Which was not good. It was the little widows peeking sleeplessly out their windows who would call the cops or blab it to Aunt Eva and maybe someone else. They all talked to one another, standing out there with a bag of rolls from the baker. He hurried along the street with his head down, carrying the chimney cement. At Aunt Eva's door, he slipped his old key into the lock—it went right in—and entered silently. She slept in the back bedroom upstairs, he knew. The table next to the door was piled with mail. It would be interesting to examine, but he didn't want to waste time. In and out, Rick-o, in and quickly out.
He glanced up the stairs next to the front door—darkness, no sound. He slid his feet along one side of the hallway, where the floorboards were not so loose from people walking on them for a hundred years. Somebody had fixed the basement door at the end of the hallway. He carried the chimney cement down the basement stairs, turning on only one light, enough to see the boxes of rotting letters and photographs, broken patio furniture, piles of Uncle Mike's clothing, mouse-eaten, moldy, and unworn in twenty years, a tangle of rusted bicycles and wagons, some of which Rick had ridden as a kid. The furnace, so old it had been installed back when Aunt Eva was still getting regular action from Uncle Mike, sat at one end of the narrow, rectangular space, its asbestos-wrapped air ducts octopused out to the ceiling above. Rick noticed a new box of air filters for the furnace. Somebody was changing the filters for Aunt Eva. He slipped behind the furnace, next to the party-wall foundation that she shared with the house next door, the Marinaros', and then put his hands around the sheet-metal exhaust tubing that coiled from the furnace into the chimney. The vent was sealed with chimney cement where it went into the brick orifice, to protect against carbon monoxide backdrafting into the basement. He cracked the old seal as he yanked the vent tube from its space. Before him appeared the black circular hole that opened the chimney. Everything looked okay. He reached into the sooty space, ran his hand along the wall. All he had done before was pull a brick out of its mortar, chisel away another crumbly brick behind it, stick in a thick envelope wrapped in waterproof duct tape, and replace the first brick, hammering it with the heel of his hand until it was flush with the others in the chimney. Then he'd jammed in a few pieces of wood to replace the mortar. The next time the furnace fired, he'd figured then, it would belch black soot over his stash, obscuring any changes in the chimney's interior surface. And anyway, the brick was tight in there, not loose at all. Even if Aunt Eva had hired a chimney sweep, highly unlikely given her age and condition, he would have had no reason to poke around. Now Rick found that same brick and pulled hard, sliding it out. Was the envelope back there? Yes. Blackened by the soot forced into all the crevices. He slit it open with his pocketknife, just to be sure. Three inches of one-hundred-dollar bills came to forty-eight thousand six hundred dollars. The old kind of hundreds, with the small portrait of Benjamin Franklin, but still good. This was the last cash from the all-time best Jersey mall job, money that Christina had helped him make. They had dropped three new Cat bulldozers at a sprawling construction site over the river. Keys in the ignition, hauled on three different canopied trailers from a housing development being built in suburban Atlanta. Nighttime drop-off, trailers immediately driven to Buffalo and parked at a scrap yard for a month. Rick had maneuvered the bulldozers off the rigs himself, taken the briefcase handed to him. Big money. Maybe he could spend some of what was left on Christina, buy her a dress or shoes, whatever. Jewelry, underwear. Cigarette lighter. Women loved little Italian cigarette lighters.
He wanted to take all of the cash, but that meant he had no backup position if things didn't go well, if the money got stolen or he blew it. On the other hand, he had been sitting in the woods for four years, and a little fun wouldn't kill him. You had to have a little fun or you didn't understand life. He split the stack of bills in two, shoved one half in his pocket and the other back into the envelope, which he replaced in the chimney. The brick might be a little loose, but who would know? He wrenched the exhaust tube back in place and opened the tub of chimney cement. The stuff looked like oatmeal, and he troweled it around the tubing, sealing the wall again. This would take extra time, but it was the right thing to do. I did bad things, but I never killed anybody. He had to protect against the furnace's backdraft; didn't want to asphyxiate Aunt Eva, death seeping through the house. The cement would be dry in a day, undetectable. Like him. The whole point was to be undetectable.
He finished the job, picked up the bucket, and on the stairs up from the basement heard a baby making cranky noises one floor above. "Oh, chickie-bee, I'm coming," called a woman sleepily. He stopped on the stairs. Aunt Eva was seventy-something years old. A baby meant young people, a young guy living in the house. Some guy who might notice new furnace cement when he changed the air filters and become curious about what was in the chimney. The baby cried again. Get the rest of the money. Rick turned back down the stairs, moving loudly, slipped around to the back of the furnace, and pulled on the exhaust vent. Nothing—he'd done too good a job cementing it in place. He savagely clubbed it with his arm. He had to hit it twice to dislodge it. Naturally the sound went through the house like a drum. The vent sagged to the floor. He reached in, grabbed the brick, threw it behind him, pulled out the envelope, and slipped it into his other pocket.
Now he could hear footsteps. He hurried back to the stairs and climbed them three at a time, but stopped at the open door to the first-floor hallway.
