The Deadly Kiss-Off Page 10

  Nellie gave an excited squeal. “Fixe! We will make everything like a big fésta all the time!”

  While Nellie was hugging Stan all over again, he managed to give me a look that said, The fun’s just starting, kid!

  19

  In my lawyer days, I had gotten so I could spot an MBA with some certainty from across a crowded shark tank. My skills were so refined that I could almost name the alma mater of any venture capitalist my work brought me into contact with. But tonight over our business dinner, I learned that although I had known them cursorily for some time, my radar had failed to discriminate properly in the case of Chris Tabak and Jess Inkley. Or maybe I was just out of practice. To my eye, the trim and preppy Tabak looked totally East Coast, and I had always pegged him as a graduate of the Columbia Business School. Staid and dull Inkley, on the other hand, had about him a corn-fed air not so far removed from Caleb’s down-home manner, and I had subconsciously assigned him to the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. In fact, their alma maters were exactly reversed, proving that you can’t judge a crook by his sheepskin.

  But whatever their deceptively dissonant matriculations, the two men and their agency, Burning Chrome Ventures, had a reputation as smart, savvy, relatively aboveboard private-equity guys. Sure, they had come a cropper with Lake Superior Bijoux and thus deprived Stan of his nest egg, but there had been nothing sketchy about the deal. At the same time, like all such guys, they liked to skate on the edge of convention, respectability, and government-approved best practices, in search of the biggest payback before any crew of like-minded rivals could swarm in. So Stan and I had high hopes that they could point us to a buyer for the fake Intel chips—some high-tech start-up looking to cut corners, who maybe wouldn’t peer too closely at the provenance of the goods.

  We had decided to leave Nellie and Sandralene home while meeting with the Burning Chrome duo. It wasn’t that we intended to keep it a permanent secret from the women, or even that we necessarily assumed they would frown on our venture. We just figured that the fewer complications at this stage, the better.

  Before we sallied out to supper that night, I had asked Stan a question that was bugging me.

  “Do these counterfeit chips actually work?”

  “Well, the video game guys who were snapping them up didn’t have any complaints. But I don’t think they actually offered, like, any warranties that lasted much longer than a round of Monster Hunter Two.”

  “So we could be held accountable if these chips had a high failure rate?”

  “Aw, come on, Glen boy, put that scheming lawyer brain of yours to use. Exactly how is some schnook who knew from the get-go he was buying and reselling fakes gonna come after us? What would they say if they even got us in court? ‘Your Honor, these for-shit rip-offs I bought at a crazy discount didn’t hold up to the standards of the real things I shoulda purchased if I was an honest businessman’? No, once we dump these fakes, we are golden. No refunds.”

  “Well, then, I guess, if you say so …”

  “I say goddamn so.”

  I had picked a restaurant where I once dined pleasurably with Tabak and Inkley years ago: the Auroch and Dodo, whose specialty was exotic meats. Surprisingly, the place enjoyed a good reputation among the hipsters and the coolhunters and the socially enlightened since all their meat was sourced from fair-trade ranches in Africa and South America and impoverished parts of the USA that practiced sustainable farming.

  The server had given us menus, set us up with drinks, and told us the specials.

  “The Everglades Pizza is a favorite. Alligator, python, and frogs’ legs.”

  Stan said, “Are you fucking shitting me?”

  The server, an impeccably turned-out young fellow with a man bun and a way of talking that indicated his favorite director was Wes Anderson, remained unperturbed. “I can bring you a sample.”

  “No way. What’re you guys having?”

  “The capybara was delicious last time I was here,” said Tabak.

  “Okay, put me down for that.”

  We had appetizers that involved ground camel meat on focaccia and chatted about nonbusiness topics for a while. Tabak and Inkley politely made no reference to my past transgressions and jail time. Our entrées arrived, and Stan took a tentative bite. Finding it to his liking, he chowed down enthusiastically on the slabs of pale meat in gravy. I had made the comparatively safe selection of beshbarmak—horse, with noodles and onions.

