Bust (5 page)

“Escorts, huh?” Bobby was getting a new idea. “They come here a lot?”

“Every fucking night.”

“Yeah? And you’re the bellhop here, right? I guess that means you take people up to their rooms.”

“Why?” Victor asked.

Bobby smiled, said, “Tell me something else. Can you get me some room keys?”

She’s a looker, yeah, probably. Jimmy’s not known to pass on a piece. It’s what got him into a fix more’n once, a looker. If you’re asking because you’re interested, remember what she’s doing with you before you fall in love.

C
HARLIE
S
TELLA,
Cheapskates

Max was in the Modell’s sneaker section, trying on a pair of Nike running shoes. He liked the way they fit, but there was no way he was buying them. They were on sale for seventy-nine bucks, but Max never paid discount for anything. Nah, he’d rather go to some classy store on Madison Avenue to get them, even if it cost him double.

As he was trying on another pair, Max sensed movement next to him. He noticed that the briefcase he had put down next to him — with the ten thousand dollars, the extra set of keys to the apartment, and the code to the alarm with instructions — was gone. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw Popeye, wearing the leather jacket with the hole in it, walking away down the aisle at a normal pace, heading toward the stairs.

Suddenly, Max realized that Deirdre was dead — there was no turning back. Even if he wanted to call off the murder, he couldn’t. He still had the phone number where he’d reached Popeye, but there had been a lot of background noise, and he’d had a feeling Popeye was at a pay phone somewhere. No, it was definitely over. By six
P.M.
Deirdre would be gone forever.

Max doubted that he’d miss her very much, but this
wasn’t his fault. Deirdre was the one who’d changed, not him.

Max had met Deirdre in 1982 at a Jewish singles weekend at the Concord hotel in the Catskill Mountains. Back then, Deirdre was an upbeat, outgoing, friendly, big-chested girl from Huntington, Long Island. Max was living alone in a studio apartment on the Upper West Side, working as a twenty-four-thousand-dollar-a-year mainframe computer technician, and he decided that Deirdre was the best thing that had ever happened to him. After a few months of dating, he took her out for drinks at the bar at the Mansfield Hotel on Forty-fourth Street. It was a classy place, lots of books in the lounge, made Max feel well-read. Paula, the little blond barmaid, brought him his third screwdriver. He could see Paula understood he was a guy of wealth and fame, like the Stones song, what the hell was the title? Then Max, feeling nice and lit, thought, What the fuck? and popped the question to Deirdre. Six months later he was kissing her under the
huppa
at a synagogue in Huntington. They had a few happy years together — reasonably happy, anyway — living in a one-bedroom walk-up on West Seventy-seventh Street. Then Max left his job to start his own company. As his business started to take off, their relationship went downhill. They moved out of the walk-up, into a doorman building on the Upper East Side, and Deirdre slowly turned into the wife from hell.

She was constantly critical, angry, and depressed, and spent his money faster than it came in. But it wasn’t the money that bothered Max so much as her personality. So, okay, it was the money too but, hey, that wasn’t the main thing. It got to the point where Max couldn’t stand spending more than a few minutes with her at a time. She was always starting arguments, telling Max that he was the cause of all her misery, that if she hadn’t married him
she would have been happy. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Then she started having mental problems. Manic-depressive, they called it, but Max had a simpler name — nasty bitch. Sometimes she was depressed, staying in bed all day, which Max actually didn’t mind so much. But other times she was hyper — on the phone all the time or out shopping with his credit cards or picking fights with him. Max paid thousands of dollars for her to see the best shrinks in the city. They put her on lithium, which helped, but sometimes she stopped taking her medication. Max was convinced that on some sick level Deirdre enjoyed the torture she was putting him through. She was actually happy when she made him feel like shit.

Max tried to work things out peacefully. He went with Deirdre to a marriage counselor, but spending an entire hour cursing at each other didn’t exactly help.

Finally, Max suggested divorce, but Deirdre said, “You know I’ll never divorce you. I’m religious.”

