Big Numbers (9 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

Cool, white foamy seawater splashes my lips.

I taste salt, dead fish, and sudden shocking, coming-awake fear. Why can’t I turn from the water? Everything feels frozen
—my feet, my legs, my hands, my arms. Is my neck broken? All I can do, twist my chin in a range of three or four inches, open my eyes.

Oh. My. God. I struggle madly and ineffectively at continental-size restraints. My distant thumping heart becomes the epicenter of an eight-point-five earthquake. Psycho Sam Attica has buried
me in the sand, up to my chin just feet from the surf.

I cry out as more seawater splashes my face.

Waves break just yards away. An army of incoming ocean swells gathers on my limited horizon, preparing to attack. The cloudless sky is an end-of-the-world steely blue.

The next breaker sends a rush of foam that covers my mouth and fills my nose. I’m forced to hold my breath.

I don’t know how much time has passed. Ten minutes. Half an hour. I’ve survived this long by holding my breath as the waves come in, letting the air out underwater so there’s time to grab a new breath when each foamy rush recedes.

This last wave may have done me in. I managed to suck in half a chest full of air, but the other half was water, and it went down the wrong pipe. I’m choking.

Sweet Jesus.

What’s this? A sideways face? Lips kissing me? Blowing warm air into my oxygen-starved lungs.

Is that Kelly’s red hair lashing my cheeks?

An oxygen mask covers my nose and mouth. I’m flat on my back, inside an ambulance, strapped to a gurney. The siren wails.

Kelly’s kneeling beside me. Her bright green eyes twinkle with delight as my gaze focuses on her.

“I know, I know,” she says. “Three unrelated trips to the emergency room in four days. I’ve already called Ripley’s.”

“You mentioned your daughter’s swim meet, so I was looking for you at the club, figured maybe we could grab some dinner,” Kelly says later. “I waited by your camper for a long time, then I got worried. Two young boys with skateboards remembered seeing you with a giant. A giant man and his shovel.”

I have no idea what time it is. I know it’s dark outside the emergency-room window. Feels like I’ve watched the trees and bushes grow up.

“But I was mostly underwater when you found me.” I say. “How did you know where to look?”

“Your screams attracted me to the rocks. I heard a sucking sound, and I saw something strange in the surf.”

“My head?”

“Yes, well, the top. And your ears sticking out.”

TWENTY-SIX

The redhead and I do a late dinner. Then I do the redhead. Not exactly a lengthy and energetic display of affection, but it seems I get the job done.

After, at her condo in front of Jay Leno and the
Tonight Show
, Kelly tells me again how she wants a piece of Gerry’s multi-million dollar estate. How she wants it before Gerry dies, too, before the lawyers and Gerry’s children start pecking and clawing at every scrap of meat.

I’m bored with her schemes tonight. Pecked and clawed a bit too much myself perhaps. Choked and shot at, that’s for sure. Hit by a car. Thrown onto the asphalt like an empty beer can. Mugged into a lineup by the police. Buried alive in the sand, left to drown.

I’m pissed is what I am. Pissed and ready for a fight. And I know exactly where I’m going, too. Don’t give a crap who gets hurt, myself included. The bastards can pick on somebody else next time.

When Leno’s over and Kelly disappears into the marble bathroom to take a bedtime shower, I dress and walk past the fake Renoir with a salute, then out the door.

I am compelled to action, not by boredom with Kelly, but by a strange, unsupportable certainty that my psyche must fight back to survive.

Nothing makes sense. Rags, Psycho, and my nasty ex-wife can have no relation to Branchtown Blackie and his minions. But something powerful tells me my place in a bigger battle is next to Luis.

The yellow police tape is down, but Luis’s Mexican Grill is still closed, the parking lot empty. I drive around back. Tucked in beside the semi-permanent, tent-sized green garbage bin, Luis’s Jeep Cherokee rests neatly hidden from the street.

I need to play my hunches more often.