  We finally got around to the real matter of the evening.

  “Chris, Jess, we need your advice,” I said. “And please, we expect you to bill us for this consultation.” I explained how we hoped to sell the Intel units that had recently come into our possession, while omitting any discussion of their genuineness.

  The two men put their heads together figuratively, employing the semitelepathic communications of longtime business partners. “Do you think—?” “No, that’s not quite right.” “Maybe …?” “What about—?” “Nope, can’t see it.”

  Finally, they had to admit to drawing a blank.

  “C’mon,” Stan urged impatiently, “there must be some Bill Gates type just getting started in his toolshed who needs what we got. They won’t go cheap, but if you guys are financing him, he could maybe swing the deal.”

  Tabak looked at Inkley. “What do you think of Luckman?”

  “It’s the only real possibility, even though it’s a slim one.”

  Stan got excited. “Luckman! I dig the name already. What’s his story?”

  “Well, he’s got an invention. And that’s about it. No business plan really, no investor interest. We thought he was too risky for us. But the invention just might be marketable. And from what I understand, each unit would use one or more processors. If he was ever going to launch his line, he’d need those chips of yours.”

  I said, “But he’s got no current backing? Is he independently rich?”

  Inkley chuckled. “Not so’s I could see.”

  “Then how could he afford to buy our chips? No, this seems like a dead end.”

  “Hold on. Hold on just a damn minute,” Stan interjected. “We could get in on the ground floor of something here. Maybe we wouldn’t just sell him the chips and book it. Maybe we’d be more like partners with this Luckman.”

  I could see that Stan was falling prey to the same fever that had seduced him into bed with Lake Superior Bijoux. “Stan,” I said, “this is way beyond our original scope.”

  “Glen, my man, you have to know how to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself, and how to grab it. Besides, all we’re gonna do is approach this Luckman cat and see what he’s all about. No commitments unless it looks good, right? What could we lose?”

  “All right, I suppose it’s safe. We’ve got no other avenues.”

  “Give us the contact info on this Luckman bird.”

  Tabak texted me the man’s name, phone, email, and address: Dr. Ronald Luckman, resident in a nearby suburb outside the city.

  We got through coffee and dessert, I paid for everyone, giving Man Bun a decent tip, and we made our goodbyes; then Stan and I were out in my car.

  “I got a real good feeling about this,” Stan practically crowed.

  “You sure you’re not just feeling that plateful of giant rat you just ate?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  Still parked, I googled up a picture of a capybara, with its designation of world’s largest rodent, and showed it to Stan. He studied it intently for a moment, then handed me back my phone. He looked slightly green.

  “Well, I said lots of times I was hungry enough to eat a rat’s ass, so I guess it serves me right.”

  20

  A frustrating week had passed since the dinner with our investment advisors, and Stan and I had not yet contacted Dr. Ronald Luckman. When we called his house and spo
ke to his wife, he was out of town at some professional conference. Then we decided that before hitting up the doc, we should try to feel out Vin Santo, owner of the languishing Intel chips. No sense in putting a lot of work into this scheme if the chips had been sold or if Santo was not interested in working with us. But he, too, proved to be on the road—in Vegas, at what was surely a very different sort of professional conference from Luckman’s.

  Meanwhile, life moved on.

  Caleb Stinchcombe had found his temporary niche in chauffeuring Lura and her dutiful daughter around on innumerable trips to various new doctors to get Lura’s health issues under control. He seemed as happy living in Stan’s digs on his own savings as a clam that had escaped the chowder pot. Lura, meanwhile, was basking in all the attention and happily adapted to life with Uncle Ralph and Suzy Lam. And Stan evinced no jealousy that I could detect.

  When Sandralene wasn’t tied up with her filial errands, she had taken to assisting Nellie with the mechanics of getting Tartaruga Verde Importing up and running at full steam. Sandralene claimed that she couldn’t just sit around our apartment all day but had to feel useful. So Nellie had put her to work on the computer, designing labels for various products. Despite having no experience or training, Sandralene proved to be a quick learner, surprisingly talented in coming up with attractive imagery and layouts once she knew her way around the software. Adorably, she employed both hands when using the mouse.

