No Safe House (8 page)

Eldon put down his window. Vince leaned in, his face in Eldon’s.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I got held up. Nothing’s happened, has it?”

“They’re not here yet.”

“No harm, then,” he said, forcing a smile and shrugging. “I’m here. We’re good.”

Vince pulled his head out of the car and walked back to the motel room. Gordie was exiting the bathroom as Vince came in, doing up his belt, checking his zipper.

“Fucking gang who couldn’t shoot straight,” Vince said. The cell in his hand buzzed.

“He here?” Bert asked.

“He’s here,” Vince said, and ended the call. He sat wearily on the edge of the bed.

Gordie said, “Did I hear right? Eldon’s here?”

“Yeah. So we’re good to go.” Gordie noticed Vince was breathing heavily. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

The cell phone in Vince’s left hand buzzed yet again. “Yeah?”

“Our boys are here,” Eldon said. “Just pulling up in a Lexus SUV.”

“How many?”

“Unless they got someone hiding in the back, just the two, like you said. But … hang on. There’s another car, a Beemer, holding back, down the street. Can’t see who’s in it.”

“The Beemer’s just sitting there?”

“Yeah.”

“Cops?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “No, wait. It’s driving off.”

“You sure?” Vince asked.

“Yeah, it’s gone. Okay, and the driver’s getting out of the Lexus—now the other guy. The other guy has the bag. A black backpack. I’m getting out, will tell ’em which room.”

Vince Fleming killed the connection, said to Gordie, “They’re here.”

He nodded. His duties were limited, at least on this occasion, to standing, watching, and guarding. A gun that he’d tucked into his belt he now took out and held. If things got out of hand, he wanted to be ready. Gordie had hurt a lot of people in his time working for Vince, but then again, so had Vince. But the boss didn’t quite have the energy for it he once did.

Five quick raps on the door. Knuckles on metal.

Vince rose from the edge of the bed and opened the door. The men resembled each other. White, stocky, neither of them over five-six, both with black greasy hair, although one kept his shorter than the other. Couple of fireplugs. Looked like, if you wanted to push one of them over, you’d have to lean and put your back into it.

“Hey,” Vince said, and closed the door once they were inside. “Which one of you is Logan?”

“I’m Logan,” said the one with the shorter hair, who also looked about five years older. He tipped his head toward the one who was holding the backpack. “This is Joseph.”

“You two related?” Vince asked.

“He’s my brother,” said Logan.

Joseph went over, uninvited, and examined the pastries in the Dunkin’ Donuts box. He selected a jam-filled one, bit into it, then frowned.

“Shit, cherry.” He tossed the donut with the bite out of it back into the box and selected a chocolate. Bit into it, smiled. “This is better.”

“The hell?” Gordie said.

Vince glared but said nothing.

After two bites, enough of the donut was gone that he was able to shove the rest into his mouth. Vince eyed the backpack he was holding and said, “So whaddya got for us?”

Joseph’s mouth was too full to talk. His brother Logan said, “Couple things I need to get straight first. How do we know we can trust you?”

Vince looked at him with dead eyes. “You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t checked me out.”

Logan shrugged. “Yeah, okay, we did that.”

“You want to do business, I’m ready. You not sure? Take your pig of a brother here and get the fuck out.”

“Excuse me?” Joseph said, licking his fingers.

Vince kept his eyes on Logan. “Yes or no?”

Logan tried to meet the stare, but after five seconds looked away. “Yeah, I want to do business.”

“You gonna let him talk to me that way?” Joseph asked his brother.

“Shut up,” Logan said. “Give me the backpack.”

Joseph handed it over.

“I got a lot in here for you to look after,” Logan said.

“Just cash?” Vince asked.

Logan cocked his head. “I thought that was all you took.”

“Whatever you can fit in that backpack, we’ll take.”

“Like a head?” Joseph asked.

Now Vince looked at him. “What?”

“A head. A head would fit in a bag like that. Let’s say we had a guy’s head and we needed to save it for something later, could you tuck it away for us?” Joseph grinned. “If we wrapped it up, like, so it didn’t smell?”

