Good People

by Marcus Sakey

  Halden put his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m on bended knee, okay?”

  “All right.” He leaned back, still sounding miffed. “You want the paperwork?”

  “Anything you got.”

  The big man reached into his bag, took out a manila folder, passed it across. “Not much else to see. They’ve got a mortgage runs a little higher than it should, some debt. A couple of parking tickets. They both work downtown.” He shrugged. “Pretty normal, other than the Visa.”

  Halden thanked his old partner and made nice by ordering dessert and a round of single malt. But the whole time, his mind was racing and his fingers were tingling. When a theory came together, look out, man. Best feeling in the world.

  I’ve got you, he thought. I’ve got you now.

  Sure, he’d lied to the lieutenant. He’d need to get around that. Need to explain why he had worked alone, why he’d kept everything to himself. It wouldn’t make him friends. But then, who gave a damn? Results spoke for themselves. Hell, once the papers started treating him as a hero, there wouldn’t be much the department could do but follow suit.

  He could see himself sitting on the porch of that cabin west of Minocqua, a cup of coffee in one hand, a dog beside him, Marie humming as she made breakfast. And all he had to do to get there was bring in a drug dealer from the Shooting Star, four hundred grand in stolen cash, and two civilians dumb enough to try to keep it.

  It was almost too easy.

  ANNA WATCHED TOM close the phone and set it on the lip of the window. He faced away from her, staring out at the city night. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he reached up to cover her fingers with his own.

  “What did he say?”

  “He wants his money. He says that if we give it to him, he’ll leave us alone.”

  “He’ll kill us anyway.”

  “Once he has the money, there’s not much reason to.”

  “Yeah, but…” She paused, searching for words to capture the feeling she’d had as Jack fled their kitchen. The squirming certainty that he had planned to shoot them, maybe even wanted to. “I think this is personal for him. Like it would be revenge or something. Maybe revenge on Will.” A thought struck her. “You know what else? He’s probably expecting the whole thing. All the money.”

  “Shit. He talked about four hundred grand, before you came in.” He rubbed at his forehead. “This is fucked.”

  She looked over at the gym bag, the sides sagging from the weight. She had an urge to upend it over the bed, let the money rain out. Stack and stacks of bundled bills. “Zucchini.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Remember that? When a party got boring, or one of us was trapped in conversation, we’d say ‘zucchini,’ figure out a way to work it in, and the other would know to rescue them. To find a way to get them out of there.” She smiled at the memory. “You were always good at that.”

  He looked at his glass, at his taped hand. “I think we’re a little past zucchini.”

  There was something in his voice so close to defeat that it broke her heart. “We’re smart people,” she said. “We can figure this out.”

  “You think?” He said it like he was trying for a joke, but it didn’t play funny.

  She started pacing. Short, tight little laps, the edge of the bed to the door, pivot, back again. “Okay. So what are our options? We can meet Jack tomorrow and give him the money, hope that he’s okay with it being short.”

  “And that he’s telling the truth about not killing us.”

  “Right. If he doesn’t kill us, we’re clear. We don’t have to deal with cops and lawyers and all of that. And we’re out of debt.”

  “Not my big concern right now.”

  “It’s not greed, baby. I’m not picturing a mink coat. I just want-”

  “I know,” he said, sounding tired. “I know.”

  “We could go to the cops.” She stopped, cocked her head. “What if we went to them right now? They could stake out the mall and arrest him there.”

  Tom shook his head. “We don’t know for sure he’ll be there personally. He’s not alone. Someone sent him a text warning him you were coming into the apartment. Besides, even if he is there, he could probably spot cops.”

  “So what? Even if they don’t catch him, if he sees the cops, he’ll know that we don’t have the money anymore.”

  “Yeah. Except that he just told me that if we give it to the police, he’ll kill us.”

  She blew a breath, closed her eyes. Paced some more.

  After a long moment, Tom said, “Still, I suppose that’s the right thing to do. Go to the police, tell them everything. Stop pretending to be criminals, and just take our medicine.”

  The way he said it, it sounded like it was a matter of dinging someone’s car in a parking lot. But it couldn’t be that simple, could it? “The right thing to do is the one that leaves us safe.”

  “The cops would protect us.”

  “What if they don’t catch Jack? What if he lays low for a year or two? Not like we’ll be in Witness Protection.”

  He moved to the chair and sat, his legs crossed at the knee. “We’re screwed if we go to the cops, and screwed if we don’t. So what if we blow out of here? Go to Detroit, like you said?”

  “What about the house? Your job?”

  “I’ll find a new one. We can sell long-distance. We could rent instead of buy, use fake names-”

  “How do we get a fake ID? How do we get jobs or open a bank account without a social security number? I don’t know how to do those things. Plus” – she shrugged – “this is our home. Sara lives here. Our friends.”

  He sighed. Nodded.

  “There has to be a way,” she said. “This is our life. This can’t be the way it goes. It’s not right.”

  “Not right?” He snorted. “Let’s agree on one thing, okay? Let’s stop playing the fucking victims. We took the money. That changed everything.”

  “Still. There has to be a way.”

