B009XDDVN8 EBOK (46 page)

“No one wants to pay, but it all works out the same in the end. Because this is what we do: we find you and collect your debts. We file liens when we can, we garnish wages when we must, we play the telephone like a Stradivarius. We have whole warehouses filled with people making calls. And we are hired by the most reputable firms. You would be shocked at the names. If you don’t make your car payment, we place a call. If you don’t pay your MasterCard bill, we place a call. And the mortgages, we had to rent a whole other warehouse just to handle the mortgages. This is all quite legitimate, state inspected, state approved. As we like to say, we put the
done
in
dunning
.”

In addition to my being bound and gagged, short-and-stocky bashed me in the head whenever I groaned or struggled too hard in my chair, which was hard to avoid, gagging as I was from the gag in my mouth. But the first time I had really squirmed, rattling the legs of the chair back and forth, the goon had bashed me one but good, knocking me straight to the floor, banging my shoulder into the cement. Since then I had refrained from making a show of it.

“I got my start making calls,” said Clevenger. “This was a long time ago, during the Reagan recession in the early eighties. It seemed such a major event, yet it is but a drizzle compared to the monsoon that has overtaken us. Once I received a file, first I’d call the debtor, then I’d call his employer, then I’d call his mother, then I’d call his mistress, then I’d call his wife. And not just once, or once a week, or once a day. Every hour. Oh, if I got your file, suddenly I was in your life. Some people have an aptitude for science, or music, or art. I have an aptitude for this. In person I am not
much to look at, I know, but on the phone I can curdle your blood, can’t I? And the message is always the same: time to pay up.”

I remembered what Derek had told me about Clevenger liking to make an impression before asking the hard questions. Which made the car battery, sitting on the floor in front of me, with starter cables snaking around it, quite the unwelcome sight. Especially the way my bare feet were bound together in a bucket of water.

“And even after I was promoted out of the warehouse to a hard-case unit, and then promoted even higher to the special-case unit, strictly off the books and with a very special clientele, the message I was sent to deliver, in ever more dramatic ways, remained the same. Time to pay up.”

Clevenger took another deep draw from his cigarette, then he waved the glowing ember toward the battery. Tall-and-morose stepped around the table and started hooking up the cables. Red to positive, black to negative, just as if readying to start a dead car. Then he turned to face me, his yellow teeth bared, a clamp in each hand, faced me as if I were a stalled Buick. Short-and-stocky pressed down on my shoulders to keep me in place as the clamps came closer. The hands clasped on my shoulders were now sheathed with yellow rubber gloves.

“We’ve been headed for this, you and I, ever since that first phone conversation in Las Vegas,” said Clevenger calmly. “It was only a matter of time before we’d be together. And I have no doubt that you will give me everything I need. But first, I have found, it helps the process move more smoothly if you know exactly what time it is.”

Tall-and-morose stood over me, opening and closing the red clamp in his left hand, an alligator snapping its jaws. I struggled like a maniac against the rubberized grip on my shoulders.

“Oh, look,” said Clevenger, glancing at his watch as the goon jabbed at my chest, the clamp snapped shut on my right breast, and I roared through my gag. “It’s time to pay up.”

When I startled awake with a sharp crease of pain in my face and a ringing in my ear, I was no longer gagged, though still bound. The bucket was lying on its side on the floor, water pooling about it on the cement. On my chest, just below the right nipple, was now a gaping sawtoothed wound leaking blood, much like one of the strange wounds I had seen on Augie’s chest. My nerves still were jangled, my bones still ached, my heart still raced, my ears still rang, the dryly electric taste of metal still cloaked my tongue.

“I enjoyed that entirely too much,” said Clevenger, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief as his post-torture cigarette dangled from his thick lips. Tall-and-morose was no longer standing behind him.

As I stared at Clevenger, the throbbing of my chest subsided. Is there a more brilliant analgesic than hate? “Did you enjoy it as much when you did it to Augie?” I said through clenched teeth.

