The Bad Beat (17 page)

Or valuable. I wasn’t sure what angle Big Lumpy was working. Part of me wanted to believe that there was this new soft core of altruism inside the artist formerly known as Mark McGregor. And part of me knew that I was dealing with a man who played incredible odds in every part of his life. What was the bet here? And who got the payoff? At the worst, this was a suicide mission on Big Lumpy’s part. At the best, it was a path toward freedom for Brent, if indeed that was what Brent wanted. What nineteen-year-old knows what he wants, after all?

“And who gets the money?”

“I do,” he said. “And then I leave it to Brent, with a few provisos.”

“If I say no, what then?”

Big Lumpy spun his computer back toward me. On the screen was a satellite image of a house. I didn’t recognize it, so I pulled the image back until I began to see recognizable landmarks: the Stratosphere Casino, the Luxor Pyramid, the stretch of cars along the Las Vegas Strip. The house didn’t look familiar because I’d never actually been to Nate’s place in Las Vegas.

“Your brother Nate still owes me money, but I’ve taken that as a loss,” Big Lumpy said. “No use crossing state lines just for a few hundred dollars. Killing someone, that’s a reason to travel. Do you know what he used as his call-in code? Goldfinger007. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Hysterical.”

“I’m a reasonable man now, Michael,” Big Lumpy said. “And I’m a serious man. I trust that we have a partnership?”

“I can’t tell you what Brent will decide,” I said.

“You’re basically asking him to sit beside you and learn how to be an evil genius. Kids today, they have their own ambitions.”

“He’ll have choices. Good or bad genius is still genius. He can be good if he wants, too. You must know that eventually someone will come along to try to corrupt him, if he’s not dead before then.”

Big Lumpy had a very good point. A man like Yuri Drubich, even if he was arrested and imprisoned by the American government, would still be able to come at a person. He’d keep coming for as long as it took. It was a compelling argument.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “What about Sugar?”

“He’s an exceptionally annoying person.”

“I shot him once,” I said.

“You should have finished the job.” Big Lumpy got up from his seat and began to make his way to the front door, then realized he was still plugged in and waited for me to unhook him from the extension cord. He was an odd combination of extreme smarts and confounding helplessness. He was strong of mind but incredibly weak of body, so he was smart enough to threaten Nate’s life, smart enough to know that I was powerless to stop anything from happening to Nate three thousand miles away and blacklisted from conventional air travel, but too weak to do anything himself. Like take a breath, for instance. Or kill Nate.

It’s hard to kill someone once they’ve stopped being an object and started being a person, which is likely what Nate now was to Big Lumpy. But he wouldn’t be the one killing him. He’d just hire that out. If nothing else, I’d come to know that Big Lumpy was a man who covered all of his possible angles. I could muscle him if need be, but I wouldn’t outthink him.

I helped him to the door. When I opened it, his assistant was waiting on the landing with Sugar. Or someone who I presumed was Sugar. It was hard to be definitive since he had a canvas bag over his head and his torso was wrapped in what looked to be the plastic wrap commonly used by movers.

“He’s unhurt, at least physically,” Big Lumpy said.

“And there’s nothing there emotionally to tarnish, so I suspect he’s fine.”

“Nice of you to wrap him up for me,” I said. I watched as Big Lumpy was helped down the stairs by his manservant—I really needed to get one of those—and was struck by how difficult it was going to be to explain all of this to Sam and Fiona, when Big Lumpy stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up at me.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” I said.

“Trusting me. No one trusts me.”

“I’m not sure that I do. You did threaten to kill my brother after all.”

“It’s just part of the odds. You know that.”

“I suppose I do. I just don’t want to take a bad beat like Henry Grayson.”

“You won’t,” he said. “We’ll speak tomorrow and in a few days all of this will be over and I’ll be dead or dying and your friend Brent will have a new life. Isn’t that nice?”

Big Lumpy didn’t wait for my reply. He and his assistant walked through the courtyard and out into the street, climbed into the white Escalade and were gone. I pulled the canvas bag off of Sugar’s head and saw that they’d also duct-taped his mouth and stuffed his ears with cotton. That they hadn’t just cut out his tongue was probably only due to Big Lumpy’s new world-view. I ripped the duct tape off of Sugar’s mouth and he immediately began apologizing, making threats and essentially babbling incoherently, so I put the tape back over his mouth, but pulled the cotton out of his ears.

