The Deadly Kiss-Off Read online

  46

  The morning following our guerrilla foray, the day of field trials for Luckman’s gadget, I awoke feeling my overtaxed legs and rolled ankle and abused lower back. Yet I also felt unnaturally confident, with a sense that the successful end of our scam was in sight. We had gotten away without botching the Great Midnight Pouched Rat Bomb-Sniffing Caper. And Vin Santo’s surprisingly competent and professional off-the-books surgeon—a young woman, no less—had stitched up and antibioticized an out-of-danger Eddie Greenfriars quickly enough that we all were back home by 3:30 a.m. So if our nerves permitted, we could get a good five or six hours’ sleep and still have time to prepare for our two o’clock meet with Crespo at the site.

  Now rested, with the low-angled sunlight of 9:10 a.m. pouring into the condo as I lay in bed contemplating a hearty breakfast, I recalled another reason to feel chipper: Nellie was coming home roughly thirty-six hours from now.

  When I entered the dining area, I found Sandralene and Stan already dressed. Sandy was serving Stan a stack of pancakes as high as a spindle of fifty CDs. There was a tangled heap of bacon on a platter, as well.

  “Any for me?”

  “Sure, Glen. Stan, give him some of yours and I’ll pour some more on the griddle.”

  “Cripes, the sacrifices I make for this guy! It’s not enough I pulled his nuts out of the fire last night; now I gotta go hungry for him!”

  “You’ll live healthier with a few less carbs.”

  “But will I be any happier? Happiness is another factor in good health.”

  Stan’s phone rang just as I had finished my hotcakes and was draining my coffee cup. But the timing of the call proved the only pleasant aspect of the interruption.

  Stan listened for a few seconds, said, “Okay, we’ll be right there,” and clicked off.

  I could already feel my sunshiny attitude melting like Madame Tussaud’s livelihood in a firestorm.

  “What’s up?”

  “That was Rosa. Luckman’s drunk outta his gourd.”

  “Oh, Jesus, no,” I groaned. He’s the only one who can work that snake-oil Geiger counter of his. What are we going to do?”

  “Well, obviously we gotta get him sober enough to perform. I got something that could maybe help.”

  Stan went into his bedroom. Sandy was already donning her coat.

  “I’ll come, too,” she said. “Maybe I can give Rosa some support.”

  Stan returned and said, “Let’s go. Luckman’s gotta be totally functional by two or we are screwed, blued, and tattooed. No way Crespo will postpone this test. Last night’s brawl will jump into his head, and he’ll figure we’re trying to pull a fast one—and that wouldn’t bode well for our economic or physical health.”

  On the way to Luckman’s in Stan’s Jeep, I said, “What could’ve made him do this?”

  “How do I know? He’s been whining for days about how all this cheating doesn’t honor him or his crappy gadget. Also, he ain’t too crazy about Crespo’s pedigree, what he knows of it.”

  I hesitated, looked at Sandy, then said, “You don’t think he found out about you and Rosa, do you?”

  “Nah, no chance. She ain’t gonna blow her share of his millions, and I sure as hell didn’t confess.”

  “I just worry about what he’d do if he ever did find out.”

  Stan showed some irritation. “You can quit worrying. After today, we don’t even need the nutty professor no more. Caleb’s got the factory running like a Swiss watch. We crank out the other four thousand units without Luckman’s help, Crespo buys ’em, and we pocket the money and split.”

  “You really think Crespo wants another four thousand detectors?”

  “Chantal does. She figures La Sombra Negra plans to set themselves up as unauthorized resellers for all of Central America and peddle the gadgets for more than they paid us. Crespo thinks he’s pulling a fast one on us. Let him. The easiest con is the guy who thinks he’s conning you.”

  The Luckmans’ shabby suburban home looked bland and quiet, belying any tensions behind its closed door and curtained windows. I regarded the attached garage and tried to recall the thrill I had felt when I first realized how Luckman’s gadget could parlay our silicon chips into a fortune. That day, just a few weeks ago, seemed like another geologic era.

