A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion] Read online

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Think what you want to think. We had something beautiful.”

  “You left him first chance you had,” I said.

  “Not the first chance,” she said. “Just the wrong chance.”

  My father plucked my mother right out of high school. He was in his early thirties, large and handsome; he had stepped into the prize ring a few times—without winning any prizes I might add—and played first base on the municipal softball team. She was stunning in that willowy and naughty high school way, too damn good for the pimpled schoolboys swarming around her. My father caught her eye flashing around some of that sanitation money and my mother was naive enough to snap at the lure. I was the product of their torrid fling, and the precipitating cause of the disaster that was their marriage.

  “I miss your father, Phil. I do.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “To me it does. But with him now gone, what was I going to do about money other than borrow it? You sure don’t send any. And Jesse would have been stocking my account if he didn’t up and die on me, too.”

  “Jesse Duchamp didn’t just happen to die, Mom.”

  “He’s not here to help, is he?”

  “Because you shot him in the head.”

  “There’s a story behind that, though. Just ask Silverman when you’re talking to him about my case. He’ll tell you the truth. My lord, Phil, you do look tasty. You got a girl?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? A face like yours, they must be lining up. Don’t be so picky. I got a right to some grandchildren, don’t I? You never should have let that wife of yours go. She had the hips for bearing children.”

  “Has a man named Maambong been in touch with you?”

  “What kind of name is Maambong?”

  “Not Nigerian.”

  “Who is he, another lawyer?”

  “He’s just a guy. I’m sort of up for a job and he might end up giving you a call. Can you do me a favor and just tell him I was a sweet little kid if he calls.”

  “You want me to lie?”

  “Stop laughing. I need this job.”

  “B-O-U-D-I-N.”

  “Like the sausage.”

  “You were a monster, Phil, but you were my monster.”

  “If this Maambong calls, he doesn’t need to know all the details about the hamsters and stuff. Or the shoplifting. Or that time I stole your drugs.”

  “I’m still mad about that, young man.”

  “That was then and it’s all different now and I need the job. But you can tell him I didn’t cry when Grandpop died if you want. He already knows.”

  “You didn’t cry?”

  “But nothing else, all right?”

  “Why didn’t you cry?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t feel like it.”

  “I didn’t cry, either, you want to know the truth. He wasn’t as nice to me as he was to you. Did you cry when your father died?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, we are different. I cried for him, I did. I mean, who was going to take care of me in here with him gone? Is it a good job, Phil?”

  “Good enough that if I get it I could start sending in money for your account.”

  “Okay, then. But you’ll talk to Silverman.”

  “I’ll talk to Silverman.”

  “I got to get out of here. These women are all criminals. And you won’t forget about Louis Boudin in Winn Parish.”

  “Hey Mom, let me ask you. When you shot Jesse Duchamp in the head in that motel room in New Orleans, was there any kind of weird taste in your mouth?”

  “What kind of taste?”

  “Like you were sucking pennies or something?”

  “No, of course not. That’s like crazy.”

  “Good.”

  “Who sucks pennies? All I could taste, Phil, was love. I never loved him more than when I blew his brains across the room. Funny how that is. I have something else to tell you. I thought you should know. I have a girlfriend.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Her name’s Lana. She’s a blonde. Not a real blonde, but still.”

  “I’m happy for you, Mom. Let’s try not shooting her, too.”

  I wasn’t thinking of the dead Jesse Duchamp as I skittered through New Orleans on the way east, past the cheap southern beach towns of Mississippi and Georgia, but his ghost haunted every mile. He had destroyed my family, crippled my father with a sorrow that all the rye in Jersey couldn’t drown, driven my mother to murder and a life of imprisonment. He was a killer himself, let’s not forget that, with a string of homicides in botched convenience-store robberies across Ohio and northern Pennsylvania committed on his way to his ill-fated meeting with my mother at the Stone Horse bar in Belleville. Yet the only thing more frightening than running into a Jesse Duchamp was being a Jesse Duchamp. He had become for me the exemplar of where my natural inclinations, if unchecked, might lead: to a cheap New Orleans motel room with someone else’s wife holding the gun that was about to blow apart my skull.

