The Bad Beat

10

Getting ambushed isn’t any fun. One moment you’re happily going about your normal life, worrying about taxes and cancer and what to eat next. The next moment someone has shot you in the face and you’re dead. That’s the second-best-case scenario, really. What you don’t want is to be ambushed, captured and then tortured to death. All things being equal, a bullet to the brain is a far more humane way to die.

There exists, of course, a third possible result of an ambush, the first-best-case scenario, as it were: You’re taken by surprise but not injured beyond repair-physically or emotionally. The problem with this angle is that if someone didn’t want to hurt you physically or emotionally they wouldn’t ambush you in the first place.

Which is why I was somewhat surprised when Big Lumpy appeared at my loft later that evening. There was a knock on the door and when I looked out the window I saw Big Lumpy’s Escalade idling across the street, the glow from the nightclub on the street turning the bright white paint yellow, then pink, then blue.

I didn’t bother to look through the peephole to see if Big Lumpy was alone. If he had guts enough to show up at my door unannounced, he probably wasn’t here to kill me.

Plus, if you want to kill someone without ever touching them, the best way is to wait for them to stare at you through a peephole. A peephole is structurally the weakest portion of a door. It’s just a hole, bored through wood, with glass on either end. So if you want to stab someone in the brain, wait until you see light being interrupted on the other end of the hole and then shove a long-bladed-preferably serrated-knife through the hole with as much force as possible. A serrated knife will do far more damage, so it really is the weapon of choice.

Or just shoot a single bullet through the hole. That will also do the trick. If you’re any good, you won’t even leave a fingerprint.

Even still, you can’t be too careful these days, so I got my shotgun from under the sink, racked it and opened the door.

“Can I help you with something?” I said.

“Is this a bad time?” Big Lumpy said. He was still wearing that absurd white outfit, but now had a portable oxygen tank with him, too, as well as a slim laptop.

“I’m a formal guy,” I said. “You should have called first. I would have taken out the nice linens and china.”

“I would have, but you’re not listed. I looked all through the Yellow Pages under ‘burned spies’ and the only name that came up was a Jesse Something-or-Other.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Call him next time.” I stepped around Big Lumpy and swept my shotgun over the courtyard where I park my car. It was empty and the gate was closed. “Where’s your manservant?”

“In the car,” he said. “Where is yours?”

“I gave him the night off,” I said. “He had a near-death experience this afternoon.”

I put my shotgun down to my side and invited Big Lumpy inside my loft. He stepped in, pulling his oxygen tank behind him, and then stopped to survey his surroundings.

“Spartan,” he said.

“I didn’t intend to stay long,” I said.

“How long ago was that?”

“Longer than I thought,” I said.

“Longer than you deserved?”

“Depends on who you ask.” This answer seemed to satisfy Big Lumpy. He walked over to my kitchen counter and set his computer down and took a seat. “Make yourself at home,” I said to his back. I put my shotgun on my bed and went into the kitchen and stood across the counter from Big Lumpy and waited for him to say whatever he wanted to say.

“I don’t suppose the boy is here?”

“No,” I said.

“Good. Wouldn’t want him seeing me and being unimpressed.”

“You ever meet his father?”

“Once. He wasn’t aware of the fact that he was meeting me, however. I used a proxy. Better to convince him to pay. I watched from a distance. I’m a bit of a voyeur in that way.”

“He’s crazy,” I said.

“I don’t doubt that,” he said. “I put the fear of God into mortal men.”

“No,” I said, “I mean he’s nuts. Clinically.”

“You found him?”

“I’ve found evidence of him,” I said. I didn’t know what Big Lumpy was doing at my place, but the fact that he was there at all told me something was niggling at him, so I decided to take a few chances, see where they led. “And the evidence indicates to me that he’s had a break from reality. If he’s alive, he might be too far gone to matter.”

“This is my problem how?”

“I don’t think he knew what he was doing when he was betting with you,” I said. “Did you know he accidentally killed his wife?”

“I was his bookie, not his therapist,” Big Lumpy said.

I told him the story Brent had told me that afternoon, including the part about his personality changing. I even told him about the conspiracy books I found in Henry’s house, figuring the more evidence for madness I could provide, the more likely Big Lumpy might feel.. . something. I wasn’t sure what he was made of exactly, but I knew that his impending death had to have some effect on him, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

“Terrible story,” Big Lumpy said when I was done.

“Maybe Lifetime will make it into a movie that the whole family can enjoy.”

“Are you really that dead inside?” I asked.

“Do you think I’m stupid, Michael?”

“No.” And I didn’t.

“Then why are you trying to squeeze empathy out of me?”

“I’m just trying to see if you’re a human being.”

“There’s no empathy in my business,” he said.

“Or mine,” I said.

