Merlot Page 6

  “You mean like Catholic and Lutheran?” he joked.

  “No,” she said, not picking up on the joke. “You know, tens, twenties, that sort of shit. Then they run it through the counters, bundle it in master bundles of one, five or ten grand, depending, so the couriers can haul it to Central.”

  “Sounds busy.” Merlot encouraged.

  “Busy, Christ,” she said washing the declaration down with more wine. “You’ve no idea. We have to hire extra people just to run this shit through the counters. Ha! That’s real glamorous, sitting around card tables with five other people in a vault with no fan. We used to have people supplied by Central, but they’ve cut back on staff so many times they didn’t have anyone to spare.”

  “So get this,” she said, lurching halfway in Merlot’s direction spilling wine on her dress, hiking it well above her hips. “I’ve got thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars to count and I have to hire temps. You know how hard it is to get good temps? It’s a nightmare.”

  “Last year,” she continued after a healthy sip, “we caught a girl stealing. College kid. I felt really bad, I mean it was stupid. She stole, I don’t know, a hundred bucks or something. Course I had to report it. Her father was a big-shot customer. We had to let her go, charge her, I mean the whole bit. They had to make an example you know, no exceptions, that sort of deal.” She paused for another healthy gulp.

  “The really shitty thing is she could have made five times whatever she tried to grab just by volunteering for some overtime hours.” She drained her glass, the slightest drop ran down her chin.

  “I felt bad for her.”

  “Sounds like your couriers must be pretty busy,” he refilled her glass.

  “Yeah. You know,” she turned her head to look at him with glassy eyes. “You know Tony, I should call her, see how she’s doing.”

  “If you think it would help.”

  “Naw,” she swallowed heavily from the refilled glass, “I’m the one that turned her in. I had to, I mean. And, I’m glad I did, the little brat, she jeopardized all of us, the count off by a hundred or two hundred, Jesus Christ. I mean what was she thinking? Still, in the end it was a stupid kid thing, you know? We’ve all done dumb things,” she said then took another long sip.

  She looked over at Merlot with a glassy stare as her head weaved. He knew she wasn’t just drunk, she was absolutely plastered.

  “So you were telling me about the couriers,” he said, topping off her glass.

  “I was? I thought you wanted to hear about Lutherans and Catholics, ha, ha, ha, ha. Just kidding. One of our biggest customers is the church diner, who would have thunk it! Get this, it’s called The Last Supper Diner. Isn’t that cute? Some church from like out in Wilmer or Saint James owns it, but all these old folks can’t figure out whether it’s Catholic or Lutheran, so they all eat there. It’s pretty cool. These little old white-haired ladies giving you another cup of coffee and shit. We get free passes at the bank every year, and I know some of the ladies there, so I always get real good service.”

  She took another gulp of wine, dribbled some down her dress, but didn’t notice.

  “Mmm-mmm, I’ll take you there. I get a free pass and they give me real good service.”

  After working seven days a week at his own place he was having a tough time coming up with somewhere he would rather not be than The Last Supper church diner, replete with little old ladies pouring coffee.

  “Do the couriers get free passes?” figuring he would give it one more try.

  “Naw, they just pick the stuff up and run,” she slurred, not looking at him but holding out her glass in his direction.

  He refilled it and waited.

  “They don’t get to know the customers the way we do, and most of them don’t even talk to us. They’re pretty up tight. Except for this one guy Billy, he’s really nice. I mean, Billy at least says hi. The other guys all act like they have a stick up their ass. You know how people who carry guns are, always walking around like ‘we’re really tough’.” She took a heavy gulp, rested the glass on her chest then stretched her legs out and examined her red toe nails.

  “How often are they there? Do they just come at the end of the day?” thinking, tell me something.

  “End of the day! You kidding? There wouldn’t be room to breathe in there if they just came at the end of the day. End of the day! Ha!” she attempted to half sit and immediately slumped back down, oblivious to the red wine she spilled down the front of her dress.

