Suddenly, she wheels away from me, pulling Alex with her, and calls, “Over here, Dad. I want you to meet someone.”
If that’s not a cue, I don’t know what is. I melt into the crowd and hide behind the shirt rack in Banana Republic.
I hang around, sidling and spying, so much that mall security is eyeing me. I figure if those dummies notice me, I shouldn’t take my chances with an FBI agent. I wander around the far side of the mall.
I’m freaking out. There are so many things that could go wrong here that I can’t even count them all. Kendra could hate me now. She could be confessing everything to her father this very minute. Or worse, Alex could spill the beans accidentally on purpose, just because he can’t stand it that I’ve got a girlfriend and he doesn’t.
I struggle to kill time. There’s a pet shop just off the food court, and I’m fascinated by a kitten in the window. The card reads: 6-WK-OLD calico, all shots. Not a word about a political career or a future in the entertainment industry. How come there aren’t any cats like this on my Web site?
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Alex storming through the mall.
“Hey, wait!”
A burst of speed, and I’m in his path. “What happened? How did it go?”
“Oh, it was a barrel of laughs!” he spits back at me. “I’ve got the total green light to date his daughter. What’s wrong with that picture?”
“How’s Kendra?”
“How should I know?” he says bitterly. “I was too busy convincing her father what a fine upstanding young man I am. Story of my life. The parents all love me. It’s their daughters who hate my guts!”
“Al-ex!”
“She’s in the bathroom. The coast is clear. Her dad’s gone home. I’m going to do the same, not that anybody cares.”
I start down the corridor to the washrooms. “I owe you,” I toss over my shoulder.
“You and the rest of the world,” I hear him retort.
I make up my mind that if she won’t come out, I’m going into the ladies’ room to get her. That should give mall security something to think about. But she does come out and stops dead in the doorway, gawking at me with an intensity that’s almost scary. I stare back, trying to decode her expression. Is it over?
And then she hurls herself at me and grabs me, kissing me so hard that we stagger into the pay phone on the opposite wall. I recover and get with the program, but this is more than just a kiss and make up. This is frantic, passionate. Our teeth grind together, but we don’t care. Our one purpose is to get close, really close. And there’s an urgency to it that transcends all other priorities.
We spin off the cinder-block wall and knock into a stack of WET FLOOR signs that go down like dominoes to the terrazzo.
“I don’t care who your father is!” she breathes into my mouth.
“I don’t care who your father is!” I breathe back.
Unbelievable. Turns out Kendra thinks we’re some kind of cops-and-robbers Romeo and Juliet—star-crossed lovers from families that are mortal enemies. And I’m not much for locker-room talk, but I’ve got to say that it ratchets up the intensity level of our relationship about five hundred percent. Hey, if I knew this was going to happen, I would have told her about Anthony Luca on day one.
We finally talk it out in a secluded parking spot on Bryce Beach, the very scene of my debacle with Angela O’Bannon. It’s freezing at the shore, but we’re generating our own heat, and the windows are too steamed up for us to bother with the view.
She says, “I don’t even think I know what a Mob boss does.” Her head is on my shoulder, and she twists to look up at me. “How pathetic is that for an agent’s daughter to be so naïve?”
“Not pathetic, lucky,” I tell her. “I’d give anything to go back to the days when my father was the best dad in the world, with no asterisks.”
“I’m sick of being Little Miss Innocent,” she says suddenly. “Give me the job description. What is it that’s so important that my father has to put in fourteen-hour days and run himself into the ground?”
I shake my head. “I’m the low man on the totem pole at our house. There’s only one thing I have control over: I have nothing to do with Dad’s business. That’s the way I stay me in our family.”
All at once, so many things can make sense between us: my phony jobs; the real reason I quit the football team; why I don’t park near her door; why I call her on a cell phone. She seems amazed that the FBI is allowed to bug our house.
“The point is, you can’t ever come over,” I explain. “Even if I can bluff you past my folks, your dad would recognize your voice on the surveillance tapes.”
