‘Don’t you see? That money is in our bank account. Anyone who looks will find it. Tad set me up. He played me. He left clues, to make me look guilty. He put money in my account, to make it look like I’m stealing from Tao. He planted my name in a meth-dealer’s house, so it’ll look like I’m an addict.’
‘You are an addict.’
‘I am being set up.’
‘You sound paranoid, Jimmy.’
‘Libby,’ I say, trying to keep my voice very calm. It’s hard not to sound paranoid after someone tells you that you are. ‘Libby. Listen to me.’ I speak slowly. ‘We need to think about this very carefully. We need to go to the police. We need to give back the money. We need to tell them everything we know. We need to explain what Tad is up to. How he’s stealing from the company. Who he’s working for. We need to tell them about Ghol Gedrosian.’
‘The police?’ Libby repeats. She is apparently still stuck on the very first part of my plan.
I take her hand. It is strangely cold. ‘Listen. Here’s what I think we should do,’ I say. ‘I think we should go home. I mean, our real home. I think we should go back to California.’
I hardly thought about this idea before I started to speak it, but now, even before the words are out, I am excited by it. More details come to me. I blurt them out, almost breathless. ‘Let’s leave tonight. Let’s get on a plane and get the hell out of here. Fuck this job. Fuck this house. Let’s just leave. We won’t even pack. Let’s just drive to the airport – right now – and take the first flight. When we get home, we’ll find a lawyer. We’ll go to the police. We’ll deal with whatever comes. We’ll deal with it together. Whatever comes.’
Libby considers.
‘What do you think, Libby?’ I say. I’m relieved. Relieved that I’ve told her. Relieved that I’ve unburdened myself of the secret that I’ve been keeping. Relieved – most of all – at the idea of escape – at the thought of walking out this front door, locking it behind us, and never seeing this house again. Never stepping foot in Florida again. Going home. ‘What do you think, Libby? Let’s get on a plane. Let’s just leave. Right now. Let’s go.’
Libby stares at me. For a moment, I think that I’ve made quite an impression on her, that she’s considering this new plan, maybe even signing up for it: walking out the front door, getting on a plane, going home, telling the police everything. Starting our lives again.
‘Think how nice it would be,’ I say. ‘To go home. Doesn’t that sound good to you, Libby? To start again?’
She prises her fingers out of my hand. She stands up and walks to the clock. She stares into its blank glass face, standing with her back to me. I can’t see her expression.
‘Libby?’ I say, quietly. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Jimmy,’ she whispers, shaking her head.
She seems to consider her next words for a long time. Finally, when she turns to me, she says, ‘I never want to threaten you. I never want to be that kind of wife.’
‘What kind of wife?’ I ask, even though I know, because she is that kind of wife.
‘I’ve waited so long. You’re not an easy man to love. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I whisper.
‘How many times do I have to forgive you? Your incompetence? Your stupidity? How many times do I have to say, “It’s OK, Jimmy. It’s OK that you’ve destroyed everything we’ve been given”?’
‘I’m not destroying anything.’
‘You’re not? Two million dollars in the bank. A good job. You want to throw it all away.’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No. I’m working for gangsters.’
‘And you’re so pure?’
‘I don’t kill people.’
‘Really?’ Her eyes flash hatred. I see her thoughts. She is remembering that night. The night she came home to find me standing in Cole’s bedroom. To find me yelling incoherently, crying, standing over our dead son.
Then, as quickly as it comes, her hatred is gone. She speaks quietly.
‘Look at yourself,’ she says, staring at me with a pitiless expression. ‘You’re forty-seven years old. If you walk away from this – assuming they let you walk away – what do you think is going to happen next? Tell me what you think is going to happen.’
As soon as she says it, I know exactly what will happen. We’ll slump back to California, and I’ll be unemployed again. Probably unemployable. Without the two million dollars, I’ll run out of money, and I’ll start using; and Libby will leave me – most certainly she will leave me – that’s what she’s saying, isn’t it? – and I’ll wake up in a motel, one more time, with the sun pounding my eyeballs, and I’ll wonder where it all went wrong. And I’ll know: right here, in this room, right now, talking to Libby, with the grandfather clock ticking off the seconds relentlessly – this is when it happened. This is when it went wrong. Right now. This moment.
