Solomon Bull: When the Friction Has Its Machine Page 4

  “Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes wise men turn to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. Tecumseh.”

  He grins wide, points, “AAAHHH! You know I love you. But that’s beer!”

  “When you die, you go back naked, like you came.”

  “Whoa.” He drinks from the pitcher. Five seconds. Ten. His eyes swell and his face contorts as he pursues the final swallow. Some things deserve a fellow’s best. He lands the empty pitcher on the table and belches.

  “What’s going on?”

  I pull a slip of paper from my pocket and read faint pencil lines. “I need two pallets of cement blocks, eight sheets of plywood, eight four by fours, and enough cement to lay the blocks.”

  “Anything e1se?”

  “Labor. You and the boys, Sunday night.”

  “Night?”

  I hold his eye. His face glazes. I don’t know if it is the Guinness or some deep genetic Italian glee waxing at the prospect of mischief.

  He smiles. “Could I go to jail?”

  “You could get shot, play your cards right.”

  “Materials will cost you. Two hundred bucks for the blocks. Close to three for the ply.”

  “Can’t you get some cheap plywood?”

  “Not that will hold you.”

  “It doesn’t have to bear any weight.”

  “Half-inch work?”

  “Sure.”

  “Still, you’ll total four hundred, easy.”

  I open my wallet. Snap five sheets of cheddar and lay them on the table. His eyes follow my wallet.

  “Stupid to carry paper like that.”

  “Maybe.” I push the cash to him, sticking a bill in a circle of condensation. “Sunday night.”

  “Sunday. You spring for the party afterward, I’ll round up the boys.”

  “No substitutes. It has to be us five.”

  “Of course.” He slips four bills in his pocket and waves the other at a barmaid.

  I zone out. A woman climbed into my shower and tried to lure me to bed so she could kill me. She returned while I was away and took the knife she’d cached. The only reason my name could have topped her dead pool list was that I spray-painted a Juvenalian barb about a senator on a billboard. And I’m planning another strike? Why?

  A dare from a woman whose opinions have the significance of a frog fart.

  Is this quest to monkey with electoral politics my boondoggle? Did Katrina strike a chord, and now the project runs on steam bottled up over twenty-seven years of watching—let’s be frank—a race of conquerors drive itself to self-indulgent madness?

  Paolo is talking at me and I haven’t heard a word.

  “What?”

  “I said, how do you know I’m not going to have a moral problem with your project?”

  “Good one.”

  I stand as a pair of headlights swings into the space that just opened behind my Jeep. Someone else is keeping the Gods happy. “I’m out of here. Sunday, brother.”

  “Hey,” Paolo says. “We got to do the blood brother thing.”

  “You know that’s Hollywood, right?”

  “But it’s cool.”

  “In the day of AIDS, you want to swap blood?”

  He slips a knife from a sheath that hasn’t left his hip in nine years. “It’s time.”

  He asks once a year, always drunk. Some guilty white people want to be Indians. Some want to be black. Others want to be women. Only men with grease or field mud on their hands seem content to be white.

  “Study blood diseases.” I smack his shoulder.

  Paolo’s been on blackout drive, his euphemism for being a functional alcoholic, for six years. He gets more insistent about the blood-brother thing each time he mentions it. I bet on Sunday night he’ll have a length of twine in his pocket, in case he gets to slice my hand.

  The ritual isn’t valid. Blood was important to people starving on lichens and mice.

  I step outside and the cool, humid air hits me, urges me to sleep in the back of the Jeep with the sunroof cracked. I know a place I can pull off the road, right after the Mund’s Park exit.

  Circling the Jeep, I see the woman in the vehicle behind hasn’t exited her… black Lexus. I stride to the door. She rolls tinted glass down and I see her eyes, mouth, cleavage, and a nine-millimeter pointed at my belly.

  She smiles. “Get in the passenger side.”

  “No luck finding an Indian?”

  She flashes teeth.

  “If you shoot me from there, you’ll have a hole in your door.”

  “And you’ll have a hole in your belly.”

  I glance up the street. At the bar. Paolo watches, nods. From his angle, he sees her face and gleaming teeth, not the gun.

  “You’re thinking too long,” she says. “Get in the car. I won’t shoot you. I promise.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve seen you drive. I’d rather die from a bullet.”

  She slips the nine in a holster that shouldn’t fit on her thigh and remain invisible under her skirt. I see the pooch of her panties and I could kick my moralistic ass for not having tagged her when I had the chance.

  And then she pulls an I.D. from her bra.

  “That can’t be comfortable,” I say. “If it says ‘sex police,’ I’m going to be disappointed.”

  She flips it to me through the window, powers up the glass, and exits the Lexus. Slams the door while I hold the badge under a streetlight. The photo is she and the badge says TFI.

  “The gun was to get your attention. I’m one of the good guys.” She takes three steps into the street and stops.

  “What’s TFI?”

  “Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Come on.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m with the Treasury. Let’s walk. What I’m about to tell you is secret.”

  “What you’re about to tell me is total crap. Treasury agents—”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t hot. They don’t shave bare. They don’t Mirandize a guy in the shower while they soap his gonads.”

