by Scott Smith
I didn't move.
He knocked again, louder, with his fist, and -- remembering Sarah asleep above me -- I stepped forward and unlocked the door.
I opened it just a crack and peered outside.
"What're you doing, Lou?" I whispered.
He gave me a big, jagged-toothed smile. His eyes seemed to twinkle. "Mr. Accountant!" he said, as if he were surprised to see me.
I frowned at him, and his expression changed quickly in response, instantly becoming serious, somber.
"Hank," he said. "I'm here to make a tiny withdrawal." Then he giggled, unable to hold it back. He wiped his mouth with his glove. I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
"Go home, Lou," I said. "Turn around and go home." A steady stream of cold air came in through the open doorway and poured across my bare feet, making them ache.
"It's freezing out, Hank," he said. "Invite me in."
He pressed his body up against the door, and -- when I involuntarily retreated -- stepped inside. He shut the door behind him, a big grin on his face.
"I've decided it's time to split it up, Hank. I want my share." He rubbed his gloves together and glanced around the entranceway, as if he were expecting the duffel bag to be just sitting there, right out in the open.
"The money's not here, Lou."
"Is it in the garage?"
"Even if it were here, I wouldn't give you any."
He reared back in indignation. "Just because you have it doesn't mean it's yours. Part of it's mine." He tapped his finger against his chest.
"You made an agreement," I said sternly.
He ignored me. He leaned to the side and looked down the hallway into the kitchen. "Is it in the bank?"
"Of course not. It's hidden."
"I just need some cash, Hank. I need it right now."
"The only way we keep the money is if we stick to the agreement."
"Come on, Mr. Accountant," he said, his voice soft and insinuating. "Be a sport."
"Who's in the car?"
"In the car?"
"Waiting for you." I gestured past the front door.
"Car's empty. It's just me."
"I saw someone in the car, Lou. Is it Nancy?"
He smiled a little. "You been watching me all this time?" He seemed to find this funny, and his smile deepened.
"Nancy and who else?" I asked. "Is Jacob there?"
Lou shook his head. "Just Nancy." He paused and then, when he saw me frown, smiled again, like a child caught in a fib. "Nancy and Sonny," he said.
"Sonny Major?" I asked, surprised. I hadn't thought that they were friends.
He nodded. "He came over for the rent, and Nancy and me invited him out." His grin stretched into a leer. "That's why I need the money, Mr. Accountant. I'm taking my landlord out drinking."
"You tell them about the plane?"
He snorted with disgust. "Course not. I told them you owed me some money."
I frowned. The house made a creaking sound around us in the darkness, settling into its foundation.
"All I'm asking for is what's rightfully mine," he said. He wobbled a bit back and forth on his feet, and, watching him, I felt an overwhelming wave of impatience. I wanted him to leave. I wanted him to leave immediately.
"It doesn't even have to be all of it," he said. "Just give me one of the packets. I can come back later for the rest."
I spoke very slowly, keeping my voice low and quiet. "If you ask me again," I said, "I'll go and burn the money first thing tomorrow. Is that clear?"
He snickered at that. "Bluff," he whispered. "B-L-U-F-F."
"Call it then. See what happens."
He snickered again. "I know a secret, Mr. Accountant. Jacob told me a little secret."
I stared at him.
"I know what happened to Dwight Pederson."
I stiffened, just for a moment; then I stopped myself. I stayed surprisingly calm. My mind was thinking very quickly, darting this way and that, but my body didn't betray it. Jacob had told him about Pederson: I was stunned, I hadn't expected this at all.
Lou grinned at me. I forced myself to look him directly in the eyes. "Dwight Pederson?" I said.
His smile widened, taking up his whole face. "You killed him, Mr. Accountant. You and Jacob."
"You drink too much, Lou. You don't know what you're saying."
He shook his head, still smiling. "I'm not going to let you burn the money. It'd be like stealing from me. I'll tell if you do it."
