For a moment I just sat there, shaking too hard to move. The motor was off, but the heater was running on high, the noise of the fan drowning out my gasps. There was a knock on the window and I jumped.
The state trooper smiled. “You all right?”
I rolled down the window. The icy-cold air cleared my head and gave me another reason to shake.
“You handled that well,” the trooper said. “Kept your car from bouncing back out in front of that semi.”
“Thanks,” I said. My voice was high and it broke in the middle of the word, and that made the trooper smile again.
“See if you can get away from the snowbank.”
I fumbled for the key, but it wouldn’t turn.
“You’ve got to put it in park first,” the trooper said, holding up his hands to stop traffic.
I could feel the eyes of the other drivers on me as I started the car and began to work it loose, inching forward, then backing up, then forward again, then back, then forward, each time a little farther. It felt like it took an hour, but three minutes later the car was free, and I was driving north on the road to Watertown.
The weather wasn’t as bad as everybody had been predicting. It was snowing, but it was no blizzard.
I’d just hit a patch of ice.
Could happen to anybody.
And troopers spent half their days in the winter helping drivers out of ditches.
No big deal.
But a state trooper tapping on your window when you had a gym bag full of cocaine in the car, just to compliment you on your driving? That was the kind of luck that could make you sick if you thought about it.
What the hell was I doing?
If I got busted with that coke, that’d be it—I’d be locked up the rest of my life.
Even if the cops pulled me over on the way back, I’d still have to explain where I got all the money. Guys my age had no reason to have that much cash.
Eighty thousand dollars.
Two people could live for years on that, not working, spending every day at the beach.
Or in bed.
But there weren’t two people.
There were three.
Me, Dawn, and Terri.
Most of that money might end up going to medical stuff. Dawn had mentioned that Terri needed a brace to ride in the car. What else would we have to buy? Even eighty grand wouldn’t hold out forever. Eventually, we’d have to get jobs, our great adventure reduced to a two-bedroom apartment somewhere, our little, strange new family growing old together.
For the rest of the ride, I had one thought: What the hell am I doing?
THE MAN OPENED the Chips Ahoy bag and offered it to me before reaching in for a cookie.
He said his name was Diesel. He was old—forty, maybe more—big in that way ex-bodybuilders get, with two chins and a doughy, low-hanging gut that hid his belt. He had a Montreal Expos mug in his hand and a pistol in his pants pocket.
“I knew Reg wouldn’t make the drive up here.”
“It’s not that bad,” I said. “I took Route 11. Some slippery spots, but if you go slow, it’s okay.”
Diesel bit the cookie in half and washed it down with a swig of coffee. “Not the weather. The cops.”
“There were some. But they were busy with accidents. Cars off the road. That kind of thing.”
“Exactly,” he said, finishing his cookie. “That’s why we checked the weather before we green-lighted today. We knew they’d be distracted. Still, not enough for Reg, I guess.” He held the bag out again. “You sure you don’t want one?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t eaten since I’d wolfed an Egg McMuffin for breakfast. I was hungry, but I doubted I could keep anything down.
“Why didn’t Reg send the other dude? Short guy, got a little pubic mustache going?”
I could picture him. “Freddie.”
“Yeah, that’s the dude. Where is he?”
I wished I knew. If I did, Dawn and I could go to the police, and they’d dig up the body or drag the lake or sift a pile of ashes for teeth. It would be the end to Reg and Steve and the others, and the start of us. But I didn’t know, so Reg was still there. I said, “I heard he’s on vacation.”
“Must be nice.” He drained the last of his coffee and put his cup in the sink. “Okay, let’s see what Reg sent.” He unzipped the bag and set two packages on the counter, each one no bigger than a carton of cigarettes, both covered in layers of plastic wrap and cellophane tape. I remembered the way the last delivery went. Dale and the fat man had weighed the package on an electronic scale, then the woman used a small glass of bleach to test the purity before they sampled it for themselves. But this was a lot more coke and a lot more money.
He picked up one of the packages and bounced it in his hand. “Looks good to me. Nice job, kid.”
I blinked. “That’s it? You don’t have to check it or anything?”
He raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
“I don’t know. Make sure it’s all there? That it’s pure?”
He laughed. “It’s never pure, kid, you ought to know that. And as for weight, Reg wouldn’t burn us. He knows better.”
Us? I looked around. It was a small house, and the doors to the bathroom and lone bedroom were open. I didn’t see anybody else. But I did see the black leather jacket hanging on a hook by the back door. In the center was a flying skull, below that a patch that said Montreal, and at the top, across both shoulders, another patch with two words: HELL’S ANGELS.
“I suppose you want the cash.” He bent down, opened a cupboard door, and took out a grocery bag, the top rolled down two-thirds of the way. He flipped the bag over. Dozens of inch-thick stacks spilled onto the counter—tens, twenties, fifties—each stack wrapped with a paper band.
I knew my mouth was hanging open, but—damn—that was a lot of money.
The man nodded at the tumbled-down pile. “You want to count it?”
It took a few seconds for the words to register. “No,” I said. “Looks good to me.”
