Funny Money Read online

  Carlos took a hard pull on his cigarette, drew back his lips and forcefully expelled smoke from the many gaps between his teeth. He powered down his window and flicked the cigarette butt into the rain. “I’m tired of bein’ an independent criminal. Jake’s stroke gave us a chance at a full-time job. Be happy.”

  Hector was not much short of astounded. His brain felt as if it had been twisted like a pretzel. There were few constants in his life, but in the simple yet sometimes complex symbiotic relationship that was Hector and Carlos, he’d always thought of his buddy as the homicidal muscle, and himself as the brains of the outfit. Now here was Carlos with a light bulb suspended over his head, the idea man. It took some getting used to.

  Hector considered the situation. Jake was a plenty smart dude. Chances were excellent that he and Marty were the only guys who knew about the ten million. Except, of course, for the guys who’d printed the stuff. But they were too smart to mess with Jake, or anybody working for him, so they were no threat. So, boiling it down, all he and Carlos had to worry about was cops, and if the cops weren’t onto them by now, it wasn’t going to happen.

  “Okay, you’re right. All we got to do is sit tight, wait for Marty’s call, and then hand over the cash like the honest and dependable crooks we are, at the same time letting Marty know we’re looking to get on the payroll.”

  “Now you’re talking!” said Carlos jovially. Identical presences, dark, sharp-toothed and feral, scuttled across his close-set eyes and vanished in perfect synchronization down the black holes of his pupils.

  Hector intuitively realized that his partner in crime had done a little math and decided that Hector was worth something less than ten million dollars. No, wait. That was paranoia rearing its ugly head. If Carlos bumped him and scrammed with the cash, who’d watch his back when Marty came a-calling?

  Carlos wasn’t going to kill him, at least not until he’d talked him into squibbing Marty. With Marty gone, and Jake on his deathbed, Jake’s carefully constructed empire would collapse. Drugs, prostitution, gambling … the whole damn city would be ripe for the taking. There’d be a bloodbath, as over-ambitious hoods and punks jostled for position. The Vietnamese and Russian and South American gangs would slaughter each other. Who’d care about a few boxes of funny money that got lost in the confusion? Nobody.

  At least so Hector reasoned.

  Chapter 3

  The minimum-wage kid cleaning the glass door skipped nimbly aside as Chantal forcibly pushed by him. The McDonalds on Main Street was always crowded, no matter how late the hour. There were a lot of Asian families in the neighbourhood, and a nearby SkyTrain station fed the restaurant an unpredictable mix of ordinary people and drug dealers and laterally mobile thieves.

  Chantal saw that there were only two cash registers open. Both had long lineups. She leaned over the counter and caught the roving eye of a boy working a deep fryer. She crooked a finger, showed him a crumpled five. He glanced warily around, looking for the manager, gave his stainless-steel rack a brisk shake, put it down, and sauntered over.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  Chantal slipped him the five. “Gimme something to drink.”

  “Thirsty, huh?” He gave her a knowing look. “What d’you want?”

  “I don’t know … an orange pop. C’mon, hurry up, let’s go!”

  The kid, money in hand, let her see he didn’t like being pushed. Stuffing the bill into his pocket, he wandered over to the soft-drink machine. Turning, he gave her the third and probably last look in his limited repertoire — sly and sexy. “What size you want?”

  “Small, so you can handle it.”

  Oops, four looks. Scowling and blushing, the kid poured the drink, expertly and mindlessly secured the plastic lid, and slammed the waxed paper cup down on the counter.

  Chantal walked rapidly towards the washrooms. She knew she wouldn’t have to ask for a key to the washroom because, even at this late hour, there were a lot of little kids running around. When a kid needed to take a leak, there was no time to go and get a key. Better by far to risk a junkie in the washrooms than a puddle of urine on the floor. She pushed open the door. The washroom was empty. She went over to the sink and splashed water on her face. In the bright glare of the fluorescent lights her skin was pale and grainy, her mouth too red, her eyes too large and far too dark, bruised and vulnerable, the windows of a visibly tattered soul. She yanked the top off the soft-drink container, rinsed out her mouth and forcibly spat a mouthful of orange pop at the mirror. She rinsed and spat again and again, splattering the mirror and walls and sink and her hair and face with bright orange. Two women entered the washroom, chattering animatedly. One look, and they were gone. Chantal sluiced out her mouth again, went into a cubicle and locked it.

