William Lashner - Marked Man

Finally, too angry at myself not to want to hurt someone else, I said to Monica, “It’s not her, you know.”

“I know,” she said.

I was frankly shocked. “When did you figure it out? When she referred to Ronnie as a he?”

“Before then. I knew it right away.”

“How?”

“I just knew.”

“So why did you stay the night?”

“I liked her,” she said. “And I wanted to know why I had been led to her.”

“Because that lying bastard was trying to set you up,” I said.

“No, something else was behind it, I’m certain. Lena asked me to come back and visit. Maybe to stay with her for a while.”

“You’re not thinking of actually taking her up on it?”

“She was nice.”

“It was all an act.”

“Not all of it. Everything has a purpose, Victor. There’s a message here, if I just listen hard enough.”

“The message is to get help.”

“You’re being mean again.”

“The lie didn’t shake your faith?”

“Only the truth can do that.”

“Well, that’s what we’re going to find back in Philly. Are you ready for the truth, Monica?”

“I’ve been ready all my life.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find your sister,” I said, “and maybe change my life in the process.”

“How?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

And that’s what I tried to figure out the rest of the long trip home. Maybe it was time to take to heart the lessons I had been learning from Teddy and Stanford Quick. Sure, I knew that Purcell was a total creep and Quick was a total corpse, but still, they had known more than I ever would about taking hold of the reins of life and forcing it to do your will. And sure, Nietzsche was an incestuous nut job with acute gynophobia and the mustache of a porn star, but maybe the guy had a point. Leap the abyss or stay on the wrong side of life for all eternity.

Enough with the law of either/or, enough with letting the richest fields lie fallow for matters of decorum or quaint moral qualms. It was time to seize my opportunities. To seize my destiny. To follow the lead of Sammy Glick and create my own damn success. It was time, damn it, to get some cable in my life.

And son of a bitch if I didn’t come up with a plan.

“I’m bringing him home,Mrs. Kalakos.”

In the scented darkness, she rose unsteadily from her deathbed, reached her palsied hand to my face. “You good boy,” she said as she brushed my cheek gently with her gnarled finger. “You good boy.” And then, abruptly, she slapped my face. Hard. It rang like a shepherd’s crook snapping over a knee.

“What was that for?” I said.

“A warning,” she said. “You no play fool and lead them to him like last time. You almost got him skewered like lamb.”

“I thought I had taken precautions.”

“I spit on your precautions. Precautions are for timid men with girls they can’t handle. You, you be certain.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Your best, it better be good enough, Victor.”

“Is that a threat, Mrs. Kalakos?”

“I am Greek, Victor. I don’t threaten. I slice. Thinly, you know? Makes the meat very tender.”

“Are we talking about lamb again?”

“Yes, of course. Thalassa makes very nice lamb, with garlic and coffee. Special recipe. You want see my slicing knife?”

“No thank you, the sight of your gun was enough.”

“That little thing?”

“I will be very careful, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“Good. I choose then to trust you, and also will my son, because I tell him to. You’ll meet him where I say, and you bring him right here, to me.”

“Someplace more neutral might be more secure. I was thinking that it would be best if I met up with the police at-”

“Don’t tell me what is best for my son. His whole life I know what is best for my son. You bring him here, to me.”

“This is the one place they’ll be certain to be waiting, Mrs. Kalakos. It won’t be safe to bring him here.”

“You make it safe. You bring him here. I don’t know how many days I have left, how many hours. I waited long enough. You bring him straight to me.”

“I don’t think that’s a very wise-”

“Are we still discussing this? No more discussion, Victor. You do what I say.”

“Okay,” I said. “My client told me to let you call the shots. But on two conditions. First, this will clean our family’s debt to you. We are even, forever. No more favors.”

“As you say.”

“Speaking of which, I have a question. My grandmother, when you found her with that man, was she happy?”

“What is happy, Victor? Who is happy in this life?”

“Ballplayers,” I said. “Supermodels. Ballplayers married to supermodels. But my grandmother, before you dragged her back, was she happy?”

“You want truth?”

“Yes, I do.”

“She was crying every night in the small apartment of that strange man, your poor grandmother. She saw she made terrible mistake. But she was afraid her husband not accept her back. I didn’t take her home for your grandfather, I take her home because it was what she wanted.”

“And she was grateful?”

“For the rest of her life, my boys they never paid for shoes. ‘Give it to them for free,’ she told your grandfather.”

“I bet he hated that.”

“He was grateful, too. They had good life together. She thought she wanted more and ended up with nothing. Life can turn to tears when you want more, always more.”

“Speaking of more,” I said, “this brings me to the second condition. We need to talk about the final payment for my legal work on behalf of your son.”

“What you mean, final payment?”

“At our first meeting, I told you I needed a retainer. But a retainer is just enough for me to agree to take the case.”

“You want more.”

“Since that meeting I’ve done a significant amount of legal work.”

“Is that what you call it? What kind of legal work have you done, Victor Carl?”

“Meetings, negotiations, investigations. If you want, I can give you an itemized bill showing my work down to the last detail, in six-minute increments, and then you can pay me in cash. If you’re short of cash, I could find you a finance company that would be quite willing to take out another mortgage on the house. Thalassa wouldn’t mind, I’m sure.”

“It’s good you sure, Victor, because that makes one of us.”

“Or maybe, if you choose, we can work something else out.”

“You have idea, of course you do.”

“When you gave me those jewels and chains at our first meeting, I couldn’t help but notice there was more in the drawer.”

“And you want rest, is that it, Victor Carl?”

“That’s it,” I said.

“You would leave me with nothing? You would take the last bauble from an old, dying woman?”

“I’m a lawyer, Mrs. Kalakos.”

“You sure you not Greek?”

“Pretty sure, but to tell you the truth, I seem to be getting more Greek every day.”

“I’M BRINGING him home, Dad,” I said over the phone, “but I’m going to need some help.”

“What can I do?” said my father. “I can barely get up the stairs.”

“Not you. I want you to take a little trip out of town. Maybe down to the shore.”

“I hate the shore.”

“Get a little seaside rental for a week. Hit the beach.”

“I hate the beach.”

“Foot-long hot dogs, barefoot girls in bikinis, frozen custard.”

“Now I know you’re trying to kill me.”

“My treat.”

“Stop it, my heart can’t take the shock.”