“Let’s just say I inherited it. Keep it.”
“I told you to listen carefully,” he was up, around the desk, standing over me. “Apparently, you didn’t hear me,” Gandolfo crumpled the photo like last week’s grocery list and threw it in my lap. “I don’t care if you know where she is. If you thought you were gonna get any money outta me or my people, you were wrong. Grandstand plays like yours only work in the movies. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that believing in the movies can be detrimental to your health?”
“No and we never discussed cooking soup either.”
“Huh?”
“Forget it.” I waved carelessly at nothing in particular.
“I suggest you do the same. Forget why you dragged me down here and forget that we ever met. Forget-”
“Coffees, bosth,” the lisping Adonis barged in.
“Mr. Klein won’t be staying for his, Vinny.”
I stood to go. I was being dismissed. Vinny remained frozen, coffee in hand, just inside the door. He gave new meaning to the term “dumb waiter.”
As I got just past Vinny, Gandolfo called for me. I turned around.
“I know who you are, Mr. Klein. I know about you and that cop, that no good donkey prick, MacClough. I hope you’re not here doing his bidding.”
“Johnny doesn’t know I’m here,” I couldn’t hold down my contempt. “He’d probably kick my ass if he did.”
“That’s good. I’d hate to think that potato-eating motherfucker sent you here to stir things up, to cause a little anarchy,” Gandolfo rubbed his hair with his palms. “I had a professor that used to say it was easier to shout anarchy than to create it. Do we understand one another, Mr. Klein?”
“We do.” I closed the door behind me.
Outside the door I smoothed the crumpled snapshot and put it back in my pocket. Mary was back at her desk typing; her face had resumed its normal gargoyle pose. Larry stepped toward me but I shooed him away and headed for the bathroom. Pissing, like love, is better the second time around. Before I could get most of me out of the bathroom, Larry descended. He locked my left arm in his bony right and guided me into an adjoining office.
I took it to be a conference room. There were twelve mahogany and camel leather chairs with a matching table slightly shorter than most par fives, more audio and video equipment than at a third world television station, a small bar, a refrigerator and a cappuccino machine. It was sort of a yuppie version of heaven. Larry key-locked the door and slunk to the far end of the room like a cat prancing on bayonets. I just sat down. My bullshit threshold had long since been passed.
Larry produced a fairly stuffed envelope from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, sneered at it, squeezed it like a cantalope and slid it down the table at me.
“You’ll make a hell of a shuffleboard player,” I picked up the package. “What is it?”
“An en-”
“This isn’t a sitcom, Larry, so spare me the straight lines. What’s in the envelope?”
“Gelt, cash money,” he yawned as he was wont to do.
“I’m a writer not a dentist. Don’t make me pull teeth. Who from and who for?”
“He says you’ll understand. You’ll know who it’s for.”
“Gandolfo says?” I twisted my eyebrows into a question mark.
“Gandolfo says,” lean Larry confirmed. “Open it up.”
I did. The thousand dollar bills were so crisp and fresh that it was nearly impossible to separate them.
“There’s one hundred of ’em,” the lawyer offered matter-of-factly. “I’ve been instructed to inform you that five of those bills are yours as a tip for delivering the remainder to the proper party and that any debts owed by you to me have been taken care of, wiped clean.”
“Nice tip,” I palmed five bills off the top and put the rest back in the envelope. “Problem is, I’m still a little unclear who the cash is for.”
“I’ve not been given any details on that matter,” Feld spoke to me in his courtroom voice.
“But if you had to make a guess. .” I trailed off.
“I’m not a guessing man, Dylan.”
“But if you were?”
“I’d say there are some women some men never get over no matter how much hurt passes between them.”
“Gandolfo just got done calling her a cunt and now you’re telling me he wants me to fork over ninety-five G’s to her.”
“Mr. Gandolfo is a very complex man, Dylan,” Larry’s courtroom manner returned. “Sometimes it is in his best interests to say certain things and have me say others. I’m certain you understand.” Feld looked at his Piaget like a buffoonish actor.
“I get the feeling class is out,” I caught his drift.
“Yes, well. . I do have other appointments. Oh, I almost forgot,” the lawyer snapped his fingers, “Mary has a file for you. It contains that information on the Barnum woman. Interesting stuff. She was pretty close to needing my services. You’ll see. And please be careful with it. The file contains, shall we say, certain documents that should have been impossible to obtain.”
“I understand,” I put my right hand out for Larry to shake. “I owe you one.”
“No, Dylan. You don’t owe me a thing,” he shook my hand more firmly than I can ever remember his doing previously.
“One more thing, Larry. What if the envelope turns out to be undeliverable?”
“Apparently, you don’t understand,” Cassius screwed his face up. “There’s no options here. You deliver that envelope one way or another. Good-bye, Dylan.”
The typing gargoyle barely noted my presence when handing me the Barnum file. I didn’t inspect the package but rather just stood there a moment observing the sour woman at work.
“Will there be anything else, Mr. Klein?” she asked, still refusing to look up. Actually it was more a dismissal than a question.
“Yes, Mary, there is. Why do you hate me?” A hundred thou in cash in your pocket makes such queries seem perfectly natural.
She ceased typing and looked directly in my eyes. “Hate is such an ugly word. I prefer contempt. That’s better. Yes, much better. It’s appropriately legalistic.” She was almost gleeful.
“Contempt, then.”
“Because you’ve known him your whole life,” she pointed at an enlargement of the cover of the Post showing Larry triumphantly holding forth on some courtroom steps. Above his picture the headline read: ‘Babysitter Strangler Slapped On Wrist.’ “You know what he is.”
“Better than most,” I confessed to the truth.
“Then you have your answer,” she stated as if she were Moses delivering the commandments.
“What about you, Mary?”
“Even whores judge people, Mr. Klein,” she winked. “But don’t fret, I have enough contempt for the two of us.”
“He pays you well. I imagine you need the money. I need the kind of information he’s good at getting. What’s wrong with needing?” I wondered weakly.
“Sometimes, need’s not a good enough excuse,” the secretary shook her head sadly. “Besides, we don’t really need him. His clients, they need him. We choose him, Mr. Klein.”
I walked to the elevator, envelope in pocket, file in hand. I didn’t argue with Mary. What good is it to argue with the truth?
Hickory Cure
Vinny, Don Juan’s bodyguard cum coffee boy, was waiting impatiently by the lift doors, pressing the buttons like a hungry rat in Skinner’s lab, looking to the arrows for a cue. My brain was too busy treading water to care much. I noticed him and I didn’t. If he noticed me, Vinny didn’t show it. Labs rats are like that. I decided the walk down would do me good.
When did I ever know what was good for me? The steps made my knees sore and my sore knees reminded me that healing ribs prefer elevators. Hell, my aches and pains were the up side of my descent of Everest. There are protozoa streetwise enough not to carry a tenth of a million bucks down deserted stairwells. Hello! I could’ve been rolled easier than a bagel and my body wouldn’t’ve been discovered until the next fire drill.
So, I wasn’t thinking straight. I was too preoccupied by today’s episode of the Dante and Larry Show to think straight. Those two had blown enough smoke up my ass to hickory cure my colon. If Gandolfo truly didn’t care about Azrael, why bother to meet me at all? Not coming would have made the point with more elegance than threats and denials. And if he did care, again, why meet me? Why give me an audience of lies and then turn me over to Larry for the big payoff? Why not let Larry do the bidding from the get-go? Why dress it up with whistles and bells and cheap theatrics?