The Up and Comer (20 page)

"Hey, who the fuck invited this kid, anyway? !" said Jack, throwing his cards away into the center. As most everyone else chuckled, he looked at me as if to say, I hope you know what the hell you're doing.

I did.

"Let's see 'em, gentlemen."

I was about to show my hand when Lisker beat me to it. He was that sure he had the winner. With a huge shit-eating grin, he turned over a monster. Two aces', two sevens, and a one-eyed jack. A wild card.

"I took mercy on you, kid," Lisker said, looking at me. "I could have fucking raised you!"

I looked down at his full house. I looked up into his eyes.

"I wish you had," I said back slowly. Almost as slowly as I laid down my cards. The nine of clubs, ten of clubs, jack of clubs, and queen of clubs. My last card? The king of hearts. The one and only suicide king.

I watched his face. For a split second, Lisker thought he had me beat. But a split second later, he knew otherwise. What he thought was a straight was really a straight flush. I too had a wild card.

The table howled. Lisker cursed. Then he cursed some more. All of it, I was sure, heard by anyone and everyone remaining out in the restaurant. The CEO of BioLink had lost out to a young punk of a lawyer, a first-time player in the game, no less.

"Nice hand," Valentine told me. "Glad I got out when I did."

"Yeah, good one to watch," said Chapinski.

"Hey, Lisker, maybe your company ought to clone this kid," said Markelson.

Lisker was desperately trying to compose himself. "One's quite enough, thank you," he said.

As for Jack, he folded his arms and waited for me to catch his eye. When I did, he cocked his head and suppressed a smile. What more could he say?

I raked in the pot. It was fifteen thousand dollars. Not bad for a night's work, I told myself, and all of it hinging on one very fateful playing card. The one card that spelled the beginning of the end for Tyler Mills.

Yes, indeed. It was time to plan the perfect suicide.

TWENTY-ONE

No loose ends. That's what I kept telling myself. If I was going to do this, and do this right, there had to be as little left to chance as possible. Regardless of how remote, I couldn't afford the risk of involving anyone or anything that could conceivably be linked back to me. Which is why even before the suicide idea surfaced, I ruled out hiring someone — a professional — to do my dirty work. Not that I knew how to arrange something like that anyway.

No, this was going to be a one-man job, and I was the man.

Method. I thought about lethal injection. I could get close enough to Tyler to do that. Remembering a case I had studied in law school entailing a hospital mix-up, I knew that a massive amount of potassium would be both deadly and untraceable come the autopsy. Except there was one drawback as it pertained to me. There'd always be the risk of a tiny puncture mark on Tyler's skin. And wouldn't you know it, he'd have Quincy for a coroner.

I kept thinking.

I was in my office, door closed, with Gwen holding all my calls. I had put a CD on my shelf system. The Tindersticks. For some reason, the lead singer's voice always brought out the worst in me. Sure enough, after three songs I had the idea.

Tyler would hang himself.

It made perfect sense. Since he'd slit his wrists to no avail, hanging was certainly a most believable Plan B for a guy bent on taking his own life. Of course, no matter how politely I could ask him, Tyler wasn't about to willingly dangle from his rafters.

Enter: ether.

Nothing like a little rubbing alcohol mixed with sulfuric acid to make a guy more amenable to putting a noose around his neck. More important, ether happened to metabolize in the body in super-quick fashion, probably no longer than the time it took for me to call the New York Public Library reference center and find all of that out. A good lawyer always did his research.

That said, Target and Wal-Mart weren't exactly stocking a broad array of volatile anesthetics the last I checked. So where was one supposed to get ahold of this uncommon household item? The same place everyone else gets their hands on things they have no business getting their hands on: the Internet. If the average disillusioned seventh grader could use it to learn how to build a bomb, surely I could finagle 50 ml of ether.

Covering my tracks, though, took some doing.

The guy behind the counter at the mailbox rental place had obviously never seen a driver's license from the state of Iowa before. If he had, he would've known mine to be the fake that it was, bought for eight dollars and change at one of those East Village stores that, with their bogus picture IDs and eclectic collections of bongs, manage to do quite well with the underage set. When asked by the mailbox guy to produce the second piece of ID required, I intentionally fumbled around a bit with my wallet (the one I had bought earlier on the street for four dollars, not the Fendi one I usually carried). Finally, I asked if my business card would be okay. No problem, I was told with an "I'll cut you some slack" head bob.
  
My
  
handiwork
  
from
  
the
  
do-it-yourself business-card machine at the Hallmark store near my office was promptly handed over. Hank McCallister, Certified Public Accountant, 114 Castleton Lake Road, Des Moines, Iowa, 50318, it read. Clean, simple, and believable. For the record, Hank McCallister was actually the name of my junior high school gym teacher. He hung around the boys' locker-room showers too much, if you know what I mean.

The term
cyberholics
popped into my mind. I was looking around at the geek-chic clientele hanging out at the OnLine Cafe where I logged on to the innocuous-sounding MRT Supplies Corp. for my ether. On the company's Web site, they were calling it "ethyl oxide" and passing it off as an industrial solvent. It was the equivalent of a legal end around, a loophole that I was more than happy to jump through. Well versed in the ways of anonymity, the company proudly displayed its money-wiring codes.

The rather large woman who processed my MoneyGram was eating an egg-salad sandwich. There was a little glob of it on her chin, out of tongue's reach. It distracted me momentarily from staring at the mole on her cheek. Whereas Cindy Crawford's was thought of as cute and round, this woman's was huge, kidney-bean shaped, and had a thick black hair growing out of it. Still, the woman couldn't have been nicer. The way I saw it, she was either extremely comfortable with who she was or in complete denial. I couldn't exactly tell. I filled out the form and gave her the amount in cash that I wanted to wire, and we were done. The account for MRT Supplies Corp. would be credited within minutes.

