The Box

by Robert Swetz

  “Vince, I had no idea what banks you had. I thought you had killed my father. I saw the site was open, and I was angry. I sabotaged it. I just didn’t know what a good job of it I did.”

  Vince nodded sadly. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t want to know anymore what happened to that money. As far as any of us are concerned, it’s gone. Forever. If Samuel kills us, there’s no way I want to hand him a bunch of money for doing it.”

  Brian said a word he hadn’t expected to say. It just popped out of his mouth. “Dad?”

  Vince looked quickly at Brian, happy to hear that one word. “Yes?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to know?”

  “No. Definitely not. Even if your mother did know the password, I still wouldn’t want Samuel getting his hands on it. If he goes ahead and kills us, I’m not going to reward him for doing it.”

  “But giving it to him could get us out of here,” Francesca argued. “We could go home.”

  Vince shook his head. “Think, Fran. Since he knows that I know he killed your father, and if we give him the money, then he’d be too afraid to just let us go. He can’t chance that information getting out, especially to your brother. He knows there would be reprisals.”

  “Wouldn’t there be?” Fran asked. “There should be!”

  “Yes. And your right, no matter how this plays out, unless he makes our deaths look like an accident, he’s got to face some kind of reprisal. Which is why I’m guessing now that he’s going to arrange something nasty for all of us. Most likely at the same time.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I’m still working on it Fran.”

  “Is there some way I can help? This is all my fault to begin with.”

  “No. Not that I can see. But if there is, I’ll let you know.”

  She glanced at Brian, then back at him. “Is it worth it to talk about us then? Are you even willing?”

  “Of course we can talk,” he replied. “Somehow, we’re going to get out of here. But that’s a discussion for you and me only.” He looked at Brian. “Sorry son.”

  “Hey. I’m good!” Brian told them as he stood up. He headed for the door. “I’ll go figure out what to do with myself for a while.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To leave you two alone.” He looked at his mother. “And Mom, please, for my sake, work something out.”

  Francesca smiled. “I think that’s the main idea,” she told him.

  “Good! Then I’m out of here. I think I’ll see if I can find the kitchen. Maybe they’ll have something I can eat there.”

  “Bring me something if you do,” his father told him. “But later!”

  Brian smiled and walked out. He didn’t know everything those two were going to talk about, but at least they were talking. There was hope.

  He didn’t head for the kitchen right away. He didn’t even go downstairs. Instead, he opened every single door on the third floor to see what was in each room. Oh, that’s where the bathroom was! He shook his head. He had seen bus station bathrooms that were smaller. And like the one downstairs, it was sure a lot fancier than any bathroom he’d ever seen.

  From the third floor he went down to the second floor. It looked like it was all bedrooms, but when he started opening the doors, he could tell that most of the rooms were being used by someone. And one of those rooms was enormous, with its own bathroom inside. He could only guess that Samuel and his wife lived in that one.

  There were a few of those rooms there that he did more than just poke his head into. He looked through them to see if he could see who was living there. He wasn’t surprised to see how big Michael’s room was, and it had its own small bathroom too. He found Josh’s room and Pete’s at the end of the hall. They didn’t have a bathroom. Neither did one that looked like a woman stayed there. Was that the one that belonged to Irene…or Iris…or something? He looked around, but he couldn’t find a name on anything. He was betting it was her room though.

  He went down to the first floor and started by the front door. He went briefly into every room. Some of them he’d already seen, but he went in again. The maids he saw all smiled at him but said nothing. He did his best to ignore them. He was only looking around anyway. No harm in that. The room where he had heard the conversations before turned out to be Samuel’s office, complete with Samuel himself. He hurried right past it without stopping. Samuel had been looking down at something on his desk and as far as Brian could tell, he never knew he was there.

  Surprisingly, the kitchen wasn’t hard to find at all. It was just past the dining room. It smelled good in there. “Can I get you anything?” one of the kitchen workers asked.

  “Uh…any chance you’ve got a cookie or something in here?”

  “Of course,” the woman replied. She left and came back a minute later with a handful of cookies wrapped up in a napkin. “Thanks!” he said gratefully. “Uh…don’t tell my mother, okay?”

  She smiled. “Our little secret.”

  “Thanks,” he said as he noticed a door opening and someone coming through. But it wasn’t a door to the outside. He saw the staircase just behind the door. It looked like it led down to the basement. There was another doorway right next to that one though that appeared to lead into another hallway. He was sure that hallway had to lead to the back door. There were two men with boxes blocking that doorway though so he couldn’t go through to see. Cookies in hand, he left the kitchen.

  “Brian!”

  He looked up to see Samuel’s wife, Isabel, heading in his direction.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking around,” he told her. “Have you any idea how fancy your house is? Before this, the best place I ever saw was Father Joseph’s office. That was great. He has an entire wall of just books. He says he studies them all, but you know priests, they’ll say anything. Who bothers to study all the time?”

  “A priest might,” she told him.