Max nearly laughed out loud, thinking, Yeah, if religion means tormenting a good man for eternity — wasn’t that a Catholic thing? Deirdre was raised Orthodox Jewish, but she never went to temple or celebrated holidays — she didn’t even fast on Yom Kippur, for Christ’s sake. She was more atheist than Jewish and, besides, Orthodox Jews got divorces all the time. This was obviously just more bullshit Deirdre was using to try to prolong his agony.

When things got so bad Max couldn’t stand living in the same house with Deirdre anymore, he considered moving out, separating. But he didn’t see why he had to be the one to go. It was his house, he’d busted his balls to pay for it. If anyone went it should be her.

The situation seemed hopeless. Max knew that even if he could convince her to get a divorce, he’d be fucked. They had no pre-nup and Deirdre would take him to town in a settlement. She’d never worked a day in her life
and they didn’t have kids; Max didn’t see why she deserved a cent of his money. But he knew a judge, especially a female judge, wouldn’t see it that way. Deirdre would get away with the townhouse, the Porsche, and at least half the money, and Max was ready to stick out the rest of his life being miserable before he let that happen. He’d worked too hard for what he had and there was no way in hell he was gonna let some lazy cow steal it out from under him.

Then Max went on Viagra and everything changed.

Max had thought he was starting to lose interest in sex, maybe even becoming impotent, but then he took Viagra and it worked miracles. Like a horny teenager, he started thinking about sex constantly. Whenever he passed a good-looking woman on the street he found himself imagining what she looked like naked. He bought sex magazines and ripped out the centerfolds, taking them into the bathroom at work and at home. He rented porn videos and nights and weekends he locked himself in the den of his townhouse and watched them. It was like he couldn’t get enough of breasts. It got so bad he never saw women’s faces because he couldn’t raise his eyes past their chests.

Around this time Angela interviewed for a job at the company. As soon as Max saw her, he knew he had to have her. She was young, she had that whole Irish accent thing going on, and holy shit, the tits on her.

What surprised him was, entirely apart from what her body did for him, he liked being with her. She’d come out with some Irish-ism like,
Where’s me coffee,
and he felt something swell up inside him. They never fought. She always laughed at his jokes and never bitched at him about the way he dressed or whatever. Max couldn’t help dreaming about how great it would be if Deirdre was gone and Angela took her place. He could listen to that
lilt his whole goddamn life. Hell, things worked out right, he’d bring her on a honeymoon to Ireland, maybe take her to a U2 concert. She seemed to like that Bono. Max was more into the classical-type stuff. He’d worked at it anyway, bought the whole package of
Teach Yourself the Classics.
He still didn’t understand what the hell it was all about, didn’t even know the difference between an alto and a concerto, but he could fake it. He loved to bore the losers at the office, going on about his favorite arias.

When the murder idea came up, it seemed like a big joke. At first anyway. But the more Max and Angela talked about it the more it seemed like the only logical solution. He had offered Deirdre ways out, but she didn’t want to take them, so what was the alternative? He was proud of himself, actually, for holding out for so long. A lot of guys who went through all the bullshit that he’d gone through wouldn’t have had half his patience — they would have hired someone to knock Deirdre off a long time ago.

Outside Modell’s, Max decided to walk back to his office instead of taking a cab. It was a great day — sunny, about seventy — and Forty-second Street near Grand Central Station was jammed with shoppers and businesspeople on their lunch breaks. Max felt cool, strutting along Fifth Avenue with his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, calling clients on his Blackberry.

When he arrived back at the office, Angela was sitting at her desk outside Max’s door, eating a salad out of a plastic container.

Like it was any other normal afternoon, Max said, “Any messages?” and Angela said, “Not a one. How’d your meeting go?”

“Hard to say,” Max said. “You confirmed that appointment for me with Jack Haywood tonight, though, didn’t you?”

“Sure did.”

“Terrific.”

He felt his voice had the right mix of boss and mellow. Like he’d once heard a young temp say about some guy,
He had it going on
.

