The Deadly Kiss-Off Read online

  Chantal straightened up, drawing Ron with her as if magnetized. She said, “Oh, I understand completely your discretion, but I don’t need to know. I comprehend now the complete functions and abilities of your invention.”

  Retrieving her purse, Chantal led the way back into the house. Rosa did not reappear. All of us had duties to perform, so we didn’t linger.

  Seeing us out, Luckman said, “I think I won’t go back to the factory right away, Glen, if that’s okay with you. I’m a little tired, and I fear I’ve been shortchanging Rosa of my attentions for some days now. I’ll see you there tomorrow.”

  I patted him on the shoulder. “Sure thing, Ron. Don’t sweat it. Plenty of time to get it all done.”

  “I suppose. I just have this sense of urgency somehow. As if our time is limited.”

  * * *

  As soon as we turned off Luckman’s block, Chantal spoke from the back aseat. I caught her face in the rearview mirror.

  “That machine is useless, you know. You would get the same results waving Harry Potter’s magic wand over the sample.”

  Stan said nothing. I thought to deny the assertion, but then said, “Yeah, we kinda figured as much. But how did you realize it?”

  She opened her purse, dug in, and held up a pale waxy block about the size of an ice-cream bar. “Recognize it? No? This is a chunk of C-four. You know, as in plastic explosive? The machine never beeped once.”

  I had to admire her ingenuity. “So this means our arrangement is off?”

  Chantal deployed her enchanting laughter once more. “Of course not! We make no judgment on the wares of our clients. It just means you two have to work very much harder with the people we bring you. And please try most earnestly to succeed in the ruse, not only for your sake, but so as not to soil our reputation!”

  Stan said, “I knew from the start that we were all on the same fucking page, doll.”

  I pulled up in front of the Hyatt, and Chantal and Les got out.

  “I think Les and I will take in the touring show of Hamilton tonight. I understand the tickets are a bargain compared to the New York prices—only six hundred dollars apiece. Could you write us a check for, say, fifteen hundred then?”

  I complied, and Chantal folded the check neatly in half before tucking it next to the C-4.

  * * *

  Back at the apartment, I flopped down wearily. The first full day of bachelor existence for Stan and me was proving highly demanding.

  “You want me to grill some steaks for us?” I asked Stan.

  “Nah, I’m going out. Thanks anyhow, though.”

  I let Stan go without inquiring about his plans, adjudging deniability more important than reassurance.

  By ten o’clock, the steak, a baked potato, and half a bottle of red wine had rendered me hors de combat. I didn’t even shower but just stripped to my underwear and fell into my too-empty bed.

  Around 1:00 a.m., I awoke having to pee a Niagara of transubstantiated pinot noir. I stumbled out to the kitchen for some ice water to wash the fug out of my mouth.

  The little living room night-light revealed on the floor a blue dress patterned with camellias, and beyond it a trail of more intimate garments leading to Stan’s room.

  I sure hoped Ronald Luckman was either a very sound sleeper or gullible enough to believe in overnight bedside visits to a dying grandmother.

  PART FOUR

  31

  By the first week in December, our factory of fakes was buzzing along with the desperate efficiency of a seaport sandbag-packing operation on the eve of a hurricane. Nellie and Sandralene were still in Caboverde, calling at regular intervals to update us on the progress of Tartaruga Verde Importing and to tantalize us with their loving sweet-voiced endearments and promises of sensual reunions. Mama Lura had learned how to handicap horses almost as well as her adopted sister Suzy Lam, while Uncle Ralph, content to live off the winnings of his two female housemates, had ceased his debilitating activities as a stooper, or gatherer of discarded betting slips. And Stan and Rosa, while almost certainly still conducting their dynamite-dangerous clandestine liaison, had slaked their passions down to covert, sensible, and undramatic levels, which served, from all indications, to keep Luckman happily in the dark. I didn’t bug Stan anymore about the morality or practicality of his affair, and he certainly didn’t bring up the topic with me. After all, I wasn’t his minder, and he wasn’t my ward.

