From a Dead Sleep (33 page)
Of course, the scheme wouldn’t work unless I could prove to Moretti that the combination was hammered out of me like candy from a piñata. I let Valentino whale on me for a good five minutes. It was one hell of a beating, nearly rivaling some of the ones my old man used to give me. Like my father, Valentino enjoyed giving it, too, bruised knuckles and all. It was the final wing of his former life, and I suppose he was going out with a bang.
I still remember the appalled look on Lisa’s face when I got home that night. One of Moretti’s doctor friends cleaned and bandaged me up, but I still looked like a monster. I told Lisa that it had happened during a field assignment, delivered by a suspect escaping from a hidden room in a house that the agency didn’t know about. It was just another lie among a marriage of lies.
The irony was that the next week was the most real my marriage had ever felt. Lisa took good care of me. Real good care. She loved having me home and having my full attention. The guilt was tough to stomach. There she was, washing my face, changing my bandages, and signing that she loved me . . . and none of it would have ever come to be if I hadn’t been screwing another woman. Between the undeserved affection and the constant fear that Moretti’s guys would nab Valentino before he disappeared for good, it was a wonder I didn’t have a stroke that week.
Ah, Lisa. There’ve been times when I’ve been caught in her captivating gaze and I’d swear those beautiful blue eyes of hers were peering deep down into my soul and unearthing my web of lies, but they weren’t. I’ve gotten too good at pretending to be someone else. Still, I’d always figured that one day the ruse would unravel to the point where I could no longer snip a loose thread and save it. It was always my greatest challenge to preserve the lie, but right now, it’s the least of my worries.
It’s nearly unfathomable to believe that what started out as a mere pickup line turned into a two-year charade.
I noticed Lisa the moment she first set foot inside Moretti’s casino. She was with a group of friends—fellow teachers out for a fun night on the town. She was a radiant jewel among dull stones with that perfect face, bright smile, and unrehearsed elegance that accompanied every movement. I’d always had an eye for beauty, and she personified beauty.
I followed her through the maze of slots and tables like a love-struck school kid, looking for an opportunity to be noticed. The problem was that people like her don’t typically notice people like me. Sure, my work for Moretti has afforded me the luxuries of being able to dress nice and look professional, but life has routinely dealt me reminders that a man can’t completely shed his skin. There’s still a part of me that will always be a backwoods Kentucky hick who ran away from home at the age of fourteen to find a new life in an electrified desert in Nevada.
I learned soon after I arrived in Sin City that you can get just about any form of fake identification one can dream up. Not just licenses and passports, but also birth certificates, social security cards, and occupational credentials. For a couple years, I even worked for a guy who was an expert at making them. I learned the trade, inserting photos into cards and passport pages, emulating government stamps, laminating the finished products. When I wasn’t doing that, I was managing my boss’s finances for room and board.
Working the numbers has always been my real talent. Back in school, teachers used to stand in awe of my ability to breeze through math problems. They told me I had a future. It’s a shame they didn’t pay as close of attention to the bruises and broken bones I’d show up to class with. If they had, I might have been freed earlier from a man who cited religious beliefs for denying me antibiotics that would have kept a bout of scarlet fever from eventually decimating my ability to hear.
Along with a phony Diner’s Club card, I was carrying an FBI badge in my wallet the night I met Lisa. I had made it mostly for grins, but had used it a few times to get laid. I didn’t have quite the physical build at that time to put myself over as agent. Instead, after sharing a blackjack table with her for twenty minutes, I introduced myself, after some feigned reluctance, as a forensic accountant for the bureau—one of the guys who goes to arrested suspect’s homes or offices and dissects paper trails and computer entries.
She wasn’t the first woman I’d met who’d been impressed with the tale, but she was the first that I really cared about impressing. I could tell by her demeanor that she was completely comfortable with my disability, which is a rarity. Most people feel they have to speak with precision and slow down their dialogue in order for me to understand them, but that night, she spoke to me like she would speak to anyone else. She was smart, witty, and genuine. The beauty inside her mirrored the outside, which is unheard of in a town packed full of plastic women with bleach-blonde hair and abnormally large breasts, serving as walking canes for rich old farts.
I wanted badly to be with her, which meant perpetuating the lies to keep things going. Someone like her would have had enough self-respect to kick me to the curb if I had come clean and copped to my bullshit. There’s no future for a woman like her with a shady casino man who works alongside thugs.
It was an impulsive deception that turned epic. The lengths I’ve gone to have been nothing short of astonishing—mostly motivated by the fear of losing her, but also by my wanting to be something I’m not.
Early on, I asked her a couple of times to drop me off in front of FBI headquarters three miles from the casino with the explanation that my car was in the shop. I’d enter through the front door of the tall, imposing building and walk right back out of the lobby to catch a cab the moment her car turned the corner. I never had to go as far as security screening. After that, I managed to avoid using that location as a meeting place all but once or twice. There were times when she expressed interest in wanting to see my office, but I always cited security clearance issues as an excuse or found a way to change the subject.
The handful of coworkers on my side of the aisle at our small wedding consisted of paid prostitutes and chauffeur drivers. I had one of them even record an automated FBI phone menu through a separate line to redirect to the TDD in my office at the casino or to my cellphone.
A rare advantage of being deaf is that you have a natural excuse for not being readily accessible. This became particularly helpful when I needed to go out of town for a few days at a time to serve as a numbers guy for the business. Whether it was on the other side of the state or in California or Arizona, it saved me the stress of having to lie to her for a while. I told Lisa long ago that when I’m in the field, she can’t reach me. She bought it from the beginning.
