Below Zero

by C. J. Box

  “One hundred sixty guests from Chicago.

  Tap-tap-tap. “Five thousand seven hundred KM. One point two tons carbon each. One hundred ninety-two tons total. Wow. Next.”

  “Eighty from NYC and LA.”

  Tap-tap-tap. “Ten thousand four hundred KM. Three hundred twenty tons of carbon total. Then the driving.”

  “What?” She asked.

  “See below where it says rental cars? What are the figures?”

  She flipped the page back and found more entries. “Two hundred sixty guests driving three hundred twenty miles Denver-Aspen.”

  Tap-tap-tap. Mumbled, “One hundred twenty-five tons of carbon.”

  He hit enter with a flourish, then whistled. “One society wedding produces seven hundred and seven tons of carbon into the atmosphere to further choke our planet to death. The offset cost is $7,815.88.”

  She thought about it for a moment. She was beginning to understand.

  “What about the honeymoon?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you count that, too?”

  He grinned.

  She got it, and she felt her scalp crawl. “There won’t be a honey-moon.”

  He waggled his eyebrows. “Our global honeymoon is over, girlie. All for the best,” he said.

  Then: “Stop looking at me like that. Carmen used to do that, too.”

  6

  Aspen

  WHEN PATTY JOHNSTON HEARD A SCRATCH ON THE KEYCARD entry on the outside of her door and saw the tiny yellow dot of the peephole blink out indicating someone was outside in the hall, she propped up on her elbow in bed and shook her hair so it cascaded into place but not entirely. When a strap from her nightgown didn’t fall casually over her shoulder as intended, she squirmed so it did. She tried to imagine what she would look like to Alex when he opened the door, but she was pretty sure she’d look sleepy, soft, warm, inviting—but not too hungry for him. The bathroom lights were dimmed and the door slightly ajar, so there was a soft glow of gold reaching across the bedroom. But not too much. It annoyed her that Alex shut his eyes when the lights were on, that he’d only look at her furtively in casual asides while they made love. She hadn’t been working out and dieting until her belly was rock hard for their wedding for him not to look at her.

  She was still trying to get over the realization she’d had recently when they were having sex: that Alex closed his eyes because he was a kind of performance artist auditioning for the lead role in his own private movie about himself. The thought still haunted her, but like his tendency to tell his friends and relatives, “I’m getting married,” not “We’re getting married,” it was just one of these quirks she’d eventually grind out of him.

  She’d almost fallen asleep waiting. It had been over an hour since she’d slid her extra key under the door of his room so he’d find it when he came in. She’d gone to bed without taking out her contacts, without removing her makeup. Waiting. Her eyes burned but she knew he didn’t like her in glasses.

  The key card slipped into the lock, was withdrawn, and there was a dull click indicating it was unlocked, but he was too slow grasping the handle—wasn’t he always?—and she rolled her eyes in the semi-dark while he fumbled with the latch. She breathed in deeply while he did it again. Fumbling, trying to fit the key into the slot. Wasn’t he always?

  Then she heard a deep male voice, not Alex’s, say: “Step aside. Let me do it.”

  She shot up in bed, eyes wide, thinking the front desk had given someone a key to her room.

  The door opened and there was Alex’s profile. Tall, square shouldered, bad posture, spiked hair. Wearing, as always, an untucked oversized Brooks Brothers shirt so starched it crackled like a wind-filled sail when he moved.

  “Alex, is there someone with you?” she asked, making her voice rise toward the end.

  Then she saw the profile of the other man in the second it took for the two of them to enter her room and shut the door behind them. The man with Alex was tall as well, but beefy, rounded, thicker, older. His face, illuminated briefly by the hall lights, was jowly. Deep-set eyes, mustache—he looked like that famous writer she never liked. What was that guy’s name?

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said. “This is Stenko.”

  She dug her heels into the mattress and rocketed back in the bed until her back thumped the headboard. She pulled the comforter up, clutching it under her chin.

  Stenko said, “If you scream, you’ll both die.”