“That’s not true,” he said. “Look at you now. Helping the helpless. Friend to the great unwashed masses who embark on stupid criminal pursuits. You’re like Robin Hood in Armani.”

“This isn’t my business,” I said. “This is my life. I’ve been forced to separate the two. You might look into it.”

This got Big Lumpy to smile. “You’re an odd man,” he said.

“I’ve had an odd life,” I said.

“I know,” he said. He opened up his computer then and swung it my way. “I’ve been reading your file.”

“I don’t need to look at that,” I said. “I have my own copy.”

Big Lumpy nodded once and then made a few clicks on his keyboard. “Have you seen mine?”

On his screen was a series of documents that were largely redacted. “Impressive,” I said. “You’ve been a real black mark.”

Another smile. He still hadn’t told me what exactly he was doing at my house and I wasn’t going to ask. He seemed to be enjoying this cat-and-mouse game, showing me that he was in as deep as I was with the government, letting me know that the stakes of Henry’s life were small comparatively. I just didn’t know why yet.

“I spent some time looking at the InterMacron Web site,” Big Lumpy said. “Impressive.”

“I thought so.”

“How old is he?”

“Nineteen.”

“Only child?”

“Only child.”

“And his father, you say he’s crazy. His mother is dead. Grandparents?”

“I don’t know. Probably dead,” I said. “I think he has an aunt somewhere.”

“Texas,” Big Lumpy said.

“Right,” I said. “I forgot you’d threatened her life.”

“I only provided intel. I made no actual threats of my own. Outsourcing, Michael-you should look into it.”

“Next career change I might,” I said.

“I spent some time quizzing Sugar on his friend’s life today, too. Just to make sure no one was lying to me about things. I’d hate to think I was dealing with a nineteen-year-old savant only to learn that I was dealing with some intricate multinational plot.”

“That happened before?”

“More than once,” he said. “It helped that I was the nineteen-year-old.” He made a few clicks on his computer again and up popped a photo of Sugar strapped to a table and covered in electrodes. “I figured it would be easiest just to polygraph your friend Sugar versus figuring out all of his slang. Did you know his legal name is actually Sugar?”

“No.”

“It came up as a lie, but he swore it was true. It made for a good control question.”

“So?”

“So it seems everyone is being honest. A true revelation.”

“You came here just to tell me that?”

“I came here to make a deal.”

“We already made a deal.”

“No, you won a bet.”

“You don’t have anything I want,” I said.

“This isn’t about us. It’s about the boy. Brent.” Big Lumpy’s oxygen machine made a beeping noise. He looked down at it and swore under his breath, then reached down and came back up with a power cord. “Would you mind plugging this in for me? My manservant apparently didn’t juice it up enough before I left and so now I have only fifteen minutes of oxygen left and then you’ll have to give me mouth-to-mouth.”

I wanted to avoid that as much as possible, so I came around the counter and took his cord. It was too short to reach anything nearby, so I went upstairs and came back down with an extension cord and then plugged everything in.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You weren’t on the machine earlier,” I said.

“Days are better for me. I can sometimes go a full hour without the machine, but nights seem to be worse. Soon days will be worse, too, and then I’ll be dead. No odds on that one, I’m afraid.”

“What do you want with Brent?” I asked.

“His mind.” Big Lumpy clicked back to the Inter-Macron site and began going through each page. “His ideas? These foolish ones he came up with? This sham? This is terrible science, but it is brilliant propaganda. And surprisingly accurate to what I suspect is actually being worked on. That is a rare talent. To be a fool. To be a genius. And to be able to synthesize all of that into a believable package. Does he have any idea what he’s capable of?”

“He’s just a kid,” I said.

“So was I. I took down Las Vegas when I was his age.”

“Everyone does that now,” I said.

“But I was the first. He could do the same thing with just a slight bit of training. You say he goes to the University of Miami?”

“Yes.”

Big Lumpy tsk ed. “Talent like this should be at a real school.”

“I mentioned his father is crazy, right? Degenerate gambler, too.”

Big Lumpy waved all that away. “Michael,” he said, “are you happy with your life?”

“Sometimes.”

“I love my life, apart from the dying aspect, but that’s true of all humans. We have superpowers, you and I, Michael, and we’ve both used those powers for evil.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said.

“I am,” he said. “You could have joined some antiviolence movement, but you chose the armed forces and chose to go around the world shooting heads of state. I have no problem with that, I honestly do not, but without a sanction you’re a criminal, as you are now in the eyes of the law, I assure you. I can show you that file, too, if you like.”

“No, thanks,” I said. Big Lumpy had me confused now. I wasn’t sure what he wanted or if anything he said was worth listening to. But the strange thing was, despite my best instincts, I found myself liking him. He was smart-there was no question about that-but he was also conflicted and lost in his own identity, so I was intrigued by whatever it was he was about to propose. “So, what, you’re going to adopt Brent?”