The clock in the living room chimed the hour, a single, deep toll. After it died away, the hallway seemed darker and quieter than before.
I put my hand against Lou's jacket, right at the center of his chest. I exerted no pressure; I simply rested my palm there. We both looked down at it. "Go home, Lou," I whispered.
He shook his head again. "I need the money."
I stepped over to the hall closet. I felt around inside my jacket until I found my wallet. I took two twenties from it and held them out to him.
He hardly even glanced at them. "I want one of the packets," he said.
"They aren't here, Lou. I've hidden them away from the house."
"Where?"
"Take the twenties." I shook them at him.
"I want my share, Hank."
"You'll get it this summer, like we agreed."
"No. I want it now."
"You aren't listening to me, Lou. I can't give it to you. It's not here."
"I'll come back in the morning then. We can go get it together."
"That's not what we agreed on."
"Be a shame if someone wrote a note to the sheriff, saying there might be something a little suspicious about Dwight Pederson's accident."
I gave him a cold stare. I was overcome by a desperate desire to hurt him. I wanted to take my fist and smash his crooked teeth down the back of his throat. I wanted to break his neck.
"Take the twenties," I said.
"I mean, he just drove off that bridge? You believe that?" Lou shook his head in mock disbelief. "Seems pretty strange to me." He paused, grinning. "Weren't you two out that way on New Year's morning?"
"You'd never do it."
"I'm desperate, Hank. I'm broke, and I owe people money."
"If you turned us in, you'd lose it all."
"I can't wait till summer. I need it now."
"Take the twenties," I said. I held the bills out toward him.
He shook his head. "I'm coming back in the morning. I need at least a packet."
I began to panic, but only briefly. Then I saw a way out. "I can't go in the morning," I said. "It's a day's drive away. I can't go until after Sarah has the baby."
Lou didn't seem to know if he should believe me. "A day's drive?"
"It's at a storage place up in Michigan."
"What the fuck is it doing up in Michigan?"
"I didn't want it near us. In case we came under suspicion for some reason. I wanted it far away."
I could see him debating inside his head. "When's she supposed to have it?" he asked.
"In a couple weeks."
"And we'll go then?"
"Yes," I said. I just wanted him to leave.
"You promise?"
I nodded.
"And we'll split it up?"
I nodded again. "Take the twenties," I said.
He looked down at the money. Then he took it and shoved it into his jacket pocket. He smiled at me. "Sorry to wake you," he said. He backed away, two unsteady steps toward the door. I opened it for him, and, when he was out on the porch, shut and locked it behind him.
I watched him through the window, watched him stand there on the front step, take the twenties from his pocket, and slowly inspect them before he set off, weaving a bit, down the driveway to his car.
When he opened the car door, the dome light flashed on for a second, and I saw two people inside. In the front seat was Nancy, smiling up toward him. In the back, lost in shadow, was a second person. At first I assumed it must be Sonny Ma
jor. But then, just as Lou shut the door behind him and the light flicked off, I had an instant's tremor of doubt. Sonny Major was a tiny man, smaller than Lou. The man in the rear of the car had looked large, even huge. He'd looked like Jacob.
I watched the car roll down the driveway. They were out on the street before Lou turned on his headlights. I waited there, my feet numb against the cold wooden floor, until the sound of the car's engine faded away and the house, once again, descended into silence.
I tried briefly to think of what I ought to do, but I couldn't come up with anything. All I could think was that things had gotten out of hand. I was in trouble now, and there seemed to be no way out of it.
When I turned to go back to bed, I found Sarah, wrapped in her white terry cloth robe, staring down at me like a ghost from the shadows at the top of the stairs.
WE TALKED right there, on the stairs. I climbed up to her and we sat down beside each other in the darkness, on the next-to-last step, like two children.
"You heard?" I asked.
Sarah nodded. She rested her hand on my knee.
"All of it?"
