The Jackpot Read online

  He was an equal-opportunity con man.

  * * *

  Todd waltzed into Carter's office without knocking, even though the door was closed. He carried two bags of Chinese takeout and recommended that they make it a working dinner. Once they got the plates set up, Carter dipped a chunk of battered chicken into the neon-red sweet-and-sour sauce and popped the bite into his mouth. He noticed Todd staring at him, Todd's forkful of sesame chicken suspended midway between his plate and his mouth.

  "How'd they make the sauce that color?" asked Todd.

  "How am I supposed to know?" replied Carter, his mouth full.

  "I mean, look at that shit. It's almost glowing."

  "It tastes good," Carter said. "Shut up."

  "I mean, that can't be good for you."

  "Just leave me alone."

  "I'm just saying is all. It looks radioactive."

  "Can we get back to work?"

  "Right, right," said Todd. He got up from the couch, dumped the remnants of his dinner into Carter's trash can, and lit a cigarette.

  "How many times I gotta tell you, that makes my eyes burn," Carter said.

  "I could give a witch's fuck." He blew smoke rings into the air.

  The smoke made Carter's head throb, and his eyes watered. He had never met anyone like Todd Preston Matheson. The first time they met, Todd asked Carter how he liked "poking Ashley." Todd laughed like a jackal when Carter replied, surprising even himself, that he liked it "fine." Todd had given him a wink and smacked him on his buttocks. It was the most uncomfortable conversation Carter had ever had.

  Todd always treated Carter well, which Carter attributed to the fact the he and Ashley had given Todd free use of both the beach cottage and the condo in Park City. As hard as Carter worked, Todd spent more time in each than his brother-in-law.

  Carter had not wanted to seek out Todd's help, but the more he thought about what he was doing, the less confident he felt in his abilities to pull it off. He came to this conclusion even though it was going to cost him dearly. He envisioned one scenario after another, all of which ended with Julius blowing his brains out with a Glock or whatever it was these hoodlums used these days, and justifiably so. Oh, Carter fancied himself a fiery litigator, but dealing with a street thug like Julius was as foreign to him as wrestling a cobra. It wasn't like presenting a breach of contract case to a mediator.

  Not surprisingly, Todd had been incredibly anxious to assist his Carter in this venture. Carter agreed to cut him in for $50 million in exchange for successfully extracting the ticket from Julius' clutches. Todd told him to relax, that he would take care of everything. Nothing would be left to chance, and no one would get hurt.

  "Fine," Carter said, deciding the cigarette wasn't worth arguing about. "I hope you get lung cancer."

  "I'm sure as fuck gonna outlive you."

  Todd smoked in silence while Carter finished off his sweet-and-sour chicken.

  "So, where is this nigger?" he asked, putting out his cigarette on the side of Carter's desk. Racial sensitivity was not Todd Matheson's strong suit.

  "He's in the partners' lounge watching television."

  "Watching Soul Train?" He laughed at his joke. "And the little hottie?"

  "Samantha?"

  "Yeah, the Syrian chick."

  "She's Lebanese."

  "Whatever. She gonna be a problem?"

  "I'm cutting her in for a few million," Carter said. "She needs the money."

  "A few million? Jesus! Why don't you just give her all of it?" He took a long drag from his cigarette. "Pussy."

  "It's gotta be enough to convince her to do it," Carter said. "Keep her quiet."

  "Fine."

  "You're gonna walk away with more out of this deal than you'll ever need," Carter said. "Stop bitching."

  Todd was quiet. Carter was pleased that he'd been able to shut Todd up, even though this sudden burst of silence had nothing to do with Carter's ability to control the man. Carter knew that Todd's imagination had gotten away from him, as it had done a few times since Carter explained what precisely he needed his help for. He was probably thinking of hosting a threesome on his new yacht.

  "You still with me?" Carter asked after the silence had gotten uncomfortable.

  "I'm gonna get so much ass," Todd said.

