Sizzling Sixteen

TWENTY-ONE

JOYCE LIVED IN a house that was a cross between Mount Vernon and Tara from Gone with the Wind. Professionally maintained green lawn leading to a monster white colonial with black shutters and a columned entrance. I turned onto Joyce’s street and saw that Vinnie was sitting on the curb in front of the house. He was back to wearing only boxer shorts, and he had a two-day beard.

“That’s disgustin’,” Lula said. “You aren’t gonna let him into this nice car, are you? He’s probably got Barnhardt cooties all over him. Maybe you should strap him to the roof.”

“I haven’t got any bungee cords. He’s going to have to ride inside.”

I stopped and let Vinnie into the Mercedes.

“What took you so long?” he said.

He was in the backseat, and I looked in my rearview mirror and gave him my death stare.

“You got no manners,” Lula said to Vinnie. “I’m gonna have to disinfect my eyes with bleach after seeing you in them shorts. Why are you always just wearing shorts whenever we rescue you?”

“I wasn’t wearing anything when I got kicked out,” Vinnie said. “The neighbors complained, and Joyce threw these shorts out to me. They’re not even mine.”

“Why didn’t you at least call?”

“Hello?” Vinnie said. “Do you see a phone on me?”

“Guess not any of Joyce’s neighbors were gonna open the door to a naked man,” Lula said.

“Only long enough to send the dog out after me,” Vinnie said.

“So why’d Joyce kick you out?” Lula asked.

“She found out I didn’t have any money.”

A half hour later, I was back at the office and Vinnie was inside, staring down at the electric cord running out to Mooner’s RV. “What the hell?”

“He needed juice for the Cosmic Alliance,” Lula said. “Are you gonna put clothes on? I’m gettin’ nauseous lookin’ at your nasty weasel body.”

“My clothes are all in the rolling goof house out there. That guy is a nut. Hasn’t anyone ever told him Hobbits aren’t real?” Vinnie went to his office and looked around. “What happened to my furniture? All I’ve got in here is my desk and a folding chair.”

“We sold it,” Connie said.

“Yeah, we sold everything,” Lula told him. “We sold all the dishes, guns, grills, and jewelry. We even sold the motorcycle.”

“The BMW? Are you shitting me? That was my private motorcycle.”

“Not no more,” Lula said.

“We needed the money to buy back your debt,” I told him. “You’re off the hook with Sunflower and Mickey Gritch.”

Mooner ambled in. “Hey, amigo,” he said to Vinnie. “Welcome back, dude. Long time, no see.”

“Yeah, a lot longer than I wanted. Didn’t you give anybody my note?”

“You didn’t leave a note.”

“Of course I left a note,” Vinnie said. “It was on the table. I couldn’t find any paper, so I wrote it on a napkin.”

“Dude, that was your note? I thought the napkin came like that. You know how you get napkins in bars with funny things written on them?”

“You didn’t read it?”

“No, dude, I put my pastries on that napkin. That’s what napkins are for… drinks and pastries.”

“At least I’m back in the office,” Vinnie said. “A man’s office is his castle, right?” He sat in the folding chair and opened his top drawer. “Where’s my gun?”

“Sold it,” Connie said.

Vinnie closed the drawer and put his hands on his desk. “Where’s my phone?”

“Sold that, too,” Connie said.

“How am I supposed to work without a phone?”

“You don’t work anyway,” Lula said. “And now you can’t call your bookie, who, by the way, probably isn’t talking to you on account of you got no credit.”

“Yeah, but you paid everything off, right? How much did it come to?”

“A million three,” Connie said.

Vinnie froze, mouth open. “You paid a million three? Where the hell did you get that kind of money?”

“We sold your phone,” I said.

“Yeah, and your bike,” Lula said.

“That’s not nearly adding up to a million three. Where’d you get the rest of the money?”

“I’d rather not say,” I told him.

“Stephanie’s right,” Connie said. “You don’t want to know.”

