Tim Green - Exact Revenge

I set my briefcase down on the table and sit opposite Russo. Bert quietly closes the door and remains standing there.

“Does… he want to sit down?” Russo asks.

“We’re fine,” I say, flipping the latches and opening the case so that the cover prevents Russo from seeing the money and the gun. “Mr. Russo, I am here for a client who might want to give you some money.”

“Money? For what?” he says, his eyes darting to Bert and back.

“For some information,” I say. “About a man named Raymond White.”

The blood drains from Russo’s face. In a whisper, he says, “Raymond was a friend.”

“That’s what I understand,” I say. “My client wants to know more about what happened to Mr. White. They were in prison together and Mr. White saved my client’s life. Unfortunately, Mr. White was killed during an attempted escape.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yes,” I say.

“I didn’t hear that,” he says, with his brow furrowed. “I heard they thought he was, but I never heard that he was.”

“And my client would like to do something for the people closest to Mr. White,” I say. “Mr. White mentioned you several times… as a friend.”

“Oh, I was,” he says. “Raymond…”

He shakes his head. “What they did to him… goddamn.”

“But you knew he was framed,” I say. “You knew what Frank Steffano and Bob Rangle did.”

“He told you?”

“He told my client.”

Russo puts his round flat face into his hand.

“I should have said something,” he says. “I know. I was drunk back then. Pretty much all the time. I didn’t really think they meant it, and when I…”

Russo looks up at me with red eyes and says, “I’m telling you the truth. I was scared. I still am. Of them.”

“What about his father?” I ask. “Weren’t you supposed to help him? I read that he died. They turned off his power. My client was told that you were supposed to help Raymond’s father.”

“Oh, I did,” he says. “Are you kidding? At least I tried. That old… he wasn’t easy. He didn’t want my help or anyone’s.”

“How do you know that?”

“There was a girl,” he says. “Lexis. I don’t know how much you know.”

“Go on.”

“She was Raymond’s girl. Then, after everything, she married Frank.”

“The man who-”

“Yeah, well, she had a baby boy,” he says. “I just know she came to me with money. A lot. She asked me to give it to the father, but that old crab-ass…

“He wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t take anything from anyone. Raymond, he was a stubborn son of a bitch and it wasn’t hard to see where it came from.”

“Why are you still afraid?” I ask.

“Do you know who those guys are?” he says, tilting his head just a touch.

“A cop who did well in business,” I say. “A politician who cashed in on Wall Street.”

“Ha, well in business?” he says. “That Frank, he cut people’s nuts off who got in his way. Got involved with the big boys down in Atlantic City. Owns some casinos and hotels and shit.

“ Well ? He’s gotta be worth a hundred million and Rangle’s probably worth even more. Some fund manager or something and he didn’t take any prisoners either, I can promise you that. Two very big men. Dangerous to your health, even a fancy lawyer like you.”

“And things haven’t gone that good for you,” I say, looking around.

“Yeah, well, it’s not so bad. Little cold in the winter.”

I look into the blaze of the fire and nod slowly.

“Aw, who the fuck am I kidding?” he says. “It sucks. If I don’t have like a convention of snowmobilers every day for the next two months, the fucking bank will probably take this shithole. Maybe do me a favor. I’m thinking about starting a rumor of a ghost. Sometimes that draws people in.”

“You deal drugs too,” I say, locking my eyes onto his.

“Hey, who the fuck are you, coming in here?” he says sitting straight and scowling down his nose, but his eyes flicker nervously up at Bert.

“There was another man,” I say, ignoring the flare in his nostrils. “His name was Dan Parsons.”

“Yeah, makes me look like King fucking Solomon,” he says, fidgeting with his pack of Marlboros.

“Meaning?”

“Got kicked out of his own fucking law firm,” Russo says. “Big fucking deal. Parsons amp; Trout. Dan Parsons this. Dan Parsons that. Oh, they paid him, but they wanted him out. His own firm. Didn’t do a damn thing but file appeals for Raymond White. Went a little batshit, I guess. Then he took every fuckin’ penny he had and got into that dotcom bullshit. Made a fuckin’ fortune, then lost a fuckin’ fortune. Uncle Sam-as in IRS-didn’t get their cut on the upside and last I heard the barbarians were at the gate.”

My eyes are drawn back to the fire. One log sticks up at an angle. On its tip is a fiery brand pulsing orange. I watch until the wood pops and the ember falls and disappears into the ashes beneath the grate.

“How much would it take to get this place into good shape?” I ask. “So you could stop selling pot to kids?”

“Kids? You should see the shit these little bastards do.”

I stare at him without comment.

“Well,” he says, crossing his arms and frowning all the way into the area where his chin mixes with his neck, “I don’t know. If I had, like… two hundred thousand. That would put me in pretty good shape. That’d pay down my loan to where I could get down to Daytona for a week in February or something. Shit, the fucking winter here never ends.”

“Two hundred thousand dollars?” I say.

“Well, you asked.”

I reach into the briefcase and push the gun aside. I take twenty stacks of hundreds out and set them on the table.

“A gift,” I say, “from Seth Cole. In memory of Raymond White… To turn your life around.”

“Hey,” he says, reaching for the money. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t kid. It’s yours.”

“Do I have to claim it?”

A smile creeps onto my lips and I say, “You can do whatever you want with it. It’s yours. No one has to know where it came from.”

“Hey,” he says, peering around the cover of the case as I close it. “How much is in there?”

“There was a million,” I say, rising from my seat and snapping shut the latches on the case.

“What if I said I needed a million?”

“Then I would have given it to you,” I say. “But I was authorized to give you only what you needed to get your business on track so you could live an honest, decent life. Now hopefully you’ll do that.”

“I could use it all,” he says, his voice rising with the rest of him. “Really. I just didn’t want to be greedy, but I need it.”

“If you didn’t,” I say, “then don’t.”

“What?”

“Be greedy,” I say, and leave.

WHEN I AWAKE, it’s still dark. I shower and change. I open the door and Bert-playing guard dog-falls backward into the room. He wakes up in a sputter, grabbing for the handle of the Glock in the waist of his pants.

“It’s me,” I say. “Let’s go.”

The boards creak beneath our feet, otherwise there’s no sound. The wind is gone. Outside, it’s frigid. There is a low ceiling of gray clouds that are lit by the glow in the east. We cross the frozen lake and leave our machines in Byrd’s empty lot, and I tell Bert to drive us to Syracuse. After almost three hours, we stop at Cosmo’s diner near the university for breakfast and I order a broccoli and cheese omelet. It is a taste from another life.

Bert asks if he can get a burger this early and the waitress with an earring in her nose shrugs and says sure. I lean out of our booth and ask the woman at the cash register for a phone book. She smiles and takes it out from under the counter.