Christopher Sorrentino - The Fugitives

“But you called me. Here we are.” Argenziano seemed amused. He leaned back in his chair and laid his interlaced fingers over his belly, a fat man’s gesture that didn’t quite work for him. The uncut half of his steak remained on the plate. A garland of parsley lay sodden in a puddle of burgundy-colored blood streaked with translucent fat. He had a look on his face that said Your Move.

“See, I have this unconfirmed thing,” said Kat. “I have a source who worked here for a while who told me that Jackie Saltino stopped showing up for work at around the same time that four hundred fifty thousand dollars went missing. This was right after March Madness last year.”

“That’s a busy weekend,” observed Argenziano.

“Kind of a big coincidence, I thought.”

“What would make you think that Jackie Saltino had anything to do with something like that, if it even happened?”

“Did it not happen?”

“Let me ask you. When you contacted them, as I’m sure you did, what did the authorities say? Did Manitou Sands report any money having been stolen? Is there an open investigation?”

Kat gazed at him without answering.

“But you didn’t just dismiss it from your mind, did you? You didn’t just chalk it up to malicious speculation by some disgruntled ex-employee?”

“Seems like a disgruntled ex-employee could come up with a nastier story than that, I bet.”

“I bet. But this would be your sort of typical rumor people that work near the money like to spread. The countinghouse view, is what I call it. It’s a strange thing about money, Kat. Very strange thing. People who don’t have any, they love to tell stories about it: about the ways it gets wasted, about the ways it gets lost, about the ways the people who do have it just throw it around. No skin off their nose, I guess. They dream about having so much they can go around giving away Cadillacs like Elvis. Of course, everybody’s near the money. Work at a McDonald’s on a busy stretch of the interstate and you’re right on top of ten, fifteen million a year. But not everybody sees it laying around in big piles like we do here, though. People who do, they think, hey — easy come, easy go, casino makes money like that !” He snapped his fingers, then began to count off on them: “They don’t think about overhead. They don’t think about the cost of insurance and security. Computer systems, custom-designed systems. Maintenance and repairs. They don’t think about the salaries for the entertainment. The chef. Place like this has an executive chef. The golf pro, the tennis pro. They don’t think about the comps. They don’t think about the cost of training workers in the pit or in the cage — that’s highly skilled work with very high turnover.”

“This is you saying the story’s made up.”

“This is me saying that it’s a daydream they stuck a name on, apparently. You sit in that cage all day long surrounded by fucking stacks of cash, pardon my french. Why not? It’s like plucking one grape off the bunch at the greengrocer, right?”

“So it didn’t happen.”

“That would be a hell of a lot of money not to report stolen, wouldn’t you agree, Kat?”

“I thought it was possible that a company transacting a lot of its business in cash might not want to call attention to its accounting practices.”

“See, now you have that countinghouse view. Stacks of money. Bags of money. Must be something wrong with it.” He laughed warmly and with easy contempt. “It’s a very interesting thought, Kat. But our financials are on file with about eight zillion government and tribal authorities, though. We’re audited by a Big Four firm. Manitou Sands and South Richmond both.”

Kat gave a little back-to-the-drawing-board shrug. “Guess that answers my question.” She popped a piece of tuna into her mouth and glanced at her watch. He hadn’t come close to disproving her conjecture, but Argenziano was weirdly right about the money. She didn’t know why money that couldn’t be traced or accounted for seemed illicit; why we felt upright and legitimate only when our money could be used to track us. It was as if we found ourselves whole in the record of our spending; could be held to account for our lives only by being held to account for our transactions.

“Jackie Crackers.” Argenziano shook his head. “A name from the dead.”

“Is he dead?” asked Kat.

“Figure of speech,” said Argenziano, fixing her with the pair of eyes that she knew was the last thing James Patrick Sheehan had seen before an epidural hematoma had plunged him into the coma from which he’d never awoken.

“Of course,” she said. “But then, you wouldn’t know, would you?”

“Like I said, I haven’t heard anything about him since he left here.”

“How long had you known him?”

“Met him at P.S. 102, in Brooklyn. He was a couple of grades ahead of me. That was a million years ago.” Argenziano leaned back and looked into the middle distance, rather theatrically contemplating the past.

“So you’re childhood friends.”

“Yes.”

“And you hired him.”

“I did.”

“But then he leaves and you never hear from him again. It’s odd.”

“It happens.”

“Did you have a falling-out?” asked Kat.

He laughed. “No, nothing like that.”

“And he left right after this theft is alleged to have taken place.”

“Looks like we’re back where we started,” said Argenziano. He glanced at his watch.

Kat flipped through her notebook and stopped at a page with car rental information on it. “My source claims to be in possession of proof of the theft.” She looked up.

“What ‘proof’?”

“Don’t know,” shrugged Kat. “I only have the claim.”

Argenziano impatiently waved off someone behind Kat. She turned around and saw a black-clad hostess retreating. The queue of people waiting for tables had grown longer. Their section remained empty. He leaned forward.

“OK,” he said. “I’m going off the record now. Got it? Let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s possible that South Richmond might have advised the Chippewas that it could be mutually advantageous to regularly set aside a rough percentage of cash receipts prior to their being entered on the top line.”

“OK,” said Kat. She felt a growing excitement.

“If something like this were to happen, it would be, ah, customary for this to be cash that South Richmond would take physical possession of. It would be good business.”

“How so?”

“It just would be.” Argenziano paused slightly between each word, for emphasis.

“Is it legal?”

“Is it legal,” said Argenziano, with a laugh. “Kat, this is a legitimate business. This is what I’ve been saying all along. There are official documents on file with official government agencies that prove this. My point here is that in the hypothetical situation we’re discussing, a single individual would have to actually carry the money from point A to point B. Physically, like, in a briefcase.”

“And that individual is Saltino.”

“Oh, it has to be Saltino, if you are dead set on writing a story about someone strolling out of my casino with a brown paper bag full of U.S. currency. This is not going to be depicted as part of a pattern of activity that could be construed as consistent with that of a corrupt organization. OK? One big weekend, one man’s temptation boiling over. That’s the frame this story has to fit inside of, if you want any help from me at all.”

“What makes you think I need your help?”

“Here you are. Who’s your source?”

“That’s confidential.”

“I’m going to bet that it’s not someone who can speak, how do I put it, authoritatively on these matters.” He removed the napkin from his lap and tossed it over the steak. It immediately absorbed some of the bloody fluid pooling on the plate. He stood. “You’ll need some cooperation on this end.” She reached into her purse and pulled out one of her cards and handed it to him.