Merlot (2 page)

Declan Osborne controlled a major portion of
the 900-number business in the nation; online interactive sex sites
plus a stable of outcall services. All of which provided him with a
license to print money. Money that Merlot desperately needed to
stay afloat after being turned down by every conventional lender
within two hundred miles. One year later, Osborne sat in Merlot’s
office with his trained ape Milton, reminding him the payment was
due in a week.

They stood to leave, and Merlot moved quickly
to the door babbling something about how happy he was to put their
mind at ease.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he cursed once they
departed, swinging a fist in the air to punctuate every expletive.
He wasn’t sure he could get two hundred and fifty dollars let alone
two hundred and fifty thousand in a week’s time. He had signed over
everything to them; the bar, the restaurant, the Lounge, the back
stage and dance area. They’d get it all, every square inch if he
didn’t find a way to pay. It was a simple enough equation, he just
had to find two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a quarter of a
million bucks, and fast.

* * *

He inherited the bar from his father. Not
exactly a gift, it came his way when Tony dropped dead from a heart
attack at 47. He would tell people one minute the old man was
mixing a Bloody Mary, the next thing you know he’s on the floor,
dead. Tony DiMento dropped dead on a Tuesday and Merlot was running
the business the following Friday night, at the tender age of
twenty-two.

Over the past fifteen years he had built the
place up to be a destination on everyone’s night out, live music,
food, drinks. But building things up didn’t just take time, it took
money and Merlot was forced to borrow two hundred and fifty
thousand.

* * *

Driving out to play cards, he was thinking
that if he broke two hundred and fifty thousand down into smaller
pieces it sounded a lot better. Stop thinking of it as a
quarter-of-a-million-dollar lump sum. One piece for each of the
remaining days before payment was due. That was just twenty-six
thousand, six hundred dollars plus change that he had to come up
with each and every day. Which didn’t seem to help much.

“Merlot! Right on time, buddy. Get your sorry
ass in here. I got the AC cranked.” Wiener opened the door, handed
him a cold beer and slapped him on the back.

His real name was Stan, actually Stanislaus,
Stanislaus Ostrowski. But then what kind of a kid went through life
with a name like Stanislaus. They started calling him Wiener back
in grammar school.

“Merlot,” chorused three guys in unison
clustered around a poker table.

“Rest of the beer’s in the fridge, help
yourself,” Wiener said.

The room lacked a definite feminine touch,
unless you counted the large painting of a naked brunette as
somehow feminine.

An hour latter Stevie was shuffling
cards.

“You know Wiener, you and Merlot, you come
and go as you want. You got a refrigerator full of beer. I mean,
look at this joint. You think any self-respecting woman would put
up with this for even a minute?”

Where Stevie wasn’t bald, his salt-and-pepper
hair and beard were close cropped. His abnormally round head, about
the size of a basketball, sported brown eyes resting on either side
of a nose more cosmetic than functional. He weighed in at about
three hundred and fifty pounds and sold hygiene products to
drugstore chains for a conglomerate no one had ever heard of.

“What are you talking about? Women like guys
to be honest, and this says…”

“Face it man, you’re what we call in the
legal biz a bum,” said Victor, the only black in the group; he
hated the term African American. At thirty-six he was also one of
the youngest and best litigators in the state of Minnesota.

“You guys kidding? That’s a fifty-two-inch
screen, who wouldn’t dig that?” Merlot argued.

“Look guys, this is my really busy week, it’s
the State Fair for Gods sake, so can we get on with the game here?
We’re here to play cards, so let’s get down to business. I can’t be
out late tonight,” Dickie said.

“Pretty tough talk coming from a banker,”
Merlot said.

On the short drive into work Merlot attempted
to rationalize the hundred and fifty bucks he had lost the night
before, convincing himself it didn’t really seem so bad if he broke
it down into nine pieces and just added another fifteen plus bucks
to his daily total of twenty-six thousand six hundred dollars.

He had a vague recollection of an old
girlfriend hanging up on him twice sometime after 1:30 last night.
It had seemed like the thing to do at the time; call her, apologize
for his behavior the last time they had been together. Then tell
her he felt like talking, wondering if he could stop over. When he
called back suggesting he’d been cut off she hung up a second
time.

