Lights Out!--A heist thriller involving the Mafia (2 page)

He energetically tried to please, hoping for an audible sign from her that he'd succeeded. He heard a muted ‘Oooh' just before he climaxed with a loud ‘Aaah!' He rolled off and asked if it was good for her.

‘Sure,' she said, sitting on a throw pillow to avoid staining the chair's fabric. Carlton took a matching chair across from her. She reached out with a leg and used her stubby, red-tipped toes to play with his flaccid penis.

‘That was wonderful,' he said, almost thanking her but stopping himself. Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say.

She disappeared into the bathroom. He slipped on his briefs and shirt. Smythe was tall, skinny and pale, and uncomfortable sitting around naked. She returned with a marijuana cigarette she'd rolled in the bathroom, lit it, and handed it to him. He drew deeply, bringing on a coughing spasm. ‘I don't do that much,' he explained, handing it back.

She laughed and finished the joint as they talked, she about her future career in opera, he about his ambitions to become an electrical engineer with a large company.

An hour later, he said, ‘I'd better be going. I have an exam in the morning.'

She walked him to the door. ‘Sure you don't want to do it again?' she asked.

‘No, I don't think so. I mean, I'd love to but— I didn't use anything.'

‘Huh?'

‘I didn't use any protection. I hope—'

‘Don't worry about it,' she said. ‘It's my safe time.'

The waiter asked Walter Wiggins and Smythe for their orders.

‘We'll both have warm chicken salad, and iced tea,' Wiggins said. The waiter walked away. ‘Let me continue to be blunt,' Wiggins said to Smythe at their table in the exclusive club. ‘Frankly – and I always believe in being frank – you're not the sort of husband I envisioned for Cynthia.'

‘I'm really sorry that this has happened, sir,' Smythe said. ‘It was an accident. Cynthia thought that she was in the safe period of her month and—'

‘Cynthia wouldn't know her safe period from Christmas Day. She's talented – I'm sure you know that – but she lacks common sense. She gets that from her mother's side. Now, you strike me as a decent sort of chap. At least you've come forward like a man and taken responsibility.' He paused to chew his cheek. ‘Smythe? English?'

‘What? Oh, English and German. My father is—'

‘Better than Lubinski or Luciano.'

‘I never intended for Cynthia to get pregnant, Mr Wiggins.'

‘Who the hell ever does? Look, I pride myself on being a realist. OK, you've knocked up my daughter and the two of you will get married. At least the kid will be legitimate.'

Smythe winced. ‘Knocked up' seemed unnecessarily harsh.

‘But I'll be damned if I'll stand by while my only daughter ends up in some tract house with a bunch of bawling babies crawling around.'

They were interrupted by the arrival of lunch. Smythe didn't like his chicken salad warm but knew better than to have ordered something else. All he wanted was to get through the meal, race outside, and breathe fresh air again. His future father-in-law was a suffocating presence, an octopus engulfing Smythe in its mass, cutting off breathing, making him sweat, and causing a rash to break out on his chest and back that he didn't dare scratch.

‘Go ahead, eat,' Wiggins commanded. ‘As I was saying, I want only the best for my little girl.'

Smythe thought of her playing with him with her toes: ‘Deep and hard. Make me forget!'

If only forgetting were that easy.

‘You strike me, Smythe, as someone who likes to do things,' Wiggins said between forkfuls of salad.

Smythe looked at him quizzically.

‘That's not good,' Wiggins proclaimed, bringing his hand down on the table for emphasis.

‘It's not?'

‘No, it's not. The world is full of people like you who spend their lives
doing
things.'

‘What, ah – what sort of things, Mr Wiggins?'

‘It doesn't matter what they do. The point is that you'll never get anywhere
doing
things.' He lowered his voice and came forward. ‘The way to get ahead is to be in a position to tell those people who do things
what
to do.' His expression demanded agreement.

‘I think I see what you mean,' Smythe said.

‘I'll give you an example. You plan to be an engineer. OK, we need engineers. But what I want for my future son-in-law is to be in a position to tell other engineers what to do. The big picture, Carlton. Bottom-line.'

‘That makes sense to me,' said Carlton, sipping his iced tea.

‘And I won't settle for anything less for my little girl.'

Smythe nodded.

‘We'll start with your clothes.'

