“You know, I’m not like Marquis, or Damien,” Burke said. “I don’t have anything against anybody. All I want is the jack.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’m going to haul ass out of this town. I’ve done some things you can’t undo, you know? Time to start over somewhere. What you should be doing, too. How much you need?”
“What?”
“You’ve got to run. You understand that, right? You don’t have a choice. If Damien catches up with you, he’ll cut off those big balls of yours, feed them to you before he puts a bullet in your head. How much for you and Adrina, get out of Detroit, go somewhere he can’t find you?”
Cordell looked at him, didn’t answer.
“I’ve done some bad shit last couple days,” Burke said. “Things I’m not proud of. Don’t want to do anymore if I can avoid it. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, a couple hours ago, all that money belonged to you. And now it doesn’t. But you need to concentrate on tomorrow, not yesterday. Will twenty thousand do it?”
“You serious?”
“Why not? Twenty’s better than nothing, right? Anyway, you earned it, all the shit you went through. And if there’s as much as you say in there, there’s plenty to go around.”
He pulled up to the gate, used the key card Cordell had given him. When the gate swung open, he drove through.
“Left here,” Cordell said. “It’s down about halfway on the right.”
Burke drove slow, no other cars around. The units they were driving past now were all garage-size, the narrow streets brightly lit.
“That’s it there,” Cordell said.
Burke pulled up, put his headlights on the orange metal door. It was padlocked to a small U-bolt in the concrete.
Burke switched off the headlights, killed the engine. He took the Browning from his coat pocket. “Any surprises in there and you’ll go down first.”
“Won’t be no surprises.”
“Good. Get your key.”
They got out of the car together. Cordell was moving slow. He undid the padlock, slipped it free of the bolt, pushed the door up on its rollers. Inside was a silver Lexus, parked nose first against the far wall.
“You first,” Burke said. He tossed his cigarette away.
Cordell went in, hit a wall switch. Fluorescent ceiling bulbs blinked on. Burke came in behind him, used his left hand to pull the door back down until it met the concrete lip of the entrance.
“It’s in the trunk,” Cordell said.
Burke gestured with the Browning. “Open it.”
Cordell took out a key fob, pressed a button, and the trunk lid clicked, opened an inch. He raised it the rest of the way.
“Step back,” Burke said. “Go stand over there.”
He did as he was told. Burke looked in the trunk. Inside were two more black tac bags. He unzipped one, saw banded packs of cash jumbled together. In the second were handguns, extra magazines, and two Kevlar vests. He could see the parts of a disassembled AR-15.
“Start a war with this shit,” he said. “You people were prepared, give you that.” He put the Browning in his coat pocket, hauled out the bag with the money, propped it on the fender, tilted it to get a better look at the bills. “This the rest of it?”
“That’s it.”
“No one else touched it?”
“No.”
“You didn’t stash any someplace else, just in case?”
“Wasn’t time.”
“So there should be about a hundred and fifty thousand in here, that what you’re telling me?”
“’Bout that.” He was rubbing his wrists again.
“Pretty big score for a guy your age. And hell, you almost got away with it.” He dropped the bag on the floor. “Count that shit for me.”
Cordell pushed his glasses up on his nose, knelt, and opened the bag wider. He began to take out bound packs, set them on the concrete floor. Burke leaned back against the Lexus’s fender, crossed his arms.
“Rough count’s good enough,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be to the dollar.”
Cordell nodded, counting out packs, lips moving silently.
“When you’re done, don’t forget to take out your twenty,” Burke said. “That’s twenty. Not thirty, not forty. I’m watching you.”
Cordell moved stacks to one side, took more from the bag.
“Count it twice,” Burke said, “just to be sure,” then took the slapjack from his coat pocket, raised it high, and laid it across the back of Cordell’s head. He grunted, fell forward across the money, and Burke leaned over, hit him again, then a third time.
He rolled him off the money, grabbed his belt, dragged him clear, turned him faceup. He was still breathing. Burke used the slapjack on him four more times. When he was done, there was blood on the leather. He wiped it on Cordell’s T-shirt, then put the slapjack away.
The money went back into the tac bag. He zipped it up, then checked the rest of the car. There was blood on the passenger seat. That would be Ferron’s. No other cash.
He went back to Cordell, wrestled him closer to the car, then gripped his belt, lifted. He got his head and shoulders inside the trunk, then raised his legs, tumbled him inside atop the other bag. His glasses were on the floor a few feet away. Burke threw them in after him, shut the lid.
Out of breath, he opened the gate, looked out on the street. Still empty. He stowed the tac bag in the Impala’s trunk beside the other one, then switched off the lights inside the unit, rolled the door shut, and padlocked it again.
He used the key card at the gate, headed back toward the freeway. He lit another cigarette, threw the padlock key out the window. A mile later, he tossed the key card.
Time for a road trip, he thought. If it worked out, he’d come back here, get the rest of his money from the bank and what he’d hidden in the house. Then head out, someplace far away, worry about Marquis later. Or maybe pay a quick visit to Terry Street first, take out Marquis and his brother both, never have to worry about either of them again.
