The Ice Harvest

by Scott Phillips

  At bottom Charlie was as disappointed to find out that Desiray had been sleeping with Vic regularly as he was to learn that he’d killed her. More than once she’d expressed a strong dislike for Vic, and he didn’t see anything Vic could have done for her professionally that he couldn’t or wouldn’t have done himself. She did have a pretty voracious appetite for coke. He remembered going home with her one summer night and watching her do line after line, becoming more and more manic as the night went on, punctuating her intake with glasses of jug wine and finishing off the evening with an enthusiastic blow job for Charlie. Now that he thought about it, if Vic was trading her coke for sex, his seemingly limitless supply of the former might have caused her to make the lethal mistake of speculating out loud to Vic about its source. Charlie had liked Desiray, liked her a lot, in fact, and for months he’d tried hard to pretend that her disappearance hadn’t been what it had seemed. He was sorry that she was dead after all, sorry to know that Vic had done it, and now that he thought about it, he wasn’t at all sorry he’d killed Vic.

  He returned to the Cavanaugh residence without much hope of finding the money there. If Roy hadn’t found it, it was most likely somewhere else. According to Dennis, Vic had stopped in at the Tease-O-Rama that afternoon, but there’d been too much chance of Charlie going back there for Vic to have risked using it to hide the money. After a cursory and unsuccessful search for any liquor he and Vic might have missed earlier he sat down at the kitchen table to think. On the counter next to it was an answering machine, its red light blinking on and off.

  “Hello?” It was a woman’s voice, husky and wary, and she said nothing else before she hung up two or three seconds later. It sounded a lot like Renata, but after five playbacks Charlie still couldn’t say for sure one way or the other. He picked up an address book from the scattered contents of an overturned kitchen drawer and looked up Renata’s name. Her home number was there in Vic’s childish hand, and Charlie started to dial it. He stopped and looked down again. Her home address was there, too. It was five-thirty. Whether he found the money or not, he was going to have to get out of town very soon.

  Renata’s house was a plain-looking white A-frame on a side street a mile west of the Sweet Cage. A light was on in the living room as he drove by. He parked the Mercedes down the street and walked up the sidewalk to her porch. The snow had stopped, and the neighborhood was perfectly still except for the crunch of his feet on the snowy sidewalk. He stepped onto the porch and rapped on the glass. A moment later a hand pulled the front window curtain back and Renata peered out at him, looking not the least surprised. She opened the door.

  “Hello, Charlie.” She opened the door wide and he shouldered past her into the house. “What brings you here? Hoping I might still reward you for your act of kindness toward me?” She shut the door behind her.

  Her living room was warm and dim, her furniture old and worn. A fire burned in the fireplace. She had on tight pants, a clinging black turtleneck sweater, and no shoes. Her bright red toenails showed through a filmy layer of nylon to match her long fingernails, and the detail aroused him slightly. Her hair was still pulled into a tight knot behind her head.

  “Where were you? I went by the Sweet Cage after we talked and there was nobody there.”

  “I couldn’t sit there and wait for you anymore, Charlie. You said you’d be by in twenty minutes.”

  “A cop stopped me.” He was sure it hadn’t been much more than twenty, but there were other matters to attend to now. “I heard your message.”

  “What message?” She moved toward the kitchen and turned back toward him, standing in the open doorway.

  “You left a message on Vic’s answering machine.”

  “Why would I call Vic? I don’t even have his phone number. Anyway, whenever I get one of those things I just hang up. I won’t talk to a machine.”

  “It was someone who sounded a lot like you, then.”

  “Sounded like me? What did she say?”

  “Just ‘hello,’ then she hung up.”

  “It wasn’t me. Did you ever find Vic?”

  “Yeah, I found him. He’s dead.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Did Roy Gelles do it?”

  “Roy’s dead, too.”

  “So you’re free to go. Why stop over here?” She leaned back onto the frame of the kitchen door with her arms folded over her chest, an amused, slightly disdainful smile beginning to play at the corners of her mouth. It seemed to him she was consciously arching her back in order to accentuate her breasts.

