The 500: A Novel

by Matthew Quirk

  I checked the inside of the closet by the faint glow of my cell phone. If I was going to be executed, I didn’t want it to happen while I was cowering among old photo albums and mothballs. I was going to cross it off as an option, but then I saw the contours of a little recessed square in the top of the closet, over a shelf. It was just barely enough to get my shoulders through: access to the attic. Maybe I could get out onto the roof, away from the spotters out back.

  I swung the door shut behind me, hoisted myself up onto the top shelf of the closet, then pushed away the wooden square and shimmied into the attic. It was all open framing with no floors, just pink fiberglass insulation on top of the drywall that made up the ceilings below. The joists groaned with every move I made.

  I replaced the square piece of wood that covered the access from the closet. Some planks lay across the top of the joists and fiberglass, for walking around the attic. I lifted one up, set the wood against the access panel I’d come through, and then wedged the other end against a ceiling joist. It was a pretty rudimentary version of the police lock that every thief fears: a metal bar set into the back of a door and then angled down and anchored in the floor. It makes an entry almost impossible to force. Burglars learn to look for the telltale bolts in the center of a metal door and move along when they see them.

  I could hear the men in the bedroom I had just left, shouting out to the spotters in the backyard. They must have known I was in the house. I looked for an easy out, any kind of vent on the roof or gable I could get through. But there was nothing wider than a pipe. God, it was hot up there.

  A fist banged on the access panel. I stepped away, balancing on the joists. I’d learned the hard way to keep my footing in attics. Once, during one of those Murphy’s law nights, Luis and I had broken into a house in Falls Church. We’d gotten into the attic, and the kid stepped wrong. His left leg went right through the insulation, and his right leg hung up on a joist and tore a ligament in his groin.

  The joists in this attic flexed and pulled at their nails as I moved: an unmistakable creak. Just then, the air cracked with two gunshots. Shafts of light poured through the holes in the attic floor six feet to my left. The shafts looked almost solid from all the dust swirling through.

  The men below were pounding on the access panel now, and I could hear the wood start to splinter and give. I moved farther away.

  Crack-crack: two more shots, two more shafts of light shining up through the holes, closer now. Any time I moved they could fix my position. I waited for them to break through the access panel. I heard the wood splinter and give. The plank I’d used to secure it fell through. My plan, if you could even call it that, was to wait as long as I could before my next move so as to get as many of them into the attic as possible.

  I saw hands come through the access panel.

  I waited.

  And just as the head appeared, I took what I’d learned from my old accomplice Luis and jumped off the joists, aiming for the front of the house, over the two-story foyer, praying I’d hit only insulation and drywall.

  I remember a weightless feeling in my stomach as I fell. Everything was going smoothly until my chin got hung up on the drywall or some wiring and sent me spinning backward. I was still moving forward, though, so I hit the wall just above the front door with my hip, adding to the spin, and landed, mostly on my shoulder and the side of my head, on the hardwood floor.

  That rang my bell. I stood, took a stagger-step, and straightened up. If there was anyone alive on the ground floor, I didn’t see him. Irin lay sprawled on the stairs, shot in the upper torso and the eye socket. Haskins was in the living room, lying on his back with gunshots to the chest and forehead. I’d never seen a dead person other than in a funeral home, all cleaned up and with the hands crossed. I guess I was almost lucky to be dazed by the fall, because the whole thing seemed unreal, bodies as fake as you see in a cheap amusement-park haunted house.

  The gunmen were coming back downstairs, so I ran out the door. I pulled the porch flag down and shoved the pole through the door handle to buy myself a little more time. There was no one out front. I guessed I’d made it behind the men sweeping the house. I ran about twenty-five yards until the shock wore off enough for me to notice the limp, and then the tear in my pants. I looked down to see that a long, half-inch-wide sliver of white-painted molding had slid deep into my thigh.

  With the injury, I didn’t think I had a chance, even if the front door held, of beating them to my car. There was a single streetlight on the road in front of the house, about twenty feet down, in the direction opposite where my car was parked. I ran close to it and then tore back my pant leg. I eased the chunk of wood to the side, let the blood pool in my hand until I had enough that I was sure Marcus would see it. I splashed it glimmering on the ground and ran the other way.

