Start-Up Page 2

  The next day, we got up late, and I watched Jerry shave with his uncle’s Norelco, gazing at himself in the mirror. He was a handsome guy, and like a lot of handsome guys his flaw was that he knew it and believed in the power of physical allure. Good-looking people think they’re a little more invincible than the rest of us.

  Though his first two meetings with the Chinese had occurred in the consulate, both he and his contact, a guy he only knew as “Lee,” had agreed that this was untenable. He was given a six-month tourist-visa stamp in his passport to explain those two visits, and from then on they met in parks around town. Today, they were meeting at one o’clock on the piece of Humboldt Park south of Division Street. “You should come along,” Jerry told me. “If you’re going to work for me, you might as well get a feel for it.”

  “Want me to be your heavy?”

  “You?” He found that amusing. “I do need a bookkeeper. How are you with numbers?”

  We left the house at eleven, passing Jerry’s uncle on the way out—he was asleep on the couch, an empty two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola under his arm, the TV silently playing some soap. Jerry didn’t want to use his uncle’s car—“They don’t know anything about me, and I want to keep it that way.”

  “But they know your passport,” I pointed out.

  He frowned at that. “It had an old address on it.”

  “Sure,” I said, wondering how long it would take, using Google, to track down Jerry McLaughlin’s uncle’s address. About ten minutes, I suspected. “You have bus fare?”

  Jerry handed me a ten-dollar bill. “You should have some change on you, just in case.”

  “Sure.”

  “And you damned well need a cell phone. You’re living in the Middle Ages, you know.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “These days, only psychopaths don’t have cell phones.”

  We hopped the 53A and changed to the 53, which took us all the way to West Division. From there, we walked to the park. “This is how it’s going to be,” Jerry told me, sounding like an old farm hand explaining manual labor to a city slicker out for a country weekend. “We go to the Stables and take our positions around the pond. Your only job is to watch. You’ll see me with Lee, but there will be at least one minder floating around. He’ll be Chinese—they bring them from the consulate. Maybe there’ll be two. Your job is to watch them. Anything looks suspicious, you call out to me.”

  “Suspicious?”

  “I don’t know. They reach for their guns? That would be suspicious.”

  “How long will this take?”

  He thought a moment. “Forty minutes, an hour? Maybe not so long. Lee and I will walk around—he doesn’t like sitting still—and we’ll talk. You’ll know when it’s over because he’ll hand me an envelope.”

  “The cash.”

  “Exactly.”

  I nodded. “And you’re comfortable with this?”

  “Totally. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “Because it’s best to be smart. You don’t want the job?”

  “We still haven’t discussed my salary.”

  “Tonight.” He winked. “Full medical, I promise.”

  These days, the Humboldt Park Stables house the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, but we still call it the Stables. Not far away is Wetland Pond, which because of the dry weather looked smaller than usual, ringed in mud. At about until one, I found a spot on the Stables-side of the pond, while Jerry wandered off to the other side.

  I wasn’t experienced in surveillance, and though I’d seen a lot of movies that showed you how to do it, I quickly realized that I was working at a significant disadvantage. There were no camera close-ups of suspicious people sticking hands into pockets or glancing furtively over their shoulders to tip me off. On the other hand, most everyone I saw was either Latino or white, so when the consulate guys showed up they stood out: short guys, short hair, and long coats, perhaps to hide shoulder holsters. But Jerry had gotten it wrong. There weren’t one or two; there were six.

  As I was counting them up, Jerry was joined by a seventh Chinese man, whom I took to be Lee, and they began to walk together.

  Six minders seemed like a bad sign, but on the other hand maybe there had always been six and Jerry had just never spotted them. It was possible.