“Yes, actually. I am one of those rare breeds, a man in love with his work. But don’t be modest, I’m sure it was just as stimulating for you.”

When the second clamp had been pressed against my side I could feel the charge move through me, as if in slow motion, muscle by muscle, not the jagged ripple of alternating current, but something hot and hard slipping directly beneath my skin, shards of lava boiling my blood, freezing my muscles, sending my heart into a furious lurch. Alarm bells rang that only I heard. Every breath burned my lungs and hammered my head. My toes clenched tight from the charge as my burning feet kicked at the bucket. I tried to scream even as my jaw slammed down so hard I would have bitten off my tongue if the cloth wasn’t there. It lasted for ten seconds, it lasted for an hour, it was an instant, it was a lifetime. I could smell the sweet singe, and my eyes bulged with blood, and I was certain, the whole time, that I was going to burst into flames.

And all the while Clevenger smoked and watched as impassively as if he were watching paint dry on a wall.

That’s all I remembered before short-and-stocky slapped me awake. I had no idea how long I had been out; all I knew was that the breaths I now gulped in were so cool and clear it was like I was breathing in air from the Arctic.

“In fact,” continued Clevenger, “I’m almost hoping you’ll force me to do it again. That’s the way it was with your friend Augie. He gave up his sham hiding spot under the chair after the first shock, as if he was the first to think of such a thing, but then he clammed up. Not a word about what else he had. Not a word about you. He dared me to throw more his way.”

“And so you took him up on the dare.”

“He had a taste for punishment that his body couldn’t handle. If you think you’re tougher than you really are, like your friend Augie, sometimes the wrong person shows up on your doorstep. You can blame me for it, that’s easy enough, but as far I’m concerned, his fate was his choice entirely. I merely stood by while he died. And then I waited for you.”

Suddenly a minuet began to play, something soft and lovely, so lovely I thought it had to be a trick of my mind, as if the pain and the terror were sending me to some angelic place. But Clevenger heard it, too, lifted a finger telling me to wait, as if I had a choice, and pulled a BlackBerry out of his pocket.

“Clevenger…Okay, that’s fine…Take your time, the rush is over. How is she?”

Clevenger lifted his eyes to stare at me as I struggled against the bindings. I shouted out, “Shelby. Shelby, it’s Dad.” Clevenger nodded and something slammed my head from behind and I almost blacked out again. Clevenger continued talking calmly into the phone.

“Good, let her sleep. I’m taking care of things here…Don’t bother, just let me know when you get in…Right.” Clevenger pressed End on his phone, laid it on the table, took a drag from his cigarette. “Your daughter is fine. She’s taking a little nap. It won’t be long before she joins us here.”

I stared at the BlackBerry for a moment, hungry for it. “Let me talk to her.”

“Not until after.”

“After what?”

“Our accounting.”

“Why don’t you just let her go?” I said. “Just tell your man to let her off at the next rest stop. You’ve got me, you don’t need her anymore.”

“But you see, Frenchy, I don’t want you.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Your money.”

“You can have it. I would have given it over even without your sadistic little demonstration. All the cash I have.”

“The wan hundred thou you promised Derek?”

“I can get more.”

“Okay, then, let’s add the extra you took from your friend Augie’s house. From the bag, beneath the kitchen floor. You didn’t replace the grout quite perfectly enough to keep the spot hidden from us. I put the amount in the bag at another hundred thousand.”

“There wasn’t that much,” I said.

Clevenger laughed. “Your lies, your meager attempts at obfuscation, it’s all textbook. You promised Derek a hundred thousand cash. Everyone lies about cash. I’ve been in this game long enough to have developed a formula. Based on your age, your fear, your level of arrogance, your stupidity and greed, I figure you have more than twice as much at least. We’re talking two twenty, minimum. Where is it now? You were ready to pay off Derek tonight, so it’s in the city. With your friends, I suppose. Just tell us where they are.”

“And no one gets hurt?”

