Bad Pennies Chapter 18
Hello. Jack here with a quick scheduling note. We are back on schedule with new chapters of Bad Pennies coming out every Friday.
Also, just to get everyone back up to speed, I’m going to begin including a ‘Previously In Bad Pennies section. Please DO NOT READ the Previously In Bad Pennies section if you want to avoid SPOILERS of the Bad Pennies story so far.
Thank you to each one of you for opening this email and joining me on this journey. So much of these first chapters have been setting things up. The rest of the story is pretty much just knocking things down and that’s always exciting. I hope you’re enjoying reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
- Jack
Previously In Bad Pennies
A couple years ago former lovers JOSH and PAUL robbed Paul’s process server employer, COOPER of almost $300,000. Josh wanted the two of them to run off together. Paul refused, thinking it too dangerous. They then went their separate ways.
Now, Paul gets caught up in a drug raid thanks to his roommate BYRON. His arrest and the police’s discovery of some of the stolen money results in Paul being interrogated by Detective PANDEY. Paul works for a bail bonds company called Second Chance Bail. One of his coworkers is a Polynesian man named DANO.
Paul has Dano track down Josh who is living in a new Condo in Tacoma and driving a fully restored 1965 Galaxie. Paul grabs the rest of the stolen money he had stashed and tells Josh he wants to take him up on his offer to run away together. But over the last couple years Josh, who has been spending most of his stolen money, has a new girlfriend named ERICA who happens to be pregnant. Josh turns Paul down. Paul decides to leave on his own, but then his car won’t start. Dano sends his Tesla to pick up Paul, but he’s far from happy with him.
Dano sat at the Stack Tavern and drank. He’d missed the 5pm check-in meeting at Second Chance Bail back in Olympia. That was three hours ago. He remained in Tacoma. His recent conversation with Cooper and his earlier conversation with Byron stayed with him.
Dano felt that he could size someone up in a few seconds. Liar. Thief. Cheat. Boy Scout. Slut. Hustler. And yet, he’d spent most weekends of the last year and far too many weeknights drinking with Paul who he had decided almost immediately was an overachieving queer. Turns out he’s a thief sitting on a ton of money. It wasn’t that Paul had lied to him. It was the fact that Paul had been lying to him all this time and Dano didn’t know it.
He downed another shot, followed it with a final swig of of a pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and motioned the bartender for another. He’d pieced together that Paul and Josh had robbed Cooper of at least tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe more. Dano had no interest in bringing Paul and Josh to justice. But stealing stolen money seemed like a moral double negative to Dano. Selling information to Cooper was just one possible revenue stream. Maybe he could get Josh to pay him to keep Cooper away. Maybe he could do the same with Paul. True, Paul was a friend, but money was money.
Blackmail, threats, betrayal. All this shit made Dano want to drink and so here he was.
The bartender poured him another shot. He was a tough looking sparkplug of a man named Mike. He had tiger stripe tattoo sleeves on both arms. Dano liked him right away. Although the fact that he let Dano run a tab for months on end didn’t hurt Dano’s affection for the man.
“A woman?” Mike inquired.
“You a pimp now?” Dano said half-smirking.
“The fuck you say?” Mike responded, offended.
“Asking me if I want a woman…”
“No,” Mike chuckled. “I was just asking if a woman is the source of your troubles.”
“You ever sure about someone and find out you’re wrong. And you were wrong the whole time?”
“Yeah. Hurricane Theresa.”
Dano gave Mike a confused look.
“Wife number two. She told me her ex died in the Gulf War. Motherfucker worked at Costco and was very much alive. He and her two kids in Portland wondered where she’d wandered off to. She told me her kids died in a car accident. She’s the reason I’ve yet to have wife number three. Betrayal sucks, man.”
Dano raised his glass in salute to Mike’s story and drank it slamming the shot back on the bar. Mike went back to his work.
Dano sat. He traced a finger along the rim of the shot glass trying to see all the angles. He was smart, but he felt like if he were just a little smarter he’d know the best course of action. He didn’t have a plan exactly, but he could navigate this.
First thing’s first though. Dano pulled out his phone and pulled up the Tesla app. It was time to deal with Paul.
Paul’s second experience in Dano’s Tesla using self-driving mode was even more disturbing than the first. With Dano in the backseat last time there was some deeply held belief that Dano wouldn’t intentionally get them both killed by telling the car to do something stupid. But here he was sitting in the passenger seat next to two cinder blocks heading toward Point Defiance.
If he took the cinder blocks off the driver’s seat it’d probably stop. Obviously, Dano wasn’t using his vehicle in Elon-approved ways. He had called for Dano’s help. Why stop trusting him now? Not that he really trusted Dano. Hell, he didn’t know who he could trust at this point.
Where was the car taking him? Paul had so many questions. He’d been spinning since that raid at Byron’s and he had yet to fully regain his bearings. He gets arrested. He grabs the money he had stashed from his lawyer. He’s ready to run off with Josh. Josh turns him down. His car won’t start. Now he was hurtling to an unknown destination carrying a bag that had enough cash to buy two of these cars. Instead of feeling protected, he felt incredibly vulnerable.
