No Safe House

by Linwood Barclay

  “Hold on!” he shouted. “You lose your damn keys again?”

  He threw back the covers, stood up in his boxers, took a second to get over the dizziness he felt when he got up quickly, then slid his feet into a pair of threadbare red-and-black-plaid slippers. He shuffled out of the bedroom and crossed the combined living room/kitchen. There was a man silhouetted in the window of the door, the morning sun rising behind him.

  Didn’t look like Stuart, but Eldon wasn’t sure. The man continued banging.

  “I said hold on!”

  He got to the door, turned back the dead bolt, and swung it open.

  “Oh,” he said, squinting, blinded by the sunlight. “Hey, Vince.”

  “Eldon,” Vince Fleming said. He was wearing a puffy Windbreaker zipped up halfway and holding a takeout tray in his left hand with two coffees in it. “Got something to help wake you up. Four sugars, right?”

  “Yeah. What’s going on?”

  “You gonna invite me in?”

  “Shit, yeah, sure.” He opened the door wide and Vince, one hand in his jacket pocket, stepped in. “What’s going on? Everything okay?”

  “We’ve got a situation, Eldon. Hopin’ you can help me with it.”

  Eldon blinked a few more times, his eyes adjusting to daylight as Vince stepped into the kitchen area. He put down the tray and handed Eldon his coffee. The nearly naked man took it awkwardly in two hands.

  “A situation?” He looked back out the door, but he couldn’t see down to the parking lot from up here, not without going out onto the landing. “Gordie and Bert with you?”

  “No. They’ve been busy all night. Still going at it. Everything work out with you last night?”

  “Huh? Yeah. I took care of the money. Came home after that. If something was going on, you shoulda called me.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “So what’s this situation?” He was still holding the coffee, hadn’t taken a sip. Vince had removed the lid from his, was blowing on it.

  “Damage control,” Vince said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. They’re checking on all our locations. We got hit last night, Eldon.”

  The man’s jaw dropped. “Fuck, no. You gotta be kidding.”

  “I wish.”

  “That’s bad. That’s really bad.”

  “No shit. Sit down, Eldon.”

  Eldon set the coffee down on the small table in front of the couch. Vince had left his in the takeout container back on the counter. “Why don’t I get dressed first. I can be ready in a couple of secs.” The man looked vulnerable, standing there in his boxers and ratty slippers.

  “No, have a seat.”

  Eldon took the couch while Vince struggled to lower himself into a low, swoopy Ikea chair.

  “You’re not curious about where we got hit?” Vince asked.

  “Of course. I was just about to ask.”

  “The Cummings house.”

  “Whoa,” Eldon said. “You’re talking two hundred thou in there, plus incidentals. Fuck, Vince, that’s not a hit. That’s a catastrophe.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Whose money is that? That the bank manager from Stamford? Took him three years to embezzle it? He’s thinking about heading off to the Caymans, but he might be wanting that money soon. He’s not gonna be happy.”

  Vince shook his head. “No. Whose money it is doesn’t matter. The fact that it’s gone is what matters.”

  “Was it just the one place?”

  “Like I said, we’re checking.”

  “We shouldn’t be sitting here,” Eldon said. “We need to get out there.”

  Vince shook his head, raised a palm to get Eldon to stay put. “What’s interesting about last night is, it looks like the Cummings place got hit twice.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah. Twice in one night. Looks like one party was already there when the second one arrived.”

  Eldon Koch looked baffled. “I don’t get that. Like, did they know each other? Were they working together?”

  “Not sure. Looks like someone got in the regular way. With a key and a code. Then someone else came along and broke in through a basement window, didn’t know they could have walked through the front door and not set off the alarm.”

  Eldon continued to look mystified. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and pointed a finger at his boss. “The dog walker could have got in the regular way.”

  “Maybe,” Vince said. “That was my first thought.”

  “He’s got a key. He knows the code. That’s one of his houses.”

  “Maybe,” Vince said again.

  “What?” Eldon asked. “What you thinking?”

  “You were late getting to the meet last night.”

  “Huh?”

  “At the motel. You were late.”

  “I told you, I’m sorry,” Eldon said. “I let Stuart take the Buick, and that left me the Golf. Thing wouldn’t start for me. Had to fiddle around with it to get it running. If I’d had a brain, I’d have given Stuart the Golf, let him deal with it, but I think Stuart was seeing some girl, and the Buick, well, it’s got more space in it, you know?” He grinned amiably. “More make-out room, right? Shit, I was young once. I know what that’s like, so I let him take it. The Buick, it’s a tank—thing won’t die. I really am sorry. I meant to be there on time.”

  “Once you got the Golf started, you make any stops on the way to the motel?”

  “No, I floored it. Shit, you have to floor it just to make it go. I went straight to the meet. What’s going on, Vince? Why you asking me questions like this? You got a beef with me? Okay, I was late. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. But what’s that got to do with us getting hit?”

  “Where do you keep the list?”

  “Huh?”

  “Stop saying that, Eldon. It’s annoying.”

  “You want to know about the list? Where I keep it?”

