napkin.”
“Dude, that was your note? I thought the napkin came like that. You know how you get napkins in bars with funny things written on them?”
“You didn’t read it?”
“No, dude, I put my pastries on that napkin. That’s what napkins are for… drinks and pastries.”
“At least I’m back in the office,” Vinnie said. “A man’s office is his castle, right?” He sat in the folding chair and opened his top drawer. “Where’s my gun?”
“Sold it,” Connie said.
Vinnie closed the drawer and put his hands on his desk. “Where’s my phone?”
“Sold that, too,” Connie said.
“How am I supposed to work without a phone?”
“You don’t work anyway,” Lula said. “And now you can’t call your bookie, who, by the way, probably isn’t talking to you on account of you got no credit.”
“Yeah, but you paid everything off, right? How much did it come to?”
“A million three,” Connie said.
Vinnie froze, mouth open. “You paid a million three? Where the hell did you get that kind of money?”
“We sold your phone,” I said.
“Yeah, and your bike,” Lula said.
“That’s not nearly adding up to a million three. Where’d you get the rest of the money?”
“I’d rather not say,” I told him.
“Stephanie’s right,” Connie said. “You don’t want to know.”
“I came in to unplug,” Mooner said. “The Alliance wants me to go to the airport to pick up some Hobbits flying in for the big event.”
“Okay, so I don’t have a phone,” Vinnie said. “It’s still good to be here. I tell you, I thought I was going to die. They were serious. I don’t know what the deal is with Bobby Sunflower, but he was gonzo. And then when the house got bombed, everyone was twice as nuts. I was happy when you rescued me from the rattrap apartment, but I figured my time was short. I never thought you’d get me off. I knew Sunflower would track me down and blow my brains out. I figured he’d find me in Antarctica if he had to.”
“He needed money,” I said.
Vinnie opened his middle drawer and rifled through it. “The petty cash is missing.”
“And?” Connie said.
“Well spent,” Vinnie said. “It’s not like I’m not grateful.”
“Why did Sunflower need money?” I asked Vinnie.
“Bad investments, I guess.”
“Like what?”
Vinnie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even care. I just want to relax and enjoy not having a contract on me. I want to sit here in my office and watch television for a half hour.” Vinnie looked around. “Where’s my television? Oh crap, don’t tell me you sold my television.”
“I got two hundred dollars for it,” Lula said.
“It was high def!” Vinnie said. “It was a plasma.”
“Well, if you want, I can call Bobby Sunflower and tell him I want two hundred dollars back so you can repo your high def, plasma TV,” Lula said.
“Nope, that’s okay,” Vinnie said. “I’m going to sit here and close my eyes and pretend I have a television. I’m calm. I’m happy to be alive. I’m happy to have gotten out of Joyce’s house without getting my Johnson cut off.” Vinnie opened his eyes and looked over at us. “She’s an animal.”
“Too much information,” Lula said.
Connie went to her desk to answer the phone. “Vinnie,” she called. “It’s Roger Drager, president of Wellington. He’d like to talk to you.”
“What’s Wellington?” Lula asked Vinnie.
“It’s the venture capital company that owns the agency.”
“Oh yeah,” Lula said. “Now I remember.”
Vinnie went to Connie’s desk to take the call.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yessir. Yessir. Yessir.” And he hung up.
“That was a lot of yessirs,” Lula said.
“He wants me to come to his office,” Vinnie said. “Now.”
“Be good if you put some clothes on,” Lula said. “He might not like little Vinnie hangin’ out your shorts.”
“I’ll get them,” Mooner said. “They’re in the Love Bus.”
“What does he want to talk to you about?” Connie asked.
“I don’t know,” Vinnie said.
“Maybe it’s the phantom bonds,” Connie said.
Vinnie’s eyebrows lifted. “You know about that?”
“We scoured the office, looking for money, and I found the file.”
“It started out small. I swear on my mother’s grave I meant to pay Wellington back.”
“Your mother isn’t dead,” I said to Vinnie.
“She will be someday,” Vinnie said. “Anyway, it got out of hand. In the beginning, I just wanted a short fix to pay Sunflower back on some bad bets, but Sunflower came in and wouldn’t let go. Before I knew it, his bookkeeper was helping me keep two sets of books.”
“Is this the dead bookkeeper?”
“Yeah,” Vinnie said. “Sudden death with tire tracks on his back.”
I thought about Victor Kulik and Walter Dunne, executed behind the diner. Life expectancy with Wellington wasn’t good.
Mooner came back with Vinnie’s clothes. “I fixed them for you, dude,” Mooner said. “They’re, like, awesome.”
Vinnie stepped into his slacks and looked down at himself. The slacks had been shortened to just below his knees, and his shirt had been turned into a tunic with a rope belt. It went well with his black dress shoes and black socks. Mooner had printed Doderick Bracegirdle with black magic marker on the shirt pocket. Vinnie looked like a wino Hobbit coming off a three-day binge. His gelled hair was stuck every which way, his clothes were wrinkled and smudged with grass stains, his beard belonged to Grizzly Hobbit.
“I’d kill him,” Vinnie said, glaring at Mooner, “but you sold my gun.”
“Probably, this Drager guy wants to have you arrested for embezzling,” I said to Vinnie. “He’s not going to care that you’re a homeless Hobbit.”
“I haven’t got a driver’s license,” Vinnie said. “I haven’t got a car.”
I hitched my bag onto my shoulder. “I’ll take you. Where are we going?”
“He’s downtown in the Meagan Building.”
THE MEAGAN BUILDING was a black glass and steel high-rise built several years before the commercial real estate market crashed. The Wellington Company was on the fifth floor. We stepped out of the elevator into a carpeted hall. Pale gray carpet, cream walls with cherry chair rails and cherrywood doors. Classy. Wellington occupied the entire floor. It was getting to be late in the day and the Wellington front desk was unmanned. Roger Drager was waiting for us in the small reception area.
Drager was in his forties, nicely dressed, had severely receding brown hair, was around 5’10”, and his body was going soft. His hand was clammy when we shook. He led us through a room with cubicles and banks of file cabinets. There were private offices with windows on the perimeter of the room. Doors were open, and most offices were empty. Desks and chairs. Same with the cubicles. Just a few guys slouched back playing computer solitaire. Not much work going on. No phones ringing.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Drager.
“Flex hours,” he said. “Most everyone prefers to come in early and leave early.”
We followed him down a long hall to his corner office. Large ornate desk and credenza on one side of the office. Seating area with a small couch and two chairs and a coffee table on the other. He directed us to the seating area. So far, he hadn’t seemed to notice Vinnie was a Hobbit.
