot, Omar slipped out of the SUV and vanished into the heat distortion rising up off the macadam. Harvey waited until Danny was backing the Pathfinder out of the parking spot and then pulled the SUV directly in the Nissan’s path of egress, trapping the Pathfinder in place.
Danny got out of the truck intending to get in the Range Rover’s face, so to speak, but stopped on a dime when he saw the dwarf lower the tinted window.
Harvey could tell by the widening of Danny’s eyes and by the instantaneous change of expression on Danny’s face that the talent agent knew he was in deep horseshit. Danny turned to run for his life and ran right into Omar, who grabbed him with two hands and headbutted him into unconsciousness.
Danny fell like a bowling pin, but Omar caught him, lifted him with ease, carried him to the Range Rover, put him in the back seat, and climbed in after him. Harvey raised the tinted window and drove away, leaving the Pathfinder halfway out of its parking spot and turned at an angle that would just block the car parked next to it from pulling out. Too bad for that asshole, Harvey said to himself.
Twenty minutes later, Danny started to come around. His eyes fluttered. He licked his lips. He made a sound that said: I’m in a shitload of pain right here.
“Oh, Danny Boy,” Harvey sang, “the pipes, the pipes are calling, From glen to glen, and down the mountain side, The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying, ’Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.”
Omar had his left hand clamped down on Danny’s shoulder—to keep him in place—and his right hand holding Danny’s chin, so he could point Danny’s face at the rearview mirror, so Harvey could look at his face while he was singing to him.
“Welcome back, Danny. How was your day at the track?” Harvey said.
Danny’s eyes began to focus as if he knew where he was and what was happening. He looked at the dwarf in the mirror and said, “Fuck you, Harvey.”
Omar released Danny’s chin, made a fist, and rabbit punched Danny in the nose, rocking Danny’s head back so that it smash-bounced off the headrest behind him. Danny groaned, and his nose started to bleed. Omar grabbed his chin again and pointed him at the mirror.
“How was your day at the track?” Harvey said again.
“Banner,” Danny said.
“Did your horse win?” Harvey said.
“Yes,” Danny said in a soft and sad and defeated voice.
“What was that?” Harvey said.
“Yes,” Danny said again, louder but no less demoralized.
“Congratulations. Tell me about it,” Harvey said.
“Let There Be Linda in the first race,” Danny said. “Paid 9-2.”
“Did you hear that, Omar?” Harvey said. “Let There Be Linda paid 9-2 in the first race. How much money do you suppose Danny Boy took to the bank?”
“If he bet the seventy-five he stole from us, sounds like four hundred plus,” Omar said.
“Precisely right. Four hundred thousand dollars and change. And what does Danny owe us?” Harvey said.
“Thirty-six over three years, the seventy-five he stole with Greenburg, fifty percent of what’s left of his winnings, plus damages, expenses, considerations, and pain and suffering. I’d say four hundred thousand and change.”
“That’s what I would say,” Harvey said. “So where’s the money, Danny? You’re not carrying that much in cold cash. Did they write you a check?”
“I didn’t place the bet,” Danny said.
“Omar,” Harvey said.
Omar rabbit punched Danny in the nose again. Danny’s head bounced hard off the headrest. Blood flowed freely from his nostrils.
“Ow, fuck, shit, Jesus, stop doing that,” Danny said.
“Where’s my money?” Harvey said.
“Gary took it,” Danny said.
“Gary who?” Harvey said.
“Shuler. Detective Gary Shuler,” Danny said. “He stopped me before I got inside the park and took my briefcase. Jesus Christ, look at my fucking nose.”
“Detective Gary Shuler?” Harvey said, using his voice to put air quotes around the word Detective. “Why would he do tha
t?” Harvey said.
“He knew you would kill me if I lost it at the track—” Danny said.
“‘There will be killing till the score is paid,’” Omar said. “Homer, The Odyssey.”
“—so he took it for safekeeping,” Danny said. “He needs me alive, so I can be his agent, and so he can keep the story going.”
“The story of you stealing my money?” Harvey said.
“I didn’t steal your money,” Danny said.
“Of course you did. You had this horse on your radar for weeks, and when your dentist’s dog died a tragic death—”
“You threw it out the window of a speeding car,” Danny said.
