The Bad Beat

by Tod Goldberg

  “Better go inside and ask my mother if you can borrow her reading glasses,” I said to Sam.

  “You ever learn that Evelyn Wood Speed Reading technique?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, “I always preferred to actually read.”

  “They say if you learn something in an altered state, you’ll recall it better in an altered state. So I’m thinking maybe a mimosa is the call here.”

  “I’m going to say no,” I said.

  “You sure you don’t think Sugar could pull off being Big Lumpy?” he said.

  “No.”

  “So Big Lumpy knew we were coming,” Sam said.

  “Seems like it.”

  “I wonder how much more he knew.”

  “I’m going to guess quite a bit,” I said. I told him I thought Brent’s place was probably bugged and my ideas about Big Lumpy’s initial reasoning.

  “Makes sense,” Sam said. “You really think he’s dead?”

  “I’ll call the coroner to find out,” I said, “but I’m going to guess that he killed himself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it would be more entertaining for him to watch this from some spectral plane than to actually be in it. And because he was already dead, for the most part. Last night he told me he had three months, but I wouldn’t have placed money on that being true. The man could hardly function. He didn’t even torture Sugar.”

  My mom stepped outside then and slammed the door behind her. “He’s an idiot,” she said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Are you going to stow him in my garage while you go out saving the world?”

  “Not this time,” I said.

  “Good,” she said, “because he’s not safe here.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “It’s bad enough that he’s an idiot,” she said, “but his self-tanning lotion is giving me a migraine. Someone should tell him that the color orange does not occur in nature.”

  “I’ll mention it to him,” Sam said. He put an arm around my mother. She had a soft spot for Sam, probably because Sam had an ability to make anyone like him, and probably because she knew he’d kept me alive on more than one occasion. “Why don’t we go inside and you can help me learn all about the fascinating world of wind, and if Sugar does anything to annoy you, I’ll put him in a sleeper lock. How does that sound?”

  Before she could answer, Sam had her turned around and was walking her back into the house. The man could defuse a nuclear bomb with a drink in one hand.

  I’d planned on leaving Sugar behind, but circumstances had changed. I hadn’t expected Big Lumpy to die. I hadn’t expected to be the unwitting dupe in some larger game—a position I was absolutely not comfortable with, but which I’d need to react to with suitable force and control. And I hadn’t expected the need to get Sam trained in the fine art of wind technology, the burgeoning echo system of black market bandwidths and, of course, make sure it was all plausible enough to get Yuri to bite on it, so that the rest of the plan could go forward. Getting a man who shot rockets into businesses off the street was a good thing, but the more tangible issue was that otherwise he would kill Brent the first chance he got. And Fiona’s death was a real possibility, too. Yuri Drubich probably considered Fiona’s breaking his wrist as bad form. What I did know, however, was that Yuri wanted to see Brent and Henry, wanted to make them pay for his inconvenience. They probably knew what Brent looked like by now, but they probably had no idea what Henry looked like. They knew enough to blow up his office, but not enough to destroy his home, which told me they were still grasping at straws.

  So I needed to find someone who could plausibly pass for Brent’s father.

  I needed someone who would do exactly what I said and wouldn’t ask too many questions.

  I needed someone who might know how to manage a few million dollars discreetly . . . and who wouldn’t mind working with Sugar, if need be.

  That decreased the pool by a legion.

  I opened up the envelope Big Lumpy had left for Brent and read the terms and conditions of his inheritance, such as it was. A good lawyer would help, but the closest thing I had to that was another man good at moving papers around. And, as it happened, the perfect person for the job at hand, too.

  “Barry,” I said into my cell phone when my favorite money launderer answered, “I need you.”

  12

  When you occupy a defensive position, it’s important to find good cover. If good cover isn’t available, a spy will try to conceal himself as best as possible. This can mean that he hides behind a bush or a mustache, in a burned-out car or on a crowded bus. Concealment provides time to reorganize and recalibrate an attack and, if done correctly, might also allow a spy to do a little . . . spying. Because there’s nothing a spy appreciates more than the opportunity to view and analyze his own information—which is why Sugar and I were sitting on the patio of Odessa sipping tea while we waited for Barry to show up.

  None of Yuri’s people knew about me, as far as I could tell, and Sugar had escaped out the back door of Henry’s office before he could be spotted. And since Sugar’s car wasn’t registered in his name, whoever Yuri thought he was intimidating by destroying the car wasn’t actually Sugar.

  If we were going to exchange information and money, I’d want to do it in public, but I’d want to do it in a place where Yuri felt comfortable, so I figured visiting his place of business was a nice way of getting the lay of the land.

  Plus, I’d placed bugs inside the main shop beneath several of the shelves holding tea and accoutrements while we waited to be seated.

  “You really think this is a good idea?” Sugar said.

  “Well,” I said, “if anyone here suspected we were anything but tea enthusiasts, they would have poisoned us already.”

  “I do feel itchy,” Sugar said.

  “That’s probably an allergic reaction to being wrapped in plastic.”

  “Man, I wasn’t made for this spy game,” he said.