As if she knows what I’m thinking, she says, ‘You see? You can’t throw this away. Not this time. Not again. Not our last chance.’
‘But it’s wrong,’ I say. ‘It’s all wrong.’
‘Of course it’s wrong,’ she says. Libby’s face is drawn and bloodless. I notice – maybe for the first time – that she has narrow ruthless eyes. Which is really something you ought to notice about your wife, before you’ve been married for ten years. ‘Of course it’s wrong, Jimmy. But that’s not something people like us can worry about. People who aren’t addicts – they can worry about right and wrong. People who can find another job – they can worry about right and wrong. People without dead children – they can worry about right and wrong. People like us... ’ She shakes her head. She lets the thought hang, unfinished.
I’m dumbfounded. Literally, struck dumb. Unable to speak. The air has left my lungs. My body is frozen. Immobile.
Her voice softens. ‘Jimmy,’ she says gently, ‘you’re a good man.’
‘Am I?’ I whisper.
‘Good enough,’ she says, not unkindly. ‘You deserve better. You finally have your shot. God only knows how you got it, but you finally have it. Accept it. For once, accept what you’ve been given.’
‘But it’s a set-up, Libby. I am being set up.’
She sits down beside me. She takes my hand. Her skin is cold and reptilian. ‘Of course you’re being set up,’ she says. ‘Of course you are. And when the day comes, you’re going to take the fall. You will. But that day might be a long time coming. Or maybe it will never come. And until it does... ’ She stops.
‘Until it does... what?’
‘Until it does, we can be together. We can try to be happy. I can try to be your wife. You’re being given a gift. Do you see that?’
‘A gift?’
‘A second chance. How many people get that, after they ruin things the first time around? This is your restart. Your second chance. A new life. A new house. Money. A wife who loves you.’
‘Do you?’
She looks at me for a long time, as if trying to decide. When she speaks, at last, she answers a different question. ‘Here’s what I want,’ she says. ‘I want you to promise me something.’
‘What?’
‘Promise me you won’t ruin this, too. Promise me you won’t go to the police.’
‘But Libby... ’
‘Promise me,’ she says.
‘Libby... ’
She screams: ‘Promise me!’ – so loud and so sudden that her shout echoes on the walls, and the ceiling, and the glass clock – startling me.
Softer now, much softer, but still insistent, she says, ‘Promise me. Promise me.’
‘Libby... ’
‘Promise me,’ she whispers. ‘Promise me.’
She touches my face. Kisses my lips. ‘Libby... ’ I say.
‘Promise me. Promise me.’
‘I promise,’ I say at last. I have no choice. After all that I’ve done to her, all these years, how can I say anything else? How could anyone?
CHAPTER 34
I wait only
fourteen hours to betray her, which is a new land speed record, even for me, even for Jimmy Thane.
Usually it takes weeks or days from the time I make a promise to my wife until the time I break it. Usually, the breaking of that promise involves waking up in a strange bed, in a strange woman’s arms; or finding myself at a ‘friend’s’ house at three in the morning – that friend copiously supplied with sandwich baggies bulging yellow crystals.
This morning’s betrayal is different.
This morning, when I wake from my dream – the usual dream – the bath, and boy’s body, the moonlight – Libby is already downstairs, frying eggs; and there’s a fresh pot of coffee dripping into the glass carafe. It’s as if she’s showing me what life might be like, if I play along: domestic bliss – eggs and coffee every morning, banal conversation in the breakfast nook, each of us reading our favourite section of The New York Times.
We don’t speak about yesterday, nor about my plan to go to the police. We don’t mention the idea of giving back the money, or of turning in Tad Billups, or leading Agent Mitchell to Ghol Gedrosian. Apparently, my promise not to do any of these things is enough for her, and we never need to speak of these matters again. Yesterday is just one more incident that we can lock away and forget, like the night Cole died, or the day she found a hooker in our bed, or the day she left me, or the day she came back.
