* * *
A noise pulls him from sleep. Sounds behind the wall in Cosmo’s bedroom. Someone moving around in there, trying to be quiet. He hears a click, knows the sound. The mechanism of the spring panel that hides the floor safe.
He slips out of bed, pulls on jeans and a T-shirt, takes the Bersa from the nightstand. The clock there says 2 a.m. He goes out into the dark hallway. There’s light showing at the bottom of Cosmo’s door.
More noise, the soft thunk of the safe being closed, the click of the panel being pushed back into place.
The light goes out. The knob turns slowly as the door eases open. Cosmo comes out, turns to pull the door closed behind him. He’s carrying the knapsack.
“You should have done that while I was gone,” Travis says.
Cosmo stops, his back still turned.
“I can’t deal with this anymore, T. I’m sorry.”
“I understand. But half of that’s mine, isn’t it?”
Without turning, Cosmo holds out the knapsack. “Take it. All of it.”
Travis goes around him into the kitchen, turns on the overhead light.
“Put it down,” he says. “We’ll talk about the money later.”
Cosmo sets the knapsack on the floor. Travis tucks the Bersa into the back of his belt under his shirt, nods at the kitchen table. Cosmo sits, his face pale, looks at the floor. “It’s too much for me, T. I thought I could hack it, but I can’t.”
“You’ve been having a hard time, I know. It’s not the way I wanted things to go either. But you need to tell me what you were planning to do after you left.”
“Go somewhere for a while, that’s all. Wait for things to calm down.”
“Leave all this behind? The shop, the house?”
“If I had to.”
Travis shakes his head. “You’re too smart not to have something else lined up. Maybe you thought things would go bad for me. That you could wait it out, go back to your life after I was gone.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Look at me. Don’t be scared.”
Cosmo looks up. His eyes are shiny.
“What about clothes?” Travis says. “You pack a suitcase at least?”
“It’s at the shop.”
“So you did have a plan. All I want to know—and I need you to be honest with me—is if that plan included a phone call to your buddy in the state police.”
“No, of course not. I’d never do that. You know me. You’ve got nothing to worry about from me. Ever.”
Travis pulls out a chair, sits. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about cutting our losses. You’re right. Took me a while to realize that. We’ve played this out. What you want, isn’t it? Go chase the straight life? Real estate, whatever? Now’s your chance.”
“You mean that?”
“Why not? You’ve put up with a lot. Seen a lot.”
“We both have.”
“True enough.”
“Our luck went bad, T. We just have to accept that.”
“Were you going alone?”
A moment’s hesitation. “Yes.”
“What about the woman at the laundromat? Esme. You tell her what you were going to do?”
He shakes his head.
Travis is suddenly tired again. He gets up, crosses behind Cosmo, runs water in the kitchen sink. He drinks a palmful, splashes some on his face. His shoulder burns.
“What about you?” Cosmo says. “Where will you go?”
“Not sure yet. Some things I need to take care of here first.”
“The woman? It’s not worth it. Forget about it. Walk away.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“That money was lost the day Tommy took it. Everything that’s happened since…where’s it gotten us?”
“Too late now,” Travis says. He shuts off the water. “You got a maid comes in?”
“Once a week. I called her yesterday, said I was going away, didn’t need her for a while. I didn’t want her to come here, see you.”
“Good thinking.”
He dries his hands on his jeans, then reaches under his T-shirt and slips out the Bersa. He points it at the back of Cosmo’s head. “Don’t turn around.”
Cosmo stiffens, puts his hands on the table. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I’ve never gone against you, T. I never would. I swear on my mother.”
“Might be a different situation now, all that’s happened.”
“It’s not.”
Make it quick, Travis thinks, between heartbeats. You owe him that much.
“Don’t do this,” Cosmo says.
“There’s nothing to be scared of. Just close your eyes.”
“This isn’t fair,” Cosmo says. Tears in his voice.
“I know,” Travis says, and squeezes the trigger.
* * *
It takes all his strength to drag Cosmo into the bathroom, get him up and into the tub. Then he has to sit on the edge until he catches his breath. He draws the shower curtain, closes the door behind him.
At the front window, he looks out on the street. The town houses are far enough apart that a neighbor might not have heard the single shot. He waits, listening for sirens. The night’s quiet.
He checks Cosmo’s cell phone. It’s locked, password protected. No way to know who he was calling.
The knapsack goes back in the safe. It’ll be there when he needs it.
He’s exhausted now. He shuts off the kitchen light, goes into the bedroom. He leaves the door open so he can hear, sets the Bersa on the nightstand and stretches out on the bed. He holds his hands up above him in the darkness until they’re still once more.
* * *
Waking, it all comes back to him. Where he was. What he’s done.
The gray light of day fills the windows. In the hallway, there’s blood on the carpet he didn’t see the night before. Drag marks. Drying blood on the kitchen floor and table. A coppery smell in the air.