“What if we give you a fake name?” Kendra suggests thoughtfully. “Then I could ‘break up’ with Alex and introduce you as Bernie or somebody.”
“No good,” I sigh. “Your father knows my face. The FBI watches the place, too. They even took pictures at my sister’s wedding. Dad asked them to make up a special album, but it didn’t go over very well.”
She looks determined. “We can’t judge them, Vince. Your side or mine. We’re going to have to keep out of it and let them do what they do. We just have to stay focused on us.”
I agree with her. But my mind is already wandering to the rumors of an inside man in the Luca organization. If that man exists, and Agent Bite-Me is about to bring an indictment against my father, how will I feel about Kendra then?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I’M STARTING TO EARN a reputation around school as the guy who really doesn’t want to be Homecoming King. People get that impression from the cursing and muttering I do every time I tear down another Vince-and-Kendra poster.
Yes, the posters are still coming, more than there ever were before. There’s even a group of nitwit football players who think it’s funny to shake me down over it.
“Hey, Luca,” one of them will call, “give us twenty bucks or we’ll all vote for you!” And everybody cracks up laughing.
If we win, my first action as Homecoming King will be to demand a recount.
There’s one bright spot. At least now I know Kendra isn’t doing it.
Alex disagrees. “Don’t be so sure, Vince. Chicks get off on this Homecoming stuff.”
“Impossible,” I say flatly. “It would ruin everything.”
“It’s a psychological thing with women,” he goes on reasonably. “On the one hand, there’s logic. But pulling from the other side is an irresistible desire to be queen.”
My life may be in turmoil. But it’s going to have to get a lot worse before I’m taking advice about women’s irresistible desires from misterferraridriver.com.
Speaking of our Web sites, iluvmycat.usa has moved into second place on the hit parade and is gaining fast on cyberpharaoh.com. I’m thrilled when I get a second message on Cat Tales, but it turns out to be the same eighty-five-year-old talking about her dear departed Fluffy again.
Fluffy: a good name for a cat. Ides of March: not such a good name.
Prime ministers. Movie stars. Quackers. Eight balls. Inky cats. Cats that’ll have you in seventh heaven. What are the odds that more than one person takes his pet to a toga party? How about fourteen? I counted yesterday.
I don’t know what to do. Alerting the police would be too extreme, especially for a Luca. Besides, they’ll think I’m nuts. So I bring in the next-best thing: a real FBI agent’s daughter. Kendra applies her considerable talents as an investigative reporter to my case.
“Well, obviously these aren’t real ads,” she says after two minutes.
“How can you be sure?”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Vince, for five hundred bucks you can get a cat with a pedigree that stretches back to the saber-toothed tiger, not a Heinz fifty-seven whose only claim to fame is that he can quack. And these names—they’re not even real names. Just phrases or expressions: Military Intelligence or I Love a Parade.”
I can’t help but marvel at the logical, methodical way her mind works.
Maybe it’s true that the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree—although, in my case, that’s a pretty scary thought. The last person I want to be like is Anthony Luca.
She looks up from the monitor to face me in the cramped library cubicle. “Could it be a hacker?”
I shake my head. “There’s no hacking involved. Anybody with a computer can place ads on the site.”
“A joker, then,” she suggests. “Somebody from the class. How about Alex? He’s got a pretty warped sense of humor.”
“It still wouldn’t explain the traffic,” I tell her. “I’ve got seven hundred hits. No way all that’s coming from a single user.”
“There’s only one other thing those ads could be,” she muses. “Coded messages.”
“Aw, come on!” I explode.
“I’m serious.” She swivels the screen so I can see it. “Each ad has two numbers, a dollar amount and a lower number: a real eight ball, four on the floor, seventh heaven. Then there are key words that come up again and again: quack, toga party, prime minister—”
I’m horrified. “But that’s crazy! This is real life, not a Tom Clancy novel!”
I take her theory to Mr. Mullinicks, mostly because I’m hoping he’ll laugh in my face. But he sticks to his guns, insisting that whatever’s happening on iluvmycat.usa, it’s my problem. The other kids agree that something weird is going on. But they’ve got their own Web sites to worry about.