The man laughed. “Good answer, kid.” He swept the stacks into the new black and gray bag, jostling them around till they all fit, then hung the strap on my arm. “You see the cash in there? Good. Now you close it. And don’t let that bag outta your sight for a second.”
I zipped the bag shut and moved the strap onto my shoulder.
Diesel put the bricks of coke in the A&P bag, rolled the top down like before, and placed it in the cupboard over the counter. “Can I get you a sandwich or something? There’s some orange juice in the fridge if you’d like.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I gotta get going. Reg is expecting me back on time, and I don’t want to get stuck in the snow or anything.”
The man stopped, then looked hard at me. “Hold on.” He pointed at the table as he crossed room. “Take a seat. I wanna make a call.”
“I was kinda hoping to—”
“Sit,” the man said.
I sat.
The man took the receiver off the phone and punched in a number. I heard him say hello, say some things about the roads and traffic, heard myself described as “some kid,” heard him joke about my shirt and tie, heard part of a mumbled comment about taking a drive, then I heard the man hang up, the whole time just wanting to get out of there. I may have been just “some kid,” but I was smart enough to know that when a Hell’s Angel with a pistol in his pocket tells you to sit, you stay sitting.
The man strolled to the counter and picked up the Chips Ahoy bag. “I called a friend of mine about you,” he said.
I looked up.
“Told him I didn’t like it,” the man said. “Told him to get over here.”
I could feel the sweat start to bubble up on my lip. “Look, I don’t want any—”
“What, you thought I was just gonna let you go?”
I paused, then nodded.
“Ain’t happening, kid,” the man said.
“But I have—”
“But nothing,
” the man said. “You ain’t going anywhere till Wally gets here.”
I tried to swallow.
The man fished out another chocolate chip cookie and held it up as he talked. “Wally drives a snowplow for the town. He’ll lead the way as far south as the county line. After that, just drive slow. I don’t wanna see you get hurt.”
IT WAS TEN THIRTY when I pulled into the parking lot of the Wishing Well Motel. It would have been an hour earlier, but I had to wait for Wally, then follow behind his slow-moving plow for forty miles. Every minute counted now, and the sooner Dawn and I were on the road, the farther away we’d be when Reg realized what had happened.
There weren’t many cars in the lot—and no full-size, luggage-rack-on-the-top, wood-on-the-side station wagons—so I was able to park in front of our room. I saw the curtain in our window move, and as I climbed out of the car, the motel room door flew open and Dawn ran to me, her arms wrapping around my neck.
“Oh my god, you’re safe,” she said. “I’ve been so worried, looking out the window every two seconds, wondering where you were . . . I’d hear an ambulance go by or something, I don’t know . . . and then a car would pull up and it . . . it . . . wasn’t you, and . . . and . . .”
For a perfect moment we stood there, holding on to each other, the light from the room spilling out around us as a fresh layer of snow began to fall. Then a loud truck drove past on the road above, and Dawn gasped and pushed away, her eyes wide. She took my arm and pulled me in the room, double locking the door and leaning to look through the peephole.
I glanced around the room.
The bed was made, but it was covered in cut-up newspapers and magazines, a pair of scissors on top of a Cosmo. There was an empty take-out container in the trash, and on the nightstand, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, a crumpled pack of Virginia Slims, a packet of soy sauce, and a pile of rubber bands.
I tossed the bag on the bed. Dawn turned slowly and looked at the bag. Then she looked at me. “No. Don’t put it there.” She took the bag, dropped to her knees, and stuffed it under the bed. She stumbled as she stood and I caught hold of her, her whole body shaking. “Sorry,” she said. “What if somebody sees it?”
“Nobody’s gonna—”
“I know, Nick. I’m sorry. I’m just really scared.”
I held her, hugging her body tight against mine, one hand around her waist, the other stroking the back of her neck. She took a deep breath and looked at me, the dark sparkle returning to her eyes. She reached up and touched my cheek. We kissed, soft at first, then long and hard, and it would have led to more if I’d let it.
“We gotta go,” I whispered.
I could feel her head shake against my shoulder.
“We can take turns driving,” I said. “We can make it to Virginia by morning.”
“No.”
“Sure we can. Come on. We gotta get outta town now. When I don’t show at Reg’s, they’ll start looking for my car. If they find us here . . .”
“He’s not going to look for us,” Dawn said.
I laughed.
“He’s not going to care what we do. None of them will,” she said, slipping away to sit on the edge of the bed.
Not now, I thought, but I sat next to her anyway, took her hand in mine. “We need to get on the road right away so—”
“No, we don’t, Nick. You’re not doing this.”
“It’s done,” I said. “I got the money. All we need to do is go, and we’re—”
“And we’re what? Running for the rest of our lives? Always looking behind us? Jumping every time there’s a knock on the door? I don’t want to live like that.”
“It won’t be that bad. You it said yourself. Reg is losing it and Steve’s got his own plans.”
She sighed. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see how we’d be starting off?”
“Yeah. With eighty grand.”
“I gotta think of Terri. You have to know that, Nick.” She turned to face me. “Remember when we first met?”
“At the Stop-N-Go.”
“Do you know what it was that I liked about you?”