I eat the fried eggs that she offers, and drink the coffee, gratefully, and when I’m ready to go to the office, I kiss her on the cheek.
‘Have a good day,’ she says. ‘I’ll be here when you get back.’ A promise, maybe. Or a threat. Or maybe she’s just trying the idea on for size – seeing how it fits – that she’ll be here when I get back.
I leave the house. I step onto the porch, into the heat. It’s eighty degrees before nine o’clock – an impossible temperature – and indeed the weather seems precarious – ready to break. The air feels heavy. Clouds darken the horizon.
I climb into my Ford.
I drive west on the causeway, into the greying sky, out to the island of Sanibel, to the house that I own.
No skulking this time. No sneaking through backyards, no squeezing through open windows. I park in front and walk straight up the path. I expect the door to be locked – maybe even hope that it will be – but it gives easily, and swings open, inviting me in.
I shut the door behind me. The air inside is warm and stale. The lights are off. Sun pushes through brittle yellow window shades, revealing the empty living room to the side, and the shadowy kitchen straight ahead.
Right away, I smell it.
It starts as an undertone. It’s cloying and sweet and foul. It’s the smell of corruption, of old things under floorboards, of dark shapes at the bottom of sewers on hot summer days.
I walk down the hall, peering into rooms, expecting to see the body sprawled on the carpet. But there is no body. There is just a smell. The rooms are as empty as I remember from my first visit: threadbare futon in the bedroom, rickety desk, bookcase devoid of books.
No body. I pass the bathroom. The smell is stronger here. No mistaking it now, no denying what it is. I retch. I stop moving, as if holding perfectly still might make things better. I take little shallow breaths, only through my mouth, try not to think about the smell.
The hallway ends at a metal door, probably the garage. There are no windows, and the light is diffuse. I look up. In the shadows of the ceiling is the attic trap door. I reach up to the dangling metal ring, and I pull.
Everything happens at once. A rush of warm air on my face. A man jumping from the attic and punching my jaw. My stumbling back and yelling in surprise, arms windmilling.
The man crashes to the ground at my feet, his face turned away from me. But I would know that gelled Caesar haircut anywhere, and that fat Rolex strapped to his wrist, and those Ferragamo pants, crisply pressed as though pulled off the dry-cleaner’s rack this very morning.
I circle the body and see the face. It stares at me with vacant eyes. The smile is a blend of mean-spiritedness and rigor mortis – teeth bared, lips snarled. In death, Dom Vanderbeek doesn’t look much different from Dom Vanderbeek in life. Maybe a bit angrier. But just as aggrieved, as if he can’t believe the unfairness of it all, that I am alive, while he is dead, and yet he clearly is the better man of the two.
I run.
The door slams behind me, and I race out of the house, my shoes scuffing concrete. I fumble with keys and climb into the Ford. I crank the engine and reach for the gear shift, relieved – relieved to be gone from there, relieved to escape the odour, the dead body, the dark house.
That’s when I feel the cold metal pressed against the base of my skull. ‘Do not move, Mr Thane,’ a man says, in a Russian accent. ‘You should not have come. You shouldn’t have seen that. Now what am I going to do with you?’
CHAPTER 35
When I look in the rearview mirror, I see a man seated behind me, holding a gun to my head. He is young, maybe thirty, with blond hair cut military short. An angry purple scar runs from the bottom of his left cheek to his ear. It’s raised, grossly stitched in an XX pattern, like a cheap baseball mitt.
He says, ‘Leave the engine running. Get out of the car.’
When I don’t move fast enough, he cocks the hammer and shoves the gun hard into my skull. ‘Now.’
I do as he says, opening the door and climbing from the car, leaving the engine idling.
He gets out behind me, keeps his gun pressed into my spine. ‘Leave your door open,’ he says. ‘Come into the house with me.’