  Vince sighed. “Yes. That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “I never put it on the computer, like you said. I keep things up-to-date in my notebook. You tell me stuff, and I write it down in there.”

  “Where’s the notebook?”

  “Right this second, it’s in my pants,” he said.

  “Get it.”

  Eldon got off the couch, his slippers making swishing noises as he walked into his bedroom. Vince heard pocket change jangling as Eldon picked his jeans off the floor. He returned in a few seconds, notebook in hand, and sat back down on the couch.

  “See?” he said, handing it over to Vince.

  Vince opened it, flipped through the pages.

  “You always have this thing on you?”

  Eldon shrugged. “’Cept maybe when I’m writing in it. I might set it down or something at the shop.”

  The auto body shop that served not only as Vince’s headquarters, but as a business front to funnel through some of his funds.

  “So you might leave it around where someone could pick it up and look at it. What about here, in the apartment? You ever leave it sitting out?”

  “Jesus, Vince, where is this—?”

  “Just answer the question, Eldon.”

  There was fear in Eldon’s eyes for the first time. “Um, maybe. But it wouldn’t matter. Only one ever here is Stuart. You could ask him, but I don’t think he’s come home yet.” Eldon glanced at the closed door to his son’s bedroom. “I could check.”

  “Don’t bother,” Vince said. “You tell your kid how you keep track of things?”

  Eldon scratched his head. “I . . . He asked me one time about the addresses. I told him I take one off each number, how 264 Main Street would be 153, and like that. It was just father-son stuff, you know?”

  “And the dates?”

  Eldon swallowed. “I told him it was the same thing. Like, say, March tenth to twentieth would be February ninth to nineteenth. Like we worked out. But Jesus, Vince, are you thinking Stuart would try to rip us off? There’s no way. Even if he looked
at my book, he wouldn’t have a key.”

  “Where are your keys right now?” Vince asked.

  “They’re right in the bedroom where—” He stopped. He sprung to his feet, went back in there. “I always leave ’em . . . Okay, I usually leave them on the table right here next to the bed.” He emerged from the bedroom with a single key. “I got the one for the house I had to get into last night.”

  “Where are the rest?”

  Slowly, he said, “I guess they’re at the shop.”

  Vince smiled. “Not really an issue anyway. That’s not how Stuart got in. He busted a basement window.”

  “Oh, goddamn!” Eldon made a fist and brought it down on his knee, hard. “Are you kidding me? That stupid little shit! I’ll beat his fuckin’ head in.” His face, angry, suddenly shifted to concern. He jumped up again, strode into his bedroom, came back with a cell phone. He stood behind the couch and entered a number, put the phone to his ear.

  “I’ll get him here,” he told Vince. “You wait. I’ll get the little bastard here right now and we’ll sort this out. I can’t believe it. The stupid bastard.”

  Vince waited while Eldon listened to Stuart’s phone ring.

  “Pick up, you little pisser. Shit! Voice mail. Hey, where the fuck are you? You get your ass home right now! Now!”

  He ended the call, shook his head in frustration.

  Waited.

  “I can’t believe he’d—Wait. Shit, how do you know this? How do you know he actually did this?” Alarm washed over his face. “Cops? Shit, did the cops pick him up?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? How? Maybe you’ve got it wrong. There’s no way he’d do this. He respects you, Vince. He may be dumber than a bag of hammers, but he respects you—he does.”

  “I don’t think he was there for the money,” Vince said calmly. “He knew about the Porsche in the garage. He broke in to find the keys, go for a joyride.”

  Eldon almost looked relieved. “That’s all?”

  “No. Not by a long shot. Even if all he wanted was car keys, he must have known, from reading your notebook when it wasn’t safely stored away in your fucking pants, when the Cummings would be away. So he thought it’d be a safe time to break in, get the keys, have some fun.”

  “Okay, the kid’s an idiot. I don’t know what to say. I’ll talk to him. We’ll make this right. What’d he do? Confess? Was he there when somebody else ripped us off? He try to stop them, and figured he had to tell you what went down? Vince, come on, I need to know.”

  “If Stuart could get a look at the book, who else might have seen it?” Vince asked. “Who might he have told? About which houses were on the list? About when people were away? About which houses had security systems and which ones didn’t? About where the stuff was stashed in the house?”

  Eldon furiously shook his head. “Nobody. Look, do you know where he is? You’ve got him, right? Is he with Gordie? Bert?”

  “Sit back down, Eldon.”

  The man came around the front of the couch, sat, leaned forward, elbows on knees.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Vince?”

  Vince paused. “I want you to listen carefully. I’m going to tell you how we’re going to do this.”

  The color started to drain from Eldon’s face. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re going to tell people—anyone who happens to ask—that he’s gone away for a while.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Does Stuart go back to school in September? Or’d he drop out when he turned sixteen?”

  “He says he’s not going back, but I’ve been telling him he has to stay in school. He wants to make anything of himself, he has to stay.”

  “So if he doesn’t return, that’s not going to surprise anyone.”

  Eldon appeared to be suffering from some kind of tremor, his head moving back and forth by tiny degrees, almost too fast to see. “No, no.”