  “I don’t know why,” he said. “I like school, but it’s nice to be out for the summer. And I don’t study anything during the summer.”

  She laughed.

  “Where’d you get all this stuff?” he asked.

  “Some of it’s been in Samuel’s family for generations. Hundreds of years. This house is nearly a hundred and fifty years old.”

  “It’s big enough,” Brian told him. “But I’m having a good time just looking around.”

  “Where’s your mother and father?”

  “Talking! Without me.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I should have known. I wish them luck.”

  “Me too!”

  “Can I show you anything?”

  He had already seen it, but he said, “Your house?”

  “I’d love to,” she told him. “Let me give you the two-dollar tour.”

  “Just as long as I don’t have to pay the two dollars. I don’t have it.”

  She laughed. “You saw the kitchen I see.”

  He held up the cookies. “Want one?”

  “No thanks. Enjoy them.”

  He let her lead him all around the house. He heard a lot about most of the decorations. It was mostly a lot of information he didn’t care about, but he listened anyway. She didn’t take him up to the second or third floors though, and she didn’t take him down to the basement either. But that didn’t matter. He had already learned what he had wanted to know to begin with. He now knew where every door to the outside was, and every window they might use to try and escape. And as a bonus, he knew where everyone in the house was sleeping, including the mystery woman.

  Now for the next question. Could he get out?

  He went back upstairs and found the door to his mother’s room open. When he looked inside, she was sitting and reading a book again, but he saw no sign of his father. That worried him. He took it as a bad sign. “Hi Mom,” he said as he went inside.

  “Brian! Where have you been?”

  “Mrs. Scuderi has been giving me what she called the tw
o-dollar tour.”

  Francesca was skeptical. “Since when are you so interested in architecture?”

  “Who said I was? I just wanted to look around. Where’s Dad?”

  “Across the hall in his room.”

  “Things didn’t go well? You didn’t talk very long.”

  “As it turns out, there wasn’t a lot for either of us to talk about. Some things Brian, are going to have to come with time.”

  “Is he…”

  “Taking us back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course. You don’t have to worry about that. He still loves you Brian, he always has, and he always will. Just like me. But it’s more difficult between two adults. I can’t really explain it or ask you to understand it when it’s so difficult for us to understand ourselves. The best I can tell you is that we’re working on it.”

  “I guess that’s good.”

  She nodded. “Probably a lot better than I deserve.”

  “Because you changed that password?”

  “Mostly because I left when I shouldn’t have. Did you find something to eat?”

  “Yeah. They gave me a few cookies down in the kitchen. Did you want some?”

  “No thanks,” she replied. “I’ll wait for lunch.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I think I’ll wander around again. I don’t really feel like sitting in my room.”

  “Brian,” she said. “Be careful. Things for us in this house aren’t quite what they appear. We’re being watched, and we’re all in more danger than you may think.”

  “Thanks,” he said, “but I still can’t sit and do nothing. I’m used to walking. I’ve got to move.”

  She nodded. “Don’t let that nervous energy of yours get you in trouble!”

  “I’ll try not to,” he told her.

  He left her room, glancing at the door across the hall. The door where his uncle had stayed. The door where his father was now. It was closed. What was his father doing in there? With no answers, he went back downstairs. Down to the first floor.

  He wandered into the kitchen again, but he didn’t stop walking. He went straight to that hallway next to the basement door. He wasn’t sure any of the kitchen staff even noticed he had been through. The hallway he found himself in turned out to not be a hallway at all. It was some kind of small room filled with boxes and other stuff. Storage. At the back of it though was a door with windows in it. A door leading to the outside.

  He opened the door and went through. A short distance away he saw a man – Pete. One of the killers. He was standing on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey!” Pete said as soon as he saw him. “Back inside! This isn’t a place for you to come.”

  “I can’t just see what’s out here?” he asked.

  “Back inside!” Pete told him.

  He turned around and went back into the kitchen, then back into the main hallway. He went all the way to the front door. He opened it and went outside.

  “What do you want?”

  The other killer. Josh. The guy was just standing around on the front porch. “I just wanted to get out for a bit,” Brian told him. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Watching the front,” Josh told him. “Now go back inside.”

  “Do you always watch the front?”

  “When they ask me to, which in this case, is now. So turn around and get back in the house.”

  Stopped again. With nowhere left to go, he headed back upstairs to his room. He sat in the big stuffed chair in the room and thought. Someone was watching the backdoor and someone else was watching the front. But now his question was, were they always watching those doors? That was something he couldn’t find out until later.

  Chapter 12

  Vince was asleep when the door burst open in the middle of the night and three men rushed into his room. Before he could get his sleep fogged head clear enough to realize what was happening, his hands were tied behind him. As one of them roughly pulled him out of the room, he saw the other two enter his wife’s room. He heard her scream, but he could do nothing to help her. A minute later, she was being dragged from her room as well and he saw Michael heading for Brian’s door. He waited for Brian to scream, to yell, but there was no sound, until a moment later when Michael came out. Alone.