Finances had been a bit of a hassle. It took a lot of work convincing Lisa that the public school system offered a better health plan than the FBI, but enough phony paperwork prodded her in the direction I wanted. My salary was directly deposited into our savings from a business account I set up under the name Freelance Business Incentives. I made certain that the acronym, FBI, was what showed up on our statements.
Whenever I got backed into a corner over contradictions or inconsistencies, I always managed to somehow weasel my way out of the mess.
However, I’ve never been put to the kind of test I face right now, standing in this dungeon of a basement in the mountains of Colorado with the fidgeting body of Valentino Greco dressing the floor.
T
rying to roll back what has already happened is as futile as attempting to scrape toothpaste back into a tube, but my mind explores the possibility anyway. It’s the curse of being wired that way. I consider the fact that only Alvar heard Valentino’s confession firsthand and weigh the approach of drawing a line of loyalty in the sand by trying to convince Moretti that Alvar is lying for some reason. That, however, would require Valentino’s unhindered cooperation, and there’s about as much chance of that happening as there is a meteor falling from the sky and landing on Moretti back in town. Valentino would throw me under the bus in a heartbeat if he felt there was any chance it could save his ass.
My only confidence at all comes from the fact that Arianna is an extremely gifted liar. She’s as good at lying to her spouse as I am—and that’s saying something. That skill alone will at least keep her safe until Moretti can sort out whether or not Valentino’s story is true. What happens after that is hard to say.
As much as I try, I can’t fathom a solution in which my presence in this house, when Moretti gets back, can possibly work in my favor. If I stick around while Valentino spills out more of the details from that night, I fear that no amount of bullshitting on my part will be able to save us.
My trembling hands form a lean-to against my forehead, and I force myself to breathe. My mind darts into the depths of dampened corridors and dead ends, struggling to devise a solution that will somehow let me see the light of tomorrow’s sunrise. There aren’t any weapons in the house. Alvar’s a walking arsenal who keeps his toys close. I know he stores an extra gun in his car, but he and his car are gone. It wouldn’t matter. There’s no way in hell this pencil-pushing accountant who’s never fired a gun in his life is going to pick off four men, especially when one of them is Alvar. If I’m here when they get back, they’ll sink their talons into my flesh and I’ll never break free.
I have nothing with which to bargain for my life. Or do I? Moretti’s financial ledger is upstairs on the desk. Inside it is enough juice to do some damage to Moretti if it was handed over to the authorities. It’s a desperate play, but it’s the only thing I have. What I do know is that I can’t negotiate in person or else I’m dead. Can I negotiate the books for Arianna and speed up our plans? God, I can’t think straight.
The realization that I’ve got maybe ten minutes tops before Moretti and the gang are back zips through my mind. I glance at Valentino who’s squirming around on the floor as much as the chair bound to his limbs will allow him. He’s cursing me out, and I feel paralyzed despite knowing I can’t afford to waste any more time. I can’t take Valentino with me. I can’t trust him and he’ll slow me down.
I run out of the room and slam the door, locking it behind me.
Sorry, Valentino; you made a deal with the devil, and now you’re on your own
. I find myself glaring at the key in my hand instead of placing it back up above the door frame. It occurs to me that if the crew can’t find it, they’ll spend time busting the door down to check on Valentino. That’s time that they won’t spend in pursuit of me. I shove it in my front pants pocket and race up the stairs, skipping every other step.
I stop in the kitchen and toss my bag of broken glass into the tall metal trashcan, just to get rid of it. Panting while I glare wide-eyed out the window above the sink, I see no headlights coming up the drive yet. I sprint down the hallway, nearly losing my footing across the hardwood floor as I lunge into the office. The ledger that holds the secrets behind all of Moretti’s finances resides on top of the oak desk I’d been using to finalize the Colorado deal. I grab my brief-bag that’s resting at the foot of the desk and slide the notebook and a slew of loose papers, envelopes, and everything else that my broad-armed swipe along the desktop takes. Any leverage that can save my ass is in that bag. I’ll figure out how to best use it later.
Hold on,
Arianna. I’ll figure a way out of this for us.
Back in the kitchen, I search through the cabinets, high and low, yearning for a flashlight. I know I’ll be blind out in the forest without one, and I can’t afford to be without another sense if I hope to make it back to civilization on foot. Unfortunately, there is no flashlight to be found. I dart out into the cold, empty garage. The closest thing I find is a hook lamp that requires an outlet. There’s got to be a fucking flashlight somewhere in this house but there’s no time. By the time I get to the front door, sweat is streaming down my forehead and it stings one of my eyes. I spin a fist in my eye socket as an epiphany arrives, Alvar’s night-vision goggles.
They’re better than a flashlight because Moretti’s guys won’t see a beam flickering through the forest. I jam my hand in my pocket and snag the key for the downstairs door. When my hand emerges, my haste leads to the teeth of the key catching the lip of my pocket and propelling it out of my grip and across the floor. It topples along the glossy wood finish toward the baseboard of the back wall and I watch in morbid helplessness as it drops between two grooves in a brass furnace register.
I shout out obscenities and lunge forward, sliding along the floor on my knees before coming to a stop at the register. I claw my fingertips at it, prying, noticing quickly that it’s secured with two screws. I don’t have time to waste scouring the house a second time for a screwdriver. With desperate savagery, I force the tips of my fingers under the excruciatingly narrow gap between the plate and the floor and place my feet against the wall, yanking it toward my chest, clenching my teeth with effort. Half of the plate snaps off and I fall to my back. Excruciating pain tears across the palm of my hand from the jagged metal that winds up embedded in it. I yank it out with my free hand, immediately witnessing a crevice of blood streaming from its center. It flows to the floor beside me and I grab my wrist to combat the throbbing laceration.