The men roared laughter.
“But the plot thickens,” Cullen said, looking at Raybould now. “This is the part you’re gonna get off on, Al. The same fat lady turns up at headquarters this morning with a couple uniforms claiming her purse got snatched, going on about a stolen lottery ticket—ten million bucks worth of lottery ticket. Ringin’ any bells, Al?”
Raybould said, “I made the lady’s acquaintance.”
“Well, here’s the capper.”
Cullen turned on the TV and slid a tape into the VCR, the men huddling around the screen now. Cullen started the tape and a grainy Tarek Yaghi appeared, his lips moving soundlessly in the moments before he turned the shotgun on Marty Small.
“See that?” Cullen said, using the stir stick from his coffee as a pointer. He indicated Yaghi’s hand as it pocketed the ticket. “At first I thought nothing of it.”
On the screen Yaghi shot Marty in the face.
“Fuckin’ Terminator,” one of the men said.
“Then I get a call from Smitty over in Robbery,” Cullen said. “Turns out the stiff at the store rolled some accident victims on his way home from a break-and-enter spree up north the other night. Lifted their wallets and a bunch of Christmas gifts right out of the wreckage and left them for dead. We turned up half the stuff in the guy’s van and the other half in the apartment of this little sperm-guzzler he picked up at a strip joint—Jesus, the mouth on
that
one. The lottery ticket was in one of the wallets he lifted. Jagoff didn’t even know what he had ’til the Leb blew his face off. Now I ask you, is that a fuckin’ daisy chain or what?”
“That’s a hell of a tale, Jack,” Raybould said, standing. “I was you, I’d send it in to
America’s Funniest Home Videos
.”
“I pity the purse snatcher when he shows up trying to cash in that ticket,” Cullen said. “He is gonna get STUNG.”
Raybould left on the men’s laughter.
* * *
Kate said, “You’ve got to be kidding,” looking down the hospital steps at the camera crew standing by their red and white van, a reporter she recognized from the evening news having his bald head powdered by make-up. A few plump flakes were falling, landing on that shiny pate, vexing the make-up guy.
Steve took Kate’s arm, saying, “Don’t worry, it’ll be a snap. The cameraman over there, the guy with the bandage on his nose? That’s Willy, hockey buddy of mine. He’s a lousy hockey player, but a great guy. He set this up for us.” He waved to Willy and Willy waved back, balancing the big Sony camcorder on his shoulder. Steve kept talking, coaxing Kate down the steps. “The whole thing’s been scripted out for you. All you’ve gotta do is read your lines. The idea’s to let the guy know he’s got your ticket, assuming he doesn’t already know, then lure him in.”
Kate said, “I hate having a camera pointed at me.”
Steve laughed. “What’ll you do when it comes time to accept your Academy Award? Think of it as practice.”
“You come on with me then, tough guy.”
“Oh, no. You’re the star of this show. Tell you what, though, I’ll stand right behind Willy so you can see me. Make some faces.”
Kate wanted to say something more, but the crew was closing in on her now, the reporter shaking her hand—“Hi, Kate, I’m Leo Lang”—and she was stuck.
Leo Lang said, “There’s nothing to this, Kate. Sandy over there’ll be holding up some prompt cards for you. Just read them off. Act natural. It’s a human interest story, it’ll sell itself.”
Kate said, “Okay, Leo, look. I’ll do this, but I won’t read any lines. I’ve got my own feelings about this. You ask your questions and I’ll answer them. All right?”
Leo said, “Fair enough,” and signaled the crew to begin. He stuck the mike under his chin and smiled for the camera.
* * *
Raybould said, “Fuck,” and slammed the heavy bag with his fist, driving a kick into it, a quick combination, the bag jouncing on its chain.
“Fuck.”
Exchanging a look, two young constables working the weights picked up their gear and headed for the showers, leaving Raybould alone in the small gym.
Oblivious, Raybould punished the bag, dumping his fury into it, clearing his mind. He needed options. Identify his options and go from there. This was just another problem. A giant motherfucking pain-in-the-ass problem, but still just a problem. And every problem had a solution. Most had several. All he had to do was identify them and then pick one. But fuck, it was maddening.
Better than federal prison, though, when you thought about it. The temptation to run straight across Bloor Street and cash that big honey in had been great. But some instinct had twitched, a warning whispered in a small voice he’d faithfully heeded all his life. Wisely. Waltzing in there with the ticket in his hand would’ve been the most spectacular blunder of his career.
