Over and over and over, Charlie thought, he said the same things and he always handed me a hundred-dollar bill. Always.
Charlie hurried down the thin staircase and out into the street. He spotted Cohen on the opposite side of the square from the café and he cut across the square to get to the café before Cohen. He went in the door and asked the cook if Big Jim was around and she said he just walked in the door.
“Where?” Charlie asked.
She pointed to the swinging door that led into the storeroom in the back. Charlie moved quickly around the tables and he went through the swinging door and Big Jim was sitting in a chair opening a wide rectangular box with a box cutter. The cut-off pool cue was on the floor next to the chair.
Big Jim looked up and said, “Where you been, Charlie?”
“I ain’t got time for that. That boy Cohen. What’d he pay you with?”
“Money,” Big Jim answered and he opened the box flaps and began to take out sleeves of plastic cups.
“Hundred-dollar bills?”
Big Jim nodded.
“Let me see them,” Charlie said.
“I ain’t letting you see them. I already spent them, anyway.”
“You ain’t spent it. I know you got them stuck somewhere and I need to see them.”
“I ain’t showing you that money or where I put it.”
“I bet you will,” Charlie said. “You will or I’m done ever running anything down here for you, making any delivery, taking anybody or anything anywhere. You show it to me or the Charlie train don’t stop here no more.”
Big Jim huffed. Tossed down the plastic cups and got up. “I don’t know what damn difference it makes, but come on.”
Charlie followed Big Jim around boxes and short shelves to the back of the storeroom. Big Jim slid a stack of boxes to the side and knelt down and pulled up a square piece of floor. Underneath was a small rectangular safe. Big Jim spun the knob a couple of times and opened the door. He reached in and pulled out a ragged envelope, and from the envelope he took out a stack of fifties and hundreds. He handed two from the top of the stack to Charlie.
Charlie smoothed them out flat in his hand. The two bills were wavy from having been wet, but otherwise they were awfully straight and clean.
“That son of a bitch,” Charlie said.
42
CHARLIE STOOD ON THE SIDEWALK and looked around and saw Cohen walking in his direction. Charlie took out a cigarette and lit it. Cohen waved and walked on to him.
“You’re just the man I need to see,” Cohen said.
“Yeah? I was about to say the same thing,” Charlie said. “Let’s go in there.” He pointed at the café. They walked in the door and Mariposa had come down and she sat at a booth alone. They walked over and Cohen sat down next to her. Charlie stood.
“She with you now?” Charlie asked.
Cohen nodded.
“You sure?” Charlie asked.
“Would you sit down?”
Charlie slid into the other side of the booth.
“I need some gas,” Cohen said. “You got some?”
Charlie looked around the café and put the cigarette in his mouth.
“Charlie?”
He took a long drag and then stared at Cohen with an expression of knowing. “I got news,” he said.
Cohen looked at Mariposa, then back at Charlie. “About what?”
“About this witch hunt I been on since forever.”
“You mean treasure hunt?”
“Whatever you wanna call it.”
“Let me take a guess,” Cohen said and he grinned. “You know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.”
“Better than that,” Charlie said. He smoked again and then he smirked at Cohen. “I know the guy.”
Cohen asked Charlie for a cigarette. He lit it and he looked out of the window and then back to Charlie.
“I think you know him, too,” Charlie said.
“How would I know him?”
“You know him. I’ve known him since he was a boy. Used to be buds with his daddy. Watched him ride horses. Watched him play ball. Even gave him a few Santa Claus toys way back when. You’d think knowing somebody like that would make you friends with him. But evidently it don’t.”
Cohen laughed a little. “That’s some theory.”
“It ain’t a theory. Are we gonna play the game or get to it ’cause I’m all outta patience.”
“What makes you think I know where the pretend money is buried?”
“I don’t think you know where it’s buried, ’cause it ain’t buried no more. I think you know where to touch it.”
“What I think is this rain is making you crazy.”
Charlie finished his cigarette and dropped it in the metal ashtray next to the ketchup bottle. He then leaned to the side and pulled out his pistol and showed it to Cohen and Mariposa. “Put your hands on the table,” he said.
“Charlie.”
“Put. Your hands. On the table.”
Cohen did as asked.
“You too, honey.”
Mariposa set her hands on the table.
“I told you I ain’t playing around, Cohen,” Charlie said and he moved the pistol beneath the table. His eyes were scattered and wild. “I want you to look around. See where you are. There ain’t nobody in this café or outside this café that don’t need something from me. There ain’t nobody around here who wants my truck to stop showing up. There’s no law worth mentioning. You’re sitting in one of Charlie’s towns. I can buy anybody out there for a pint of tequila. So what I’m gonna do is count to five. When I hit five, she’s gonna catch a bullet where she don’t wanna catch it. In between one and five, you decide if there’s something you want to say to me.”
“Charlie, come on,” Cohen said.
“One.”
“Me and you can talk, just put it away.”
“Two.”
“Cohen,” Mariposa said in a shaky voice.
“Three.”
“I have it,” Cohen said.