  “I don’t see it,” he said. “And even if we get through this, we’re not in the clear. We still have to deal with-” He went ramrod, eyes widening.

  “What?” She looked at him, then over her shoulder, just to make sure someone hadn’t come in. “What is it?”

  Tom stared straight ahead for a long moment, eyes squinting the way they did when he was working something out. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, brooding.

  He said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  16

  WHAT CAME FIRST WAS EXHILARATION, a rush of energy. Like solving a brainteaser, that moment when something clicks, and you realize that the way two brothers could be identical and yet not be twins was if they were triplets. A new way of looking at a familiar problem.

  He tested it, probed with his mind, thinking What if this and What about that. It seemed solid. Not bulletproof, but solid. Certainly a safer plan than anything they had on the table already.

  Anna said, “What is it? Tell me.”

  He did. Speaking the words made it more real, not entirely a comfortable feeling. He watched Anna, saw her eyes narrow, the tiny crow’s-feet appearing. When he was done, she said, “I think that would work.”

  “I don’t know. Like Jack said, this isn’t our world. Maybe we should just go to the police.” Tom closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. The darkness felt safe, like huddling under blankets on a snowy night. He made himself open his eyes. “Thing is, if we do this. I mean… What are we if we do this?”

  “Alive.” Anna spoke quietly. “Free.” She cocked her head. “Rich.”

  “Oh, forget the money.”

  “Really, Tom? Forget the money?” An edge sliced her former softness to ribbons. “You don’t care if we have to declare bankruptcy? Lose our house? If we can’t have a child, a family? Have to hire a lawyer, go to court, see our pictures in the paper? If we have to spend the next ten years digging ourselves out? I’m getting a little
tired of you making it sound like this was my idea. We decided together. Nobody talked you into it.” She shook her head, blew a breath. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t take it either. I hate this situation. I’d give up the money in a second to get our old life back. But that is not an option. It’s just not. So either we can be strong and come through this to a better place, or we can panic and lose everything.”

  “If we do this, a man is going to get killed.”

  “A bad man.”

  “How can you be so okay with it?”

  She shrugged. “I’m just trying to be realistic. Jack isn’t a nice guy. You tried to stab him this afternoon, and nobody would tell you that was wrong.”

  “I know. And believe me, I wouldn’t shed tears if he died. It’s just that planning it out ahead of time seems… evil.”

  She was silent for a long time. Finally she said, “We’re not evil people, baby. We’re just in over our head.”

  He could hear the buzz of traffic, faint through the double-paned glass. Cars heading north, cars heading south. Thousands of lives being lived, choices being made. No way to know which ones would end up meaning everything.

  Tom said, “Pass me the phone.”

  He’d given the business card to the detective, but he remembered the number. Some things made an impression. One of them was having your life threatened by a drug dealer. He dialed, pressed Send. A bass voice rumbled through the phone, not the guy in the suit. “Yeah?”

  “I need to talk to…” He hesitated, realizing he didn’t even know the name. “This is Tom Reed. He-”

  “Hold on.”

  There was the muffled sound of conversation blocked by someone’s hand. Then a familiar voice came on the line. “Mr. Reed. Do you have what I asked for?”

  “I tore my house apart. Top to bottom. What you’re looking for isn’t there. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s disappointing.”

  “I know. But I have the answer to the question you asked,” Tom said. “Yours. I’m on your side. And I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “By telling you where to find Jack Witkowski.”

  There was a long pause, and then the voice said, “Smart man.”

  ANNA SAT ON THE EDGE of the bed and watched her husband negotiate murder.

  Tom’s eyes were rimmed in black, but his voice was steady and his words carefully chosen. Despite everything, he was still strong. She felt a flush of love, and something else. Pride? Maybe it was wrong to feel pride in her husband’s ability to hold his own against criminals. If so, she didn’t care. It was the two of them against the world. Popcorn morality could wait. Perhaps one day she would agonize over what they were doing to Jack Witkowski. Perhaps it would haunt them both. But she doubted it.

  Tom said, “I’m not going to tell you that.”

  He said, “I’m on your side, but I’m not an idiot.”

  Then, “That will work.”

  Finally, “Tomorrow morning.”

  He closed the phone, then opened it again long enough to stab the power. When it beeped off, he set it on the windowsill, then leaned back into the chair, a mod blue thing, boxy and too large. He put his arms on the armrests, then closed his eyes and rolled his head back. “He wants to meet for breakfast.”

  “He’ll do it?”

  “He was excited. I think he’d rather this than get his dope back.”

  “And you think he’ll leave us alone afterwards?”

  “I think so. He seems… professional. I’m sure he believes we don’t have the drugs – I mean, why would we lie about that? Not like we can sell them on the street corner. Plus, we’re white, educated, employed taxpayers. He kills us, it’s going to be investigated. Can’t see why he’d want that. Besides, after we help him…” He ran a tongue across his lips.

  She finished his sentence in her head. Just to see. There was a twinge, definitely. A momentary regret. But most of the emotional turmoil she was swimming through had more to do with fear. Fear that it wouldn’t work, that something would go wrong, that Tom would end up hurt. Measured against that, the twinge of moralitywas a trickle against a tidal wave. Who wouldn’t put their loved ones ahead of everything else? “So what now?”

