Bad Bitch(63)
I was looking for a row of ink slingers. I found them. I walked into the first one I came to. The woman behind the counter gave me an appraising look, lingering on my swollen-shut eye. She was older, covered in tattoos, and smoking a blunt. The buzz of two, maybe three, tattoo machines carried from the rear of the shop.
“What’s doin’, sugar?”
I pulled out my wallet and tried to grasp a slip of paper I’d slid between some bills. My hands, swollen from the fight, were not cooperating.
“Let me get that for you, hon.” She removed the scrap of paper I’d been pawing at and slid my wallet back across to me. “You want this?”
“Yes.”
“How big?” She snubbed out her blunt and dropped into a drawer under the counter.
She drew out a sheet of drafting paper and grabbed a pencil from a drawer. A purple lotus blossom, still bright, covered the back of her weathered hand.
I pulled my shirt over my head and turned. “Center of my back, between my shoulder blades. Big.”
Her fingers, surprisingly nimble, were already drawing the tree out to fit the space I’d shown her. She copied Evan’s strokes so precisely that I doubted a printer could have done it better. “You want color?”
“No. Black. Just like the drawing.”
“How much time you got?” She managed to create the wizened branches perfectly, giving them the same twists and turns as Evan had.
“However much time it takes.”
“How much money you got?”
I pulled the roll of bills from my pocket. “However much it takes.”
She smiled, the first change in demeanor she’d had the whole time I’d been in her shop. “Welcome. Let’s get started.”
Chapter Fourteen
Evan
“You’re fired.” The words still felt good. Some things never changed.
“You can’t fire me. Only Mrs. Sawyer can fire me!” The angry financial adviser on the other end of the line, Richard Blackmon, wasn’t impressed. He would be as soon as the process server dropped Mrs. Sawyer’s complaint in his lap.
“Funny you should mention that. Mrs. Sawyer and her lovely son Greg are sitting in my office right now. You’re on speakerphone, by the way. Say hi, Mrs. Sawyer.”
“Hi,” the white-haired octogenarian crooned.
“Anyway, Mr. Blackmon, as I was saying, we have been in here all morning going over her account statements from your investment, 4680 Greenmont. You know, the real estate investment you set up to rebuild housing along Lake Pontchartrain after Katrina?”
Sputtering on his end of the line.
I continued. “It looks like you’ve been falsifying all of these. I called the fund manager you have listed here at the top of her paperwork. And, wouldn’t you know, there is no such fund at all. So, by my count—and don’t hold me to this—I’ve found about $132,000 or so that you’ve stolen from Mrs. Sawyer. Sound right to you?”
“You can’t—I don’t—I didn’t—”
“That’s all well and good, Mr. Blackmon, or do you go by Dick? Either way, Dick, the money is gone, and I know you have it. Now, either I will file the complaint that’s sitting on my desk, ready to go, and drag your practices out into the light of day or you will repay every cent owed, plus six percent statutory interest, to Mrs. Sawyer by this Friday. On top of that, you will pay my fee, which totals $52,800, directly to my firm, Angel & Associates. Got it?”
Silence.
“If Mrs. Sawyer and I don’t receive the funds, I will file the complaint Friday at five p.m. sharp. I will then contact the media. After that, there will not be a day when I or the media or one of the other people you screwed over won’t be calling you on the phone, knocking on your door, or waiting for you around the corner. I hope you got all that. And, just to assure you that I’m not fucking around”—I covered the receiver with my palm and mouthed “sorry” to Mrs. Sawyer for the profanity before resuming my tirade—“I’ve already drafted an e-mail to the SEC’s southeastern region head of compliance. It’s very thorough. I have it right here in front of me. All I have to do is hit send and the feds will come down on you and level your entire life.”
I smiled at Mrs. Sawyer and her son and enjoyed the look of shock on their faces. When she first rolled in on her walker with the neon yellow tennis balls on the bottoms, Mrs. Sawyer wondered if “the pretty blond lady” had any chance of recovering her money. Over the course of a few hours, I showed her and her son what this “pretty blond lady” was capable of.
I waited a few moments, maintaining the silence, letting Dick languish in the bath of his wrongdoing.