At least he tries to.

Kozee suddenly can’t move his finger. C.T. has grabbed Kozee’s finger in midpoke. He thumps it down on the table that’s between them, and he comes up with some sort of little knife out of nowhere, it looks like one of those guillotine blades and he’s wearing it like a ring. The blade is pressed against Kozee’s pointer finger, right where the finger meets his right hand.

“I don’t like being interrupted, either,” C.T. says softly. “Now sit down, slowly, and I’ll talk, you listen. I’ll walk out of here with a promise from you, and you’ll still have your hand in the same shape it was when I walked in, so you won’t have to explain to your crew of little pussies how the head pussy got his finger cut off by an old man.”

Kozee slowly sits down. This old fuck, he’s pulled a knife out of nowhere, caught his finger and had it down on the table so fast it would take longer to tell about it, like that fat old blind guy on the reruns of Kung Fu. Kozee, for the first time since he was ten years old, before he started hitting his growth spurt, is actually scared.

“Now listen to me,” C.T. says, slowly, like he’s talking to a cat. “You’re not to lend money to my son anymore. His credit is no good here. You give him no reasons, no hassles, you just tell him no. In return, you get to keep your finger. And as a show of good faith, I keep quiet about that strap-on hooker you visit. The one in the second-floor walk-up on Hudson and McGuffey. With the lifesize naked dummy she keeps in the window to tell her clientele that she ‘be open for bidness.’”

Kozee’s eyes at this point are wide-open. Nobody is supposed to know about that shit. He can’t believe the shit that this old fuck knows, how he talks, how he acts, not even breaking a sweat and the guy is serious, he will take Kozee’s finger. Kozee wants to kill this clown, but the guy is reading his mind again.

“Yeah, I can read your mind,” C.T. says, “and it’s the shortest book in the library. If I’m struck by lightning or a car or something, the MPEG of you and your whatever winds up on muchosucko-dot-com and a half-dozen other Web sites before my body’s even cold. And I’ll take more than just your finger if you come after me. Are we solid?”

Kozee nods. He is furious and scared and is thinking that he will kill this old guy if he ever gets the chance but at the same time he knows he’ll never get the chance.

“Oh,” C.T. says, “one other thing. Don’t even look at my son. You’ll pray for St. Joseph to give you a quick and happy death.” He runs the edge of the blade softly, almost gently, across Kozee’s finger before he releases his grip and then he snaps his finger and the blade disappears, like he’s a sideshow magician or something. Kozee looks down and sees a thin line of blood at the joint, and for just a second he’s afraid to lift his hand off of the table, for fear his finger will still be lying there. C.T. gets up and throws three bills on the table-one, two and three-and looks around again, a contemptuous look on his face. He walks through the door without looking back, and gets into and starts up his car like he’s just left church or something and he has nothing else to do for the day. Kozee is furious, he’s trembling so badly he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop. One of his boys comes in to use the bathroom, and as he walks by the table he is staring at Kozee’s hand.

The finger, Kozee sees, is still bleeding.

Three days later Andy calls C.T. at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. “Guess who wants to talk to you?”

“Jeff,” C.T. says.

There’s a long silence on the line. “Did he call you, too?” Andy asks.

“No. Did he say what he wanted?”

“He wants-” Andy pauses and tries to contain himself, but he can’t help laughing “-for you to help him with a problem.”

“That’s what I do,” C.T. says. “Have him call me.”

The following Tuesday C.T. and Jeff are sitting in Lisa’s. Jeff has a circular bruise in the middle of his forehead from where C.T., while wearing his ski mask, had pressed his.38 special, and another lump along the right side of his head where C.T. had pistol-whipped him. C.T. has been listening to Jeff lay everything out, from Rakkim ripping him off to borrowing money from Andy to getting robbed by a couple of heavy-duty mokes who are now, apparently, in the wind.

When he’s done, C.T. doesn’t say anything for a minute, just sits and sips his coffee, then asks the waitress for a refill before he starts in on Jeff.

“First of all. You tried to pull a game on Andy.” Jeff starts to protest, but stops when C.T. raises his hand like a traffic cop. “Don’t ever do that again. When we’re done here, you’re gonna pay Andy back his three hundred, and another hundred for his troubles.” Jeff doesn’t look happy, but nods his head. C.T. says, “I can’t fucking hear your brains rattle. Is that a yes or a no?”

“Yes, yes, sir, I’m sorry,” Jeff says. C.T. waves it away.

“Okay. We understand each other.” C.T. takes a sip of coffee, and looks at the waitress for a moment, bending over a table across the room. The woman is new at Lisa’s, maybe her midthirties, probably too young for him, but she looks good in a pair of jeans, bent over a table, taking an order. She is the type of slum goddess that the Clintonville neighborhood has attracted by the busload for decades. He imagines her for a moment on a hotel balcony, kneeling in front of him, then turns back to Jeff.

“Now, your problem isn’t these mokes who ripped you off. Your problem is Rakkim. He owes you money. You get it from him. What he owes you and then some. For your trouble.”

“How I am supposed to do that?” Jeff says. C.T. takes another sip of coffee, and stares at Jeff over the rim of the cup. The coffee, he thinks, is really good this morning. The old hippie who owns the place is home where he belongs so he can’t fuck it up. C.T. looks at the waitress again and she smiles over her shoulder at him.

C.T. smiles back at her, then smiles at Jeff.

“How about,” he says, “I’ll show you.”

Lawrence Light is no stranger to the world of financial skullduggery that his character Karen Glick tackles in Too Rich To Live and Fear and Greed. As an award-winning reporter covering Wall Street, Larry writes about the world Glick investigates. His real-life experience has given him insider information on the corrupting force of greed. And has given him his own share of enemies along the way.

“The Lamented” takes a slightly different turn as it examines the toll greed can take on the human conscience, even in characters who seem to lack one of their own. When their past pays them a visit, some unsavory individuals discover how easily the line between reality and imagination is blurred. But when all is said and done, payback is as unavoidable as it is deadly.