“I came in to unplug,” Mooner said. “The Alliance wants me to go to the airport to pick up some Hobbits flying in for the big event.”

“Okay, so I don’t have a phone,” Vinnie said. “It’s still good to be here. I tell you, I thought I was going to die. They were serious. I don’t know what the deal is with Bobby Sunflower, but he was gonzo. And then when the house got bombed, everyone was twice as nuts. I was happy when you rescued me from the rattrap apartment, but I figured my time was short. I never thought you’d get me off. I knew Sunflower would track me down and blow my brains out. I figured he’d find me in Antarctica if he had to.”

“He needed money,” I said.

Vinnie opened his middle drawer and rifled through it. “The petty cash is missing.”

“And?” Connie said.

“Well spent,” Vinnie said. “It’s not like I’m not grateful.”

“Why did Sunflower need money?” I asked Vinnie.

“Bad investments, I guess.”

“Like what?”

Vinnie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even care. I just want to relax and enjoy not having a contract on me. I want to sit here in my office and watch television for a half hour.” Vinnie looked around. “Where’s my television? Oh crap, don’t tell me you sold my television.”

“I got two hundred dollars for it,” Lula said.

“It was high def!” Vinnie said. “It was a plasma.”

“Well, if you want, I can call Bobby Sunflower and tell him I want two hundred dollars back so you can repo your high def, plasma TV,” Lula said.

“Nope, that’s okay,” Vinnie said. “I’m going to sit here and close my eyes and pretend I have a television. I’m calm. I’m happy to be alive. I’m happy to have gotten out of Joyce’s house without getting my Johnson cut off.” Vinnie opened his eyes and looked over at us. “She’s an animal.”

“Too much information,” Lula said.

Connie went to her desk to answer the phone. “Vinnie,” she called. “It’s Roger Drager, president of Wellington. He’d like to talk to you.”

“What’s Wellington?” Lula asked Vinnie.

“It’s the venture capital company that owns the agency.”

“Oh yeah,” Lula said. “Now I remember.”

Vinnie went to Connie’s desk to take the call.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yessir. Yessir. Yessir.” And he hung up.

“That was a lot of yessirs,” Lula said.

“He wants me to come to his office,” Vinnie said. “Now.”

“Be good if you put some clothes on,” Lula said. “He might not like little Vinnie hangin’ out your shorts.”

“I’ll get them,” Mooner said. “They’re in the Love Bus.”

“What does he want to talk to you about?” Connie asked.

“I don’t know,” Vinnie said.

“Maybe it’s the phantom bonds,” Connie said.

Vinnie’s eyebrows lifted. “You know about that?”

“We scoured the office, looking for money, and I found the file.”

“It started out small. I swear on my mother’s grave I meant to pay Wellington back.”

“Your mother isn’t dead,” I said to Vinnie.

“She will be someday,” Vinnie said. “Anyway, it got out of hand. In the beginning, I just wanted a short fix to pay Sunflower back on some bad bets, but Sunflower came in and wouldn’t let go. Before I knew it, his bookkeeper was helping me keep two sets of books.”

“Is this the dead bookkeeper?”

“Yeah,” Vinnie said. “Sudden death with tire tracks on his back.”

I thought about Victor Kulik and Walter Dunne, executed behind the diner. Life expectancy with Wellington wasn’t good.

Mooner came back with Vinnie’s clothes. “I fixed them for you, dude,” Mooner said. “They’re, like, awesome.”

Vinnie stepped into his slacks and looked down at himself. The slacks had been shortened to just below his knees, and his shirt had been turned into a tunic with a rope belt. It went well with his black dress shoes and black socks. Mooner had printed Doderick Bracegirdle with black magic marker on the shirt pocket. Vinnie looked like a wino Hobbit coming off a three-day binge. His gelled hair was stuck every which way, his clothes were wrinkled and smudged with grass stains, his beard belonged to Grizzly Hobbit.

“I’d kill him,” Vinnie said, glaring at Mooner, “but you sold my gun.”

