Standup Guy (9 page)

John Fratelli awoke the following morning, and something was nagging at him in the back of his mind. It came to him: IRS. He showered and dressed and had his first shave of the day, then he called New York on his throwaway cell phone.

“Woodman & Weld, Mr. Barrington’s office.”

“Good morning, this is John Fratelli. May I speak to Mr. Barrington, please?”

“One moment, I’ll see if he’s free.”

“Stone Barrington.”

“Mr. Barrington, it’s John Fratelli. How are you?”

“Mr. Fratelli, I’m fine. You sound different.”

“Perhaps so. I have a legal question for you, a hypothetical one: how would a person recently out of sight for many years avoid having the Internal Revenue Service made aware of his presence?”

“Does this hypothetical person have a Social Security number or has he filed returns in the past?”

“He has never had an SSN, nor has he ever filed.”

“Then he should not apply for one, unless he seeks employment, in which case he might want to give some thought to a new identity.”

“I see. What else should he avoid?”

“Any sort of transaction requiring a Social Security number: opening a bank account, for instance, or applying for a loan, opening a department store or gas credit card. All sorts of businesses these days require a Social Security number. Of course, he could decline to divulge that number, because it’s technically private information. That might work with opening a bank account, but not when applying for credit. A lender would deny his application.”

“What about income?”

“Everyone is required to file an annual tax return, Mr. Fratelli, listing income from any source.”

“And if one doesn’t file?”

“Then they would have no reason to come after him, unless someone had reported his status to them. If this person had, for instance, not filed a tax return during his, ah, absence from society, the IRS would have no knowledge of him. Once he filed, though, they would know him forever.”

“Then perhaps he should avoid coming to the attention of the IRS.”

“That would be my advice, hypothetically.”

“Thank you. I’ll send payment for your services.”

“Please, no more hundred-dollar bills.”

“You object to cash?”

“I object to out-of-date cash. I had a visit from the Secret
Service after I deposited those hundreds. They’re series 1966 and out of circulation. You can tell by the red seal on the bills.”

“What did you tell the Secret Service?”

“Substantially nothing: attorney-client confidentiality.”

“That was the right thing to do. I’ll send you a cashier’s check.”

“Mr. Fratelli, please don’t bother. You’ve more than compensated me for my time already. By the way, you should know that the Secret Service are not the only people interested in your existence and whereabouts. I had a visit from a retired police detective named Sean Donnelly, who investigated a crime committed at JFK airport some years ago.”

“But you told him nothing?”

“Correct. You should also know that, shortly after visiting me, Donnelly was shot while leaving P.J. Clarke’s in the wee hours of the morning.”

“Killed?”

“No, just winged. He’ll be up and around soon, and as far as I know, he remains interested in your whereabouts.”

“Any word on who shot Donnelly?”

“No, but my assumption is it’s probably whoever ventilated your suitcase. If I were you I would find a way to exchange your funds for new funds.”

“I have already done so.”

“Have you spent any more of the hundred-dollar bills?”

“Yes, I’ve paid my living expenses, but I’ve made an investment which brings me a weekly return, so I won’t be needing to do that anymore.”

“How much of a return, out of curiosity?” Barrington asked.

“Five percent a week.”

“Did you say
a week
?”

“Yes.”

“So, you have loaned to . . . a lender. How much?”

“One very large bill.”

Barrington made a sucking sound through his teeth. “Mr. Fratelli, this is not good. Those hundred-dollar bills will not go unnoticed by the organization employing your lender, and I fear that you may have more to fear from them than from the IRS.”

“That’s good advice, but I believe things are under control. I’ve settled in a comfortable spot, and they are not aware of my location or my new name.”

“Yes, I noticed the postmark on your card. You’ll want to watch that sort of thing.”

“You’re quite right, I was careless, and I won’t be again. Thank you for your advice, Mr. Barrington.”

“Did you take my advice on acquiring a throwaway cell phone?”

“Yes, I did. I’m speaking on it.”

“You might want to give me that number, in case I hear from any of your old acquaintances. Somebody has already fired a shotgun at my front door.”

“I’m extremely sorry to hear that. Here’s my number.” Fratelli dictated it to him.

“I won’t call unless I fear that you are in jeopardy.”

“Thank you, and goodbye.”

“Goodbye and good luck.”

Both men hung up

Fratelli thought about this for a few minutes, then he took up his throwaway cell phone and called Manny Millman.

“This is Manny.”

“This is John Fratelli.”

“Hey, Johnny, how’s it going?”

“I’m getting feedback about some certain C-notes.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve heard something about that.”

“How did you dispose of the cash I gave you?”

“It was shipped to an offshore bank account the day after you gave it to me.”

“All of it? Don’t lie to me, Manny.”

“Apparently, twenty thousand of it was paid to a punter who had a long shot come in. I just heard, and I’m going to recover whatever he has left and send it out of the country.”

“A very good idea,” Fratelli said.

“But at least some of it is floating around out there. And, Johnny, I had a visit from a Secret Service guy.”

“Asking about the C-notes?”

“Asking about you. I told him I thought you were dead.”

