The Best Laid Plans

by Judy Penz Sheluk

  “Erm, thanks,” he said, making no move to wipe off the lipstick. “I happen to like the class of client I’ve attracted, but I wouldn’t mind a haircut.”

  Occasionally, among chimps, a low-ranking male will surprise everyone by making off with an attractive female. I speared a cube of eggplant with spicy garlic sauce on the end of my chopsticks and put it into my mouth. I hope it worked out for the two of them.

  V.S. Kemanis

  V.S. Kemanis has enjoyed a varied career in the law and the arts. As an attorney, she has worked for the Manhattan District Attorney, the NYS Organized Crime Task Force, state appellate courts, and judges. Publishing credits include the Dana Hargrove legal suspense series, five collections of short fiction on wide-ranging themes, and stories appearing in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and EQMM’s Crooked Road, Vol. 3, anthology, among others. She is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and Mystery Writers of America, New York Chapter, where she serves on the Board of Directors. Find her at vskemanis.com.

  Sucker Punch

  V.S. Kemanis

  The telltale gleam in Zach’s eye gives him away. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Freddy knows that look, those words. Zach has been coming up with ideas ever since they were kids, scraping their knees on the streets of Oakland. Next-door neighbors, born within a month of each other, they’re lifelong buddies. Zach wouldn’t think of excluding Freddy from his latest plan.

  “This one is a sure thing.”

  Another familiar claim. Freddy isn’t the brightest lightbulb in the attic, but he knows enough to be skeptical. Are they millionaires yet? None of Zach’s get-rich-quick schemes have ever gotten them anywhere. There’ve been a lot of them, a few more memorable than others.

  At age five, the lemonade stand. To boost profits, Zach watered the product (supplied by Freddy’s mom) to the point of questionable lemon content. Girls and women swarmed, buying many half-full paper cups, not to sip the tasteless liquid but to drink in Zach’s charms. Even at that age he was a devilish, charismatic entrepreneur. Freddy, the good-natured sidekick, smiled dumbly and asked his mom for another pitcher. They made five dollars, split two-three, the lion’s share to Zach. It was his idea, after all.

  At age nine, a backyard carnival. Zach set up a dart game, rope swing, stilt walk, horseshoes, and dime toss. He made up skits for Freddy the Clown (“you already look goofy—just add this wig and nose”). A quarter per show, and a quarter for every ride and game. Zach’s parents thought it was a cute idea, unaware of their son’s profit motive. As the coffers filled, the plan imploded when irate moms and dads stormed the house, refusing to give their kids any more money for carnival games. Zach’s dad made him give it all back. Freddy the Clown suffered lasting damage to his reputation.

  At age fifteen, the Earthworm Farm. Memories of the failed carnival inspired Zach to insist on Freddy’s backyard for the venture. “Organic earthworm castings. This stuff is black gold, Freddy. Grows tomatoes as big as your head. We’ll make a ton selling worm turds to gardeners.” Freddy timidly balked, Zach persisted—he needed Freddy’s paper route money for the initial investment. “They’re hermaphrodites and screw like crazy. We’ll have millions before we know it.” They set up the earthworm beds and watched the population explode, only to suffer a devastating plague. An infestation of red mites—all Freddy’s fault, if you asked Zach. Weren’t the worm beds in Freddy’s backyard? He should have taken better care.

  At age twenty, card counting. Despite his innate brilliance, Zach barely survived high school, flunked out of community college, and couldn’t hold down a job. Minutes after losing a job at the multiplex, he came up with a Hollywood-worthy plan to use his photographic memory for lucre. “I’ll cut you in, Freddy. Twenty percent, and I’ll do all the work.” They practiced, Freddy the blackjack dealer. As soon as they both turned twenty-one, they were off to Vegas to rake in the coin. “Just watch out for the bouncers,” Zach instructed, coming up with an elaborate system of signals. When the day was done, they were down five hundred—their joint investment—and Freddy was out on his tail. The casino bouncers didn’t like the looks of that sweaty youth pacing, twitching, saluting, and winking around the blackjack tables.