  “I didn’t Mirandize you. I fondled you. Because I’m trying to recruit you.”

  Paolo is in the bar making a blow-up face with his mouth against the glass.

  “Recruit me? With a knife in my back?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Time for me to shut up. Talk to people who plant knives and pull guns, whether they’re gangsta or banksta, you get what you deserve.

  “Are you ready to listen?” she says.

  I sit on a bench and pat the space beside me. She looks left and right and sits. Cagey. The badge looked real, but any ten-year-old with a Mac and a laminator could make one. And who the hell ever heard of the TFI?

  “Does the Treasury approve your methods?”

  “You mean when I introduced myself in the shower?”

  I nod.

  “That wasn’t a method. That was me.”

  “Mixing business with pleasure?”

  “You’re sharp like New York Cheddar.”

  “You’re tits and ass. Like tits and ass. Where is this going?”

  So much for waiting on her to say more than she should. I’m too eager to find out what she knows. Is this about Cyman? Have I broken some day-trading rule that the SEC polices with heavy artillery? Have they mistaken any of my money transfers as some kind of laundering or terrorist-financing operation?

  “Well, this has been swell.” I stand and she grabs my hand with speed that reminds me she somehow down-climbed my building in the buff, wet from the shower. She’s a ninja, all right. She’s one of those folks, like me, who can catch a dollar bill before it drops its own length. Chuck Yeager, Rachel, and me.

  “Stay,” she says. “Your country needs you.”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. Full-throated braying. She faces away.

  “I’m serious.”

  “You should have thought about being serious before you stashed a knife under my bed, snuck into my shower, busted back inside to remove the blade, tailed me to Flag, pulled a gun on me, and flashed a lame-ass T-F-I badge. Rachel.”

  She flinches. “Are you nuts? I tried to seduce you. You freaked out. I ran.”

  “In the buff.”

  “Uh, I was naked in the shower. Hello?”

  “Why’d you come back today?”

  “To warn you.” She reads my face, which I consciously paint with yer fulla crap. She stands and offers her hand. “Come.”

  I walk with her. She angles across the street to a coffee shop. Buys a pair of mochas and claims a computer at the back. She sits on the barstool. Pulls up an Explorer window.

  Logs into… the Treasury.

  still NINE DAYS to RACE DAY…

  All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.

  —T.E. Lawrence

  I look over her shoulder as she navigates to the Treasury’s version of corporate white pages and types Rachel N. Brenner. Her photo flashes on the screen. Date of birth, 3/12/85. Blue eyes. One hundred-twenty-five pounds. Mostly curves. She swivels to me.

  “So,” I say. “What’s the TFI’s mandate?”

  “Financial crime.”

  “What does the TFI want with me?”

  Though the coffee shop is almost deserted, she surveys the emptiness. Closes the browser window, erases the history, cache, cookies, then uninstalls the browser.

  “They’re not going to like that.”

  “They have no choice.” She pulls a blackberry
from nowhere and fires an email. “I’m telling them to reset my password because I’ve accessed Treasury’s intranet from a real-world computer.”

  My loins ache to hear truth in her words.

  She finishes. “Let’s go outside.”

  We walk. I drop a half-full mocha into the trash. The air is full of mist like the chic cafes in Phoenix dispense from white PVC pipes at the height of the monsoon. Except at night in Flagstaff, it is decidedly cold. We tramp along a deserted sidewalk toward a church. Rachel is silent, maybe waiting for me to say something that will give her an edge. Inform her how to play me. I’m thinking the same, of course. Her beauty is an asset. She might overestimate her strength if I allow her to think it works on me.

  I take her hand, swing her face to mine, clutch the small of her back. Kiss her like I paid cash.

  She responds tightly at first, then warms. Gets into it. Gasps a breathy moan that I’d buy as unintentional if she hadn’t already tried to manipulate me with sex and a gun. No, Rachel, like any woman who connives, knows those whimpers are siren songs to men. I’ll trust nothing.

  The kiss evolves and in two minutes we’ve created a new species of desire. She pulls my lower back and somehow rotates her inner thighs out. I feel her pulse—no, mine. We separate and I hold her gaze. My face feels tight—I read her eyes and know the face she beholds is mad, possessed. I want her. I want her to know I want her. I want her to think I’ve forgotten about the chance of a six-inch blade winding up in my back. Let her proceed like the match is won, and let’s see where she stumbles.

  “We should go somewhere private,” she says. “Where we can talk.”

  “Talk.”

  “I was thinking about a motel a couple blocks away.”

  “Do we walk or drive?” I say.

  “Drive.”

  We return to her car. “Where’d you go to school?” I say.

  “George Mason.”

  “Economics?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How did a libertarian school turn you into the Sheriff of Nottingham?”

  “It didn’t.” She slams the door.

  I slip into the leather seat. The dashboard glows a citrusy orange, which somehow fits Rachel. The tach flashes to four grand and she swerves to the street. I hang onto the armrest and slap the shoulder restraint across my chest. She burps the tires; the car surges. She whips left, gasses it, another left, a right, and in three minutes she’s negotiated the surrender of Flagstaff. We pull into a Day’s Inn. She slips a card in the door slot, we get the green light to enter.