Smythe looked down at his shirtfront. He'd worn his best suit to this command lunch, a light gray one that had recently been cleaned and pressed. His shirt was white – both of his dress shirts were white – and he'd chosen an aqua tie that he thought went nicely with the suit.

‘That thing you have in your shirt pocket,' Wiggins said.

Smythe again glanced down.

‘That plastic thing with those pens and … what is that, a slide rule? I'll be honest with you, Smythe. No offense, but it looks stupid.'

‘I'm not offended, Mr Wiggins.'

Let me out of here.

‘I'll take you to Trend Custom Tailors. Tommy Battista's a friend. We'll get you outfitted like the leader I know you'll become.'

‘That's very generous of you, sir.'

‘As I said, I want only the best for my little girl. Finished? I have a board meeting to get to.'

Wiggins's limo stood running outside the club. He offered to drop Smythe anywhere he wished, but Carlton made an excuse to decline the ride.

‘I'm glad we had this man-to-man talk, Smythe. Mrs Wiggins has already got things moving for the wedding and reception. Any questions?'

‘No, sir, no questions.'

‘Good.' He gripped Smythe's right hand in his and brought his other hand down hard on his bony shoulder. ‘Welcome to the family, son.'

Smythe was asleep in his Manhattan hotel room when the lights came back on. He awoke, sat up and stared at the TV screen where two naked women were coiled around each other. He glanced at the clock radio. The blackout had lasted less than an hour. He called Air Canada again and booked a flight to Toronto, leaving LaGuardia at eleven the following morning. After watching the movie for a few minutes, he turned off the set and lights, and pulled the covers up around him. Memories of his entrance into the Wiggins family, and his thirty-year marriage to the failed opera singer, had been too exhausting to think of anything but sleep.

S
mythe had made it home in time for the party following the blackout.

Now, almost a year later, he'd barely gotten back to Toronto for yet another of Cynthia's soirees. This time, a blackout hadn't been the stumbling block.

‘Cynthia was so concerned that you wouldn't be back in time for the party,' Cynthia's mother said as guests left the dinner table and repaired to a drawing room for coffee, dessert, and after-dinner drinks. Mrs Wiggins was now a widow, her husband Walter having choked to death on a piece of warm chicken salad at the National Club.

‘I wasn't sure I'd make it,' Carlton said. ‘My flight from Buenos Aires was delayed because of the weather.'

‘How's the consulting business, Carlton?' a male guest asked.

‘Couldn't be better, Harold. My client in Argentina keeps me hopping, eats up most of my time.'

The truth was that the Argentinean Power Authority had informed him three weeks after his presentation to them that they'd decided to hire someone else.

‘Carlton, darling,' Cynthia said, ‘Mrs Kalich didn't put out sugar for the coffee. Please go tell her we need it, and need it now.'

He excused himself and went to the kitchen where he delivered the message to their housekeeper. He rejoined the guests and was asked again how his consulting business was progressing.

‘Good,' he said. ‘Just fine.'

The man lowered his voice. ‘How are those hot-blooded Argentinean
señoritas
, Carlton?' He punctuated it with a jab to the ribs.

‘Afraid I'm too busy when I'm there for anything like that,' Smythe offered, not entirely convincing.

‘If you say so, buddy,' the man said, walking away after delivering a final, knowing leer.

Smythe's travels were brought up again a few minutes later, this time in Cynthia's mother's presence.

‘So much traveling,' Mrs Wiggins said. ‘Poor Cynthia. She's so often alone and with this big house to run.'

‘Where are you off to next?' Carlton was asked.

‘Back to Argentina in a few days.'

‘I don't see why you had to go all the way to Argentina to find a client,' Mrs Wiggins said. ‘How many trips there has it been? Seven? Eight? Cynthia is dying to go with you. When are you planning to—?'

‘Seven, Mother,' Smythe said through a forced smile. He'd become practiced at forced smiles.

‘There should be plenty of business for you right here in Toronto,' Mrs Wiggins threw in.

Smythe changed the subject to the Toronto Blue Jays' chances that baseball season. Cynthia questioned why anyone would bother watching a baseball game. ‘I've never understood the appeal,' she said, which prompted the mayor to extol the virtues of sporting events, especially how the revenue they generated benefited everyone in the city.