Parking beside the Jeep, I hop down onto loose gravel. My shoes scuffle loudly in the silence of the late hour. The traffic on Broad Street is a trickle. Two birds haggle for roosting space inside a patch of pine near Luis’s back fence. The breeze against my skin blows cool and dry.

The hood of Luis’s Jeep toasts my fingers. He hasn’t been here more than a few minutes.

I try the kitchen entrance, the one I use when I take a shower. The door’s open so I slip inside.

The kitchen is long and narrow with an even narrower oak table extending down the middle. The table’s surface is covered with pots and pans, stacks of dishes, baskets of onions, peppers, garlic, and cilantro left out to rot. There are three bare bulbs for light. Only one is on, at the opposite end of the room.

Carefully making my way along the table, I hear voices. Distant and muffled. I move slower, softening my steps in the dim light, making sure I don’t kick anything loose, knock stuff off the table. The vegetables smell like garbage.

Under the lighted bare bulb at the far end of the oak table, an open stairway leads down into a cellar. Light filters up a wooden stairway. So do those voices
—one loud and strong, the other not. I check the darkness behind me and take a deep breath.

The door to the shower and dressing room are at the other end of the kitchen. I’ve never been in this part of the restaurant before. Never seen these shelves, loaded with paper towels and toilet tissue. Never seen this old, hand-painted sign, “Maria’s,” leaning against the kitchen wall. Something about the sign
or the name seems vaguely familiar, but it can’t be. Everything over here is new, strange.

A wounded groan slithers up from the basement.

This is what I came for, right? To do battle beside Luis? To find out what the hell’s going on with this Blackie character, settle the problem?

I grab another breath and start down the stairs.

After three steps, I see a prone and disabled Branchtown Blackie. Another four steps and my eyes capture the complete picture: Luis stands on a plastic tarp, his right hand holding his switchblade to Blackie’s throat. Only Luis’s tight grip keeps Blackie’s head off the plastic. Blood and purple bruises color Blackie’s face. If he’s breathing, he doesn’t know it.

Luis’s gaze finds me on the stairs. I expect the tenseness to leave his gaze when he recognizes me, but it doesn’t. His body reminds me of a lion crouched over its captured prey. Staring at me, another adversary, ready to kill again to protect his food.

“What happening?” I say.

Luis blinks and the lion fades from his face. I feel my own level of tenseness subside. Luis is a scary guy to have mad at you. Acting like a wild animal.

“It is not your concern what happens here,” he says. “You must go.”

Luis’s words are a command, not a request. He struggles with the harsh language, his eyes sad while the tone is more like the lion I saw seconds ago.

But my brain has been working subconsciously, and it now tells me why Luis and Blackie are both situated on a plastic tarp. If I stick around, I will see Blackie get carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

“Did this man kill Cruz?” I ask.

“Leave now,” Luis says. “You have no business here.”

“What are they after, Luis? Tell me and I’ll leave. What do they want from you?”

Luis drops Blackie’s collar. The man’s head bounces once off the tarp-covered cement floor like a juicy apple.

My lips part in surprise as the tip of Luis’s switchblade turns slowly from Branchtown Blackie to point directly at me.

“Leave now, Austin Carr. Leave now or you will be rolled up in plastic and buried with this
pachuko
.”

Guess Luis has had enough of my questions.

Maybe he’ll tell me about all this later. Or not. Maybe Luis is actually doing me a big favor by not telling me. Do I really want to be a witness to Blackie being murdered, wrapped up and thrown away like a bad enchilada? I don’t think so.

I head back up the stairs.

Sweet Jesus. But I’m on his side. And Luis threatens me?

And what the heck’s a
pachuko
?

TWENTY-SEVEN

Back in Kelly’s condo, I’m ruminating over Luis’s threat to kill me. This from the
hombre
I thought was my pal, the man I share life’s little secrets with? I distinctly heard him say he would wrap me up like a chicken burrito, bury me with the
pachuko
.

