Tim Green - Exact Revenge

The man called Dominic folds his hands and dips his head. The rest of the room is silent. A tugboat going by outside sounds its horn. Finally, Bert clears his throat and shifts in his seat. Ramo Capozza nods at Frank and Frank digs back into the papers. He scans one, then another, and slides them down the table toward Capozza. The man to Capozza’s right, thin and angular, wearing a creamy brown suit, puts on a pair of gold reading glasses and examines the papers as well.

I’m pretty sure the most interesting one would be the statement from The Bank of Zurich showing a statement from the Iroquois Group for one hundred thirty-seven million dollars. The other would be the state certificate of incorporation showing Bert Washington as the president of the Iroquois Group.

The man leans toward Capozza and whispers in his ear. Capozza nods. Bert clears his throat again and this time begins to cough. I lift the headset away from my ears and look over at Chuck, who’s doing the same thing. When Bert’s done, I put the headset back on to catch a few words of Bert’s.

“-over the numbers,” Bert is saying.

The men all stare at him. Some start to mutter.

“What did he say?” I say in a hiss to Chuck with my hand over the microphone. Chuck shrugs.

“I think everyone should relax,” Capozza said, raising his hand. “Donald has the books. It’s nothing the different corporations don’t already give to the IRS, so let’s not get excited. The fact that Mr. Washington’s group is thorough is the sign that they’re a good group of businessmen and they’ll be good partners.”

The man with the reading glasses reaches down and sets a box of three-ring binders on the table. The box is pushed all the way down to Bert. Bert sits silent.

“ It shouldn’t take our accountants much more than a week to check through these, then, if you gentlemen are still willing, we’ll have a deal ,” I say into Bert’s ear.

He repeats it stiffly. Frank squints at him and rolls his tongue around the inside of his mouth.

Ramo Capozza slaps his aging hands gently on the tabletop and says, “Very good, Mr. Washington. We appreciate your coming by. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some more business here before I meet my daughter for lunch.”

Bert doesn’t move.

In his ear I say, “ Go shake his hand .”

“Go sha-” Bert starts to say, then stands up and continues. “I’m going to go. Now. Thank you very much.”

He picks up the box, moves down the length of the table, and shakes Ramo’s hand, then walks out the door. A man leads him through the hall and down the steps.

Bert is actually out the door when I hear Frank say, “Hey, Bert, do you mind if I call you Bert?”

Bert turns and there he is. Frank. Massive. Greasy. But with manicured hands and a three-thousand-dollar suit. A lump swells in my chest.

“No,” Bert says.

“Good,” Frank says. “Hey, Ramo told me it was Seth Cole who introduced you. That right?”

“ Yes ,” I say in Bert’s ear. “ Tell him yes .”

“Yes,” Bert says stiffly.

Frank angles his head, still looking at Bert. A small smile creeps on his face.

“Yeah, well… tell him from me… thanks. Okay?”

“Okay,” Bert says. He turns away and steps toward the open door of my limo.

“Hey,” Frank says, causing Bert to turn toward him again. “Don’t think you’re going to pull any funny stuff with those records…

“The last Indian war didn’t go so well for you guys.”

FRANK RUBBED HIS TEETH back and forth against the face of his thumbnail. His eyes were looking out the window, but he wasn’t really seeing any of the storefronts on 49th Street, he was just staring. When the car pulled up in front of the Diamond Men’s Club, Frank waited for his driver to open the door. A bullnecked bodybuilder dressed in a tuxedo hurried outside to hold open the door to the club.

“Good morning, Mr. Steffano,” the kid said.

Frank didn’t bother to take the thumbnail away from his teeth when he asked, “Mickey in?”

“Seven a.m., same as always,” the kid said, rushing to open the inner door. The girl in the cashier’s booth stopped chewing her gum to stare.

It was dark inside and the red lights pulsed with the music. On the main stage a blonde girl who looked like she was about fifteen worked the brass pole at the end of the middle runway. Two guys in cowboy hats offered up creased dollar bills. Five or six other men in rumpled business suits were spread out in the dark, sitting at small round tables drinking twenty-dollar drinks.

Frank snuck up on the bartender and watched carefully as he poured a drink, then walked down the stairs, across the floor to the far wall, where he let himself past another musclehead and into the back. He passed a changing room where two half-naked girls were looking at their faces in the mirror and laughing about something. Mickey’s office was in the very back, across the hall from Frank’s. Frank knocked five times with a rhythm that was Mickey’s special code, and after a minute the bolt lock clicked and the door opened.

“What?” Mickey said in his grouchy nasal wheeze before he peered up through his glasses and saw that it was Frank. “Frank. What are you doing here so early?”

“Why?” Frank asked, pushing the door so the knob rattled against the inside wall. “You doing something you shouldn’t be? How come any time I come here during the day everyone acts real nervous?”

The space was cramped, and he kept Mickey there instead of letting him use his own spacious office across the hall even though he rarely used it himself and Mickey was there practically twenty-four seven.

“If someone was gonna try to take you, Frank,” Mickey said, “they’d be doing it at night. We don’t make enough money during the day to pay the phone bill. You’re just intimidating. That’s why they’re nervous.”

“Good,” Frank said. He pulled up a chrome and leather chair across from Mickey’s desk. On top of it sat an open folder with some account sheets, a computer, and an ashtray piled high with spent cigarettes and snowy ash. Behind the desk were a massive safe and two gray file cabinets. Mickey sat down and lit a cigarette, his small fingers struggling to hold the match steady.

“You’re shaking,” Frank said.

Mickey nodded toward the wall that was lined with pictures of his wife and their two teenage kids. The boy was a miniature of Mickey, small and sneaky-looking with big ears, except the boy didn’t wear glasses and he hadn’t lost most of his kinky orange hair.

“She’s leaving,” he said.

“Your wife?”

Mickey nodded.

“She can’t do that. You want me to have someone talk to her?”

“No,” Mickey said, exhaling. “Let her go. I got an apartment already and that little blonde thing from Sioux City is moving in.”

“The girl out there on the pole?”

“How’s your wife?” Mickey asked, squinting one eye at Frank through the smoke.

“Mickey,” Frank said after a moment’s pause, “how’s our books?”

“Clean.”

“I’m not talking just here. I mean the whole crapshoot. The casinos. The hotels. The clubs.”

“Clean,” Mickey said with a little less conviction.

“How clean?” Frank said, shifting his bulk toward the desk. “Clean enough so if a bunch of hotshot lawyers and accountants dug in there’s nothing doing?”

“The way we got it set, it’d be a real shell game. Someone pretty smart would have to have, like, the books from all the companies, and sit down to compare one to the other and have a pretty quick eye to see what you got going on.”

“Fuck,” Frank said.