  His voice was deep, harsh, but somehow apologetic. It took her a moment to believe what she’d heard.

  She said, “Alex, how could you bring someone with you? What in the hell are you thinking?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. The second word was slurred, shorry.

  “You’re drunk,” she said. To Stenko: “Get out now. Whatever he told you is not a possibility.”

  “Patty . . .” Alex said, stumbling forward in the dark as if pushed, “it’s not like that.”

  “Sit down on the bed, Alex,” Stenko said. To her: “I have a gun.”

  “He has a gun,” Alex repeated, bumping into her bed clumsily, then turning and sitting down hard. She barely moved her leg in time to avoid the weight of him.

  “What’s this about?” she asked Alex. “I can’t believe you brought a man in here with you.”

  “Keep your voice down, please,” Stenko said. “I don’t want either one of you to get hurt.”

  “Hurt?” she asked. “What does he want, Alex?”

  “He’ll tell you,” Alex said.

  She wanted Alex to stand up and protect her, to charge Stenko, to knock him down to the floor. But Alex just sat there, heavy, his head down and his shoulders slumped more than usual and his hands between his knees.

  There was so little light from the bathroom that she could barely make out Stenko as he grabbed a chair from the desk, turned it backward, and sat down with his legs spread. Stenko rested his arms on the back of the chair and leaned forward, putting his chin on his forearms. He held a long-barreled pistol in a big fist, but it was pointed away from them.

  “What do you want?” she asked Stenko directly.

  “You’re not going to believe it,” Alex said, slowly shaking his head from side to side. He smelled of alcohol and cigar smoke. “We met in the bar.”

  “Obviously,” she said, anger starting to replace fear.

  Stenko said, “I need you to listen carefully to what I have to say.”

  She reached out from beneath the covers and hit Alex in the shoulder with her open palm. “Alex, do something!”

  Alex didn’t move.

  But Stenko sighed and swung the pistol over, pointed it vaguely at both of them. She saw a smudge of white thumb in the murk and heard him cock the revolver.

  “I said listen,” Stenko said in a whisper.

  She found Alex’s biceps, squeezed it hard and not affectionately.

  Stenko said, “With the size of the wedding, the number of guests, how far they’re all traveling here . . . Wow. It’s quite a big operation.”

  She shook her head, puzzled.

  Stenko said, “When I got married—the first time, I mean—we did it before Judge Komicek at the courthouse. Marie’s parents and her best friend, Julie, were there, and I had my mom and all three of the Talich Brothers. That’s all—less than ten guests. This was Chicago. The whole thing was over in fifteen minutes. No big deal. Then we moved into a little two-bedroom bungalow off Division Street. And when it was over, we were just as married as you two will be. But it was simple. No impact.”

  After a beat, she asked, “So?”

  “Marie is the mother of my son, Robert, by the way. I’ve had other wives and other kids, but Marie, Robert, and my daughter Carmen were my first and best family. Marie knew what I did, but she didn’t want to know any details, and now that I think about it, that was the happiest time in my life. We were struggling, Marie was pregnant with Carmen, and I was happy but I just didn’t realize it at the time. I was too damned impatient.”


  She cleared her throat. “What does that have to do with us?”

  “I’m getting there,” Stenko said. “Alex, does she always talk this much? It doesn’t bode well, if you ask me.”

  “No one asked you,” she snapped.

  “Here’s the deal,” Stenko said, ignoring her. His voice was soft but flat, midwestern. “Here’s the deal. I was a hard-charger. Ambitious, ruthless, I guess. I had a certain affinity for Chicago politics and business, and all the guys I grew up with went into one or the other. Except for the ones who became cops, but they’re still friends of mine. So what I did those first few years after marrying Marie was I bulldozed anyone in my path. I fuckin’ ran over ’em, is what I’m saying. I was a force of nature: Stenko. No one was safe unless they were on my side helping me get what I wanted. I figured there were two kinds of people—those who supported me and those that needed to be bulldozed.