  “I can’t find the money. I can’t leave without it.”

  “You think it’s here?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is the voice on Vic’s machine sounded like you.”

  She shrugged. “Look around if you like.”

  He sat down at her dining room table. “I guess not. You have anything to drink?”

  “Just coffee and tea.”

  “No liquor?”

  “Not even wine. You want some coffee? Yes or no.”

  “I guess not.” His head throbbed, and the dull pain in his hip was constant now.

  “Maybe the woman on the answering machine was Bonnie. She has a husky voice. You know, one of those booze-and-cigarette voices.”

  “Vic and Bonnie haven’t spoken in three years, as far as I know, except maybe to exchange insults.”

  “As far as you know. Maybe she’s got the money.” She sat down at the table next to him and leaned forward. “She still lives in their old house, right?”

  Charlie nodded. It seemed unlikely. Charlie had never seen a marriage break up with such animal viciousness as Vic and Bonnie’s, not even his own.

  “You don’t suppose he was planning to take her and the kids with him all along and cut you out of it, do you?”

  “You got the last part right. He was planning to put me in Lake Bascomb.”

  “Or if he wasn’t taking her with him he might have just thought her house would be a safe place to stash the money until the morning.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Even if she’s not in on it, isn’t it possible he went over to see the kids? He might have some kind of hiding place there, maybe a floor safe or something.”

  It began to make sense to him. Vic was no more attentive a father than he was, but Christmas would have presented him with the perfect excuse to go over there and hide something. “He could have wrapped it up and put it under the tree.”

  Renata nodded. “How much money are we really talking about, Charlie? If you were both planning to skip town on it, it’s got to be a lot more than what you managed to skim off the top for a couple of years.”

  “Yesterday at noon I cleaned out the operating accounts for the whole operation.”

  “So that’s, what, five or six businesses total? Let’s say twelve grand, maybe fifteen. Still not nearly enough for you and Vic both to be planning to cash out on.”

  Charlie sighed and stood. It was five-forty-five. “We were running some coke on the side. A pretty fair amount of it, actually. Behind Bill’s back.”

  “Jesus Christ, Charlie. Bill Gerard would have cut off your skin in little pieces if he ever found out.”

  “The idea was to get out of town after we’d made a lot of money but before he found out about it.”

  “It’s a lot of money, then.”

  “It’s a great big fucking pile of money. I’d better get over to Bonnie’s before they come downstairs to open presents.”

  She rose and moved toward him. “If you want to come back here before you go, Charlie . . .” She put a hand on his shoulder and the other on his hip. They leaned together and kissed for a moment. Her mouth tasted like Doublemint gum masking tobacco, one of Charlie’s favorite combinations. Then she pulled back, her palms flat on his chest, her fingers arched and their long red nails pressing through his overcoat and his shirt. “You should get going now.” Her accent seemed slightly thicker than usual.

  Ten minutes later he w
as sitting in the Mercedes across the street and three houses down from Bonnie’s house in a newish subdivision of almost identical two-story houses in an area that had been farmland when Charlie was growing up. He got out of the car and crossed the street, the edgy anticipation of the break-in diminished somewhat by the notion that hardly anyone would suspect a middle-aged, well-dressed white man driving a late-model Mercedes of anything sinister in a neighborhood like this, even before six in the morning. That this was a man who had that very Christmas morning committed his first murder and was about to commit his first burglary would not have occurred to the casual observer.

  He moved to the side of the house, where he brushed the snow from around a basement window. He sat down in the hollow he’d made and braced himself, knowing he could afford the noise of only a single kick. His right foot shot straight through the window, knocking his shoe loose at the heel and making what seemed to him to be an excessive amount of noise, but he sat motionless for thirty seconds with no indication he’d been heard. Carefully he extracted his foot from the cracked window, his shoe dangling from his toes, and as he pulled it out the shoe caught on an outcropping of broken glass and dropped into the basement. Cursing quietly he got onto his knees, stuck his hand in, and managed to unlatch the window without gashing his wrist open.