"Yo, whoever's down there, I got a shotgun!"
The guy was probably hunched at the top of the stairs leading from the second floor to the front door—not twelve steps from where Rick stood in the basement doorway. If the guy came down the stairs from the second floor, he might get a clean shot into the back of Rick's head as he opened the front door.
Now footsteps descended the stairs.
"Where's Aunt Eva?" Rick yelled. "She's my aunt!"
"Who's that?" came the man's voice. "Come out of there."
"That Sal?" Rick yelled. "Don't fucking shoot me, Sal!"
The baby was crying upstairs. "Come out of there!"
"Sal?"
"Sal lives in New Jersey. Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm a member of the family."
"The fuck you are. You come out here."
He was still holding the tub of chimney cement. He flung it down the hallway to see what would happen. The shotgun exploded, tearing away the plaster, splintering the door frame, making the woman scream and the baby cry louder.
The guy is jumpy, Rick thought. "What the fuck you doing?" he called, smelling the smoke from the gun.
"Who is that? You come out here, you motherfucker." Then he yelled up the stairs. "Beth, call the cops!"
"It's Rick!"
"Rick? Who's Rick?"
"Rick Bocca, Aunt Eva's nephew. Tell Beth it's her cousin Rick Bocca."
"Beth," called the voice, "guy says his name is Rick Bocca!"
He could hear her make some kind of answer. Then he heard footsteps.
"Rick?" came Beth's voice. "Is that you?"
"Beth, it's me—tell your husband not to fucking shoot me!"
"He's not going to shoot you."
"Come out of there, you fucker!" came the man's voice again.
"I'll—" she began.
"No, no, don't go get him, let him come out!"
"You're not going to shoot?"
"Come out of there!"
He put his hand out, waved. Nothing happened.
"Come on, goddammit!"
He stepped into the hallway. A small, hairless man in a T-shirt and stained underwear held a double-barreled shotgun. Beth stood behind him, in a short nightgown.
"Ricky?" she cried, still scared. "Is that you?"
"It's me."
"You look so different. Beard and everything."
"It's me, Beth."
"Why you down there?"
"I just needed to get something, Beth, something I left."
"Why didn't you call?" she
cried, upset all over again. "I mean, this is crazy, you woke everybody up and scared us and—"
"I thought Aunt Eva was still here."
"She's in a nursing home, three months."
"Oh." He still hadn't taken a step.
"This is Ronnie."
"Hi, Ronnie. You mind putting down the gun?"
But Ronnie was a small man threatening a big one. A rare thrill, and one not to be concluded too quickly. "What did you need to get?" he said.
"Just something I left, Ronnie. Personal."
"What?"
It was ten steps to the door, and if he got near enough, maybe Ronnie wouldn't take a second shot with his wife so close.
"Look," he began, taking one step, his hands up, "Aunt Eva said I could leave something down there, and she let me have a copy of the key. Here." He held up the key.
"We heard you was way out on Long Island, fishing."
"I was, Beth, but I needed something so I came back." He looked into her eyes. "I was out there, and I—"
"I fucking want to know what you were getting!" said Ronnie, waving the barrel at him.
"Hey, Ronnie, wait a minute, I know you don't like this, but you got to see it my way. I didn't want to disturb Aunt Eva."
"What do you have down there?"
It was greed he saw in Ronnie's face now, and this gave him his answer. "You're never going to believe this—"
"Try me."
"Ronnie, for God's sake, put down the gun," said Beth.
Ronnie pointed the gun at Rick. "No. I want to hear this. He came back for something, Beth, he came back and wanted something."
"Okay, Ronnie. You're probably familiar with the furnace, the exhaust vent, right?" He could feel the line coming but didn't know what it was yet. "I used to help Aunt Eva around the house, and one day, couple of years ago, I hid a big toolbox up the chimney, leaving enough room so that the smoke can still go up no problem."
You could pack hundreds of thousands of dollars in a toolbox.
"Where's the box?" Ronnie demanded.
"Well, I didn't get it out yet, see, it's still—"
"What's in it?"
Rick waited, listening to the baby's angry fit upstairs. He needed the line. "Hey, Ronnie, that's my money down there," he cried. "All of it. Aunt Eva—"
"Come here. Step back," Ronnie said to Beth.
"What?" she cried. "What are you going to do? Don't hurt him!"
"Get up the fucking stairs, bitch!"
"Ronnie, wait a minute—"
"You can fucking just walk out of here, right now," Ronnie ordered Rick. Holding the gun with one hand, he opened the front door with the other. "Go. Get out."
"Wait, I can't do that," Rick said. "I need all of that cash, man, I'm in trouble—"
"It's his money," Beth said.
"Shut up!" Ronnie screamed. "Get up the stairs." He motioned to Rick with the gun. "Get out. Get the fuck out of this house now."
Rick looked back toward the basement stairs.
"I mean it! Get the fuck out now!"
"You got to let me have some of it, at least," he said.
"I don't have to let you have shit!"
"Just let me have sixty or seventy thousand. You can have the rest."
"No!"
"It's my money!"
"It's in my house."