Time to finish this shit up, he thought, find the woman, find the money.
Just you and me now, honey, he thought. Let’s see what you got.
NINETEEN
They’d been on the road more than an hour, Claudette in the backseat, Haley sleeping in her lap. Crissa looked at them in the rearview, said, “Are you awake?” They were on Interstate 95 now, heading north.
Claudette raised her head, blinked. She’d been drifting in and out of sleep the last twenty miles. “Yes.”
“How do you feel about what happened back there?”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to talk some things out, and we need to be on the same page with it.”
Haley shifted in her sleep.
“How much does he know about your sister?” Crissa said.
“Not much. Her name. Town she lives in. That’s about it.”
“We need a plan, in case he comes looking for you.”
“He won’t.”
“He might. So you have to plan as if he will. But you know what the biggest danger is?” She caught Claudette’s eyes in the mirror.
“What?”
“You decide you miss him, try to go back.”
Claudette looked out the window. “I don’t think I could do that. Not now. Not after today.”
“Good.”
“I feel bad for him, though.”
“Don’t.”
“Sometimes you see things, know things,” Claudette said. “But you ignore them, hope they’ll go away on their own, that things’ll get better.”
“Sometimes they do. Mostly they don’t.”
“I know.”
“Anyway, if Roy’s smart, he’s on his way to Alaska right now.”
“He can be,” Claudette said. “Sometimes.”
“What?”
“Smart.”
“Let’s hope,” Crissa said.
* * *
It was just before 2:
00 A.M. when she steered the rental into the gravel driveway. It was lined with live oaks on one side. Spanish moss hung from the branches, gray and ghostly in the headlights.
The house was set back from the road, the homes here spaced out, separated by undeveloped lots. Lights on the porch and in the front room. She parked behind a dark red SUV, shut off the headlights and engine.
The front door opened, and a woman came out on the porch.
“Go talk to her,” Crissa said. “I’ll get your things.”
Claudette got the door open, slid across and out. She lifted Haley up to her shoulder. They started across the yard to the porch and the woman waiting there.
Crissa got out, stretched, touched her toes to ease her back muscles. The air was thick and smelled of nearby swamp, a faint sulfur scent in the air. The night was full of crickets. She thought of her own house, the smell of the inlet, the far-off sound of the channel buoys at night. The noise of the wind, the echo of empty rooms.
She opened the trunk, got out the black trash bag and the single suitcase. Roy had kept the other one. She carried them up the lawn to the slate path that led to the door, the bag slung over her shoulder. Claudette and the woman had stopped talking, were looking back at her.
Crissa tried to smile despite her fatigue, set the suitcase down, said, “Hello.” The woman standing next to Claudette was in her early forties, blond hair tied back. Crissa could see the resemblance in the eyes, the facial features.
“This is Crissa,” Claudette said. “Crissa, my sister Nancy. This is her house.”
Haley made a noise in her sleep, her head on Claudette’s shoulder.
“Let me take her,” Nancy said. “I’ve got the downstairs bedroom made up already.” Claudette shifted Haley into her sister’s arms. Without opening her eyes, Haley put her arms around Nancy’s neck, her head on her shoulder. Nancy shifted her for a better grip, looked at Crissa.
“And what are you again?”
“Just a friend,” Crissa said.
“Well, y’all better come in, then,” Nancy said. “I guess we have some talking to do.”
* * *
“Do you have any idea,” Nancy said, “how many times I’ve been through this?”
She and Crissa sat in the living room, a single light on. Claudette was asleep beside Haley in the spare bedroom.
“I can imagine,” Crissa said, and sipped from her mug of herbal tea. It was a big living room, with a sloped ceiling and skylight, a brick fireplace. An old house, but plenty of space, and it would be full of light in the daytime.
“From the time she was fifteen,” Nancy said. “One thing after another. One man after another. With Larry, and then Haley, I thought she’d settle down. At least it seemed that way for a while. But I guess he had his issues, too.”
“He did.”
“But he’s not coming back, is he?”
“No.”
“He paid for Claudette’s rehab last time. Not long after she had Haley. He was a good provider when he was around. You think she’s done with that Roy?”
“Maybe. Until the next time she gets high, decides he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.”
“Will he come after her? Will he come here?”
“I doubt it, but you never know. He doesn’t have a car, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get access to one. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to stick around here a couple days, just in case.”
“And what would you do if he does?”
“I don’t know. I’ll deal with it if it happens,” Crissa said. “Anyway, I imagine he’d call first, ask her to come back. If that’s what he wants. But who knows what he’s thinking? He’s a junkie, using junkie logic. He sees himself as the victim in all this.”
She drank her tea. “This is a beautiful house.”