  “But then I got the word from my docs. And I looked up and thought, Where is Marie? Where is Carmen? Where is Robert? Hell, I liked Marie. She’d sing to me and she was pretty good. Robert, he was always a little too melodramatic, but he was my first. So when I got the word from my docs, I thought, What a selfish bastard I am. Like you two. I took and I took and I never gave anything back. I consumed. Now I’ve got this deficit I’m trying to pay down. I’m trying to get below zero, but I’m in a time crunch and my friends and associates all cheated me, kicked me when I was down. So the reason I’m here is to help us both out.”

  She said, “Below zero?”

  “You can do it, too,” Stenko said. “This is your chance. If only I’d had this opportunity early in life. If only somebody would have shown me how to do it.”

  Stenko sighed and got quiet. As the seconds went on, her fear returned.

  “Anyway,” Stenko said finally, his voice still hushed, “that’s why I’m here. My son figured it all out. That’s what he does. He cares. Eight grand—that’s how much you owe the planet, and I’m here to collect. Let’s start with the eight grand to offset the carbon produced by all the people attending this wedding.”

  She dug her nails into Alex’s arm until he winced and pulled away. She said to Stenko, “What right do you have to say that? This is extortion. You’re insane.”

  Stenko said, “I’m only getting started, Patty. The average American produces twenty tons of carbon a year. I spent a lot of time with my pal Alex tonight and he filled me in on both of you. According to your fiancée, between the two of you, you’ll have three homes and an extravagant lifestyle. I got all the particulars from Alex and fed them to my son, Robert. It’s pretty amazing. With the homes, the travel you people do on commercial and private jets, your fleet of vehicles at each place, you two will produce seven thousand tons of carbon a year. Robert says there are entire villages in Africa that won’t produce that much over a decade. To offset that, it would cost over thirty-five K per year helping the environment.

  “My God,” Patty said. “This is ridiculous. My family contributes to all kinds of environmental causes. My mother hosts the Think Green fund-raiser in San Diego every year! Have you ever heard of Think Green?”

  Stenko said, “No, I haven’t. Robert didn’t say anything about that. But he did figure that with your seven tons a year and a life expectancy of sixty more years for Patty and fifty more for Alex, that you two alone will do $2.1 million in damage in your lifetime. That’s more than some pissant countries,” he said. “I can’t remember which ones. They have goofy names I never heard of. Sierra Leone? Burma? Maybe—hell, I don’t know which countries. Robert’s the expert, not me.”

  “What is your point?” she asked. “I mean, if you’re here to make us buy some of those carbon credit things, I’m sure we can. Will you go away and leave us alone if we do?”

  She could see his smile in the light of the bathroom. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly why I’m here.”

  “We’ll do it,” she said. “We’ll pay the eight thousand for the wedding tomorrow. I swear. Now would you please go away?”

  “You’ll do it now,” Stenko said, his voice hardening. “And you’ll have to do the entire amount. Alex has the paper with the wire transfer numbers on it. You can use the phone and call it in.”

  She shook her auburn hair and rubbed her eyes. “Alex,” she said, “Send the money.”

  “From my account?” Alex said, hurt.

  “For Christ’s sake,” she said, “you have eight thousand fucking dollars you can part with if it’ll make him go away.”

  Alex stared at her. “He wants the whole $2.1 million.”

  “My God,” she said, closing her eyes tightly as if it would make it all go away. “He told you already, Alex? And when he told you, you brought him to my room?”

  Stenko said, “The place you’re sending the money is a legitimate enterprise. From what Robert tells me, they’ll use the cash to buy up rain forest, plant trees and shit. And take farmland out of production. They invest in windmills and solar panels. Things like that. It’s a wonderful investment in the future of our planet. It’s the best thing you could possibly do for yourselves, for me, for all of us.”

  “You’re not kidding, are you?” she said, eyeing him, looking at a ghost in the dark. But one with a gun. And he raised it, straightened his arm, and pointed it at her eyes. The black muzzle was rimmed with silver.

  He shook his head. “You owe us,” Stenko said. “You owe the world.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said.