"Thank you very much," I said to the mole woman.

"You're quite welcome, Mr. McCallister," she said back with a smile. In hindsight, I probably should've told her about the glob of egg salad.

The prepping was proceeding nicely. No one could ever prove that Philip Randall had ever heard of MRT Supplies Corp., let alone purchased 50 ml of ether, or ethyl oxide, from them. No mailbox rental place would ever show any record of a Philip Randall, either. If there was any connection to be made, the only person who had anything to worry about was one Hank McCallister of Des Moines, Iowa.

Like I said, no loose ends.

The last chore of the day was a stop at Chase Manhattan to have funds from my and Tracy's brokerage account wire-transferred into our checking account. Call me nuts, but we didn't make a habit of keeping a six-figure balance in it. Once the wire went through, I could have the certified bank check that Tyler was asking for drawn up — exactly as I had told him. What I hadn't told him, though, was that the check wouldn't have his name on it. It would be made out to cash. It was my way of eliminating any paper trail between the two of us. He was never going to get the chance to cash the check, of course, but after I had it credited back to my account, the bank would still have a record of it on file. Making the check out to Tyler was a potential loose end. Making it out to cash was essentially subpoena proof. I'd simply chalk up the amount to a foolishly long-running gambling debt out on the golf course.
Damn that double or nothing!
Sorely needing lessons would be the worst anyone could ever accuse me of.

* * *

By Friday midafternoon, I had everything I needed, including a three-quarter-inch nylon rope for hanging and a pair of gloves for no fingerprints. The rope was a backup in case there were no bedsheets to be found in Tyler's apartment. The makeshift nature of a bedsheet noose, I thought, would add that extra touch of authenticity to the event. It smacked of the right amount of suicidal desperation.

Time to phone Tyler. Only not from my office. I didn't want records showing any more calls between us. That there was already one was okay, to be thought of as merely two old friends catching up. A series of calls, however, would possibly be perceived as something more.

Wanted: a pay phone that listed its own number. Very hit-and-miss in Manhattan. The first two I walked up to on the street weren't even working. Hell, one was missing the receiver altogether. Time to move inside.

Looking around I saw a Chinese restaurant up the block. I walked in and found their pay phone in the back by the kitchen. Its phone number was listed above the Touch-Tones. I paged Tyler and stood there waiting. Nearby, an elderly Chinese couple was tallying the lunchtime receipts at one table while all the waiters ate at another. After about a minute, my loitering caught their attention.

"Could I get an egg roll to go?" I asked, thinking that might stop their staring.

One of the older waiters said something in Chinese to one of the younger waiters. They both looked annoyed. The younger one put down his chopsticks, stood up, and walked over to me.

"Is that all you wanting?" he asked me in quasi English. I nodded. He turned and walked back into the kitchen, coming out a few seconds later. "It come in couple minutes," he told me before returning to his lunch. Sure enough, everyone else had stopped staring.

Within another minute the pay phone rang. At the very least, Tyler was prompt.

"Hello?"

"I thought it was you," he said. "Are we all set?"

"Certified bank check for a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Is that all set enough for you?"

"I suppose I should expect you to be a little testy."

"You
think?"

Said Tyler, "Meet me in a half hour at—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa…. " I broke in on him. "How do you think I make all that money? It's called a job, and I've got a meeting in twenty minutes that I can't miss. I've done everything you've asked so far, so give me this one. We'll do it early this evening, seven o'clock. Just tell me where I should meet you."

There was a heavy sigh followed by a prolonged silence on the other end.

"Are you still there?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm still here. Meet me on the northeast corner of Ninth Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street. Seven o'clock, as you wish. Lord knows I wouldn't want you to miss your big important lawyer meeting."

He hung up.

I stood there at the phone for a moment. There was no meeting I had to go to. The point of stalling with Tyler was so that the likes of Gwen, and whoever else, would leave the office for the weekend knowing that I was still there. Working late would be my alibi were I ever to need one. Again, I wasn't planning on needing one.

I left the Chinese restaurant, egg roll in hand, and returned to the office. Back behind my desk, I called Tracy, telling her that there was an emergency with a client and that I'd have to burn the midnight oil. On a Friday, no less. We previously had made plans to see a movie together. It had been my suggestion earlier in the week, knowing that I would end up having to cancel on her. All in all, there was minimal disappointment. She told me that she'd probably stay home and read. I apologized and told her that we would try to do it another night.

For the remainder of the day, I sat there in my chair and mapped out the evening as best I could. Time passed agonizingly slowly. At about five-thirty, Gwen popped her head in to let me know she was leaving. I wished her a good weekend and asked if she had any plans.

"Self-loathing on Saturday, followed by self-pity all day Sunday," she said with a straight face.

I shouldn't have asked.

Come six o'clock, I took a stroll around the corridors, being sure to be seen whenever possible. I stopped by Shep's office and engaged him in a brief bull session. He had the unique gift of having humorous things happen to him in the most mundane settings. This time it was while getting his teeth cleaned.

"I'm lying there in the chair," Shep started to explain, "and they've got this really hot new dental hygienist."

I interrupted him to comment that he was dangerously close to sounding like one of those bad letters to
Penthouse.

"Not to be confused with those good ones," he was quick to point out. "Anyway, you know how they've always got some easy-listening music pumped into the rooms to relax the patients? Well, I'm lying there, and it turns out this hygienist likes to sing along with the songs as she works. I mentioned she was really hot, right?"