  As Jerry and Lee had their conversation, I tooled around the edge of the pond, tempting the soggy ground with the toe of my sneakers until I realized the Chinese guys weren’t doing anything. They stood stock-still, hands deep in their pockets, watching birds that had fluttered down onto the water. These guys were professionals, so I tried imitating them. Stiff, hands hidden, enjoying fowl. But I wasn’t a big fan of birds. During my few years in Austin, just out of high school, I’d gotten in the habit of shooting rocks at grackles, the cockroaches of the sky. A little bread on the ground could attract a whole flock of them, and trying to injure them with rocks was a kind of sport. I considered trying the same thing now, but that would ruin these Chinese birdwatchers’ good time. There was no sense pissing them off.

  When I looked up again, Lee had his hand on Jerry’s back and was walking him eastward, in the direction of Humboldt Drive. Jerry craned his neck to get a look at me, but his expression said nothing, so I just followed.

  So did the other six. One of them was talking into a cell phone.

  I kept my distance, but never lost sight of Jerry. As they walked, Lee moved his free hand around between them as if explaining all the things they had in common. I was a little worried, but I figured that if there was something serious happening Jerry would make a break for it. But all he did was walk slowly with Lee, nodding occasionally, and the only thing that broke his cool was the black Range Rover with diplomatic plates that came from the north on Humboldt and pulled up to the curb. The driver didn’t get out, but a Chinese suit opened the rear door from inside, and Lee hurried Jerry toward it.

  I waited for something from Jerry. Anything. As he prepared to climb into the car, Lee’s hand on his elbow, he looked back, found me in the distance, and gave me a smile. It looked as if, with that smile, he was expressing a satisfaction I’d never quite seen from him before. And this from an eminently satisfied guy. I didn’t wave, just gave him a chin-high nod, and watched Lee climb in after him and close the door. The Range Rover’s black windows were impenetrable, reflecting only the sky, and when it rolled on I couldn’t hear the engine. I thought maybe it was a hybrid, but then realized that there were too many other cars, and I was too far away, to be able to hear a thing. Once it was out of sight, I looked around, but the minders had left as well. I was alone.

  I hung around Humboldt Park until three before deciding that the Chinese probably weren’t going to bring him back there. It occurred to me—and for some reason I felt pleased by this—that my presence had spooked them. So, rather than have their conversation out in the open, they had taken Jerry to some safe house to talk in private. Though Jerry might have explained that I was a friend, they weren’t the kind of people to just believe him. Or maybe Jerry hadn’t said a thing about who I was, because that would be showing his hand—it was the kind of thing Jerry would think about.

  I took the bus back down to Archer Heights and let myself in. Jerry’s uncle had found his way off the couch, and was frying eggs in the kitchen, though he still hadn’t put on a shirt. He had an enormous stomach hidden behind a mat of black hair, and he smoked as he cooked. He offered me some eggs, which I declined, then he told me that Jerry had called.

  “When?”

  “Hour ago? He says call him on his cell.”

  “Where is he?”

  A shrug.

  I went down to the basement and used the Mickey Mouse phone. It rang five times before he picked up, and there was a lag of about two seconds as I waited for Jerry to say hello. When he finally did, he sounded out of breath; only the “lo” audible.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Tom
.” Another pause. “Listen, Tom. I need you to do something.”

  He wasn’t just out of breath; there was something else going on. The pauses made it sound as if he were with someone else, getting instructions on what to say. I said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just listen, okay?” He was speeding up now. “Under the TV. The cabinet with all the DVDs. Open it up.”

  Mickey Mouse had a long, tangled cord, and I was able to walk with him over to the television. I pulled open the drawer. “Yeah?”

  “Find The IPCRESS File.”

  “The what file?”

  “IPCRESS,” he repeated, then spelled it. “1965, Michael Caine.”

  “Did we watch that one?”

  “Just find it.”

  There were about a couple of hundred DVD cases and boxes with their spines staring up at me, and they were in no particular order. “This is going to take a minute.”

  “It’s on the right side.”

  I found it pretty quickly. A dark spine. I took it out and saw Michael Caine in glasses, looking a hell of a lot younger than I knew him. Very old school. Then I opened the box and, instead of a DVD case, found a stack of cash, all in denominations of five hundred.

  “You got it?”

  “Still looking.”

