Bad News

by Linwood Barclay

‘Listen, that was nice, last night, and breakfast.’

  ‘It was,’ I said.

  ‘It hasn’t been nice, being angry with you,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t like it. But I think, with this stuff with Trixie behind us, I think we can start over, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What are you doing today, anyway? I thought maybe you’d be home. Although, I guess, with this suspension thing still going on, it’s hard to know what to do with yourself. I was thinking, maybe you should get started on another book. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe you have to see this as an opportunity, to get back to your novels. I mean, maybe the other ones didn’t take off, but lots of successful authors, their first few books, they don’t do that well, and then all of a sudden, they have a bestseller.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I just thought I’d go out, get a coffee or something.’

  Merker was giving me a hurry-up sign, but then, suddenly, he stopped, as though something had occurred to him. He was waving his hand at me, like he wanted to say something.

  ‘Listen, honey, can you hang on a sec?’ I said. I smothered the bottom half of the phone with a fist. ‘What?’

  ‘This is the broad, on the fridge?’ Merker asked.

  ‘It’s my wife.’

  ‘The one in the picture, with the nice rack?’

  Was my wife’s honor worth protecting at a moment like this? Did I tell Merker to go fuck himself and run the risk of him pulling out his gun and shooting me through the head?

  I thought about it, briefly, and told him, ‘Just give me a sec. I’m just about done.’

  Sarah said, ‘Zack? Are you there?’

  ‘No, no!’ Merker said. ‘She can do it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We put the wig on her. She can do it.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ I said, and unwrapped my hand from around the phone. ‘Sorry, honey. There was just someone going by.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  Merker was whispering. ‘How’s her handwriting?’

  ‘Hang on, Sarah,’ I said, again, and covered the phone again. ‘Shut up. It’s not happening. I’m not dragging her into this.’

  He snatched the phone from me. ‘Hey!’ I shouted.

  Just as suddenly, Gary had the gun back in his hand – the real one – and was pointing it at me while he put the phone to his ear with his left hand.

  I could hear Sarah say, ‘Zack? Zack?’

  Merker said, ‘Hey, Mrs Walker?’

  ‘Zack? Who’s this?’

  ‘This is Gary, Mrs Walker. I’m a friend of your husband’s.’

  ‘What happened to Zack? The phone went all funny.’

  ‘Listen, we kind of need your help with something. Can I ask you a kind of personal question?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How would you describe your breasts? I saw your picture, that one on the fridge where you’re wearing that gown? At your place? I know you can’t tell everything from a snapshot, but I’d say they’re pretty nice.’

  ‘Put my husband on the phone.’

  ‘Well, I’d like to, but I’ve got a gun pointed at his head right now, and if you don’t help us out, I’m gonna give his brains some fresh air.’

  Annette came back in with the baby on her hip. ‘Even if I can’t do this thing, I should still get something for my time.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  We were parked across the street from SunCap Federal. Merker behind the wheel of the Ford pickup, me on the passenger side, Sarah between us. She had the red wig on and was practicing her Marilyn Winter signature a few more times. I’d dug a tattered old owner’s manual out of the glove box, and Sarah was writing out her new name in the margins of pages that described how to check oil levels and properly install a hitch. She scribbled into page after page, glancing up at the fake ID resting on the dashboard for guidance.

  ‘That’s pretty good,’ Merker said. ‘I think the W is off just a tiny bit, I think it should slant a bit more to the right, but really, you’re good.’

  Sarah, normally fairly polite, did not respond to Merker’s praise. I looked at her last two forgeries, and they were pretty much dead on. The situation seemed too unbelievable. Here was my wife, pretending to be Marilyn Winter, the phony name of Trixie Snelling, who was actually Miranda Chicoine, also known as Candace.

  ‘Even if I get the signature right, what if someone notices that I’m not her?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘You got the hair, you got the key, you can sign the name, the boobs are close,’ Merker said, full of confidence. ‘You can do it. Although you could of dressed a little sexier.’ Sarah was wearing a black blouse, tan skirt, sensible, flat shoes. ‘Can you at least hike the skirt up a bit?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You have to get this right. You fuck it up, bad things are gonna happen.’