  She pulled the wad of money Hector had given her out of her pocket. During her time working the street she had learned that the customer was always wrong, and could never be trusted. The rules were simple. When negotiating, never take less than the going rate. No cheques! Payment in advance of services. Count the money, and then count it again. She’d broken the rule with Hector and Carlos, but that was because she hadn’t realized there were two men in the van. She’d worked out a mutually acceptable rate with Carlos, and climbed into the van and slammed the door. She’d noticed that the dome light hadn’t come on, but that didn’t trigger any alarms, because a lot of guys screwed with their lights. Carlos told her to buckle up so the cops wouldn’t have a reason to pull them over. As he drove away Chantal snapped her fingers and told him pay up or pull over. That was when Hector came out from behind a cardboard box in the back of the van. He’d seen the look in her eyes and given her a friendly smile, told her to relax and promised her this was her lucky day.

  As she counted her hard-earned cash, a quarter-inch-thick stack of American twenties, Chantal was surprised to discover that Hector had not lied. She’d asked him for two hundred and fifty dollars, an outrageous amount, given the neighbourhood she worked in. Hector had paid her almost a thousand dollars. Amazing. She counted the money again, and double-checked her math. Nine hundred and sixty bucks. Talk about easy money. What was an American twenty worth? A least thirty bucks. If she gave Nick half the money and went to a bank tomorrow and exchanged the rest of it for Canadian currency, she could take a couple of nights off and he’d never know about it.

  A fist pounded on the cubicle door. “Open up! Come out of there, or I’ll call the police!” Chantal sucked in her stomach and stuffed the twenties inside her panties, then stood up and unlocked the door. The washroom was filled with self-righteous McDonald’s employees, led by a pint-sized manager who took his dead-end job far too seriously.

  She held up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay, I give up, you got me.”

  “Look at the mess you’ve made! What’s that matter with you? Get out now or I’ll have you arrested!”

  “All right, I’m leaving.” He tried to take her arm and she grabbed his skinny wrist and put his hand to her breast. He pulled away as if she’d tried to brand him. Smiling, she said, “There, now you have something to dream about tonight.”

  Outside, rain hammered the pavement. There was a pay phone at the far end of the parking lot. If she called a cab, she could be home in twenty minutes.

  Hunching her shoulders against a sudden gust of wind, she zipped up her faux leopardskin jacket and started walking.

  Chapter 4

  Parker, wearing dark-blue silk pyjamas, opened the mirrored door of the clothes closet. There was only one bathroom in the house and the mornings were always hectic, so she’d gotten into the habit of choosing the next days clothes before going to bed. Her three black VPD uniforms hung in plastic bags at the far end of the rack. Rank had its privileges. Foremost among those privileges, from Parker’s point of view, was that she was hardly ever required to wear a uniform.

  It was mid-October, and the Channel 11 weatherman had forecast cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-teens Celsius. After some deliberation
, Parker chose a cream-coloured blouse, chocolate-brown slacks, and a burgundy cashmere boat-neck sweater that Jack had given her for Christmas a few years earlier. She hung the clothes from a hook on the door, then shut the door and examined herself in the mirror. Her hair and lipstick looked fine. She unfastened the top button of her pyjamas. A little cleavage was a good thing. She unfastened another button. There, much better.

  She plumped up the pillows and got into bed and settled the duvet around her. There was a half-read novel on the night table, but she was in no mood for reading. She turned on the Victorian lamp with its frosted glass shade shaped like a crescent moon. The lamp was equipped with a ten-watt bulb. She and Willows had bought it in an antique store in Seattle during a weekend vacation the previous spring. The drumming of the shower stopped. She leaped out of bed, hurried across the room, turned off the ceiling light and got back into bed.