  “Hurry up.”

  This was a lot more than the fifteen grand I’d figured he’d collected. A hell of a lot more. As casually as possible, I said, “Where are you, Jerry?”

  “I don’t even know, man.”

  His change of tone was unnerving. From pauses to anger to an almost soothing regretfulness. That’s when it occurred to me that he was manipulating me. Not in any evil way, but only to make sure I did as he asked. I said, “Are you in trouble?”

  A long pause. Too long. “No, man. Everything’s fine. You have the DVD?”

  “Yeah. I have it now.”

  I could hear his sigh. “Okay, look. I need you to bring it to me. Like, now.”

  “You messed up, didn’t you,” I said, because only then could I see it. It was as if I could see right through the phone line. Jerry was sitting somewhere, maybe on a bed in a motel room, maybe tied to a chair in an abandoned factory, and that guy he called Lee was standing with some Chinese toughs, very disappointed by the fact that Jerry had been fooling them all for the last few months. Quite reasonably, Lee wanted his money back.

  “Yeah,” Jerry said. “I messed up big time. But you bring that box, and everything in it, and it’ll all be fine.”

  “Of course. Where?”

  Another pause. This time I heard whispers in the background. Jerry said, “Go to the corner of State and Madison, and stand in front of Sears. A black Chevy will pull up and a guy in the passenger seat will tell you the title of the film. You give it to him, and you’re done.”

  “He says The IPCRESS File.”

  “Then you hand it to him and you’re done. Got it?”

  “In front of the Sears. But not the Sears Tower.”

  “The one on North State.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Please don’t fuck this up, Tom. My life depends on it.”

  It wasn’t until the bus that I had myself a good think. Thinking wasn’t really possible in Jerry’s uncle’s house, because no matter where I sat, I was surrounded by Jerry’s things. It was as if, by me being in his house, Jerry could see me thinking, and could see what I was thinking. Even if it wasn’t true—even if Jerry didn’t have some kind of astral vision—he certainly knew what I did immediately after hanging up: I counted the money.

  My first question was: How did Jerry end up collecting $164,500? Had he sold his uncle’s vintage Les Paul electric? No, it was still on display in the old alkie’s bedroom. Besides that, Jerry didn’t have anything to sell. Not for this much money.

  Only when I was on the number 53, sitting in the back beside a black woman and her wide-eyed son, maybe nine, did I realize that Jerry had been feeding me a line. Yes, he’d sold the Chinese bogus information, but he’d done it more often, and had sold it for a lot more, than he had admitted to me. It was also possible that he’d been selling to other consulates as well. He had to have been working around the clock to gather that much cash. But even so, why would he lie to me about it?

  We were friends. We’d been friends going on fifteen years, having met when, in high school, I backed him up in a fight with a numbskull who would have beat him flat. Erik Farkas, a big brute with an Eastern European accent, and all I remember was getting angry seeing him picking on little Jerry, then flying forward, my fourteen-year-old fists swinging. When my memory picks up again, I’m in the principal’s office wiping blood off of my sore hands. Whatever happened in between, I’d earned a grateful friend in Jerry.

  We were close in school, drifted apart when he headed off to university and I followed my mom down to Texas after my dad’s death. By the time I’d returned from the south and was beating around for work, Jerry had given up on higher education, and we reconnected. He invited me to share an apartment with him in Wicker Park, but after six months we were both out of cash and headed to his alcoholic uncle’s house in Archer Heights.

  I think it’s safe to say we knew each other pretty well. I’ve already described him, and I think that if he had to describe me, he’d call me an easygoing guy without too much ambition and, at times, a remarkable ability to fuck up things. I think he liked me, but in the way you like your friend’s dog. Fun to play with, but if you had to clean up its shit you’d lose your patience pretty quickly.

  “What’s the movie?” asked the kid sitting next to me, gazing at the DVD box sticking out from my jacket pocket.

  “Hush,” said his mother.

  “It’s all right,” I told her, then looked at him. “It’s The IPCRESS File, starring Michael Caine.”