  “Haven’t you even been listening? They come every other hour, you goof. Only we have them scheduled so it’s at twelve after on the even hours and twenty-five after on the odd hours, so we don’t set a pattern. Sort of, you know, in case robbers are watching or something.”

  He casually jotted down the times she had just provided.

  “Well, you have all those dye packs and things I see on the cop shows right? Maybe tracking devices or something in there with the money?”

  She turned halfway toward him, speaking as she moved. “Tracking devices, man, where the fuck did you get that? We don’t have tracking devices, we barely have enough room or time just to get all that crap into trash bags. Besides, the courier is coming to get them so why bother to put a dye pack in there? Not that we have ‘em anyway. Oh brother,” she giggled, then sipped, draining her glass, setting it on the desk, almost but not quite knocking it over.

  “All done.”

  She swung her body around, skirt hiked up onto her midsection exposing a silky blue thong as she struggled to sit upright.

  “Hey Tony, I need to pee,” she said, attempting to brush the hair from her face.

  He came from behind the desk to give her a hand.

  “Here, you can use my private bathroom, right here around the corner,” he pulled her chair back, then pulled and lifted in an effort to get her up.

  “Whoa,” she gulped, then worked to focus her eyes, took a deep breath and staggered to the bathroom door.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Be right back, no peeking. Less you want to,” she giggled. Then stepped inside the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

  He cautiously opened her purse and pawed through all sorts of keys and small containers to find her wallet. He wrote down the address from her driver’s license, returned the wallet, tossed the purse back on the couch, and quickly retreated to his chair.

  He need not have hurried.

  In the small white-tiled bathroom Cindy sat on the toilet and rested her head against the side of the cool porcelain sink. She was thinking if she could just stay here for a little minute more, she would be all right. Just a moment or two to let some of the alcohol run through her system, and she would be fine.

  The sink felt so nice and cool against her face. She could feel the floor slowly begin to move from under her and she closed her eyes thinking, this is kind of fun before quickly concluding things were moving a little too fast for her. If she could just slow down the wall behind her, the rest would be pretty easy.

  He waited patiently at his desk. It wouldn’t be the first time he had deliberately over-served a woman but there seemed to be something different here. God help me if I’m developing a conscience, he worried.

  * * *

  “A Sonny Bono impersonator, that’s what you came up with?” Osborne yelled into his phone, incredulous. “I’m returning from dinner now. I’ll have Milton dispatch him if he is still onstage when we arrive. I would advise you to encourage his hasty departure.” He glanced over at Serpentina sitting opposite him in the rear seat.

  “I’ve got what’s her name, Snakey here, she’ll work. No, no the one with the tattoo, yes, Serpentina. And remove that Sonny Bono character before I arrive, good God!” he exclaimed snapping the small phone shut.

  Milton glanced in the rearview mirror as Osborne wrestled to maintain control. He had seen it a few times before, when the irrational greed for a dollar overcame his common sense. He noticed Osborne’s sligh
t twitching, the rapid blinking of the eyelids, and he gripped the steering wheel with his throbbing right hand, focused on the road ahead and hoped the moment would pass.

  “It seems the best they could do on short notice was a transvestite Sonny Bono look-alike who would only strip down to a thong. What few customers there were have departed. For God’s sake, am I the only sane person remaining? Milton,” Osborne leaned forward as Milton drove, “when we arrive you will go immediately to the stage and unceremoniously remove this individual if he has not yet departed. At least that wench Sassie and her unemployed camp followers left. We’ll see how dancing in the breadline suits their fancy.”

  He sat back and inclined his head to Serpentina,

  “My dear, I’m going to need your talents onstage tonight. It seems we have a bit of a booking snafu.”

  “Tonight, but for how long?”

  “Just the remainder of the night?”

  “The remainder of the… but, it’s barely 11:00.”

