“But you’re asking me to break the law!”
Pointer donned—his most condescending tone and took a deep breath. “Think about how, many laws you break every day, Mr. Briscow. There’s the speed limit, maybe one drink too many before you drive. I’ll bet even one or two of your tax returns aren’t all that they might be.”
Todd was angry now. These analogies were absurd. “Perhaps you’re right, Mr. Vincent, but what you’re suggesting is orders of magnitude beyond…”
Pointer broke him off again. “Mr. Briscow, think what life would be like if every time you drove your car, someone was there waiting to write you a ticket for doing one mile an hour over the limit.
Think what it would be like to have every one of your tax returns audited, starting from seven years ago. You know, even a few dollars adds up over seven years, what with interest and penalties…”
Suddenly, Todd realized that he had no options. He was furious. “How dare you blackmail me!”
Pointer winced at the term. “Mr. Briscow, you have nothing to fear unless you have broken the law. And if you’ve already broken the law, what’s one more time?”
The full spectrum of emotions flooded Todd’s mind all at once: anger, fear, loathing. This pompous jerk—a lawyer, no less—was forcing him to violate the law by leveraging his fear of having violated the law! It was ridiculous, but what choice did he have but to go along? What an incredible twist this hero business had taken!
Pointer correctly interpreted the silence as Todd’s acquiescence. “Very well, then,” he said. “I’ll give you thirty minutes to gather the information I need, and then I’ll give you a call back. Is that all right?”
“No, it’s not all right!”
“Do it anyway.” Pointer’s tone was flat, leaving no room for negotiation. “I’ll call you in exactly a half hour. And Mr. Briscow?” “What?”
“Time is of the essence in this matter. You don’t want to get on my bad side.”
Todd stared at the dial tone for a long time. Deep in the pit of his stomach, he had the feeling that he’d just been threatened with more than legal action.
Mark Bailey just wanted the agony to be gone—both mental and physical. Hearing Nathan’s voice again on the radio had him balanced on the very edge of his sanity. He had to hand it to the little guy. He had the luck his Irish ancestors had intended for him.
As soon as Mark saw the news on television, he knew what had happened. And though he allowed himself a brief moment to feel vindicated by the failure of a “professional” killer to finish the job he’d paid Ricky to do so long before—could it possibly be just three weeks?—Mark knew the bottom line of what had happened last night. Pointer was not the kind to shoulder the blame himself. No, he’d want to share the glory with a friend. Even through the haze brought on by the recent death of yet another bottle of cheap bourbon, the swollen mass at the end of his arm reminded him of just how giving Pointer could be when he was in the mood to share.
Upon draining the last of the bottle, Mark made a pact with himself to sober up enough to make a plan. If history was any judge, he knew he’d be coherent again in a few hours. Meanwhile, he thought he’d engage in some serious introspection.
My God, he thought, what have I become?
Street-smart survivor that he was, it was not a question he often allowed himself. For thirty-three years, Mark had had to live off his own wits, thoroughly lost in the shadow of his perfect brother Steve. A year ago, when he was pressing charges against Steve’s progeny, it brought a smile to Mark’s face just to think of what Mr. Perfect Lawyer/Businessman/Class President would have been thinking as he watched the fruit of his loins treated with exactly the same respect that Mark had become accustomed to.
The look on the runt’s face as he was escorted from the courtroom to the jail had said it all. Why me? Nathan’s eyes had pleaded. Because I said so, Mark’s smile had replied. The look on the judge’s face had been a different matter entirely. The look of pure contempt had made Mark feel oddly recharged, contented. Brother Steve had been a star among the sanctimonious assholes who called the courthouse their office. And there they all stood, powerless, while Mark the Survivor sent Perfect Steve’s kid to the hoosegow. Revenge felt sweet and thorough.
It had all seemed so simple then. Who could have guessed how complicated it would all become?