Paul’s breathing quickened. Maybe he should move the cinder blocks and just get the fuck out of here. Give the first guy he sees $10,000 cash for a ride to California and invent a new life from there. That was a possibility, right?
Until Cooper finds that guy and makes him tell you where he dropped you off. He wanted a solution that brought Josh to him and kept Cooper away forever. Maybe Dano had an answer to that. But if he did, Paul knew it was going to cost him.
Dano watched Paul walk in carrying this duffel bag like a security blanket. That told Dano it must be important. Hell, the fact he didn’t leave it with his car told him that much.
“I’d buy you a drink,” Dano said. “But from what I hear, you don’t need me to.”
Paul seemed to take this in stride. He sat down on a barstool next to Dano as Mike put another shot and a beer in front of Dano, clearing away the empties. Paul kept the shoulder strap of the duffel bag across him. Paul ordered a fucking Manhattan. Because of course he did. Why not get fancy drinks now that Dano knew he was loaded?
“That bag what I think it is?” Dano asked nodding toward the bag.
“I wanted to see you before I took off,” Paul said, ignoring the question.
“Why? To rub my nose in it?”
“Dano, I’ve had a hell of a couple days, so just get to the fucking point.”
The smugness of this guy. Dano resisted the urge to hit him. Money before violence. That’s about as close as Dano got to a personal belief system. So he tempered his anger.
“You been lying to me pal,” Dano said. “I thought I knew you, but I guess I didn’t.”
Dano pick up the shot from the bar.
“What are you talking about?”
Dano put the shot down without drinking. He took a deep breath. His temper was getting the better of him.
“Ever since your broke ass walked into Second Chance I’ve been carrying your ass. Buying you drinks, lunches, even giving you gas money. And the whole time you could have just reached into your Bag ‘O Plenty. You’re a real piece of work, my friend.” Dano bit out that last word.
Paul stared at him with a blank face. If he was trying to be intimidating, it didn’t work. Dano let the silence remain between them. The conversation was getting away from him. Pissing off the guy with the bag full of money wasn’t the best strategy, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Stop me if I’m wrong,” Paul said. “But since when does any of this have a damn thing to do with you? I could be a serial killer, but as long as I don’t kill someone you know, what the fuck do you care?”
Dano downed his shot of cheap whiskey and let himself feel the burn.
“I care because you lied to me. You played the poor man. When you were short, which was way too often, I paid your way. You owe me.”
Mike returned with Paul’s Manhattan. Paul thanked Mike for it, then picked it up, sniffed it, then took a small sip. In the middle of an argument in a dive bar he’s sniffing at his drink. This guy. Paul put the glass down, and having finished whatever drinking ritual he was about, returned his attention to Dano.
“I owe you? I never forced you to spend a dime on me. But tell you what,” Paul motioned for Mike. “Hey, put Dano’s tab on mine and cash me out.”
Mike laughed at this.
“Okay,” Mike said. “You know we got financing, right? I can get you a loan application.”
“I’m serious. I’ll pay it right now.”
Paul pulled out a thick wad of bills from a coat pocket. Mike went to the register and came back with a bill for nearly sixteen hundred dollars. Paul gave him twenty hundred dollar bills.
“Two of those are for a tip,” Paul said. “Put the rest towards his account.”
Paul looked at Dano.
“Feel better now?”
It wasn’t fucking easy. Dano wanted to toss this skinny white boy through the back door and kick him down the alley. The idea that he thought Dano could be bought off like that. And the idea that every time he bought something for Paul he had a wad like that in his pocket. Dano thought about just dragging the asshole outside and beating him until he gave him the money. If he’d been a stranger. If he’d been a bail jumper. But it was Paul. Money and emotions fucked Dano up.
Hell, Paul was right as much as Dano hated admitting it. The money wasn’t his. Then again it wasn’t Paul’s either.
“Shit, Paul.” Dano said eventually. “I’m just pissed because we could have had a hell of a time with all that money.”
“No. If I’d spent a bunch of it right away they would have found me.”
“Got news for you, pal. They found you anyway.”
Paul raised his glass. Dano reluctantly clinked it with his own pint glass. They both drank.
“That’s true. It’s why I’m getting out of town.”
“You and Josh riding off into the sunset for your Brokeback Mountain happy ending?”
“That movie doesn’t end happily.”
Dano shrugged. “How would I know? I’m just asking if you’re running off with your ex-boyfriend.”
“No. He’s got a pregnant girlfriend. They’re going to live in domestic bliss in their condo.”
Paul drank his cocktail. Dano considered not saying the next thing, but when he thought of what Cooper might do to the pregnant girlfriend of a guy who stole a bunch of his money. . .
“Now’s the part where you get pissed off with me,” Dano said.
“What did you do?”
“I told Cooper where Josh Carter lives.”
Seconds of silence passed as if Paul hadn’t heard him.
“You did what?” Paul said quietly.
“I thought I could shake him down for some cash by trading information.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? Do you know what you’ve done?”
“Like you said, this isn’t my thing. It’s not my fault you decided to steal a bunch of money from a psycho.”
“So if you sold Josh out and you know it won’t take much for Josh to talk about me, why are you telling me?”
“Because I’m pretty sure Cooper’s going to stiff me on the money and he pointed a gun at me earlier today.”
NEXT: Josh vs Detective Pandey
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