The Good Kind of Bad (41 page)

‘No.’

‘No, huh? Nothing. Nada. So, if you’d not told Nina, and she’d not told Mickey, I’d be in California by now.’ He leant back against the fridge, folding his arms. After a minute of silence, he must’ve thought better of his words and moved over to the table, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . It’s just we don’t have a whole bunch of time to save our asses. We need to get this done. Why don’t we go to the bank for the money together?’

‘Is that all you can think about? The money?’

‘In a word: yeah.’

When the phone began to ring in his pocket, I took an educated guess at who it was.

‘Don’t answer it,’ I warned.

Pulling the phone out, he turned the screen to face me. Sure enough, MICKEY was emblazoned across the screen.

‘Let me reason with him, see if I can work something out.’ With that, Evan carried his phone out of the kitchen and down the hall.

After five minutes of trying to listen from the other side of the lounge door, I pushed it open to find Evan by the fireplace, still with the phone to his ear. His voice was low and his expression grave, before he hung up the phone and put a hand to his bruised jaw.

‘He wants the cash tonight. The price is one million now.’

I felt like I was going to pass out. ‘One million? No, Evan. He can’t do that.’

‘He can do what he likes! If we can find half a mil on the bounce he knows we can stretch to seven digits. If we pay that, then . . . you get the idea. It might be another million by the end of the day. He’ll keep pushing until he bleeds us dry. Shit!’ he yelled, kicking over a dining chair.

‘Then we don’t pay,’ I murmured.

‘And spend the rest of our lives in prison, eating shit from a tray and getting raped in the shower? I’d rather Mickey shoot us, thanks.’

‘But one million?’ I asked again.

‘Yes. One million dollars. Doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it isn’t going to change. Can you see now, how desperate I am? We have to get to the bank, so I don’t get killed. That all right with you?’

As I arched my neck toward the car window, I watched a clear sky stretch to the city horizon, a glimpse of azure here and there between the buildings.

I looked at Evan, sitting comfortably behind the wheel of his Lincoln, his eyes hidden by a pair of black-framed aviators.

‘Which bank did you say it was? Eagle First on South Derber?’ He shot me a mega-watt smile, almost like he was trying too hard, before rolling his shoulders under his blazer and smoothing down his thin tie, like he was James Bond or something. ‘That’s a cute blue shirt-dress. Better than fluffy pink pyjamas. How about I take you to dinner tonight, to say thanks for saving my ass? I’ll get my zoot suit on and book a table at The Doralia. No expense spared for my baby.’ He patted me on the knee, like a dog. ‘What would I do without you?’

I flinched at his touch before Evan then swung the wheel sharp to the right. Outside the bank’s concrete façade, right in the heart of the city, Evan’s Lincoln stuck half into the road while the horns swerved his rear lights.

‘I don’t think you can park here.’

‘What’re they going to do, give me a ticket?’

‘I don’t feel good, could we please go back?’ The last place I wanted to be was Eagle First, but Evan had been more than insistent we came, threateningly insistent as we’d journeyed down to his car in the garage, and now his fleeting smile was fast becoming a grimace.

‘I’ve taken the trouble to drive us down here. We may as well go in.’

I sat perfectly still, with a hand to my forehead.

‘Get out of the car, honey.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Well, we can’t go home without the cash, not if we want to keep breathing.’

Clinging to Evan’s shoulder, if only to remain upright, decidedly lacking any grace we stumbled up the stone steps and through the entrance of Eagle First, into a vast hall of offices, desks and cashiers. Meeting head on with a wave of sickly peach, it was like the air was dripping with the stuff, turning my stomach inside out.

With Evan gripping my waist tight enough to prevent escape, I soon tripped over my feet and stuttered to a halt. An unimpressed Evan pulled me over to the side wall, sitting me on the edge of a concrete pillar and crouching down beside me.

‘What are you doing to me? The whole bank is watching. Who’d give you any money acting like
this
?’

It felt like he was shrinking, or I was growing, or the whole world was in some type of flux. ‘I told you. I need to go home.’