  He lowered himself quietly into the basement, his right sock soaked. The almost perfect blackness was broken only by the pale gray rectangles of the windows where the walls met the ceiling. He felt his way to the wall and moved lopsidedly inch by inch around the room by touch, careful to avoid upsetting the storage boxes lining the walls, until he reached the stairs just opposite the windows. Moving his palm up and down the rough wall he located a light switch and flipped it on. The basement was unfinished, with mottled gray concrete walls and a smooth cement floor, stacked high with unused junk. A pair of bare bulbs glowed yellow in the ceiling fixture, one considerably dimmer than the other. He spent a minute looking around under the broken window for his shoe without success, bewildered, quietly moving aside boxes of old clothes and toys. He searched the rest of the room for two or three minutes before giving up on it. He turned out the light and moved slowly up the stairs.

  The kitchen was only marginally brighter than the basement. He pulled open the refrigerator door, holding on to the body of it with his right hand to steady himself and minimize the dull pop of the separating rubber door seal. He leaned down and found no beer or wine inside, just a large assortment of soft drinks, fruit juice, and milk, and he moved on.

  The tree was a big one, standing in the far corner of the living room, with a good thirty brightly wrapped packages scattered beneath it. He knelt to examine them and found that he was unable to make out the writing on the tags in the dark. He crawled around to the back of the tree, found the end of the light cord, and plugged it into the wall. The multicolored lights cast a surprisingly bright, soft light on the room, and on the coffee table he saw a plate of partially eaten cookies and a half-empty glass of milk; at least he wouldn’t have to worry about Bonnie coming down to play Santa. On the mantel above the fireplace hung three filled Christmas stockings beneath a multitude of framed family photos, including one, surprisingly enough, of Vic. Charlie doubted very much that his own photo was to be found anywhere in Sarabeth’s house, unless Melissa had one hidden away somewhere. The names on the packages were clearly legible now, and he began sorting through them. The first package he found with Vic’s handwriting on the tag was a big box addressed To: Nina. From: Daddy. He dug at the ends of the Scotch tape with the ends of his fingernails, trying and failing not to tear the paper beneath in the process. When he peeled the wrapping paper from the top he saw the words Little Baby ChewyFace, and under those the recommendation that the toy was for children from four to eight. He pulled the top of the box open and inside it found Little Baby ChewyFace, some instructions, and nothing else. He remembered the doll well, having given one to Melissa two or three years earlier when it had been the hot item of the moment. When the child put baby food in its mouth the doll seemed to chew, particles of food actually dribbled out the sides of its mouth, and at some point the child’s mother had to clean the doll. It performed several other more or less disgusting and high-maintenance functions as well, and Melissa had seemed pleased enough with hers at the time. He replaced the doll in the box and repaired the wrapping as best he could, then set about looking for more of Vic’s packages. He’d found one marked To: Danny. From: Dad and was about to open it when it occurred to him that even Vic wouldn’t have left a present for one of his children that he’d have to take away before Christmas morning rolled around. The money would have to be in a box addressed to Bonnie.

  But where was it? Jesus, these people gave each other lots of presents. To Mommy from Susy. To Danny from Nina. To Susy from Santa. Every possible combination except To Bonnie from Vic. He pressed on. Grandma and Grandpa, uncles, aunts, and cousins, all of them presumably Bonnie’s side of the family. And there in the corner, right next to where he’d grabbed the light cord from the carpet, sat a large package wrapped in the same green paper as Little Baby ChewyFace. He picked it up and hoisted it over the other packages. Its considerable weight was unevenly distributed within, and he set it down in front of him and flipped open the tag. To: my one and only Bonnie, with hope for the future. From: Vic.

  He drew a sharp breath and was ready to take the package out the door when a tiny voice stopped him.

  “You’re not Santa.”