"Yes."
"Jacob told Lou about Pederson."
She nodded again, giving my knee a little squeeze. I put my hand on top of hers.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
I shrugged. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Keep the money. Wait it out."
She leaned away from me. I could feel her looking at my face. I stared down toward the front door. "You can't do that," she said. Her voice, without rising at all, nevertheless had taken on a subtle urgency. "If you don't give it to him, he'll tell."
"Then I'll give it to him."
"You can't. He'll get us caught. He'll start spending it everywhere, attracting attention."
"All right, then I won't. I'll call his bluff."
"But he'll tell."
"There's nothing else I can do, Sarah," I said, my voice rising with frustration. "Those are my two options."
"Burn the money."
"I can't. Lou'll tell about Pederson. I'll end up getting charged with murder."
"Blame it on Jacob. If you turn in the money and promise to testify against him, they'll grant you immunity."
"I can't do that to Jacob."
"Look what he's done to you, Hank. This is all his fault."
"I'm not going to do that to my own brother."
I could hear Sarah's breathing; it was coming fast and shallow. I squeezed her hand.
"I don't think he'll tell," I said. "I think if we stand firm, he'll wait till summer."
"And if he doesn't?"
"Then we're in trouble. That's the risk we take."
"You can't just sit back and wait for him to turn you in."
"What do you want me to do? You want me to kill him? Like Jacob said?"
She waved this aside, frowning. "All I'm saying is that we have to do something. We have to find some way to threaten him."
"Threaten him?"
"It's a power thing, Hank. We were controlling him by keeping the money, but now he's controlling us. We have to think of a way to regain control."
"Things'll only get worse if we threaten him. It's like upping the ante; all he'll do is throw in another chip."
"You're saying you want to give up?"
I took my hand away from hers and rubbed my face with it. All around us, the house was absolutely quiet, as if it were listening. "I just want to keep doing what we planned," I said. "I want to wait till summer."
"But he'll tell."
"He won't gain anything by telling. He knows that. The money'll be gone if we go to jail."
"He'll do it out of spite. He'll do it just because you don't follow his orders."
I shut my eyes. My body was beginning to ache with fatigue. It wanted to return to sleep.
"I don't think you understand how serious this is, Hank."
"We should go back to bed," I said, but Sarah didn't move.
"You're at his mercy now. You'll have to do whatever he tells you."
"I still have the money. He doesn't know where it is."
"Your leverage came from the threat of burning it. That's gone now."
"I shouldn't have told Jacob."
"You know Lou. He'll use it against you for all it's worth."
"I can't believe he did this to me."
"Even if we make it through to the summer and split up the money, he'll always have this to threaten you with. He'll wait ten years, until he's spent his share, then he'll track us down. He'll blackmail us. He'll send you to jail."
I didn't say anything. I wasn't thinking about Lou; I was thinking about Jacob.
Sarah took my hand again. "You can't let him do that. You have to take control."
"But there's nothing we can do. You keep talking about threatening him, but how're we going to do that? We don't have anything to threaten him with."
She didn't say anything.
"Is there something you want me to do?" I asked. "Do you have a plan?"
She stared at me, hard, and for a second I thought she was going to say she wanted me to kill him, but she didn't. She just shook her head. "No," she said. "I don't."
I nodded. I was about to stand up, to head back to the bedroom, when she grabbed my hand and held it to her stomach. The baby was kicking. I felt it beneath my palm, something dark and mysterious, the warm softness of her body pushing up forcefully against my skin. It went on for several seconds.
"It'll be all right," I whispered, when it was finally finished. "Trust me. We'll see it through."
It was the type of thing people always say when they're trapped in untenable situations; I realized that as soon as I began to speak. It was like what my mother had said to me the last time I'd seen her, something both false and brave, an aversion of the eyes and a closing of the ears, a denial of the peril we were in. It was a bad sign, that I felt the need to say it, and I could tell by the way Sarah kept my hand pressed against her belly, her grip tight and insistent, that she knew it, too. We were in trouble; we'd started something dangerous together, full of naive self-confidence and assurance, and now we were watching it slip out of our control.