  Meanwhile, the effervescent Chantal Danssaert and the good-humored Les Qiao happily and unanxiously awaited our stockpiling of finished units in quantities sufficient to impress any buyers with our general manufacturing competence and ability to satisfy demand in a timely manner. Only then would they bring in any prospective customers. I deduced that they were suffering no enormous emotional strains, given the steady flow of charges they racked up at various eateries, theaters, clubs, and stores.

  Every day, I went to the factory to gauge our progress. I generally found excellent conditions, thanks to the combined efforts of Caleb and Luckman.

  Caleb oversaw everything about the factory except quality control and inspection. Responsibility for those departments devolved naturally to the inventor of the LBAS. Luckman circulated tirelessly among all fifteen workstations, doing random surveillance of assembly procedures. Then, when each unit emerged finished at the end, he put it through its paces, proving to his own deluded satisfaction that the miraculous sensor could detect test quantities of any and all explosive substances paraded before it. The off-brand chips served to power and control all the other circuitry in the device and allowed each unit to mount a convincing display of explosives-detecting wizardry. Without our contribution, Luckman’s sensors and readouts would have remained inert, although the false results they gave were still basically useless.

  Luckman’s mind-set in this area intrigued and puzzled me. Did he sincerely believe in his vaunted wonder machine’s ability to function as advertised, albeit with some sensitive tuning or tweaking in each individual instance? Did he know that the unit was a farce? Was he trying to scam us at the same time that we were busily scamming him? Or was it some kind of split-brain thing—a willful self-deception by which his surface mind believed the lie while his subconscious brain knew the truth?

  No matter how much I talked to him, I couldn’t discern the answer—except to all but rule out any conscious duplicity. Luckman was just too sincere and too naive, his Christian belief too real and dominant, to be capable of practicing the same kind of ruse that hardened, unethical atheists the likes of Stan and me were capable of.

  Whatever the riddle of his motivations, he was turning out quite an impressive-looking product.

  We had found a source for sleek extruded-aluminum cases that did not resemble the clunky prototype. Then we had settled on an enameled color combo of fire-engine-yellow with black stripes, connoting danger and military-grade capabilities. The shoulder strap for carrying was high-tech webbing. The controls and the embedded video display were easily accessible on the exterior of the case. The pistol-style detector no longer looked like a video game zapper, but rather like something a bounty hunter from the future would use to take down a robot nastier than Arnie. If I were a cop or a colonel or head of company security, I would want one of these before I even knew what it was for. I was glad that at least the look of the thing would help sell it and counted on Luckman’s techno-nursemaid abilities to breeze convincingly through any demos.

  I was equally impressed with Caleb’s abilities to perform with utmost equanimity as a one-man human-resources department, combined with purchasing, billing, and maintenance duties. Alice, as his assistant, had quickly reached her limits, although we kept her on for a few simple tasks, and we had hired a couple of competent helpers for him. Their presence at additional desks in Caleb’s office helped fill out what had been an underused space.

  I was also pleased that Caleb and Luc
kman had seemed to hit it off, since they both were so integral to our success and had to coordinate closely all day. They had a lot of traits in common that seemed to draw them together. They both were religious—Luckman to a greater degree—and both navigated the world with the same kind of old-school attitudes despite Luckman’s being a big-city academic and Caleb’s more blue-collar, rural roots.

  I often found the two of them in earnest conversation, and not always concerning business. A common thread seemed to be the degeneracy of contemporary pop culture. And once, in our temporarily empty break room—a few folding chairs and card tables, a Keurig coffeemaker, a couple of vending machines provided by one of Vin Santo’s more legit franchises—I came upon them sitting silently in communal prayer and backed out before I could disturb them.

  I just felt lucky that they took charge of all the headachy crap that otherwise would have fallen to Stan and me.

  Stan was genuinely unstinting in his praise of his former rival. He explained one day when we were schlepping a quantity of packing foam from Gunther’s warehouse to our factory.

