No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  I go into the hall. The carpet is a burnt orange colour that hasn’t been popular since the 1970s. Even in the half-light, it’s clearly filthy, with a path trodden deep into the pile. Whoever owns this house doesn’t spend much on upkeep.

  From the hall, I can survey the lay of the place. Just above me is an attic trap door. There are two bedrooms off the corridor – the one I just explored, and a second, which I peek into now, and which is empty except for a bookcase without any books.

  I give the rest of the house a similarly cursory inspection. There’s a single small bathroom. It contains: a plastic bathtub, a floral shower curtain, and a toilet – seat up – with a rust ring in the bowl, and dried yellow piss on the rim. Down the hall, near the front door, there’s a kitchen with a linoleum floor that curls up at the edges like an old man’s toenails.

  The kitchen is conclusive proof that no one lives in this house. The little telltale signs that kitchens usually hold – the ones that mark human habitation – are nowhere to be found: no dishes in the sink, no newspapers on the butcher’s block table, no half-drunk glasses of orange juice. A quick glance inside the fridge confirms this: the fridge itself is empty, but the light bulb still glows. Someone has paid the electricity bill within the last several months. But no one bothers to keep food here.

  Whatever I hoped to find at 56 Windmere – whether an incriminating document, or maybe even Charles Adams’s corpse slumped on the kitchen floor, in a pool of brains, with a shotgun in its hands – I do not find. There is no document. There is no dead CEO.

  I decide to bring my little breaking and entering adventure to an end. I am about to walk out of the front door, and return to my humdrum existence as a turnaround executive. I’ll have other opportunities to ruin my life in the future. It won’t happen today, apparently.

  But as I approach the entry foyer, something occurs to me. There is one place left to explore, one area in the house that I haven’t looked at. And it’s bothering me. After all, I’ve come this far, haven’t I? So I might as well.

  Might as well.

  I return through the hall, to that attic door tucked into the ceiling. There’s a short pull chain. I tug, and the door glides open on a hydraulic hinge. A compact stepladder is telescoped against the back of the trap. I extend it down, and it reaches to the ground.

  Heavy, humid air pours out of the opening, and it smells like mothballs. Up the ladder I climb, poking my head into a black crawl space. Far away in the darkness, three slits of light glow – a ventilation grille. My hand grazes a light switch. I flip it. A single bulb in an enamel socket illuminates the attic. The room is A-shaped, just tall enough at the apex to allow a man of normal height to walk, stooped over. I pick my way over the unfinished floors, careful not to trip on exposed beams. There are no boxes, no crates, no family heirlooms, no furniture that someone can’t bear to throw out. There are no dead CEOs, either. There is only one item in the attic. I see it at the far side: a black, heavy plastic garbage bag – ‘hefty’ size, they call it – the kind of bag used for the disposal of lawn clippings or construction debris.

  I walk to it, bent over, careful to avoid the exposed rusty nails poking out of the roof’s two-by-fours. I kneel down next to the bag, spread it open.

  I’ve never seen this much cash, in one place, in my entire life. The bag is filled with hundred-dollar bills, stacked and banded into tight bricks. I reach deep into the bag, pick one of these bricks at random, flip through the bills to be sure they are all Ben Franklins. I’m not a counterfeiter, and wouldn’t know the difference between a real hundred-dollar bill and a fake, but these look as real as any money I’ve ever seen.

  When you work as a commission-based sales executive, as I once did, you become extraordinarily skilled at a certain type of arithmetic. This is because your entire life is based upon it: how much food you can eat, how big a mortgage you can afford, how much pussy you can get on the side. You begin to solve these types of equations in your head, as proficiently as a NASA scientist.

  They go something like this: ‘If I have one hundred sales prospects, and I close a sale ten per cent of the time, and each sale is worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and I earn forty per cent commission, well then, I’m going to bring home $600K. You’ve got to figure taxes, of course, and the tax rate on that kind of income – federal and state – is about forty per cent, which leaves me with $360K.’