“Thanks. Michael and I bought it right after we got married. It was bigger than we needed, but we figured we’d have kids before long, you know? Turns out I couldn’t. Took me a long time to find out, though. We were looking into adopting just before Michael got sick. And after that … well, there was no after that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t say I was happy to get that phone call tonight. But at least Claudette’s here, and alive. I won’t have to worry so much about her and Haley now. I can take care of both of them, for a while at least.”
Crissa set her mug on the coffee table. “Take a walk with me. I want to show you something.”
They went outside. Mist lay ankle-deep on the ground. Crissa opened the trunk of the rental. On the way up here, she’d stopped at a convenience store, bought a cheap nylon sports bag, transferred the money into it.
“What am I looking at?” Nancy said.
Crissa unzipped the bag, opened it, took out her penlight, and shone the beam inside.
“What is this?” Nancy said.
“Seventy-three thousand dollars, more or less. It belonged to Larry. I had to spend some of it.”
Nancy was silent for a moment, then said, “Am I not supposed to ask how he got it?”
“Gambling,” Crissa said.
“I didn’t know Larry was a gambler.”
“In his way. But there’s nothing to worry about. It’s all clean. No one’s going to come looking for it. It belongs to Claudette and Haley.”
“Does Claudette know about this?”
“She knows there’s money. She doesn’t know how much. And I’m not going to tell her. I’m leaving it with you.”
Nancy looked at her. “And why would you do that?”
“Like I said, it’s for Claudette and Haley. And you’re the best person to decide how it should be used.”
“You trust me that much? We just met.”
“I don’t have any choice, do I?” Crissa said.
“Let’s go back inside. I think I need a drink. Something a little stronger than tea.”
“That,” Crissa said, “sounds like a good idea.”
* * *
She woke on the couch with a start, not knowing where she was. The comforter Nancy had given her slipped off, fell to the floor. She was fully dressed, had fallen asleep almost as soon as she’d lain down.
She sat up. Haley stood a few feet away, watching her. She wore Minnie Mouse pajamas, carried the stuffed squirrel.
“Hey,” Crissa said. “What are you doing up?” Dawn was a pale glow in the living room window.
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“That you’d left. Without saying good-bye.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Daddy did.”
“Come here.”
Haley stepped forward, and Crissa took her in her arms, squeezed her for a moment, then let go. “I’d never leave you like that. How’s Sammy the squirrel holding up there?”
“That’s not his name.”
“What is?”
“He doesn’t have a name. He’s a squirrel.”
“He looks sleepy,” Crissa said. “You should both go back to bed. It’s early.”
“I was worried.”
“Don’t be,” Crissa said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
Crissa unzipped the sports bag on the table, opened it. Sunlight streamed in through the big kitchen windows. The backyard ran down to a small stream, with woods beyond. Claudette and Haley were walking along the creekside, picking up stones and examining them, looking for arrowheads. Every few steps, Haley would crouch, look intently into the water as if watching something below the surface.
“All that money looks different in the daylight,” Nancy said.
“You have a safe in the house?”
“No.”
“Then your best bet’s a safe deposit box at a bank. Take what you need as you need it. Leave the rest where no one can get at it besides you.”
“Can’t I just deposit it in an account?”
“Not unless you want the IRS knocking on your door the next day. Banks have to report every c
ash deposit of ten thousand dollars or over. If you do make deposits, keep them lower than that, and not too frequent. Even better if you spread it out into smaller accounts, CDs, money market funds, whatever.”
“You sound like you’ve had some experience with this.”
“A little.”
“I’ve never seen this much money at once in my entire life.”
“It goes faster than you’d imagine. I have something else for you, too.”
She took a cell phone from the bag, set it on the table.
“What’s that?” Nancy said.
“A disposable. For emergencies. There’s only one number in it. This one.” She took out a second phone, identical to the first. She’d bought both on the drive there. “After I leave, you need to reach me, or anything happens—she hears from Roy, whatever—you call me. You’ll be the only one with this number. So if it rings, I’ll know it’s you. Show Claudette and Haley, too, just in case.”
“I will.”
Crissa zipped the bag shut again, hefted it. “Where can we put this for now?”
“My room’s best. Upstairs. There’s a panel in the ceiling of the closet there. I’ll show you. Is it heavy?”
“Heavier than you’d think,” Crissa said.
* * *
She stood at the kitchen window, watched the sun setting over the woods. Claudette was at the sink, doing the rest of the dinner dishes. After they’d eaten, Nancy had left for her night shift at the hospital. Haley was in the living room, stretched out on the carpet, watching television.
“You really think he’ll come?” Claudette said. She was drying her hands with a dish towel.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe he’ll just call, try to get you to go back to him.”
“I needed to get away from him, from that life. I knew that. But it’s hard sometimes, you know? You get used to things. It’s like you say you’ll never become a certain type of person. And then one day you wake up, and that’s who you are. And you’re not sure how it happened.”
“I’ll stay here another day, just in case,” Crissa said. “Then head home.”
“Where do you live?”
“Up north.”
“You don’t give much away, do you?”
“You’ll need to find a school for Haley here. The sooner the better.”
Shoot the Woman First Page 16