  “Which is why you shouldn’t say things like ‘I wasn’t made for this spy game’ in public. It tends to be a red flag.”

  “You just want me to sit here and shut up?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sip your tea. You may find you enjoy it.”

  “It tastes like dirt, you want my opinion,” Sugar said.

  “That’s one thing I don’t want.”

  We’d been there for only fifteen minutes and thus far I hadn’t seen a man with a broken wrist or a woman with balance issues who was also bleeding from the ears, so maybe they were both taking a personal day. Our waitress was a young Cuban woman—maybe nineteen or twenty—who didn’t seem to possess any outward signs that she was a Castro supporter here to overthrow the American government, nor did she seem all that interested in bringing us hot water in a timely manner. In fact, the entire tearoom seemed to be filled with people mostly interested in doing their jobs at the rate tea steeps. Which was fine. They didn’t even bother to attempt to peek at the folder filled with documents that I brought with me. I was just another businessman on a business lunch with his drug dealer.

  But across the street from the tea shop was another story. Though the information we’d received said that Yuri’s business was registered here—which it was—I could tell now that it was both an issue of keeping up appearances and total convenience.

  On the southeastern corner, there was a seven-story condo complex that looked to be made entirely of metal and glass, which made me first think that the air-conditioning bills would be enough to drive any man into an illegal trade, but then when I saw the name of the complex—the Rai Gardens—a familiar tingling sensation began working up my spine.

  On the northeastern corner was a five-story office complex that flew the flags of several different countries, including, right in my line of site, the flag of Moldova, a former Soviet state located between Romania and Ukraine. I called Sam.

  “How good is your Russian?” I said.

  “I’v
e had to replace all verb conjugations with information about bandwidth, I’m afraid. Why?”

  “Because I’m sitting here at Odessa looking at a condo complex called the Rai Gardens.”

  “Doesn’t rai mean ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise’ or something like that in Russian?”

  “See,” I said, “you’ve retained just enough information to be useful.”

  “I’m trying my best,” he said.

  “I need you to do me a small favor,” I said. “Find out where our Ukrainian friend’s wife is from.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to make sure a hunch I’m having is correct,” I said. “The Moldovan Consulate is about fifty yards from the teahouse. I’m going to guess that our Ukrainian friend married a woman from across the border.”

  “And that he keeps a place inside the Rai Gardens?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he owns the Rai Gardens,” I said. “Fiona said she got knocked out and he was there in a matter of minutes. It makes sense that he’d live close enough to asylum and his business interests. It’s too coincidental not to be true.”

  “Just as soon as I finish digesting some very interesting information about the wind turbines in Dubai, I’ll be on it. But listen, Mikey, this information Big Lumpy gave us? It’s a lot more comprehensive than whatever Brent knows.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “This laptop, it’s loaded with video of test sites. We’ve got formulas here that mean nothing to me but must mean something to someone. I mean, when he said that he’d make the information government secrets, I really think he meant it. He has a whole Power-Point presentation on here that I’d say he didn’t just whip up overnight before he died.”

  “You know his connections,” I said.

  “But what if he’s trying to screw us? What if we give this information to Yuri and it really is the kind of thing that will give him a leg up, give terrorists a leg up, too?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know, Sam,” I said. “He was NSA. I don’t see him doing that. He said it would bring Yuri down, and I want to believe him.”

  “I don’t know, Mikey,” he said.

  “Look,” I said, “he won’t have the chance to get anywhere with it. We give him the information and twenty-four hours later, he’s in a prison somewhere. It’s a chance we need to take.”

  “We’re putting our faith in a whole slew of untrustworthy people. He’s got three zip drives full of information we’re supposed to hand to Yuri. I can’t make sense of anything on them.”

  “Sam,” I said, “I’ve got a good feeling Big Lumpy was preparing for this moment for a very long time. He knew way too much about everything way ahead of time.”

  “But why would he care about screwing Yuri Drubich?”

  “I don’t think he did,” I said. “I think he wanted to help Brent.”

  “He’s got a funny way of being nice,” Sam said.

  “Speaking of which,” I said, “anything yet on Monty?”

  “No,” Sam said. “Big Lumpy kept a tight organization. You want me to poke some lowlifes, I can do that, but it may raise suspicion.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m meeting with a lowlife shortly. Maybe he’ll have something we can use.”

  I hung up and took another sip of tea. I could tell Sugar wanted to say something, anything, because staying quiet to him was like swallowing castor oil was for other people. But before he could say anything, I gave him an order. “I want you to count how many Denalis drive down the street and park either over there by the condo or over there by that embassy-looking building. If they have tinted windows, count them twice.”

  “Why twice?”

  “Because no one with tinted windows drives alone,” I said.

  “Do I win some kind of prize at the end?”

  “If everything works out the way I think,” I said, “you’re going to get to keep on living and selling drugs to college freshmen.”

  This got Sugar’s interest. “Cool,” he said. He turned his chair so that he was facing the street more directly and then took off his sunglasses, since apparently he has a hard time concentrating with sunglasses on. “You think I could get another one of these teas? I sort of like the buzz it’s giving me.”