None of it was his fault, of course. If he’d gotten the same respect from dear old Dad that Steve had, then Mark would never have had to seek quick cash. When his old man told him that his inheritance was contingent upon finishing college, Mark never thought for a moment that he was serious. As much of a cantankerous old fart as he was, Mark never dreamed that he would disinherit his own blood for something as trivial as a piece of paper from some snotty ivy-covered building. But he’d been serious, indeed. Serious as a heart attack.
When the old man died, his will became cast in iron, unchangeable. Steve had everything. Mark had nothing. Even Nathan got a big chunk, but not Mark. Nope, he was just a doormat, and who ever heard of leaving money to a doormat?
But then, Steve had always been the talented one. No one could suck up to the old man quite like old Steve-o. Butt-buddies to the end.
Yes sir, Dad sir, I’d be happy to shit all over Mark, sir.
What, sir? Mark got a “C,” sir? Why, that’s terrible, sir. Have you seen my straight A’s, sir?
So Steve and his seed got all the money and Mark got fucked. What else was new?
Once, when times got tough, Mark actually tried a little sucking up to the master himself, but all he got from his dear rich brother was a lecture on how he should get some “focus” in his life. Shithead.
Instead of sharing, Steve invested everything in real estate and in his practice. Then, two months after the real estate market collapsed, Steve-o became Jell-O at a railroad crossing.
When you’re a survivor, you become adept at finding the opportunity hidden in the disguise of adversity. Now that there was a new orphan in the world, Mark had naturally figured that there would be money to support him. Dear old Dad’s money at that. The irony was delicious.
Except there was no money. Steve-o’s fortune had evaporated when real estate collapsed, and Nathan’s funds were tied up in a trust managed by some hotshot lawyer in New York. Even Nathan couldn’t touch the money until he was eighteen. The kid whined constantly, grew like a weed, and ate nonstop. That all cost money. Lots of money. Old Steve-o would have done well to concentrate more on the present than the future. An insurance policy would have been nice. Sure, there was that one policy for a quarter-mil, but that went pretty fast. That was when Mark was in his pimping era. Nasty little business, managing whores. Bad crowd, too. For the life of him, he had no idea where all the money went.
The real cash, he found, was in the import business. Through some friends, he came to meet people who knew people. If he could cough up $500,000 and make a trip to Colombia, he could be set for life. That five hundred thousand could become five million, and with $5,000,000 in the bank, Mark could be anything he wanted to be. Poor alcoholics were bums; rich alcoholics were eccentric. All he wanted was respect.
That’s where Pointer and Mr. Slater entered the picture. Mark had heard about their “bank” through street sources. It took all the salesmanship he had to leverage the cash—a thirty-day loan at 20 percent interest. But what was a hundred grand when you were looking down the pipeline at five million?
On May 27th, his hired pilot took off in a hired airplane to make the buy that would make Mark a rich man. When the son of a bitch failed to return, Mark’s troubles began in earnest. Some speculated that the pilot was killed in a sudden storm over the Gulf, but Mark knew better. He knew that somewhere someone was spending his five million dollars, having never had to invest a penny of his own money.
Thirty days to the hour after he had borrowed the money, Pointer showed up at his door demanding payment. In retrospect, Mark knew that he should have told the truth in the beginning, but it just was not his nature. He stalled for time. There were some problems getting the stuff cut, he explained, smooth as silk, and Pointer gave him an extra day. Even Mark thought it sounded like the truth.
But the clock kept spinning. His plan was to withdraw the last of his insurance money—twenty thousand dollars—and offer it up the next day as a down payment.
By the thirty-first day, though, Pointer had discovered the lie, and when Mark offered the twenty grand, Pointer laughed like it was the funniest joke he had ever heard. No, it wouldn’t do, he said. Suddenly the Hit Man had lost all interest in why Mark couldn’t repay his debt, replaced instead with a well-developed plan to introduce Mark to whole new worlds of pain. Kidneys seemed to be an especially favored target, though Pointer was equally talented with gut punches. And when he drove that bony knee of his into your balls, well, that was a really special