  “Worse than that,” Stenko said, “I’m desperate.” Was that the glint of tears in his eyes?

  “What if we did it in payments?” she asked.

  “I don’t have the time.”

  “That’s too much,” she said with finality.

  “Tell that to all of those Third Worlders who died in that tsunami caused by global warming,” Stenko said, speaking the words as if by rote, “or those poor stupid polar bears clinging to their last piece of melting ice. What are their lives worth?

  “I’ll tell you what Robert tells me,” Stenko said. “It isn’t about you. It’s about all of us. We all have to do what we can, not what we want to do.”

  “But we do so much,” Patty said, tears in her eyes. “I told you about Think Green. We recycle, don’t we, Alex? And we replaced all of our lightbulbs. You know, with the ones that don’t work very well? And one of my cars is a Prius. It’s not like I don’t care.”

  “Then show me how much you care,” Stenko said. “You’ve got two minutes to make the wire transfer.”

  They stared at each other in silence for the first minute. She wanted Alex to help her, to agree with her out loud. To stomp the living shit out of this Stenko.

  “Do something,” she said to Alex.

  He sighed.

  Through gritted teeth, she said, “Send the goddamn money, Alex. You’ve got it. It’s not like you won’t get more.”

  She leaned forward until her lips brushed Alex’s ear, whispered, “Do it. There have to be ways of canceling a wire transfer after its been made. We’ll call the police and my dad and get it canceled.”

  Alex snorted, looked away.

  “Alex, you’ve got the money,” she said.

  “So do you,” Alex said, sullen.

  She was shocked, and she sat back and glared at the side of Alex’s head, thinking that perhaps she hated him.

  “I don’t care which of you does it,” Stenko said, “we’re running out of time.”

  “It’ll have to be you,” Alex said to her.

  She looked at him, openmouthed.

  Alex said, “Sorry, Patty.”

  “My God,” she said, “you’d actually choose your money over our marriage? Over me? That’s why you brought him in here?”

  “Don’t forget the planet,” Stenko said helpfully.

  “I’m sorry, Patty,” Alex said again.

  Stenko said to Patty, “This is the man you want to spend your life with?”

  She laughed harshly, more of a
bark. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

  “So,” Stenko said to her, “it’s up to you. You want the phone?”

  She looked from Alex to Stenko and back to Alex.

  Stenko said, “Sorry kids. I’d hoped we could come to an understanding, but like I said, I’m impatient. Time’s up.”

  7

  Saddlestring

  JOE ROLLED INTO TOWN AT THREE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING as the fingers of morning mist began their probing ghost-creep from the river into Saddlestring and the single traffic light at First and Main blinked amber in all directions. There were no lights on yet downtown, and the traffic consisted of a single town cop spotlighting a raccoon in an alley. The only people up, it seemed, were the bored clerk reading a newspaper on the counter of the twenty-four-hour Kum-And-Go convenience store and the morning cook at the Burg-O-Pardner starting on the biscuits and sausage gravy for early rising fishermen.

  His street was dark as well except for the porch light burning at his house and the kitchen light next door at neighbor Ed Nedney’s, a retired town administrator who’d no doubt arisen early to get a jump-start on late-fall lawn maintenance or putting up the storm windows or plucking the last few errant leaves from his picture-perfect lawn— completed tasks that would make Joe’s home look poorer by comparison and Joe himself seem derelict. This is what Nedney lived for, Joe thought.

  Joe didn’t like his house, and every time he came back, he liked it less. It wasn’t the structure or the street; it was simply that he didn’t like living in town with neighbors so close, especially after years of waking up on Bighorn Road to the view of Wolf Mountain and the distant river. But it was where his family lived, and that fact far outweighed his dislike of the location.

  His neighborhood was new in terms of Saddlestring itself—thirty years old—and had grown leafy and suburban. The Bighorns could be seen on the horizon as well as the neon bucking bronco atop the Stockman’s Bar downtown. The houses seemed to have been moved a few inches closer together since the last time he was home a week ago, but he knew that was just his tired eyes playing tricks on him.