  Along the panhandle, dropping into the dangle of Florida, past the retirement havens of The Villages, skirting past the fantasy lands of Orlando, down the same interstate that up north cut less than five miles east of my hometown, I made my way with determined speed to a brighter fate. The address Mr. Maambong had given led me across Biscayne Bay, past an immense medical center, and then up and around an island of extravagant homes that surrounded some exclusive country club.

  A closed gate fronted a modernist expanse of white concrete and glass, with soaring curved lines and its name in steel letters above the ivy-covered wall: Fisi.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Maambong,” I said into the speaker box at the gate. “My name is Phillip Kubiak.”

  The response over the intercom was mere static, and for a moment nothing happened. Then the motor started churning and the gate slowly slid open. I drove my Porsche across the tiled cement of the drive toward the front door. When I climbed out of the car, the house’s front door was open and Cassandra was waiting for me. Her copper hair waved gently in the wind, her bright-red lips twitched.

  “We expected you much sooner, Mr. Kubiak. You must have driven east with extraordinary care. In the right lane maybe, with your blinkers on? Well, hurry in, we’re just about to begin the festivities.”

  6. Chess

  You’ve barely touched your beer,” said the outlaw to the magazine writer in that foul-smelling shack. “Give it another chance. They say it gets better with a little airing.”

  The magazine writer lifted her mug and with eyes closed tried again. This time she expected the vinegary rankness beneath the stench and was not disappointed. The sip stayed in her mouth, a small victory.

  “See, every terrible thing is better in its second helping,” said the outlaw. “The beer is just one of the ways Ginsberg keeps the crowds out of his bar. A single glance at the decor is enough to know that he likes his alone time. And let’s not forget the dead animals. Look at the deceased kangaroo rat curled in the corner, speckled with sand that has blown in through the wallboards. Look at the mounted head of the big horn over the door, mangy and marble-eyed, much like Ginsberg himself. And then there’s the ugly little stuffed thing behind the bar. It’s a meerkat, a kind of mongoose from the Kalahari. Ginsberg bought it to scare off the scorpions, but the taxidermy was done in some cheap Chinese sweatshop and now it smells vaguely of rotting horse. Yet Ginsberg has grown attached. Think on that a moment. His one true friend in this world is a stuffed meerkat. I would consider it pathetic, except it is one true friend more than I will ever know.”

  The magazine writer jotted a note on her pad. This story she was hearing wasn’t anything like she had expected. No paeans to justice, no aggressive self-aggrandizement. It was all, to be truthful, just a little pathetic. When she looked up from the paper, the outlaw was staring at her.

  “No, I’m not
feeling sorry for myself,” he said. “I’m just stating fact. I know exactly what I am; I’m determined that you see it clearly, too. That’s the purpose of this interview, right? So breathe deeply: take in the fetid atmosphere of the only place I can now comfortably show my face. I want you to register how far I have fallen from the younger and still whole figure of Phillip Kubiak, standing on the far edge of the rooftop patio of that modernist house in Miami. If this sad and solitary wreck before you is the after, then he is the before, a man whose future is suddenly, and unexpectedly, infused with a great, if mysterious, promise.

  “Picture him there, straight-backed, two-eyed, broad-shouldered and handsome, well dressed, well shod. Behind him there is music, laughter, the celebratory hum of wealth. He holds a glass of fine single malt and gazes across the glister of the wide canal, on which the house is sited, to the palm trees, the high-rise resorts, the perfect pale beach beyond. The ocean is so blue it had to have been put on earth just for him. Boaters that motor along the canal look up to see him standing by the rail on that roof and can’t stop themselves from waving, hoping he will wave back. He doesn’t give them the satisfaction. Instead he turns, and with eyes hard as the cut crystal of his Scotch glass he peers at the small claque of candidates that stand between him and his rightful place in this world.