  Sarah glanced at me.

  ‘So we’ll be sitting out here,’ he reminded her. ‘I see anything funny going down, first thing I do is shoot your husband here. Then I call Leo and get him to kill the kid. A cop car comes screaming up, people come running out of the bank, anything like that, and the shit hits the fan.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Sarah said. ‘You don’t have to worry.’ I believed her, but I didn’t know whether Merker was convinced.

  He patted her bare knee encouragingly. Sarah tried to pull it away, but there was no room to move. ‘That’s a good girl,’ he said.

  I so wanted to kill him.

  ‘Let me out,’ Sarah said. I opened my door and stood on the sidewalk. I held out a hand for Sarah, but she made a point of navigating her descent from the raised truck without my assistance.

  ‘Don’t forget this!’ Merker shouted, tossing out a small blue zippered gym bag. He’d asked Annette if she had something he could carry a bit of cash in, and she’d offered him that. If Merker ever did get Trixie’s money, it was going to smell like old socks and sour towels. Sarah grabbed the bag by the strap and stood next to me.

  ‘It’s a bit crooked,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Sarah.

  ‘The wig. It’s just a bit off to one side.’

  She used the oversized mirror bolted to the passenger door to take one last look at herself, made a minor adjustment.

  ‘That’s perfect,’ I said.

  She wouldn’t look at me. Maybe there was no point worrying anymore about whether I might get out of this alive. Even if I did, I was still a dead man. But all that really mattered to me now was that Sarah survive this.

  I had no idea how things would play out. Would she get into the safety-deposit box? Would the money Trixie said was there actually be there? Would something tip off the bank officials that she was not who she claimed to be? Would they call the police? Would Merker kill me when they showed up, and call Leo to tell him to do the same to Trixie’s daughter?

  After Sarah walked into SunCap Federal, would I ever see her again?

  As if reading my mind, Sarah reached out and touched my arm and looked at me.

  ‘I can do this,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to Katie.’ She’d never met the girl, but she didn’t need to set eyes on a five-year-old girl to be concerned for her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for everything.’

  She looked as though she wanted to say something, but I knew she wasn’t ready to forgive me for the mess I’d gotten us both into, nor did she feel this was the time to tell me what a complete and total asshole I was.

  I could only hope there’d be a chance later.

  ‘Wish me luck,’ she said.

  And I watched her, in her red wig, gym bag in hand, stride across the street, open the door of SunCap Federal, and disappear inside.

  It had taken less time to lay it all out for Sarah than I might have expected. At Annette’s place, after Merker had asked Sarah about her breasts, he handed the phone back to me.

  ‘Zack, what’s going on?’ Sarah said.

  I had to concentrate a moment and employ what journalistic skills I had
to boil everything down to point form. ‘The guys who’ve been after Trixie found her sister and brother-in-law up in Kelton. They killed them. They took Trixie’s daughter Katie. They want the money Trixie took from them, or they’re going to kill Katie. I went to see Trixie in prison. She has a plan for how we can get into her safety-deposit box, get the money, give it to these guys. One of them is holding Katie at our house. If anything goes wrong, he gets the call and kills her.’

  I waited for Sarah to say something, but then heard another voice.

  ‘How’s the linoleum thing coming along?’

  Frieda, the Home! editor.

  Then Sarah. ‘I’m on the fucking phone, Frieda. Zack?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Where are the kids?’

  ‘Not at home. Angie’s downtown at a class, Paul’s at school, both of them said at breakfast that they weren’t going to be home after school today.’

  ‘Most of the time, they don’t show up when they say they’re going to. Not the other way around.’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I guess you could say I’m a bit rattled. But otherwise, yeah, I’m okay. But once this is over, if it goes off as planned, there’s a deal to hand me off to another set of bad guys. Or bad gals, actually.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s not worry about that now. The immediate problem is getting into the safety-deposit box.’