  In the bathroom, Willows stepped onto the scale and watched the numbers spin around, then slide back and steady. He’d gained five pounds in the past three months. He’d read somewhere that men tended to try to eat away their worries. If it was true, it explained everything, because he was worried as hell about Annie. She’d always been an enthusiastic, hardworking student. All through high school, she’d never missed the honour roll. Now she was in her first year at UBC, the University of British Columbia. Overnight, she’d changed from an ideal student to a rebellious party animal. Willows smiled. The phrase “rebellious party animal” was ludicrous, but devastatingly accurate. He’d actually shouted it accusingly at her during a particularly heated argument. She’d laughed in his face and stormed out of the house, trailing a slipstream of abuse. Though she was only eighteen, she’d come home drunk on several occasions. More than once her clothes had smelled richly of marijuana smoke. She got phone calls at all hours of the day and night from people he didn’t know, who were loath to identify themselves.

  Annie had just finished writing her mid-terms. She’d always been so eager to discuss her exams, but now she refused to talk about them. She often slept in and missed classes. Her work ethic had deteriorated to the point where Willows was concerned about her failing and dropping out. He’d suffered through years of turmoil with Sean, but he had straightened himself out. Now Annie had gone off the deep end. It was as if she’d been waiting her turn.

  The worst part of it was that Willows knew exactly what was bothering her, and he couldn’t do anything about it. Years ago, his ex-wife, Sheila, had moved to a tiny coastal town in Mexico to be with her new boyfriend. The terms of the divorce dictated an equal split of their assets. Willows had to remortgage the house his parents had left him. If Parker hadn’t stepped in and co-signed the loan, he’d have been forced to sell the house.

  In the interim, Sheila had phoned on numerous occasions, demanding money. Sometimes she sounded drunk; she always sounded desperate. Willows had sent her various amounts, depending on his circumstances. It had never been enough. One call followed another, endlessly.

  The day after he and Claire had remortgaged the house, Sheila phoned and told him to courier her a certified cheque, in U.S. funds, for the full amount he owed her. Willows contacted her Vancouver lawyer and discovered he’d been fired. Willows didn’t know much about Sheila’s boyfriend, but what he did know wasn’t good. He was concerned for her safety, but there was nothing he could do about it. Sheila hired another lawyer. Under threat of legal action, he was eventually forced to turn over the money. Parker moved in six months later. Sean hardly noticed she was there. Annie, characteristically generous to a fault, welcomed her with open arms and an open heart.

  In the years that followed, Sheila had never failed to write to Sean and Annie on their birthdays and at Christmas. But this year she’d skipped Sean’s birthday, and then, just a few weeks before school started, Annie’s. Willows had written her, and faxed her care of the local post office. Sheila had not responded. He’d recently learned that she and her boyfriend had moved out of their rented house, leaving no forwarding address. He dreaded giving the news to Annie.

  Parker called out, “Jack, are you okay?”

  Startled, Willows mentally teleported himself back from Mexico. He was still five pounds overweight, and he was cold. He stepped off the scales, and finished towelling himself dry. He was still worrying about Annie when he entered the bedroom.

  Parker lay on her side, facing him. She smiled as he drew near the bed.

  “Nice towel.” She flipped aside the duvet, and moved over a little, making room for him. Eyeing him boldly, she said, “Want a hand getting that off?”

  “No, that’s …”

  Parker reached out and gave the towel a yank, pulled it loose. "Well, just look at you!”

  Willows slapped his belly. “I’m going to start working out, maybe jog a little …” He slipped into bed.

  Parker said, “That’s not what I was talking about, Jack.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “This is what I was talking about,” said Parker, taking the subject of interest firmly in hand.

  Willows reached for the lamp.

  “Leave it on,” said Parker.