Logan said, “We don’t have a head.”

Vince said, “Let’s start counting.” He pointed toward the cheap dresser, the laminate on the top and drawers heavily chipped. Sitting on it, next to an old, nonflat television that had to weigh three hundred pounds, was a currency-counting machine that looked, at a glance, like an oversized computer printer.

“Why do you need to know that?” Logan asked.

“When you go into your local Bank of America branch with a stack of cash, do you just tell them how much it is and they say okay?”

Logan grunted. He put the backpack on the bed, unzipped it, and reached in with both hands to bring out stacks of bills held together with rubber bands.

“Each stack is a thousand,” Logan said. “There’s seventy of them.”

“Seventy grand,” Vince said flatly. “I thought you said it was a lot.”

He shook his head, grabbed three stacks at random. If they each came out to a thousand, Vince wouldn’t bother counting the rest mechanically. He slipped off the rubber bands and set the stacks, one after the other, into the machine. Once he had the bills nicely tucked in, he hit the button and the bills fanned like tall grass in the wind.

After he’d checked the third stack, Vince said, “Okay. Now we’ll see that we have seventy of them stacks.”

It didn’t take Vince long to count them, making them into seven piles of ten. Gordie didn’t help. As he’d been instructed, he was there to watch, and besides, it was hard to count bills with a gun in your hand.

“Now what?” Logan asked.

“I take my service charge,” Vince said, pocketing five thousand-dollar stacks. “That covers you for six months.”

“Motherfucker. That’s high. What if I want it back before the six months is up?”

Vince shook his head. “Minimum charge.”

“Fine,” Logan muttered. “I’m outta options. The police may be watching us. Last week, they had a warrant to search our warehouse. Didn’t find anything, the fucks. But they know what properties we own. And Swiss banks aren’t what they used to be, either.”

“No,” Vince concurred. “I think we’re done here.”

Logan appeared uncertain. “Aren’t we supposed to get something?”

Vince cocked his head. “A toaster?”

“A receipt?”

Vince shook his head. Vince had brought some brown paper Whole Foods shopping bags to put the money in, but Logan pointed to the backpack and said, “You can keep that.”

Joseph said to his brother, “Check it out.” He was pointing at Vince’s crotch. “Guy’s pissed himself.”

Vince bent his head down to examine himself, saw the dark, wet stain to the side of his zipper. “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath.

Gordie bit his lip. This happened occasionally, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to point out to the boss. At least not in front of others.

Joseph took a step toward Vince. “Hey, I was out of line pointing that out. Sorry about that. Don’t be embarrassed. My uncle, he’s older than you now, but there’s been times when he’s had the same problem. Thing is, though, those times it happened, he was three years old.”

He flashed that grin again. Vince turned his head away from Joseph and fixed his eyes on Logan.

“Your mother still alive?” he asked.

“Huh?” Logan said.

“Your mother. The one who pushed you and your brother out her cooz. She still alive?”

Logan blinked. “Yeah. She is.”

“What are you gonna tell her?”

“What am I gonna tell her about what?”

“What are you gonna tell her when she asks why you didn’t do more to save your brother? Why you didn’t get him to control his mouth? Why you let him get himself killed by being an asshole?”

Logan’s eyes shifted to the left, looking beyond his brother to Gordie, who had his arms raised and extended, a gun pointed at the back of Joseph’s head.

Logan swallowed slowly, then said to his brother, “Apologize to the man.”

Joseph turned around long enough to assess his situation, then looked at Vince and said, “I may have spoken out of turn. You have my sincerest apology.”

“It’s gonna cost you another five to leave your stash with me,” Vince said.

Logan nodded, caught his brother’s eye, and tipped his head toward the door. The two of them left the room.

When the door closed behind them, Gordie lowered his weapon and said, “All you had to do was give me the nod.”

Vince glanced down again at his pants. “I got a change of clothes in the car.”

“I’ll go,” Gordie offered. He was used to this.

Before he reached the door, Vince’s phone buzzed again. He looked to see who it was and frowned. Not with disappointment, but curiosity. It wasn’t one of his guys keeping watch outside.