“Stick with that story,” Fratelli said.

“I will, and, Johnny, your request is being honored to transfer your weekly vigorish from offshore account to offshore account.”

“Very good.”

“How can I get in touch with you, Johnny, if anything else should come up?”

“You can’t. I’ve left the state and made myself at home elsewhere.”

“You’re sure there’s not a number?”

“Okay, I’ll give you a throwaway cell phone.” He dictated the number. “Memorize that, Manny, then burn it.”

“Johnny, like I told you before, I’m grateful to you for your help when I was in the joint with you. I won’t rat you out.”

“Thank you, Manny.” Fratelli hung up.

Manny got up from his table and started walking the Hialeah clubhouse, looking for Howard Silver.

Howard Silver stood at the hundred-dollar window at Hialeah and took one last look at the odds board. He was about to turn back to the window when he found himself abruptly pushed out of line.

“Come with me, Howard,” Manny Millman said, taking a firm grip of Silver’s elbow and propelling him toward a door marked “Employees Only.”

“What the hell, Manny? I don’t owe you anything.”

“I know, Howard, and I’m grateful for your business.” Manny opened a door and shoved him into a conference room. “Have a seat,” Manny said. “We’re going to have a little conference.”

“What’s the beef, Manny? I don’t understand.”

“Howard, when your long shot came in, we gave you twenty grand in hundreds, that correct?”

“Well, yeah, that’s how much I won.”

“I’m sorry, but through an administrative oversight you were given the wrong hundred-dollar bills.”

“No,” Howard said, shaking his head vehemently, “the ones you gave me are working just fine, everywhere I go.”

“How much have you spent, Howard?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“All right, let’s do it this way: how much you got left?”

Howard made a little involuntary jerking motion that moved his left arm across his chest. “I’ll go home and count it and let you know,” he said.

Manny removed Howard’s arm from its frozen position, stuck his hand into Howard’s inside pocket and came out with a thick bundle of bills, bound by a rubber band. “Looks like ten grand here,” he said. “Give me the rest.”

“Manny, I won it fair and square,” Howard protested.

“I know you did, Howard, and I’m going to replace your money with other money that won’t get you killed.”

“What do you mean, get me killed?”

Manny put a finger to Howard’s head, pulled an imaginary trigger, and said, “Bang. Like that, killed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let me explain it to you. A long time ago some money was stolen. In hundred-dollar bills.” He picked one from the stack and held it up. “Like this one. See the red stamp?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t put that on hundreds anymore. They look different nowadays.”

Howard picked up the note and held it up to the light. “Looks okay to me.”

“Well, Howard, I know it doesn’t have the word ‘stolen’
stamped on it, but believe me, it is. Empty your pockets, Howard. All of them.”

Howard began pulling a handkerchief, a comb, some car keys, and a wallet from his pockets, then he produced a money clip holding a thick wad of hundreds.

“Is that all of it, Howard?”

Howard nodded.

“None of it at home?”

Howard shook his head.

“Did you deposit any of it in your bank account?”

“Of course not, my wife sees the statements.”

“I want to know every single place you left one of these hundreds,” Manny said, shoving a legal pad from the table in front of him toward Howard and placing his pen on it. “Start from where the nice man gave you the twenty grand, and go from there.” Manny picked up the bound wad of hundreds and began expertly counting them. His fingers were a blur.

Howard began to make a list.

“Write how many hundreds you left in each place,” Manny said, pulling the stack from Howard’s money clip and counting that.

“There,” Howard said, shoving the legal pad toward Manny.

Manny looked at the list. “Howard, no normal human being could read this handwriting. Take me through it, slowly.”

Howard took the pad back. “Okay, I picked up the money from the man out in the trailer, then I left and came up to the clubhouse, to the bar, and I bought everybody there a round. That came to five hundred and change, so six hundreds.”

Manny wrote down six. Howard continued with his day—lunch, more drinks, then a series of bets at the hundred-dollar window. “I didn’t lose it all,” he said. “I won some back.”

“I’m not interested in what you won back, Howard, just the hundreds with the little red stamp on them.”

Howard worked his way through the list. He had bought a couple of suits at a Lauderdale shop that Manny knew; he had given a hundred to a beggar on the street because he liked the beggar’s dog. Manny knew the beggar; Manny knew the dog. He had sent some flowers to his girlfriend, as distinguished from his wife. Manny knew the flower shop. This continued to the end of the list.

Manny toted up a total. “Okay, you spread around about three grand on the street, and another five hundred in the clubhouse. You bet another four grand. We got a total of twelve thousand, one hundred dollars on the table here.” Manny went through his pockets and produced wads of cash, much of it in hundreds. He counted out the money, then made Howard count it again, then gave him newer hundreds and took all the old ones and stuffed them into his pockets.

“Now listen, Howard,” Manny said. “I’ve made you whole, right?”

“Right.”

“And I’ve saved you from going to prison or getting a hole in your head, if you keep your mouth shut. You going to keep your mouth shut, Howard?”

“Yes, Manny, I certainly am. And I very much appreciate your help in all this.”

