A Simple Plan

by Scott Smith

  There wasn't much around the exit -- a pair of gas stations, a boarded-up Dairy Queen, a convenience store. It was farm country, flat and featureless.

  We pulled off onto the edge of the road, then got out and walked toward the tollbooth. Vernon's car, a cherry red Toyota hatchback, was sitting there with its door hanging open. The area around it had been roped off with bright yellow tape. There were state troopers everywhere, but no one seemed to be doing anything. The car Vernon had rear-ended had been driven away.

  I could see a body lying beside the Toyota. It was covered with a silver blanket.

  We ducked under the tape and made our way through the milling policemen to the corpse. The farm boy and I crouched down beside it, and he flipped back the blanket. Collins stood behind me.

  "That him?" he asked.

  It was Vernon. He'd been shot in the side of the head, just above the ear. I could see the entry hole, a black puncture, no larger than a dime. There was blood everywhere -- on Vernon's face, the blanket, the pavement, even his teeth. His shirt collar was pink with it. His eyes were open, round with surprise, staring straight up at the sky. I had to resist the temptation to reach down and shut them.

  "Yeah," I said. "That's the guy."

  The farm boy flipped back the blanket, and we stood up.

  "You okay?" he asked. He touched me on my elbow, turned me away from the corpse.

  "I'm fine," I said, and then, surprising myself, felt my face begin to grin. I had to concentrate to stop, had to clench my teeth together and tighten my jaw. It was the relief that did it -- I was startled by its strength -- it eclipsed my sadness over Carl's murder, made his death seem almost worthwhile, expedient, the sort of price one might expect to pay for a bag full of treasure. For the first time since the night we decided to take the packets, I felt absolutely secure. Sarah had been right, it was perfect: now there was no one left to connect us to the money. Everyone was dead -- Vernon and his brother and Carl and Lou and Nancy and Jacob and Sonny and Pederson. Everyone.

  And the money was ours.

  Collins went off to radio Sheriff McKellroy and tell him that I'd identified the body while the farm boy fell into conversation with some of the state troopers. I started to return to the car -- it had gotten cold out, and I wanted to sit down -- but then changed my mind and remained where I was. I was curious to see if they'd found the bag of money yet and thought that if I hung around I might hear about it. I moved off toward the tollbooth and stood there, just beyond the yellow tape, with my hands in my pockets, trying to look inconspicuous.

  A red-haired policeman began to take pictures. He pulled back the blanket and photographed Vernon's body. He photographed the Toyota, the tollbooth, the blood on the pavement -- everything from several different angles. Although the weather was continuing to clear, the day was still dark, and he used a flashbulb on his camera. It went off again and again in rapid cadence, little explosions of light, like sun bouncing off a mirror.

  After a few minutes, a news crew pulled up in a yellow van. CHANNEL THIRTEEN was written diagonally across its side in large red letters, and below it, in black, ACTIONEWS. They had a Minicam with them, and they started filming the crime scene with it. They tried to get a shot of Vernon's body, but one of the troopers ordered them away.

  A dark brown car arrived right after the van, and two men climbed out of it. I could tell they were from the FBI as soon as I saw them. They looked like Vernon had -- tall and lean, short haired and hatless. They were both wearing overcoats, unbuttoned over dark suits and sedate ties. They had black shoes on their feet, black leather gloves on their hands. Hovering all around them -- both in the way they moved and in the gestures they used when they spoke to the troopers -- was that same coolly professional air, that same sense of icy precision and control, which Vernon had so successfully imitated when we'd been introduced. And it intimidated me now exactly as it had then; my chest went tight, my heart sped up, my back began to sweat.

  The horrible fear that I'd overlooked something, that I'd left some clue, some incriminating trace of myself within the crime, drifted, draftlike, into my thoughts. If I were to be caught, I realized with a chill, these would be the men who'd do it.

