Tod Goldberg - The Bad Beat

“Right, great,” Sam said. “At any rate, the subject in the bedroom is, uh, emotionally unstable. We’re helping his son with some business regarding, uh, well, a gentleman named Big Lumpy and another gentleman named Yuri Drubich and, uh, we need our emotionally unstable client to get the help he needs in a secure facility and, uh, well, here we are.”

Marci looked up. “Did you say Big Lumpy?”

“I did,” Sam said.

“This house,” Marci said. “I expect that it will be cleaned after I leave?”

“Of course,” Sam said.

“No fingerprints, no hair, nothing?”

“Pro job all the way,” Sam said. “I’ll burn it down if you want me to.”

“And Yuri Drubich, correct?”

“Correct,” Sam said.

“I’ll get back to you on the burning. Where’s the asset?”

“Back bedroom,” Sam said.

“You mind if I drug him? We’re going to pile him in an insulation roll and people, especially crazy people, tend to get claustrophobic when wrapped in insulation.”

“Be my guest,” Sam said.

Marci finally turned my way. “Like your work,” she said.

“I haven’t done any in a while,” I said.

“Belgrade in 2001,” she said.

“Ah, yeah, that was fun,” I said.

“You single?”

“Uh,” I said. “Not really. Yes, in a way. It’s complicated.”

“Always is.”

“My ex-girlfriend is violent.”

“She get mean and beat you up?”

“It’s happened,” I said.

“I knew you looked like a good time.” She stood up, walked toward me and then stopped a few feet away so she could look me up and down. I actually misjudged Marci’s height when she got out of the van, because now that she was standing directly in front of me and the distance between us seemed to be closing incrementally with every breath, I thought she was probably closer to six foot three. Tall enough to cast a shadow on me, at any rate.

“Maybe some other time,” I said.

“You’ll be in a military prison some other time,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said. I tried to catch Sam’s eye, but he was busy staring at the floor. I couldn’t tell if he was jealous or, like Marci, wanted plausible deniability should Fiona learn about any of this. “Listen. I might need another small favor down the line with the asset.”

“Yeah?”

“Any way we might be able to get him declared dead?”

“Why?”

“Insurance,” I said, “against getting killed.”

“We can make him go away for a long time, but I thought he had a kid.”

“He does,” I said. “It’s insurance against him dying, too.”

Marci finally looked around the living room. She picked up a photo of Henry and Brent from the fireplace mantel. “Cute kid.”

“He’s older now,” I said.

“He know his father is crazy?”

“That’s why we’re working for him, Marci.”

“I like the way you say my name,” she said. “You like Italian food?”

“I’m more a Persian food guy,” I said.

“I like Persian food,” she said.

“I know a great little place in Fort Lauderdale,” I said. “Outdoor seating. Breeze from the ocean in your hair. Palm trees swaying in the wind. It’s like being on the Mediterranean.”

Marci licked her lips, which made me feel like I was watching a nature documentary. She might have been six foot four.

“Did you just ask me out on a date?” she said.

“I think you just made me ask you out on a date,” I said.

This got Marci to smile. Thank God. And then she made that same high-pitched squeal I’d heard earlier through Sam’s phone. “You live through this,” she said, “I’ll consider all of your propositions.” She pulled a walkie-talkie from her utility belt. “Come on in,” she said into it. “Bring the barbital and the insulation roll.”

Getting ambushed isn’t any fun. One moment you’re happily going about your normal life, worrying about taxes and cancer and what to eat next. The next moment someone has shot you in the face and you’re dead. That’s the second-best-case scenario, really. What you don’t want is to be ambushed, captured and then tortured to death. All things being equal, a bullet to the brain is a far more humane way to die.

There exists, of course, a third possible result of an ambush, the first-best-case scenario, as it were: You’re taken by surprise but not injured beyond repair-physically or emotionally. The problem with this angle is that if someone didn’t want to hurt you physically or emotionally they wouldn’t ambush you in the first place.

Which is why I was somewhat surprised when Big Lumpy appeared at my loft later that evening. There was a knock on the door and when I looked out the window I saw Big Lumpy’s Escalade idling across the street, the glow from the nightclub on the street turning the bright white paint yellow, then pink, then blue.

I didn’t bother to look through the peephole to see if Big Lumpy was alone. If he had guts enough to show up at my door unannounced, he probably wasn’t here to kill me.

Plus, if you want to kill someone without ever touching them, the best way is to wait for them to stare at you through a peephole. A peephole is structurally the weakest portion of a door. It’s just a hole, bored through wood, with glass on either end. So if you want to stab someone in the brain, wait until you see light being interrupted on the other end of the hole and then shove a long-bladed-preferably serrated-knife through the hole with as much force as possible. A serrated knife will do far more damage, so it really is the weapon of choice.

Or just shoot a single bullet through the hole. That will also do the trick. If you’re any good, you won’t even leave a fingerprint.

Even still, you can’t be too careful these days, so I got my shotgun from under the sink, racked it and opened the door.

“Can I help you with something?” I said.

“Is this a bad time?” Big Lumpy said. He was still wearing that absurd white outfit, but now had a portable oxygen tank with him, too, as well as a slim laptop.

“I’m a formal guy,” I said. “You should have called first. I would have taken out the nice linens and china.”

“I would have, but you’re not listed. I looked all through the Yellow Pages under ‘burned spies’ and the only name that came up was a Jesse Something-or-Other.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Call him next time.” I stepped around Big Lumpy and swept my shotgun over the courtyard where I park my car. It was empty and the gate was closed. “Where’s your manservant?”

“In the car,” he said. “Where is yours?”

“I gave him the night off,” I said. “He had a near-death experience this afternoon.”

I put my shotgun down to my side and invited Big Lumpy inside my loft. He stepped in, pulling his oxygen tank behind him, and then stopped to survey his surroundings.

“Spartan,” he said.

“I didn’t intend to stay long,” I said.

“How long ago was that?”

“Longer than I thought,” I said.

“Longer than you deserved?”

“Depends on who you ask.” This answer seemed to satisfy Big Lumpy. He walked over to my kitchen counter and set his computer down and took a seat. “Make yourself at home,” I said to his back. I put my shotgun on my bed and went into the kitchen and stood across the counter from Big Lumpy and waited for him to say whatever he wanted to say.

“I don’t suppose the boy is here?”

“No,” I said.

“Good. Wouldn’t want him seeing me and being unimpressed.”

“You ever meet his father?”

“Once. He wasn’t aware of the fact that he was meeting me, however. I used a proxy. Better to convince him to pay. I watched from a distance. I’m a bit of a voyeur in that way.”