"The house actually belongs to me," Beth cried.
"Shut up, I said, shut up!"
"Let him have forty thousand," came Beth's voice. "It's his money, Ronnie."
Ronnie didn't answer. Instead he advanced toward Rick, leveling the shotgun at his head in the narrow hallway.
"Get down. Get down on your stomach."
Rick knelt down.
"I said stomach."
He got on his stomach, face touching bits of plaster and paint. It would take Ronnie a good ten minutes to tear apart the chimney with a sledgehammer and crowbar, looking for money that wasn't there. By then Rick would be on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in his truck, the money a fat pad in the glove compartment.
"Crawl. Crawl to the door."
He wormed along Aunt Eva's old patio-turf runner that Uncle Mike had trimmed with a box cutter thirty years ago, until he got to the door, knowing that Ronnie couldn't see the cash in the front of his pants. He looked up at Beth, who was still cowering in the stairwell. She looked like hell, even taking into account that it was six-thirty in the morning.
"Beth—"
She shook her head, eyes fearful. "I can't do anything, Ricky."
Ronnie came over and put the gun into Rick's face. "You come back, I'm going to do this."
Ronnie lifted the gun and blasted the hallway again. The sound of the gun hit Rick in the head, and for a moment he felt deaf and sick, but then he realized Ronnie had emptied the second barrel. He jumped up and grabbed Ronnie by the throat. He drove him backward against the stairwell, knocking his head on the wall, with Beth screaming, and he took his other hand and slipped a thumb under Ronnie's lip and pulled upward.
"What?"
Ronnie couldn't talk.
"What was that, Ronnie? Say it again, what?"
Ronnie made some kind of noise when Rick pulled again.
"You're tearing his face!" cried Beth.
He looked at her.
"Please, Rick."
He let go. Ronnie collapsed to the floor holding his mouth.
AN HOUR LATER he found a parking garage that was just right—in Chinatown, tucked into the south side of the Manhattan Bridge. Unless you were looking for it, you'd never find it, which was the idea. He could sleep in the truck or move around the cheap hotels nearby, and if he had to get out of the city fast, then all he had to do was pull out of the parking garage and keep turning right until he was on the bridge. He eased the truck in next to a phone-booth-sized bunker made out of construction block. The attendant, a black man with a Knicks baseball cap, sat in an old bucket seat, eating sweet pork and watching television. The man turned, eyes dull, face diseased by car exhaust. "How long?"
"A week, maybe. Could be longer."
"Put you down two weeks."
Something was wrong with the man's breathing, and it was hard to hear him. Rick cut the engine. "You want to stick it in back, I don't care."
The man nodded contemplatively. "You want it in the back? Most people want it out front so we don't have to move ten cars."
"I don't care if you bury it back there."
The attendant leaned forward and turned the television off, and, as if the box had been sucking the life out of him, now his gray face brightened strangely. "You trying to hide this truck, my brother?"
"It's my truck."
A smile of brown teeth, pork wedged against the gums. "Question still pertains."
"Yes, the answer is yes."
"Repossession? We get that a lot."
"Nope. Wife's attorney."
The attendant frowned. "Them fuckers gone want every dollar—yes sir, I see you got yourself a situation. You want me, I can stick it down in the basement. Way in the back."
"As a favor?"
The man rubbed his chin theatrically. "See, I always thought a situation require a consideration."
"I need access."
"What you mean by access, my brother?"
"I want to be able to get to it. Not move it, just get to it."
He shook his head. "We don't do that. I'll stick the truck in the basement for you, but I can't have you coming and going ten times a day, chicks back there, parties, barbecue, whatnot."
"It wouldn't be ten times a day. Just once."
The attendant picked up his food. "I suppose we was discussing the consideration."
"Hundred bucks a week, you keep the truck way in the back, let me go in and out."
The man stirred his fork around in the carton. "Now, hundred dollars a week is just fine for me, buddy, but I's the day man. Six to six. There's also the night man. Big dog like you coming in here at night's going freak him out. He going think yo
u going kill his ass. If you explain your deal with me, he ain't going believe you, and if I explain it, he's going want his cut."
"I'll go one-fifty, seventy-five for each of you. But I get to sleep in the truck."
"You can go ahead and take a shit in there, far's I's concerned. Just keep the windows rolled up."
"What about the air down there?"
"It's bad."
"You better show me."
They walked into the car elevator and descended to the basement. The dark space stretched about half the size of a football field, and the status of the cars went up appreciably: Mercedes, three Lexuses with dealer stickers on them, Cadillacs like Tony Verducci drove, a cherry-red Hummer, a vintage T-bird.
"You've got some nice cars down here."
"Yo, this ain't parking down here, this is security."
They walked to the far corner.
"Here."
"Air's pretty bad down here."
"It's for cars, not people."
He wondered how well he would sleep. "How do I get up and down? Take the elevator every time?"
"Nah, there's a stairway in the front, comes up right next to the booth. My name's Horace, in case you ask."
Rick handed the man his spare key, then peeled off some bills. "Hope you have fun with that, Horace. I had to go through some trouble to get it."
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