The Deadly Kiss-Off Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Paul Di Filippo

  E-book published in 2019 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Djamika Smith

  Book design by Kathryn Galloway English

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5384-4097-1

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5384-4096-4

  Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  To Deborah, who inspires noirish thoughts.

  And to my siblings, Cathy, Frank, and Bob, who form a whole mob on their own.

  PROLOGUE

  The fake bills turned up in my wallet the morning after an extended debauch.

  Counting with bleary eyes the contents of my nice Burberry leather bifold (a present from my girl), I immediately spotted the bogus bills, which were of a quality achievable, perhaps, by a couple of nine-year-olds using a process of Silly Putty color transfers. I spat out a few choice phrases, then replayed the previous evening in my head.

  Feeling lonely with my woman away, I had decided to treat myself to a solo night on the town. With over five hundred thousand dollars to my name—not quite as much as I once dreamed of having, but not chicken feed, either—I could afford it.

  To avoid leaving a potentially embarrassing credit card trail that I might have to explain later, I took out a wad of cash from the bank—mostly hundreds. So far, so legit. No fakes likely from that respectable source.

  My first stop after the bank had been my favorite restaurant, Jerusalem & Galilee, a high-tone seafood place. There I disbursed only cash—slightly over three hundred with tip, for some Malpeque oysters, a bottle of Bollinger La Grande Année Brut, and a large trencher of jumbo lump crab cakes—and did not receive any bills back. Likewise for the strip club I visited next, Captains Curvaceous, where the interior decor resembled a Sponge Bob–themed stage set intended to background the Adult Video Awards. So it had to be my next and last stop where I was slipped the bad bills. And it made sense.

  Around 2:00 a.m., after several expensive alcohol-abetted lap dances with two ladies named Perfidia and Celestina had left me feeling moderately degenerate but hormonally unsatisfied, I had been pretty woozy but not ready to call it an evening. So I headed to an exclusive shot house I knew from my days as a louche young lawyer.

  The after-hours place was still there, behind the ordinary facade of a building that might have been a showroom for vinyl replacement windows. I gained entrance with a fifty-dollar solicitation to compensate for not being known to the doorman.

  Inside, I discovered that the establishment had expanded from mere illegal bar service, adding gambling tables, complete with chips and croupiers. I bought a stack, got busy at the roulette wheel, and somehow came out a thousand dollars ahead. I cashed out and hailed a ride home.

  The bad Benjamins had to be part of my winnings.

  The night of the day I discovered my loss, I went back to the blind pig and buttonholed the manager, a slim young white guy with bad skin, dressed in a Gucci tracksuit. The shaved sides of his head contrasted with a shock of blond hair above that would have done credit to a North Korean dictator. About the time I was in prison, he was no doubt mourning the dissolution of the Beastie Boys while doodling heavy-metal insignia during study hall.

  We conducted our conversation in a secluded anteroom, out of the customers’ earshot.

  “I need to see the owner.”

  The kid’s voice was way too high and creaky to deliver the requisite tone of managerial competence and authority. “What for?”

  “Last night, you guys paid me part of my winnings with a couple of fake hundreds.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Oh, yeah? Who says?”

  This sort of stupid, mulish hostility was no way to run a customer-service window.

  “If you had anything between those ears to stop my words from going unimpeded from one side to the other, you’d know I just said it. Now, let me see your boss.”

  “All right, smart-ass, you just wait here.”

  He left and returned with two guys in jeans and hoodies who could have been cast as Russian weightlifters from some future cyborg Olympics. They quickly bookended me, marched me into a back office notable for its drab utility, and took up positions on either side of the closed door.

  Behind a beat-up gray-green Steelcase desk adorned with a condensation-flecked Big Gulp cup sat a figure I recognized: Vincent “Weeping Ear” Santo.

  Santo, who looked like a dissolute, boozy Friar Tuck in a frowsy off-the-rack suit, was the acknowledged head mobster of our fair city. Hailed before judges and juries at least a score of times during his career, he had always managed to beat all charges—often thanks to the convenient disappearance or amnesia or stammering recantation by key witnesses.

  Suddenly, being compensated for my two-hundred-dollar loss did not seem so vitally important to me. But it was too late simply to back out.

  Santo eyed me like a TSA worker who has spotted an ISIS loyalty card in someone’s plastic tray of surrendered possessions. Then he said, “You know who I am?”

  Luckily, I knew that Santo did not enjoy being addressed by his abjured nickname (derived from a childhood ailment that had fostered an attitude of brutal reprisal against all mockers, real or imagined). Nor did he care for “Vincent” or “Vince” or “Vinny.”

  “You’re Vin Santo.”

  “Very knowledgeable. Nice, very nice. And I know who you are. You’re Glen McClinton.”

  That surprised me. “Right. But how …?”

  “How is easy. Your face was plastered everywhere, thanks to your recent little crazy-ass dustup. But you should be asking why.”

  “Why you bothered to even remember my name?”

  “Exactly. So I will tell you. It is because you took down Barnaby Nancarrow, who was getting to be like a thorn, or even a small, dirty, filed-down-toothbrush-handle shiv, in my side, trespassing on many of my trademark ventures.”