‘Look, I’m kinda having a bad day,’ he muttered, with a sharp tug on my arm. ‘So, please, let’s just get this done so we can go back to pretending we’re not about to assume room temperature.’

After he escorted me over to the cashier queue, it wasn’t long before my grasp slipped and knees buckled, but Evan’s finely tuned reflexes caught me and returned me upright. He threw a smile at the disapproving faces, his forearm supporting my back like I was his puppet, his ventriloquist’s dummy.

‘She’s tired is all. I told her she spends too much time at that hospital doing brain surgery, but would she listen to me?’

Evan faked a laugh while my eyes darted the hall, looking for an exit, though before I could hatch an escape plan I was yanked forward, a desk now free at the end of the hall.

When we arrived at cashier eleven he stared first at Evan, beaten and bruised, before moving to me, struggling to keep open my eyes.

‘Welcome to Eagle First, how can I be of assistance?’

Evan pushed his sunglasses up into his hair. ‘Yeah, she’d like to withdraw a million dollars.’

‘Excuse me?’ the clerk replied.

‘A million dollars, from her account,’ Evan ordered, with his elbow on the counter.

The clerk examined at me from over his glasses, clearly concerned. ‘Sir, is she all right?’

‘I need . . .’

‘You need what, ma’am? It sounds like she needs something, sir.’

‘Yeah, the money withdrawing, she needs the money withdrawing. That’s what she’s trying to say.’ He stared at the clerk, a slight man who sported a Groucho Marx moustache. Then Evan scribbled on the back of a payment slip and pushed it over the desk. ‘The account is in this name. Her name.’

The clerk took the paper. ‘It’s in your name, ma’am? This is your account?’ He spoke slower now, like I was a child.

‘Of course it’s hers. Get typing on that little computer of yours and there won’t be a problem, pal.’

My pulse began to race. I could hear it, like a river rushing though my ear canal. Everything about Evan, and the bank, felt wrong. I had to get out of there. I had to leave. ‘Evan, there’s something you have to know about this account, this money.’

‘Will you shut up about the money?’ he warned through gritted teeth, while smiling at the clerk.

While typing in the details, Groucho’s shaking head voiced his disapproval, though upon pushing the enter key, his eyebrows rose sharply. Evan hadn’t listened. I’d tried to tell him the money was tainted but he’d been too obsessed with it ‒ not three hundred grand, but a million. He’d asked the clerk for a million, the full price of Mickey’s silence. How did he know there was one million in there to withdraw? I knew Mickey had upped the price, but what happened to three hundred?

‘The account hasn’t been accessed in a while?’ Groucho asked, interrupting my thoughts.

‘Yeah, sure. She’s been saving up her birthday cash. What do you think she should spend it on?’ Evan joked.

‘I don’t think she’ll be spending it on anything, not without some ID and the cosignatory.’

Evan’s grasp on my waist tightened. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Sir, the cosignatory needs to attend in person due to the inactivity on the account, and for the quantity of cash you’re talking about. Nothing can be withdrawn until then.’

Evan looked like he was turning purple. ‘A cosignatory? Shit, who?’

‘A Mr Bill Heller? Though maybe you should see to her health before you see to her finances,’ Groucho suggested, a hand jabbing at something under his desk.

‘No, maybe I shouldn’t. It’s real simple, are you paying attention? It goes, money from her account into my bag right here. It’s her cash and she’s here to collect it, so what’s the goddamn problem?’

‘I’ll call the police.’

‘Buddy, I
am
the police.’ Evan lifted his jacket to display his shield and holstered gun.

Groucho’s moustache twitched. ‘Maybe I should phone your superior then, let him know what you’re doing.’

‘And maybe I should speak to your supervisor before you go and get your super-head busted open.’

It was then two burly security guards appeared behind us, each equipped with a gun of their own. Evan glanced over his shoulder before dropping his head with a sarcastic smirk. I closed my eyes and hoped I was dreaming.

