The Last Call

“Hey,” I said. Not a whisper. “I do not launder money.”

“What do you do then?”

“I spread it around. And it comes back. But the people who come to me are good people-meaning not criminals.”

“I’m no criminal,” she said. Did I detect a little poutiness in her voice?

“No. You’re not a criminal. You’re just a thief.”

Julie talked in her sleep, or rather she talked in her nightmares. Those squirreled-away secrets normally kept hidden behind her soft green eyes and even softer lips came out and showed shadows and corners of themselves.

Across her delicate face there was a soft splash of blue light from my fish tank. In there I keep Tiger Oscars, Jack Dempseys, and an African Knife, all cichlids imported from Lake Victoria, a dark ocean and an even darker continent away. Huge fish shadows swam over her face, possibly evoking these dreams, these torments. I could have awakened her, sure. But then again I was under some kind of spell. Really, I could no more have brought myself to do it than I could have granted her immortality.

“Doan,” she murmured, which I translated as “don't.”

“Doan.” Again.

“No, Ray.”

Who's Ray?

“Please. Not there. Doan shoot me there…”

Shoot? Either a gun or a needle. God, I thought, please let it be only a needle.

“Raa-aaa-AAAY!”

She cried out and a shiver knifed through my stomach.

I reached for her but my hand didn’t even make half the distance. She awoke, eyes stark and wide in the blue light and she was in motion and hitting me and screaming.

“NO! I SAID NOOO!”

A rake of nails across my ribs like the tracks a red hot poker might make. A cuff to the chin and for just an instant there were little splashes of light, and my adrenalin kicked in and I was strong and grabbed her and held her.

“Julie! It's me! It's Bill!”

Eyes frozen, locked on mine in the submarine glow. First horror. Dawning recognition. Wonder.

“It's okay,” I cooed to her. “I've got you.” I put my arms fully around her and held her to me, tight. “It was a dream.”

“Oh… uh… Bill. God. Bill. I'm… so… so sorry!” Her voice broke.

She sobbed like that for five minutes until her sobs became whimpers and even the whimpers soon drew away into silence as I held her. We found ourselves looking into each other's eyes and she kissed me and I kissed her back and we were making love yet again, and I wasn’t thirty-nine but eighteen, or maybe sixteen, and our bodies and our thoughts and what we could see and touch and feel became one thing.

And it wasn’t even Tuesday yet.

CHAPTER THREE

It was Tuesday. I usually don’t know what day it is. I met Julie on Monday and either that was ten years ago or yesterday.

I was up by six a.m. and there she sat on my barstool in the breakfast nook, wearing my Notre Dame t-shirt and stirring coffee. An angel if there ever was one. I don’t ever recall using the breakfast nook for breakfast. What guy without a woman would?

“Hey,” I said, and she looked up. A smile spread across her face and I noticed the little dimple in her chin for the first time when she smiled big. Too angelic for even Notre Dame.

“Mornin’,” Julie said. It was a good sound for that room.

“Coffee, huh?”

“Yeah. Bill. I have to tell you something.”

“Here it comes, “ I said.

“Told ya to run.”

“And how fast. So what is it?”

“Bill. I like you a lot. I can't stay though. There's Jake and Freddie, two of Archie’s men. They wield guns the way lawyers wield briefs. If they find me I might not live through it, and if you're with me you definitely won't. And you're entirely too cute to fit for cement shoes.”

I took down my David Letterman cup and poured the last of the coffee. She was probably already on her second or third cup.

“Jake and Freddie, huh?”

“Yeah.”

She sighed, sipped at her coffee and looked off into space. I wished that I knew what she was looking at.

“I don't want to go, even though I know I have to,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. Sometimes it’s best if a fellow just lets a woman say what it is she wants to say. All you have to do is let her know you’ve heard her.

“Good. Just so you know.” She got up, came over to me where I leaned back against the stove. She put her arms around me and rested her head on my chest. I could smell her hair. It was fine hair, like baby hair. I’d been right that first morning. Was that yesterday? The scent of her stirred around in my head, making my knees weak.

Julie looked into my eyes. It was almost as if they'd changed color. They’d become more smoky, and all leprechaun green.

“Hey,” I said. “What you may not know is that I've got friends in low places.”

“That’s sort of hard to believe,” she said.

“Ha! Believe me.”

“Yeah?” she said. Her face was getting puffy, like maybe she’d start crying any second.

“Look,” I said. “I’m gonna help you. Wherever you have to go or whatever you feel you gotta do, I’m gonna help you.”

A tear paused, preparatory to rolling down her cheek.

“Sometimes I think you're not real,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve heard that before.”

“But you are. You really are. Okay, Bill. You can help. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

She wiped the tear away.

Fish shadows swam in my thoughts.

“We’ll think of something,” I said.

You can’t learn to get around in your own line of work without learning a little something about the history of your own particular area of specialization. One of my specialties was moving money around-legitimately. My clientele are special and they have special needs.

I’d started off as an investment counselor back in 1988 and quickly found that it’s not so easy to get ahead unless you have clients. I looked around at all the other fellows who graduated with me and found that few of them were earning more than enough than it would take to just begin to whet my appetite, and so I made a conscious decision to strike out in my own direction.

I originally started my firm out of an efficiency apartment three blocks off the drag in Austin. Why Austin? For