  ‘How are you going to do that without Trixie?’

  I paused. There was no easy way to do this. ‘Gary wants you to do it. He saw your picture on the fridge, when we were at the awards dinner, and he thinks you can pull it off. We have Trixie’s red wig, which is part of her Marilyn Winter persona. That’s the name she used to get the safety-deposit box. You’d have to go in, pretending to be her, with the key, sign in as her. Then you get into the box, transfer all the money into a bag, and bring it back out. Give it to Gary, Katie gets released.’

  Sarah said nothing.

  ‘Honey?’ I said.

  ‘I’m here.’ Another pause. ‘Tell me about Katie.’

  ‘She’s scared to death, Sarah.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll actually let her go?’

  I felt a wave of hopelessness wash over me. ‘I’m just going along for now, Sarah, hoping this works out the way it’s supposed to.’

  Merker said, ‘Can we get this show on the road? Tell your lady we’re coming to pick her up. Where’s she work?’

  ‘The Metropolitan,’ I said.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Sarah,’ I said into the phone. ‘Don’t do it. This has all gone far—’

  Gary Merker snatched the phone back. ‘Hey, lady, you don’t do it, he’s dead, the kid is dead. You in?’

  ‘I’m in,’ I heard her say.

  Twenty minutes later we picked her up out front of the paper. And now Merker and I were sitting in the Ford pickup, waiting, wondering how it was going for Sarah inside the bank.

  As I sat in the truck, I spotted something just barely sticking out from under Merker’s seat. It was a handle for something.

  It was the stun gun. The one he’d used on me and one of the twins at our house.

  He had his real gun sitting in his lap, his right hand resting on it, but without a finger looped around the trigger.

  ‘She smart, your woman?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A lot smarter than I am.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that I can believe. How long she been in there now?’

  ‘Only a couple of minutes,’ I said. ‘It just seems like a long time.’

  ‘How long should it take? You go in, you show them the key …’

  ‘Just hang in. Maybe the bank is busy. Maybe it’s taking her a while to get someone to help her.’

  Merker fidgeted nervously, scratched his nose, but, mercifully, stuck nothing in it for once. ‘She has to get the signature right. If she can do that, she’ll be fine.’

  ‘She’s been forging mine for years,’ I told him. ‘She can do this.’

  But it was torture, sitting out there in the truck, having no idea of how it was going inside.

  ‘Maybe I should go in,’ I said. ‘Just watch from a distance, see that everything is going okay.’

  Merker snorted. ‘Yeah, that’s a great plan. I sit out here all by myself, let the two of you just run off.’ Merker turned on the radio, twisting the dial from station to station, then, deciding there was nothing interesting enough to take his mind off his current situation, turned it off.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, looking up the street. A police cruiser with two officers was approaching. ‘Shit shit shit,’ he said. ‘She fucking told.’

  I glanced down again at the handle of the stun gun. ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘They’re just driving down the street. It’s not like they’re slowing down or anything. If they were—’

  The police car slowed down.

  ‘Shit!’ Merker said through clenched teeth. He slammed his fist into the steering wheel. ‘She’s blabbed, I know it.’

  ‘She won’t have done that,’ I said. Unless, of course, she was unable to pass herself off as Marilyn Winter and had to confess to what she was up to, what was at stake.

  The cruiser came to a stop in front of the bank, and the cop on the passenger side got out. He said something to the driver, held up two fingers, as if to say he’d only be a couple of minutes. Unless, of course, it meant to send for two more police cruisers.

  Merker got out his cell phone, punched in some numbers. ‘Leo?’

  ‘Jesus!’ I said. ‘Nothing’s happened yet.’

  Merker waved at me to shut up. ‘Just checking in, man. How’s it going there?’ Merker listened, nodded, looking back and forth between me and the bank across the street. The cop had the door open and was going inside. It looked as though he was reaching into his back pocket.

