Around ten thirty that night, there was a knock at my front door. My mom had gone to bed after making a big dinner. Raina was asleep on the floor of my room. So that left me alone to answer. My heart was already pulsing in my ears. I immediately assumed it was the paparazzi or the police. Either way, the fact that I was just out of the shower and wearing no shirt didn’t seem ideal.
I checked the peephole, but it was obscured by something. So, I took a deep breath and threw open the door. And there, in the blue-white LED glow of our floodlights stood Griffin. He was scraggly with wrinkled clothes and something approximating a beard, but it looked more like an unwashed neck. His big black glasses were smudged. In his hand were two burritos wrapped in foil.
“Griffin,” I said. “What in the hell, man?”
“I know, I know,” he said. “You were probably really worried about me, but here I am. I’m alive.”
“Um,” I said. “Yes. I was worried. But also, you kinda fled the scene of a crime. Remember that?”
He scratched his fuzzy neck.
“Listen. There’s no time to argue right now, Wendy,” he said. “I got you a burrito. You need to come with me. The future of the Green Street depends on it!”
I looked down at my bare chest.
“This is the second time someone has tried to take me somewhere mysterious today, and I think I’m going to demand a little more information if that’s okay with you.”
“Well,” he said, looking at the burritos, “I didn’t know if you liked chicken or steak, so I put some of each in there. It sounds kind of weird, but it’s pretty good. It’s like if a cow ate a chicken, and then got wrapped in a tortilla.”
“Griffin.”
“What?”
I calmed myself with a long inhale.
“A little more information about where we’re going.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sure. That’s easy. A karaoke bar.”
Since I was not of age, and not in possession of a fake ID, I hadn’t spent much time in bars, let alone bars where people sing. But I’d heard about Boomtown. It was a hair and nail salon by day, karaoke bar by night. And it wasn’t far from campus. So, around the tables full of drinks and mounted screens showing odd videos of giraffes running through the Serengeti, there were still old-fashioned dryer chairs and bags of pink curlers shoved into the corner. The door was open on this warm night and the sounds of an out-of-tune rendition of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” drifted out into the parking lot.
On the way over, Griffin had briefed me on his recent whereabouts. After the protest went south, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He started following Ron Marsh, trailing him everywhere, going through his garbage, trying to find out who he was and why he was so obsessed with shuttering our little theater. He hadn’t turned up much at first. Mostly what you’d expect: lonely middle-aged guy, divorced with a grown daughter he rarely saw, frozen dinners from Trader Joe’s, a prescription for gout medication, lots of Law & Order episodes. It was all pretty boring and kind of sad.
“But then!” Griffin said. “He started getting phone calls late at night to come here.”
I peered into the dark interior of the bar. A mousy-looking woman in a hockey sweatshirt was belting out the finale.
“To sing?” I asked.
“Well,” Griffin said. “Sometimes. He’s into show tunes. But also to meet a contact.”
“A contact?”
Griffin pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and started flipping rapidly through the pages.
“Ten fifty-five p.m. Wednesday: R.T.D. meets with a well-dressed woman, envelopes exchanged, sings ‘Jesus Christ Superstar.’”
“Wait,” I said. “Who’s R.T.D.?”
“Oh,” he said. “Ron the Dick.”
He turned the page.
“Twelve-oh-three p.m., Friday: R.T.D. meets with well-dressed woman, one envelope exchanged, sings ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ Eleven twenty-four p.m., Monday: R.T.D. meets well-dressed woman, two envelopes, sings ‘Memories’ from Cats.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” I asked
“See for yourself,” said Griffin, and pointed to the back corner, where a man sat by a stylish pedicure chair. The bar was lit mostly by flashing screens with lyrics crawling by, so it was hard to make out his features at first. But the longer my eyes adjusted to the light, his face revealed itself in the purple dark. His beard looked darker. He held a glass of white wine and took a dainty sip. He squinted.
“He got the call right before I came to your house,” said Griffin. “So it’s possible the drop-off has already happened.”
Ron was flipping through a book of songs as we watched him, jotting down numbers on a napkin. Eventually, he made his final choice and took it up to the host.
“How long do you usually stay here?” I asked.
“All night if I have to,” he said. “You’d be surprised how few people notice me. Sometimes the well-dressed lady keeps him waiting.”
Griffin pulled out a dropper and placed something on his tongue. He must have noticed my odd look.
“Gets pretty boring, and I can’t really smoke in the lot. So, these have a very small amount of THC in them. Very small. Almost none. Want a couple?”
“Uh, no,” I said.
He put another drop on his tongue.
“Probably for the best. They taste horrible. Like rotten cantaloupe. And marijuana.”
For the next half hour, I regretted my decision not to partake in the drops. We sat through three interminable performances, two country hits I didn’t recognize, and one stirring rendition of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” by a group of sloshed frat boys. Ron clapped along, sipping his wine, looking at his watch. Finally, our lady arrived.
She was indeed sharply dressed in a blazer and a white shirt that almost glowed. She rested a hand on Ron’s shoulder. She ordered a drink, and when it arrived she slid an envelope over to Ron, who protested a little, then quickly pocketed it. Griffin snapped a picture on his phone that was mostly a blur. He looked at me, lips pursed, eyebrows raised.
“So what’s in it?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” said Griffin.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“How am I supposed to know what’s in the envelope?”
“I don’t know. Steal it like you did the scooter?”
“I borrowed the scooter,” he said.
“The criminal justice system believes otherwise. Actually, they believe I did it.”
“Well, that’s not fair,” he said.
Then he administered another drop.
“Besides,” he said, “we don’t need the actual envelope. We can put the pieces together on our own. Phone calls in the night? Seedy karaoke bars? Envelopes? And a femme fatale? Clearly he’s getting kickbacks!”
“A femme fatale? Kickbacks? This isn’t a noir, Griffin.”
“That’s what you think! Guess where she works?”
“Where?”
“Real Estate Company. It’s a total fix. A con job. When this is all over, they hop in a boiler and make for the coast!”
“How many drops have you had tonight?”
“Don’t remember,” he said.
We stood there peeping on them as a few performers took smoke breaks around us.
“I don’t know,” I said. “There could be a lot of other explanations.”
“Like what?”
“They could be friends. . . .”
Just then, a song ended and the host got on the mic.
“Ronnie Magic!” he called in a cheesy voice, “Ronnie Magic to the stage please.”
I looked at Griffin.
“Ronnie Magic?”
His karaoke name.
Ron closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he stood up with a smile on his face and walked to the front of the bar. A few people applauded and raised a drink. Ron took the mic from the host and began doing some brief vocal warm-ups. Then the song began and a tuba started to huff and puff in the background. A few other horns kicked in. Ron opened his mouth and out came a golden voice that sounded classically trained.
“Money makes the world go round. The world go round. The world go round!”
I hardly noticed the lyrics at first since his voice was so surprising. But the song, which was the aptly titled, “Money,” from Cabaret, wasn’t exactly subtle.
“Money makes the world go round. It makes the world go round.”
Ron was doing a little shuffle now, side to side, snapping his fingers.
Griffin was staring at me.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s an interesting song choice, but it doesn’t prove anything.”
We both looked back to the stage where Ronnie Magic was really hitting his stride. He threw his head back and bellowed:
“Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.”
He took a breath and repeated the chorus three more times, each time at a faster pace.
“Well,” I said. “Maybe we should talk to someone about this.”