The Fugitives (7 page)

“Are you kidding?” He smiled and shot a quick look around the room, pointedly taking in the other diners. Kat wasn’t sure if he was complimenting her or insulting them. “Come on, I have a table waiting.”

He led her to a section of the restaurant where no one else was seated. A waiter rushed to beat them to the table. Argenziano collapsed into his chair as if throwing himself into a La-Z-Boy, pulling his napkin from where it was stuffed into his water goblet in the same motion.

“Help the lady into her seat, Ignatz,” he told the waiter, chopping the air in her direction with the edge of his hand.

“It’s Sean, sir.”

“Whatever.”

The nonrhotic pronunciation flared into the rejoinder, as did a certain macho shrugged impatience that was familiar to Kat from about a million movies and TV shows. Sean helped her into her chair.

“Now,” Argenziano said, the attentive mentor again, “please order whatever you’d like. I’d recommend the single-malt scotch marinated tips of beef with the asparagus in Armagnac reduction and the gorgonzola polenta. Surprisingly light. Excellent.”

Kat glanced at the menu. “I’ll have a salad niçoise,” she said.

“Excellent,” repeated Argenziano. “Some wine with that?”

“Do you have anything Sicilian?”

Argenziano smiled tightly. “Very nice Trebbiano.”

“I’ll have a glass of that, then, please.”

Sean poked the components of her order into a handheld electronic device and then turned formally toward Argenziano.

“Bring me a steak, rare, and a glass of mineral water.”

Sean entered the order and then hustled away. Argenziano leaned forward as if sharing a secret. “I only eat half. Doctor’s orders.” Kat nodded, and then the two of them sat for a moment in silence.

“So,” said Kat. “You’d said that you could tell me something about Jackie Saltino.”

“So I did. What would you like to know about him?”

Sean returned with the mineral water and a bottle of wine, which he extended for Kat’s inspection. She assented to his turning her wineglass right side up and pouring a thimbleful into it. She found herself nodding appreciatively before she’d even gotten the glass to her lips, and thought about how she felt sometimes as if these rituals were embarrassing for everybody.

“Oh,” she answered, when Sean had gone to get bread, “everything.” They shared a small prescribed laugh.

“What can I say? He worked for us, he left our employ voluntarily, I haven’t seen him since.”

“He worked for the casino?”

“Not exactly. He shared the same employer I have.”

“Which is?”

“South Richmond Consultants. Ah.” Kat had removed a notebook and pen from her purse.

“You consult with casinos.”

“We develop business solutions uniquely suited to the gaming and hospitality industries. We also broker arrangements between resort owners and certain trades: construction, waste management, vendors of goods and services, and so forth. We bring people together.”

The bread arrived and Argenziano literally drummed his fingers while the boy set out two small dishes and poured olive oil from a decanter into the center of each.

“What sort of ‘business solutions’ have you come up with for Manitou Sands?”

“That would be proprietary information, I’m afraid.”

“And when you broker these arrangements, I take it that you earn a commission?”

“Yes, that’s the standard practice. A commission based on the value of the contract.”

“From both ends?”

“No. Generally payment is on the resort’s end. It’s very similar to real estate. The buyer pays the commission.”

“What if the resort decides, say, that it wants to hire someone on its own? Buy locally produced food, say.”

Argenziano, whose hand had made several false moves toward the bread, grabbed a piece, dipped it in the pooled olive oil on the dish before him, and took a bite. He nodded at Kat while chewing. He swallowed and took a sip of mineral water.

“Resort management is free to make any business decision that it feels is in its best interests.” This came out sounding like “innarests.” “We expect them, of course, to fully honor existing obligations. But we can work with all sorts of different contractors and vendors. They’re usually pretty quick to see the advantages of working with us. It means more business for them, sometimes considerably more. Of course, in such cases we take a commission on that end as well. It’s very similar to going to an out-of-network health care provider. You pay for the privilege.”

Kat said, “You told me that you were a ‘liaison.’ What exactly do you liaise?”

