42. Forty-Two
Forty-Two
Blue Grace
The cash from Franklin’s most recent sale hit the charity’s bank account two weeks after the kids’ disappearance from that stupid camp.
Not that I was keeping up, that’s just what Frank told me was supposed to happen.
And when the fucking cops didn’t show up at my door, I assumed that was exactly how it went down. Thank Christ.
Now, I was dealing with the boring shit.
Laundering money isn’t all glitz and glamour.
I had to filter the money through the charity's accounts. Which meant sitting down with the accountant. Thankfully, Brucey-boy–as I’d always called him–made house calls, which meant I could stay in my silk bathrobe and boxers all day.
Maybe I’d get lucky and one of the paparazzi hiding in my bushes would catch a photo when I opened the door and throw my face up on the gossip blogs tomorrow.
I was due some fucking press. It had been nothing but Pistols this and Pistols that everywhere for weeks.
I was sick of it. Sick of looking at Dallas’s lovey-dovey face and his smug punk rock princess every time I went online.
In the distance, there was the knock I’d been waiting for on the glass front door and I heard Este answer it.
She then escorted our guest to the dining room where I was waiting.
Bruce walked closely behind Este, watching her ass as she walked.
She might be older than when I first brought her into my home, but she was still tempting.
Maybe I’d even treat myself to a taste after Bruce left, provided Delilah stayed passed out upstairs.
She scurried away, leaving my accountant and I to discuss business.
Bruce slid–with loud huff–into the glass chair across from me.
He was red-faced and sweating, fucking swollen looking, the fat fuck, but well-dressed as always.
From the floor, he grabbed his leather briefcase, the one he’d had as long as I’d known him, and slapped it on my custom made metal dining table.
“Watch it,” I sniffed.
Bruce just ignored me, too busy sucking his teeth and licking his lips.
“Now, Blue, that’s quite the tasty morsel you’re hiding here.” His hungry eyes drifted to the archway Este had just disappeared through before turning them to me.
“I’ll give you a thousand bucks for fifteen minutes alone in your kitchen with that one.”
“Can we get the fuck on with it?” I snarled, “I’m not paying you to ogle my housekeeper.”
He shrugged, grabbing the pocket square from his jacket pocket and wiping the beads of sweat from his bald head.
Looking at his shiny-ass dome of a skull made me more grateful than ever that my blond hair was still relatively full, and if it was turning grey, well, I paid our band’s stylist a shitload of money to keep it from showing.
He then pulled out a laptop and a giant yellow legal pad.
What a fucking cliché. Then again, Bruce did good work.
He had done everything since Lou introduced me to him all those years ago.
Back then Lou was just an up and coming manager with only one band, the fucking Pistols, on his roster.
We met at a record label party and instantly hit it off.
In those days, the parties were epic, drugs everywhere, fuck, the labels didn’t care if we were high all the damn time.
In fact, it sold more albums if we were.
Everyone, including the crowd, getting off on the live-fast-die-young mentality.
It was at another one of those parties that Lou dragged this fucker under his arm and said, “Blue, meet Brucey-boy. This motherfucker’s a wizard with my coin. ”
It had been nearly twenty years since then.
I’d never had to call on Bruce, not really, until eleven years ago, when I fucked up.
When years of unpaid taxes and treating the charity like my own personal honeypot caught up to me.
Franklin’s money might have been what stopped the bleeding, but it also left me with the giant fucking problem of what to do with that all that money afterwards. That’s when I picked up the phone.
Turned out, Bruce had spent years honing his skills with some fuckers who were way worse than Lou or I, and he knew exactly what to do.
The first thing that happened was the Delilah Foundation “bought” a property where we “built” a halfway house for women.
That gave us somewhere to funnel the money, and an easy way to get it back to Franklin in the form of payments to the development and construction arm of Barrett Holdings.
Over time, Franklin gave me other accounts to add to our list of payees.
I never asked who they belonged to or what that money was going towards.
Then, just before the trial, it all stopped.
There were no more transfers, no more donations, no nothing.
Until last fucking summer, when a donation showed up, followed by a text from Franklin with a new account number and the whole damn thing started again.
Still, I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know anything more than I already did. The less I knew about Franklin’s business the better, in my opinion. He was one scary motherfucker.
An hour later, with the money now rerouted and on its way into just two of the linked accounts, as per Franklin’s instructions, Bruce closed his laptop and extended his damp palm out to me.
“Pleasure working with you, as always, Blue.”
I gagged at the feeling as I shook his hand and then walked him towards the door. The second I was alone in our echoing marble hallway, where even my breathing sounded too loud as it bounced off the white walls, I texted Franklin.
Blue
It’s done.
I dropped the phone back into my pocket, and, in keeping with tradition, I ascended the stairs to my bedroom.
Maybe I’d fuck my unconscious wife. Or maybe, I’d get high and pass out instead.
I spun and headed back down the stairs, then, to the door that led to the recording studio.
Losing myself in oblivion was the more appealing option right now.