  Barely a year has passed since that one, and now Zach shows up at Freddy’s apartment with his laptop, spouting, “I have an idea,” again. Another “sure thing.” These words always trigger a flash-bang mind-collage of all their ventures, from lemonade stand to carnival to earthworm farm to card counting and many, many more in between. Zach has a way of convincing the world that he’s better than his circumstances, destined to be rich and famous or, at least, rich. Freddy always listens. Freddy always gives in. But maybe it’s time for a change.

  “I don’t know, Zach. None of our businesses ever work out.”

  “Is it my fault you were dropped on your head at birth?” One of Zach’s favorite jokes. Freddy is getting a little tired of it, but he lets it go. Zach always follows up—as he does now—with a brotherly punch on the shoulder and a huge, toothy smile, just to show it’s all in fun. The gleam in his dark eyes and his magnetic good looks are irresistible to everyone in the world, Freddy included. Zach knows this about himself. His life plan is to find a lonely, rich, older lady and rope her in with his fawning sex appeal. It’s his best idea yet, a potentially huge moneymaker. He imagines the sunny days under his lady’s admiring gaze, floating on her yacht in the Caribbean, showing off his tanned bod in a Speedo, butter dripping onto his chest from mouthfuls of succulent lobster tail. So far, that brilliant idea hasn’t worked out either.

  “Ha ha.” For the umpteenth time, Freddy laughs along about being dropped on his head. “So, tell me. What’s the new idea?”

  “Crowdfunding. It’s ridiculously easy. Just ask people for money and they give it to you.”

  “Don’t you need a good cause for that? Like, you can’t pay the chemo bill for your two-year-old with cancer. You know, with photos of the kid’s bald head.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a cause or a charity. Have you ever looked at these sites? People are suckers for anything.” Zach powers up his laptop and enters a search. “Look at this one. She needs five thousand to remove the tattoos she willingly allowed someone to fry all over her body.” The top photo on the page shows a scorpion on the young woman’s nose, a snake slithering from jaw to jaw along her hairline. “Do I feel sorry for this girl? Am I going to give her money to fix her mistakes? Noooo. But ten people already did.”

  Zach laughs heartily, an infectious mirth. Before he leaves the tattooed lady, Freddy notices an updated photo, posted midway into her campaign, meant to demonstrate her serious intentions. Half of the snake is gone, replaced with raw-looking skin. “I’m using every penny I earn, but it isn’t enough,” she writes. “I desperately need your help!” The ten contributors aren’t overly impressed, pledging only five or ten dollars each. One of them comments, “Burn, baby! I hope it hurts!”

  Freddy looks on as Zach scrolls through the listings. Many of them, he would agree, are laughable. Interspersed among the truly needy cases—the cancer sufferers and accident victims—are bizarre tech startups, wacky inventors, starving artists, and spiritual messengers begging for attention and, more to the point, begging for big bucks. Few are making their goals.

  “Looks like only the charities and horrible diseases are getting any money,” Freddy points out. “Besides, I don’t see why you need me for this. You can do it on your own. I’m making out okay. Just got a raise at Food Super.” Freddy’s bloody white apron attests to his dedication behind the counter in meats, poultry, and fish, a job he’s held since graduating from high school. He never went to college, sure that he wouldn’t make it through anyway. At twenty-two, he’s okay with his life and looks forward to the possibilities—promotion to head of the meat department, or manager of his own store one day. Who needs Zach and his crazy ideas?

  “How could I cut you out, man?” Zach dons a rueful expression. “Sometimes I
feel bad about a couple of those old projects.”

  Really? Freddy is taken aback.

  But then Zach’s face lights up, and he gives Freddy the standard brotherly punch on the shoulder. “Seriously, dude, I’ve figured it out. I think it’ll look better with a team. A few photos of the two of us. Blood brothers, lifelong friends. What could be a better hook?”

  “What exactly do the ‘brothers’ need money for?”

  “Our passion, our dream. What we’ve been saving up for. A trip to the Himalayas, climbing Mount Everest.”

  “Really. Okay. Yeah. Our dream.”

  “We’ve got the photos to prove it.” Zach opens his photo library and comes up with a picture of the two of them wearing muscle shirts and shorts, Zach’s arm slung around Freddy’s shoulder, at the top of Mount Diablo.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, we were seniors. You remember, we cut that day.”

