“You’re not making this sound any more appealing,” Barry said. “Besides, I’m not old enough to have a nineteen-year-old kid.”
“No?”
“No,” he said. He didn’t sound all that convincing.
“How old are you, Barry?”
“That’s confidential information,” he said. “You can’t ask me that.”
“I’m going to guess forty-three,” I said. “Normal person, by the time they’re forty-three, they’ve got a kid.”
“I’m not a normal person and I’m not forty-three,” he said. “Do I look forty-three?”
“Right now you look about fifty,” I said. “The Crocs aren’t doing you any favors.”
“These pants make me look fat,” Barry said.
“Pleats do that,” I said.
“What would I need to do?”
“You’d need to come with me and Sam and Brent to meet with Yuri. While you’re there, you’re going to apologize for doing some untoward things and then we’ll all go home.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” I said. “Essentially.”
“What does ‘essentially’ mean?”
“Won’t know until it happens,” I said. I poured Barry another cup of tea and pushed it toward him. “Put some honey in it. It will calm you down.”
Barry took a sip and grimaced. “The honey only makes the bitter things stick together,” he said. “So this Brent. What’s he like?”
“Shrugs a lot. Says ‘like’ every other word.”
“Is he worth all of this trouble?”
“He’s a smart kid. Big Lumpy thought he was the real deal, obviously. He’s had a bad life,” I said. “I think everyone deserves a chance for a better one. Maybe this will give him that.”
“In the end, it’s just money.”
“You saying money can’t buy happiness?”
“Personally,” Barry said, “I derive great pleasure from money, but you know how kids are today.”
“I guess you’d know better than me, being closer in age to most children,” I said.
Barry didn’t respond to that. “And I’m to portray his father?”
“Yes.”
“Will I get a script?”
“Do you need a script?”
“I did a bit of theater in high school,” Barry said. “Thurber and the like. So I at least need to know my motivation.”
“Not to die,” I said.
“That’s easy enough,” Barry said.
Sugar finally navigated his way across the street, the parking lot and the tea shop and found his seat back at the table. He still had the fifty-dollar bill in his hand, along with a flyer for some event.
“Bro,” he said, “you won’t believe what I found out.”
“That this isn’t a pedestrian state?” I said.
“Our boy is gonna be all up in some black-tie shit tonight.”
Sugar handed me the flyer. Across the top it said THE CONSULATE OF MOLDOVA SALUTES ITS PHILANTHRO-PIST OF THE YEAR. In the center of the flyer was a huge photo of Yuri Drubich, his lovely wife and three lovely children. There was even a dog in the photo. Some kind of spaniel with a very pink tongue. It was suitable for framing or turning into a Christmas card. At the bottom of the flyer it said that the evening’s black-tie celebration would begin at eight p.m. and that Drubich would be honored for his “tireless efforts in expanding technology to the children of Moldova.” To reserve a table of five was a mere $10,000, though ten people got you a discounted rate of just $15,000. Checks payable to the Drubich Trust for Electronic Education.
I showed the flyer to Barry. “You have a cheap tuxedo?” I asked.
“If I wear black tie, I go all-out,” he said. “I prefer Armani.”
“We’ll get you a nice rental,” I said.
“Nothing with ruffles,” he said. “My senior prom I went ruffles and I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“Do you have any bad checks you’d like to pass?”
“Cashier’s or certified?”
“Let’s go cashier’s. More cachet. Make it from InterMacron Industries.”
“You’ll need to give me some time,” he said.
“How long?”
Barry looked at his watch. “Best guy in town is just down the street,” he said. “Factor in schmoozing and gossip, I can be back in fifteen minutes.”
“Go,” I said.
“How much you want the check for?”
I took a sip of tea and looked out at the street. The number of consulates in the same building as the Moldovan Consulate would make things difficult security-wise, I suspected. Bringing guns inside would be nearly impossible, yet I knew for certain that Yuri’s security detail would be fully loaded, which presented some problems. If we met privately with Yuri and his men were forced to kill us, it would be easy to cover up under the guise of an attack on the Moldovan Consulate by a burned spy, an ex-Navy SEAL and an Irish terrorist; Brent and Barry would be more difficult to explain, but they were also two people not many other people would miss, just as Barry feared. Plus, I’d need to find a place to stash Sugar where he couldn’t hurt himself or others.
This would take some planning, but I had some ideas.
“Make the check for a hundred thousand,” I said. “That should be enough money to ensure the opportunity to make a toast at this event, don’t you think?”
“Why not make it a million?” Barry said.
“Yeah, boy,” Sugar said, apparently feeling that he was allowed to speak again. “Go big or stay home. That’s how I roll.”
I hated to agree with Sugar. But even a clock is right twice a day. “Do it,” I said and Barry was up and gone.
It was just after noon, which meant I had a little less than eight hours to make it all airtight. I texted Fiona with some of the new details and then called Sam.
“Thank you for calling InterMacron,” Sam said.
“We’ve had a slight change of plans,” I said.
“Don’t tell me I learned all of this for nothing,” he said.
“No,” I said, “you’ll need it.” I told Sam about the event honoring Drubich that evening and about the generous donation I thought InterMacron should make in his honor. “How do you feel about doing a little public speaking tonight?”
“As long as they have an open bar,” Sam said, “I’m prepared to speak at length on any number of subjects.”
13
College boys, Fiona thought, were the worst of their species. Aesthetically, there was very little wrong with a twenty-one-year-old male at the peak of his conditioning, his body healthy and able to withstand punishment. Fiona was happy to admit that. And she couldn’t resist staring at a few of the particularly lovely specimens as she walked with Brent across the campus of the University of Miami. In fact, if college boys could just learn to keep their mouths closed and their bodies toned, they’d be perfect chew toys for a woman like herself. Fun, disposable, not terribly annoying.
But when they opened their mouths…
It was as if they forgot they had mothers, or sisters, or even beloved pets, since surely they didn’t treat their dogs as poorly as they treated women. What base form of human, other than boys in college, thinks it’s appropriate to walk up to a woman and ask her if they could “get with that”? Or ask if she was “down for it” or if she’d be interested in “getting your drink on with me at the frat house” as if any of those invitations weren’t little more than veiled requests for sex?
It was just before noon and Fiona was escorting Brent to lunch before she’d be forced to sit through yet another class. She’d spent the previous two hours and thirty minutes in a lecture hall listening to some crusty professor in a tweed jacket telling complete and utter lies about history, to the point that she’d finally raised her hand to ask a question, but fortunately for the old cud behind the lectern, he didn’t bother to look up from the text he was reading. Fiona would have let him know, in exacting detail, how American education was apparently predicated on misperception.
It was more than she could take, really, listening to the professor butchering the past. He’d gone on some long-winded jag about how the British had attempted to oppress their colonists living in America and that’s what started the Revolutionary War, a war that was scantily discussed in the history books Fiona recalled, though her memory was very precise on the minimal material she was taught about the issues related to that particular war: the colonists were a wanton band of separatists, an issue she was well versed in, but unlike the Irish, they didn’t have the advantage of being right.