  Now, a similar set of equations runs through my head, automatically, as I stare at the pile of cash at my feet. A brick of hundred-dollar bills is worth, I guess, twenty grand. Two hundred bricks is worth four million dollars. You’ve got to figure taxes, of course, and the tax rate on a bunch of cash sitting in a plastic garbage bag is... well, it’s zero.

  It occurs to me, as I stare at this four million dollars of cash in a garbage bag, that I’m looking at Tao Software’s missing venture capital. I don’t have evidence for this, of course, but the numbers fit, and this is the address where Tao’s cheques were sent. The mechanism by which those legal above-ground dollars were converted into underground cash eludes me, but surely the police and Agent Mitchell will be able to figure it out.

  Assuming I live long enough to tell them.

  Which – I suddenly discover – is not a sure thing.

  From outside the house, I hear sounds in rapid succession: two car doors slamming, heavy footsteps on the front walk, and keys jingling in the entry door. I freeze.

  I consider retreating further into the attic, hiding in the dark recess at the far side of the room, hiding until whoever is visiting 56 Windmere finally leaves. That thought lasts exactly two seconds. This attic isn’t a hiding place. This attic is a dead end. Maybe literally. Whoever is visiting this house means to come right here, to this attic. There is only one thing in this house worth visiting. It’s not the empty IKEA desk, or the bookcase with no books. It’s the plastic bag at my feet.

  So I turn and I flee. This is a two-step process – turning and fleeing – and I execute the first part with competence, maybe even grace, turning my body with the litheness of a gazelle. Next, I flee. Here is the part where I fail. I lunge towards the attic exit, with all the speed and power I can muster. Unfortunately, I forget about the low ceiling, and the exposed rusty nails. My head slams into a beam, and sharp metal punctures the skin of my forehead. I see a flash of white light, and I hear the ocean. I stand motionless, dazed, my hands gripping my head, trying to remember where I am, and where I’m going.

  I regain my bearings. I’m in an attic, and I’m standing next to a garbage bag of cash that I’m not supposed to see, and there are men coming to retrieve it. Presumably these men will be surprised to find me here. Men who come for four million dollars of cash in a garbage bag probably do not like to be surprised.

  More carefully now, I try again to flee – slower this time. I flip off the light and scramble down the stepladder.

  I jump down into the hall. I need to get the hell out of here, but I can’t just turn and run. I must re-fold the stepladder and close the attic. I glance into the hallway. I can’t see the front foyer from here, but I hear the door opening. I try to stay calm, keep my motions small. Fumbling makes things take longer. I telescope up the ladder, segment by segment, until it fits neatly behind the attic door. I push the entire apparatus upward, into the ceiling. It’s heavier than I expected. The door closes on its hydraulic hinges and clicks shut.

  There are voices now, in the foyer, near, indistinct and male, more than one.

  I lunge from the hall, into the safety of the nearest door, which turns out to be the bathroom. Bad choice. The one window here is small, and stuck shut with dried paint. I could probably open it, if I banged it loose. But banging is not a good idea. I hear footsteps approach in the hall.

  I step into the shower and pull the curtain closed, slowly. I remove my fingers from the plastic liner just as I hear a voice in the bathroom doorway. For an instant I fear I have been discovered, because the voice speaks directly t
o me. But the language is not English, and the tone, though loud, is not aggressive. It’s a man calling out to a friend – a hint of laughter in his voice.

  His footsteps trudge into the bathroom, and they stop just inches from the shower curtain. I can hear the man’s breathing. He sounds big, like a bear. There’s a metallic clank. Then I hear a zipper and the splash of urine in the toilet bowl. ‘Ahhh,’ the man sighs, in that universal language of men who have waited too long for a car ride to end.

  The piss continues for some time. Outside the bathroom, the other man’s voice calls. Again, not English. It sounds Eastern European, maybe Russian. The man who is urinating says something in response, but keeps on pissing. I don’t speak Russian, but I do piss, and so I get the general idea: ‘Give me a minute. I’m taking a piss.’