I’m wondering if
pachuko
could mean a guy who wears black. Or who wears a pencil thin mustache. Probably not. Or maybe—and this is just a hunch—maybe a
pachuko
is an asshole who acts tough.

Dressing for work, I consider what’s next. That’s the scary question, isn’t it? What the heck could possibly come along now and top the long list of crap already happening to me? I know it’s a jinx to
even pose the question, but damn, I have to wonder. I mean it’s a question a man has to ask himself when the doo-doo stops falling on his head long enough for contemplation.

What the hell did I do to deserve all this?

Ah, that’s a baby’s question. Bad stuff happens to people every damn day. Really bad stuff. Look at Gerry. One day he’s fine, the next a cancer diagnosis. The question isn’t why me, it’s why not me? Do I imagine I’m so special that bad luck can’t befall me?

You know what. That’s not the real question either. Nope. The real question is, if a way out has presented itself, why haven’t I chosen that path? Why won’t I do what has to be done?

Fifty-eight thousand dollars would disassemble the really bad part of my previously listed complaints. And once I reacquired a face-to-face relationship with Beth and Ryan, I could deal with Rags, Psycho, and all the St. Louis hospital bonds of this world by finding another job.

I understand Kelly’s desire for Gerry’s money will require crime. It’s a major drawback to the design. If Gerry’s kids are only half smart, they’ll check pop’s statements after he dies and find out about any and all large transfers. Once they dig up the paperwork on my little swap and switch, and once they figure out who Kelly Rockwell is, I become a forger who belongs in jail, or at least Kelly’s criminal accomplice.

That NJ State internet site showed Gerry’s estate probably tops twenty million. Would his kids really miss two million in bonds? Did they even know about the stuff in Gerry’s safe?

Outside, walking toward my camper, I consider the moxie it took for Gerry to accumulate that kind of net worth. Think Gerry was scared of a little crime now and then?
Doing the old white collar shuffle when he had to? Makes me wonder what kind of illegal crap he was into.

On my way to meet Kelly that afternoon, the late September storm turns Seasid
e County, New Jersey into a gloomy and rainy landscape. Thirty-year-old elms and roadside plantings of fifteen-foot rhododendrons don’t improve my navigation skills either. Heck, I can hardly see the road, let alone 299 West Ridge Avenue.

Truth is, I should be able to find the place by sticking my nose out the window and breathing deeply. Stockbrokers are experienced at smelling fear, and since the place I’m looking for is a hospice, a care center for the terminally ill, the stench of dread should be formidable.

I’m here to see my monster, hopefully acquire his signature on some transfer papers.

“Looks bad, doesn’t he?”

Kelly understates Gerry’s ghastly appearance. Bad is way too kind. The poor guy is a freaking cadaver. Pasty gray skin, hair gone, sticky yellow goo oozing from his nose and eyes. Tubes in every orifice.

The room doesn’t help. The smelly flowers. Drawings and photographs of clouds. Indian spirit signs and religious symbols on the yellow walls. Everything pale and eternal.

“I don’t think he’s capable of signing those forms,” Kelly says.

The woman is sharp. “
Yes, unconscious is hard to overcome. You want to sign for him or should I?”

“You’d do that?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I don’t know. I figured you’d want me to do the signing part. So you could claim you thought the signature was real.”

“Nobody’s going to believe I wasn’t part of the scheme, Kelly. There are too many witnesses to our…friendship. Plus there’ll be the fifty-eight grand I came up with on such short notice.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“The plan is, don’t get caught,” I say. “You’re going to Mexico, right?”

“
Si, senor
.”

“Then there are things you’ll need to do when you get there. I’ll explain and write them down later if you like. But basically you’ll be covering your tracks, making it harder
—hopefully impossible—for Gerry’s kids to find you and get the money back.”

“But what about you?”

“I won’t have anything those kids want. They won’t come after me unless you’re involved, unless there’s a way they can get Gerry’s missing money. I’m broke.”

“You don’t have to be,” she says.