  “Kon serteza, Sandy is no Caboverdean,” Nellie told me. “But she has the eye and mind of the average customer. And she really wants to help!”

  “That’s good, sweetheart. Maybe you could even take her on your next trip to the islands.”

  Nellie’s look turned serious—an expression that I always thought made her look like a perplexed teenage beauty queen contemplating which pimply boyfriend got to take her to the prom. Not for the first or last time, I marveled at my good fortune.

  “But Sandy and Stan do not have a lot of money, Glen. And what they do have, Stan is saving for some investment, I think. Talvés, it could be we have to buy Sandy’s ticket. Would that be okay?”

  “Sure. Totally deductible.”

  “Nháku!” Nellie hugged and kissed me. “This would be next best to going with you. Only thing missing would be me riding your big pichoti on some quiet secret beach.”

  This randy talk and some immoderate snogging led to impromptu afternoon sex in a providentially empty apartment—a romp that I needed immensely. Having Sandralene sharing these living quarters had, as I had feared, led to a more or less perpetual low-level state of arousal. The first time the big, curvy woman had sat her exquisite rump down at the breakfast table, clad only in creamy silk pj’s that Nicki Minaj would have rejected as too incendiary, I had to force into my mind’s eye images of baseball, chess, and tile showrooms. Thank God Stan was still lazing abed. So sending Sandralene away with Nellie to Cape Verde would be like experiencing a period of blissful, relaxing monasticism.

  After Nellie and I had cooled off, still lying in bed, she asked me, “So, Glen, you know what Stan has in mind? Are you in on it, too? Please tell me it’s not something dangerous like when you messed with that cabeca ma biroti Nancarrow.”

  “Yes, I do know. And yes, I am on board. And no, there’s no danger at all. It’s just a chance to make some real money. You know we could use some income, the way we’re spending on the import business.”

  I hadn’t meant to guilt-trip my lover, but the unintended effect was useful in gaining her wholehearted agreement. “Oh, Glen, you must know how grateful I am for all your support! You are making nah sonhu come true! Anything you and Stan decide to do is fine by me. I don’t even need to know nothing specific. You just tell me when everything is kompletu—or before then if you need my help.”

  So, with Lura, Caleb, Sandralene, and Nellie all cruising along happily engaged in their various pursuits, Stan and I felt confident of tranquility on the home front when we showed up for our meeting that night at the door of Vin Santo’s nameless blind pig.

  “You got your game face on?” Stan said.

  “I’ve never been gamier.”

  “Good one.”

  Santo’s manager was the same obnoxious young twerp with the postmodern buzz cut who had failed to run me off on my first visit. This time around, he showed some grudging deference as he ushered us past the wheels, cards, slots, and boozy clientele into the unadorned, pedestrian quarters from which Santo reigned. Even a supercilious lout could smarten up, I supposed.

  Seated at his commonplace desk, the mercenary monarch still resembled some tubby borscht-belt stand-up comic with awkward secret vices and the fashion sense of an Albanian sugar-beet farmer. His perpetual Big Gulp stood within easy reach. The same two stooges, or clones thereof, who had shadowed my earlier meeting with Santo stood guard just inside the door.

  “Welcome, gentlemen,” Vin said with the closest thing to a smile that we were ever likely to get from him. “I know one of you personally, even if we don’t go too far back. Glen McClinton, how ya doing?”

  “Pretty good, Vin. And you?”

  “Can’t kick. I haven’t had to kill anyone in at least the past half hour. That makes it easy on my delicate nerves.”

  For my peace of mind, I decided to assume he was joking, and so I just smiled in response.

  Santo turned to Stan. “Now, you I know by reputation. The best torch in town. Once worked exclusively for Barnaby Nancarrow, until he did you dirty.”