  “I knew when I tangled with Johnny Reb back there in Hedgesville that he was one smart cookie and was gonna help us out big-time someday. That’s why I said we hadda bring him home with us.”

  “Not just because you live by the credo ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’”

  “Enemies? Me and ol’ Caleb? He’s got no designs on Sandralene anymore, I can promise you that.”

  “Why shouldn’t he, after you’ve kicked her to the curb?”

  “I done no such thing! I told ya, Sandy is cool with me and Rosa. And besides, it’s different when Sandy’s outta town. When she gets back, I ain’t gonna be tomcatting so heavy.”

  “And what’s Rosa going to feel about the sudden chill?”

  Stan looked a little nervous. “I’m sure she’s gonna be a good sport about things. After all, cougars can’t be choosers, can they?”

  On that note, I left Stan to lie uneasily in the metaphorically burning four-poster he had created.

  I thought to sound out Caleb about his own romantic inclinations, just to get his side of things. So one day I made a point of taking him out to lunch at a nearby diner. After we had ordered and chatted a while about how he liked his job and his living conditions and life up north in general—he still couldn’t get over strangers not bothering to return a cheerful greeting on the street—I said, “You met any women yet you might fancy a date with, Caleb? I’ve noticed some pretty gals out on the floor who have a hard time taking their eyes off you when you’re out there. Big, strapping, handsome gent like you should have no problem finding some company.”

  Caleb self-consciously smoothed an errant cowlick, but it sprang right back up. “Well, Glen, it’s like this, see? I know this job is probably only temporary, and I’ll be heading back to West Virginia with my stake. You fellows are paying me mighty generously, by the way, and I can’t thank you enough. But I did leave a good business down there, after all. At least, it’ll be good again when the economy picks up, which it always does. And I’d hate to get serious with some local girl who wouldn’t necessarily want to stick with me when I relocate.”

  “Jeez, Caleb,” I said, “you can at least have a little fun till then! No need to put a ring on it.”

  “I appreciate your take on matters, Glen, but I’ve got to approach things like this as I see fit.” He paused. “Besides, there was ever only one gal for me, and not being able to have her is not something a man gets over easily.”

  That sure sounded to me like carrying a torch for Sandralene, but I wouldn’t be conveying that news to Stan. I patted Caleb on the back. “Of course, of course. Well, you just let me know if you need me to act as matchmaker, if you’re too shy.”

  Stan and I had reported in to Vin Santo several times in the past week, and he expressed satisfaction with the way things were going. The very smoothness of it frightened me a little. I wasn’t used to such problem-free, stress-free operations. I kept waiting for something bad to happen, but nothing did.

  At last, we had five hundred units sitting in inventory, ready to sell. All the bugs had been purged from the assembly process, and we would soon whip through the remaining forty-five hundred chips. For the first time, I thought about the long-term implications of our setup. What if we found a deep market, and Santo could rustle up some more fake chips? Could we shuck and jive our customers with rigged trials long enough to earn Stan and me a hundred million apiece? My brain would whirl dizzily whenever I contemplated such a prospect, and I would have to bring myself gently down to earth by remembering that we hadn’t yet sold unit one.

  But when Chantal called me and said, “I think we are ready now to bring in our first two clients,” it was hard not to dream big.

  32

  Chantal, Les, and I stood in the airport’s unsecured public area, where the disembarking passengers would emerge down a pair of escalators. Coffee smells wafted from the nearby Starbucks booth to compete with the heady outgassing of flame-retardant chemicals from the new carpeting. The essential hybrid bouquet of modern civilization. Busy travelers surged, and expectant families shuffled. A couple of limo drivers held up iPads with the names of their clients displayed.

