The Library at Mount Char

by Scott Hawkins

  “Three hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars. I went to the bank. Money really isn’t a problem for me. Will that be enough? I can get more.”

  “It should cover it,” he said. “I used to know people—qualified people—who would do a job like this for three hundred dollars.” He waited, not unhopefully, for her to rescind the offer, or maybe ask for an introduction to the qualified people. Instead they stared at each other for a while.

  “You’re the one I want,” she said. “If it’s not the money, then what’s holding you back?”

  He thought of explaining to her how he was trying to do better. He could say, Sometimes I feel like a new plant, like I just sprouted from the dirt, like I’m trying to stretch up to the sun. Instead what he said was “I’m trying to figure out what you get out of this. Is it some kind of rich-kid extreme sport? You bored?”

  She snorted laughter. “No. I’m the exact opposite of bored.”

  “What, then?”

  “Something was taken from me a number of years ago. Something precious.” She gave him a flinty smile. “I mean to have it back.”

  “I’ll need a little more detail. What are we talking about? Diamonds? Jewels?” He hesitated. “Drugs?”

  “Nothing like that. More like sentimental value. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “And why me?”

  “You come highly recommended.”

  Steve considered. Over Carolyn’s shoulder, on the dance floor, Eddie Hu and Cath were practicing the Charleston. They’re getting pretty good, too. Steve remembered what it felt like to be good at something. For a time, in some circles, he had been a little bit well-known. Maybe somebody remembered. “All right,” he said finally. “I can accept that, I guess. Couple more questions, though.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You’re sure that whatever it is, we’ll just be dealing with basic, residential alarms? No safes, no exotic locks, nothing like that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My sister again.”

  Steve opened his mouth to wonder about the quality of her information. Then it occurred to him that he couldn’t have told you exactly how many jobs he’d done if you put a gun to his head. One hundred and twelve sounds about right, though. So, instead, he said, “Last question. What if whatever it is you’re after isn’t there?”

  “You get the cash anyway.” She smiled slightly and leaned in a little closer. “Maybe even a bonus.” She cocked an eyebrow, smiled just a little flirtatiously.

  Steve considered this. Before she dropped the burglary bombshell he’d been hoping that the conversation might head toward flirty land. But now…“Let’s keep it simple,” he said. “The money should do me just fine. When do you want to go?”

  “You’ll do it then?” Her legs were strong and tan. When she moved you could see the muscles working under her skin.

  “Yeah,” he said, already knowing in his heart what a terrible idea it was. “I guess.”

  “No time like the present.”

  II

  One of the things Steve liked about Warwick Hall was how clean it was. Everything was polished wood, glowing brass, well-sprung leather seats shaped like a friendly invitation for your ass, black-and-white tile laid out on the floor in a way that would have tickled Euclid.

  That atmosphere broke as soon as you went out the front door, though. To get back to the modern world you had to climb a couple of flights of greasy concrete steps up to the street. The stairwell was black with ancient dirt, the sort of place stray cats go to die. Drifts of McCrap accumulated in the corners—cigarette butts, fast food bags, a Dasani bottle half full of tobacco spit. Tonight it was chilly, which kept the smell down, but in the summer he held his breath while he climbed.

  Carolyn didn’t like it either. She had removed her rubber boots in the bar, but put them back on at the threshold, then took them off again at the top of the stairs. Her leg warmers were candy-striped in the many colors of the unfashionable rainbow. Oh hell, I’ve got to ask. “Where did you even get those things, anyway?”

  “Hmm?”

  He pointed at the galoshes.

  “I’m staying with a lady. She had them in her closet.” Without the rain boots her feet were bare. The parking lot was crushed gravel. Walking on it didn’t seem to bother her.

  “That’s my truck over there.” It was a white work truck, a couple of years old, HODGSON PLUMBING stenciled in red letters on the door. The locks on his equipment cases were Medeco, the best. “Chicks dig it, I know. Try to contain yourself.” It had turned cold after the sun went down. His breath puffed white as he spoke.

  She tilted her head at him, a quizzical expression on her face.

  “Not funny. Never mind.” He got in the driver’s side. She fumbled at the door handle.

  “Is it jammed?”

  She gave a small, nervous smile and fumbled harder. He reached across the seat and opened the door from the inside.

  “Thanks.” She tossed her galoshes and the bag with the $327,000 onto the floorboard, there to languish among the Mountain Dew bottles and empty bags of beef jerky. She curled up on the bench seat, legs folded beneath her, flexible as an eight-year-old.

  “I got a spare jacket in the back. You want to borrow it? It’s chilly out.”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  Steve cranked the truck. It rumbled to life. Cold air began to pour out of the vents. Last chance, he thought. Last chance to back out of this. He glanced at the floorboard. In the phlegmy yellow glow of the streetlamp he could see a bundle of money outlined against the canvas of the bag. He grimaced the way you do when you swallow medicine. “You got an address for this place?”

  “No.”

  “Then how am I—”

  “Take a left out of the parking lot. Go two miles and—”

  He held up a hand. “Not yet.”

  “I thought we were doing it tonight?”

  “We are. But first we’ve got to talk.”