  Before we could ring the bell, Rosa Luckman had the front door open. Although she stood solid, putting up a brave front, she looked like hell, all her patrician charm and looks having been scraped down to the bone.

  “Come in, come in,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been up all night with him. I didn’t call sooner, because I thought I could talk him down, and I knew you were busy. But I haven’t done any good. Maybe I’ve even made things worse. He hates himself and everything he’s done.”

  Rosa suddenly seemed to collapse in on herself and quietly began to sob. Sandy swooped her up like a mother hen, saying, “You need some coffee, sweetie. Get me to the kitchen.”

  The two women marched off. Stan and I found Luckman in his study.

  The guy was a real animal, all right. Not only had he worked his way through the whole bottle of port he had opened when he signed the contract, but he had killed a pint of blackberry brandy as well.

  Slumped in a recliner, his clothing nasty with flecks of vomit, he looked up blearily when we came in, and seemed to recognize us.

  “Mr.—Mr. Hasso. Mr. Glen. You’re just in time to say goodbye. I am done with all this. All this big bad mess I have caused. ‘We have walked in lasciviousness, lust, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries. And now we shall pay the price. And the wages of sin is death!’”

  Stan got his hands under Luckman’s armpits and hoisted him up like a rag doll. “Goodbye, nothing! You are in this till the end, Pops. And you won’t regret it, believe me, when you and the missus are rolling in greenbacks. You don’t wanna let her down now, do you? So suck it up! You are going to have a cold shower and some hot coffee. But first, down a couple of these.”

  Stan propped Luckman up on the edge of his desk while he took out a prescription bottle from his pocket and spilled out two pills.

  “Get me a glass of tonic over there, will ya?”

  I poured sparkling water from the bar into a tumbler and handed it to Luckman, who took the glass and studied it as if it were the Hope Diamond.

  “Take these pills, Prof. They’re just a little harmless pick-me-up.”

  “Don’ wanna. Can’t make me.”

  Stan’s benign expression and voice assumed the menacing tone of an unhappy mama bear. “You’ll swallow the pills, Pops, or you’ll swallow some teeth. Which is it gonna be?”

  Like most academics confronted with the threat of actual violence, Luckman caved faster than a home-ec-class soufflé. He swallowed the pills and guzzled the water.

  “Okay, good man. Now, let’s get you under Niagara Falls.”

  The three of us went to the bathroom upstairs. Stan and I managed to strip Luckman and get him in the stall. Stan turned the cold water on full force, and Luckman bellowed his distress. Stan kept him nailed in place even though he, too, was getting soaked. Luckman’s wet, fish-belly-pale middle-aged body wasn’t particularly flabby or gross, but he still evoked a drowned corpse cast up on some alien shore.

  By the time Stan relented, Luckman seemed perceptibly more alert and sensible. We wrapped him in towels and escorted him to the bedroom, where a framed picture of Rosa occupied the nightstand.

  “What were those pills?” I said.

  “Just some Adderall—fairly lightweight stuff, but it’ll kick booze in the ass.”

  Rummaging through closet and bureau, we put together a set of clothes for Luckman, then moved to dress him. But he motioned us off with growing indications of sobriety. A sheepish look further confirmed his gradual return from his alcohol--infused fun
k.

  “I have dressed myself for many years now,” he said. “I think I can continue a while longer. May I have some privacy, please?”

  We left Luckman alone and went downstairs to the kitchen, where Sandy and Rosa were conferring quietly, their heads close together. Rosa supported her bowed head with one hand planted against her brow, while Sandralene had an arm draped over Rosa’s shoulder. They both looked up when we came in.

  “He’s gonna be fine,” Stan said. “Get a big mug of java ready however he likes it.”

  By the time Rosa had the coffee ready, Luckman himself manifested. His guilty expression seemed to affirm that he would be repenting and paying for this shameful fall from self-control and duty until his dying day.

  “I am very grateful to you gentlemen for your help. And, Rosa, dear, well, you know how I feel. I owe you so much. But I promise you all, as the Lord is my shepherd and witness, I will live up to the demands of the day.”