As for Tommy, he doesn’t see anything strange at all. The one good thing to come out of New Media class is the interest all this has kindled in my brother. He even found himself a computer and set it up in his apartment in the city. I got my first e-mail from him last night:
hey vince how’s it going write me back so I know this crap works tommy
Tommy’s computer apparently has no punctuation marks or capital letters.
Of course, I see the guy practically every day. So by the time I retrieve that message, he’s standing right there beside me. He practically shrieks with delight when his words pop onto the screen. It’s like taking a four-year-old to Disney World.
Mom appears in the doorway, a heaping tray of s’mores in her hands. “Look at you two, working that space-age gizmo like a couple of professors.”
My mother loves to watch us with our heads together at the computer. It helps her see her family as the wholesome folks she deludes herself into believing we are.
“Who’s dying?” I ask suspiciously. S’mores are Mom’s version of first aid. She only makes them for incoming wounded.
“No one, smart guy,” she retorts. “Your uncle Cosimo dropped by, poor man. His gout is acting up again.”
I grimace. Uncle Cosimo’s last attack of “gout” came via a shotgun full of rock salt as he was hotwiring a Range Rover.
Tommy heads for the stairs. “I’d better talk to him.”
I watch as he disappears to take care of business. I’ll never change my brother, I realize. But I’m glad I was able to turn him on to something that’s actually legal, although I’m willing to bet that his computer was liberated rather than bought and paid for.
To be honest, I’m spending less and less time on any kind of schoolwork these days, because I’ve got a new project that’s occupying all my powers of reasoning. There must be some way for Jimmy Rat and Ed Mishkin to get back on track with their debts, while at the same time paying me the six hundred dollars I owe on my/Dad’s/somebody’s credit card.
The thing is, Jimmy and Ed both seem to make plenty of money. But since they pay my dad only once a month, they always manage to blow all their cash so there’s not enough left when the uncles come around to collect. Ed apparently spends everything on women, and Jimmy Rat? Who knows what happens to his money? He clearly isn’t spending it on fine clothes and good grooming, and definitely not on deodorant.
Basically, these two don’t need a wiseguy; they need a financial planner. And so long as I’m going to lose sleep over Jimmy’s fingers and Ed’s great-aunt, I guess it has to be me.
The first problem is expecting these blockheads to think ahead a whole month. So I calculate the amount each man has to take out of his cash register every night and not touch. From there, I add in an installment plan so that I get my six hundred back, and Ed returns the one-fifty I made Jimmy lend him last week. Then comes the tricky part. I fix it so that Ed overpays Jimmy for the first two weeks when Jimmy’s tab is coming due, and vice versa after that.
I’m pretty proud of myself by the time I put it on an Excel spreadsheet and print it out. Then I call up Jimmy. All this time I’m being Thank-you-PaineWebber, I forget that Jimmy is about as convenient to reach as Saddam Hussein. Ed’s easier to get on the line because he’s usually waiting for a call from a lady friend. I know this because he always answers “Hey, there, hot stuff.”
I tell Ed about my new system, but he doesn’t even seem interested. Then he starts talking about a movie he saw!
I remember something Tommy says: nobody can ignore you when you’re standing on their neck. Well, I’m not going to hurt anyone, but I’m also not going to be ignored.
I interrupt Ed’s graphic description of the leading lady’s lingerie. “Listen, Ed. I’m coming down there tomorrow after school. If you and Jimmy don’t show up, I’m washing my hands of both of you.” I slam down the phone.
That night I show Dad my payment plan spreadsheet. He laughs so hard that he mauls an expensive piece of walnut on the table saw.
I’m deeply wounded. “What’s so funny?”
Tommy isn’t as amused. “You know how that’s going to help a guy like Jimmy Rat? He’ll save money on toilet paper, that’s all.”
Ray is the kindest of the three, but even he isn’t very encouraging. “You’ve got a good heart, kid, but you’re wasting your time. These guys could start the month with Fort Knox in their pockets and be tapped out by the fifteenth.”