  The fire road certainly made for interesting driving with my headlights off, but it put me back on the valley byway heading away from Paris. The leg wound needed only eight stitches at the little urgent care-storefront in Front Royal. Instead of veal Shenandoah, I had a chicken sandwich in the Arby’s parking lot, then unfolded the piece of yellow paper Haskins had given me: my death sentence and my only hope.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ANNIE WAS STILL awake when I returned to the inn. I went straight into the bathroom and showered, washing the dried blood off my leg. When I came back into the room I told her I was fine, tired but okay, and that all would be explained in the morning. It was dark, and the stitches were hidden under a bandage. She pressed me on what happened, of course, but showed mercy when I told her all I needed was sleep.

  Breakfast, where we were surrounded by the ever-helpful, ever-present inn staff, was obviously not the place to discuss confidential matters. It gave me a short reprieve before I had to explain what had happened.

  The minute we sat down in the car, I turned the radio up. Annie watched me, waiting for me to talk as I stared straight ahead and drove. After fifteen minutes, she twisted the volume knob and switched off the music.

  “Mike. You have to tell me what happened. Your leg—are you okay? Did anyone get hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I…” My voice trailed off. I’d hoped that my old gift for extemporaneous bullshit would provide me with a way out of this. It didn’t. The past night’s events still had the unreal quality of a dream, and trying to find a way to react to them, to go on, paralyzed my thoughts.

  “I need some time,” I said. “To think. It’s…”

  I watched the white lines blink past on the highway, and shook my head.

  “Can I talk to you about it later?” I asked.

  She nodded her head yes, then took my hand as we curved through the long valleys of the Shenandoah. I was surprised it worked, frankly. She was as persistent as I was. It wasn’t until I looked in the mirror that I understood why she’d let it drop. It was my first real glimpse in the sunlight of what I looked like after last night: circles under my eyes dark enough to be bruises, flat unfeeling gaze, an unhealthy pallor. I looked like a dying man.

  I didn’t sleep at all Sunday night, just stared at the ceiling, listening to Annie breathe, taking small comfort every time I glanced over and saw the little pout she made as she slept.

  From time to time I sat up on the edge of my bed in the darkness and fingered the corner of the business card that Detective Rivera had left me. Was this all too much for me to handle on my own? Should I talk to the cops, commit the one sin that can’t be forgiven in a family of thieves? Was there really any way I could escape Henry, let alone outmaneuver him?

  “Geez, you look like shit,” the guy with the office across from mine said when I showed up on Monday morning. “Good weekend, huh?”

  “Great,” I said.

  I guess the disastrous situation I’d stumbled into was showing in my face, which was bad. Routine and cool play were the only ways to make it through this, to stall Marcus and Davies until I could figure out what to do.

  Two
dead, and the papers had nothing to say about it on Sunday or Monday. Maybe only the killers and I knew. That wouldn’t last.

  I’d never found an Outlook inbox more soothing, and I dug into the banal routine of my day. I could almost pretend the weekend hadn’t happened.

  Almost.

  Through the glass around my office door, I saw William Marcus turn the corner by the stairs and start down the hallway toward me. He was looking typically untroubled, a mug of coffee in one hand and a blueberry muffin in the other.

  I heard his muffled steps on the carpet.

  He walked right by my office.

  I was safe catching up on my e-mail for now. After a few minutes, I turned around and ventured a peek down the hall, and didn’t see him. I turned back to the computer.

  “Mike. Davies’s office. Now.” It was Marcus’s voice, behind me. Like a gunshot had gone off nearby, my whole body tightened instantly, and my fists drew up to my chest. Then I stretched out my fingers, and forced myself to take a long, slow breath.

  “Sure,” I said.

  We walked upstairs, and my heart bucked in my chest like an unbalanced dryer. I tried every plausible run-of-the-mill scenario for a call-up like this, and found none. The only explanation was that they knew I was in the house when Haskins and Irin were killed. Still, I followed him meekly, knowing but not quite believing I was walking right into the killers’ hands.

  Davies sat at his desk, peering through reading glasses as he pecked out an e-mail. “Just a moment,” he said without looking up. “Sit down.” I sat. Marcus remained standing.