  “Excellent, you’ve learned to read a digital clock. Surely you don’t expect Milton or myself to venture onstage. Obviously I can’t entice new talent at this hour of the night. Come, come, come it’s time we put all that surgically enhanced talent of yours to work, my dear. Now, relax,” he said, touching her hand for the briefest of seconds before quickly pulling a moist, sterile towelette from the packet resting between them, and aggressively cleaning his fingers.

  “Your shift will conclude at four and I shan’t need your services until much later in the morning. There, perfect, problem solved.”

  Sunday

  Otto slept in his recliner, in front of the TV. It was tuned to the weather channel and between squeaks and beeps repeated the forecast in a computerized monotone every twelve minutes. He didn’t hear any of it. He was out cold, wearing a bathrobe, his feet crusted with dried residue from the Epsom salts.

  His feet didn’t hurt, but Otto had soaked them anyway to ensure they remained pain free. A barely touched scotch and water sat on an end table and next to the drink, his forty-five. He had set the alarm on his watch for 5:00 am, he usually woke a minute or two before it went off.

  He was snoring loudly and in his reoccurring dream he was back in Saigon, getting ripped off by pretty bar girls and not caring. Only this time he had his briefcase with him, and he didn’t want anyone to touch it. There was a car, a battered two-toned Fleetwood, dark blue with white spray paint along the lower portion of the body. The car was parked in front of the bar, three rough-looking bearded guys all hanging out the driver’s window.

  They were staring at his briefcase, and he wondered how they knew it contained money. He stayed in the bar with all the pretty girls ripping him off, knowing he didn’t have to worry about the three thugs in the car, yet.

  * * *

  Billy Truesdale got up and walked down the hallway to the bathroom. It was almost four on Sunday morning, and he last checked his blood-sugar level at midnight. It wasn’t a big deal, checking it, better that than going blind or ending up in some sort of diabetic coma. He read the monitor and returned to bed.

  “You all right, Billy?” his wife Martha asked, like she did every morning around 4:00 when he came back to bed.

  “Not to worry, honey, go back to sleep,” he said knowing she already had.

  He planned to lay low all day and catch the final Vikings preseason game. He had a busy week ahead of him, hauling those damn bags of currency out of the bank in a grocery cart and into his armored car. What a pain. All that cash from the fair, that he and his team had to cart back to Central all day long. Drop off one load, only to turn back around for another. They were vulnerable. He’d warned the bank every year for the past twelve, nobody listened. Maybe they knew something he didn’t.

  * * *

  It was just after four when Merlot jerked awake at his desk. He’d fallen asleep in his chair, a mound of melted wax rose beneath each candle.

  It took him a moment to get his bearings, knew something was amiss when he spied Cindy’s purse on the couch. Was she still in the bathroom?

  In response to his question he heard a roar from behind the bathroom door, followed by a sputtering female cough that echoed from inside the tiny tiled room.

  “Oh god, no.” Nothing echo’s quite like a forlorn voice begging for mercy from deep inside a porcelain bowl.

  It was relatively quiet for a moment. He silently crept to the door, heard her cough, then spit, followed by the toilet flushing. The water refilling the tank had always been loud and it masked all sound from inside the bathroom. He took a step back in the event she opened the door, not wanting it to look like he had been spying on her.

  “Oh, oh, araugh!” she roared again, but with not quite as much authority.

  He was tired, and all he wanted to do was go home to bed. Maybe just give her a little more time, he thought, tiptoeing back to his chair, snuggling down and closing his eyes.

  Cindy was gasping in little tiny breaths, hoping that might help keep her stomach calm. She was sure it was empty. She’d filled the toilet with a lovely shade of pink three or four times now. At the moment not really caring what Tony thought. The way she felt, she’d be dead before sunrise anyway.

  “Oh God, araugh,” she groaned, nothing of substance came up. Stick with the little short breaths, she told herself, kneeling in front of the toilet, holding her hair back, wishing she could just be home to sleep in her own bed. She vowed to never, ever drink again as she lay her head back down on the toilet seat.