He put the phone to his ear.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “What’s up?”

His face grew dark as he listened. “Tell me again which house.” He listened a few more seconds. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know. You done good.”

Vince put the phone into his jacket and spoke to Gordie. “We need Bert. Tell Eldon to take care of the money. Then tell him to take the rest of the night off.”

“Why? We’re not going back to your place for a drink or—”

“Do it. Get rid of him.”

“What’s going on?”

Vince put a hand out to the dresser, steadying himself. “We may have been hit.”

“Jesus,” Gordie said.

“It’s worse than that,” Vince said.

I
was thinking I must have heard Grace wrong. There was no way she could have said what I thought I’d heard.

“You what?”

“I think—I don’t exactly know for sure—but I think I might have shot somebody,” she said.

So I’d heard right. But it didn’t make any sense. I felt as though I’d just been pushed off the top of a tall building and there was no one down there with a net. The sidewalk was coming up very, very fast.

“Grace, I don’t understand. How could you think you shot somebody?”

“He gave me the gun.”

“Who gave you the gun?”

“Stuart.”

This was going to be bad
.

“He wanted me to hold on to it. But then we thought we heard something, and it was dark, and I don’t know what exactly
happened. But there was this loud noise, like a gun went off. Like, this huge bang. And I didn’t think it was me, that I was the one who made the gun go, but I was the one who was
holding
the gun, and Stuart didn’t have one, but I’m not sure because it was all so dark and crazy and I’ve never touched a gun before and I was so scared and then I thought I heard a scream but I don’t even know now if it was somebody else or me. I just ran. I was going to go out the front door, even if it set off the alarm, although the little light was green, but when I turned the knob, it was locked and I couldn’t figure out how to open it, so I went back through the basement and went out the window and I didn’t know what to do at first—I was kind of paralyzed or in shock or something, I don’t know, and I got my phone out and then I just ran and ran until I got to the gas station and I wasn’t sure what to do and finally I decided the person I had to call was you even though I knew you and Mom would be really mad but I didn’t know what else to do and it wasn’t my fault. I mean, maybe it was my fault, but I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.”

And then she dissolved into tears. Not just tears, but huge, racking sobs.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking against the wall. She raised her head, and even though her eyes were looking my way, it was as if she didn’t even see me.

“My life’s over,” she said. “My life’s completely fucking over.”

I got down on the floor next to her, putting my arms around her and holding her as tight as I could.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “We’re going to sort this out. We’re going to sort it all out.”

Knowing, even as I said the words, how unlikely that was. This was no fender bender. This wasn’t getting arrested for drinking underage. This wasn’t something we’d be able to smooth over in a hurry.

“If somebody did get shot, are you saying it was Stuart?” I asked between her sobs. “Did you get the sense that there was somebody else there? Someone else who could have fired a gun? And is it possible Stuart had a second gun? That he gave one to you and held on to another one for himself?”

“He—I’m pretty sure—he had just the one. He went back to the car to get it. I … I called for Stuart and he didn’t say anything. I think … I think I actually screamed for him. But then I thought I could still hear something moving around, and I put my hands over my eyes for a second, screamed again, I was totally freaking out, and I felt someone run by me, or I heard someone running … I don’t know. It was dark in the house. He told me not to turn on any lights, so no one would know we were there. I think I got bumped. If Stuart was okay, wouldn’t he have answered me? Maybe—maybe what I heard was a dog or something running through the house. He said the people there had pets, so they didn’t have those, you know, those things in the house that can tell if you’re there.”

“Motion sensors.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear a dog? Was there any barking?”

“No, I didn’t hear anything like that.”

“Okay. Grace, where did this happen?”

“A house.”

“Where’s this house?”

“I don’t know.” She took several deep breaths. “I mean, I sort of know, but I don’t exactly know. Not far from the gas station. I wasn’t running that long.”

Ten minutes, she said. Could be a radius of half a mile to a mile or so around that location.

“So it wasn’t Stuart’s house?”

She shook her head. “No. It was some house that he said was on the list.”