  He looked as if I’d switched to that clicking language, !Kung, from The Gods Must Be Crazy. I said, “It’s an old film. Really old.”

  The boy understood that, nodding and looking down the long aisle toward the front of the bus, all the knees and shoes and backpack straps hanging down, then said, “Can I have a look at it?”

  The mother said, “Stu,” which I assume was his name.

  “He can ask,” I said, then to him: “You can ask, but I’m afraid the answer’s no.”

  “Why not?”

  His mother squeezed his elbow hard enough to elicit a squeak from him as he tugged his arm away.

  “Because,” I said, “there’s no disc in it. I’m using it to carry money.”

  He grinned at that, his teeth big. “Oh, you’re just kidding me.”

  I considered opening it up, because I wanted to see that smile get bigger, but I knew that would be the last straw. His mother would probably hit me.

  I got out a couple blocks from Sears and used the five-dollar bill, all that remained from the ten Jerry had given me, to buy an iced coffee and an egg sandwich from Dunkin’ Donuts. Then, as I fought the crowds, eating and drinking, I finally thought about the money. Not how it came to be, or the fact that it was supposed to save Jerry’s life. No, I thought about the thing that everybody thinks about when holding that much money in their hands. I finally thought about me.

  Not just that, but also Jerry’s plans to become a master criminal. There was a certain beauty to his vision of the future, with its secret base, army of fanatical followers in color-coded jumpsuits, its threatening messages to the governments of the world—its pure comical villainy. I mean, in a world where both cops and criminals lack style and real epic vision, who could stop such a man? To think that a few Chinese guys with guns could wipe out his hard work, his immense plans—that was hard to accept.

  Salvaging it would take work, of course, but it was possible. You start with the money, and then you research it—plan and plan again. Jerry seemed to have a natural talent for that, but it was a learned skill like most things. And the information, as he’d pointed out, was right there on the Internet, enough to satisfy any curiosi
ty. With enough knowledge, enough application, anything is possible. But as Jerry had said, you have to want it enough to make the sacrifices. You have to want it enough to always know what is required of you. You have to be smart. You can’t be too nice.

  I like New Orleans. People say a lot of bad things about it; they talk trash about the hurricane-pummeled buildings and the crime and the unemployment. But the things they complain about I see as opportunities. The truth is that New Orleans is a grand employment center. With all these people down on their luck, you can find cheap workers in every window, and I’ve already made sketches for simple work outfits: red for security, blue for managers, yellow for support staff.

  But this is for the future. And besides, I’m not interested in building a complex on the oil-natty Gulf Coast, where federal helicopters could settle down at any moment and put an end to the dreams I’ve taken over and made my own. I like Jerry’s idea—Greenland: mountains of ice, desolation, and privacy.

  I read online that Jerry’s body was found in Lake Michigan. At least, parts of him were. One hand, a leg, and a head came up in a net full of salmon, and of course there were no suspects. I was, however, wanted for questioning, for my disappearance after a quick trip back to Archer Heights to pick up a change of clothes and Jerry’s laptop, which was the only obvious peculiarity in Jerry’s life. But if I’d stayed, I probably would have joined him in the lake. Eventually, the cops will assume that that was what happened, and I’ll be marked as missing and, later, as presumed dead.

  I’ve begun drinking in a bar over in the French Quarter frequented by guys who drive for Brink’s, shipping cash around town. I buy them drinks and tell them my name is Jerry and I’m from Austin. They’re big, boastful guys who love to talk about the dangers of their profession. They like that I’m interested. They have no idea what I’m about—not yet, at least. Neither did Jerry. The fact is, no one does.

  About the Author

  Olen Steinhauer grew up in Virginia, and has since lived in Georgia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas, California, Massachusetts, and New York. Outside the United States, he’s lived in Croatia (when it was called Yugoslavia), the Czech Republic, and Italy. He also spent a year in Romania on a Fulbright grant, an experience that helped inspire his first five books. He now lives in Hungary with his wife and daughter.