  Carter noticed a pup tent in Todd's pants, and he looked away, horrified.

  "So what's your plan?" Carter asked.

  Todd clapped his hands together and scooted forward on the loveseat.

  "It's perfect. We tell him I'm firm security," he said. "You and I are going to escort him out to an undisclosed location for his own safety. Keep him there until we – I mean, he – can cash the ticket next week."

  Carter nodded.

  "How big is this dude?" Todd asked.

  "About six feet, I guess. Shorter than you," Carter said. Another thing in their favor was that Todd was a beast of a man. He was six-four and tipped the scales at a robust two-seventy. And Carter knew he wasn't afraid to use it.

  "He shouldn't be a problem," Todd said. "You know the shit I learned in the slammer?"

  "Yeah, you've mentioned it once or twice."

  "Don't get smart with me," Todd said. "I'm the reason you're gonna end up with this ticket."

  Carter was careful not to underestimate his new client, but he was confident that together, he and Todd possessed a significant physical advantage over Julius.

  "How old?"

  "I dunno. Forty?"

  "Probably done time," Todd said. "Got to expect a fight."

  This made Carter nervous. Anything could go wrong. Money made people do crazy shit. Then he thought about Blinky and his blowtorch. In his mind, he could hear the tongue of flame hissing, angrily looking for something to consume. He wondered where Blinky would start. His eyelids? His toes? Probably something small, leave something to work with later. Carter Pierce pictured his nuts being turned to charcoal, and he felt his stomach turn to liquid.

  "I'll be right back," he said suddenly, leaping for the door. "The food didn't sit well."

  "I told you. The fucking sauce."

  "Fine! It was the sauce!" he said, stomping out in search of the nearest bathroom.

  When Carter got back to his office, he found Todd looking at porn on the web. Todd made no attempt to close the web browser, cover his tracks.

  "God, I love the Internet," Todd remarked. "Imagine if they'd had this when we were fifteen. I don't know how any teenage boy leaves the house."

  "I guess. Are we all set?"

  "Yeah," Todd said.

  "So what's the plan?"

  "We get him to the cabin."

  "Yeah, I got that part," Carter said. "It was my idea."

  "Then we jump him."

  Carter was flabbergasted.

  "Jump him? What the hell do you mean, 'jump him'?"

  "Relax, baby. It's all taken care of."

  Todd lifted up his shirt, revealing the butt of a chrome-plated pistol tucked into his waistband.

  "Oh, Jesus," Carter said, stepping back as if Todd had pulled the gun on him.

  "He gives us the ticket, and we call the police on him, tell them he was breaking in," he said. He added: "Why does this have to be complicated? It's my house. We'll tell them he was in the office one evening we were talking about my being out of town. Look, if we even mention getting the ticket away from him, he's going to think something's up. Tomorrow, notify his company that you saw him stealing change from people's offices. Have Ashley call and pretend to be your paralegal. Take the family to Cancun for a week. When you get back, we cash in the ticket."

  Carter nodded his head. That's right. It didn't need to be complicated. Just pin Julius in a corner he would never get out of, and then destroy his credibility. No one would ever believe his claim to the ticket.

  "Where's Samantha?" Todd asked.

  "She took off after she met with him about what he wants to do with the money."

  "Good," Todd said. "Also, we nee
d to get all the notes she took from her office. Don't let her know what we're doing. Don't let her anywhere near the guy. When the time comes, we'll cut her in."

  "What if she doesn't go for it?"

  "By then, it will be too late," he said. "When you cash the ticket, no one else will have a legitimate claim to it. If she causes trouble, I don't know, we'll make it look like they were in on it together."

  "But they don't even know each other."

  "Come on, Carter. You ever heard of a little jungle fever?" Todd said. He stood up and thrust his hips back and forth in a sexually suggestive manner. "She works late, he works late, a few sparks fly, you win the lottery, and they come up with a plan to defraud the legitimate winner of this historic jackpot."