‘Fine, we’ll go, but I’ll be back for the cash.’

As he hit the counter with the butt of his fist, the clerk jumped in his little swivel chair. Reluctantly, I was dragged past the guards (now murmuring into their radios), out of the bank and back on to South Derber.

‘Why didn’t you tell me there was a cosignatory?’ Evan barked while pushing me through the passenger door of the Lincoln and leaning in through the window.

‘This money, it’s . . .’

‘He’s going to kill me. Mickey Delacro will take my head off. This was supposed to be easy. I was supposed to have that money by now. And do you mind telling me who Bill Heller is?’

‘I don’t know.’ I lied.

‘How can you not know? It’s your goddamn account!’

‘Like I’ve been trying to tell you, it’s complicated.’ Even with Mickey’s supposed threats, I felt glad Evan hadn’t reached the money. And as for Mr Heller? He was some obscure folk singer from the Seventies, my father’s favourite. Of course my dad had used an alias, knowing the police might one day come looking for him and his Ponzi scheme cash. Sneaky guy.

Back at the apartment, Evan had first given me more juice, told me I’d feel better if I drank, but I’d left it on the kitchen side and retreated to the bedroom after he began venting his anger on plates, glasses, vases ‒ I guessed anything within reach.

Bang, crash, shatter.

Still listening to the ruckus, I dragged the sheets over my head to hibernate in my cocoon.

How long until that was me? My arm? My leg? My head? He’d never raised his hand to me, but he didn’t have to. I was beginning to see it. Not so long ago, Evan had been Victor, I’d been sure of it, but somewhere along the line I’d been distracted by a smokescreen. Now, I was beginning to realise the money wasn’t for Mickey at all, that Evan’s anger wasn’t misplaced fear, it was frustration. Though the more I thought, the more I didn’t want to. The more my headache invaded, crushing my cranium.

I lay for a while, watching the black mirror of the TV screen, like it had been somebody else; like all this time it had been somebody else. And then, it stopped.

I must’ve drifted off because the noise and cursing was gone, now awakening into a deathly silence. Clambering out of bed with a less throbbing head and my vision restored, I crept down the hallway to investigate. Lounge, study, bedroom, terrace, bathroom . . . Evan was gone.

I could leave. Evan would return to find his meal ticket gone. Yes. I could do it. Five minutes to pack my stuff and change? Though there was only one problem – I was no closer to proving Evan was Victor, no closer to discovering if this
was
about the money. It seemed unlikely, especially after everything that’d happened, that Evan had made my acquaintance just take money he didn’t know I had.
Nobody
knew about the money, not even Joe. No. There had to be something else going on.

After everything he’d told me, all his talk of Mickey, The Principe, Mr F and the money, of Nina and Joe . . . Today I’d seen the real Evan ‒ a man angry and frustrated, who’d stopped biting his tongue. There had to be one scrap of evidence somewhere in the apartment, to prove Evan’s true identity for sure, to prove what I’d believed deep down since Nina first uttered his name. That Evan was Victor.

I didn’t know how long he’d been gone for, for how long I’d been asleep, but I had to try. I had to try and find it.

Checking the front door, I found it locked. Of course it was locked. My key was gone from my handbag too.
I need to know where you are at all times.
Evan had begun taking precautions.

Breathe. Think
. My key had to be somewhere. Where would he hide it? And where would he hide incriminating evidence? The apartment was still as minimal as when I’d first stumbled around Evan’s rooms, when my face had cushioned the force of Joe’s kick. Evan didn’t do mess, apart from at work. Maybe it was part of his alter ego, but in the apartment things weren’t conveniently left lying around. I was going to have to climb inside his head while figuring out my own.

If I were a burglar, where would I look? Where would Evan think I’d look? Drawers, boxes, behind the bath panel, under the . . . bed. Under the bed in my room. Seeing as things were
never
left lying around, the money had been more than easy to find. Had he
wanted
me to find the briefcase? Mr F and The Principe. Had it been a set-up? Telling me what they wanted me to hear?