  I opted not to tell Sugar he was drinking the Russian equivalent to chamomile and went ahead and poured him some of my zavarka, the strong, sometimes pungent tea favored by Russian diplomats the world over. He took a sip and I watched as he tried to keep from coughing it all back up. To his credit, he remained strong and kept drinking from his cup as he counted cars.

  A few minutes later, what I hoped was a rented purple Ford Focus pulled into the parking lot and out stepped Barry, right on time and dressed just as I’d ordered: a blue polo shirt tucked into a pair of tan slacks. He wore a pair of hideously ugly brown Crocs on his feet, which was counter to my order that he be wearing loafers, but it was suitable enough. He had also shaved, as instructed, and wore a pair of sunglasses that made him look like someone’s father—a pair of barely tinted aviators—and had managed to comb his spiked hair into something vaguely resembling a normal hairstyle.

  Combine all of this together, along with Barry’s usual countenance, and it made for the perfect package of world-weary middle-class angst. Wonderful.

  I waved at Barry and he just sighed and made his way across the parking lot toward the tearoom.

  “Who’s the square?” Sugar asked.

  “Barry,” I said.

  “Bad Check Barry? The money launderer?”

  “Same guy.”

  In fact, Barry was far more than a money launderer these days. He’d diversified his talents to the point that he was practically a one-stop shop for all your illegal paperwork needs. Like an Office Depot, but with the ability to get you a fake passport and safe passage to Ecuador at a moment’s notice.

  He wasn’t a lawyer, but he’d be able to help me with the conditions of Brent’s new wealth that Big Lumpy had set forth and with the lengths (or depths) we’d need to go to in order to secure Brent the opportunity to find that wealth.

  But he didn’t know all of that when he sat down at the table with Sugar and me.

  “You look good,” I said.

  “I feel like one of those tourists serial killers keep an eye out for, since they know no one will miss them. I had to go into Walmart to get all of this stuff. Do you know how degrading that was for me, Michael? What if someone I know spotted me?”

  “You’d be forced to vote Republican from here on out,” I said.

  Barry handed me a receipt for $127.98. “You don’t need to pay me back for the sunglasses,” he said. “I like the way they look on my face. Might be good for business meetings with people not quite as fashion forward as you and your Scooby Gang. Plus it makes me look a little more authoritarian.”

  “That’s why cops wear them,” I said.

  “These pants are some kind of polyester blend,” Barry said. “I’m sweating in places I didn’t know I had places.”

  “I appreciate you coming in costume,” I said. “I’m going to make it worth your while.”

  “You working with some fetish gang or something?”

  “Not quite,” I said.

  “Not even close, bro,” Sugar said, which made Barry do the one thing he hadn’t done yet: acknowledge that someone else was sitting at the table with me. One thing most criminals have in common is the ability to completely ignore people they have absolutely no interest in. It makes it less likely those people will be able to positively identify them later or, worse, testify against them.

  “Who are you?” Barry said to Sugar.

  “Sugar.”

  “I thought the Spice Girls broke up,” Barry said and then he turned back to me. “Who is this person to my left?”

  “He’s a drug dealer. He used to live downstairs from me.”

  “Oh,” Barry said. “The guy you shot?”

  “Same guy,” I said again. />
  “Why does everyone know that?” Sugar asked.

  “It’s a funny story,” Barry said. “I didn’t even hear it from Michael. Shot him through the wall, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Classic,” Barry said. “You doing some kind of ‘Up with People’ thing with him now?”

  “We’ve done some work together in the past,” I said.

  “I’m pretty much on the team,” Sugar said.

  “No, you’re not,” I said. “He’s currently part of the reason we need you.”

  “My lucky day,” Barry said.

  “I already know you,” Sugar said. “You’re Bad Check Barry. See, I know all the gangsters up in this piece.”

  Barry stared at Sugar for a long time without speaking. Normally, Barry is the kind of guy who likes to chat a bit, but I could tell he felt uneasy about Sugar. Finally, he turned to me and said, “I’m going to pretend he’s not here. Is that okay?”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Sugar, go back to counting Denalis.”

  “I’ve already got five,” Sugar said.

  “Good. Stop if you get to twenty.” I waved the waitress over—since we were now the only people on the patio she actually managed to get to our table in a reasonable amount of time—and ordered another samovar of tea for Barry. I needed him alert, so I poured him a healthy-sized serving. He took a sip, grimaced and tried to act cool.

  “What do you call that flavor?” he asked. “Communism?”

  “Gorbachev’s favorite tea,” I said. “Served it to Reagan and then they talked about movies with chimps.”

  “I thought I recognized it,” Barry said. “It’s strong. Tastes a little bit like something the Russians would pour in your eyes to make you talk. They ever do that sort of stuff?”

  “They were known for their persuasive interrogation techniques,” I said.

  Barry took another sip and then looked around the place. “It’s nice here. The kind of place I could bring a date later on. You ever bring Fiona here?”

  “She came on her own recently and now she’s not welcome back,” I said.

  “That happen a lot?”