Formerly Fingerman (33 page)

Another piece of recovered video showed Frank entering the hallway, stopping, and then running off. There's no way he could have done it. Brittany watched the footage and let it soak in. Then she poured a can of Pepsi on the computer and went to return her new agent's call. Jarvis kept his mouth shut and got his promotion.

Today's episode was “Stripper Love Triangles.” Not quite the hard-hitting, crime-oriented show she had imagined herself hosting. But Brittany lived in a sweet penthouse apartment, dated an underwear model, and instigating babymama fights sure as hell beat coming up with nicknames to impress Anfernee.

Brad's Crammers! campaign was by now a sensation. As predicted, college students bought them by the case, and binge drinking was all the rage. So, hurray. Presumably, the campaign won a slew of awards, but Brad couldn't have told you for sure. He never checked.

Brad was not Brad anymore. At least not the Brad we knew.

He was no longer the pretentious ad guy concerned with perfecting that onion-dip print ad or the lost soul scrambling to get ahead in the world of in-house agencies. And he certainly wasn't hiding.

Brad had become a landscaper with a thriving business in Islamorada, Florida. His advertising-trained eye for composition and color translated quite well into deciding where to put the Chinese fan palms and choosing complementary groundcover. And to top it off, there was nobody telling him the climbers weren't target-market appropriate, and no one was trying to glom on to the credit for the edgework.

It was all Brad and that felt good. There was no more magical thinking. No more wondering where the next vine would take him. The only vines left in Brad's life were the overpriced ones he planted for the retirees who hired him.

And he painted at night. So far, nothing MOMA-worthy, but it sure made him happy when he sort of got down on canvas what he saw in his head. Maybe he'd try to sell them one day. Stranger things had happened.

He and Gracie divorced without so much as a whimper. Turns out the Brad she had asked for when her husband called from the rooftop was a CrossFit trainer with whom she had recently begun a meaningless affair. So they called it quits and it was easy. Brad wanted nothing from her and she didn't want to give anything up. Win-win.

FYI, the name of Brad's business is Fingerman's Landscaping. He decided to stick with his actual name, despite what he found in Dr. Yo's trunk.

The lockbox. Brad opened it to find Yo's entire plan to disappear: a brand new passport, brilliantly faked birth certificate, an authentic-looking social security card, a fully loaded .45, a pound of rock-star weed (man, Yo loved weed), and $380,000 in twenties. Altogether, there were three lockboxes hidden in the trunk. The grand total ended up being north of two million dollars of untraceable cash.

According to the documents, Yo's new identity was named Nicholas Hamilton Steele. Nick Fucking Steele.

A lot of guys would have taken Nick Steele's identity—used that birth certificate to get a new passport and driver's license with their own picture, and enjoyed the perfect credit of a man who hadn't bought anything for the last ten years. It would have been so easy to slide right into that lifestyle, disappear into the generic landscape of America, and never look back.

But Brad didn't apply for a new passport with his own picture and he didn't get a new driver's license. He tossed them both, along with the gun, into the Atlantic on his way over the Seven Mile Bridge just below Marathon.

Make no mistake. Brad wasn't a fool. He took the money. And the weed. But not the name. After all he'd been through, it just didn't seem right.

Nick Steele wouldn't have worn a chicken suit to sneak up to the courthouse. He would have jet-packed in. Nick Steele wouldn't have told the lame, boring truth Brad told. He would have made up something cool and appropriate for Jerry Bruckheimer to option as a Tom Cruise vehicle. Nick Steele would have never started a landscaping business in the Florida Keys or used a pair of pliers to extract the last few drops of paint from a tube to finish his painting. Nick Steele just wasn't Brad Fingerman.

Fuck Nick Steele.

Thank you to everyone who supported me while I wrote this book and, more important, while I waited.

But, especially . . .

Adriann Ranta, who never stopped.

Robbie Goolrick, who I can never thank enough.

And Ben LeRoy. I just . . . I mean . . . Thank God for you.

Copyright © 2015 by Joe Nelms.

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by

TYRUS BOOKS

an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

www.tyrusbooks.com

ISBN 10: 1-4405-8170-3

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8170-0

eISBN 10: 1-4405-8171-1

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8171-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nelms, Joe.

Formerly fingerman / Joe Nelms.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-4405-8170-0 (hc) -- ISBN 1-4405-8170-3 (hc) -- ISBN 978-1-4405-8171-7 (ebook) -- ISBN 1-4405-8171-1 (ebook)

I. Title.

PS3614.E4443F67 2015

813'.6--dc23

2014026148

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and F+W Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters.

Cover design by Sylvia McArdle.

Cover illustration by Claudia Wolf.