  I watched them walk over to Vernon's body and crouch down beside it. They uncovered him and began checking his pockets, pulling them inside out. One of them took Vernon by the chin and turned his head back and forth, as if he were examining his face. When he let go of it, he wiped his hand on the silver blanket, murmuring something to his partner. His partner shook his head.

  From Vernon's body they proceeded to an inspection of the Toyota, and from there to a brief conference with one of the state troopers. After about a minute or so, the trooper called over the farm boy and introduced him to the two agents. They talked for a few seconds; then the farm boy turned to point in my direction.

  "Mr. Mitchell?" one of the agents called. He started walking toward me. "Hank Mitchell?"

  "Yes?" I said, stepping forward to meet him. "I'm Hank Mitchell."

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open to show me his shield. It gave me an anxious feeling, watching him do this, like I was being arrested. "My name's Agent Renkins," he said. "I'm from the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

  I nodded, staring at the badge.

  "My partner and I were wondering if you'd mind driving back into town with us, so you could tell us what you know about all this."

  "I've already gone over it once with the police," I said. "Couldn't you get my statement from them?"

  "We'd prefer to hear it for ourselves. You can appreciate that, can't you?" He gave me one of Vernon's fake smiles.

  I didn't answer; it was clear that I didn't have a choice. The other agent came up to join us. He had a black plastic garbage bag clamped beneath his arm.

  "We're parked over here," Renkins said, pointing toward their car. Then he turned and led me away.

  I RODE in the backseat. Renkins drove, and his partner, Agent Fremont, sat beside him. The two men looked virtually identical from the rear -- their shoulders were the same width, their heads rose to the same height above the car's seat, and their hair grew out in exactly the same tint of dark brown, covering their identically round scalps to the same depth and thickness.

  There was only one variation between them, though it was a dramatic one. Fremont's ears were much too large for his head. I couldn't help staring at them as we pulled away from the toll plaza; they were huge, convoluted ovals, stiff looking and astonishingly white, and they had an extremely personable effect on me. They made him instantly likable. He must've been teased about them when he was little, I thought, remembering Jacob's childhood and how he'd been tormented for his weight, and I felt a wave of pity for the man.

  It was a remarkably different sensation, sitting in the rear of the agents' car, than it had been sitting in the front of the cruiser. It was just a normal car, like a traveling salesman might own -- black vinyl interior, little ashtrays on the doors, a cheap-looking tape deck in the dashboard -- but, alone in the backseat, I had the definite sensation that I was in their custody, that I was under their control. It was a feeling I hadn't had in the cruiser.

  We headed toward Ashenville, moving at right angles along the perpendicular farm roads, first north, then east, then north again, and I told them my story. They kept a tape recorder running as I spoke, but they seemed relatively uninterested in what I had to say. They asked no questions; they didn't glance back at me when I paused or nod encouragement to move me along. They sat impassively before me, staring out the windshield at the road. We retraced the route I'd driven with Collins and the farm boy earlier that afternoon, passed the same landmarks, the same houses, the same farms. The only difference was that it was clear now, the air pale and dry. The sun, approaching the end of its slow arc to the west, glinted brightly off of distant rooftops.

  As I talked, I decided that the agents' silence could mean only one of two things. Either they'd
already accepted my story and were merely listening now as a formality or they'd discovered something damning in their investigation of the crime site, some contrary evidence that wiped everything I was saying aside, and they were simply waiting for me to finish, allowing me to dig myself further and further into my falsehood before unmasking me for what I was: a liar, a thief, a murderer. I lingered as I neared the close of my tale, pausing and repeating myself, fearful to discover which of these possible alternatives would confront me.

  But then, unavoidably, I reached the end.

  Fremont punched a button on the tape recorder, stopping it. Then he turned to look at me.

  "There's only one problem with your story, Mr. Mitchell."

  A tightness settled into my stomach when he said this. I looked out at the passing fields, forcing myself to wait before I spoke. Off in the distance I could see a scarecrow, dressed in black, hanging from a pole. He had a straw hat on, and from this far away, at first sight, he looked like a real man.

