Faking It

I still don’t know how to spend it all.  Seven hundred fifty grand in counterfeit $20 bills, stuck in a single large suitcase underneath my bed.  That’s 37,500 individual slips of paper having no value at all but for the deceit they represent.  At face value, they seem easily spent, but in the modern world, crammed with plastic cards and electronic bank transfers, it’s a good deal more difficult that most might imagine.  No one buys a car with a few hundred twenty dollar bills these days—at least not without arousing unwelcome suspicion.  And that’s the last thing I need these days.

Revenge is a tough business, and competition is fierce.

To this end, I’ve enlisted the help of Henry Au downstairs.  He’s the owner of the coffee shop, the Chinese immigrant who took one look at me when I asked to rent a room upstairs and asked me if I spoke Chinese.  “Listen,” he had said in Mandarin, “you and I, we’re Chinese.  If you pay me cash, the rent goes down by half.  No taxes that way.  Better for you, good for me.  Okay?”  No problem.  I asked him if I could pay him to pay me, too.  I’d give him cash, and he’d write me a check every two weeks for helping out in the café.  Business was poor then, anyways, and he didn’t care what my reasons were.  He still doesn’t, so long as I bring in my $1500 each week so he can write me that thousand dollar check.

His bank liked the extra cash, too.  I wonder how many people in this town use false tender.  Probably everyone.

And so I have my modest, if dishonest, income, one which serves my ends.  I will have my revenge.  My father’s spirit will find peace.  I’ll end the acrid anger which eats at my humanity, my sanity.  A man will be destroyed.

Karma

Things should have ended as they were, of course.  We might never have spoken again, communicating instead through the transfer of funds between insurance companies.  I should have forgotten about her with the passage of time.


Instead, I met her father.

Pater Familias

I’m in the business of information. I broker personal power, bending it to effect change as needed for those who can afford my services. I don’t need the pecuniary gain; I merely do that which has been the family trade for centuries. We have practiced our art through two dynasties and survived the communist revolution. In the last forty years, however, we have moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong to America, disbanded and discredited by remnants of the English Empire. Such has been our fate. Karma was unkind.

I’m the only son of an only son who was the last surviving member of the Tong family. I am alone in my generation, just as my father was in his. My father was legendary in his craft. He was master of the mental push. I idolized him in my youth. I still do. So I’ve trained all my life, studying the business of information. To avenge my father’s humiliation, and that of our ancestors. The ghosts that pulse within my veins.


So it was that I met with Charlton Matthews, the man I despise most, about his job offer.

Back Bite

I was heady with ill-fated confidence when I answered her call. I recognized the number as it flashed on my caller ID.

 She was abrupt, and concise. “Who is this?”

“Jon.” I felt the need to embellish. “You know, the guy who remodeled your rear bumper yesterday.”

“Why did you call me?"

Because I wanted a date. “I just called to see if you were okay.” I paused. “Are you?”

Her voice finally softened. “Yes, thanks, I’m fine.”

I began weighing possibilities. Dinner? Too much. Coffee, perhaps. At the little bookstore under my apartment. Cozy but casual. I rallied my reserves.

She interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, listen. Thanks for calling. But I’ve got to go.


“My boyfriend’s on the other line.”

Switch Back

She was one of those rare girls who was charming only in person, much like a run-on joke which invariably ends with 'you had to be there.'  She was one of those.  Certainly she was comely.  Yet once photographed, her shapely features, like those of models found in department store catalogues, were at once pretty and forgettable.

Her recorded voice was no better.  Over the limited range of the phone, she sounded tinny and vapid.  Lost was the mellifluous will in her character.  She was a siren without song.  My immediate response to her insipid voice mail message was to hang up.  I was a sailor spelled from my trance, charting a new course towards relative safety.


Until, of course, she called me back.

Ship Shape

We met by car accident. Would-be lovers in a violent embrace. I was amused, and sat at the wheel as she scrambled out her passenger-side door. She was furious, but I found our opposition in mood magnetic.

Our true enmity had yet to be realized back then.

I had run the stop sign to catch a marked man, and had nearly overtaken him when her SUV erased the front third of my Honda. The opportunity had passed; a new, altogether different, one had arrived. It was she.

I found the tension in her curvilinear stance and savage and seductive. She stood outside my driver's side window for a time, berating me for my carelessness. I watched the acrid smoke snake upwards from the crumpled hood and was glad I hadn't used any of the other cars.

Then the cop came, and she ratted me out. I almost asked her out. Later, the officer hardly heard me, choosing instead to banter with her. I got a ticket, and my car had to be towed. I didn't care.

After all, I had her name. And number.