The Fugitives (36 page)

“There you are.”

She looked at him blankly.

“Can I get you something?”

“Did my phone ring?”

“Not that I know of.”

“She said she’d call.”

Kat got up and took her phone from her purse. She called Becky’s number and left a message on her machine. She strolled over to Mulligan’s bookcase and began sliding books off the shelves at random and examining them. Was this obscurity or her own ignorance she was encountering? Nice-looking new book after nice-looking new book, and she’d never heard of any of them.

“I have an idea,” Mulligan said. Kat stood facing away from him, studying the dust jacket of a five-hundred-page novel. On it, a girl stood, legs astride, holding a gun at her hip.

“Is this any good?”

“I couldn’t get into it.”

“But you brought it to Michigan anyway.” She replaced it. She remained facing away.

“I have an idea,” he said again. She turned to look at him and he put what he thought was an enthusiastic expression on his face.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s relax and not worry about it for five minutes.”

“How about this one?” Without looking, she reached for another book.

“Overwritten. It was up for an award I was judging.”

“Yet here it is.”

“They’re all terrible,” he said. “How about it?”

“I am relaxing.” Deliberately, she dropped the award nominee on the floor.

“Go for it. I don’t know what possessed me. We can take them all to the Salvation Army tomorrow.”

“I don’t care whether you keep them or not.”

“Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe it is absurd to have them, most of them. I’ll never read them. What am I trying to prove?”

“Will you stop questioning your place at the center of the universe for five minutes? I don’t care means I don’t care.”

“You’re still mad.”

“She should have called.”

“And she’s not picking up.”

“No.”

“If it’ll reassure you I’ll start listing the fifty possible ordinary reasons why she isn’t.”

Kat didn’t respond.

“I like the look of a lot of books, shelved books,” he said. “Maybe there’s something a little affected about it. I don’t know.”

Kat slipped her hand into the empty space where the fallen book had been. She pulled books down, widening the space. They tumbled to the floor, eight or ten books, paperbacks and hardcovers. “There,” she said.

“I actually have read some of those,” Mulligan said.

Kat daintily stepped out of the pile of books on the floor and sat down on the couch. “I need to go down there,” she said.

“She’s probably busy with the TV guy. Maybe the phone service was temporarily cut off as part of the installation. Maybe she needed to go out and adjust the dish. Maybe she had to run to the mall to buy a new TV stand.”

“She was supposed to call.”

“Call her again.”

“She’s not picking up.”

“Call the cops. Tell them your ailing mother isn’t answering.”

“I need to go.”

Mulligan shrugged and a little sheepishly went to pick up the books on the floor. He hoisted them individually, and carefully blew the dust off them before reshelving them. She couldn’t tell if he was doing it for comic effect or not.

“I’ll go with you.”

“Why?”

“What if you need me?”

“You have been,” she said, “zero help. All you’ve done is scare the guy off.”

Mulligan pouted, eliciting the same unwanted pang in her as Justin and all the others. “Don’t get all weird,” she said. She got up off the couch and put her arms around him from behind. He felt her sag into him a little, as if surrendering to her own gesture. It reminded him sharply and unexpectedly of something that had happened years ago, a few months after his arrival in New York. There was a girl, Rina. Sad-eyed refugee from the Tisch drama program. Coffee, they always went out for coffee. Dates, movies and museums, but the coffee was what stayed in his head, always at Kiev or Veselka. They had a tension to them, those coffees; always ending with Rina on her way home alone to her apartment on East Third and with him heading back to Williamsburg to beat off, but he made sure to stay patient, keep things upbeat, and finally one day, over coffee, he’d seen whatever it was that Kat’s involuntary slump now reminded him of, and within an hour he was fucking her on a mattress on the floor of her studio.

He breathed a laugh.

“What?”

Not something you shared. Tell someone that story nowadays and they’d call him a sexual predator. Grabbing her arm to keep her from moving away, he turned and ground his pelvis into hers. He heard her gasp slightly.