"I'm scared, Hank," she said, and I nodded.
"It'll be all right," I whispered again, feeling foolish this time. But there was nothing else to say.
I WAS up early the next morning. I dressed in the hallway and brushed my teeth downstairs so I wouldn't wake Sarah. In the kitchen I made myself some coffee, and while I drank it I read yesterday's newspaper.
Then I drove over to Jacob's.
I parked across the street from his apartment, right behind his pickup. It was a beautiful morning, cold, crisp, cloudless. Everything looked clean, scrubbed -- the striped vinyl awning of the grocery store, the parking meters' silver pillars, the flag snapping in the wind above the town hall. It was still early, a little before eight, but Ashenville was already wide awake, the street active with people coming and going, newspapers folded under their arms, cups of coffee steaming in their mittened hands. Everyone seemed to be smiling.
Jacob, as I'd expected, was asleep when I arrived. I had to pound, wait, and then pound again before I heard him shuffling slowly toward the door. When he finally got there, he seemed displeased to find me standing outside. He leaned against the doorjamb for a moment, squinting at the light from the hallway, a look of profound disappointment on his face. Then he grunted hello, turned, and stumbled back into the apartment's dim interior.
I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light. His apartment was cramped, airless. It was just a big, square, carpetless room. Off to the left was a door leading to a tiny bathroom. Next to it, running the entire length of the apartment, was a two-foot-deep recess cut into the wall. This was Jacob's kitchen. There was a bed, a table with two chairs, an old, broken-down couch, a television set. Dirty clothes were strewn across the couch; empty beer bottles
dotted the floor.
It stank of poverty. Every time I saw it, it made me sick.
Jacob returned to the bed, collapsing on his back. The bedsprings moaned beneath his weight. He was dressed in a pair of long johns and a T-shirt. The thermal underwear clung grotesquely to the soft thickness of his thighs. There was a good three inches of skin showing beneath the bottom of his shirt. It was fat -- white, rippled, malleable. It seemed obscene to me. I wanted him to cover himself with a blanket.
I went over and pulled open the blinds on the two windows, filling the room with sunlight. Jacob shut his eyes. The air was thick with dust, sifting slantwise through the light like miniature snow. I considered briefly the possibility of sitting down, eyed the couch with distaste, and decided not to. I leaned back against the windowsill and folded my arms across my chest.
"What'd you do last night?" I asked Jacob.
Mary Beth was on the foot of the bed, his head resting on his paws, one ear cocked, one eye open, watching me.
Jacob, eyes shut, shrugged. "Nothing." His voice was gritty with sleep.
"You go out?"
He shrugged again.
"With Lou?"
"No." He coughed, cleared his throat. "I've got a cold. I didn't go out."
"I saw Lou," I said.
Jacob pulled a blanket over himself and rolled onto his side, his eyes still closed.
"He came by the house."
Jacob opened his eyes. "And?"
"Nancy was with him, and somebody else. I thought it might've been you."
He didn't say anything.
"Were you there? In the car?"
"I told you." His voice sounded as if he felt picked on. "I didn't see Lou last night. I'm sick."
"That's the truth?"
"Come on, Hank." He rose up on his elbow. "Why would I lie to you?"
"Was it Sonny?"
"Sonny?"
"Sonny Major. Was it him in the car?"
"I don't know. How would I know that?" He put his head back down on the pillow, but he was fully awake now. I could tell it from the sound of his voice.
"Are they friends?"
"Sure. He's his landlord."
"They go out together?"
"I don't know," Jacob said tiredly. "Why not?"
"Does he know about the money?"
"The money?"
"Yes," I shouted, exasperated. "Has Lou told him about the money?"