  “And already he is plotting.”

  There were twenty or so on that rooftop with me, along with those I already knew were with the firm. Behind the bar, Bert, lie-detector Bert, sweated in a plaid vest while he poured vodka and squeezed limes. Cassandra, in a shiny green sheath that matched her eyes, tossed her hair and smiled at me from a distance. As Mr. Maambong talked to a small group, he leaned on his cane and threw his head back in laughter. And I could tell that not all the others on that rooftop were candidates for the open position. A number seemed assured of their places in Mr. Maambong’s scheme of things; they didn’t have that edge of polite concentration and concentrated politeness that marks aspirants like a stain. That left seven or eight as competitors. I knew this game, and I knew the rules, which meant no rules. It was no longer about passing Mr. Maambong’s tests; it was about playing the players.

  This is the crux of it, so pay attention. Think of a game of chess. Each piece on the board controls its own territory and has its own quirks. The bishop attacks on a slant, the knight hops, the queen rules, and for that very reason she is always in danger. Pawns take mincing steps, yet can transmogrify into the most amazing things. But whatever the pieces arrayed before you, you never forget they are just knobs of wood to be maneuvered, or sacrificed, or utterly destroyed. That’s the game I’ve played all my life, and it is as dispassionate as lunch. The rooftop patio was tiled in multicolored terracotta. I felt my cheeks twitch into a smile before I stepped onto the board.

  “We want to thank you all for accepting our invitation for this weekend’s festivities,” speechified Mr. Maambong to the whole of the party. “We are in the business of servicing a very distinguished and powerful clientele and to that end we require from our employees the utmost loyalty, the utmost discretion, the utmost drive. That is what we will be looking for this weekend, along with your considerable individual skills, before we make our final decision as to whom we might hire. In return, if you obtain a position, we will be quite generous in your compensation and fringe benefits. That is why you are here, no? For our outstanding medical and dental? In appreciation of your time and efforts in this tryout, we will be paying each of you one thousand dollars, payable upon the signing of a nondisclosure agreement insisted upon by our lawyers. Be aware that you may trifle with us, but you don’t want to trifle with our lawyers. Tomorrow we will wake up with a bright morning jog and then the games will begin. Get your sleep, you’ll need it. Now, my friends, please, let’s enjoy our evening.”

  After the speech, the candidates congregated in wary huddles on the terra-cotta roof. With Scotch in hand, I made my way from grouping to grouping, taking the measure of my competition.

  “Do you see that right there,” said a man named Don, tall and beefy, with taut tendons framing his thick neck. Standing on the roof with me and another man, he was nodding and chuckling as he looked over at Cassandra. “Man, I need to hit that.”

  “You weren’t here this afternoon by the pool,” said the other man, Derrick. He was shorter and thinner than Don, with less arrogant features, but the resemblance was still close enough that they looked to be of the same gene pool. “She was sunbathing without her top. Man, they could use those beauties for marine recruitment. Put them on a poster above the words ‘What we’re fighting for.’”

  “They’d be turning down enlistments,” said Don, with another chuckle.

  “Didn’t you guys get Mr. Maambong’s warning about Cassandra?” I said.

  “Yeah, I did,” said Derrick. “That’s a bummer.”

  “But what’s he going to do?” said Don, flexing. “Smack me with his cane?”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “It would be worth it anyway, wouldn’t it?” I swallowed the rest of my Scotch, jiggled the ice. “I’m getting a refill. By the way, did you two know each other, I mean before you showed up here?”

  “No, man,” said Derrick. “Why?”

  “You guys look like you pledged the same frat.”

  “We did,” said big Don with a chuckle. “Phi fucka Sandra.”