  I move my head slightly, one inch to the right, to expand my field of vision. Now I can see the top of the toilet tank, just barely. It isn’t much of a view, but it does help explain the metallic clank I heard just before the man began to urinate. The man was carrying something in his waistband, something that he removed and lay on the ceramic tank. A gun. A very large, black gun. Which I now stare at, as it lies on the back of the toilet.

  I hold my breath. The gambler inside me suddenly doesn’t like these odds. Indeed, the gambler inside me doesn’t like any of this. It was a fun little escapade, breaking into a house, because it seemed harmless. Oh sure, there was some downside. I might be arrested. My career might be ruined. Libby might be embarrassed.

  Now, the downside seems much steeper than I initially calculated. Not only embarrassment. The downside now includes... well, death.

  Next to me, the man finally stops urinating. There’s a zipper sound, and a toilet flush. ‘OK,’ the man calls, in accented English. His hand reaches into my field of view, grabs the gun from the toilet, and then he, and his gun, are gone.

  I stand very still. There’s activity outside the bathroom door: the clanking sound of the attic stepladder being unfolded, then muffled footsteps. I wait for what feels like a long time. Then the footsteps, and the voices, return. The ladder clanks again, and the attic door closes with a click.

  I wait, motionless, until long after the sounds of the front door closing and tyres receding from the driveway.

  I look down at the bathtub where I stand. Drops of blood spatter around my feet like warm rain. It takes a moment to remember that it’s mine. I step out of the tub and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. On my forehead is a lump the size of an egg and the colour of rotting meat. A line of blood streaks from the wound and drips down my face, like a very Catholic depiction of a crown of thorns.

  I hold a thick wad of toilet paper against my head, to staunch the blood. It keeps coming, but at least the paper stops it from dripping to the floor. With my left hand holding the paper to my head, I use my right hand to wipe down the tub, erasing the evidence that I’ve been here.

  When I finish cleaning the bathroom, I return to the attic. I am not surprised by what I find. Which is nothing. The attic is empty; the four million dollars are gone.

  CHAPTER 14

  ‘Jim, what happened to your head?’

  This is the question asked by Amanda when I return to the Tao office. Puzzled faces stare at me through the glass of the conference room; people in the bullpen, hearing the commotion, lean back in their chairs to get a better look at the most exciting thing they’ve seen all day, maybe all month: the boss in the reception area, with a head wound.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, loudly. ‘Just a little accident. Rusty nail in the head. That’s all.’

  ‘Do you need stitches?’ Amanda asks. She flips the telephone headset from her ear, stands to get a better look at me. ‘Come here.’ She grabs my hand and guides me around the reception desk. I want to protest, but her grip is strong and she accepts no opposition. She pushes me down into her chair and stands over me.

  Before I can stop her, her fingers are dancing along my scalp, moving aside my hair, gently touching my wound. ‘Does that hurt?’ she asks.

  ‘No. Ouch. Yes.’

  ‘Look at it,’ she says, in something like fascination. ‘Was it really a rusty nail?’

  ‘Not sure how rusty. It was kind of dark.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Long story.’

  ‘Now, Jim, this is a very important question, and you must answer me seriously.’ She looks at me sternly.

  I’m expecting her to ask if I broke into someone’s house and hit my head in their attic. But she asks instead: ‘When was your last tetanus shot?’

  Tetanus shot? I can’t recall my last doctor’s appointment. When your medicines tend to be delivered in eight-ball format rather than pill jars, things like health care and doctors take a back seat to other priorities, such as: When can I next get high. But I do not want to explain this, nor do I want to spend the afternoon at Tampa General, waiting for a tetanus vaccination. So I lie. ‘Yeah, I had one. Right before I came to Florida.’

  ‘You are very lucky, then,’ she says. Amanda’s voice is soft, very close to me – her mouth just above my ear. I feel her warm breath against my skin. Her fingers are in my hair. It’s strangely intimate. Even though we’re in the public reception area, and I know people are watching us, her back shields this private moment from everyone’s view.