He worked the bag, reaching for clarity, bathing his system with calming endorphins.
Okay, cashing in the ticket was no longer an option, so stroke that. What else? Who
could
cash it? The original owner, but he had no idea who that was. He could find out, would find out one way or another, but that approach could get messy. What else?
It came to him then, a plan of such sweet simplicity he had to smile. It’d cost him, but when you were talking these kinds of numbers, what were a couple million here or there?
He eased up on the bag, satisfied, shaking the numbness from his hands. Dripping sweat, he went into the locker room and showered, standing for a long time in the splash and echo of the tiled shower stall, singing softly to himself.
“Gimme some lovin’, gimme gimme some lovin’…”
* * *
Hicks said, “There he is.”
Raybould came out of headquarters onto College Street, moving fast. He stepped onto the street, dodging traffic, and headed straight for the van. Hicks twisted his body away from the window saying, “Shit, he made us,” and Mayer leaned over his gear, turning his face to the passenger door.
But Raybould cut behind the van onto the sidewalk. Mayer picked him up in his sideview mirror. “The fuck’s he up to now?” he said, watching him go into a Burger King outlet.
Hicks opened his door, ready to tail him on foot, but Mayer said, “Wait a sec,” and boosted the volume on the receiver. “Listen…”
The jingle of a coin dropping into a payphone.
“There’s a payphone in the entrance,” Mayer said.
“If anybody’d know that, it’d be you.”
“What’s that supposed to be, a joke? Some kind of slur on my eating habits?”
Hicks said, “Quiet.”
Raybould’s voice: “Paulie, it’s me. Yeah, I need a meeting. Tonight.” Pause. “Don’t give me any shit, Paulie. Tell Mister Corsino it’s worth two million, simple exchange.” Pause. “Okay, put him on.”
Mayer said, “God damn, looks like you were right about this guy.”
“You had any doubts?”
Raybould’s voice: “Yeah, Mister Corsino, it’s a lottery ticket. Ten million.” Pause. “Can’t do it. Too much heat.” Pause. “What…? No, I had to drop a guy to get it. All very public. The ticket’s clean, but I can’t show my face.” Pause. “Paulie can do it, get his picture in the paper.”
Mayer said, “The guy’s got a death wish.”
Raybould’s voice: “A million cash, the other seven wired.” Pause. “What’s to convince? Can you think of a neater way to launder ten million dollars? And make two million while you’re at it? Think about it. I’m doing you a favor here. It’s easy and it’s legitimate.” Pause. “
Half
. Are you fucking shitting me? You…no, Mister Corsino, don’t hang up. I apologize. Jesus… Okay, five it is. But I still need the million cash.” Pause. “Ten o’clock, I’m there.”
Hicks grinned at Mayer. “The kitty just got a million bucks sweeter.”
“Shit, Rodney, I don’t know. This is getting dicey. I’ve got a family to think about, I can’t afford to walk into the middle of a shit storm here.”
“Bryan, if we’re cool about this we’ll be fine. Are we cool?”
Hesitating, Mayer said, “Yeah, we’re cool.”
The sound of another coin dropping into the payphone, then Raybould saying, “I need a flight to the Caymans, tomorrow afternoon.”
“Prick’s not wasting any time,” Hicks said. He looked at Mayer. “Hey, Bry, when this is over I’ll flip you for the plane ticket.”
“Shit, Rodney, I don’t know.”
* * *
Kate said to Steve, “You don’t see the double standard there?” looking him straight in the eye. They were alone in the elevator, heading back to the Stepdown Unit. The interview had gone better than either had expected, Kate a natural in front of the camera. And with the exposure the reporter promised, in a matter of days everyone in the country would know her story. It was the surest way Steve could think of to draw the thief out. “Take
Striptease
for example,” Kate was saying. “Cinematic dreck, granted, but you guys get full rear
and
frontal views of all Demi’s new software, the rest of us get what, two or three seconds of Mel’s backside in
Lethal Weapon
and that’s supposed to be fair?”
They’d been discussing nudity in film, using it as a kind of unconscious foreplay, when Steve made the mistake of calling male nudity gross, something he’d rather not see outside of the precinct shower room. Even there if he could help it. Now instead of arguing, he was watching Kate’s face, enjoying the way her nostrils flared when she got excited, the red spots that came up on her cheeks like a rash, the flash and sparkle of her eyes. She really cared about this stuff.