He’d already received a couple of calls from
work on his cell, but figured since he was only a few blocks away,
it could wait ten more minutes while he swung into the coffee shop
for his morning latte and doughnut.

“Hi Chrissie, I’ll have a double latte and
one of those French doughnuts,” he said to the sinful looking
blonde behind the counter.

“The bagel would be better for you, honey,
lot less cholesterol”.

“Two French doughnuts,” he said.

“Here, maybe stop in and see me tonight or
some other night,” he quickly added, handing her his business card,
again.

“I’ll buy and we can see where things go from
there.”

“Gee, thanks Merlot. I don’t know, can you be
trusted?”

“No, that’s part of the deal.”

“Hmm-mmm sounds fun, we’ll have to see,” she
called after him, then tossed his card in the trash as he climbed
into his car.

* * *

“Merlot? Didn’t you get my calls?” Patti
whined at him as soon as he entered the bar.

“Look, Patti,” he started with a mouthful of
French doughnut, washed it down with a swallow of latte to buy
time.

“I don’t know exactly how to tell you this,
but your kids…”

“My kids! Oh God, Merlot, is that why you’ve
been giving me the cold shoulder for four damn months? Don’t be
stupid. My kids? I don’t want someone like you around my kids. No
offense, but they’re really impressionable. No, believe me.
Actually, I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon and I’m
going to have to leave about thirty minutes early. I just wanted to
let you know.”

“No problem. Thanks for the heads up.”
Thinking doctor’s, he quickly counted back the time that had passed
since their weekend together, concluded no, it couldn’t possibly be
him. Could it?

* * *

At no surprise Merlot was obsessing about
Osborne and his loan. Christ, he’d have to rob a bank…

He recalled bits of a drunken conversation
last night during the card game.

“Ahh, man, sorry guys, I gotta run,” Dickie
had said, raking in his winnings.

Dickie’s name was really Hans. Hans
Ulmbacher, about as German as it gets. Five feet seven inches tall,
blonde hair, blue eyes, and close to five feet seven inches wide,
weighing in at just about three bills. It was why they called him
Dickie, it meant fatty in German.

Dickie was an IT guy for a bank, complaining
about work.

“Look, fellas, I’m really bushed. I told ya,
this is State Fair week. One of our branches handles all the cash
from the fairgrounds. I mean this little dinky branch, they do zip
the rest of the year. But during the fair they’ve got the cash
literally stuffed into trash bags. The courier guys go nuts. We
bring in a half dozen extra counting machines just to handle the
shit. Then get it processed enough so they can haul it to Central
where it’s a hell of a lot safer.”

“Amazing we’ve never been hit. They literally
have the bills stuffed into trash bags. Wheel it out in a shopping
cart to the armored car. All this cash, sticky from cotton candy
and smelling like pronto pups. God, you’d think you were walking
through the Midway.”

“Should you be telling us this?” Victor
asked.

“Yeah, like you guys would tell anyone.”
Dickie snorted.

* * *

“Hans Ulmbacher, please,” Merlot said into
the phone.

“Merlot!” Dickie answered two minutes later.
“Sorry to make you wait. What can I do for you? Don’t need a loan,
do ya?”

Merlot was quiet for a long moment.

“Dickey, you got time to stop in on the way
home? I got a couple of things I wanted to run past you.”

“I could. It might be a little late. Maybe
eight, everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine, just looking at a couple of
different systems here and wanted your input.”

“Not a problem, my fee is dinner, in
advance.”

“Perfect, we got a great prime rib. We’ll go
back into the kitchen, you can pick the one you want. No rush, just
ask for me at the bar.”

“Now you’re talking, man!”

Step one taken care of. He had enough time to
run over and see the physical layout of the bank branch. Maybe
begin formulating some sort of basic plan. Look around without
being too obvious.

Note to self he thought pulling out of his
parking place. I’ll need a set of disposable, untraceable, wheels
for a get away vehicle.