I know that if I do as he commands – if I leave the car running, the door open, and go into the house – I will die. Just as Charles Adams did. Just as Dom Vanderbeek did.
‘I don’t want to shoot you,’ he says. The conclusion of this thought is unspoken, but perfectly clear: But I will. His gun prods like a bony finger, pushing me forwards, towards the front of the house. At the door he says: ‘Open it.’
I glance over my shoulder at the street behind us. No one is on the sidewalk. No one drives past. There is no one to call for help. He says, ‘There is no help for you, Mr Thane. Go inside.’
In the house, it smells worse than before. Maybe the Russian wasn’t expecting it. He shuts the door and says, ‘Ecch.’
If the smell hinders him, though, it does so only momentarily, because immediately he jabs his gun into my back, and urges me forward, in the direction of the corpse. At the end of the hall we see Vanderbeek crumpled on the carpet. The Russian leans over his body and studies it with something like scientific interest. He taps his toe into Vanderbeek’s ribcage – once, then twice. When the corpse doesn’t move, he seems satisfied.
He looks up at the attic trap door, still ajar. He says, ‘You should not have opened that door. It was closed for a reason.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He takes out his cellphone, dials, and holds it to his ear with a huge hand. He says something in Russian and snaps the phone shut.
He turns to me. ‘We will need to dispose of the body. You may never come here again. Do you understand?’
These words do not sound like words that a murderer speaks to a man he is about to kill. ‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Mr Vanderbeek was too curious. You see what happens to curious people? People who ask too many questions?’
I nod.
Before he can take this line of reasoning further, he is interrupted by the sound of a car engine outside the house. In a moment, the front door opens, and loud Russian voices are in the foyer, laughing and joking. Two men appear at the end of the hall – big men, stupid- looking men – carrying a roll of carpet between them. When they see me and the blond man, they stop their banter mid-sentence. They nod respectfully at the man with the gun. The blond man waves the barrel at them, beckoning them to approach.
The men lay down the carpet beside Vanderbeek, unfurl it. They each take one end of my Sales VP’s corpse, lift him onto the rug, and roll him up. The blond man says
something in Russian, and the two bruisers nod, and bend, and lift the load between them. They leave the house without another word.
When they are gone, the blond man turns to me. He sticks his gun back into his belt, and opens his hands wide, a gesture I take to be one of peace and forgiveness.
‘My employer has sent me to deliver a message to you,’ he says.
‘Who is your employer?’
‘You know who I work for.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You work for Ghol Gedro—’
He punches me in the stomach. I fall, clutching my guts and saying something like, ‘Oof,’ which sounds ridiculous, even to me, even as I fall to the ground. My knees slam onto the floor. There’s no padding below the rug – just concrete – and a bolt of pain shoots up my legs. I keel over, and cough – one fist on the ground, trying to catch my breath. The blond slides a knife from a scabbard on his belt – where the hell did that come from? – a big sawtoothed blade – and he reaches down and grabs my hair, very hard, and pulls my head upwards and back, exposing my throat. He presses the blade under my chin. ‘Never say his name,’ he whispers. ‘Never.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He lets me go, and I crumple. He stands. For a moment, I am relieved. Alas, the relief does not last very long, because he kicks me in the ribs. ‘Ungrateful,’ he says, and kicks again. ‘Ungrateful!’ Another kick. I curl into a foetal position, put my hands over my head, wait for the next kick.
When it doesn’t come, I peer through a crack in my fingers. He’s kneeling beside me, looking concerned, as if he happened to wander by and find me here. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asks gently. ‘Can you sit up?’
I do. My ribs ache. The blond man sticks his face just inches from mine, so close that I am able to study the scar on his cheek. ‘Do you know that he has given you a gift, Mr Thane?’
‘The money?’
‘More than the money. Your house, your job, your wife. Everything a man could want.’
‘Libby?’ I say, surprised.
‘He has given her to you. Have you enjoyed her?’
‘Actually... ’ I start. But then I think better of it.
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