  “He isn’t here,” Michael said.

  “What did you do with him!” Francesca screamed. “What did you do with my son?”

  “You tell me!” Michael yelled back as he went right up to Francesca and slapped her face.

  Francesca screamed and started crying. “I didn’t do anything with him. He was there when I put him to bed!”

  “Shit!” Michael said. He turned to Vincent. “Where the hell is your son?”

  “You’ve got me,” Vince told him. “I saw her put him to bed. I said goodnight to him. He was there. Maybe Michael, you ought to check with your father. He’s the only other one in this house that I can see who might have taken him. Unless you’ve got other muscle around that I don’t know about.”

  Michael was angry. “Bring them,” he said as he headed for the stairs.

  --- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

  Brian had been in the big party room when all the commotion started. He had been about to try going out through the front door when he had seen Michael, Josh, and Pete hurry down the hallway from the kitchen. With just his head stuck out the door, he watched as they hurried up the stairs. Now was his chance, now was his best opportunity to get out. But then what? Where would he go? What would he do? His family was still here in the house. But at least he knew he could get out now.

  He heard a scream from somewhere upstairs. He ran toward the stairs. Before he got there, he heard yelling up there too. And then he heard people coming down the stairs. He didn’t want anyone to see him downstairs. But where could he hide? The closest room was Samuel’s office. He ran inside. The light was off, but he could see well enough from the light in the hallway. He looked around. His eyes fell on a slightly open door. He opened it and saw coats and other things inside. A closet. He went in and closed the door again, leaving it just slightly ajar like it had been.

  “Put them in the car,” he heard Michael’s voice say.

  “What about the kid?” Pete asked.

  “He’s got to be around here somewhere, we’ll find him. Just make sure they’re secure.”

  “Michael. What’s going on?” Brian recognized Samuel’s voice. “Why so much noise?”

  “The damn kid is missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yeah. We got his mother and father, but his room was empty. Give us a few minutes. He’s around here somewhere. We’ll find him.”

  “Well do it quickly. I want them out of here.”

  “Don’t worry, Pop. Go back to bed. I’ll handle it.”

  “Good.”

  Brian stayed put. It sounded like Michael and his friends had done something with his mother and father, and now they were taking them somewhere. Someplace where he was supposed to go too. He remembered that his father had said that Samuel would probably arrange some kind of accident for all of them. Were they going to do that to them now? Kill them? He was terrified that might be the case. But right then, he didn’t have a clue what he could do about it.

  He stayed in the closet and listened to the sounds in the house that he could hear, but the men searching the house didn’t make much noise. He couldn’t believe they never bothered to come into Samuel’s office, or if they did, they never opened the closet.

  “He’s not here, damn it!” he heard Josh say.

  “Shit!” he heard Michael reply. “He got out somehow. Were you watching the door?”

  “Yeah, right up until you called us to meet in the kitchen.”

  “Shit!” Michael swore again. “He probably walked right out the door while we were talking. Okay, we’ll have to find him later. Let’s get Vince and his wife to the cleaners. Then we’ve got a lot of damn searching to do.”

  Brian list
ened as the front door opened, then closed again, and the house fell silent. Totally silent. Too silent for his taste. Were they about to kill his parents? The thought terrified him, but he didn’t know what he could do about it.

  He left the closet and peered out into the hallway. All quiet. He needed something. He needed help. But who could he call? He wanted to call his Uncle Gerald, but he didn’t have a clue how to reach him. The only other thing he could think of that might help just then, was money. With money, he could at least eat and survive on the streets for a while until he could figure out what else he could do. He was very much afraid that he might be on his own for the rest of his life.

  Since everything seemed quiet, he flipped the office light on and went back inside. He pulled out one of the drawers in Samuel’s desk, hoping to find some money, but what he saw instead was a gun. A bright silver gun with pearl handgrips. He pulled it out. Right underneath the gun he found a cellphone and a wallet. He checked the wallet and found out it belonged to his father. There was money in it too. A lot! Since the wallet belonged to his father, he was betting the cellphone did too. But how about the gun? He didn’t know if his father had been carrying one. He hadn’t noticed one, but when he had seen any of the Scorpions carrying guns, they were always hidden under a shirt or something. Had his father had a gun? He didn’t know.

  He put the cellphone and his father’s wallet in his pocket. He tried to stuff the gun in his other pocket. The entire handle hung out, but he couldn’t do anything about that. One by one, he opened the desk drawers to see what else he could find. Just a lot of office stuff and paper. Nothing that he figured would do him any good.

  He turned the light off and headed for the front door. Could he get out? He opened the door and looked outside. He didn’t see anyone. As fast as he could, he ran for the gate. A moment later, the gate was closed behind him. With one hand on the gun in his pocket so it wouldn’t fall out, he kept running as fast as he could. He finally stopped to catch his breath. He had no idea where he was. He had no idea where he should go. He did know though that when Michael and his friends came back, they were going to be looking for him. He started walking, moving as fast as he dared away from the house and that area of town.