He changes his dressing in the bathroom, looks in the mirror at the closed shower curtain behind him. Something else the woman has to pay for, what she made him do, the corner she forced him into. All this is on her.
He knows then what he’ll do that day. How to find her, flush her out, get the money. The only way left.
THIRTY-NINE
It’s afternoon when Joette gets to the nursing home. She returned the rental, took a cab to a Toyota dealership on Route 36 in Eatontown. She picked out a five-year-old Corolla, had them draw up the paperwork while a salesman drove her to the bank. She got a cashier’s check for $17,000, signed it over to the dealership, drove the car off the lot.
In her mother’s room, one of the hospice aides, a young Black woman, is sitting beside the bed, reading a nursing textbook.
“Has she been sleeping all day?” Joette says.
The aide dog-ears her page, closes the book. “She ate a little lunch, but not much. I’m not sure about breakfast, you’ll have to check with the nurse. I know Alora had her up in the activity room this morning. They had a singer there today.”
“I’ll stay with her awhile, if you want to go.”
“Thanks.” She gathers her things. “I still have a lot of studying to do. Taking my CNA certification test next week.”
“You want to be a nurse?”
“An RN, eventually. If I can get enough financial aid.”
“Good luck with that.”
When she’s gone, Joette takes her chair. Her mother is breathing softly, peacefully. Joette watches her sleep.
* * *
Joette wakes from a bad dream she can’t remember. There’s a light tapping on the open door. Clea, the front-desk receptionist, is standing there.
“Hi, Jo. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Sorry. I must have just drifted off.” She straightens in the seat. Her back is stiff from the chair.
Clea holds out a white business envelope. “Someo
ne dropped this off at the desk for you earlier. I meant to give it to you when you signed in.”
“For me?”
She gets up, takes the envelope. It’s sealed. Her name is written on the front in blue ink. There’s no address.
“When did this come in?”
“Just a couple hours ago. A man dropped it off.”
“A man?” A cold current of dread runs through her. “What did he look like?”
“I only saw him for a minute, and I didn’t get a good look at him. The lobby was a little crazy. The EMTs had to take Mr. Lefferts to the ER at AtlantiCare, and there was a problem with his oxygen. They had to get him stabilized right there in the lobby before they could put him in the ambulance.”
“This man say anything?”
“No. He was in and out. And I didn’t actually see him drop it off. After things calmed down and the ambulance left, I found it on the desk. I know it wasn’t there before, so it must have been him. I guess he just left it and walked out. He didn’t try to come past the desk, or I would have stopped him. Is there a problem?”
“No,” Joette says. “It’s fine.”
When Clea leaves, Joette sits back down. There’s an odd weight to the envelope. She works a thumb into the flap, carefully peels it back and away.
Inside is a single sheet of paper, folded into thirds. She takes it out, sees the phone number written on it. When she unfolds the sheet all the way, something shiny slides out, falls into her lap. A razor blade.
FORTY
He was here.
She goes out to the car, keys the numbers into her phone. When the line opens, she says, “I got your message. Don’t go near her. I have what you want.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
“Surprised to hear from me?”
“No.”
“You knew it would come to this, didn’t you?” he says. “Back there on the beach, you should have hit me a couple more times, finished the job. But you didn’t have the stomach to see it through. Second time you made that mistake.”
He’s driving. She can hear engine noise.
“I know where your mother is. She’s not going anywhere soon. You might move her, but it’ll take a while, and I’ll find her eventually. I’ve got nothing but time. And I know where your friend dances. Even if she doesn’t go back there, she’ll turn up someplace like it. I’ll track her down. The boyfriend, too, and the kid. All of them. You believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Keep that in mind, it’ll simplify things. You take off, I say, ‘Okay, fine, sure,’ and I kill somebody. Your fault. You hold back some of the cash, or maybe decide to go to the cops after all? I kill someone else. Your fault again.”
“So I give you the money, and you kill me instead.”
“You’ve cost me too much. No way you walk out of this, however it plays. But I promise you this. You fuck with me again, and even after you’re dead, I’ll keep going, just on general principles. I’ll kill them all, not think twice about it.”
“I’ll do it. I’m tired of running.”
“It was your call,” he says. “You rolled the dice.”
“It’ll take me time to put it all together. Most of it’s back in banks.”
“I think you’re lying about that. I’d bet you’re still carrying it around, keeping it close. Either way, you better get it fast. I’m going to call you tomorrow night, tell you where and when. You don’t answer, we’re done. You don’t do exactly what I say, we’re done. Anything happens I don’t like, we’re done. Then I start keeping my promise.”
“I’ll answer. And I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I know you will,” he says, and the line goes dead.
* * *
He ends the call, turns onto Cosmo’s street. Two blocks away, a cluster of police cruisers are parked outside the town house, along with a crime scene van.
He slows, pulls over. Two cops are standing in the driveway, next to a pale blue Mercedes. Neither of them looks his way. It takes him a moment to remember where he saw the car before. Parked outside the laundromat. Esme’s car.