  “Ah. OK.”

  “You ever done this before?”

  “Not exactly. No.”

  “You the high-strung type? Nervous?”

  She flashed a small, wry smile. “You know, I’m honestly not sure. If I am, I’ve got it under control.”

  “Well, that’s good. I don’t know what you’re expecting, but this isn’t going to be like bungee jumping. As a first-timer, you might be a little tense. That’s normal. But after the first couple of times, it’s actually pretty boring, more like helping a buddy move to a new apartment than anything you’d see in the movies.”

  She was nodding. “I get that. I—”

  He held up a hand. “However. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. You got a cell phone?”

  She looked confused for a moment, then shook her head.

  “Really?”

  “Really. I don’t have any kind of phone. Is that a problem?”

  “Nope. I was going to have you get rid of it. They can be tracked. It’s just that everyone seems to have them these days. You got gloves?”

  “No.”

  “I got a pair you can use. You’ll need to put your galoshes back on too—footprints. They’re probably not going to give the full CSI hair-and-fiber treatment, not for a simple burglary, but they might dust for prints. Other than that, just follow my lead and try not to touch anything you don’t have to. You don’t have any guns, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “OK, good. Guns are bad news.” Aside from not wanting to hurt anyone, Steve was a convicted felon. If he were caught in possession of a gun he’d be looking at five years, minimum.

  “Let me get some things.” Steve took his own cell phone out of his pocket and removed the SIM card. He knew that cops could put together a pretty accurate map of where a person had been by the cell towers their phone connected to as they moved around. If I remove the card, that should make it impossible, right? He wasn’t sure. Back when he used to d
o this, cell phones didn’t exist. It crossed his mind to put the phone in one of the equipment lockers in the back of the truck. He figured that would work about like an elevator in terms of insulating the signal. But you never know. Ah, fuck it, he thought. I’ll just smash the thing. Probably that was overkill, but if he was going to do this he was going to do it right.

  He was parked in the back corner of the lot—under a light, but away from everybody else, and mostly out of sight. Old habits die hard. He smiled a little. The metal locker over the wheel well swung open on well-oiled hinges.

  He started pulling out tools. A cordless Makita drill, a couple of screwdrivers, a small crowbar, a five-pound hammer, and a slim jim he had made himself out of sheet steel from Ace Hardware. Just, y’know, for practice. He wrapped his cell phone in a towel and ruined it with two whacks from the hammer. The rest of the stuff he put into his tool belt along with a couple of pairs of leather work gloves, then stuck the tool belt in a knapsack. Long time since I put a kit together. He felt a burst of something like nostalgia and squashed it down hard. He hated how he missed this so much. He wanted to do better and, mostly, he did. Even after ten years the slap that ended his burglary career, and the accompanying verdict—You little asshole—were never far from his thoughts.

  But…three hundred grand. He sighed. “How far is it?”

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “What kind of place is it? House? Apartment?”

  “It’s a house.”

  “Stand-alone? Not a duplex or anything?”

  “Yeah, stand-alone. It’s in a subdivision, but the neighborhood is mostly empty. The owner works night shift, so we should have all the time we need.”

  “All right. First thing is, I’ve got to get us another car.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, among other things, this one has my name on the door.”

  “Oh. OK.”

  They drove to the airport. He parked in short-term parking, then slung the knapsack over his shoulder. They walked into the terminal and out the other side, then took a shuttle to long-term parking. He walked down the rows until he found a car with the ticket stub in plain sight. It was a dark-blue Toyota Camry, just about the blandest car on the road. The owner had dropped it off the day before. Perfect.

  “Stand there, would you?” he said.

  Carolyn took her place in front of the wheel well. He hung the crowbar from a belt loop and put the wire cutters in his back pocket. Then he took the long strip of sheet steel out of the knapsack, slid it in between the rubber and the window, and slipped open the lock. He was ready for the car alarm to go off, but it never did. He popped the trunk from inside the car and tossed his knapsack in there. “You coming?”

  She walked around and got in on the passenger side. “That was quick,” she said. “My sister was right about you.”

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” He popped the cover off the steering column with the crowbar and used the screwdriver to pop out the ignition locking bolt. The Toyota started on the first try. Some of the exits from the lot were automated, but the electronic trail that his credit card would leave if he swiped it would be more or less conclusive proof of grand-theft Camry. So instead he replaced the metal cover on the steering column and had cash ready when he got to the window. He needn’t have bothered. The lot attendant, a bored-looking black guy in his fifties, was watching TV. He never looked up.

  They slipped out into the night.

  III

  In his secret heart, Steve fancied that he was a Buddhist.

  A couple of years ago, following a whim, he’d picked up a copy of Buddhism for Dummies at the bookstore. He kept it under the bed. Now it was dog-eared, the pages stained with the pizza grease and spilled Coke of repeated readings. Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep he fantasized about giving up all his worldly belongings and moving to Tibet. He would join a monastery, ideally one about halfway up a mountain. He would shave his head. There would be bamboo, pandas, and tea. He would wear an orange robe. Probably in the afternoon there would be chanting.