“No,” he said. “But I could help him. Do you read, Michael? I mean other than books on counterinsurgency and the like?”

“I’ve been known to curl up with an operations manual for small submersibles.”

“I’m thinking Dickens. Great Expectations. ”

“I’m familiar with it,” I said. “I take it you don’t see yourself as Pip.”

“I don’t have much time left, Michael. Maybe I can do a little good. Maybe I can send Brent in a direction in life that would use his talents. Talents that have not been cultivated, as far as I can tell.”

“He did dupe Yuri Drubich,” I said.

“He could dupe our own government with this site,” he said.

“He’s not as impressive in real life,” I said. “He says

‘like’ a lot. And takes Ambien recreationally. And counts Sugar among his friends.”

“He doesn’t need friends,” Big Lumpy said. “He needs someone to lead him. Like you did. And like I did. Or he needs someone to at least provide him the path to a better life. I could be that person.”

“You didn’t sound like that kind of person this afternoon.”

“It was something you said, actually, if you must know. You called me a sideshow. At the time, it just made me angry. But then I got home, thought about torturing Sugar, but instead just polygraphed him for what I needed to know. And you know what, Michael? I felt… gratified.”

“So you had an epiphany,” I said. “You could change your mind tomorrow.”

“Do you want to know how long I have to live?”

“I’d say three months,” I said.

“Could be less, really. My number of epiphanies is limited. I’d like to spend my last days happy, if you can believe it. Maybe I’ll travel. Maybe I’ll buy a spot on a Russian spaceship. Or maybe I’ll just keep running numbers and sending my minions to beat the shit out of people until I take my very last breath. Before today, those seemed to be my best choices. But then I had this… epiphany, as you call it. I call it a moment of reckoning. A moment of understanding my place on this planet.”

This all sounded too good to be true. “I don’t believe that I can totally trust you,” I said.

“You shouldn’t,” he said. “You’d be foolish to.” There was another beeping sound, this time from Big Lumpy’s iPhone. “Do you have anything to eat? I have to eat something every hour or else my medication will make me sick. Isn’t that funny? My medication will make me sick.”

“It’s ironic,” I said.

I opened up my fridge and took out two yogurts, blueberry for me and strawberry for Big Lumpy. He regarded the yogurt like it was poison, then exhaled in resignation, asked me for a spoon and started eating. When he was finished, I offered him a glass of water or some orange juice, but he declined both. I didn’t bother offering him a beer.

“Big Lumpy,” I said. “You like that name?”

“Not particularly.”

“What do your friends call you?”

“I don’t have friends.”

“What about family?”

“My brother, Jeff, calls me Buddy,” he said, “but I hate that, too. But then I haven’t spoken to him in a decade. So he probably just calls me ‘asshole’ now.”

It was weird to think of someone like Big Lumpy having a brother. Or parents. People like him just seem to exist outside of the normal world sometimes. “Anyone ever call you Mark anymore?”

“No,” he said, “no one calls me Mark anymore. Not in a million years.”

I’ve never trusted adults with nicknames. If you want to hold on to some childish thing, make it that you look both ways before crossing or that you are slavishly dedicated to making others share. But letting yourself be called something like Big Lumpy suggests a larger emotional problem. Which it was clear Big Lumpy had. Here he was nevertheless, as raw and vulnerable as a newborn. I could step on his oxygen line and he’d be dead. Or I could just shoot him. Or break his neck. He’d come unarmed and alone into an enemy war zone.

He was acting like a person with nothing to lose, which I suppose was true.

“So, Mark,” I said, “tell me what you want to do.” Big Lumpy made a few clicks on his computer again. “Yuri Drubich, you recognize, is not a positive part of international relations. He deals with terrorists. As much as I don’t care for working for our government, that has more to do with pay rates and backstabbing than some jihad madness, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”

“I can.”

“So you didn’t really blow up a preschool in Panama?”

“No,” I said.

“Good to know,” he said. “I’d like to represent your interests to Yuri. Tell him I’m the man behind the plan and that I have all of the actual information, but that it will cost him. What sounds like a good round number?”

“Four million?”

“That’s not a round number. Six has more curves.”

“So he pays. You give him the information and then when he finds out it’s bunk, what then?”

“You get him for purchasing government secrets with the intent of distribution to terrorists.”

“But this isn’t a government secret,” I said.

“Not yet,” he said. “But when I share Brent’s ideas with a few associates of mine in the NSA, it certainly will be. His broad ideas for transference are nothing short of profound. Just because they are theoretical doesn’t mean they aren’t inherently plausible.”

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.”