  I had to confess to being just a tad nervous: my typical scammer’s stage fright, which would vanish, I hoped, the moment the con began in earnest. But I was also a little uncentered by Stan’s absence. I realized how much I had come to rely on his indomitable blend of savvy and crude. But we had agreed that he would hang back from this initial meeting until I had scoped out the nature of our first customer. Stan’s rough edges, I felt, might be a little off-putting to certain sophisticated sensibilities. Stan had consented, with only small reluctance and his usual disdain for appearances and conventions.

  “Fine by me,” he said. “I got plenty to do besides stroking some purchase-ordering paper shuffler who probably never actually even busted a cap before. Rosa and me are going to the track with your uncle Ralph and his harem today.”

  “Jesus, Stan! Can’t you keep a lower profile, for God’s sake!”

  “Aw, don’t pop your vasectomy stitches. The prof don’t know your uncle, and for sure he’s not gonna show up at the track. This is safe as houses.”

  “All right, all right, just try to be circumspect.”

  “I can’t be circumspect, cuz my dick ain’t never been cut—and I got no plans to change that status.”

  “Oversharing! Not to mention, a truly dreadful pun. Just go away now.”

  I resolved at that point that I would try to seek out Rosa later and make a case for tapering off or breaking off this affair. Though I had never yet had a one-on-one with the ex-schoolteacher, I suspected she would be more amenable to logic and caution than her Gulch-bred paramour. Who knew, though?

  If Stan’s absence undercut my confidence a little, the cool, unruffled professionalism of our arms brokers served to bolster my spirits.

  Chantal Danssaert, as always, looked the embodiment of aloof high-fashion competence. She wore a pantsuit of gunmetal-gray lamé threaded with white silk, for an understated striped effect. The lapels of the puffy-shouldered double-breasted jacket intersected low enough to reveal the upper band of her lacy white undershirt. I suspected that her sylphlike build meant she could go without a bra, which was fine by me. In contrast to the severity of the suit, her expensive-looking heels were encrusted with gaudy costume jewelry, as if she were ready for the Cirque du Soleil. She pulled the look off impeccably.

  Her business partner, Les Qiao, had ramped up his typical sloppy-chic stylings to a kind of Matrix-y all-black Korean rapper / ninja look: Mao jacket, shiny linen pants with enough billowing extra fabric to hold two of him, and jackboots that the book burners out of a Bradbury novel might have worn.

  I turned to Chantal now, and she stopped fiddling with her phone.

&nbs
p; “So today we’re bringing in just the one guy?”

  “Yes. I want to lavish all our attention on each buyer individually at first. We will show them great favor for the day or two they are alone with us. But then, when they come together with their peers to inspect the product and see the demo, we will exude impartiality and encourage them to compete with each other. This way, we will get the maximum bid out of each one.”

  “That’s another thing I’m uncertain about,” I said. “Why aren’t we just going to ask a standard retail price for each unit, rather than conduct an auction? Let everyone buy as many as they want.”

  Chantal again went through her small ritual of popping an Altoid. It struck me as her securing a Maginot Line against stupidity, and about as useful as that fortification had been. But we all need our superstitions. “You must trust me on this,” she said. “Many of these firms and agencies like to have exclusivity on a product. They are rivals and are always looking for an edge. If your detector could just be picked up by anyone, right off the shelf like something from Target, it would not appeal to them as strongly. And besides, Les and I will be happier if our one percent comes from a bigger transaction.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I have to assume you know what you’re doing. But I’d hate to have both parties blow us off entirely.”

  “This will not happen, I promise you.”

  Les Qiao chimed in. “Gotta believe the Danse, man.”

  “And we really have to put them up on our nickel, at your hotel?”

  “Of course. Do you wish to look like a piker, Glen?”

  “I like to look solvent. You guys have already run up some hefty charges.”

  “You will find that we are worth every penny, Glen.” She laid the back of her cool hand possessively against my cheek and smiled. “We are excellent fluffers who ensure the money shot.”

  Her touch and bawdy talk sent a little wavelet of pleasure through me. Les Qiao seemed not to mind her intimate gesture, and once more I was left wondering about their nonwork relationship.