  "A problem?" I asked.

  Fremont nodded, his elephantine ears moving up and down like paddles beside his head.

  "The man whose corpse you identified back there -- he wasn't from the FBI."

  The relief I felt at these words was so intense that it had an actual physical effect on me. Over the entire surface of my body, my pores opened, and I began to sweat. It was a strange, even horrible sensation, like losing control of one's bladder, a sudden slipping, a dizzying loss of control. It made me want to giggle, but I suppressed it. I wiped my forehead with my hand.

  "I don't understand," I said. My voice came out hoarser than I would've liked. Fremont didn't seem to notice.

  "His name was Vernon Bokovsky. That plane you heard with engine trouble back in December was carrying his brother. It crashed in the nature preserve."

  "He was looking for his brother?"

  Fremont shook his head. "He was looking for this." He lifted the plastic bag from between his feet. I leaned forward to get a better look. It gave me a thrill to see it; it was knowing something secret.

  "A garbage bag?" I said.

  "That's right." Fremont grinned. "Full of some very expensive trash." He opened the bag, shaking it so I could see the money.

  I stared at it, counting to ten in my head, trying to look speechless with surprise. "Is it real?" I asked.

  "It's real." Fremont stuck a black-gloved hand into the bag and pulled out one of the packets. He held it up before my face. "It's ransom," he said. "Bokovsky and his brother were the guys who kidnapped that McMartin girl last November."

  "The McMartin girl?"

  "The heiress. The one they shot and dumped in the lake."

  I kept my eyes on the money. "Can I touch it? I'm wearing gloves."

  The two agents laughed. "Sure," Fremont said. "Go ahead."

  I stretched out my hand, and he set the packet in it. I stared down at it, weighing it in my palm. Renkins watched me in the rearview mirror, a friendly smile on his face.

  "It's heavy, isn't it?" he asked.

  "Yes," I said. "It's like a little book."

  We were approaching Ashenville now. I could see it rising from the horizon, a low mound of buildings clustered tightly around the crossroads. It looked fake, illusory, like the city of Oz.

  I handed the packet to Fremont, and he dropped it back into the bag.

  Ashenville had returned to normal in my absence. The TV crews had left, the crowds had disappeared, and now the town looked exactly like it would've on any other Saturday afternoon, empty, sleepy, a little run-down around the edges. The only thing that remained as a reminder of its recent tragedy was the flag, fluttering limply at half-mast.

  Renkins parked in front of the town hall, and we climbed out onto the sidewalk to say good-bye.

  "I'm sorry you had to get dragged into all this," Fremont said. "You've been very cooperative." We were standing at the base of the town hall's steps. There was only one police car left.

  "I still don't really understand what happened," I said.

  Renkins grinned at me. "I'll tell you what happened," he said. "Two brothers kidnapped a girl outside of Detroit. They shot seven people, including the girl, and escaped with a ransom of four point eight million dollars. One of the brothers crashed a plane into that park. The other came out to find him, pretending to be a federal agent. When he saw the plane, he shot Officer Jenkins."

  His smile deepened.

  "And then a state trooper shot him."

  "There's four point eight million dollars in that bag?" I asked, as if I were ready to believe it.

  "No," Renkins said. "That's five hundred thousand."

  "Where's the rest?"

  He shrugged, glanced at Fremont. "We're not sure."

  I gazed off at the town. There were two birds fighting over something in the gutter up the block. They screeched loudly at each other and took turns trying to fly away with it, but it was too big, neither of them could lift it. I couldn't tell what it was.

  "So there are four point three million dollars out there, just floating around?"

  "It'll turn up," Fremont said.

  I looked at him, closely, but his face was absolutely expressionless. Renkins was staring up the street at the birds.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "We had the money for two hours before Mr. McMartin had to take it to the drop site. We couldn't mark it -- we were afraid the kidnappers would detect the markings and kill the girl, so we put together a task force of twenty agents, and they wrote down as many of the serial numbers as they could." He smiled at me, like he was letting me in on a joke. "We ended up recording just under five thousand of them, one out of ten of the bills."