  “Fucking A, Prof. Your come-to-Jesus moment was a bitch, but that’s all behind you now.”

  “Amen,” I said, but no one else chimed in.

  47

  Standing outside the locked gate of the test site, waiting for Crespo and company, the five of us shuffled about in a vain attempt to stay warm. Despite the sun, the temperatures today hadn’t gotten much above freezing. I recalled previous Thanksgivings when we had snow on the ground. The holiday was only five days away, and I wondered what we’d be doing and feeling and experiencing then. Jubilation and relief and togetherness? Anxiety and despair and separation? All we could do was forge ahead and hope for the best.

  Chantal and Les stood close together for warmth, Chantal regal as ever, Les somewhat wry and goofy, like a kid on a field trip. Stan seemed impervious to the chill, despite wearing only an unzipped leather jacket. Luckman, with the garish detector slung over one shoulder of his stadium coat, was too wrapped up in his interior life even to notice the conditions.

  “I believe this is their car coming,” said Chantal.

  I saw a big blood-red Nissan Armada SUV, almost military grade in its heft, approaching down the block.

  Chantal added in an off-the-cuff fashion, “Oh, by the way, Lina and Eddie are on their way home already. But before they left, they informed me that they need a hundred and fifty K now, not seventy-five. That wound is going to incapacitate him for a while.”

  Again with the death of a thousand fiscal cuts. I said, “I thought the seventy-five-K fee included the bonus for facing live fire.”

  “Yes, for facing it, but not for actually receiving it.”

  Stan said, “Just let it go, pard. Not worth the hassle.”

  The Nissan pulled to the curb, and Crespo got out on the passenger side up front. The driver and one other fellow emerged. Looking like undertakers, they all wore black cloth coats that came down almost to the knee, underneath which could be concealed anything from a shotgun to a small shoulder-fired missile. I wondered whether these two had been on duty last night and, if so, just how mad they might still be at the MS-13 assault, and what they would do if they knew we had rigged it. The three of them together—no-nonsense dudes wrapped tight as the inside of a golf ball, somehow managed to resemble both the conquistadores who had invaded El Salvador, and the righteous Mayan warriors who had defied them.

  Crespo’s eyes might as well have been two polished hematites for all the emotion they conveyed. He shook hands all around, though his comrades didn’t bother. I assumed from the formal cordiality that we had not been rumbled.

  “You will please excuse Señores Mejía and Alvarado from any attempts at small talk. Their English is not too good. But their eyesight and powers of discrimination are acute, so I rely heavily on them. Let us begin.”

  The driver unfastened the padlock on the gate, and we entered the field of rubble. It looked a lot less spooky by day. I had a hard time even believing it was the same field of postapocalyptic nightmares I had traversed with such fear only twelve hours ago.

  Luckman unslung the LBAS and activated it. His expression was neutral, maybe a tad on the determined side. He fiddled with the controls, then said, “Ready.”

  Here was the moment of truth, after weeks of scheming and striving, with all our fortunes riding on it.

  Luckman exhibited just the right blend of scientific inventor’s confidence and newbie businessman’s desire to impress. He even kept up a running monologue, explaining what he was doing to fine-tune the detector. It might have been all bullshit, but it sure sounded convincing. Crespo shadowed Luckman diligently while his henchmen made certain the rest of us were not somehow kibitzing.

  Luckman arrowed straight to every place I had salted the ANFO. He found the unidentifiable strays that did not correspond to Crespo’s samples and hence looked like false positives. And he was unable to discover those items I hadn’t tagged. And so, in just a little longer time than Lina and I had spent taking Algernon on his little walk, Luckman finished the trial, with the LBAS shining like an explosives-detecting beacon of wonderfulness.

  Crespo and his brothers-in-arms had betrayed no sentiments about the performance while it was underway. But once we all were back out on the street with the gate locked again, they huddled near their car for an animated conversation more in keeping with the passionate Latino temperament I had anticipated.

