Suicide Squeeze

33

Otis dropped Conner off at Playerz.

“You’re not coming in?” Conner asked.

“Shit,” Otis said. “My ride smells like swamp water. I’m heading to the car wash.” He drove away.

They knew Conner at Playerz by now and waved him through. Conner passed Pete on the forklift. He was reading a Mad magazine, the wicked little submachine gun still in his lap. Pete barely glanced at Conner, nodded him on back to Rocky’s office. The word seemed to have gone out: Conner Samson was okay.

Conner knocked once, went inside. “Rocky, I got a proposition for you.”

“You’re all wet,” Rocky said.

“Yeah. Long story.”

Rocky picked up his phone, pushed a button. “Julie, can we get a couple of towels in here? Thanks, dear.”

Conner opened the garbage bag, took out the DiMaggio card and the letter from Marilyn Monroe, set them on Rocky’s desk like he was presenting him with the Holy Grail and an Academy Award.

Rocky donned a pair of half glasses, squinted at the letter, then the card. The glasses added twenty years to his face. “Now, this is interesting?” Rocky turned the card over in his hands. “What is it?”

“A baseball card and a letter from Marilyn Monroe.”

“Is that something good?”

Conner explained. He told Rocky about the autographs, the insured value, the possibility of a collector out there willing to pay big money. It felt like a sales pitch, and that was okay to Conner. Conner Samson possessed this thing that so many other people were looking for. It felt good to be lead dog for a change.

Rocky picked up the phone, asked the person on the other end to get him his “associate in Chicago.”

Rocky put his hand over the phone, handed Conner a folded piece of paper. “We just ripped off a shipment from the Gap. Go find some dry clothes.” Rocky turned his attention back to the phone. “Sal? Yes, good to speak with you too. Listen, I have a specialty item, some baseball memorabilia and a Hollywood thing. Is that one phone call or two?”

Conner left the office, closed the door behind him. He breathed a sigh of relief, didn’t realize until now how tense he’d been. Rocky would know what to do, whom to call. Conner felt strangely comfortable leaving it all in the hands of the odd crime boss.

He ran into Julie on the way down the hall. She was thin and pale, pencils stuck in her wad of dishwater hair. She handed Conner two clean towels. He thanked her, and she went back to work.

The map led Conner through the warehouse maze, like a Super Wal-Mart, a mall, and a flea market all rolled into one. Except everything was hot. Otis had told him people had the wrong idea about criminal supergeniuses. People thought they were like James Bond villains, lasers from outer space and nuclear bomb extortion. Nope. The real criminal masterminds were born administrators, superbureaucrats. Rocky Big had to handle state and local officials, cook the books, duck the tax man, hide cash flow, organize travel schedules, trucks coming and going at all hours of the day and night. It was a logistical, pencil-pushing nightmare and Rocky Big was the best. The ebb and flow of stolen goods in and out of Rocky’s warehouse was a magnificent, criminal ballet.

Conner lingered longingly over a collection of plasma flat-screen televisions. Hook one of those babies up to a surround-sound system. Maybe if things worked out… Conner shook himself loose from the fantasy, found the boxes of Gap clothing. He dug around until he found his size, a pair of khaki pants and a forest-green V-neck T-shirt. Conner was wet, smelled brackish. He didn’t want to put the clean clothes on his dirty body. He walked back to Rocky’s office.

Pete had evolved to a copy of Sports Illustrated.

“Rocky still on the phone?” Conner asked.

“Yup.”

“Anyplace a guy can clean up around here?”

Pete told him there was an employee locker room on the second floor. Conner found a spiral staircase, climbed it, passed a Coke machine, and found the men’s locker room. Half the urinals had been ripped off the wall. The tile was an industrial green. He tried three shower stalls, found one that dribbled water that was almost warm. He rinsed off. No soap.

Even in summer there was just something about dripping naked on bare tile that made Conner shiver. He flashed on his baseball days in the locker room. Morons snapping towels. Idiots. He sort of missed it.

Rocky walked in. “I didn’t even realize the plumbing still worked up here.”

Conner quickly wrapped a towel around himself. “I needed to clean up.” For some reason, Conner wasn’t crazy about Rocky being too close to his naked body.

“You’ve done quite well!” Rocky said.

Conner raised an eyebrow, started edging toward his new Gap outfit draped over a stall door.

“There’s a million-dollar offer for the DiMaggio card,” Rocky said.

Conner’s mouth fell open. “What? But that’s-it’s only worth-” Any collectible is really only worth what somebody is willing to pay for it.

“Some tycoon has a collection. Looks like you’re gonna be in the chips, as they say.”

Conner forgot all about being naked. He was stunned.

“It’s a lot of money.” Rocky looked serious. “Try not to piss it away.”