“That’s the idea.”

“And I can trust you?”

“You don’t have a choice. I have your daughter. Who are you going to trust if not me?”

“And then it’s over.”

He laughed, his fat face creased like a pillow with a gaping maw, and he laughed. “No, Frenchy, it’s just beginning. Right now we’re talking about cash. Next we start talking your fixed assets, the art, the car, the IRA and pensions. Your children intend to go to college, right? Then we’ll talk about your college funds. And the house, especially the house.”

“There’s no equity in the house. And no one will buy our furniture after what your goons did to it.”

“There are ways to extract the money. In fact, it’s being taken care of as we speak.”

“What the hell does that mean? And what about the deal you offered?”

“That was when you were still on the loose. Now that we have our hands on you and your daughter, the price is steeper.”

“Fine. Whatever. You can have it all.”

“Of course I can. And I will.” He reached into the canvas bag, pulled out a yellow tablet and a pencil. “In these cases we always start with an accounting.” He took a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket, put them on, jotted something on the pad, and then peered out at me over the rims. “Let’s start with the cash. How much is there, exactly, and where is it hidden?”

“I’ll tell you everything as soon as my daughter’s free.”

“You don’t set the rules anymore, my friend. The battery was just an appetizer, a taste of where this can go. There is nothing I would like better than to give you the main course.”

I didn’t want to see what he meant by that. God, I really wanted to say yes, yes, please, anything, yes. But I also knew exactly where I was, smack in the middle of another stinking negotiation. I had botched my negotiation with Derek through gross overconfidence; this one, I could not afford to lose. All I had left to trade was my cooperation, and so that was the one thing I needed to withhold until my daughter was free.

“Look, you win, Clevenger. Congratulations. Your dick’s bigger than mine. You want my money, take it. You want a complete accounting of my assets, I’ll give it. You want my signature, I’ll sign anything you put in front of me. It’s that simple. Just let her go, let her call me and tell me she’s free and she’s safe, and you can get everything you want.”

“I can get it anyway.”

“Not without my say-so.”

“Oh, you’ll give me what I need, all right.”

“Or I’ll spit in your face.”

“From that distance?”

I tried, I hawked up a gob and tried to shoot it out, but with my body bound it barely made it past my legs. He stared at me for a moment, at the ground where my spit had landed with a mealy splat, and back at me. Then he looked at short-and-squat and nodded.

I was slugged on the back of my head so hard I toppled like a domino. When the chair crashed to the floor, my shoulder and head hit the concrete at the same instant and my entire side was blinded by a white-hot pain. When my shout had subsided and I could see again, I was staring at Clevenger’s tiny black shoes, as innocent as a pair of Mary Janes, and the white canvas bag beside them.

“You are so precious in your defiance,” said Clevenger, as calm as ever. “You tried to get away with something, you’ve fallen in over your head, and suddenly you’re the victim.”

“You killed my friend, you kidnapped my daughter, you stuck a fucking electrode on my tit.”

“All justified, my friend. You took money that wasn’t yours, you used it to live a richer life than you otherwise would be able to, and when it was time to pay up you refused. You’re no different than any other deadbeat whose file I’ve been given. Think of me as the cold wind that blows through your life, putting everything back into balance. You were living beyond your means,
and now you’re going to live below them until you catch up—it’s that simple. And you should be grateful, you should build shrines. I’m showing you the truth of things, boy. In this life you never get away with anything. You were robbing your future to pay for your present and I’m just enforcing the arrangement. So don’t go spitting at me. Spit at the kid who made the deal in the first place.”

I closed my eyes for a moment and who I saw just then was J.J. Moretti, aged seventeen, staring ogle-eyed at the riches revealed in the beam of his flashlight. In the darkness of my vision I heard a voice, sharp and arrogant. “Pick him up.” The chair, with me tied to it, was leveraged off the ground and jarred to standing. I opened my eyes into the present, slipping through a quarter century as one slips on a banana peel.