  Buddhism, he thought, is a clean religion. You never heard about how eight people—two of them children—just got blown the fuck up as part of the long-standing conflict between Buddhists and whoever. Buddhists never knocked on your door just when the game was getting good to hand you a tract about what a great guy Prince Siddhartha was. Maybe it was just the fact that he didn’t know any Buddhists in real life, but he clung to the hope that they might really be different.

  Probably that was bullshit. Probably if you actually went to a Buddhist service you’d find out that they were just as petty and fucked-up as everyone else. Maybe between chants they talked about how so-and-so was wearing last season’s robe, or how the incense little Zhang Wei burned the other day was the shitty, cheap stuff because his family was so poor, ha-ha-ha. But this was Virginia and he was a plumber. Why not pretend?

  He never went so far as to even fantasize about buying a plane ticket, of course. He wasn’t stupid. Pretend for the sake of argument that his vision of the Buddhist ideal had a basis in reality. The fact that he himself was still just a piece of shit with a shaved head and an orange robe was bound to come out sooner or later.

  Probably sooner, he thought. The Buddha was pretty clear on the subject of stealing. “If you kill, lie, or steal…you dig up your own roots. And if you cannot master yourself, the harm you do turns against you Grievously.” The g in “Grievously” was capitalized.

  And yet, he thought, with the mental equivalent of a sigh, here I am.

  “—left up there,” Carolyn said.

  “Say again, please?”

  “I said turn left up there, by the red car.”

  They had been driving about twenty minutes, Carolyn giving directions. “Left here. Right on the big road. Whoops, sorry, turn around.” Her voice was low and throaty. It was hypnotic. Also, Steve’s sense of direction was crap. Five minutes out from the airport he’d already been utterly lost. They might as well have been in Fiji. Nagoya. The moon. “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Are we getting close?”

  “Another few minutes. Not long.”

  She was sitting curled up in the passenger seat with her back to the door. Her posture, together with her tight bicycle shorts, showed a lot of leg. He was having trouble not staring at that leg. Every time they drove past a billboard or road sign on her side he’d sneak a peek. She didn’t seem to mind or, indeed, notice.

  “Turn there,” she said.

  “Here?”

  “No, next one down. Where that—yes.” She smiled at him, her eyes feral in the moonlight. “We’re close now.”

  The road ahead was dark. They were well outside the city, edging into farm country. They drove into a mostly empty subdivision. It was big, or designed to be big—it had enough acreage for maybe a hundred houses with postage-stamp-sized yards. There were a few finished ones here and there, a few more poured foundations with weeds sprouting from the cracks. But mostly the lots stood empty.

  “Perfect,” Steve muttered.

  “There.” She pointed. “That one.”

  Steve followed her finger out to a smallish ranch house painted a pale shade of green, hideous even in the dark. The driveway was empty. The only source of light was a lonely-looking streetlamp on the corner.

  He rolled past the yard slowly, which reminded him in some nonspecific way of a rap video, which made him feel ridiculous. A hundred yards farther down the road curved just enough that the house vanished from sight behind a stand of trees. He parked there and turned to look at Carolyn.

  “Last chance,” he said. “You’re sure you want to do this? If you’ll tell me what it is you’re after I can—”

  Her eyes flared in the moonlight. “No. I have to go with you.”

  “All righty, then.” He snuck another peek at her legs, then got out. The soft thunk of the door shutting sounded satisfactorily covert. He
walked around to the back of the car and retrieved the knapsack. “Are you—”

  She brushed the back of his neck with her fingertips. He shivered, the little hairs standing up. He turned around to find her very close, close enough that he could smell her. She smelled a bit like she hadn’t bathed in…well, a while—but it was a good kind of hadn’t bathed in a while—musky, feminine. His nostrils flared.

  “Come on,” she said. She had put the galoshes back on over the leg warmers.

  When they reached the house, Steve checked inside the mailbox. It was stuffed full, easily a week’s worth of junk. Owner hasn’t been home in a while, he thought. Perfect. He pulled out a magazine and angled it in the moonlight until he could read the cover. It read Police Chief Magazine in big blue letters, and was addressed to…“Detective Marvin Miner.” He looked at Carolyn. “This guy’s a cop?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “What’d he do to you?”

  “Ruined my silk dress.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  “He got blood on it.”

  “Hmm. Did you try rinsing it with club so—”

  “Yeah, it was too far gone. Are you in or not?”

  “Well…I guess it doesn’t make much difference, if we do it right. Anyway, it doesn’t look like Detective Miner is home.”

  “Mmm.”

  Steve hesitated, then stepped onto the driveway. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell. No response from inside the house.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “I wasn’t expecting anybody, but if there’s a Rottweiler or something it would be good to know about it now.”

  “Ah. Good thought.” Her voice dripped with distaste.

  “You don’t like dogs?”

  She shook her head. “They’re dangerous.”

  Steve gave her a quizzical look. Most nights when he got home his cocker spaniel, Petey, wagged his tail so hard his whole butt wiggled. Maybe when this is done me and Petey will go to Tibet. He imagined hiking up the hill to the monastery on a bright spring day, Petey bouncing along beside him, Inner Peace waiting for them at the top of the hill.