‘Cynthia is one of the primary supporters of COC,' Mrs Wiggins proudly told the mayor.

‘The largest opera company in Canada,' Cynthia amplified.

‘I never miss a performance,' the mayor's wife said.

‘I've attended a few,' said the mayor.

‘Yes,
only
a few,' his wife chided.

And so went the conversation for the rest of that evening – baseball, opera, travels, the United States' perceived arrogance in prohibiting Americans from buying prescription drugs from Canada: ‘They import all sorts of tainted products from China and other third-world countries,' the mayor said, ‘but treat us like a banana republic.'

Everyone agreed.

The guests eventually departed, leaving Carlton, Cynthia and her mother in the house with Mrs Kalich, who set about cleaning up the drawing room. The mother planned to stay the night, as she often did following Cynthia's dinner parties.

‘I'll be out in my office,' Carlton announced.

‘At this hour, Carlton?' Mrs Wiggins said

‘He smokes his vile cigars out there,' Cynthia said.

‘A disgusting habit,' her mother agreed. ‘Walter smoked them. I'm certain they hastened his death.'

Carlton smiled graciously. ‘I just have a few loose ends to tie up,' he said. ‘Another wonderful party, Cynthia.' He kissed her cheek and headed for the kitchen where a door led to their handsomely planted and lighted rear yard. A free-form swimming pool occupied the rear-most portion of the property. Next to it was a two-room pool house. One room was a cabana, fitted out with benches, pegs upon which to hang clothing, and a series of shelves holding beach towels. Smythe had converted the second room into an office. There was a phone, a combination fax/scanner/printer, a laptop computer, a few putty-colored file cabinets, a wall calendar, a cordless telephone, and a small desk whose surface was illuminated by two gooseneck halogen lamps. Heavy gold curtains covered a single window that looked out over the gardens.

He crossed the grounds, entered the pool house, closed and locked the door, and sat. He loosened his tie, came forward with his elbows on the desk, and held his head in his hands. He'd found the evening to be excruciatingly precious and uninteresting, and hoped that Cynthia and the guests hadn't seen him constantly consulting his watch.

He turned on the computer. As he waited for it to boot up, he reached into the lower drawer of one of the file cabinets, slid file folders forward, and grabbed another folder that lay flat beneath the vertical ones. He placed it on the desk, went to the window where he parted the curtains to ensure that no one was heading his way, closed them, and opened the folder. Staring up at him was an eight-by-ten color photograph of a strikingly beautiful woman. Her hair was inky-black, her eyes equally dark – and impressively large. Her blood-red lips were full, her teeth glistening white against flawless burnished skin.

He let out an involuntary groan of pleasure. ‘Gina!'

Accompanying the photograph were handwritten notes in Spanish on scented pastel paper. He understood most of the words, especially ones of endearment:
Adorable, Irresistible, Mi bella amada, Querida, Me desespero cuando estás lejos
.

After a glance at the door, he logged on to AOL and in the address line wrote,
Gina Ellanado
. The message box appeared. He pulled from a desk drawer an English-Spanish dictionary and
The Lover's Dictionary
which translated lovers' words into four languages. He'd come across it while browsing a used book store in New York shortly after meeting her.

Using those resources, he began to compose his message to the woman in the picture:
Eres la chica más guapa del mundo
. It wasn't an overstatement. Gina Ellanado
was
the most beautiful woman in the world, in
his
world. He repeated the phrase from one of her notes to him:
Me desespero cuando estás lejos
. It was true. He was desperate when she was away from him. Tired of translating, he turned to English:
Soon, my darling, we shall be in each others' arms again
. He spelled out his upcoming travel plans to Argentina, and ended with,
I count the seconds until we are together
.

He sent the message, deleted it from the ‘Sent' file, checked to be sure that he'd erased her most recent message from that morning, and signed off. He next brought up a folder labeled ‘Franchise' and opened it. A series of screen pages emerged from the file. Some were filled with notes of a technical nature, the others columns of dollar figures linked to geographical locations. He typed in a few additional thoughts, closed the file, shut down the computer, chose an expensive Cuban cigar from a small leather humidor, carefully lit it so that the flame of the match never actually touched its end, sat back, propped his feet on the desk, and smiled legitimately for the first time that evening.