“Well, I’m the face South Richmond presents to the Northwest Michigan Band of Chippewa Indians, and vice versa.” Here he paused to smile, demonstrating the face in action. “Mostly I keep lines of communication open. In the very rare instance when one party has a complaint, I convey it to the other. I mediate in those rare instances. This is very rare, though. I must stress the rarity. Most misunderstandings can be cleared up without my ever having to pick up the phone and call back east. That’s one advantage to my being based on-site. I am the face they deal with. It’s a relationship. And for the most part, the job is the very pleasurable matter of overseeing things going very smoothly. It’s very similar to the work, speaking of journalism”—he gestured at her notebook—“of a managing editor. I coordinate the contributions many different individuals bring to a very complex series of operations.”

“And what did Jackie Saltino do?”

“Jackie reported to me. He was our transfer pricing manager.”

“What’s ‘transfer pricing’?”

“It’s pretty complicated to explain. But it has to do with maximizing profit.”

“And this is what Jackie Saltino did.”

“Yeah, until he left us.”

Kat had memorized the details, but it was the authority of the notebook to which she deferred. It was easier, sometimes, kept unpleasant confrontations to a minimum, to rattle off known facts transcribed in her own hand as if they were questionable pieces of information she herself couldn’t quite accept. She flipped a few pages back. “I have Jackie Saltino dropping out of high school in the tenth grade. Two years at Spofford Juvenile Center for auto theft and aggravated assault, remanded to Elmira Correctional Facility when he turned eighteen after pleading guilty to a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of a fellow detainee at Spofford. Paroled at twenty-one, worked for Archer Courier as a foot messenger for eight months, until he was rearrested on charges of having beaten a Henry I. Baumann, the recipient of a package who he, Jackie, thought had withheld a tip. This time he went to Auburn.” She looked up. “It kind of just goes on.”

“And you disagree with the idea of giving a person who’s paid for their mistakes a chance to wipe the slate?”

“No. I’m all for it. I was just saying that, looking at this history, it doesn’t really suggest the preparation or temperament necessary for a complicated management job.”

Argenziano gave her that tight smile again and sipped his mineral water. “Jackie worked hard to get where he was.”

“But then he left.”

“People do leave us.”

“Mr. Argenziano,” Kat said, “there’s a reason why you agreed to talk to me about Mr. Saltino, but I’m not sure what it is.”

“You called and said you were interested in him.”

“I called Manitou Sands and they put me in touch with Gary Houkema.”

“Gary. Director of public relations. Terrific guy.”

“But when I reached Gary Houkema he told me that you wanted to talk to me.”

“Jackie was my employee. He was directly under me.”

“I mean like he wouldn’t say a word to me, this Gary Houkema. And I thought, that’s funny. Usually it works the other way around. You call a person directly involved in a story and they refer you to PR.”

Sean returned with the salad and steak. He set the food before them quickly and moved off. Kat turned around in her seat to glance behind her. The restaurant had begun to fill, she could see a few people clustered near the entrance waiting for tables, but their section remained empty except for them.

“We do a lot of things differently around here,” said Argenziano.

Kat stared at her notebook. She picked up her fork and pierced a string bean. She looked at Argenziano, who had begun diligently sawing at his steak. He cut it in half, then started cutting one of the halves into bite-sized pieces. She noticed that the steak had been branded with an H.

“Have you ever heard from Saltino?”

“No, not a word. It’s not uncommon.” He shrugged, still cutting.

“Never been asked to provide a reference, or verify employment?”

“Nope. But again, people float in and out of this business.”

“Even transfer pricing managers.”

“Even managers.”

“Do you know where Saltino is?” she asked.

“No. Do you?”

“What if you were to hear some news about him?”

Argenziano put one of the bite-sized pieces of meat in his mouth. He chewed. He sipped water. “I’d be interested in catching up with him,” he said, finally.

Kat looked at the notebook, then closed it. She pushed her hair out of her face and bit down on her thumbnail.

“I’m not that sure that I need to know where he is,” said Kat. “Journalistically, I mean. Why am I interested in this guy, exactly?”

“Why, indeed.”

“Middle manager quits his job, falls out of touch with his old associates. This is America, right? Happens every day.”

“People just pick up and move.”

“Pull up stakes and head for greener pastures.”

“Make a fresh start.”