She said, “That’s the part I don’t understand. Why is it—” The elevator doors opened and they got off, turning right to Stepdown and in through the automatic doors. “Why is it considered such a big deal when a man takes his clothes off and—”
A gruff male voice boomed out of Keith’s cubicle into the main hall: “Gabe, keep them
goddam
boots off the furniture.”
Kate froze in her tracks. “Oh, shit, it’s my uncle Garnet.” She looked at Steve, biting her bottom lip. “I should warn you about him. He’s my dad’s older brother and he…stayed on the farm. He’s a bit crusty.”
The same voice said, “You gonna eat this shit or not?”
One of the nurses frowned at Kate.
Smiling, Steve said, “I like him already.”
Kate said, “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
They went into Keith’s cubicle.
* * *
Garnet Whipple, a gaunt man of sixty-three with a scruffy white beard and eyebrows to match, stood next to Keith’s bed in his bib overalls, eating a chicken leg off Keith’s dinner tray. His wife, Mildred, her narrow peasant’s face set in stone, sat in a chair at the foot of the bed with a glossy white purse in her lap, unshaven legs showing under a wash-faded cotton skirt. Gabe, their forty-year-old mentally challenged son, sat hunched on a stool next to his mother, gnawing on a ratty finger nail. There was no sign of Lee. She’d either gone home or made herself scarce. She hadn’t spoken to Garnet in almost fifty years, not since he pulled a ladder out from under her in the barn and broke both her ankles.
Kate rolled her eyes at her father, who gave a little shrug, then made the introductions. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet my friend, Steve Seger. He’s a constable with the O.P.P.”
Gabe grinned and scratched his eye. Mildred said, “Hey, Steve,” without looking up. Garnet, using his sleeve to wipe chicken grease off his chin, said, “Hey, officer. You didn’t ticket my old deuce coupe out there, didya?”
“No, sir,” Steve said, smiling. “I’m off duty.”
Kate touched his arm. “Steve, this is my uncle Garnet and my aunt Mildred. And this—”
“That’s Gabe,” Garnet said. “Not enough oxygen to the brain-pan at birth. Told the wife we shoulda hit him in the back of the head years ago ’n’ raised a pig. Least that way we’da had pork.” He winked a merry eye at Steve, letting him know he was only kidding. Still, Steve had to wonder. “Ain’t but one thing he’s good for,” Garnet said. “Gabe, sing for the constable.”
Grimacing horribly, his few remaining teeth pearl-white in his ruddy face, Gabe raised his chin and broke into song, Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman”, his voice an almost flawless reproduction of Orbison’s.
Steve said, “That’s incredible.”
Garnet said, “Ain’t it?” spooning up Keith’s ice cream now. “Like puttin’ a nickel in a jukebox.”
Mildred said, “Garnet, leave the boy alone,” and Gabe went back to chewing his nails.
After a brief silence Keith said to Kate, “So how’d the interview go?”
“Pretty good, I think,” Kate said, looking at Steve.
“She was amazing,” Steve said.
“The reporter said they’d start running the spot tonight on the six o’clock news,” Kate said, “so hopefully the guy’ll see it.”
“Worth a shot,” Garnet said. Keith had explained to him earlier what Kate was doing. “Goddam, for that kind of coin, I’d take a bare-ass swan dive off the CN tower into a tub of wet cow shit if I thought it’d do any good.”
Kate whispered to Steve, “Now that you’ve sampled the Whipple gene pool, can’t you just hardly wait’til we have kids of our own?”
Steve stifled a laugh.
Finished with Keith’s tray, Garnet removed his upper denture—casually, as if the entire civilized world did the same thing—and started sucking out the stuck bits of chicken from between the teeth.
Keith said, “Garnet, for Christ’s sake, that’s disgusting.”
“What.”
Gabe broke wind, a damp gunshot pinging off the metal stool, then started singing again, this time in a child’s voice, “Beans, beans the musical fruit…”
Steve lost it completely. Despite themselves, Keith and Kate did, too.
* * *
Garnet seemed content to hang around forever, but Mildred was beginning to fuss. “Garnet, it’s time. We don’t wanna be out on that highway after dark.” Kate was glad when they finally got up to leave and could see that her father was, too. Two and a half hours with Garnet and his clan had worn him out.
Garnet was pulling on his duffel coat, saying, “You get all that green money back, Keithy-boy, don’t forget who pulled your skinny ass outa the silo that time. You’da been rat bait, sure as hell. I want out of the cattle business. Maybe get into poultry. The Kentucky Fried kind. Be a millionaire myself in half a year.”