The Player, The Thief and The Broken Heart - Chapter Eighty-Three - A Strange Reunion

Sweat trickled down Jimmy's temples. The room was hot and stuffy, probably intentionally so. Tell them nothing, he reminded himself. Bad enough he'd already opened his fool mouth once. The man seemed to enjoy torturing Jimmy as he went into detail about the floor Jimmy had been on when the hotel security guards first spotted him and then notified Yushenko's goons.

"Actually," a deeper, surlier voice said. He sounded older than the other man. Neither were young, Jimmy was sure of it. Or skinny. "The FIRST thing you do, is not rob a place where one of you is employed in a high profile position and already running an illegal call girl ring outta the place. Really fuckin' brilliant. Second is the cameras. Like the outside cameras in the fuckin' parking lot."

Something in his brain imploded into a singularity. No hit had come yet. Nor was he bracing for one anymore. The voice speaking to him seemed to leap out from the past to grab him by his scruff and shake him. He waited, breath held in, for the man to continue so he could pinpoint the speaker.

Footsteps circled behind him. "Third is to know your target. Four duffel bags to pick up a single envelope full of negotiable Bonds and you guys don't even know what the fuck they are? You though there'd be piles of cash just laying around? You guys are fucking morons! All of you!"

The back of a hand knocked the side of his head, enough to stun, not hard enough to hurt. Jimmy stared up, eyes wide. Still, all he could see was a head in silhouette. It can't be, it's impossible, but it had to be. Only one person had ever clipped his head like that, usually jokingly. "Dad?"

Overhead lights flipped on. The spotlight dimmed and went off. The intense heat dissipated. Jimmy gaped up at the man standing in front of him that was like a mirror showing his own face twenty-something years in the future and yet a stranger, older, fatter, balder. Not as tall as the man he remembered. His hair was still thick, though mostly grey now, and he had the neck of a bull ending in a giant square chin. Jimmy half wondered if he was dead too and yet he hadn't felt any pain, anything hitting him, and his wrists still chafed against the cuffs. He struggled to get air into his lungs and suddenly his wrists were free and a pair of arms enveloped him.

"Shit, son," he said. The hulk of a man was sobbing."God dammit I missed you but until a week ago - until that old fucker was cold and dead in the ground - it wasn't safe for me. And then I find out his protege ... he wanted to come after you. Somehow learned I was still alive and wanted to force my hand. I don't know what to say. Except that I'm sorry and that I will try to explain once we get the hell out of here."

Jimmy sat frozen, stiff. He felt so numb he wasn't sure if he was still alive or not. It seemed like forever that he sat and then he put his arms around his dad who still smelled the same as he'd smelled when Jimmy was a little kid. A mix of lavender and musk and stale cigarette smoke. So many questions swirled around in his mind he couldn't grab onto a single one. He vaguely recalled hearing news of his dad's arch nemesis and the urge he had felt to go to the funeral so he could spit on the man's face. Or piss on it, were that possible to get away with doing.

His dad sniffled and wiped his eyes with a white handkerchief. He stepped back and helped Jimmy to his feet. "We ain't in the clear yet. They're after you in here. Burkhard's men. They could see you too in those hallways."

"Burkhard?" He could have sworn the guy they were knocking over was Russian.

"Later we'll fill you in." A shorter, stockier man with bristly silver hair handed his dad a slim, leather case. His dad opened it. One side held a white piece of foam and on the other, pats of blue, purple and red makeup. In the middle, peach-coloured wax. "Lift your chin up. Higher."

Jimmy kept his eyes fixed on the pipes crisscrossing the ceiling while his dad's friend applied fake injuries to his face. This was too surreal; he had to be dead. Or he'd been drugged or knocked unconscious and was in the midst of a bizarre and vivid dream.

"You'll need my help to get out of here," his dad hissed in his ear. "So after screaming a few times, you're gonna play dead while we haul you out."

Jimmy nodded. The man accompanying him smacked his fist into his palm and Jimmy released a groan of agony he hoped would sound convincing. A few more fake punches were thrown and he moaned pathetically, grunted, then made a choking sound.u

"You're a natural," his dad whispered.

Jimmy went limp as his dad picked him up and slung him over his shoulder. He kept his eyes closed, his dad barking orders at various security guards to hold a door for him. Footsteps tapped and echoed along the concrete corridor. The ventilation system overhead hummed and rattled. His shins bumped against the metal frame of a second doorway and his dad tightened his grip around him. As they turned, his head banged against a corner and he bit his tongue to keep from yelping out.

At last, they were outside again. He felt like he'd been flung into a parallel universe as the cold wind blew against his cheeks and he listened to his dad's laboured breathing and several sets of feet tromping across asphalt. His dad. Nothing about tonight felt real.

They stopped in the alley, Jimmy's dad saying "I'll take it from here."

Jimmy opened one of his eyes slightly. One of the Golden Dunes security guards blocked their way to the street. Behind that security guard was a white van of the kind used by landscapers or contractors. "We had orders to watch you finish the job."

"I'm finishing it in the desert some fifty miles from here," his dad's buddy sneered. He jerked his head towards the security cameras overlooking the alleyway. "If your boss has a problem, he can take it up with me personally."

Jimmy's dad tossed him down into the back of a white van like he was a sack of potatoes and slammed the door shut. For several minutes various men argued outside, muffled by the metal walls and padded upholstery in the van. If he didn't know better he'd think they were arguing in German. He never knew his dad to speak German though. Or still be alive for that matter. Whatever language they spoke, it wasn't Russian or English or Italian.