  “Oh man,” said Derrick. “That would be worth a paddling.”

  I joined in on their laughter before heading to order another couple of fingers of the good stuff from Bert. I leaned on the bar as he poured, looking around. A man and a woman came over and joined me. She grabbed a white wine; he ordered a rum and Coke.

  “Don’t you find this a little surreal?” said the woman, named Angela, tall and broad-shouldered, her mouth in a perpetual smirk. “In some fancy house, competing against each other to be the last person standing.”

  “Fighting for the final rose,” I said.

  “When I want a rose,” she said, “I pick it myself, take a bite, and spit out the thorns.”

  “Remind me not to take you to the park.”

  She laughed. “Truth is, I always thought those shows were demeaning to everyone involved.”

  “Nothing demeaning about it,” said the man, named Tom Preston. He was trim, and tightly coiled, and there was something cold about him, blank. He had a closely mown beard and a slight gap between his teeth that made him appear to be smiling all the time, but he wasn’t smiling. “It’s just the way it is. Life’s a competition.”

  “But usually we know what we’re competing for,” said Angela.

  “You don’t know what you’re competing for?” said Tom Preston.

  “I mean what do they do here?” said Angela. “What will the job entail? Mr. Maambong still hasn’t told us.”

  “Doesn’t much matter, does it?” said Tom Preston. “We’ll do what he tells us, at least at the beginning. What matters is what it gets us.”

  “Smile,” I said. “He’s looking over here. Where’s he from anyway, do you know?”

  “I went to school with a boy named Maambong from Manila,” said Angela.

  “Nice kid?”

  “No,” she said.

  The frat-boy twins were now standing with Maambong, laughing at something he said. “Don and Derrick are sneaking in some extra face time with our potential boss,” I said.

  “Maybe we should join them,” said Tom Preston. “Maybe we should make our presence felt.” He looked at Angela and me like we were all plotting something together. “You coming?”

  “I’ll make an appearance,” said Angela. “Give a little curtsy.”

  “Go ahead without me,” I said. “I’ll stay back and enjoy my drink.”

  I watched as they joined the group around Maambong. Interesting competition. Don and Derrick were idiots, I wasn’t worried about them, but Angela was independent and quick—maybe too independent for my purposes. I couldn’t get a read on Tom Preston, but there was some
thing about him, something fierce and cold at the core. And he had been trying to build a team of the three of us, a move I respected. It was time to maybe build a team of my own.

  “You think it matters how loud we hoot at Mr. Maambong’s jokes?” said a woman named Riley with a twang in her voice. I had joined a cluster of three others, watching Mr. Maambong from a distance as our competitors listened to his stories and laughed at his wit. This Riley had a potato face, a short mop of pink hair, and a silver ring dripping out the bottom of her nose. “Because fake laughter is not in my toolbox.”

  “Nothing succeeds like sucking up,” said a young man named Kief, short and wiry, with a loose-jawed slurry of a voice.

  “Then why aren’t you yukking it up with the rest of them?” said Riley.

  “Pride.”

  “That and a fiver will get you a sandwich,” said a handsome man named Gordon, oversize in every way, with a mop of short dreads. He wore a dark suit with an open white shirt, and his hands were huge. His hands were like great black crabs.

  “I don’t see you over there hanging on Mr. Maambong’s every word,” said Kief.

  “They’re so tight around him, it’s like being closed out of a craps table,” said Gordon.

  “A man your size,” said Riley, “you could just pick up one of them, toss him like a horseshoe, and take his place.”

  “It is tempting,” said Gordon. “But I have enough enemies to last me. Tonight I believe I’ll behave myself.”

  “Everything in life, when you get to the bone of it, is just high school,” I said. “It’s like we’re in the back row again, smoking cigarettes and passing notes while they’re in the front row, laughing at the teacher’s jokes and studying every night for the SAT. I guess that makes them the A team.”