  "Looks like we're all set."

  "Get our boy in here," Todd said. "Try not to eff it up."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Friday, December 21

  9:23 p.m.

  Samantha's head was pounding when she pulled up to her parents' house in Glen Allen, an older suburb just north of Richmond. The sky was a sickly orange, the thick cloud cover reflecting the city lights, and the snow was coming down steadily. The driveway was full, so she parked on the grassy strip alongside the drainage culvert that fronted her parents' property. The house sat at the top of a small cul-de-sac, surrounded by seven other almost identical ranchers. Her parents had lived in this small three-bedroom ranch for thirty-five years. It was where Samantha had grown up with her younger sisters, Mariam and Emily, and her brother Ziad. Both sisters were married with kids, even though they were younger than her, her mother liked to remind her roughly once every half hour.

  Samantha didn't make it out here often anymore, about two or three times a month. She liked to tell herself (and her parents) that it was because of the heavy sacrifice the firm demanded. The truth was that sitting out in her comfortable Audi, as she often did before going inside, looking at the clapboard structure with the peeling paint made her stomach clench with guilt. Guilt about her parents' sacrifices, guilt about her relationship with them, guilt about her failure to have her own family, guilt about the family she still had in Lebanon, guilt about not feeling guilty enough. And some general non-specific guilt to cover anything she might have missed.

  She lit and took a few drags from a cigarette she found in the center console, chasing the smoke with two pieces of gum. When she was confident that her mother would either miss or politely ignore the aromatic residue left behind by Samantha's secret vice, she gave herself a quick once-over in the rearview mirror and got out of the car. As she made her way up the cracked and snow-glazed sidewalk, she glanced over at the driveway, trying to get a sense of who was here tonight. Her sisters and their children, of course, because they never missed Friday dinner at home. They were both married to doctors, both of whom were working tonight. Her sisters were both stay-at-home moms. This, she knew, pleased her mother Zaina, who despite all her pronouncements about the importance of education, seemed to be at peace with the fact that both her younger daughters had graduate degrees and no jobs.

  The cherry-red Miata belonged to her maternal uncle Tamir, who owned the all-important title of FAVORITE UNCLE. He was the one who never judged her, never treated her like a child, always supported any decision that she made, and if it backfired on her, never said, "I told you so."

  A black Jeep Wrangler announced the presence of her dad's first cousin, Hisham. He owned a struggling Mediterranean restaurant and drank a little too much. She could tell how poorly the restaurant was doing in a given month based on how tipsy he was at the family dinners. When he got really loaded, he became what Samantha liked to call 'grabby' with any female in his crosshairs.

  The din was audible from the front porch. Even from here, she could hear Hisham rambling on about something or other. The playful squeals of her three nieces and lone nephew broke up the important grown-up talk that would only get angrier as the evening wore on.

  She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  * * *

  The aroma of kibbe baking in her mother's oven filled the house, and even though she felt like dog poo stuck between the treads of a running shoe, Samantha's mouth watered. She hadn't had lunch, and smelling the kibbe now just about made her knees buckle. She loved the traditional Lebanese dish, which consisted of seasoned ground beef layered in a casserole dish and stuffed with sautéed onions, pine nuts and spices.

  Samantha found her mother alone in the small kitchen, squeezing two lemons into a giant glass bowl of tabouli, a salad common throughout the Middle East. Like Samantha, Zaina Khouri was a small, slender woman with olive skin. She had lived in the U.S. since she and Omar, Samantha's dad, had immigrated here forty years earlier. The kitchen was not much bigger than a walk-in closet, but it had produced about ninety-five percent of the meals that Samantha had eaten between the time she was born and when she left for college.

  "Hi, Mama," Samantha said. She squeezed her mother on the shoulder. "Not too much bulghur in that."

  "Don't you worry about that," Zaina said in broken English. "How ya doin', honey? You late."