  Barnaby Nancarrow was the sleazy real estate guy who had been the target of a scam that three coconspirators and I had run—a deal we dubbed “the Big Get-Even.” We came out of it not with the premium prize we had aimed for, but with some consolation dough of a million apiece—now reduced by taxes and expenses to my current assets.

  “That we did,” I said. “I don’t think he will see a parole board for about twenty years, minimum.”

  Santo canted his large butt to one side, to dig in the pant pocket of the upraised hip. He withdrew a roll of greenbacks that would have sent a lesser man to the chiropractor.

  “You did me a real solid there, Glen, and I am going to show my appreciation. Now, my manager tells me you somehow left here yesterday with some bogus dough. I am truly sorry for that. We try not to burden our good local customers with such trash. The bad paper’s supposed to be reserved strictly for obnoxious hicks from out of town. But nobody here knew your face. So, what was it? Two hundred?”

  I nodded, and Santo peeled off two C-notes.

  “Okay, here’s what you won, fair and square. And just to show my thanks for the Nancarrow thing, here’s a little more.”

 
The lagniappe proved to be an additional hundred Benjamins, counted out with ceremonial panache.

  I took the ten grand very tentatively, showing enough decorum not to recount or inspect it for authenticity before slipping it into my billfold, whose superior Burberry construction somehow accommodated the mass of currency without splitting apart. I managed to keep my voice from quavering excessively.

  “Thank you … very much, Vin. Not necessary, but much appreciated all the same.”

  Santo had repocketed his roll, which seemed hardly diminished. “No problem. I like your moves. You were pretty ballsy barging in here. So anyhow, if you ever come up with any new scheme that you need a hand with, or which I might could maybe bankroll, keep me in mind.”

  “I certainly will, Vin. But I have to tell you now, I am pretty much done with that kind of thing.”

  Santo lifted his Big Gulp and slurped down about a pint before unlipping the large-bore straw.

  “Kid, if I had a blow job for every time I heard that bullshit about going straight, my dick would be worn down to a pushpin.”

  PART ONE

  1

  Eight months after talking to Vin Santo, I finally came to the realization that the mobster had pegged me with complete accuracy. I missed the criminal life.

  Not that I was planning to pursue any illegal schemes—I had too much invested in my current innocent, respectable lifestyle. But I knew myself well enough to recognize the yearning.

  And besides, I was starting to need more money.

  My financial advisor was a guy I knew from my old days as a lawyer, before I got disbarred and sent to prison. Leo Geneva. Worked for a firm called Lightyear Financial Investments. A snappy dresser, he reminded me of a young and skinny Walter Matthau, only more lugubrious. That was fine. I wouldn’t really want a grinning, insouciant playboy handling my money.

  In his office, I got ready to hear some bad news I already suspected.

  Geneva tapped out a little fandango on the keyboard of his laptop, then shifted his gaze from the screen to me, his eyes hound-dog mournful.

  “Glen, just a little over a year ago, you entrusted half a million dollars with me.”

  My partner in the elaborate con that produced this money had been Stan Hasso, a burly lowbrow giant composed of two parts unbridled id, one part unabashed fuck-you, and three parts irreverent self-regard. We had been hoping to get revenge on his former employer and also score five million apiece. But we gratefully accepted a tenth of that, since the deal also included going scot-free despite our many crimes.

  “Yes, this is accurate.”

  “And today, despite a decent return on your investments, you have a little over two hundred and fifty K in your account.”

  I knew where the money had gone. Buying a decent condo in the trendy neighborhood of Dashwell Corners. Moderate living expenses. And investment in the new enterprise of my girlfriend, Nellie Firmino, a small Cape Verdean cyclone of energy, smarts, and beauty, herself a collateral bonus derived from our failed scam.

  Nellie’s business, Tartaruga Verde Importing, exuberantly conceived when we got our windfall, specialized in bringing to this country Cape Verdean gourmet items. Liftoff, still in progress, had sucked up a lot of funds.

  I said, “I can’t quit bankrolling Nellie, Leo. I want to see her succeed. And after what she went through with Stan and me, half that money is rightfully hers.”

  “I totally agree. All I’m saying is that you are going to need to replenish the coffers somehow or else adopt a less extravagant lifestyle.”

  “I know. But I don’t exactly have a lot of prospects lined up. Not much call for a defrocked lawyer who also recently made headlines in a shady deal that brought down a corrupt but respected citizen.”

  What I didn’t mention to Leo Geneva was that my mind just wasn’t inclined toward legitimate pursuits. I found myself yearning for some larger-than-life excitement. Maybe some of my feelings had to do with approaching forty. But the larcenous impulses that had sent me to prison in the first place, rekindled by Stan and his Big Get-Even plans, had not been extinguished, but only banked as smoldering embers. I yearned for some kind of nose-thumbing antisocial activity. And if it happened to be a scheme that might net me a big profit, so much the better.