Max went into his office and closed the door behind him. He had a stiff vodka and grapefruit juice, thinking, This shit is good. At two o’clock, he met with Alan Sorenson, his Senior Networking Manager. There had been an emergency at a client’s Newark office in the morning and Max wanted to make sure the situation was under control and that the company’s network didn’t experience any downtime. At three, Max met with Harold Lipman to discuss a quote Lipman was preparing for a new branch of a Japanese bank that was opening on Park Avenue. Harold had used a graphics program to design a full-color picture of what the bank’s new Local and Wide Area Networks would look like. Max told Harold that the designs for the three-server network looked pretty and all, but it wasn’t going to get him the sale.

The vodka hitting his stomach, Max said, “Take Takahashi to a strip joint or, better yet, call one of the escort agencies in my rolodex and buy him a whore or two. Trust me — that’s the only way you’ll close this thing.”

Harold smiled, like he was embarrassed or thought Max was joking. Harold was thirty-six, tall and pale with thinning, graying hair, and he always seemed to wear the same wrinkled blue suit. Now
there
was a cheapskate who bought discount even if he could afford better. Before working for Max, Harold had worked as a retail computer salesman. He lived in Hackensack, for Christ’s sake, with his wife and six-year-old daughter.

“I think I’ll just take him out to lunch,” Harold said.

“Guys don’t want lunch, they want tits,” Max said seriously.

Harold started to smile and Max cut him off with, “Hey, I’m not joking. If you want to start closing sales you’ll have to learn this sooner or later. You want to be a big kahuna, get some money to buy yourself some new goddamn suits?” He was going to add,
And not at Today’s Man,
but it was hard enough to educate the guy about table dances, he wasn’t going to start fashion policing the poor slob.

“I don’t think he’s that kind of guy,” Harold said uncomfortably.

“Is he a fudgepacker? If he is, I know a couple of guys who’d love to screw him.”

“No,” Harold said. “I mean, he wears a wedding ring and he didn’t seem gay.”

“Then I don’t know what the problem is — take him to a strip joint. Believe me, as soon as he has some tits bouncing in his face you’ll close the sale.” Max waited then said, “In this business, it’s make or break, and you gotta go for bust.”

He let the joke linger, waiting to see if the schmuck got it.

Finally, Harold laughed uncomfortably, said, “I’m going to go to his office and present the proposal in person and see what happens.”

Max said, “Is it your wife?”

“Is what my wife?”

“The ball and chain, the guilt trips, because if it is, don’t tell her about it, that’s all. You think I tell my wife every time I go to a strip club? But your wife’ll be happy when you start bringing home the big commission checks. Trust me, I know this stuff and I certainly know women.”

“It’s not my wife.”

“Then what is it, your kid? You?”

Harold, his face turning pink, said, “No.”

“Look, you don’t have to enjoy it, I mean if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re not there to get off, you’re there for the
client
to get off. He’s Japanese right? Jesus Christ, the Japs love table dances. Trust me on this one. It’s a cultural thing. Maybe it’s because Japanese women, as a whole, have very small breasts. Why’re you smiling? I’m serious. But whatever you do, don’t, do not, buy him a Japanese dancer. Even if she has the big old-style silicone knockers, they don’t like that. It gets them angry because it reminds them of what they don’t have at home.”

Harold stood up, took a few steps back toward the door, said, “Well, thanks for the advice, but I think I’ll just stick to my own sales techniques.”

“Listen, you putz, I don’t want to have to let you go. I mean, I think you’re a smart guy. When you started here you knew more about hardware than you did about networking, but you’re catching up on your technical knowledge and I think in a month or two you’ll be right where you need to be. That said, I hope you understand, I can’t keep paying you your draw if you’re not making any commish. I just can’t run my business that way. Now I’m giving you some good, solid advice here. When I hired you I told you I’d give you all the training you needed, well this is part of your training.”

Max was happy with this speech, his rally-the-troops schpiel. He knew he was great at motivation — that’s why he was the head honcho and everyone else wasn’t.

“I came here to sell networks,” Harold said, “not table dances.”

“Then maybe this is the wrong product for you,” Max said. “Maybe you should sell bibles or something. Now go take Takahashi to a strip joint and close this goddamn sale, or else.”