Kelson drove to the southside neighborhood of Bronzeville, parked in an alley by the Ebenezer Baptist Church, climbed two flights of stairs, and knocked at DeMarcus Rodman’s apartment. The door opened, and all six foot eight and two hundred seventy-five pounds of the man consumed Kelson in a hug that left no doubt in Kelson’s mind that, if Rodman wished, he could break Kelson’s ribs and squeeze them out through his nose. When Kelson told him so, Rodman gazed at him with his gentle eyes, set a little too close together on his gentle face, and said, ‘Why would I want to do a thing like that?’
Then Rodman’s girlfriend Cindi, wearing green nurse’s scrubs, stepped in for a kiss on the cheek.
Marty sat on the living room couch between his girlfriend Janet and a skinny man in ripped jeans and a gray hoodie. On the wall behind them, portraits of Malcolm X, Cindi, and Martin Luther King, Jr, watched the room as if they’d seen it all before.
After Rodman poured coffee for everyone, Kelson turned to the one-armed man. ‘Who’s bothering you, Marty?’
‘Buncha fucking idiots,’ Marty said. ‘No big deal. DeMarcus worries too much.’
‘The owners of a place called G&G,’ Rodman said. ‘Out in Mundelein. They threatened him. They want some fancy accounting – Marty’s specialty.’
‘A thing I do for friends,’ Marty said. ‘Don’t knock on my door if I don’t know you. The fuck they think I am?’
‘You said no?’ Kelson said.
Marty had a high-pitched laugh. ‘I said fuck no.’
‘They took it hard?’
‘They said I’m the only man for the job. They had another guy, but he’s gone. They had a guy before him, but he’s gone too. I said thanks just the same. They said everyone says yes. I said I’m saying no. They said you don’t want to say no. I said what happens if I do? They said how much you like that one arm of yours?’
Janet stroked the arm as if she felt the insult. She was very large and had what friends and family called a skin condition.
‘What did you say then?’ Kelson asked.
‘What d’you think I said? They hurt my fucking feelings. I told them, they cut off my arm, I stomp their fucking heads. But I don’t mind telling you, these people scared me. I mean, who keeps a fucking hunting knife in a bank office?’
‘G&G’s a bank?’
‘A holding company. G&G fucking Private Equity. Customers gotta buy in big. The website says G&G invests and manages. It doesn’t say if you got cash you need to clean, G&G’s got the machines. Or if you want to hide money from your ex-wife, they got the holes to hide it in. The IRS? Fuck the IRS – compared to G&G, the IRS is a baby.’
‘Sounds like the kind of thing you do,’ Kelson said. ‘But no means no?’
‘So they get out the hunting knife,’ Marty said. ‘Like twelve inches. I think it’s a gag. Or maybe they got it in the office because the boss has a hobby. Fuck if I know. Then this guy – he’s in fucking pinstripes and a tie, a red fucking tie – he holds the knife to my nose. I don’t mind telling you, I still got trauma from my arm, and I was just a fucking kid. I’m sweating. So, like a jackass’ – he glanced guiltily at the skinny man beside him – ‘I tell them ’bout my nephew. I throw him to the fucking wolves. I ain’t proud of it. But he knows numbers as good as I do.’
‘Better,’ the other man said. He had a bowl haircut and the start of a beard.
‘A moment of weakness,’ Marty said. ‘He’s tough as I am, but he has twenty years on me – and he’s got both fucking hands. He’s like two of me. I told them if they wanted a man for the job, they should talk to Neto.’
‘I don’t mind, Uncle Marty,’ the nephew said. ‘I need the work.’
‘Not this work, you don’t,’ Marty said. ‘Now they say, if Neto fucks up, they come after me – and him.’
Kelson turned to Rodman. ‘What do you want to do about it?’
Rodman’s voice was gentle and low. ‘Nothing now. We wait and watch. Marty wants Neto to get in and out quick and clean. The last two G&G accountants – guys Marty knew – didn’t work out, and Marty hasn’t seen them since. Maybe they made their bundle and took off. Maybe not. So we keep Neto safe, and if the G&G people start rumbling, we let them know they should worry about Neto’s friends too.’
Kelson asked Marty, ‘Exactly what does G&G want done?’
‘It’s a fund distribution,’ he said. ‘Once a year – more often would ring alarms – they move money out of G&G and shift it around for the clients. Offshore accounts, shell companies, whatever they got. Next distribution is in two days. The accountant – Neto this time – is the firewall. He erases G&G from the money, which is how G&G and the customers both want it. Invisible money. Fucking deniability.’
‘Why not take this to the cops or the feds?’ Kelson said.
‘Why not fuck your mom?’ Marty said. ‘One – I’d cut off my own arm before I’d snitch. Two – what would I tell them? The G&G people live in the daylight. They golf and go to church. Their kids play soccer. G&G owns a building in the middle of a fucking office park. That’s why they find guys like me and Neto. We’re buffers. Throwaways. Dirty gloves. If we go to the cops, the cops say, Who the hell’re you? If we walk into the SEC or FDIC and tell stories about these rich boys, the feds kick us in the fucking asses. G&G looks clean.’
‘Unless they’re scrubbing blood out of their carpet after they cut you.’