Charlie opened up his coat and took out a flask and handed it to Cohen. Cohen unscrewed the cap and drank and handed it back. Charlie drank and set it on the table. Outside the rain drummed against the awning and more people filed onto the sidewalks. Cohen looked around the café as if there were an answer to his predicament written across the wall.
“How long you had it?” Charlie asked.
“Had what?” Mariposa said.
Charlie laughed. “Hell, you ain’t even told your girlfriend? I don’t feel so bad now.”
Cohen sat still and stared.
“How long you had it?” Charlie asked again.
“Pretty long.”
“You little shit. All those goddamn times you knew I was out there and you knew all these crazy assholes were down there digging and shooting and sometimes just shooting and you let me keep on. I oughta blow your kneecaps off right now and make you crawl to it.” His jaw was clenched as he spoke and it seemed the pistol might fire at any second.
Mariposa said, “Cohen?”
“Don’t say nothing else,” Charlie ordered her. He then licked his lips, scratched at his cheek. “You’re a curious son of a bitch, Cohen. I’ll give you that. Besides being a fucking liar, you’re sitting on Fort Knox and living out there all alone like the rest of all those waterlogged weirdos when you could be any damn place you wanted. All because of what? ’Cause of Elisa? Gimme a goddamn break. I wish your daddy was here right now so he could slap your dumb ass for being so stupid.”
“Don’t say her name again,” Cohen said.
“Don’t start crying.”
“And I didn’t lie to you.”
“Call it what you want but we both know what it is and that shit don’t matter right now anyway because we got real business to get into. The long and short of the real business is that you’re about to get up and take me to it. You and her both.”
“She don’t have nothing to do with this.”
; “We’ll call it collateral.”
Cohen shook his head. “I can’t go right to it ’cause I don’t have it.”
Charlie leaned his head back and shook it in disbelief. “Oh God,” he said. “We really gonna keep on like this. Really?”
“I know where it is.”
“Hell yes, you do. And we’re going.”
“It’s down there.”
“That’s bullshit. Ain’t no way you’re up here and it’s down there.”
“It ain’t bullshit. I already told you the other day we had to run out of there when them others showed up and that’s where it is. In the Jeep where I left it when we took out.”
Despite what he felt about Cohen now, Charlie thought that he was telling the truth. He was too smart to keep lying with a pistol aimed between his legs.
“How much is it?” Charlie asked.
“I never counted it.”
“Holy shit. More money than you can count. Always hear people say that but I never heard anybody say it that meant it.”
Cohen leaned back. He looked at Mariposa. She stared at him as if unsure who he was.
“What you driving?” Charlie asked.
“Truck. Still need gas.”
“I got that.”
“But we need to wait, Charlie. It’s brutal out there right now.”
“It’s been brutal.”
“Hasn’t stopped for weeks. We barely figured out how to get up here.”
“I know it’s bad and it’s getting badder with every drop that hits the ground. Won’t be no better time than this minute.”
Charlie drank from the flask again. Paused and thought. “She’s gonna ride with me in the U-Haul and you’ll follow.”
“No, hell no,” Cohen said.
“Hell yes. If you think I’m piling you two up next to me and driving through this mess then you’re the crazy one. First time I look off you’ll be on me. She rides with me and you follow. U-Haul’s heavy anyhow and we’re gonna need that.”
“I wanna know what’s going on,” Mariposa said.
Charlie picked up his cigarettes and took one from the pack and said, “You tell her.”
Cohen rubbed his hand at the back of his neck and then looked at her. “In the Jeep I have a lot of money. Money Charlie and everybody else has been looking for. We’re going to get it.”
“I don’t wanna go get it,” she said.
“Me, neither.”
“I didn’t want all my men shot dead, neither,” Charlie said. “And I didn’t wanna spend the last two years of my life dodging shotguns and hurricanes digging for a pot of gold when your boy here knew where it was. But at this juncture you are both sitting in the world of have to. Hell, I wouldn’t worry about it. The way I see it, Momma Nature knows us. She’ll take care of it.”
He lit the cigarette and stuck the flask back in his pocket, then knocked the pistol three times underneath the tabletop and told Cohen to stand up. When Cohen stood, Charlie checked his coat and pants for a gun. He found the bowie knife and he took if off Cohen’s belt and stuck it on his own.
“You can have this back when you deliver,” Charlie said and then he waved the pistol at Mariposa. “Now move your ass. I’m ready to go.”
“Not yet,” Cohen said. “You gotta let me do something first.”
“I know that one, son.”
“No, I mean it. We got two others with us. You saw them yesterday in here. A boy and his little brother and they’re upstairs. I can’t run off on them without saying something.”
“They’ll be all right.”
“They’ll be all right if we’re all right, but what if we’re not? It won’t take but a second, Charlie. They’re boys.”
Charlie looked around. Told Cohen to stand still right next to this table. Then he walked to the doorway of the café and looked out along the sidewalk, his head turning back and forth and on his tiptoes some. He saw familiar men standing half a block to the left and he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled and then waved. A moment later two men approached and Charlie talked to them, the pistol in his hand waving in the direction of Cohen and Mariposa. The two men listened carefully and Charlie reached in his front pocket and handed them some money. Then he turned and came inside and the men followed him over to Cohen.