* * *

The staccato, synthesized beat blaring across
the mirrored stage and the naked redhead on the brass pole were
lost on Milton as he helped himself to the early bird breakfast
buffet. From 6:30 to 11:00 in the morning, the Beaver Hut served a
Brunch and Buns special featuring scrambled eggs, bacon and ten
different strippers. Milton took his usual place at the bar and
ignored the naked woman stuffing dollar bills into her garter.

Brunch and Buns had been Osborne’s clever
idea, skirting the law by offering only non-alcoholic fresh juice
drinks before 11:00.

A naked woman stepped on stage. A large
rattle snake tattoo emerged from her backside, coiled seductively
around her waist before barred fangs poised to strike a surgically
enhanced right breast.

Mary Alice Mahoney, dancing under the stage
name Serpentina, had attempted to create an element of mystique
when she got her tattoo two years ago. Unfortunately, her thought
process had been somewhat clouded by three days of tequila shots
and cocaine at a Las Vegas golf cart convention. Her sponsors, a
bunch of sales guys from Coral Gables, were pushing the idea of
charging a hundred bucks to chip a plastic golf ball off her
breasts. She fled Vegas that night.

Her post Brunch and Buns duties consisted of
getting things for Osborne; the mail, the phone, his chair, a pen,
anything and everything he wanted, all the while decked out in a
starched white nurse’s uniform and surgical latex gloves.
Everything that might come in contact with him was slathered with a
liberal dose of hospital disinfectant.

A promising nursing student until her
fondness for Darvon and nitrous oxide had been discovered. When she
wasn’t dispensing disinfectant or getting the mail, she monitored
Osborne’s pulse, temperature, and blood pressure. She issued
various pills throughout the day for his contrived ailments and, in
general, helped to feed his neurotic hypochondria.

She ignored furtive looks from the other
girls in the dressing room, kicked off her sliver stiletto heels,
pulled the plastic bag off a freshly starched nurses uniform,
pinned her hat in place, ready for another germ-free day with
Declan Osborne.

* * *

“Good morning, come in my dear,” Osborne
anxiously beckoned a few minutes later. He sat behind an expansive
polished mahogany desk and rolled up his sleeve for the
blood-pressure cuff.

She was forced to take very small steps due
to her uniform being two sizes too small. This was probably just as
well, since Osborne had her wearing white stiletto heels, and she
hadn’t seen her feet since her breast augmentation.

“Let’s get the day’s preliminaries over with,
shall we?” he said, then opened his mouth for the digital
thermometer. After taking his blood pressure and checking his pulse
with a stopwatch she quickly misted the phone and desk area with
disinfectant.

“And begin,” he instructed, shutting down his
computer, signaling the all clear for her to cleanse his
keyboard.

Finished, she quickly reached under his desk
and rebooted his computer while he sat in his office chair, arms
outstretched, palms upward, not unlike a surgeon awaiting the
proper instrument, one eye on the digital clock to ensure she
completed her appointed tasks within his prescribed time frame.

“Excellent, excellent girl,” never once did he ever
call her by name. “Now on your way out there are four dozen jelly
doughnuts I picked up late yesterday. Please bring them up to the
Fat Farm and then return.” He turned back to his computer and began
typing frantically.

The Fat Farm was located up on the third
floor of the building and consisted of cubicle upon cubicle of
women responding to 900 number calls. Each woman was armed with a
head set, a sexy voice, and all day to keep the caller on the line.
Working as independent contractors, they were paid a commission
from the $4.95 per minute fee advertised on late night cable. This
was different from the Internet sites, located up on the fourth and
fifth floor and billed at $14-$39 per minute, depending. Next to
the school system, Declan Osborne was the largest female employer
in the state.

* * *

Note to self, Merlot thought, sitting in
traffic having not really moved more than thirty feet in the past
ten minutes: when planning the robbery allow for traffic
conditions. Eventually he was able see the bank up ahead, a low red
brick building sporting weathered cedar trim.

It took him another ten minutes to inch his
way to the bank, park on the street, and wait in line at one of the
teller windows. Dickey had been right, the place was jammed. Lines
of customers holding two and three business deposit bags stuffed to
over flowing. There was one guy with a shopping bag full of
cash.