August 22, 2007
Debts That No Honest Man Can Pay
Written by Girth McDürchstein on August 22, 2007 6:11 PM
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Feinstein’s building is down in Venice, a few blocks from the beach, in a little pink-stucco one-story building surrounded by parking lots. I parked in one of the lots—thankfully, they’re virtually deserted on weekdays, and one of them only charges $1.50 for parking during “non-peak” hours. That’s cheaper than the meter.
His secretary, a plump girl named Sheila, sat behind her gigantic desk. She looked, as usual, haggard and mildly terrified. “Mr. McDürchstein,” she said, looking pleased to see me. “Mr. Feinstein is with a client. He’ll just be a few minutes.”
“No rush,” I muttered. I set down my duffel bag and lifted the latest issue of Militant Jugz from the overstuffed magazine rack. I browsed through it for maybe 20 minutes, stealthily playing with myself. Finally, a disheveled group of middle-aged men in suits filed out of the conference room doors. Each of them wore a frown, the color drained from their faces. They resembled the ensemble from a film by the late Ingmar Bergman. In stark contrast to their colorless complexions, I noticed flecks of red liquid dotting several faces and white shirts.
Feinstein followed them out but stopped in front of the door. “Did you bring the money?” he growled at me, taking a sip from a advertial mug declaring Feinstein to be THE GREATEST AT GETTING YOU OFF!!!
“Of course.” I nudged the duffel bag full of cash with my foot.
A greedy smile creased Herc’s face. He gestured into the conference room and said, “Please, come right in.”
As usual, the small conference room’s charming dinginess and poor lighting made it as intimate and appealing as a rest area bathroom. The automatic coffeemaker in the corner dripped and belched as it created a new pot, trying (unsuccessfully) to mask the normal stench of raw sewage and limestone wafting through the floorboards.
Not everything was typical, however. The grimy walls were covered with droplets and streaks of blood. On the conference table, the mangled corpse of a seagull lay on display. Next to it, drying blood stuck the feathers to one end of a ball-peen hammer.
“Excuse the mess,” Feinstein said as he rounded the conference table to sit at the head, his back to the window overlooking the weed-choked vacant lot behind his office, soon to be another parking lot. “I sometimes require visual aids to get my point across.”
I sat at the other end of the table, carefully setting down the duffel bag as far from the gull-guts as possible. I unzipped it, then flipped it over and dumped the cash out on the table.
“In non-sequential tens and twenties, like you asked.”
“Is it all there?” He looked like he thought he was hallucinating.
“Thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred and twenty dollars. I kicked in extra to make it an even forty,” I said. “Count it.”
“No, no.” Feinstein got up to take a closer look at the money, eyes bulging. “I trust you, Girth. I trust you.” He took one of the bundles and held it to his chest like a little girl holds her dolly.
“Hey, do you know if Lem Zisk is around anywhere? I still owe him for—”
“No, he got disbarred in ‘02. You don’t even want to know why.”
“I’m pretty sure I do,” I said, running my fingers through the tops of the bills on one bundle.
Feinstein literally started to drool, then said, “Apparently, he was using teenage Korean hookers as paralegals, which is less legal than you’d think.”
“Wow,” I said. “So, do they have like an agency or something?”
“He’d usually just go down to the docks when those slave ships—never mind.” He wrote on the face of a $10: THEY’VE GOT ME BUGGED.
Who? I mouthed.
He shrugged, then shook my hand. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“I’m sure there’ll be more to come.”
Feinstein chuckled. “I don’t doubt that.”
“I’m going to take a drive to the harbor now. You wanna come with?”
Nodding his head yes, Feinstein said, “No.”
I nodded and clapped my arm around his shoulders. “Let’s roll.”
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