  I glance at her shirt. It’s a natural movement of my eyes – I merely try to look straight ahead – but straight ahead in this case means that I look down her loose-fitting camisole. I see her breasts. She wears no bra. Her nipples are pink, round, the size of cherry blossoms. And I see something else, too – something jarring and out of place on this girl’s skin that is so smooth and pale. A tattoo, on her left breast, just above her nipple.

  The tattoo is not a girly, feminine drawing. It’s Cyrillic, blue-black ink, block letters.

  I glance up, at her face, but it’s too late. She has caught me. Done the triangulation. She knows. Exactly where I was looking.

  But she stays still, with her shirt hanging down. Her fingers remain on my head; and her touch becomes even softer, more gentle. She leans closer.

  ‘You are very lucky,’ she says, again, softly, more breath than voice, and I smell her perfume: floral, like honeysuckle. She pauses. ‘Very lucky.’

  ‘Am I?’ My voice is hoarse. I look down, to avoid her eyes. I’m firing on all cylinders today: breaking into houses, avoiding Russian mobsters, ogling my employee’s breasts. Maybe this afternoon I’ll use a cap gun to stick up the local Winn-Dixie. Just for the hell of it.

  I stand, and we break contact. She backs off, and we switch places behind the desk.

  The moment is gone, and she sits down and puts on her headset. Then, as if nothing has happened, she says: ‘Your three o’clock is here. He’s in the small conference room.’

  ‘My three o’clock?’

  ‘Pete Bland. He’s been waiting for you. You’re twenty minutes late.’

  I inherited Pete Bland, Tao’s attorney, from my predecessor, the same way I inherited Charles Adams’s title, and his desk chair, and his tattooed receptionist.

  Pete Bland is a partner at Perkins Stillwell, Tampa’s pre-eminent white-shoe corporate law firm. This is yet another example of a pattern I’ve noticed everywhere at Tao since my arrival: for a company that hasn’t turned a penny of profit, ever, and relies on the largesse of distant investors, thrift is nowhere to be seen. The sweeping art deco reception area, the designer furniture, the Aeron chairs, the class-A office space, and, now, the fancy attorney – all of these add up to one haemorrhagic burn rate.

  But that cash haemorrhage is precisely the reason I called this meeting with Pete Bland – I need to staunch that bleeding. And fast. There’s only one way to do that.

  I take a Manila folder from a locked drawer in my desk and hurry to the small conference room. I’m expecting to find a corpulent middle-aged man, in an expensive suit and gold cufflinks. Instead, I see a skinny thirty-five-year-old kid with Doc Mar
ten shoes and stylishly long sideburns – I think they still call them ‘mutton chops’, don’t they? – and a colourful neon tie that looks as if it needs its own power generator. I guess when you’re born with the name ‘Pete Bland’, there are two ways you can cope: give in, or resist. Tao’s corporate attorney chose the second path. With his shoes, and sideburns, and tie, he looks more pimp than lawyer.

  ‘Jim Thane,’ he says, ‘great to meet you. I’m Pete Bland.’ Despite his unusual dress, he has a standard lawyer’s handshake: dry, firm, quick. Lawyers are like taxi drivers; they always want you to know that the meter is running. ‘I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.’

  Clearly a lie, which I ignore.

  ‘But I have to ask,’ he continues, ‘what happened to your head?’

  I almost forgot. I touch the wound. It’s the size of two eggs now. ‘I didn’t look where I was going.’

  ‘Story of my life,’ Pete Bland agrees. ‘That’s how we wind up with a mortgage and two kids.’ He sits down, pops the lid of his attaché. He removes a yellow legal pad and a pen. ‘So,’ he says, clicking his pen. ‘You want to fire a few people.’

  I look behind him, make sure the door is firmly closed. ‘More than a few, actually.’

  Two things happen after you fire a lot of people. First, you spend less money on salary. Second, you get sued. The two things go hand in hand, and one follows the other like caboose after locomotive. That is the reason for my meeting with our company attorney: I want the first, but not the second.

  Pete Bland asks: ‘You have that list we talked about?’