  Geneva chewed meditatively on a pencil, presumably a relic of his trade from predigital days. “Maybe you could go with Nellie to Cape Verde. Help her out. Use your brains, get things moving faster, cut down on the burn rate.”

  I had wanted to do some traveling with Nellie, for both pleasure and business, but the restrictive terms of my parole still had some months to run.

  I nodded. “Let me see what I can do about that.”

  But I quickly found, on a nonscheduled visit, that my parole officer, Anton Paget—also Stan’s PO—wasn’t inclined to cut either of us any slack. Not an unreasonable position, considering all the lies we had told him to promote our scam.

  “McClinton,” said the squat, hard-nosed arbiter of my freedom, his favorite gaudy Hawaiian shirt belying his flinty soul, “you and Hasso severely disillusioned me. I thought I knew all the bat-shit ways that a pair of criminal morons could fuck me and themselves over. But you two mooks invented at least half a dozen new ones.”

  “You always advised me not to settle for less than I’m capable of, Anton.”

  He regarded me stonily for a moment, then said, “So we just had diametrically opposed ideas for the proper vector of your ambitions—that’s what you’re telling me?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Glen, please get your ass the hell out of my office right now, and don’t ever again, during the rest of your parole, give me occasion to see your face on the wrong side of the mug-shot camera. You can travel all you want in a few months, when you depart my tender ministrations.”

  “Will do.”

  As I turned to leave, Paget said, “You still hanging out with your lunkhead-in-crime?”

  That question made me sad. I had wanted to keep up my dodgy friendship with Stan Hasso—and, of course, with his Junoesque squeeze, Sandralene. Both of them still had a large claim on my affections and trust. And the feelings seemed mutual.

  But although they had hung around companionably for a little while after we all returned to the city from the rural locale of our crimes, eventually the bonds of our shared exploits began to fade. We discovered we actually had little in common that would keep us together—at least, under current circumstances.

  I pondered memories of one of my last get-togethers with Stan.

  That night, the big galoot had seemed unwontedly antsy and ill-at-ease in his own skin, unable to turn his hand to anything he cared about—an attitude utterly foreign to the cocksure, competent guy I had known. With his revenge accomplished and cash in his pockets, he should have been on top of the world. But his long life of crime—he had worked as an arsonist for hire, along with many other illicit sidelines—had not remotely prepared him for his newfound semirespectability.

  “Glen, amigo,” he told me that night after much boutique bourbon in a hipster bar, “this motherfucking civic-righteousness gig is going to kill me. I feel all the time like fucking Han Solo frozen in that black plastic shit.”

  “You’ll settle into it, Stan. It’ll seem like second nature before long.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because that’s exactly the goddamn outcome I’m dreading.”

  We had parted with a mutual promise to stay in touch. But over half a year had flitted by with no further get-togethers. I couldn’t even be sure where Stan and Sandy were living these days, and that made me feel mournful and guilty.

  But I put those emotions aside to focus on the relationship I was still building with Nellie. She came first. I was chafing at not being able to go with her on the upcoming journey to her ancestral islands on another buying mission. (It was during one suc
h separation that I’d had my meeting with Vin Santo.) We always parted with genuine sadness, temporarily alleviated by toe-curling predeparture sex.

  This time was no different. I saw Nellie off at the airport that Saturday in May around 10:00 a.m. and started the drive home. Just to kill time, I took an alternate route through the city.

  At a red light, my eye fell on a flea market–cum–rummage sale set up in the vast weedy parking lot of a defunct strip mall. On a whim, I pulled over, parked, and ambled into the sprawl of booths and fast-food trucks.

  And that’s how I found Stan again.

  2

  Most of the grim sellers at the flea market looked about two steps away from bankruptcy, eviction, suicide, or selling a spare kidney. Plainly, the economic growth enjoyed by so many in this city, state, and nation had not trickled down to their level. Their rickety folding tables boasted a raggle-taggle miscellany of domestic tchotchkes, oily used-car parts, lawn ornaments, distressed vinyl records by performers no one had ever heard of, barely worn Kmart clothing, chipped coffee mugs with office-humor mottoes, cheap socks bundled three pairs for five dollars, and the like. Here and there, jewelers and potters and metalsmiths appeared to be hawking the very creations that had gotten them expelled from their various amateur handicraft associations. And the clientele looked to be of much the same socioeconomic stratum as the vendors.

  Nonetheless, a certain Dickensian vibe of life enduring—of suffering partly alleviated by its being shared, and a determination to clutch vigorously at any lifeline that chance might provide—prevailed among the crowd, and I found myself somehow spiritually uplifted. The life on display here brought my own petty discontentments into perspective.

  It was almost lunchtime. I bought a chili dog and a lemonade from a cart—they were surprisingly fresh and tasty—and continued strolling along the canopied aisles.

  Ahead loomed a larger-than-average display of better-than--average stuff: a solid wooden table covered with an attractive color-ful cloth, atop which were carefully arranged ranks of new designer handbags: Coach, Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Givenchy, Prada, Marc Jacobs. Befitting their classy allure, the table was surrounded by customers admiring the wares and obscuring the vendor.