“‘The joy of killing! The joy of seeing killing done—these are traits of the human race at large,’” Omar said. “Twain, Following the Equator.”
“—you conspired with Greenburg to produce a farce called Jenny and Her Magic Breath so Greenburg would take the money from me and give it to you to take to the track, where you would, of course, lose every penny.”
“If I make the bet, I win four hundred grand,” Danny said, bleeding onto his shirt. “And you’re wrong about Jenny. She’s no farce. She’s the real deal, and I’m her agent, and I’m going to make millions. So fuck you, Harvey. Jesus, look at my nose.”
Harvey looked into the rearview mirror and saw Danny and his bloody nose and ran a quick equation in his head. There was no chance that Jenny could breathe life into death. Zero chance. It was absolutely impossible. However, there were also no absolutes anywhere. Miracles did occasionally, improbably, and impossibly happen. So if there was just ever so slightly a one-percent-of-one-percent-of-one-percent chance that Jenny could indeed raise the dead, then she would become a license to print money. And if that became the case, then he and Danny would be partners—or Danny would die.
“I want to see her bring a dead dog back to life,” Harvey said. “Make that happen on Sunday or Omar is going to excise your heart with a butter knife.”
“‘By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me,’” Omar said. “Shakespeare, Hamlet.”
Harvey turned the Range Rover into Mike’s horseshoe driveway, pulled to the front of the house, turned in his seat, and serenaded Danny again. “But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow, Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow, ’Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow, Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.”
Omar headbutted Danny again, and Danny’s eyes rolled back, and he slumped against the door, semiconscious. Omar got out of the Range Rover, came around to Danny’s side, lifted Danny out of the SUV, and dropped him near the front door.
Before Omar had a chance to get back in the SUV, a beat-to-hell Ford pickup turned into the other side of Mike’s horseshoe driveway and pulled up until it was face-to-face with the Range Rover. Judd Martin jumped out of the pickup looking otherworldly and wild and worse, lifted Mike, naked and hogtied and blindfolded, out from under a dirty tarp in the truck bed, carried him to the front door, and dumped him on the ground next to Danny.
Harvey, Omar, and Martin looked at each other with astonishment, and then Martin got back in the Ford, Omar got back in the Range Rover, and both vehicles backed out and drove away.
I’M A TIME BOMB
Since Danny had untied him and they’d both staggered into the house, Mike had shaved and showered and now stood naked in front of the full-length mirror that Marcy had purchased at Pottery Barn. His sunburned and duct tape-scarred skin looked raw, his nipples still burned, and there were bags under his eyes, but he seemed to look more or less the same as when he was a senior accountant at Wasserman and Waddell, which was Wednesday, two exceptionally long days ago.
He seemed to look more or less the same, that is, but for the “M” that Judd Martin had branded into his chest. It hurt like hell, the “M” did, but Mike had decided in the shower that he was going to ignore that pain because to acknowledge it was to give Martin power over him, and as weak as Mike was, as emotionally and physically spent and fragile as he was—and Mike knew he could crack open any minute—he refused to be weaker than a zombie real estate madman.
He sat on the bed and called Paramus. It was three thirty in the afternoon in the Valley, so it was six thirty in New Jersey. Marcy’s mother, Dianna, answered the phone. She hadn’t liked Mike from the beginning, and it had gone downhill fast from there. When he’d asked for Dianna’s blessing for her daughter’s hand in marriage, Dianna had said no. (Marcy’s father, Jim, had said he was on the fence.) And when Mike took the job at Wasserman and Waddell instead of the job he’d been offered at an accounting firm in Hackensack, minutes from Paramus, a job that Jim had helped line up to keep his daughter and future grandchildren on the East Coast, Dianna had declared a sort of silent emotional war that she’d waged up to and including this very Friday at six thirty, EST.
“Marcy and the girls spent the day visiting schools. Tonight they’re looking at rental houses with Jim, just in case,” Dianna said.
“In case what?” Mike said.
“You were an accountant until Wednesday. Do the math.”
He had done the math. That was the problem. His numbers had been bad since Tuesday, and each day since then they’d become worse. He put on basketball shorts and a Lakers T-shirt and walked across the house to the kitchen, where he found Danny leaning against the sink and Jenny sitting at the table. Danny was on his cell phone.
