Read Online Big Numbers by Jack Getze - Free Book Online

the office? What Gerry said about his money…it was bullshit?”
    “I guess Gerry wants to keep me happy until he dies.”
    Can’t blame him for that.
    “Only problem,” Kelly say s, “Gerry’s dumb-ass lawyer Federal Expressed a copy of the will to our house last week while Gerry was sleeping. I not only read it, I made a copy, had my lawyer look at it.”
    “And?”
    “And basically I’m screwed. He leaves me a hundred grand—severance pay for my domestic labors. The cocksucker. But his grown children get the money, the property, the businesses. Everything.”
    “He can’t do that in New Jersey,” I say. “It’s a community property state.”
    She faces me. “Gerry and I were never married.”
     
     
    I need Walter’s help checking out of the hospital that afternoon, but before I go, I use another patient’s cell phone to call a reporter friend of mine at the Newark Herald-Examiner . I want more information about Gerry Burns.
    I’m not sure where Kelly and I are going, or even where we are right now, but I can feel the stakes advancing. And I’m tired of being surprised with new information. This pal at the Herald knows how and where to check public records Google doesn’t know exist.
    “Think Rags hit you on purpose?” Walter says.
    I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking.”
    Walter’s wheeling me through the hospital’s huge revolving glass entrance. His four-door Mercedes is waiting just outside. I can’t wait to get “home,” start living again in my camper with my leg in a brace. I automatically rub my sore head.
    “I think you’d better start looking,” Walter says. “Rags is a whack job, and you really pissed him off with that phone-sex gag. Embarrassed him in front of everyone. You’ve been on him good for months.”
    “Really?”
    “Really. Telling you straight.”
    I slip easy into the soft leather of my friend’s new Mercedes. “Hey, Walter, when we get to Broad Street can you do me a favor and stop at that athletic goods place?”
    “Sure. You gonna buy a gun?”
    “Not a ba d idea. But I was thinking more of a football helmet.”
     
     

 
    EIGHTEEN
     
    It’s after six when Walter pulls into Shore Securities. Sunday evening, there’s three cars in the lot besides my camper; Rags’ Jaguar with the dented hood, Straight Up Vic’s Beamer wagon, and a dirty white Lincoln Mariner SUV with fishing poles clamped to a chrome rack on the roof.
    “Shit.”
    “What’s the matter?” Walter says.
    I nod toward the Mariner. “That fisherman is my client, Psycho Samson.”
    “The wrestler with two bond defaults?”
    “That’s him. He’s suing.”
    “Maybe he’s here negotiating a deal with Vic.”
    “Or maybe he’s hiding,” I say, “waiting to jump me.”
    Walter makes a fist. “So we’ll kick his ass.”
    This puts a smile on my lips. In California, skinny un-muscled guys like me and Walter accept our fate. In New Jersey, everybody acts tough. Faccia rozzo . “I did better against Rags’ Jaguar than you and I would against Psycho. Two years starting tackle at Notre Dame, ninety percent of all running plays went directly behind his block.”
    Walter makes a show out of checking the near-empty parking lot, stretching his long neck, creeping his Mercedes forward like a turtle. Takes us two or three minutes to check all sides of the Mariner and my camper.
    “Why wasn’t he an All-American, an NFL draft pick?” Walter says.
    “Drug busts, sexual assaults, and worst of all, a bad attitude with the coaches. The school tossed him his senior year. Didn’t graduate, although I don’t think he cared too much. The World Wrestling Syndicate offered him a six-figure signing bonus.”
    “Get out.”
    “He’d probably be as famous as Hulk Hogan now if he hadn’t strangled a guy in practice.”
    No sign of Psycho, and I can’t even see a place where he could hide. I mean, the man is gigantic. Maybe Walter’s right and Psycho’s inside,