“I suppose you want your comb and brush,” Tristan said, handing them to the man.
“Thank you,” Dewey said, and he took the comb and brush and worked on his hair while Jerzy stood watching with Dewey’s can of beer in his hand.
“What the fuck is this anyways?” Jerzy said. “The Creole and Bernie Show?”
“Let the man get into character,” Tristan said. “Want your stash, Bernie?”
“Thank you,” Dewey said, carefully sticking the mustache over his upper lip. “And my Bernie glasses, please.”
“They busted when I tossed them on the table,” Jerzy said.
“Those are my Kessler glasses,” Dewey said. “I’ll never need those again.” And he held his palm below his eyes and removed both contact lenses, which had lightened his brown irises.
“Ain’t that some shit, wood?” Tristan said with admiration. “I’m proud to be a partner of this man!”
Dewey said, “The reason I’m getting into character, as you call it, is because I have to meet a new runner here in thirty minutes. Would you please help me get into my loafers? I can’t manage. I think I have a cracked rib.”
“Puttin’ the man’s shoes on his feet is definitely a job for you, Creole,” Jerzy said, handing the beer to Dewey. “There’s some things a self-respectin’ white man won’t do.”
After Dewey looked sufficiently like the person that his new runner was expecting to meet, he gulped some of the beer and said, “It’s amazing how good a cold beer tastes after someone has just beaten the living shit out of you.”
“Forgive and forget, dude,” Jerzy said. “Close the book on that misunderstandin’, but make sure there ain’t another one.”
“The first thing I have to say,” Dewey began, “is that you’re right. Just getting outta town with the clothes on my back is not in the cards. And neither is the partnership that you envision.”
“Don’t back up on us, Bernie,” Jerzy said ominously.
“Let the man finish,” Tristan said.
“But I think we can work together and come up with a plan that’ll make you a lump sum far beyond what you could make working an entire year with me.”
“Doin’ what?” Tristan said.
“The geek, as you call her, is my wife. She’s a brilliant hacker and has accounts that I have no way to access. In fact, I don’t even know which bank they’re in. If we could devise a way to make her give me some information I’d need, I’d be grateful enough to pay you half of what’s in those accounts.”
“And how much would that be?” Tristan asked.
“Maybe as much as eighty thousand dollars,” Dewey lied. “You would get half of that amount.”
“Forty grand?” Tristan said. “Whadda we gotta do? Torture it outta her? We don’t do violence.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me,” Dewey said, moving painfully in the chair.
“You mean you jist can’t tell the bitch to give it up?” Jerzy said. “What kinda man are you, Bernie?”
“Not a confrontational one,” Dewey said. “She was married before we met, and she had already set this up. She does all the secret banking online and in private.”
“That’s kinda like a prenup, ain’t-isn’t it?” Tristan said. “That you agreed to?”
“Her version of one,” Dewey said. “It’s her money, not mine, she says. But I think I’ve earned it more than she has.”
“You said ‘accounts,’ ” Tristan said. “You think there might be more than one bank account?”
Dewey was thinking fast, trying to sell his story to Creole, who was obviously the intellectual superior of the two.
“Of course we have lots of small bank accounts that we open and close under different names when we have to move money around. That’s how I get cash for the runners. But the secret account is the one I’m interested in learning about.”
“Could there be more than just the eighty grand?” Tristan asked. “You two do some pretty good business.”
Dewey told a whopper, saying, “No, I don’t think so. If you added up all the accounts she’s opened and the ones I’ve opened, there might be another two thousand in there. Whatever there is I’ll split with you if we can agree on a sensible plan for making her cooperate.”
“Do you have a plan in mind, Bernie?” Tristan asked.
“This meeting today has opened certain doors and made it all very urgent. I need some time to think.”
“We ain’t got time for you to think,” Jerzy said, getting his mind around a $40,000 payday. “So what if we was to, like, kidnap you? We could phone and tell her we’re gangsters and we know all about your business and we’re holdin’ you for ransom. And we’ll cut your fuckin’ throat if she don’t give up what’s in the bank. Wouldn’t she pay us to save the love of her life?”
Dewey flashed a weak, ironic grin, took a sip of beer, and said, “To tell you the truth, Jerzy, I think she’d go ahead and leave everything behind and be on the first flight out of L.A. I think that within six months she’d have another Bernie Graham working his ass off for her, and she wouldn’t think twice about the husband she left in the hands of kidnappers. In fact, I think she might see right through your plan and figure that I was in on it. She’s very cunning and clever.”
Tristan, who’d been listening quietly and thinking, said, “There’s not much use in goin’ home and sleepin’ on it. There’s only one answer here.”
“What’s that, mastermind?” Jerzy said.
“We gotta kidnap her, not Bernie, and we gotta make it look good. We gotta put more fear in her than we put in Bernie today. And Bernie’s gotta play his part and have very serious phone talks with her, where she’s so scared she begs him to pay the ransom of, say, a hundred grand.”
Jerzy snapped open another beer, guzzled most of it, pointed to Bernie, and said, “He says there’s only eighty in the account.”
“Dawg,” Tristan said patiently, “if we ask for eighty, she’ll know for sure Bernie’s in on the game.”
Now it was Dewey who appeared to be deep in thought, and he surprised Tristan when he said, “Don’t ask for a hundred. Make it five hundred thousand. That’s a nice round number. Why not be extravagant?”
Tristan paused just for an instant and said, “Why ask her for an amount that’s gonna make her think it’s all hopeless, Bernie?”
“It gives us a chance to pile on the bullshit during negotiations,” Dewey said much too quickly. “You know, back and forth. The price gets whittled down, because that’s what kidnappers do when they have to. She has to finally be convinced that you thugs are gonna settle for the eighty grand because you’re satisfied there’s no more in the bank.”
“All this makes me not wanna pop the question to my bitch if this is what marriage does to people,” Jerzy said with a bemused smile. “Anyways, she don’t do drugs, so a mixed marriage wouldn’t work.”
Tristan stood up and said, “And what if your wife don’t wanna cooperate, Bernie? Then what?”
Dewey finished the beer, groaned in pain, licked the foam from his lips, and said, “She will have to be made to believe you’re for real.”
“Bernie,” Tristan said, “let’s hope she believes our bluff. Far as I’m concerned, the game’s over if she figures out it’s you that’s behind this thing. Or if she decides to die for her money rather than let you get your hands on it, I’m tellin’ you right now, I’m outta there. I ain’t gonna torture no woman. I’ll walk away from this whole gag.”
“How do you feel about it?” Dewey asked Jerzy.
“That’s a lotta money to walk away from,” Jerzy said. “I think we gotta convince her to talk. If you got her back with some minor damage, it’d be okay with you, huh?”
“I won’t be getting her back,” Dewey said. “If she doesn’t give up the information, it’s probably because she figures I’m in on it. She’ll dump me, so I’ll be gone either way with whatever I can get for the stuff in the storage room. Which of course I’ll share with you fifty-fifty.”