  Freddy remembers it well, the way Zach strong-armed him into going on a hike, missing a crucial English test, with serious consequences to his grade. But it was fun, he remembers that too, and he misses all the many good times they’ve had together. Lately, they’ve been drifting apart. Zach always inspired zaniness, spontaneity, and manic fun, and the Diablo trip was one of the best. No moneymaking schemes, just a day with perfect weather, hiking up a mountain. A short one. Someone at the top took that picture.

  Everest might be taking this adventure too far. “To follow our dream?”

  “Yeah,” Zach confirms, reinventing history. “Here we are, in training. My leg muscles are killer in this pic.”

  Besides the leg muscles, Zach’s face has a winning smile under the cool sunglasses, adding to his overall hunk image. Freddy doesn’t look too bad himself, his scrawny calves partly in shadow. In the photo, as in real life, Zach is the center of attention, Freddy the appendage, fulfilling his role as sidekick, conveying their status as “bros.”

  “But…” Freddy begins his usual, timid objections while googling on his smartphone. “You can see we’re on Mount Diablo and,” he finds it, “the elevation is only 3,848 feet.”

  “Not the point, Fred. This is obviously a training photo. I’ll beef up the pitch and throw in some facts about our grueling climbing regimen.” Zach starts drafting the text.

  “Facts?”

  Zach is typing, not listening. “I researched the whole thing. The best time to summit Everest is either the spring or the fall, so we’ll cut the campaign off two months from today, in time for a spring trek. Perfect. That’s April Fool’s Day, the day for suckers. I figure it costs at least twenty grand each for the trip, so I’ll ask for forty. I found this site that doesn’t dock you for not making your goal, so anything we get is ours, eighty-twenty.” He flicks a look at Freddy. “Only because it’s my idea.”

  When Zach finishes the pitch, Freddy looks it over. He isn’t quite sure about the spelling of “shurpa,” “Himolayas,” and “trecking,” and has even bigger concerns about Zach’s use of the crowdfunding site. “If we get any money from this, we have to use it for what you wrote here. No way are you going to Everest. I know I’m not.”

  Zach breaks into a confident smile. “No way can they get inside our heads. It’s fine as long as we’re planning the trip. We’ll make a lot of cash, but it isn’t going to be forty. Maybe twenty or thirty, so, you know, uh-oh. Too bad, not enough to go this spring. We’ll have to keep training and fundraising.”

  “You won’t get thirty or even twenty. Who’s going to help two bros take a hike?”

  Zach’s face registers a glimmer of doubt. Maybe he sees Freddy’s point. “I’ll throw in a few more hooks.” He types madly. The trip is a “spiritual journey” (“chicks love that stuff,” he tells Freddy), and the money they spend in “Nepaul” will help boost the impoverished economy. Freddy takes a look and puzzles over another one of Zach’s “facts.”

  “When were we ‘tragically robbed of our life savings for our spiritual journey?’”

  “Last year. In Vegas. At the blackjack tables. I know that was every penny I had. Yours too.”

  Freddy shakes his head. “Whatever.” He gives up. When Zach is on a roll, he can’t be stopped. He’s bound to fail, of course, but it’s no skin off Freddy’s back. His only investment for this one is the use of his first name, “Freddy, Zach’s bro,” and his smile on a photo, taken on a nice afternoon, five years ago.

  Once the campaign is up, Zach disappears. Typical. In the old days, depending on the project, his temporary disappearance usually meant he was abandoning any further efforts until it was time to reappear and blame Freddy for botching the ingenious plan.

  This one is different. Zach demands nothing of Freddy and will have nothing to pin on him. And Zach hasn’t been around much in the past year anyway, so his absence now isn’t very different. Freddy is left with nothing but his mild curiosity. In the first week, he takes a quick look at the crowdfunding site during his break from the meat counter, just to see what’s happening. It’s day four, and “Send Two Bros to Everest!” has garnered only three donations of five dollars each, one contributor commenting, “Nice gams!”

  Back on the job, thinking about it, Freddy brings the cleaver down “thwack” on a leg of lamb. Yeah, Zach, dream on. It’s not Freddy’s dream, so he pushes the scheme entirely out of his mind.