“That I let you rip me off?”
She smiled and lowered her head. “You were different. You weren’t like the people in my life. You were funny and kind, and—” She laughed. “You were a good person. And then you showed up at Reg’s, and I thought I’d been wrong. But the more I learned, the more I saw you, the more I knew I’d been right.”
“I’m not a saint.”
“No, but you’re not like them, either. But if you take the money, that’s what you’ll become. Trust me.”
“What about Florida?”
“We’ll get there,” she said. “Not right now, but soon.”
I felt a weight sliding off my back and realized then that, despite what I had said, despite my list, I wasn’t ready to leave.
“We have a couple hundred bucks,” she said. “And time to save more.”
I gestured at the newspapers and magazines. “Is that why you spent the day cutting coupons?”
She glanced at the bed, and for a moment it was if she didn’t remember. Then she said, “Yes. Coupons.”
“That’s not going to save us much.”
She squeezed my hand. “It’ll get us closer. That’s the important thing.”
I felt my chest tighten, felt something in my throat. I brushed the hair off my forehead, my fingers rubbing against my eyes. I took a breath and wet my lips. “So what do we do now?”
Dawn bent down and reached under the bed. “Take this to Reg,” she said, hanging the bag on my shoulder. “Then come back to me.”
I’D DONE IT.
I stood out from the crowd.
I stood up for what mattered.
I stood fast when things got rough.
And I stood by the woman I knew I loved.
I followed my list, and it led me to this moment.
I shifted the bag to my other shoulder and knocked on the door.
I was about to walk into a murdering drug dealer’s house to hand over the eighty thousand dollars I’d gotten from a Hell’s Angel for delivering a kilo of cocaine, and I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been happier.
The door opened and Cory said, “Well, don’t just stand there grinning like an idiot. Get in here.”
I stepped in and stamped the snow off my boots. Cory relocked the door, mumbling about heating the damn outside, then disappeared down the hall.
The late local news was on the TV, but the sound was drowned out by the funky beat pumping from the stereo. There was a bong on a folding chair by the couch and an empty pizza box on the floor.
Reg and Lester sat at the table, Lester shuffling cards, Reg staring at me.
“You cut it close there, shithead. Another hour, we would have come looking for you.”
“The roads were pretty bad around Oswego,” I said.
Reg gave a disgusted sigh, crushed his cigarette butt in the ashtray. “I don’t know why I hired your sorry ass in the first place.”
“Steve,” Lester said, still shuffling.
“Oh, that’s right,” Reg said. “Steve. Been after me for weeks to give shithead here a shot.”
“Longer than that,” Lester said.
Reg looked at me. “He must owe you big-time.”
I smiled to myself. It was the other way around. If it wasn’t for Steve bringing me to Reg’s house, Dawn would have simply been this hot chick who once conned me out of ten dollars. Funny how it worked out like that.
“Nicky! My man.” The kitchen door swung open and out stepped Steve, smiling like he’d won a quarter-million-dollar bet. He strode over and slapped an arm around my shoulders. “Up to Watertown and back, and it ain’t even midnight. I told you Nick was the real deal. I’d stake my life on it, right, Nicky boy?”
“You said that about Dawn, too,” Reg said, knocking another cigarette out of the pack. “Then she got sloppy with the accounts, adding wrong, losing money . . .”
>
Lester gave a half laugh. “Losing it in her purse.”
Steve waved a hand, dismissing it all. “That bitch is crazy. Runs in her family. Mom’s a junkie, her sister’s brain-dead . . .”
“Dawn ain’t much better,” Reg said. He lit the cigarette, took a long drag. “I swear, she don’t give a shit about anybody but that wacked sister.”
Reg leaned back and blew a perfect smoke ring.
And as I watched it float to the ceiling, something clicked.
The coincidences that couldn’t be chance.
The clues I’d missed.
The one truth I ignored.
I’d do worse things than that for my sister.
My stomach groaned, knowing then what had happened. And sensing what was coming.
Reg snapped his fingers. “Hey, shithead. I’m talking to you. Give me the bag.”
I stood there and, for a flash of a second, nothing moved. Then, with an inaudible pop, it started again, everything in slow motion, all sounds merging into a dull, sickening roar.
Reg saying something I couldn’t hear.
Lester pushing the cards away, clearing a space.
Steve reaching over, taking the bag off my shoulder, setting it on the table.
The bag that had held a kilo of cocaine.
The bag that the Hell’s Angel had filled with money.
The bag that I’d looked in as I drove back home.
The bag that hadn’t been out of my sight for a single second.
Until Dawn put it under the bed.
The bed that we’d slept in together the night before.
The bed that, twenty minutes ago, had been covered in bits of paper.
I looked at the bag.
Black and gray.
Exactly the same.
Except this one still had the price tag that I’d seen Reg tear off.
I watched as he pulled the zipper back and dumped out stack after stack of bill-size clippings from newspapers and magazines, each stack wrapped tight with a rubber band.
A few days later
I PULLED INTO THE EMPTY SPACE, PUT THE CAR IN PARK, and sat there, trying to make sense of it all.
Snow Job Page 18