“Probably, this Drager guy wants to have you arrested for embezzling,” I said to Vinnie. “He’s not going to care that you’re a homeless Hobbit.”

“I haven’t got a driver’s license,” Vinnie said. “I haven’t got a car.”

I hitched my bag onto my shoulder. “I’ll take you. Where are we going?”

“He’s downtown in the Meagan Building.”

THE MEAGAN BUILDING was a black glass and steel high-rise built several years before the commercial real estate market crashed. The Wellington Company was on the fifth floor. We stepped out of the elevator into a carpeted hall. Pale gray carpet, cream walls with cherry chair rails and cherrywood doors. Classy. Wellington occupied the entire floor. It was getting to be late in the day and the Wellington front desk was unmanned. Roger Drager was waiting for us in the small reception area.

Drager was in his forties, nicely dressed, had severely receding brown hair, was around 5’10”, and his body was going soft. His hand was clammy when we shook. He led us through a room with cubicles and banks of file cabinets. There were private offices with windows on the perimeter of the room. Doors were open, and most offices were empty. Desks and chairs. Same with the cubicles. Just a few guys slouched back playing computer solitaire. Not much work going on. No phones ringing.

“Where is everyone?” I asked Drager.

“Flex hours,” he said. “Most everyone prefers to come in early and leave early.”

We followed him down a long hall to his corner office. Large ornate desk and credenza on one side of the office. Seating area with a small couch and two chairs and a coffee table on the other. He directed us to the seating area. So far, he hadn’t seemed to notice Vinnie was a Hobbit.

“Let me get right to the point,” Drager said to Vinnie. “I know you’ve been stealing from Wellington. I want full disclosure, and I want the money you’ve embezzled. I want the names on all the bad bonds you’ve written.”

“Yessir,” Vinnie said. “I’ll cooperate totally. I don’t know where I’ll get the money, but I’ll pay it back somehow. Are you calling the police in?”

“Not if you repay the money.” Drager stood and looked at his watch. “I have another meeting. You can let yourselves out?”

“Absolutely,” Vinnie said. “No problem.”

Drager walked partially down the hall with us, said good-bye, and entered another office. Vinnie and I continued on toward the room with the cubicles. The building was eerily quiet, with the exception of a room to the right. I could hear machinery working on the other side of the closed door. I opened the door and looked in. There was a large paper shredder working. A bored-looking kid stood beside the shredder. Black garbage bags presumably filled with paper were stacked against a wall.

“What?” the kid said.

“Sorry,” I said to him. “Looking for the ladies room.”

“By the elevator.”

I thanked him and closed the door. I didn’t say anything to Vinnie until we got into the car and were out of the parking lot.

“So what do you think?” I asked Vinnie.

“He was nervous,” Vinnie said. “Scared.”

Vinnie might be a creepy human being, but he was an excellent judge of people. That’s one of the reasons Vinnie was a good bail bondsman. Vinnie knew when people were lying, scared, doped-up, dumb, or crazy. When Vinnie wasn’t intentionally scamming, he didn’t write a lot of bad bonds. Vinnie knew who was going to run and who was going to show up for court.

“Do you have any idea why Drager was nervous?”

“I’m guessing someone’s putting pressure on him.”

“His next meeting?”

Vinnie shrugged. “All I know is Drager didn’t want to shut me down or send me to jail. He just wanted the money.”

“You know what else I thought was weird. The office. There weren’t any people working there. He said they left early, but I didn’t see any clutter on the desks in the empty cubicles and offices. Nothing in their wastebaskets. The only machine working was the paper shredder. What kind of an office has that many empty desks and a giant paper shredder?”

“A fake office,” Vinnie said. “Cripes, I don’t want to say what I’m thinking.”

“That you and Bobby Sunflower have been scamming an even bigger scammer?”

“Yeah.”

“Drager?”

“Drager’s mixed up in it, but he’s not the end of the line. Someone’s got his nuts in a vise.”