  Freddy hasn’t seen Zach for almost two months when a few strange things happen.

  First, an odd encounter with two young women at Food Super. They’re friends or sisters maybe, about Freddy’s age, and they’re planning a dinner party. Giggling, they ask Freddy’s advice on the tenderest cut of beef. He recommends the top sirloin. They stare at him openly, in awe (something Freddy dreams of, but never seems to get from the opposite sex). They laugh and look at each other, sending a silent message. Then, the prettier one turns to stare at him again and says, “That was quick.” Her eyes descend to Freddy’s hands, holding that nice chunk of top sirloin. She asks him to wrap it up for her.

  Days later, two city health inspectors make an unannounced visit to the meat department. They spend a long time testing the meat and bone saw. Freddy’s boss, Albert, is completely thrown by the inspector’s question, “When did you fix the safety on this?” The safety has always been in place, Al tells them—why are they asking? “There’s been a complaint.” Al is mystified at this news but maintains his respectful demeanor until the inspectors are gone. He turns to Freddy with narrowed eyes and pain on his face. “You made a complaint?” Freddy is mortified, but what is Al to think? For such a long time, it’s been just the two of them together, Al and Freddy, the team in meats.

  Finally, it’s April Fool’s Day. During his lunch break, sitting outside the meat locker, Freddy gets a text from Zach. “How’s a cool 5 grand, your cut! $$$ here soon!” Unbelievable. Freddy uses the calculator on his phone. It’s an eighty-twenty split, so that means…Zach pulled in twenty-five grand? How is that possible?

  Freddy opens “Send Two Bros to Everest!” and finds, splashed in the middle of the webpage, an “Update! Urgent Appeal!” posted a week ago. The three photos say it all. Freddy needs a moment to remember the first two. A couple of years ago, Zach visited Food Super, in the mood to entertain Freddy. Butcher jokes were flying. In the first photo, Freddy stands behind the cutting table in his soiled apron, his face snarled in blood lust as he holds the cleaver high in the air, about to fall on a pile of red muscle and ribs. The second photo shows the meat and bone saw, spattered with bloody remains. The third photo is a close up of…well, where did Zach get that one? A horror movie? It’s a hand, or rather, part of a hand.

  Freddy’s jaw drops to his knees as he reads the update. Sadly, a tragic work accident at Food Super has cut short their hopes for a spring trek. The bros are now planning for the fall, but money is desperately needed for Freddy’s new, mechanical prosthesis and intense physical therapy, so he can master its use on the treacherous snow-covered, oxygen-thin slopes. “Be generous, give now
and help the first handless climber to summit Everest!”

  Before Freddy gets his head around this, Al marches up, red-eyed and fuming, flanked by two police officers.

  “Frederick Measleton?” says one of them.

  Freddy stares back in stunned silence.

  Al is practically crying. “After all these years, Freddy, I don’t understand how you could do this to me. How could you do this to Food Super?”

  Al is like a father to Freddy, the last person he would ever want to hurt. His heart is beating fast, his voice lost to him. Can’t they see this is all Zach’s doing? But…nothing is ever Zach’s fault.

  “You’re coming with us,” the officer says.

  When Freddy walks into the police station, Zach is handcuffed to a wooden bench. He’s a new Zach, contrite and unrecognizable in these words: “Don’t worry about a thing, man. I told them already. It’s all on me.”

  A surprising sound to Freddy, a person who’s been the fall guy for so many of Zach’s failures. A person who has heard about a fictional fall on his head at birth, over and over and over again.

  But, on further thought, maybe it isn’t so surprising. They’ve had some great times together. Didn’t Zach always include Freddy in everything he did, the good and the bad? That’s what lifelong buddies do.

  When all is said and done, Freddy is cleared, Al forgives him, and Zach gets a fair deal for his first entanglement with the law. The judge goes light. Community service and restitution. Zach is ordered to stay away from Food Super. More important, lesson learned. There will be no more moneymaking schemes.

  Not long after that, the bros get together in the park and talk about doing a hike up Mount Tamalpais. A very doable 2,572 feet.

  “It’s funny, man, but you were right,” Zach says.