“Sugar,” I said, “I want you to listen to me. You ever tell anyone who I am, where I live or even the color of my eyes again, and I’ll kill you myself. We clear?”

Sugar nodded his head. It was about all he could do, since he was still wrapped in plastic.

“All right,” I said. “Come on in and I’ll make you some yogurt.”

11

The first kamikazes, the first fighters willing to commit suicide in order to defeat their opponents, are generally thought to have been the Jewish Sicarii and the Islamic Assassins. Unlike modern-day suicide bombers, the Sicarii and the Assassins weren’t required to die in order to do their jobs, but if that was what happened, so be it. Undertaking a suicide mission requires a different psychological makeup than merely putting yourself in a position where you might die as a result of your actions.

With someone like Big Lumpy, however, where his death was already foretold, taking a risk like presenting himself to Yuri Drubich in order to defraud him was an entirely different beast. He could die in the process, but maybe it would be a less painful way to go than via whatever was eating him from the inside out. No matter how this all played out, Big Lumpy was a dead man. And in the end, if he went for it, Brent’s father’s debts would be gone, he’d be able to get the help he needed, and Brent would have choices about how to use his talents. Or at least he’d have the financial security to make choices. I couldn’t imagine what Big Lumpy’s provisos would be, as he said, but they’d hardly be enforceable with violence after he was dead.

“What sort of person goes by Big Lumpy?” my mother asked.

It was the next morning and I’d just finished explaining to Brent (and a befuddled Sugar . . . and my chain-smoking mother) the deal Big Lumpy was offering him, right down to the potential for millions of dollars. We were sitting at the same kitchen table where I’d had eight thousand conversations with my own mother and father about how crime doesn’t pay. The same table where Fiona and Sam—who were on their way over to take Brent to school—and I had planned more than one enterprise that might normally be considered criminal if we weren’t such good law-abiding citizens . . . or, well, at least Sam and I were, in any case.

I hadn’t mentioned to my mother that Nate was being threatened in all of this, figuring that all things being equal, she really didn’t need to know that Nate was also into a psychopath—or a former psychopath, as it were—for some marginal sum of money. Parents really don’t need to know everything about their children.

“It’s a nickname,” I said. “Because of his huge brain.”

“What about you, Sugar?” my mother asked. “Why do people call you that?”

“I’m sweet, Mrs. Westen,” he said.

“Isn’t that nice,” she said. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Brent tells me you used to live under Michael’s place. Isn’t that a coincidence?”

“It’s a small world,” he said.

“So you’re the drug dealer, then, that he had to shoot?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You know. We all got checkered pasts, right, Mike?”

“You don’t have a checkered past,” I said. “You have a checkered present. You really do need to consider another line of work, Sugar. Eventually someone is going to have better aim and will get you in the head.”

“I was thinking maybe I’d go back to school. Hit up twelfth grade again at night school and then just bounce once I get my paper. You know, but I gotta get mine until then. I’m going to get up out of that game when I can, Mike, on the real. Soon as I get a new ride.”

“I’m sorry,” my mother said, “but I have no idea what you just said. Could you interpret into English for me, Michael?”

The thing about my mother was that she could
be
lost and adrift and then she could just
seem
to be lost and adrift. It was a good defense mechanism and a good way of putting people like Sugar in their place. She would have made a good preschool teacher or Cossack.

“He’s going to quit dealing drugs just as soon as he gets his high school diploma and a new car,” I said, “but not in that order, I suspect.”

“And do you also call yourself Sugar because you sell cocaine?” she asked.

“Allegedly,” he said.

My mother turned to Brent. “If you’re smart,” she said, “you’ll get him out of your life as soon as possible.”

Brent shrugged. If he could figure out a way to convey the word “like” by using a repetitive body action, he’d have the basis of his entire emotional range covered.

“Anyway,” I said to my mother, “Big Lumpy is a genius. Geniuses get to call themselves whatever they want. Though my understanding is that he doesn’t actually care for the name, if it makes you feel any better, Ma.”