  Chapter 5

  Hector had noticed that one of the many advantages of a fleeting, cash-based love fest in the back of a speedily moving vehicle was that he was less inclined to take a nap afterwards.

  Lucky thing, because Carlos was in a mood to party.

  “What d’you say, Hector? Wanna hit the bars, maybe drive over to the Austin, listen to some music? Or we could drop in to the Cecil, check out the strippers …”

  “No way.” Hector tapped the face of his trusty Timex. “It’s almost eleven-thirty, and we’re outta groceries.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “The Safeway closes at midnight; the bars are open all night long.”

  “Not really.” Across the border, everything was open twenty-four hours a day, minimum. But this was Canada, home of the fifty-cent dollar and roll-up sidewalk. Carlos had often thought that, if he moved to America, he’d only have to spend half as much time thieving to make pretty much the same amount of money. In America, life was sweet. But there was also a tendency to shoot first and ask questions at the inquest …

  Something else, however. If he moved across the border, it would give him an opportunity to hunt around for a new partner. He and Hector had been together almost a year now, and Hector was slowly driving him nuts. The guy was a whiner, always finding something to complain about. He’d been genetically cursed with an ugly, unremittingly negative attitude about the whole wide world and everything — animal, mineral or vegetable — in it. Plus, he had a hatful of totally weird ideas about money, believed that in a perfect world the working man would give 100 per cent of his income to the government, and that it would be redistributed by faceless bureaucrats, guaranteeing everyone a roof over his head, clothes on his back and three square meals a day. Utopia, he called it. Carlos had wondered aloud if there’d be a 7-series BMW in every garage, and was told in an infuriatingly superior voice that he was missing the point. Yeah, sure he was.

  He made a left and headed for the West End. There was a Safeway down by the liquor store at the foot of Robson, half a mile or so from the strip of glittering brand-name shops. He’d drive down Robson for the pleasure of watching Hector flip out. Nothing turned poor Hector’s crank like mindless consumption, the average guy’s burning need to get rid of his cash, find something else to stuff in his closet …

  Carlos lit a cigarette. He swerved to avoid a moron on a bicycle. There was a certain kind of person who, when you stuck them on two wheels, somehow immediately decided they were immortal. Maybe their stupid helmets were too tight, cut off the circulation to their brains. Or maybe it was the little flashing red lights they wore that gave them a false sense of security. He cut in front of the cyclist, timing it perfectly, missing him by inches. A cry of rage and fear cut through the muted thunder of the rain, the wet slap of the wipers.

  Hector frow
ned. “What’d he say?”

  “Asked me to stop and beat him to a pulp, or shoot him, if I can spare a bullet.” They were crawling along, Carlos’ eyes on his rearview mirror. He waited until the cyclist was about to overtake him, then slammed on the brakes. The bike wobbled, veered sharply towards the sidewalk, and vanished.

  Hector stared glumly out the window. “Where we going?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Hector did his best. After a few minutes, he said, “D’you own an umbrella?”

  “No, because I like to keep both hands free, like any sensible person would. Though I gotta admit sometimes the idea of a yard-long piece of wood with a sharp metal point on it makes a lot of sense.”

  “The problem with an umbrella,” said Hector, “is that it might keep your head dry, but that’s about it. Unless you get a really big one, like those red or blue-and-white striped umbrellas you sometimes see. But they take up so much space.”

  “That’s a bad thing?”

  “Think about it. Crowded sidewalks, people in a hurry, everybody carrying big umbrellas: it’s a recipe for disaster.”

  “I can see it now,” said Carlos.

  “See what?”

  “The movie, Umbrella.” Carlos made that hyena sound that drove Hector nuts. “Maybe it’ll star that Leonardo kid. Titanic, watch out!”

  “Go ahead, make fun. Will you learn anything, being a smartass? No, but that doesn’t bother you, and you don’t even know why.”

  Carlos thought about it for a moment. Against all the odds, Hector was right. He said, “Don’t tell me you’ve come up with a better idea.”