‘Sure, unless that, but I figure they buy good carpet cleaners.’
‘You got any names?’ Kelson asked.
‘Yeah,’ Marty said. ‘The three I talked to at the meeting. Sylvia Crane, Harold Crane, and Chip Voudreaux.’
‘How’d they even find you?’
‘Lady I dated a coupla times before I met Janet told them about me. Her name’s Genevieve.’ He squeezed Janet’s hand.
‘Genevieve Bower?’
‘Fuck you – you know her?’
‘I’m doing a job – because you mentioned me to her. She hired me.’
‘Careful around her,’ Marty said. ‘She’s a crazy one.’
‘So, how does it work with G&G?’
‘The accounting’s done offsite,’ Marty said. ‘No way to trace it back. Two days from now, they send Neto to a Holiday Inn or a DoubleTree or somewhere with public computers. They give him a password. He follows directions. Four or five hours, and he’s done. The last transfer is ten grand into his own account – pay for a half day’s work. They say it’s easy. It ain’t easy.’
‘We don’t do anything right now,’ Rodman said. ‘We’re on standby. Maybe the thing goes smooth and Neto takes us to dinner at Gene and Georgetti. Or maybe it goes bad.’
Kelson asked Neto, ‘Are you up to the job?’
‘Yeah,’ Neto said, ‘I’m a genius.’
Marty said, ‘When he was in high school, MIT wanted him. Caltech. Princeton.’
Kelson said, ‘Why didn’t you go?’
‘Too busy,’ Neto said.
Marty laughed. ‘They found out about his criminal record. Fucking kid redirected funds from Banco Santander Río when he was fifteen. Had all of Argentina pissed off at him.’
Neto gave an ah-shucks grin.
Kelson eyed his shabby pants and hoodie. ‘Looks like you invested your earnings badly.’
‘FBI took the cars,’ Neto said. ‘The judge made me pay back the rest.’
‘Fucking feds,’ Marty said.
Neto smiled the way some men smile when they have nothing to lose. ‘I’ve got expenses.’
Marty said, ‘You do this job. You take your pay. You get out. If you go in deeper, you’ll never come back up.’
‘Right – you said.’
‘I ever tell you wrong?’
Neto gave him a loving punch on the shoulder without an arm. ‘Wasn’t Banco Santander Río your idea?’
‘I might’ve said I heard something about their electronic security. I might’ve. I didn’t say a hotshot fifteen-year-old should go climbing through the hole.’
Neto spoke to Kelson. ‘I was always impressionable.’
‘Well, impress this,’ Marty said. ‘We get you in, we get you out, and you never go back.’
At five that evening, Cindi left for a nightshift at Rush Medical. The others ordered Chinese from Little Wok. Kelson picked wood ear mushrooms from his moo shu pork. Rodman ate pounds and pounds of egg foo young and shrimp fried rice with the delicacy of someone picking at tea-party finger sandwiches. Marty spooned some of everything on to his plate and stirred it into a mash with a chopstick.
Neto ate nothing at all but stared at Kelson. ‘Marty and DeMarcus say you’re good,’ he said, ‘but I don’t see nothing so special about you. What’s so special about you?’
Kelson ate a dumpling and said, ‘I don’t think I’m so special.’
Marty laughed that high laugh. ‘He’s nothing you wouldn’t see at Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Between the two-headed cow and the fucking Chinaman who drilled a hole in his head to carry a candle.’
Neto wrinkled his eyebrows.
Kelson ate another bite and said, ‘Is Neto your real name?’
‘Nah,’ Neto said. ‘James. But when I was little I couldn’t ever hold my excitement.’
‘So you said “neat” or “neato”?’
‘I said “fuckin’ A”. Marty taught me. But my mom and dad figured a nickname like that would get me in trouble.’
Kelson said, ‘So, Neto?’
‘So, Neto.’
‘Me, I’ve always been Sam Kelson. In court, Samuel. Thing is, since I got shot in the head, I’ve got disinhibition, which means you can’t shut me up and I’ll tell you the truth even if I really, really want to lie. But I’ve also got autotopagnosia – I sometimes don’t recognize myself. I look in a mirror and say, Holy shit, who’s he? So, sure – I’m a two-headed cow.’
‘So you’re like Jason Bourne in those movies?’
‘Yeah, I wish. That’s dissociative fugue. He doesn’t know who he is. Me? I know, sort of. But I don’t always recognize myself – and I can’t stop telling people about it. Did you know Jason Bourne is named after a real guy – Ansel Bourne – who also forgot who he was?’
‘Nope, I didn’t know that.’
‘Neither did I, until Dr P told me.’
‘Who’s Dr P?’
‘My therapist. She’s putting the cracked egg back together.’
‘Wow,’ Neto said.
At eight that evening, Kelson drove to his building. He rode the elevator to his floor and went down the hall to his apartment. He fumbled his keys outside his door and dropped them on the hallway carpet. Then a sound came from inside. He reached for his belt – but he’d left his guns in his office. ‘Dammit,’ he said, and the lock tumbled. The knob turned and the door swung open.
An eleven-year-old girl stared at Kelson and said, ‘Gotcha.’ His daughter Sue Ellen.