  He rubbed at his forehead with his good hand. Shrugged. Said, “Want to see if there’s anything good on TV?”

  THEY’D LEFT THE CURTAINS OPEN, and the faint reflection of city lights swam on the darkened ceiling. Tom had looked at the clock two minutes ago, knew that it was just after three, but felt a powerful urge to look again. Didn’t.

  The pain in his hand synced to his heart, his fingers swelling and shrinking with every beat. He remembered one time talking to a doctor about stomach problems, the doc asking him to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten, which he’d found strange. How would you know what pain really was? Couldn’t it always get worse? That was the way of life. You thought you understood things, had a grip on what was good and what was bad, and then wham, something came along that redefined your spectrum.

  “Are we greedy?” He spoke to the darkness.

  After a moment, she said, “For taking the money?”

  “No. Yes.” He stared upward. “Not just that. Are we greedy people?” A car horn sounded outside, muted by the glass into a faint and ghostly wail.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Not more than anybody else.”

  “Six on a scale of ten.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. Said nothing. They lay on the bed, the comforter piled at their feet, only the sheet stretched over them. From the angle, he couldn’t see the city outside the window, just an indigo glow creeping to midnight blue. Beneath that never-dark sky lay the depths of Lake Michigan, black ripples frosted white. He didn’t know how to sail, but had always wanted a sailboat. He imagined being on one now, skimming over inky currents like the edge of a dream, just him and Anna and a cold wind and the hollow lap of water and the city’s fevered light dwindling behind. Head east, sail all night, into a sunrise scrubbed clean by solitude.

  “What are you thinking, baby?”

  “Something Jack said.” He flashed back to the moment, the twitch of adrenaline, the pressure of the knife in his pocket. The way Jack had gestured with one hand to encompass their living room, their marriage, their life. “He asked why we took the money. What we wanted that we didn’t already have.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I didn’t know what to say. I mean, we aren’t as well off as it must have looked to him. He didn’t know about mortgage payments and fertility treatments and how badly we wanted a baby and how you hated your job. But…” He held his hands in the air, then folded them behind his head. “I don’t know. Even with those things. He had a point.”

  In the quiet of the room, he could hear her breathing. “You know what I think? Everything finds a balance. An equilibrium.” Her voice low. “I think rich people are fundamentally about as happy as poor people. It’s the way we’re wired. When things are good for any length of time, we take them for granted. When they’re bad, we get used to them. Our heads level everything out.”

  “That’s kind of convenient.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As an argument. It makes it easy not to worry about things or try to change them. It excuses us from concern.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not true. Give somebody a million dollars, they’re going to live it up for a while. But eventually, the lifestyle will become normal. It won’t thrill. They’ll end up feeling more or less the same way they always did.”

  “So what’s the point?”

  “I don’t know. Live a good life. Be nice to people. Have a family, and love them well.”

  He thought about it, staring at the liquid stir of light on the ceiling. “Maybe you’re right. I look back at the problems we used to have, and I wonder what the hell was wrong with us. I mean, were we really sweating all that nonsense? Everything that mattere
d at the time, now it seems…” He pursed his lips and blew air like he was scattering the pods off a dandelion.

  “I know,” she said. “Worrying about advertising. House payments. Jesus. Even the baby thing.”

  They fell silent for a long spell, time marked in steady intervals by the slow throb of his hand. Finally he said, “We were greedy.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess we were.”

  AROUND SIX IN THE MORNING, he gave it up. His fingers ached, his head pounded, and it felt like someone had grabbed hold of his kidney and twisted. Tom rolled out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom. He closed the door and started the shower, put one of the disposable packs in the coffeemaker. Thought better of it, and stuffed the second pack in as well.

  In the shower he stood and let the water drench him, pounding off the top of his head in a soaking spray that hid the world and soothed some of the pain. It felt lovely, a quiet moment lost behind a curtain of water. The only thing that ruined it was having to hold his bandaged left hand up and away.

  He reluctantly got out of the shower and awkwardly toweled off. At least there was a plan. He felt better for that. Maybe they had been greedy. Maybe they were in over their heads. But they were working together, sharing their strength, and they had a plan. It was something. He poured the coffee into two mugs and stepped into the room.

  Anna lay nude atop sheets twisted like whipped egg whites. She smiled when he set a mug on the table. Tom picked up his cell phone and turned it on. The message indicator blinked, and he dialed his voice mail. A computerized voice told him he had four messages.

  “This is Detective Halden. Give me a call back as soon as you can. We’re ready to go ahead with setting up this man who threatened you.” The cop rattled off his phone numbers. Tom sipped the coffee. Strong but lousy, which he supposed was better than weak but lousy. He punched a button to save the message and hear the next.

  “Mr. Reed, Detective Halden. Please call me – we need to move.”

  The next. “This is Christopher Halden again. I need you to call me back ASAP. Day or night. I mean it, Tom – as soon as possible. I’ll try your home line as well.”