“He might be all smart and stuff,” Sugar said, “but he’s mean.”

“He let you live,” I said. “He didn’t need to do that.”

“Whatever,” he said. “He wrapped me in plastic wrap like I was a sandwich or some shit. That’s messed up, yo.”

Through all of this Brent was strangely silent. “So,” I said, “what do you think, Brent?”

“Why does he want to do this?” he asked.

“Honestly? I think he sees himself in you.”

“I’ve never met him,” Brent said.

“I don’t mean it literally,” I said. “But in your work. The Web site. The guts it took to stand up to him and to screw Yuri Drubich over. He thinks you’re smart, Brent. I think you’re smart, too. But I’m not offering you an opportunity to do . . . well, whatever he wants you to do.”

“What do you think that will be?”

“My guess is that he wants you to go down a better road than he went on,” I said. “At least eventually. My sense is that he thinks he can train you a bit. And then send you to work for people who could use you for the good of our country. What you did to Yuri, what you came up with, InterMacron, that technology you just made up out of the ether? He thinks it could work, Brent. That’s the biggest thing. He thinks your theories are sound.”

“I was just doing what I could to help my dad,” he said. “I did what anyone would do.”

I looked across the table at my mother. She was sitting beside Brent attempting to be as motherly as possible, which wasn’t easy, since she was always better at being vaguely distant and demanding, and I could tell she wanted to say something. She kept opening her mouth and then closing it, like a fish.

“Go ahead, Ma,” I said, “say what you’re going to say.”

“Well, Michael,” she said, “I think Brent makes a very good point. Doing whatever he could do to take care of his parent. That’s a very kind, very wise, very sweet thing for a boy of just nineteen to do.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Princely.”

“At least he didn’t run off and become some . . . whatever you are.”

“A spy,” I said.

“Which is badass,” Sugar said.

“Totally,” Brent said.

Not the response my mother was looking for. “Anyway, Michael, I just think that maybe Brent needs a good, solid family surrounding him. What kind of life is he going to have doing whatever this Big Lucy wants him to do?”

“Lumpy,” I said. “Big Lumpy. And the truth is, Ma, that Brent can make his own choices of what he does. You want to work for the government, Brent?”

He shrugged. Of course. “I dunno. That sounds pretty cool.”

“Would he get to carry?” Sugar asked.

“Probably not,” I said.

“Whatever, bro,” Sugar said to Brent. “I could get you a piece.”

“He would need to get certain criminal elements away from him,” I said.

“What about my dad?” Brent asked.

I hadn’t told him yet about finding Henry. I wasn’t sure what might happen next, but I knew that if Yuri or perhaps Big Lumpy could use Henry as collateral, they would. It was best that Brent still be kept in the dark about his father’s whereabouts and mental condition, but I didn’t want him to be in constant fear about his possible death. I had to make a choice.

“He’s safe,” I said.

“You found him?” he said. “Where is he? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t,” I said. “And I can’t tell you where he is now, but understand that he’s in a place where no one can get to him.”

“When did you find him?”

“Yesterday,” I said.

“What?” Brent pushed back from the table and then stood up abruptly. “What? Why didn’t you tell me? I’m not a little kid, you know. I’m a full-grown man, you know. I’m, like, almost twenty.”

“Brent,” I said, “please sit down.”

“No,” he said. “No. I mean, like, I’m valuable and you’re just, like, pulling my strings and I’m not down with that.”

He stalked across the kitchen and into the living room and then back into the kitchen. His face was puffy and red and I realized he was near tears.

I don’t do well with tears. Especially not on men. Or boys. Or women. Crying animals aren’t my area of expertise, either.

“Uh, Ma,” I said, as quietly as possible, since I figured she might have more experience with this than I did.

“He’s right, Michael,” she said. “Nineteen is a full-grown man. I’ve heard that before.”

“Not helping,” I said.

Brent did another tour of the house, mumbling under his breath and stomping the entire time, before basically throwing himself down onto the sofa in the living room. “I need to go to school,” he said finally, as if we’d not spent the better part of an hour talking about the rest of his life. “I’ll be late if we don’t leave in, like, fifteen minutes.”