“I’m not a dog whisperer,” Danny said. “I have no idea what’s wrong with Chachi.” Danny’s nose was bruised but not broken. His eyes were black and blue enough to make him look vaguely raccoon-ish. He’d called a cab to take him to the track, picked up the Pathfinder, driven it back to Mike’s, showered, and changed his clothes as well: black V-neck T-shirt and faded jeans. His hair was behind his ears, still wet.
“What are you doing here?” Mike said to Jenny, grabbing a bowl, a spoon, a quart of milk, and a new box of Frosted Flakes and sitting across from her.
“Collecting my money,” Jenny said. “Greenburg paid cash, and my mother wants it now. I don’t normally care what she wants, but she’s in a bad state of mind.”
Mike had thought Jenny was pretty when he’d first met her yesterday at Greenburg’s house, but she was there to breathe life into a dead dog—which she actually freaking did—so he couldn’t concentrate on what she looked like, although he remembered her green eyes and her sexy red sundress because Marcy had one just like it.
Today, Mike thought Jenny looked like somebody else all over again. She wore a denim sleeveless cowboy shirt—embroidered with bucking broncos—open halfway down her chest (he could see her lacy black bra), with denim cut-off shorts (that were so short she might as well not be wearing any shorts at all), blue and white cowboy boots, and a white cowboy hat. She wore turquoise bracelets and rings. Are her eyes blue now? Mike asked himself. Yes, they are. Her eyes are blue and not green.
Anyway, Marcy’s sundress was long ago and far away, before the girls were born, when the newlyweds were young and in love and the door to their lives was wide open. Now, of course, that door was closing fast. He might never get it open again.
It was that thought, that his marriage was in trouble, that made him decide to eat the entire box of Frosted Flakes.
As he filled his bowl, he thought, I’m a time bomb, and my fuse is lit. The slightest provocation, and I will explode. There was no point in wondering how his life had come to this, no erasing the last three days. Though he looked familiar, he was not the same man he was on Tuesday, before his mother died and his world went wild. Once upon a time, he was a normal person. Now, he was a time bomb.
“My mother has no state of mind,” Mike said to Jenny.
“A deal’s a deal, Dr. Greenburg,” Danny said. “Your dog is alive as promised. His disposition has nothing to do with it. You don’t get your money back. I’m sorry you’re upset, but maybe that’s why Chachi’s growling at you.” And he clicked off the call and said, “I’m getting a ne
w dentist.”
Mike poured milk in the bowl and shoveled Frosted Flakes into his mouth. Danny grabbed his own bowl and spoon and joined Jenny and his brother at the table. As he reached for the cereal box, Mike pulled it away.
“Going to cost you,” Mike said to his brother.
“Fuck you, Mike,” Danny said. “I could have left you naked and hogtied in the front yard. But I didn’t. Now give me the goddamn Frosted Flakes.” He reached across the table, and Mike whacked his arm away with his spoon.
“Seven thousand five hundred,” Mike said.
Danny looked at Jenny, and she said, “My Frosted Flakes are sixty thousand. I’ll take cash.”
Danny sat back, took a breath, and said, “I don’t have the money.”
Mike stopped eating. He had bills to pay and not enough savings to pay them. He needed his share of the fee. He was a fifty-fifty partner in whatever the hell it was they were doing here. In his mind’s eye, he saw the sizzling fuse approaching the explosives, snaking across the room, very close now. “What did you say?”
“I don’t have the money,” Danny said.
Mike could feel the heat of the fuse, which was maybe just one inch from the case of dynamite that was his life. This was forever the Story of Danny: frustration after disappointment after fuck up after scam. It had never changed for as long as they had been brothers. Mike resented him, distrusted him, disliked him, and probably hated him. He knew Danny felt the same way in reverse. Mike didn’t care. He was all out of caring.
“What happened to it?” Jenny said, looking like some kind of stripper cowgirl.
“I went to the track and—”
The sparking fuse arrived and lit the emotional dynamite that was Mike, and in one mad moment of force and energy, he exploded out of his chair and turned the kitchen table over onto Danny, who fell backwards onto the floor while Jenny jumped up out of the way of the flying Frosted Flakes and milk, which went everywhere across the kitchen.
“You lost the money on a fucking horse?” Mike said, screaming while pouncing on Danny, who was flat on his back.