“You’re wrong,” I say defensively, “and I’ll prove it.”
All the way through bumper-to-bumper traffic into the city, my mind is in Kendra’s basement, where I would be if it wasn’t for this meeting. To stay focused, I keep glancing over at the passenger seat where my spreadsheets sit rolled up and waiting, like blueprints for a better life for those two idiots. It takes an hour and a half to creep into Manhattan and another twenty minutes to park.
Frankly, I’m pleasantly surprised to find Jimmy and Ed huddled in a corner booth at Java Grotto, Ed’s place.
I hand out the spreadsheets and say my piece, going into real detail about exactly how it has to work. Amazingly, they follow me. They’re money guys, businessmen.
There’s a long silence when I’m done, and then Jimmy says, “No can do, Vince.”
I’m shocked. “What do you mean, no can do? You don’t have a choice. Don’t you know what the alternative is?”
Ed clears his throat. “Hey, Vince, how about a latte on the house?”
“No!” I exclaim. “This isn’t about coffee! And nothing should be on the house until you straighten out your finances!”
Jimmy pipes up. “We’re real grateful for all your help. In fact”—he rolls up the spreadsheet and slips a rubber band on it—“I like this so much that I’m going to frame it and hang it on my wall.”
I almost blow a gasket. “Don’t patronize me! You don’t like my way? Fine, do it your way! How much money have you saved up so far?”
They stare at me.
“None?” I howl. “Nothing? What are you doing—flushing it down the toilet?”
“See, the thing is,” says Jimmy, “there’s stuff about us you don’t know. A few months ago me and Ed became investors in an establishment.”
“What kind of establishment?” I ask suspiciously.
“It’s in the entertainment industry,” Ed supplies. “Adult entertainment.”
“A strip joint,” I conclude.
“Correct,” says Jimmy. “I see you’re a man of the world, Vince. We bought into the Platinum Coast up on Thirty-Ninth
. Used to be the Wiggle Lounge before the mayor’s boys shut it down on account of too much wiggling and not enough lounging. Real classy place.”
“So what’s the problem?” I demand. “Use the profits from the Platinum Coast to help pay my dad.”
“There are no profits,” Ed breaks in. “The place is eating money right now. And Boaz—he’s our partner—he keeps coming to us to kick in more.”
I shrug. “Tell him no.”
“But we’ve got so much invested already!” Jimmy whines. “If we let it fold, we lose everything!”
“It’s still better than throwing good money after bad,” I argue.
“But these places are gold mines,” Ed groans. “If we could ever get the Coast off the ground, we’d be rolling in cash! It’s been nothing but headaches so far—beefs with the cops, with the liquor license, with the landlord. We’ve spent more time closed than open. Once that gets straightened out—”
Jimmy grabs my arm. “Come see the place, Vince!”
I pull myself free. “Why?”
“It’s such a thing of beauty! Once you see it, you’ll understand why we can’t let it go.”
“It’s a strip joint!” I exclaim.
“Not a strip joint,” protests Jimmy. “A gentleman’s club, where prominent men of this community can go after a hard day’s work to relax and unwind.”
“And the chicks are smokin’!” adds Ed.
I think it over. Of course I don’t want to see this cesspool. But I guess I’m sort of their financial advisor. And this is an asset. Someday their equity in this place could be a bargaining chip to trade for these guys’ kneecaps.
They’re right. I’d better go check it out.
We take my car. That way I can hustle those two into a cab and zip right out the Midtown Tunnel after I’ve viewed this objet d’art. I’m dying to rush right home and take a shower. Dealing with Jimmy and Ed makes me feel like I’ve been dipped in cooking oil.
Even in broad daylight, I can see the place glowing half a block away. That’s where the money’s going, to pay the electric bill. I find a parking space right across the street, and we sit staring, mesmerized by the chaser lights and the pink neon. I can see us reflected in the mirrored doors, Jimmy, Ed, and me. What in God’s name am I doing in this place with these people?