  * * *

  Otto woke up, stretched, and turned off his watch alarm before it sounded. Fortunately sometime during the middle of the night he had removed his feet from the Epsom salt bath, they were marvelously dry and ready to face another twenty-mile day.

  He pulled on a clean Vikings jersey, number thirty-five, got a pot of coffee perking before frying up some bacon, eggs, and hash browns, the weather station squawked in the background.

  * * *

  Some time later Merlot gently knocked on the bathroom door.

  “Just a minute, be right out,” came a soft voice as if it had only been three or four minutes instead of four or five hours. The toilet flushed, and the sink tap ran.

  “Shit,” Cindy said whispering louder than she wanted to. Eventually the door opened up. Merlot moved a few steps back to give her plenty of room.

  “Oh good, you’re still here, how perfect,” she said, not sounding at all sincere. Her hair dropped limply to her shoulders. Her complexion had a pale, pasty pallor, made more frightening by her bloodshot eyes rimmed with smeared mascara. Her dress was askew, wine stained and wrinkled

  “Oh relax, you look fine. We’ve all done it,” he lied.

  “Fallen asleep? More like passed out on the toilet seat in a bar. Then wake up at sunrise after puking my guts out in a guy’s office on our first date? No, Tony, we haven’t all done that. I’m unique in that vein, trust me,” she said, side-stepping him. She cautiously picked up her purse, took a deep breath before she turned to face him.

  Even hung over and an absolute mess he found her attractive.

  “Well, shall I just say it’s been an experience,” he smiled and bent to kiss her.

  “Oh please, I’m just gross, don’t,” she said backing away.

  He kissed her anyway, on the cheek.

  “I don’t think you’re dreadful” he said, then walked back to his desk.

  “Oh you poor, poor, deranged man. Tony, I’m so sorry, you let me intrude on your work, I wanted this to be so nice. You had this romantic dinner all planned and I, I just ruined everything by getting falling-down drunk and throwing up all over your bathroom. If you never want to see me again, I’ll understand. Look, I should go, I’m just making this worse.”

  “Wait, before you go, Cindy, have one more drink.”

  She glared for half a moment before realizing he had a glass of water and some aspirin.

  “Take these. They’ll go to work and by the time you get home you c
an crawl into bed and wake up feeling a hell of a lot better,” he laughed.

  She took the aspirin out of his hand, popped them into her mouth, then chased them down with just enough water and no more. She felt the water make a cold, hollow splash somewhere deep in her empty stomach, and waited a moment to make sure she didn’t erupt again.

  “Okay, thanks. I’m really sorry, Tony. You’re so sweet but I’d better go,” she said.

  He caught up with her partway through the darkened bar and walked her to the door. He felt sorry for her. The wrinkled dress, messed hair, mascara rimmed eyes, no lipstick. She could use a shower. God, she was a mess.

  “Let me unlock the door for you, here,” he said as she cautiously stepped out into the bright morning and quickly covered her eyes.

  “Ugh shit, God it’s bright. Thanks,” she said waving briefly over her shoulder, too embarrassed to turn and look at him. Her car sat alone in a far corner of the empty parking lot.

  She was being let out of a bar at close to six on a Sunday morning, the last drunk, swept out with the trash. It was already warm and humid, the day had all the makings of being beastly, just the thing for a hangover. Thankful that no one saw her at this hour looking like death warmed over, she gingerly made her way to her car.

  * * *

  Otto was waiting at a stoplight, on his way to pick up his first truckload of bacon and batter. Other than a city bus there wasn’t another vehicle around. For a brief moment he toyed with the idea of running the light, but decided that with a loaded forty-five in the front seat that wasn’t the best idea.

  It was about that time he spotted a woman stumbling out of DiMento’s. He thought he recognized her, but couldn’t place her. She looked like she’d had a hell of night. Pasty skin, hair messed, clothes disheveled, he was reminded again of those Saigon bar girls. He was thinking maybe she had stopped by one of his stands and that got him thinking in terms of the fair, which got him thinking cash deposits and that’s when he put it together. The bank.