  He looked over his shoulder and saw a dark-haired little girl of five or six, dressed in Smurf pajamas and staring at him with fierce loathing.

  He rose to his feet and bent over at the waist, fingers arched on his knees. He whispered his reply, shushing as he raised his right hand and placed its index finger to his lips. “I’m one of his helpers. And you must be Nina.”

  “I’m Susy,” she said out loud, condescending. “Nina’s almost twelve.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Presumably Nina was going to be disappointed with Baby ChewyFace, then. “You’re such a big girl, I mistook you for your big sister. Ho, ho, ho.”

  “What’s your name?” Her expression didn’t soften.

  “Charlie.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Just making sure all the packages are addressed to the right people.”

  “You’re stealing our presents.”

  “You’re going to wake everyone up. You don’t want to do that, do you?”

  “I don’t care. It’s almost morning anyway.”

  “How old are you, Susy?”

  “I’m five.” She pointed to the package. “That’s from my dad to my mom. Put it back.”

  Charlie looked down at the tag and affected surprise. “So it is, so it is.” He put it next to the tree, outside the circle of presents.

  “Not there. Where it was. In the back.”

  He picked it up again and placed it carefully back in its original spot. “There we go. Well, I guess I’m about ready to head back to the North Pole. Maybe you ought to go back to bed until it’s really morning.”

  She stared at him, unconvinced. “I’m too excited to sleep.”

  “If you don’t give it a try I’ll have to tell Santa. He wouldn’t like that.”

  “You don’t know Santa.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “How come you only have one shoe?”

  “The other one fell out of the sleigh.”

  “Okay.” The little girl sighed, looking resigned, and she turned away from him. For a moment he thought he’d pulled it off, and then she called out over her shoulder, “I’m going to go tell my Mom.”

  Charlie knelt, picked up the package, and ran into the darkness of the kitchen to the accompaniment of an earsplitting shriek from little Susy, knocking against the sharp corner of a low counter with his sore hip. He wrestled with the back-door dead bolt.

  “Mommy! A guy’s stealing our presents! Mommy!” Her voice had the to
ne of a rock saw cutting marble. He threw the door open and sprinted as well as he could manage one-shoed through the snow back to the Mercedes. He threw the package onto the passenger seat and turned the engine over, and as he pulled out and away he saw a light come on upstairs.

  A mile away he thought he heard a siren in the distance. He pulled into a supermarket parking lot, turned the headlights off, and sat under a lamppost with the engine running. The siren was getting close, howling louder and louder until a police cruiser materialized and blew a red light through the intersection in the general direction of Bonnie’s house. Charlie was relieved that there were a few early-morning churchgoers on the streets. He didn’t know if Bonnie had seen the Mercedes out her window or not, but in any case it seemed best from now on not to be pretty much the only car on the road.

  It was time he got back to Renata’s, but first he wanted to take a look at the money. He tore eagerly at the green paper and found a cardboard box duct-taped firmly shut and marked on two sides with a Miller High Life logo. After a failed attempt to loosen the tape with his thumbnail he shut the engine off and tore at the tape lengthwise with the car key. The tape split wide open down the center and he pulled up on the side flaps with a loud ripping sound as the tape on the sides separated from the box. Inside, orange from the light spilling in from the lamppost, were balls of wadded newspaper, and he fished through them until his hand touched something solid. He pulled out a wooden block the size and shape of a blackboard eraser. He began tossing the crumpled newspaper pages onto the floor of the passenger side, followed by another dozen or so of the wooden blocks, until he came to a hand-printed note on a piece of yellow legal paper at the bottom:

  Merry christmas BITCH!

  Good BYE. VIC.

  Stunned, he leaned forward and took several deep breaths to avert panic, gripping the wheel so hard his fingers started to hurt. He had almost no money. Maybe Renata would be willing to front him enough to get out of town. With great deliberation he managed to place the blocks and newspaper back in the box and set it down on the parking lot next to the car, and then he drove away, the pedals hard-edged and hard to hold down under his wet, shoeless right sock.