“What are they for?” Cohen asked. The men were young but worn, one a head taller than the other. They were dressed in layers of mismatched coats and smelled and looked like wet dogs. One of them had a nervous shake in his hand and the other had a brown birthmark the size of a dime above his right eye.
“They’re gonna keep watch,” Charlie said.
“Hell no,” Cohen said. “You’re already making Mariposa go.”
“They ain’t gonna do nothing but sit outside the door and wait for us to get back. When we do everybody is free and clear. But I ain’t taking no chances.”
“And what if we don’t get back?” Mariposa asked.
“Then I guess they’ll work it out amongst themselves. You ain’t making the rules anyhow. Now show me where your boys are, ’cause we got business to get on with.”
COHEN AND MARIPOSA WENT UP the staircase first, followed by charlie and then the two men. Cohen opened the room door slowly and looked in at Evan and Brisco, who hadn’t moved from the bed. Brisco slept with a blanket pulled to his chin and Evan remained locked on the television.
“Evan,” Cohen said.
“Open the damn door and go on in,” Charlie ordered and he pushed him a little.
Cohen and Mariposa entered the room and Cohen walked to the television and turned it off. He told Evan to sit up and when Evan saw the old man come in behind them and the pistol in his hand, he sat up quick and swung his legs off the bed and to the floor.
“Don’t get up,” Charlie told him. The watchmen moved into the room behind Charlie. “Say what you gotta say, Cohen.”
Cohen moved toward Evan and in the dim light of the room, Evan saw the concern on his face. Mariposa moved next to Cohen.
“You got ten seconds,” Charlie said.
“We gotta go back down tonight,” Cohen said. “Me and Mariposa are going with Charlie to get the Jeep and then we’ll be back.” He reached into his coat pocket and held what was left of the money. He turned around to Charlie and the men and said, “He better have every damn thing he’s got right now when I get back.”
“He’s gonna,” Charlie said.
“Tell them.”
Charlie turned to the men and said, “Everything stays as is or you don’t get another dime.” They nodded. As Charlie spoke to them, Cohen leaned over to Evan, tucked the money under his leg, and whispered, “Twenty-four hours and then do what you gotta do.” Evan nodded.
Mariposa walked around the edge of the bed and brushed Brisco’s hair away from his face. She tucked his blanket around his small body and then she and Evan looked at one another. An uncertain, concerned, wordless exchange and she thought of telling him goodbye but didn’t like what it suggested.
“Time’s up,” Charlie said.
Cohen mouthed twenty-four hours to Evan and then he and Mariposa walked out the door, where Charlie stood waving the pistol like an usher escorting guests to their seats. Cohen and Mariposa started down the stairs and Charlie pulled the door shut, told the men to stay put and that the boys don’t leave unless the building catches on fire which ain’t gonna happen. When the three of them were downstairs, Charlie stuck the pistol in Cohen’s back and led him and Mariposa out of the café door and into the night, telling Cohen, “Don’t get fancy. It’ll be my way or it’ll be a bad way.”
43
THE LINE HAD BEEN OFFICIAL for six months and the two-year mark for Elisa’s death was approaching. Cohen had been trying to keep busy. Trying to fend off thinking of her death as an anniversary. One morning he had been outside looking under the hood of the Jeep when he saw the horse standing in the back field. She was brown and her wet coat shined and she wore a saddle but no rider. He put down the socket wr
ench and wiped his hands. Stood still as the horse looked unsure and he didn’t want her to bolt. She lowered her head and grazed, then she looked around, looked in the direction of Cohen, and she made a few steps in the direction of the house.
He walked across the backyard, moving patiently. He stepped over a barbed-wire fence and out into the field. The horse moved again, stopping along a fallen oak tree, her coat the same color as the mound of dirt wrapping the massive roots of the old tree. Cohen stopped. She remained unsure but curious. He whistled and she looked at him. Moved several steps in his direction. He whistled again and held his hands out by his sides, showing his palms. He moved a little closer and so did she and in another careful minute he was an arm’s length from her.
He looked her over without touching her. He spoke in a calm voice as he moved around her backside, making sure she wasn’t wounded in some way. Water dripped from her tail and mane and she was muddy but didn’t appear injured. She wore a saddlebag along with the saddle and her name was engraved on each of them. Habana.
She snorted. Shook her wet mane. He held out his hand to her nostrils and she craned her neck forward. He held his hand there and talked to her and then he reached out and touched her and she accepted it. He rubbed her nose. Ran his hand along her neck. Patted her some. He turned and began to walk back toward the house and he told her to come on but she didn’t follow.
“Come on,” he said again and whistled. “Let’s get your saddle off. Come on. I’m safe.”
She turned and looked back in the direction she had come from, to the jagged tree line along the back field.
“Come on, girl.”
She didn’t follow. Instead she started walking back the other way.
Now Cohen was the curious one. He wasn’t wearing his coat and he didn’t have the sawed-off shotgun nearby and he felt like if he went back for either, she would be gone. He wore his rain boots and he thought that was good enough, so he followed her.
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