Feelers by Brian M Wiprud Read Free Book Online Page B

boulevard and walked in. Not a very upscale place, just rows of desks, bulletin boards full of listings, files stacked atop filing cabinets. The place was a disaster, and how they managed to keep their properties straight I could never imagine. All the agents were out except Mary.
    “Mary—how are you today!” I approached the woman at the desk in the rear. She looked over her reading glasses at me.
    “Ooo. Morty. Good. How did it go?” She struggled to her feet. Regrettably, Mary was not a small woman, and gravity was taking its toll on her knees. I tried not to look at her legs beneath her shorts—fat hung down on them, and they were dimpled and veiny and generally made one consider giving up eating meat. Lord knew what the rest of her looked like under the T-shirt, and let the Lord be the only one. An elaborate eyeglass chain hung around her neck, and she let her glasses fall to her waist, right about where her breasts ended.
    “It went well.”
    “So I hear,” she said, gasping from the exertion of just standing. Her sweaty eyes beheld me mischievously from under her bushy eyebrows.
    I had hoped that maybe, just maybe, the rumors had not reached her. Why? Because it was also my custom to “tip” her if I found tight ones. As a businessman, I have to grease the wheels of industry to make them turn in my favor. So I was ready.
    “There was some extra.” She took the envelope from my hand and peered inside at the cash bonus—ten one-hundred-dollar bills—and ten percent check covering her cut.
    Mary grunted with satisfaction. “Nice.”
    “But not as nice as rumor may have it. At Oscar’s last night they told me I had scored a hundred tight ones. Crazy. The workers got drunk after I paid them and they exaggerated. You know how it is.”
    She smirked. “So how many were there?”
    I put a hand on her shoulder and laughed softly. “How long have we been friends?”
    Chuckling, she said, “Long enough to know you’d never tell me the truth, were it one or fifty. Was it fifty?”
    I put a hand on my heart. “I can honestly say it was not fifty.”
    “More?”
    “Or less.” I shrugged. “I have profited, and you have profited, yes?”
    “
Yes
.” Waddling back to her desk, she heaved into her poor chair, unlocked a desk drawer, and placed a strongbox on the desk. From a string around her neck she took a key that had been nestled in her bosom and unlocked the box. Flipping through a pile of paper, she found a check and handed it up to me. Then she dropped the envelope I gave her into the box and returned it to the drawer.
    I glanced at the check for accuracy, folded it, and slid it into my wallet.
    “Look, Morty, youse better be careful.” Her look was ominous, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she did not feel well or it was genuine concern.
    I merely cocked an eyebrow, awaiting an explanation.
    “If youse found the mother lode, the Prick’ll be after you, know what I mean? I hear he’s got his panties in a twist over this.”
    “Do I begrudge him when he finds good fortune? Besides, what is he really going to do?”
    “You don’t have it in your apartment, do you?”
    “I never keep accounts anyplace but in the bank or somewhere safe. Not good business.”
    “Because I’ll bet he’s going to toss your place.”
    “Mary, I am counting on him doing just that. I didn’t fasten the top lock before I left to make it easier for the Balkan Boys to get in. There’s nothing there for them to find. And when they do not find what they are looking for, what will they do? Capture and torture me, try to make me talk? Pete is a prick, to be sure, but I really do not think he would go that far. Do you?”
    “So you did find the mother lode.”
    “Mary, my friend, it does not matter if I did or did not. What matters is that there is a rumor that I did. They will believe the rumor—not me. So what can I do? I can let them look.”
    “And your car?”
    “Nothing there, either. I will leave it