He backs the Impala up slowly, reverses into a driveway. One of the cops lights a cigarette. They still haven’t noticed him.
You almost drove right into it, he thinks. It would have been all over. You fucked up, made a mistake coming back here. Lose your edge and you lose your luck.
He imagines how it might have gone. Cosmo planning to meet Esme after he took the money from the safe. She’d have come here today when she didn’t hear from him, couldn’t reach him, found his Lexus still in the garage. Did she call the police then, or did she have her own key? Did she go inside, find what Travis had left? If she’d come while he was still there, he would have had to kill her as well.
It doesn’t matter now. They have the body, his prints all over the place, his Silverado in the garage. The only money he has now is what he took off Darnell and Joffo. Everything is fucked, and it’s his own fault.
He takes out the Bersa. If the cops see him, come after him, he’ll use it, hold court in the street. He won’t run.
He turns left out of the driveway, heads back the way he came, driving slow, the gun in his lap. He watches the cops in his rearview until he rounds a corner and they’re out of sight.
* * *
The residential hotel is two blocks from the Elizabeth train station, on a narrow street that dead-ends at a tractor-trailer lot, just under a Turnpike overpass. He’s been here before, knows they’ll take cash and not ask questions or want ID. The lobby is a threadbare carpet and a wooden counter, a dusty plastic tree and a rack of mail slots.
The stooped gray-haired desk clerk takes one of his hundreds without a word, hands him a key attached to a green plastic diamond.
Travis doesn’t trust the narrow elevator, climbs the stairs to the third floor. The hall is filled with the acrid smell of someone cooking in their room. Muffled voices and TV noise come from behind the doors he passes.
His room has a single window that looks out on a barren side lot. In the tiny bathroom, he strips off his shirt. He stopped at a pharmacía a block away, bought first-aid supplies.
The dressing sticks to his shoulder when he tries to peel it off. He drips alcohol on it, the sting quickly turning to pain. The sodden gauze comes off slowly. His entire shoulder is red, the gauze black and yellow. A sickly-sweet smell comes from the wound.
He fishes out the fent cap from his pocket, shakes some more out onto his wrist and snorts it. Only a dusting left in it now. He wishes he’d taken the rest of the capsules from the safe. Another fuckup.
He dresses the wound again, then changes the bandage on his head. From the room next door, he can hear grunting, a bed squeaking.
He takes out the Bersa, ejects the magazine. Six rounds left. It’ll be enough. Tomorrow night ends it. After he’s settled with the Harper woman he’ll be in the wind.
He aims at the mirror above the dresser and dry-fires twice at his own reflection.
FORTY-ONE
Early afternoon. Outside the window of Joette’s hotel room, the sky is heavy with the threat of snow. She sits at the desk and writes a letter on hotel stationery.
Helen:
If you’re reading this, chances are that I’m dead. I’m leaving this with you so you’ll know what happened.
I did something I shouldn’t have, took some money that didn’t belong to me. It was in the car that crashed outside the motel that day, the one that caught on fire. I found the money in the trunk. I took it and hid it. I didn’t tell the state troopers. I’m not sure why I did it, but once I did there was no going back.
There’s a man named Travis Clay who says the money belongs to him. He’s the one that hurt Noah. He also threatened my mother, and Brianna and Cara at the motel. He won’t stop until he gets that money.
I’ve put everyone around me in danger, and I’m sorry for that. I’m also sorry I couldn’t tell you more about what happened. But now
when you look back on it all, I hope you’ll understand why. And that you’ll forgive me.
I’m going to give him the money, there’s no other way. Once he gets it, he’ll kill me. I guess I’ve always known that.
I don’t know how things got to this point. I could have given it to him early on, ended all this. I don’t know why I didn’t. If I’d known how it would end up, I never would have taken it in the first place. And no one would have gotten hurt.
I’ve let so many people down, lied to so many people, you included. You are the best friend I’ve ever had. I wish I had been a better one to you.
Please show Noah this letter. I’ve kept so much from him, and it’s because of me that he got hurt.
I’m hoping once I give this man his money, he won’t be a threat to anyone around me anymore. That he’ll go somewhere and never come back. I don’t want anyone else to pay for what I did.
Please look after my mother when you can. She doesn’t have much time left, and I want her last days to be peaceful. Her DNR and other paperwork are all on file there at the nursing home. I’ve listed you as a family member, in case any last-minute decisions need to be made. I’m sorry to leave you with this responsibility, but you’re the only one I can trust.
I’m sorry I brought this down on everyone. I’m hoping what I do now will end it. I can’t tell you why I did what I did. I’m not sure myself. If I could go back and change things, I would. But I can’t. And this is the only way out.
Love, Jo
She seals the letter in a hotel envelope, writes Helen’s name and cell number on the front. She’ll leave it on the desk here, propped against the lamp in plain sight. If she doesn’t come back, someone will find it.
She takes the money from the safe, loads the sports bag one last time.
You should have let it burn.
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