THREE DAYS AGO

There were a lot of websites for people who wanted to spy on other people, mostly the people they trusted the most. Spycams, real-time GPS trackers, keyloggers, voice mail and text message hacks, semen detection kits; it was all right there, like Omaha Steaks and gift baskets to send to the elderly and the ailing.

Argenziano worked on his own laptop because he knew perfectly well that this place, itself a kind of perfection of surveillance, was likely surveilling him in ways that he couldn’t begin to imagine. And the casino was, in turn, being monitored, audited, subjected to undercover investigations by authorities whose own internal affairs were undoubtedly subject to constant oversight, all the way on up. And in the end it looked like all any of them wanted was to go home, put their feet up, and check if their wives’ panties had some other guy’s splooge on them.

He typed in the address of the website where a reliable person had told him that he could obtain the password to any e-mail address. He entered the information the site requested, whistling a little. They asked for a credit card number. Argenziano stopped whistling. He reached for his wallet and then thought better of it. He stood up, left his office, and walked out onto the floor in his shirtsleeves. A waitress passed him carrying a checkholder that had a credit card sticking out the top. Argenziano stopped her.

“Let me have that.”

“It’s those people’s, Mr. A. They want to pay.”

He grinned and squeezed her upper arm. “How much are they down?”

“A bunch, I guess.”

He winked at her. “I’m going to comp them.” He took the checkholder from her and brought it into his office. He entered number, security code, and expiration date. Then he put on his jacket and returned the card to the guests, smiling graciously as he informed them that their refreshments were on the house.

He came back. Now it wanted a valid e-mail address, which he had to obtain at a second site, using fictitious personal information. Back at the first site a small window ominously ticked down the number of seconds until his session expired. He clicked to close it. A new window blossomed trying to sell him a system utility program. He closed that. He heaved a dramatic sigh: You never paid just once, you paid and paid.

He typed in the brand new e-mail address. On TV, they always had a guy the hero could go to, some dweeb—capable and efficient, but a dweeb—who did this stuff while the hero watched over his shoulder, the two of them bullshitting away at each other. He pressed
ENTER
and another window promptly opened: Fuck a Different Chick Every Night. He thought it was like talking to his ex-wife, always struggling to get back to the point. It was like talking to any woman. Sometimes you just had to hit her.

HE POKED AROUND
in Kat’s e-mail. Search capacity was limited on the
Mirror
’s system.

wanted to confirm the figure of $20,000 the banquet raised toward Mrs. Vasquez’s medical

follow up concerning the actual size and horsepower of the prototype engine and whether “partial zero emissions” means that it actually

not confirm the Hemingway quote regarding his upbringing in Oak Park that you provided. Can you let me know whether you were paraphrasing and, if possible, what the original

will need a dozen blueberry, four bran, six corn, and a selection of scones

You could die from boredom. Then:

Subject: Re: Fwd: Story idea from Becky Chasse

To: Chasse, Becky

From: Kat Danhoff

Becks:

Sorry to be responding late. I don’t check my regular email as often as I probably should. This address is the good one, FYI. I’m assuming you’re joking about whether or not I remember you. You were my best friend for eighteen years, girl. And yes, I DO WANT to catch up later.

Meanwhile, about your story: it sounds very interesting, although with the position I’m in here, which is still kind of at the bottom of the totem pole, I have to figure out if it’s worth running it by my editor, who can be sort of a pain about this kind of thing.

But it seems to me whatever you may have seen at your kid’s school function, what’s central is your allegation that casino employees are skimming from the gross receipts. Even if this man Saltino did steal $450K on his own, it sounds like it was going on for a long time and that he wasn’t working independently. Can you give me the names of any other employees who could possibly have been involved? For example, you mentioned Robert Argenziano and said he seemed to be especially upset after Saltino’s disappearance. I’d like to start doing some preliminary research. It’s important because then I can give my boss an idea of how important a story this might be.

Also it’s important that you keep this to yourself.

It’s really good to hear from you. So you’re back in Nebising. Is it just the same as ever? Better? Worse? Maybe don’t tell me. There’ve been a few times over the years when I thought I was going to have to stick everything in a UHaul and head back but something always saved my bacon in the end.

Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out for that info. Use this address!!

Love,

Me

He remembered Becky Chasse, vaguely: she’d started out on the floor as a cocktail waitress, then moved to the cage. And, Argenziano thought, like all these flat-assed Indians Becky Chasse hadn’t missed a trick, and now she was feeling conversational. Now she was back in the boondocks and itching to spill. Attrition was the big problem, of course: employees didn’t give a fuck what the casino did as long as the casino was paying the freight. She must have been half-smart, since she’d gotten it half-right.

Becky Chasse, Nebising: he found her telephone number easily enough. He closed the computer, leaned over, removed a gun case from his bottom drawer, and checked inside. Then he packed it away in a gym bag. Here he was, mopping shit up. Now he could reward himself with a mineral water, a dry piece of broiled fish, and a fresh nicotine patch on his shoulder to make him itch and give him vivid dreams. What did he ever need, except for other people to do what they were supposed to do? Why did it never happen? What a world, what a world. A pep talk in the mirror was in order. He heaved his latest great sigh and rose from his chair. He wanted to call it a night.

Out on the floor, it rang and buzzed. Saturday night. Ugly people looked beautiful in the soft smoky light, it all smelled of perfume and B.O. and cigarettes and anxiety. People dressed up, people dressed stupid, people dressed lucky, people dressed slutty, people dressed just like they dressed for any old thing. There were elderly people who had that careful evaluative expression they wore to scrutinize the early bird specials at the restaurant, or in the cantaloupe aisle at the cantaloupe store. There were young people taking evident pleasure in throwing their money away. It was all a game to measure something about yourself.

He went and he found the couple he’d comped. They were still down, but they looked happy. They had no chance, but they did have fresh drinks, and the opportunity to enjoy watching their money disappear. No chance: the dealer moved so quickly, so smoothly; Argenziano could see them studying him with evident awe, as if they’d only had to pay once to watch the spectacle. But you never paid just once: you paid and paid.

The man spotted him and toasted him with his drink. Argenziano gave him a thumbs-up.

“End of the day for you? Going to get this place out of your system?”

“I never get it out of my system,” said Argenziano. “I hear it all night, it stays in your head. The noise, the bells, the talking, the excitement. You enjoy your evening, now.”

It was a lie. Every night, as soon as he left, as soon as he got on the elevator and went up to his suite, he forgot. There were no lingering aftereffects of the casino environment. That was for the players, coming out and crapping out in their dreams. Him, he just got undressed and watched a movie, then went to sleep. No sense at all that this moneymaking machine churned on all night twenty-three floors below. The place was actually very well constructed, he thought, with pride.

TODAY

It got dark while they were driving down a two-lane stretch of Route 115. Groups of motorcycle riders kept overtaking them, impatiently buzzing close behind them until they could pass, and then opening up, bursting out of and then back into loose formation as they swept into the opposing lane and rocketed ahead. Twenty-five miles northwest of Leatonville, Kat pulled into the lot of a Big Boy. Their waitress appeared to be in the middle of a private crisis, dropping their menus on the edge of the table and rushing off, evidently about to cry. The place was pretty empty and the other waitresses gathered behind the counter near the kitchen door and talked intensely and quietly among themselves. The three of them apparently agreed to cover her tables because one brought water and took drink orders, the second took their food order, and the third brought the food. All superattentive. For Kat, the objective became to stay until the sad waitress reappeared. Kat felt a powerful need to see her. Eventually, she did reappear, as Kat was considering ordering a piece of pie, sidling out of the kitchen door in street clothes, eyes red, hair down. One of the other waitresses stopped her, putting a hand on her forearm. They talked for a moment and then hugged. The sad waitress seemed diminished, smaller; she carried this tragically faded lavender pattern–printed backpack. Kat could see it all, the rusted-out Dodge Neon waiting in the lot with the two crusty child seats in the back, the crap scattered on the front lawn; her whole life, right here, no place at all, and now it was making her cry, finally. She popped a nicotine lozenge instead of the pie.