  "I had to work," Samantha said. "And I've got a cold."

  "You supposed to be here two hours ago."

  "Mama, come on," Samantha said, absently checking her Blackberry. No new messages. She set the mobile phone down on the kitchen counter.

  Over the years, Samantha had learned that while the Lebanese possessed a number of stellar attributes, her ancestral people simply did not start anything on time. Dinner guests were invited at six with the full expectation that no one would be there before seven and dinner might hit the table at eight. It was just expected.

  "Don't 'Mama, come on' me," Zaina said, wagging an angry finger at her. "You late. We have special company tonight."

  "So was everyone else," Samantha said. "What special company are you talking about? Who else is here?"

  Zaina ignored her and went back to working on the tabouli. Samantha cracked open the oven door for a peek at the kibbe.

  "Get out of there," Zaina said. "It needs another few minutes."

  "Then I'm not late for dinner."

  "You hush," she said. Zaina placed her hand on the small of Samantha's back and gently pushed her out of the kitchen. "Go say hi to your sisters. Go."

  * * *

  After Samantha slipped out of the kitchen, the elderly woman noticed her daughter's mobile phone resting on the counter. A red light was blinking angrily, and the words LOW BATTERY flashed across the screen. She slipped it into her pocket and made a mental note to remind Samantha about the battery at dinner. Part of her wanted to smash the thing into a thousand pieces, but then she'd never hear the end of it from Sam.

  * * *

  Samantha headed down the short hallway, where she found her niece Lena playing with two Bratz dolls. Lena, one of Emily's two daughters, was the quietest of her nieces and Samantha's favorite, although she wouldn't admit it to her sisters. The others were loud and spoiled and didn't listen to anyone.

  "Hi, Auntie Sam," Lena said. "Do you like my dolls?"

  Samantha's heart broke.

  "Yes, baby, I like them very much."

  Mindful of her developing head cold, Samantha passed on kissing her niece. Instead, she knelt down and pinched Lena's side playfully, which made the little girl squeal with delight, and then continued down the hall.

  The hallway opened up on a large family room, where Samantha found the rest of her family in a state of chaos normally reserved for a nuclear power plant control room during a reactor meltdown. Her two other nieces were arguing over a portable Playstation game. Her sisters were sitting on the far edge of the faded sectional couch, probably talking about their older sister behind her back.

  Hisham was delivering one of his soliloquies about American politics to her dad and Tamir, who rarely ever got a word in edgewise. A fourth man that Samantha did not recognize was sitting next to her dad. He was younger than the other men, closer to her own age tha
n to theirs. His dark hair and hairy arms, like orangutan hairy, betrayed his Middle Eastern ancestry. She shook her head. This was the 'special company' her mother had mentioned. She should have picked up on it right away. Special company meant that her mother had found yet another single man that she hoped Samantha would just hit it off with. Then she could get married, have babies and make hummus for the rest of her life.

  "The American government never gonna want peace," Hisham was saying, pounding his right fist into the palm of his left hand. "War is good for American business. War lets America keep the military in the Middle East, where they keep their eye on what? The oil. All about the oil, this country."

  "Hi, everyone," Samantha said.

  Her dad, Omar, jumped off the sofa like he'd been fired from a slingshot, happy to see his daughter but also thrilled to get away from his cousin, permanently afflicted with diarrhea of the mouth. Omar bear-hugged his daughter and, despite her warning that she had a cold, planted kisses on each of her cheeks. She hugged him tightly.

  "Hi, Papa," she said.

  The other men all stood, and she shook hands with each of them. She deliberately took an angle that made it difficult for Hisham to plant one on her, not that he didn't try, even in her condition. Last, she shook hands with Mr. Special Company. He was wearing medical scrubs and he reeked of cologne. Ah. A doctor. Her mother couldn't have hammered home the point any more clearly had she faked a heart attack and awaited Mr. Special Company's delivery of CPR.