“Burn bridges.”

“Exactly,” said Argenziano. “It’s not news.”

“Except when it is,” said Kat. “The question is, is it a story?”

“That’s the question exactly.”

“If it were a story there’d be a reason for me to try to find out where he is.”

“So you’re wondering how you can determine if this is the case.”

“It’s funny. That’s really the dividing line in reporting. Interesting things happen all the time that never come anywhere near the papers or the six o’clock report. You know? Sometimes it’s an accident of context. Something kind of big happens the same day something really big happens. But more often it’s a question of whether it’s a story. What we’ve been talking about, I don’t know if it’s a story.”

“But you called me. Here we are.” Argenziano seemed amused. He leaned back in his chair and laid his interlaced fingers over his belly, a fat man’s gesture that didn’t quite work for him. The uncut half of his steak remained on the plate. A garland of parsley lay sodden in a puddle of burgundy-colored blood streaked with translucent fat. He had a look on his face that said Your Move.

“See, I have this unconfirmed thing,” said Kat. “I have a source who worked here for a while who told me that Jackie Saltino stopped showing up for work at around the same time that four hundred fifty thousand dollars went missing. This was right after March Madness last year.”

“That’s a busy weekend,” observed Argenziano.

“Kind of a big coincidence, I thought.”

“What would make you think that Jackie Saltino had anything to do with something like that, if it even happened?”

“Did it not happen?”

“Let me ask you. When you contacted them, as I’m sure you did, what did the authorities say? Did Manitou Sands report any money having been stolen? Is there an open investigation?”

Kat gazed at him without answering.

“But you didn’t just dismiss it from your mind, did you? You didn’t just chalk it up to malicious speculation by some disgruntled ex-employee?”

“Seems like a disgruntled ex-employee could come up with a nastier story than that, I bet.”

“I bet. But this would be your sort of typical rumor people that work near the money like to spread. The countinghouse view, is what I call it. It’s a strange thing about money, Kat. Very strange thing. People who don’t have any, they love to tell stories about it: about the ways it gets wasted, about the ways it gets lost, about the ways the people who
do
have it just throw it around. No skin off their nose, I guess. They dream about having so much they can go around giving away Cadillacs like Elvis. Of course, everybody’s
near
the money. Work at a McDonald’s on a busy stretch of the interstate and you’re right on top of ten, fifteen million a year. But not everybody sees it laying around in big piles like we do here, though. People who do, they think, hey—easy come, easy go, casino makes money like
that
!” He snapped his fingers, then began to count off on them: “They don’t think about overhead. They don’t think about the cost of insurance and security. Computer systems, custom-designed systems. Maintenance and repairs. They don’t think about the salaries for the entertainment. The chef. Place like this has an executive chef. The golf pro, the tennis pro. They don’t think about the comps. They don’t think about the cost of training workers in the pit or in the cage—that’s highly skilled work with very high turnover.”

“This is you saying the story’s made up.”

“This is me saying that it’s a daydream they stuck a name on, apparently. You sit in that cage all day long surrounded by fucking stacks of cash, pardon my french. Why not? It’s like plucking one grape off the bunch at the greengrocer, right?”

“So it didn’t happen.”

“That would be a hell of a lot of money not to report stolen, wouldn’t you agree, Kat?”

“I thought it was possible that a company transacting a lot of its business in cash might not want to call attention to its accounting practices.”

“See, now
you
have that countinghouse view. Stacks of money. Bags of money. Must be something wrong with it.” He laughed warmly and with easy contempt. “It’s a very interesting thought, Kat. But our financials are on file with about eight zillion government and tribal authorities, though. We’re audited by a Big Four firm. Manitou Sands and South Richmond both.”

Kat gave a little back-to-the-drawing-board shrug. “Guess that answers my question.” She popped a piece of tuna into her mouth and glanced at her watch. He hadn’t come close to disproving her conjecture, but Argenziano was weirdly right about the money. She didn’t know why money that couldn’t be traced or accounted for seemed illicit; why we felt upright and legitimate only when our money could be used to track us. It was as if we found ourselves whole in the record of our spending; could be held to account for our lives only by being held to account for our transactions.