  “That useta be my CV in a nutshell, Vin. But it’s out of date. You can add that until recently, I was driving one of your rigs, under your boy Gunther Stroebel. Never lost a cargo. And I aim to add a few more lines to my résumé. Glen and I are now legit brokers, like. And we come to you with a proposal.”

  Stan outlined in broad terms how we thought we had a buyer for the fake Intel chips that were still presumably languishing in the warehouse, and would be happy to take a commission on them. Naturally, he did not name Dr. Ronald Luckman as our prospect, but he did say the guy was an inventor.

  Santo seemed intrigued by this. “An inventor? With some kinda new high-tech gadget? That shit is how you really clean up big these days.”

  When Stan tried to speak in the manner he imagined a venture-capitalist representative of Burning Chrome would speak, it came out like a duck trying to impersonate a dog.

  “We believe this to be so. But we have not fully sussed out his potential nor the marketplace applicability of his product.”

  Santo seemed impressed. “This could be very lucrative if we did more than just dump the chips on him and screw. A nice conduit for laundering certain moneys. You think this brainiac is open to taking on some silent partners?”

  Stan lied with bald-faced confidence. “We do. In fact, we were already thinking along those lines ourselves, having some residual profits from our last enterprise, which we wished to put to work. But if you want a piece of the action, Vin, we’d be more than happy to cut you in.”

  Santo sipped his plastic bucket of candy-flavored swill and pondered our offer for a moment. “Okay,” he said, “here’s how it’s gonna go. You brace this guy and come back to me with a solid assessment of his gizmo. Glen, I’m relying on you and your investment paisans for this judgment. Then I will decide if I am prepared to do this deal, and how much capital I’ll put into it. Does that suit?”

  “It suits us fine,” Stan replied.

  “Then let us seal this stage of our affairs with a drink.”

  I thought for one crazy moment that we were all going to have to take turns with the Big Gulp, slurping from the oversized straw as if it were a peace pipe. But Santo ordered up some nice champagne, and by the time the three of us had emptied two bottles, we all were chattering away like old army buddies.

  And so it would be, I supposed, as long as we didn’t do anything that made Santo need to kill us.
>
  PART THREE

  21

  Yet again Nellie and Sandralene were out accomplishing vitally important business errands in my beautiful car, which, it seemed, I hardly ever got to drive. I suspected that part of their day would be devoted to purely self-indulgent shopping, but I didn’t mind. Keeping our women happy and busy and out of our hair was an essential part of the scheme Stan and I had worked out. And riding in Stan’s clown car was a small price to pay.

  We had followed my phone’s GPS out of the city, to the bedroom community of Hayfields. As the name implied, the district had, once upon a time, featured farms and cows and similar arcadian motifs whose pastoral charm our hardworking ancestors had failed to preserve down to our time. And so the land had long ago been platted out in middle-class houses, seeded with a few strip malls of restaurants and yoga studios, and devoted to weary workers who had moved on up from the immigrant origins of their parents.

  As we turned onto Greenwood Street and I began looking for number 1300—Luckman’s address, as provided to us by the boys at Burning Chrome—Stan said, “I’m gonna let you make our pitch to this Poindexter. You know, suss out what his invention is, how many of the chips we can reasonably unload on him, what we can charge. The investment angle, if any. All that good stuff. After all, you gotta start carrying your weight in this enterprise sooner or later. And I figure you’ll relate to some overeducated nerdburger a lot better than I will.”

  “Thanks, Stan. Operating on those principles, I should allow you to talk only to brain-damaged three-card-monte dealers who moonlight as trade union enforcers.”

  “Ha! I know you don’t mean that, Glen. I know you got real respect for my brains. Why else would you keep on tagging along with me and backing my brilliant schemes? After all, who hit on this whole play of brokering the computer parts?”

  “Oh, you’ve got street smarts, sure; that much I give you. But that wouldn’t be enough to convince me to follow you. No, your real seductive gift is some kind of mystical good luck that always saves your ass and makes you come out of the pile of horseshit smelling like the proverbial rose.”