Gary Ponzo - A Touch of Greed

Tommy waited. A hostess came over to check on the crowded restaurant, but Ben pulled her aside and explained things. Tommy motioned with his hand that he needed something to write with.

Lemke said, “Hi sweetie,” into the phone. “What’re you doing?”

While he listened, his face lost its color and his eyes grew into soft round plates of distress.

Tommy pulled the toothpick from his mouth and jabbed it between a couple of molars, always keeping his gums vibrant.

When Lemke put his phone down, he looked around to see if there was an out. Tommy knew the guy needed to compromise without his crew seeing him cave. He’d lose respect.

Tommy motioned to Dino. “Get rid of these mongrels. They’re causing too much of a scene. Have them wait outside.”

Dino turned and nodded. A minute later the only people left in the restaurant were Tommy, Dino and Lemke. Dino sat down across from Tommy, boxing Lemke in, figuratively and literally.

“What do you want?” Lemke said.

“So, here’s how this works,” Tommy said. “First, you’re going to give me bogus information so you can stall, maybe the cops will show up or maybe you’ll get reinforcements, I don’t know what kind of plan you have going, but I’m short on time so I’m gonna have them chop off Chelsea’s pinkie and bring it in here for you. She’s out in the car.”

Tommy looked at Dino, who got out of the booth and began walking away.

“No,” Lemke blurted. “I’ll tell you what you want.”

Dino didn’t stop.

Lemke tried to get up, but his stomach would only allow so much leeway, so the table came up with him. “Stop!” he screamed.

Tommy shoved him back down and said, “Shut up, Jerry. This is just foreplay.”

The guy must’ve genuinely liked his daughter because he tried sliding out of the booth, looking like a whale hopping on its tail. “Don’t do this,” he muttered. “I swear, I’ll tell you what you want. You just have to promise this never gets back to Garza.”

“Oh, it won’t get back to him,” Tommy said. “I promise.”

The hostess came to the table with a legal pad and pen and handed them to Tommy.

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

Just then Dino returned with a white bar rag with something beige sticking from the top. A pinkie with red fingernail polish.

Lemke looked like he was going to faint. He slumped back in his chair, his jaw open, his eyes staring at the pinkie, full of recognition.

“I. . I. . told you I would. .”

“I’m sorry, Jer,” Tommy said, taking the pinkie from Dino, holding it up for Lemke to see. “I can’t afford bullshit. Now you tell me the exact address where I’ll find Garza’s Tucson hideout and we’ll leave the rest of Chelsea’s body intact.”

Tommy slid the legal pad and pen over to Lemke. “I want every address. Then I want names of his contacts here in Tucson.”

Lemke looked at the pad and hesitated.

Tommy slapped Dino on the arm. “Go get the rest of her fingers, will ya,” Tommy said.

Dino got up.

Lemke screamed, “No! I was just trying to think where this girl would be, that’s all.”

“Hold up,” Tommy said to Dino. Lemke’s lips were trembling. Even the best method actors couldn’t fake that kind of fear.

“Okay,” Tommy said, holding up the palm of his hand. “Just write the information down and we’ll keep your daughter alive.”

Lemke began writing furiously, his chubby fingers moving over the pad with a purpose.

“This didn’t come from me, right?” Lemke said, without looking up.

“Course not,” Tommy assured him.

After a couple of minutes, Lemke examined the paper and seemed satisfied. He handed it to Tommy with shaky fingers. “It’s everything I know,” he said.

“I believe you,” Tommy said.

The pinkie was beginning to leak enough blood to soak through the bar rag. Lemke’s eyes locked on the pinkie like it was a rare gem.

“Could you please let her go?” he asked politely.

Tommy inspected the pad and was impressed with how detailed the directions were. He ripped off the top sheet, then dropped the pad back on the table.

“Give me your cell phone,” Tommy said.

Lemke quickly slid his phone over to him.

Tommy handed the phone to Dino and said, “You know what to do.”

Dino nodded, then folded his arms across his chest.

Tommy got up and tossed the rubber pinkie at Lemke. The big guy scrambled for it once it bounced off his chest. It took a couple of moments of playing with it in his fingers before he’d realized the dupe.

“It’s fake,” Lemke looked astonished and confused. “Where’s Chelsea?”

“We took her out for some ice cream,” Tommy said. “The only thing we may have hurt is her appetite.”

Lemke seemed relieved and pissed all at once. “You mean. .”

Tommy became disgusted. “Unlike some of your friends, I don’t mess with kids.”

Lemke stared at the piece of paper in Tommy’s hand as if he’d just given him the password to his online bank account. It convinced Tommy he had the real deal.

“Listen,” Tommy said, zoning in on Lemke’s large torso, “mix in a salad every now and then, huh?” He headed for the door, pausing only to point at Ben Westfall and mouth, “Thank you.”

Once outside, Tommy slid into the back seat of the SUV. Matt was behind the wheel, Nick in the passenger seat. Stevie was back there with a lapful of rubber fingers and a bottle of red nail polish. Tommy handed Nick the piece of paper, who gave him a fist bump.

“Let’s go,” Nick said, putting an address into his GPS.

“He cause a scene?” Matt asked through the rearview mirror.

“Naw,” Tommy said, looking out at the passing desert landscape. “How tough can you be living in a town without sidewalks?”

Matt parked the SUV a hundred yards from the house. They were in a rundown residential neighborhood in west Tucson. Most of the front yards blended into each other, just one long stretch of overgrown mesquite trees and dry dirt between patches of dead grass. There were scooters and tricycles resting on their side in random yards, but no kids.

Tommy thought if they built a police station on this street, it wouldn’t stop the flow of crime. Nothing would. You could smell it in the air.

“The Hostage Rescue Team is on the way,” Nick said to Tommy. “We’re going to sit tight until they get here.”

“Place looks like a bomb hit it,” Tommy said.

They sat silent for a minute until Stevie said, “What was Nairobi like?”

“Sad,” Tommy said. “Very sad.”

“You were at some orphanage?”

“Yeah, a buddy of mine has a daughter who runs the place, Susan Walker. She’s a real gem. Most of them are AIDS babies. She treats them like they’re her own children.”

“So what did you do exactly?” Stevie asked.

“Mostly scrounged for food or boiled water. I’d go to the local churches and ask for supplies. But the most important thing I did was hug these little creatures. They need human contact so badly. Did you know if you took a child at birth and kept them in complete darkness for the first four months of childhood, they’d be blind for the rest of their lives?”

“Get out,” Nick said. “Is that true?”

“I’m not shitting you,” Tommy said. “Something about the optic nerve needing to connect with the brain and it only happens in the first four months. After that, it won’t connect anymore. That’s why baby toys are all primary colors. They need to calibrate their eyesight.”

“Geez,” Stevie said. “Where’d you learn all this, in Africa?”

“Yeah, apparently some of these orphanages over there are basically babysitting kids whose parents already died of AIDS, so they just sit there in some kind of a pen, like a baby corral, and they get fed three times a day and that’s it. No one touches them and they don’t receive human affection, so just like the optic nerve, their ability to give and receive love never quite attaches. They grow up like zombies. They don’t smile, they don’t cry, it’s useless, because they’ve been conditioned to be ignored. So we go around and hug these babies all day long.”