  ‘He’s going for his wallet,’ I said. ‘He’s just going to the ATM.’

  Merker was listening to Leo. ‘Okay, good, yeah, well, we’re just waiting on this end. What?’ Leo was telling him something else. ‘Well, take some Pepto or something. Fuck, I got bigger things to worry about than your stomach. I’ll call you back if anything goes wrong here.’

  He put the phone back into his pocket.

  ‘Where’s the cruiser?’ he asked.

  ‘It kept on going. I think he’s doing a loop around the block. If there were a problem, he wouldn’t waste time looking for a parking spot.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ He looked in his mirror, checking to see whether the cop car was still visible. ‘Hang on,’ he said, opened the door, and stepped out so he could get a better view down the street.

  I leaned swiftly across the seat, reached down and grabbed hold of the stun gun. I was back in position, holding the gun down by my right side, between my body and the door, by the time Merker was getting back in.

  ‘I think he’s doing a slow drive around the block,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’re right, maybe he’s just using the money machine. He better be.’

  His eyes were trained on the doors of the bank. ‘Come on. Come on. I want to see somebody come out of there. Your wife, or that cop, and not together.’

  I’d been waiting for my moment, some way to get the drop on Merker, and now it was at hand. Stunning him would only put him out of commission for a few seconds, but it would be long enough to wrest the gun away from him, to get his cell phone, to smash his goddamn fucking head in if I had to. Then I could wave down either the cop as he came out of the bank, with or without Sarah, or the other one doing a loop around the block. Once Merker was subdued, police could surround our house, get Katie out safely.

  My mouth was dry, my heart was pounding in my ears.

  There was nothing to say to Merker. No need to give him a warning. No need to tell him to freeze or drop his weapon.

  I could just stun the bastard.

  And so, while he sat with his back to me, focused on the bank door
s, I steadied the stun gun in my lap and pointed it at him.

  And pulled the trigger.

  The gun went bzzzt.

  Merker did not suddenly go into spasms. He did not crumple into his seat or fall against the steering wheel. He did not scream in pain.

  All he did was turn around and ask, ‘What was that?’

  And then he saw the stun gun in my hand. Fear flashed across his face briefly, but then he smiled. ‘You dumb fuck. Once you’ve fired that thing three times, it has to be all reset.’

  He reached across the seat, grabbed the stun gun out of my hand, and hit me across the nose with it. Blood sprayed out onto my shirt.

  ‘You’re really starting to fucking annoy me,’ Merker said. ‘I’ve already got enough on my mind without having to worry about you trying to be some sort of fucking hero.’ He shook his head in disgust and shoved the stun gun back under his seat.

  I cupped my hand under my nose to catch the blood. There was a steady trickle. I didn’t think he’d broken anything, but it hurt like a son of a bitch.

  ‘Hold on,’ Merker said. He was looking at the bank again. ‘It’s our cop.’

  I wiped my bloody hand on my pants, dug a tissue out of my jeans pocket, and held it gently around my nose. I looked across the street to see the police officer come out, alone, walk out between two parked cars, and look down the street to flag down his partner when he reappeared.

  ‘Yes!’ Merker said. ‘You were right! Probably just getting some cash. So they can go buy some doughnuts.’

  The cruiser appeared, slowed, and the cop got back in. It drove away, taking away not only the two officers, but my immediate hopes of being able to get us out of this mess.

  ‘Yes,’ said Merker gleefully.

  My tissue was soaked with blood. I tossed it onto the floor, found one more in my other pocket and held it to my nose. ‘Hey, don’t make a mess,’ Merker said, glancing over.

  The moment he looked at me, Sarah came out of the bank, clutching the gym bag. ‘There,’ I said.

  Merker whirled around. ‘Oh my God, I don’t believe it. This is fucking fantastic.’

  Sarah checked the traffic and then crossed, coming around the back of the pickup and then up to the passenger door. I opened it and stepped out so she could get back in between us.