  She closes the door and embraces me. Pushes me against the wall and slips the security chain through the slot. Her other hand reaches between us, plumbs the gorge between her breasts and releases a clasp that does nothing. Her bra isn’t about support—it’s about appearing conventional. I nose to her neck and her hair smells like a meadow of flowers. My mind shifts to single-track territory. I need to rattle her, if only to rattle myself. I push her away.

  “So you want to recruit me?”

  “Talk later,” she pants.

  “Now.”

  She sighs. Turns. Reaches for the nine holstered on her thigh, and as I inhale and prepare to drop her with a palm to the base of her skull, she removes the holster and rests it on the dresser. She sits on the edge of the bed. Puts her hands together at her knees and leans forward.

  “You paid a thousand dollars to Cal Barrett,” she says.

  I’m silent.

  “Cal Barrett is a terrorist.”

  “I’m sorry. No.”

  “We believe Cal Barrett funnels cash to extremist groups throughout the country. Home-grown groups. Are you familiar with money laundering?”

  “Uh, gee, Rachel…”

  “Money launderers follow distinct steps to insert black market money into the legitimate financial system—”

  “Are you saying the one thousand dollars I paid him was black market money?”

  “No. We don’t know where his money comes from. With most of them, it’s drugs, or cigarettes, or guns. Fencing stolen merchandise. With Barrett, we don’t know. One of the ways we find criminals is to search out the middle-level transaction. After a launderer inserts money into the financial system, he’ll move it around and try to create a complicated paper trail. The more transactions the better. Everything from buying cash value life insurance to sending and receiving a thousand wires from bank to bank. That’s how we isolated Barrett. We’ve got computers that do nothing but apply algorithms to financial records from all the major institutions. Barrett’s engaged in so many red-flag transactions, ‘layering’—we call it—that we had to investigate him. The problem is we can’t get close on the ground. He’s coy, financially. He’s even worse, in person. We can’t get an asset in.”

  I recall an Internet news story I read about him a month ago. “Former guerilla soldier. Everything is about security.”

  “You admire him.”

  “I want to win his race.”

  “We need someone who can get inside. He 1ikes you.”

  “He doesn’t know me.”

  “He knows more about you than I do,” she says. “And I know a lot.”

  “We met once. He doesn’t know me. He’s psychotic, by the way.”

  “You mean when he said a woman running Apple would signal the End Times?”

  “...Right...” I say. “How…?”

  “Remote listening devices and telescopic microphones. At any given moment, we have three agents snooping around his ranch. We picked up your conversation. We even know what he was playing on his iPod.”

  “Of course you’ll tell me.”

  “Baby, It’s Cold Outside. Over and over. He sang along for six miles.”

  “So if you heard that conversation, you know I haven’t had any interaction with him.”

  “Ah, but he knows you. Why do you think he was out there, that day, when you just happened to be running? Could it be that you’ve run at the same time every day for the last month?”

  “Coincidence?”

  “Hardly. He knew you’d seek him. We’re trying to figure out what he told you.” She levels her head. “And why you wanted to talk to him.”

  “You taped it. You know what he told me.”

  “But we don’t know what he really said. He was communicating with you.”

  “If he used a code, I missed it. I thought he was a nut.”

  She says something I miss. Instead, I remember thinking shortly after meeting him that we’re tumbling toward tyranny. And… when Apple makes an implantable iPod, I’m busting outta jail.

  “We need you to infiltrate his organization. Find out where his money comes from. Put us on the right track.”

  I’m reluctant to turn my back to her, but I have to think. I face the sink built into the far wall and watch her in the mirror. She’s facing the television. It’s hard to think when you could be moments away from poking Jessica Rabbit.

  I expected Cyman to show up in the conversation, but unless Rachel is sixteen times smarter than me, this discussion has nothing to do with the billboard.

  “Well?” she says. “In or out?”

  “Are you investigating me?”

  “Only insofar as necessary to understand Barrett’s interest in you.”

  “What is his interest in me? What does he know? What’s he done?”

  “He may be trying to kill you. He may be trying to recruit you. He’s like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. We know he’s nuts. We just want to get him before he grabs the machete. He’s formed the roots of a militia, but we don’t know where they are. He moves money, but it disappears into legitimate cash. His money shows up and then disappears and all we have is the middle. We don’t know the source or the destination.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t think you have the right to know. Besides…” I finally turn to her. “Treasury can touch anybody.”

  “You think? We’ve got superhero agents working for Elmer Fudd execs. Our mainframes speak Cobol to computers that hablo FORTRAN. Treasury is more spaced out than the White House. More dysfunctional than Congress.”

  “I can’t quite get my brain around it,” I say. “You’re talking like Treasury is the third branch of government.”

  She smirks.

  I’m quiet.

  “That’s everything,” she says.

  “Tell me again, why you joined me in the shower.”

  “Sex.”

  “I’ve heard good things about it,” I admit.