  “There’ll be cell records. You’ll get calls from his phone, from across the country, while he sees the good old U.S. of A. Anyone asks, you can tell them about the places he’s been. How this was something he talked about doing for a long time, hitching across this great country. We’ll arrange cash withdrawals from ATMs to match. Here and there.”

  “Stop, Vince. Please stop.”

  “So there’ll be a record. You understand the importance of that. And then, one day, you’ll stop hearing from him. Maybe the last call will be from California, or Oregon. Someplace like that. So that’s where the police will start looking for him. By then, the trail will be so cold, it won’t ever lead back here, to the business we run.”

  “No.”

  “Is that a no, you won’t go along with that?” Vince asked. “Or is it just difficult for the realization to sink in?” His tone softened, and he extended a hand, close to Eldon’s knee, but he could not bring himself to touch him. “He put all of us in a very difficult spot.”

  “You didn’t do it. Tell me you didn’t do it.”

  “I didn’t. Someone else. And we’re gonna find out who. Bert and Gordie and me, we’re going to do that, for you. We’re gonna find who killed your boy and make them pay—you can count on that.”

  Eldon’s chin quivered.

  “But where Stuart was when this went down, that creates a significant problem for us. We couldn’t have the Cummings return home to find a body in their kitchen. Nor could we move him someplace and let him be found. There’d be questions. Things that’d be hard to explain to the cops. Stuart had his faults, but I know you loved him. I understand that. I know what it is to lose a child. I got an idea what you’re going through. But I also see what has to be done. This son of a bitch who killed your boy, that’s also the son of a bitch who took our money. Money that was entrusted to us. Left in our care. That all complicates things, Eldon. That’s why I need to know I can count on you. I need to know that you’re going to—”

  “Where is he?” Eldon asked, the words coming out in a whisper.

  “Eldon, we’ve looked after it.”

  Eldon stood, took a step toward Vince, pointed a trembling finger at him. “You son of a bitch. You’re telling me my son is dead, and you don’t have the decency to let me have one last look at him?”

  “Things have been moving very quickly.”

  “I want to see him! I want to see my son! You fuck! Where is Stuart?”

  Vince wanted to get out of the chair, not have this man towering over him, but the chair, the way it sloped back, it was going to be an effort and a half to get the hell out of it.

  “I told you, we’ve looked after him.”

  Eldon stared incredulously at him. His voice went low. “Tell me you didn’t take him to the farm.”

  “Eldon.”

  “Tell me you didn’t feed him to the pigs. Tell me you did not feed my boy to the pigs.”

  “I gotta get out of this fucking chair.” Vince gripped the wooden arms, tried to pull himself forward, gain some leverage. But suddenly Eldon placed the flat of his hand on Vince’s chest and shoved. Vince fell back, the front of the chair springing up for a second, the whole thing nearly toppling over.

  “Eldon, you need to calm the fuck down.”

  “You miserable sack of shit. Do you feel anything? How could you do that?” He kept jabbing a finger in the air in front of his boss’s face. “I bet it was you. All this talk about someone else being in that house. I bet it was you.”

  “No.”

  “This whole thing of yours, this plan to safeguard other people’s money. It’s all a scam, isn’t it? The whole thing. You sucker these dumb, scared bastards into leaving their stash with you, and you’ve just been waiting until you’ve got enough. Then you’re going to help yourself to all of it. One day, Gordie and Bert and me come to work and you’re fucking gone, and then when these assholes drop by to get their money back, we’re left with nothing but our dicks in our hands. Is that what Stuart figured out? Did he catch you in the act? Is
that why you killed him?”

  Spit was flying out of his mouth as he ranted. Vince glared at a drop on the sleeve of his Windbreaker.

  “Is that how it went down?” Eldon continued. “Stuart broke in to steal a car and find you there? All these questions, asking me where I was, why I was late—that’s all bullshit, isn’t it? An act. You fuck.”

  “You shouldn’t say things like that,” Vince said. “Any other time, you talking to me like that, that’d be something I couldn’t forgive. But I’m going to make some allowances. You’ve suffered a loss. You’re in shock.”

  Eldon wasn’t done. “You’ve been running on empty for too long. You’re an old man. You’re sick and you’re dying and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing anymore. But I’ve stuck by you, because you know why? Because loyalty means something, that’s why. But it only goes so far. You feed a man’s son to the pigs, you can’t expect him to have your back any longer.”

  Eldon turned, started walking toward the bedroom, giving Vince time to gather up enough momentum to pitch himself forward out of the chair.

  “What are you doing?” Vince asked. He rested his hand on the back of the couch, gripped the cushion in his fingers.

  “Getting dressed,” Eldon shot back.

  “What are you going to do?”

  The man was pulling on his jeans, doing up his belt. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I’m sorry about your boy,” Vince said. He pulled a cushion off the back of the couch with his left hand, reached into his jacket with his right.

  Eldon was reaching across the bed for his shirt, his back turned, when Vince came into the bedroom.

  “You’re not sorry about anything, you asshole. You’re not capable of it.”