The sides and back of the van had no windows. The only light came from a streetlamp that shone in through the windshield. He lay against what felt like several bags of sand or topsoil and his heart lurched in his chest again. He had to have been hallucinating his dad and Yushenko's goons were on their way to bury him in the desert just like the man had said. Piled against the wall of the van across from him he saw long, slender wooden poles belonging either to shovels or rakes. Something dark shifted in the corner behind the front passenger seat, but the makeup was running into his eye, clouding his vision. Exhausted, he lay his head down.

Whatever happened, happened. Several times tonight his life had flashed in front of his eyes, but this time the image stilled to the point in time that divided his old life from his current one. To the previous time he had stared Death in the face and come within an inch of feeling its cold embrace.

He was standing on the balcony of his nineteenth-floor condo. Lights from the Las Vegas strip glimmered in the south. It was dawn. The sun hadn't come up yet and the sky glowed a deep dark blue. If his death even made the headlines the next day it would have been just another gambling statistic, a side note if it was mentioned to begin with. He was about to climb over the metal railing when he realized there was one last thing he had to do first.

Make Jeannie hate him.

His heart pounded as he pulled out his phone and punched in her number. A mickey of Jack Daniels had done nothing to settle his nerves.

"Hello?" A sleepy female voice had answered. Rebecca said later she recalled only being left a message and one she must have erased. She never remembered speaking to him.

He had gulped as he propped himself against the balcony rail. "I can't make it for our date tonight. I'm a bastard. A lying cheating bastard and you deserve better than me." She tried to interrupt but he continued, "In the months before we started seeing each other I was sleeping with four other women. Not once did I use a condom. One of them just told me she's pregnant. I can't afford a kid right now and she's determined to keep it, so I'm taking off. Gonna fake my death and change my name, move on to a new life. It's easy for me to fake stuff. Only thing I'm good at is being fake. All I've ever been after is a good fuck, that's it in life. Other than that you were nothing to me. Just a conquest.Another notch on my bedpost. Good-bye, Jeannie."

He'd pressed his thumb against the end call button and slumped down against the wall until he was crumpled on the concrete floor of his balcony. Tears streamed out of his eyes. He hated the idea of hurting her like that but if she hated him then she wouldn't think his suicide was her fault. He couldn't let something like that hang over her head the rest of her life. Instead he'd be just another cheating asshole she was better off never knowing. He grabbed the rung of a nearby patio chair and pulled himself back onto his feet. Time to do it. All his problems would be gone.

The two-hundred thousand dollar mortgage on a condo only worth sixty, the twenty grand he owed Ernie's Used Autos, the shitty dishwasher job he was going to have to take just so he could feed his empty belly; none of that would hang over him any longer like a blade dangling on a fraying piece of string over his head. Bile erupted in his throat as he slung his foot up onto the railing. The bitter sting of bile and the dozen painkillers he'd swallowed only semi-successfully burned his tongue as he looked down at the parking lot below. The ground stretched away and then zoomed back in. Suddenly dizzy, he tumbled sideways off the chair, his head landing on a sack of potting soil.

That's what triggered the memory, he thought, coming back to the present. The smell of the musty earth in his nostrils. Voices outside still argued, louder, angrier, and even less coherent. He'd faced death before; he'd make it through this next few hours.

Later that same morning he'd lifted his head from a slimy puddle of liquor, saliva, and partially dissolved white pills he must have vomited up, and wiped his crusty lips with his sleeve. His head was pounding. Sunlight burned through his eyes straight into the back of his skull. With all his strength he rolled onto his back and stared up at the concrete ledge above. The floor of his own balcony was hard and cold on his aching body. Inches away from his hand lay his phone. What the hell had he been doing out here? He'd been unable to remember at first. He'd been so out of it even his sense of identity had escaped him. All he knew was that he was at home.

He'd then retraced what steps he could remember from the previous week like he was searching for a lost wallet and recalling each place he'd taken it out. Wednesday, all sixty employees at Hayworth Marketing and PR had been walked out, including him. Just like that the company was gone. Bankrupt. Delisted. Not a dime of severance or even their last pay checks. Payroll had already been delayed twice; all of them were owed a month's salary by that point. That afternoon had been a call from the bank. Because of the real estate crash he owed three times on his condo what it was worth in the current market. If he didn't come up with the difference in sixty days that was it. Gone. He'd have to go back to the restaurant where he'd quit mid-shift five years earlier. On his knees, begging. An old friend of Frank's owned the place, otherwise they would tell him to go to hell.

Later he was supposed to have had a date with ... Shit. Her voice floated out of a drunken haze and she'd been angry about something. His hand had then floundered over to his phone and he switched it on. Five-thirty in the morning he'd called her. No wonder she was pissed. It was half past seven in the morning now. Too early to apologise. Then Jimmy had staggered onto his feet and lurched toward the sliding glass door that was still partway open.

"Jimmy," he heard her voice whisper to him, but he'd been alone in his place that morning and it was months before he saw her again. Again he came back to the present and the shouts outside had quieted. A sliding door on the driver's side rumbled open.

Jimmy's dad climbed in behind the wheel and his friend got into the shot gun seat. "Stupid fucks," he grumbled, "I swear they get dumber every year."

Jimmy closed his eyes, the van lurching and bouncing on the road lulling him to sleep. As a baby, his mother would take him for a drive along remote desert roads when he wouldn't go down. Lying in the back of a moving vehicle stirred even remoter memories than the smell of dirt wafting around.

"Jimmy," a whispery female voice was calling.