This is not what Joey Onions enjoys about gambling. He does not enjoy losing, but even less does he enjoy crossing the path of an irate bookie. Or bookies, as is the case here and now, pushing their way through the crowd toward him, one of them Hispanic and the other black, and both of them bigger than the big bald guy at the door, who Joey now wishes hadn’t let him into the ring in the first place, where he’s just lost two grand he could now be handing over to these two thugs if that’s why they’re here, which he certainly hopes isn’t the case.
“Hey, guys,” he says jovially. “What gives?”
“No check in the mail, bro,” Holmes says.
Joey doesn’t like it when a nigger calls him “bro,” but he’s willing to take any kind of insult so long as this isn’t about the money he owes these guys. Or is that what Holmes means by “No check in the mail, bro?” Is that his cute nigger way of saying “You still owe us fifty large, bro, and here you are throwing away money on the birds”?
“Which check might that be, Dave?”
“We spoke to the lady yesterday,” Angelet says. “No check in the mail.”
“And which lady might that be, Rudy?”
“That lady might be Alice Glendenning, who you said a check went out to from Garland last week.”
“Oh,” Joey says.
So that’s what this is about.
What occurred, actually, was the last time these two came around asking about money matters and such, they happened to mention that they were still in the hole for two hundred K from a guy named Glendenning who drowned out on the Gulf seven, eight months ago, it must’ve been, and whereas they might be getting stiffed by him because he was dead and all, this didn’t mean they were going to let themselves get snookered by a small-time little shit like Joey who was still alive, was actually what they’d called him. Which was when Joey happened to mention that he recalled the name Glendenning from some correspondence back and forth between Garland and a lawyer, and he would look into the matter for them if they so desired.
So he went back to the office and checked the files, and sure enough there was indeed a claim filed by a woman named Alice Glendenning as beneficiary of a $250,000 double indemnity policy on the life of her husband, Edward Fulton Glendenning. According to the records, this claim had not yet been satisfied, though it looked as if it might soon be.
Now Joey is not a very big reader, but he is fond of the sequence in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-four where the hero is being tortured with caged rats about to eat his face, and he yells, “Do it to Julia!” who is his girlfriend, telling them to put the rats on her face instead of his, thereby betraying her to save his own skin.
So Joey stretches the truth a tiny little bit and goes back to Angelet and Holmes with news that a check has already gone out to the Glendenning woman, and they should look to her for payment of her husband’s gambling debt, instead of coming around breaking his balls all the time for a lousy fifty G’s.
“Yeah, that check went out,” he tells them again now.
Which is another lie.
“You sure about that?” Holmes asks.
“Positive,” Joey says.
And then — figuring it can’t do any harm, can it? — he embroiders the lie just a tiny little bit more.
“In fact, it was already cashed,” he says. “I saw the cancelled check last week sometime.”
“Then the fuckin bitch is lying to us,” Holmes says.
“I’ll bet,” Joey says.
What the hell, he thinks.
Let her mother worry.
The FBI arrives at twenty minutes past noon.
Brusquely and bustily informing Sloate and Di Luca that the Feds have now taken over the case, Sally Ballew immediately begins detailing the way things will be handled from this moment on.
“First,” she says, ticking the point off on her index finger, “Mrs. Glendenning will never again talk directly to the kidnappers. Is that clear? Detectives? Mrs. Glendenning?”
“What if they ask for me?” Alice says.
“Hand the phone to me.”
“That can be dangerous,” Sloate says. “They told her not to call—”
“They already know we’re in it,” Sally says. “From what I understand, you blew surveillance.”
“A garbage truck intervened,” Sloate says.
Sloate offers the excuse like a kid explaining that the dog just ate his homework. Sally merely gives him a look.
“Second,” she says, using her middle finger to tick off another point, “no one outside of law enforcement enters this house again.” She turns to Carol as if just discovering her and asks, “Who are you, miss?”
“I’m Alice’s sister,” Carol says.
“She stays,” Alice says.
“Fine, just keep out of the way,” Sally says, dismissing her.
“How do you plan to get my children back?” Alice asks.
“Exactly the way we’ve done it before,” Sally says.
“And how exactly is that?”
“First,” Sally says, using her fingers again, “we let them think they’re running the show.”
They have been running the show, Alice thinks. And they’re still running it. They’ve got the money, and they’ve got my kids. What does that add up to, if not running the show?
“They are running the show,” she says.
Sloate says nothing. He is enjoying seeing someone else in the hot seat for a change. Marcia is enjoying this, too. She hasn’t liked Sally from minute one, and her opinion of her hasn’t changed an iota. The two local dicks can barely suppress smiles.
“Next,” Sally says, ticking it off on her ring finger, “we find out where they are…”
“And how do we do that?” Alice asks.
“We are still currently checking hotels, motels, bed and—”
“Suppose they rented a private house?” Alice asks. “Or a condo? There are hundreds of—”
“We’re checking real estate agents as well. We have the woman’s false name, we’re hoping she may have used that. Once we learn where they are, we contain them there with the children, and we move in.”
“Move in?” Alice says. “What about my kids?”
“Don’t worry, they’ll be completely safe.”
“How can you promise that?”
“Trust us,” Sally says.
The telephone rings.
Marcia is about to put on earphones. The phone rings again. Sally grabs the earphones from her and puts them on her own head. The phone rings a third time. “Take it,” she tells Alice. “If it’s them, put me on. I’ll do the talking.” Alice picks up on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Glendenning?”
“Yes?”
“This is Rudy Angelet. You’re lying to us. We’ll be there to pick up the money in half an hour.”
The line goes dead.
“Who the hell was that?” Sally asks.
12
At the Shell station on Lewiston Point Road and U.S. 41, they buy a road map and two containers of coffee, and then go out to Jennifer’s T-Bird to study the map.
The top is up and the air conditioner is blowing full blast; Rafe is afraid his wife might be out buying a container of milk or something, and he doesn’t want her to spot him in an open red convertible with a gorgeous blonde. For all Carol knows, he’s on the road to Atlanta, which reminds him that he ought to call the kids when he gets a chance, make sure they’re okay. He hasn’t yet mentioned this to Jennifer, because he knows how women feel about another woman’s kids. Rafe thinks he knows a lot about women.