  I didn't say anything. I simply stared at him, struck dumb. I couldn't really bring myself to grasp what he was saying.

  "We'll track it down," he said. "It's just a matter of waiting for the numbers to turn up. You can't go around passing hundred-dollar bills without eventually sticking in someone's memory."

  "The money's marked," I said slowly. I looked down at my feet, frowning, trying not to react to this news, trying to appear calm, distant, uninvolved. I concentrated my whole mind on my boots, forced myself to think up names for their color, occupying all my energies on this task, knowing implicitly that I'd collapse if I allowed myself to try to lift the full weight of Fremont's revelation.

  "That's what it amounts to," he said. "Marked money."

  "Crime doesn't pay," Renkins said.

  Tan, I thought, oatmeal. With a strain I managed amber. But the knowledge slipped in around the words, waterlike, seeping through the cracks. The money was marked.

  Fremont offered me his hand. I forced myself to take it, struggled to match its firmness. Then I repeated the ritual with Renkins.

  "Our knowing about the serial numbers," he said, "that's confidential, of course. It's the only way we'll be able to catch whoever else is involved in this."

  Fremont nodded. "So if you talk to the press..."

  "Yes," I said, "I understand."

  "If we need you, you'll be around?" Renkins asked.

  "Of course," I said. I gestured across the street toward Raikley's. "I work over there."

  They both glanced at the feedstore. "We probably won't have to bother you," Renkins said. "It seems pretty cut-and-dried."

  "Yes," I said weakly.

  Sepia, I thought. Terra-cotta. Adobe.

  "I'm just sorry you had to get mixed up in all this. It's a tragedy, the whole fucking thing."

  He gave my shoulder a parting pat, and then they turned, one after the other, walked up the town hall steps, and disappeared through the double doors.

  I watched my feet make their way toward the curb. They shuffled out into the street, then moved across it to the other side. My car was there, a little ways down the block, and my boots guided me around its rear end, stopping when they reached the door. Magically, my hand emerged from my jacket pocket, holding the keys. It unlocked the door, pulled i
t open, and my body bent at the waist, my head ducking forward, as I dropped into the seat.

  And it was only then, safe in my car with the door shut firmly behind me, that I let my mind slip free, allowed it to settle on Fremont's words, absorb them like a sponge, swelling with their import.

  The money was worthless.

  My first reaction, one that had even begun to trickle out while I was standing there with Fremont and Renkins on the sidewalk, was an overwhelming wave of despair. The bloodied corpses of Pederson and Nancy and Sonny and Jacob all rushed forward to confront me -- four lives I'd ended with my own hands to protect my hold on the bag of money, money that was nothing now, simply stacks of colored paper.

  Fatigue followed directly behind despair, like rain from a cloud. It was my body's reaction to the horror of what I'd done -- a bonenumbing tiredness, a feeling of surrender and acceptance. I sank in the seat, my head falling forward on my chest. I'd been living for almost three months beneath a tangled knot of strain, a knot that had just been loosened, severed even, in one sharp stroke. There was some relief in that at least -- for now it was truly over. I could go home and burn the money, the final fragment of damning evidence, the last loose end.

  Move.

  The thought flickered through my despair and fatigue, a warning from some deep corner of my mind, some frontier outpost that was still planning, still cautious, still carrying on the fight, unaware that the war was over.

  If Fremont or Renkins were to glance out Carl's window, it whispered, they'd see you sitting here in a daze. It might set them thinking. Start the car. Drive away.

  The voice had strength to it, the strength of caution. It was a voice I'd been listening to with care for nearly three months, and, automatically, as if conditioned, I listened to it now, too. My hand rose, inserting the key in the ignition.

  But then I stopped.

  On the street corner behind me, perhaps fifty feet away, was a phone booth, the sinking sun glinting off its Plexiglas sides.

  Drive away, the voice said. Now.