“Not a word to another soul, Howard, or people will come
after you. If anybody asks you about a hundred with a red stamp, you don’t know nothing, you never heard of such a thing, got it?”

“Got it.”

Manny walked Howard back into the club, then he took the elevator down to the parking lot and walked a hundred yards, where he came to a parked Cadillac with an Airstream trailer attached to it. He hammered a code knock on the door, which was opened by the bookkeeper.

“I got twelve thousand, one hundred bucks in hundred-dollar bills,” he said. “You shipping today?”

“I ship every day,” the bookkeeper said.

“Give me eleven thousand one hundred from your shipment and replace it with this.”

The man counted out the money and accepted the stack from Manny. “What’s this about, Manny?”

“Accounting,” Manny said. “Now send your shipment, and we never had this conversation.”

The man nodded, and Manny left the trailer and went back to the clubhouse.

Meanwhile there were seventy-nine series 1966 hundred-dollar bills in the wind in and around Lauderdale and points north, south, east, and west, for all he knew. Since they weren’t bundled, there was a good chance they’d just disappear, until some scanner in some bank somewhere picked them up. It was pretty near untraceable, and it was the best he could do. He put it out of his mind and went back to handicapping.

Stone’s day was closing, and he called Holly Barker.

“Yes?”

“It’s Stone. Dinner tonight?”

“You poor dear, did last weekend make you think I was available for a social life again?”

“It gave me hope.”

“Stone, I had a little break in work, and I was randy, just like you.”

“You certainly know how to sweet-talk a guy.”

“I am once again submerged in work, and there’s no time for sweet talk. I’ll call you if I can ever breathe again, all right?”

“All right.”

“I do love you, baby, but my country needs me more than you do right now.”

“Okay.” They both hung up. That had been a little depressing, but that was the way Holly was. In the meantime, he had no plans for the evening, and Dino wasn’t pretty enough. It occurred to
him that he had not called Hank Cromwell, who had drawn such a nice portrait of him. He did so.

“Well, I wasn’t sure you would call,” she said.

“O ye of little faith.”

“You didn’t say you would.”

“That was implicit in my request for your phone number.”

“I guess it was, at that.”

“I know it’s late to call, but would you like to have dinner tonight?”

“I would,” she replied. “Where and what time?”

“Where do you live?”

“Murray Hill.”

“In that case, may we meet at Patroon at eight?” He gave her the address.

“Sounds good. I don’t know the restaurant. How dressy is it?”

“I’ll wear a necktie.”

“Ooookay. See you then.”

Stone hung up, and Joan came to the door. “Anything else? I thought I’d get out of here at a decent hour.”

“Good idea. I just have to sort out what’s on my desk, so I’ll remember tomorrow what I was doing today, then I’m out of here, too.”

“Good night, then.” She vanished.

Five minutes later, the phone rang. “Hello?”

“It’s Emma. How are you, darling?”

“Just thinking I would never hear from you again. And you?”

“Feeling guilty for not having called since you gave me the name of that sweet DCI Throckmorton.”

“Sweet? Are we talking about the same grizzled curmudgeon?”

“Oh, his mustache and eyebrows could use a trim, and he’s a little grouchy, but he responds well to gentle treatment and a smile.”

“I’m relieved to hear that. I thought he was some sort of android invented by the Metropolitan Police.”

“Well, he knows what he’s doing, I’ll give him that. It took him three days to sort out my problem.”

“And how did he do that?”

“He began questioning everybody with access to my designs, and he can be a very intimidating questioner. He just asks and sits there like he’s daring them to lie to him. Very effective.”

“I must remember that technique.”

“Anyway, it was the art director on our account at our ad agency. He started asking questions in that way of his, and she crumbled like a biscuit. She’d been color faxing somebody in Paris every design of ours that crossed her desk, which was about ten percent of our output, just the things we were using in our advertising.”

“I congratulate you.”

“I gave Throckmorton a check for ten thousand pounds. Do you think that was fair?”

“Fair? I’m surprised he didn’t clutch his chest and turn blue.”

“It wasn’t enough?”

“It was more than enough. I doubt he’s seen that much cash in one place in his whole life, unless it was the proceeds of a bank robbery he was investigating. Are you sending your design thief to prison?”

“I declined to bring charges against the poor woman, but she got fired.”

“That was wise of you. I doubt if she’ll do it again, if she can find another job in the ad business. Does this happy turn of events mean you’ll be coming to New York now?”

“I will be, but not now. It’s very, very busy here, and we’re planning the bigger office in L.A.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t be sad, my dear. We’ll see each other soon. Sooner, if you’d like to turn up in London for a few days.”

“Now, that’s an interesting thought. Do I have to stay at the Connaught?”

“Certainly not, you’re not allowed to stay anywhere but with me.”

“You’re sure you have room?”

“It’s a king-sized bed, or as I like to think of it, playing field.”

“Let me see when I can carve a few days out of my busy schedule. Maybe I’ll surprise you.”

“Promise?”

“Sort of. Joan has already gone home, and she’s the only person who can give me permission to leave town.”

“Then I will look forward to hearing from you. Good night.”

Stone hung up. Ah, London: it had been a while, and he loved London.