Holy Rollers (45 page)

Through the music from his ear buds, Dick heard a groan. When he turned, ready to perform CPR, the pudgy man was heaving himself off the stationary bike, trying his best to move on jelly-like legs. He bounced off a pillar and another bike before he made it to the locker room door.

Dick unhappily noted he hadn’t wiped down the equipment.

His eyes went back to the TV moments before Merribaugh’s face disappeared…and then he turned off the treadmill.

If that guy had a beard and mustache…
He looked back to the door of the locker room, catching a glimpse of a wide, sweaty posterior before it vanished around the corner.

The nightly news would again use that photo of Merribaugh just twenty-four hours later. Only this time the caption would read: V
IRGINIA
F
UGITIVE
C
APTURED
IN I
OWA.

$ $ $

“Wait a minute,” said Constance, who was sitting in her Harlem living room and holding a mug of hot coffee inches from her lips, because if she’d really heard what she thought she’d heard, she knew she’d spit the coffee all over her couch. “Did you just offer me a job?”

Special Agent Patrick Waverly brushed a forelock off his brow. “I’ve seen you in action, and you’re good. Not as good as me, but good.”

“You realize I’m a criminal, right?”

“Yep. Ran your record, saw you in action…Everything looked pretty criminal to me.”

She set the coffee cup down and sized him up. “So what’s the job pay?”

“Don’t you want to know what the Bureau wants you to do?”

Constance Price folded her arms. “I
asked
, what’s the job pay?”

Waverly laughed. “I love you criminals. Sometimes you’re so
honest
.”

$ $ $

Paul Farraday walked out of the McDonald’s on Route 46 in Little Ferry, New Jersey. His bag contained a Big Mac and large order of fries; he’d ditched the large soda in the trash can out front because he didn’t want to gain weight.

A few miles down the road he pulled the car he’d borrowed without permission into the lot of a strip mall and parked. Then, still carrying the McDonald’s bag, he walked a few hundred feet down the road.

He looked across Route 46 toward Teterboro Airport and thought,
Yeah
.

Farraday was a firm believer in developing one’s skills. That was how he’d become a legendary driver…a deft car thief…a great chef…a memorable alcoholic…

And now he was ready for a new challenge.

He took a deep breath of Route 46 exhaust, watched a small plane launch into the air, and smiled.

“Yeah.”

$ $ $

“Five-point-one, David!”

She’d phoned ahead to tell him she had great news, and she did. She’d managed to squeeze an extra hundred thousand dollars out of a buyer above the five million they’d
almost
accepted for his beach-adjacent home in Southampton. But Lisa Cochrane had wanted to personally deliver that news to David R. Carlyle IV, which was how she and Mary Beth found themselves in his Midtown Manhattan office a few hours later.

“That’s wonderful news,” said David. He stared out the window overlooking Sixth Avenue. “Except…”

“Except?” Lisa raised one eyebrow. She liked the word “accept.” The word he had used? Not so much.

He looked everywhere but at her. “Except now I’m not so sure I want to sell.”

Lisa had wanted Mary Beth to witness the triumphant moment when David R. Carlyle IV clapped his hands with joy at a five-point-one-million-dollar offer on his financial albatross. Not this.

But her girlfriend made her own entertainment.

Mary Beth walked up to him, grabbed his collar, and said, “I will kill you with my bare hands if you don’t take the deal.”

“Oh, my!” David took a step back.

And then he thought,
Five million, one hundred thousand dollars isn’t a bad deal. Not bad at all…

It was an unorthodox negotiating strategy, but it worked. Better yet, he still wanted to write some real estate porn.

Not a bad afternoon.

$ $ $

Leonard Platt’s fifteen thousand dollars—correction: fifteen thousand
forty
dollars!—would be just enough to get him through seventeen weeks, according to calculations he’d done over and over since the night most of the seven million dollars flew into the darkness and the pockets of the devout.

One-third of a year. Better than the average termination settlement—
much
better than the zero dollars he’d received from the Cathedral—so maybe, he thought, he shouldn’t dwell on it.

And if he banked it, well…he’d almost have enough cash to bankroll a future job one day. He could be the Lisa!

Then Leonard thought,
Bankroll a job? I’ve become one of them!

When the thought first crossed his mind he was horrified. For maybe five seconds. Then he was giddy for the rest of the night.

$ $ $

“I ever tell you about Devin Hannerty?” Grant asked one night.

Chase rolled over to face him, although he was tempted to feign sleep. “The one who owns the gay clubs, right?”

“That’s the guy.”

“And he treated you like shit when you moved to New York, so now you hate him, right?”

“That’s the guy.”

Chase yawned. “Yeah, you told me about him. So?”

“Heard today he’s hiring.”

Chase rolled away. “That’s nice.”

Grant pretended not to notice. “
Really
hiring. Word on the street is he fired almost his entire staff. The only ones left are incompetent ass-kissers.”

Chase rolled back to face him. “Are you talking…a job?”

“Maybe. If we can find the right bait. Devin likes ’em young.” Now it was Grant’s turn to roll away.

They lay in the darkness for a few minutes.

Chase cracked first.

“Jared?”

Grant rolled back until their noses touched. “Maybe.”

“I’ll call him right now.” Chase wasn’t surprised by Grant’s exaggerated sigh in the darkness as he grabbed his phone from the charger and dialed, but he
was
surprised when Jared answered at that hour. And without pounding dance music in the background, at that.

“Hi, Chase!”

“Uh…Hi. Listen, you got a half hour tomorrow to talk about some work we might have?”

“Sorry, I can’t.”

Chase turned on his Barry White voice. “Are you sure you don’t want to work with me?” That earned him a physical slap from Grant, and a verbal one from Jared.

“I’m in Washington now.”

Chase scratched his head. “Washington state? Or Washington, DC?”

“DC, of course!” Jared squealed. “Dan and I are boyfriends now! Isn’t that—?”

Chase clicked off the phone and said, “Jared can’t do the job.”

Grant, who’d heard Jared’s side of the conversation, laughed himself to sleep.

Rob Byrnes is the author of five novels, including the 2006 Lambda Literary Award–winning
When the Stars Come Out
and 2009 Lammy finalist
Straight Lies.
His short stories have also appeared in several anthologies, including
Men of the Mean Streets
(Bold Strokes Books, 2011).

A native of upstate New York, Byrnes was born and raised in Rochester and graduated from Union College in Schenectady before moving to Manhattan. He now resides in West New York, New Jersey, with his partner, Brady Allen.

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