  Crespo returned to our little knot of quiet observers—just the four of us, for Luckman had gone to sit in Chantal’s car, where he could be seen, blank-faced and unobtrusively sipping at intervals from a travel mug of coffee, which I was pretty sure had been stiffened with some of whatever cloying booze he still had back at his house. The promise of that reward had been part of his motivation.

  Crespo nodded back at his compatriots, both of whom were busy on their phones. “Señor Mejía is arranging for the pickup of the thousand units, using our own trucks. We will not ship them and have them subject to customs, but rather transport them overland ourselves, along less obtrusive routes. Señor Alvarado is okaying the funds transfer. You should find the money available by the time you reach the factory. I thank you, gentlemen, for helping to maintain the security and stability of my beloved country.”

  And just like that, we were thirty million dollars in the black.

  * * *

  Vin Santo himself greeted us at the front door of his club, still closed at this unhedonic hour of four in the afternoon. I almost keeled over at the sight of the rotund crime lord up and about—in the daylight, no less! I had never seen him outside his inner sanctum before, and during most of those visits he had been seated. For all I knew, he might have been like Professor Xavier, directing his operations by sheer telepathy from a wheelchair.

  Santo threw his arms around me. It was like being embraced by a bag of suet. He bestowed the same greeting on Stan, who rolled his eyes heavenward and hugged back tentatively, as if he had been tasked with making love to a manatee.

  “My favorite boys! Thirty million in the bag. Numbers on the screen don’t lie, and I have seen it with my own eyes. Enter, enter! I got a big spread laid out for us.”

  Santo had a few cronies at hand, as well as his bodyguards, but there was enough food and drink for twice the number present. I nibbled on some shrimp and had a little champagne, not wanting to get too stuffed or too wasted. Stan, however, indulged like the doughty trencherman he was.

  Santo took a spreadsheet printout from a flunky and corralled Stan and me into a quiet corner.

  “Here’s the breakdown. Expenses to date, including the initial cost of the chips: two million. The share for the Danssaert chick and her pal, three million. My half of the remaining twenty--five—well, let’s just round up and call it fifteen million, okay? That leaves ten million as a three-way split for you boys and the professor. Not too bad, huh? And this is only the first batch of gadgets, with four times as many sales down the road!”

  The champagne
interfered with my math a little, but I eventually worked out that Stan and I would net over thirteen million apiece, once all five thousand units were sold. Not quite the astronomical figure we had first imagined, but not too shabby at all.

  “Vin,” said Stan, “we are in your debt.”

  “Pally, you ain’t gonna be in nobody’s debt ever again!”

  48

  The restaurant was called Morabeza, and we had rented a private room for the official celebration of the recent success engineered by Luckman Enterprises and its millionaire high-roller executives. But the evening included a second theme as well: Morabeza was a Caboverdean establishment, stocking many of Nellie’s imports. As a good customer, they were helping her get Tartaruga Verde Importing onto a solid footing, and so she felt it only fitting to patronize them in return, steering diners there whenever she could. Her practical logrolling had not met with any resistance from the rest of us, since the place was lively and popular and had a great reputation for making delicious exotic dishes.

  Two days had passed since we aced the sale, giving Nellie time to return from Cape Verde and get her head together. (Our Stateside reunion had been just as ecstatic as our reconciliation in the islands, and all was back on an even keel.)

  We were a largish party: Chantal and Les, Stan and Sandralene, Rosa and Ronald Luckman, Caleb (stag), and Nellie and me. It would have been cool to have Lina and Eddie present, too. I had wanted Nellie to meet Algernon, a vital player in this caper, whom I had grown very fond of during our shared trial by combat. But as Chantal had informed me, the two vets had eagerly hit the road once their covert ops were over. A check for their fee of one hundred fifty thousand, drawn on our overstuffed bank account, had followed them home. And by now, with our money almost in hand, I no longer regretted the doubled expense. The thirty million still sat in the Luckman Enterprises account, ultimately controlled by Vin Santo, but our shares would soon be dispersed to our individual banks.

  Santo had politely declined our invitation to party down.