  “Did you have a nice weekend?” Marcus asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. “Annie and I headed out to the Inn at Little Washington.”

  I spoke calmly despite the pulse pounding in my throat and temples. Marcus and Davies exchanged a look, then Davies nodded.

  “Did you try the veal?” Davies asked.

  “Yes. Superb. I really need to find a good butcher around here—”

  Marcus moved closer to me. “Empty your pockets,” he whispered in my ear, and he held out a plastic desk tray. I pulled out my cell phone, keys, wallet.

  He ran his hand along my jacket pocket, felt a pen, and gestured for me to drop it and my watch in the tray.

  “Well, good,” Davies said. “So nothing out of the ordinary?”

  Marcus gestured for me to stand. I obliged.

  “The inn was a special treat,” I said. “But besides that, no.”

  Marcus, still silent, patted around my belt, then ran two fingers along my sternum. They felt like a head of a hammer against the bone.

  “Lovely,” Davies said. “Marcus, you have a good meat man, don’t you?”

  Marcus was poking through the tray, examining my belongings.

  “Yeah. Eastern Market,” he said. He finally appeared satisfied, and gave Davies the okay sign.

  I’d done my share of warm-up chitchat in these meetings. It was standard. But I’d never done it while getting frisked.

  “So nothing out of the ordinary?” Davies asked me again.

  “No.”

  He looked at Marcus, who shrugged.

  Davies smiled wide. “Well, fantastic,” he said.

  “Great,” Marcus chimed in.

  Maybe I’d misjudged. The pat-down was odd, but everybody seemed to be having a good time. I relaxed a hair, even grinned a little myself.

  “Terrific,” I said.

  “Ha,” Davies said. “Well, just keep that story going and we won’t have a problem. You and the rest of the world will first hear—” He looked to Marcus.

  Marcus checked his watch. “Probably around eleven thirty.”

  “—in a few hours the first hints about the unfortunate deaths in Fauquier County. The full story will leak slowly over the next few days.”

  They watched me, assaying my response. I simply nodded. In a gesture, the whole arrangement was laid out. They wanted me to keep up my story, to play along with the murders.

  “You understand?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Henry looked from me to Marcus. “See? Apt pupil. That will save us a lot of breath, and a lot of unpleasantness.”

  “You don’t need to worry about your involvement,” Marcus said. “We’ve taken care of that. You’ll be fine. The police arrived later that evening, and discovered a murder-suicide.”

  Henry cleared his throat. “You should know that we regret what happened out there as much as anyone. We were growing concerned about the justice’s involvement with this young woman, his increasingly erratic behavior, his paranoia. We can never be sure exactly what happened between them. We tried to stop him. We were too late. I’m not sure what you know or think you know, but you can rest easy. We are not the bad guys here, Mike.”

  “We’re not exactly the good guys,” Marcus said, “but we aren’t cold-blooded killers. It’s bad for business.”

  “That’s what happened,” Henry went on. “I don’t need to tell you that the situation is dangerous for all of us. Your hands aren’t clean, Mike. There will be an extraordinary amount of attention. A circus like we haven’t seen since, I don’t know…Chappaquiddick? The Mary Meyer murder? The work you’ve done with Walker, with Radomir, would not look good under scrutiny.”

  “I was in the dark on both of those cases.”

  “Or you didn’t want to know. Money tends to dull one’s ethical curiosity. It’s only natural. You know well from your work with Marcus that he and I don’t do threats. I will tell you that, while every person thinks he’s the guy in the white hat, few individuals are. People think they’re honest, but that is only because they are never tested, never forced to pay the true price of honesty. I tell you this because I enjoy you. I see myself in you. And I can save you from a lot of pain.

  “I knew about your history from the beginning, Mike. You were born to live in the gray. That’s why I took you in. I know more about your past than you do. Marcus and I would have preferred to continue taking our time grooming you, slowly introducing you to all the complexities of our work here, but I’m afraid things have accelerated. You’ve always been precocious. You can be great. You can be me one day. It’s your choice.”

  He stood and moved closer to me.

  “Now, tell me. In the house, did you talk to Haskins? Did he tell you anything? Did he give you anything?”

  I felt Marcus’s eyes at work on me, taking in every blink, every tic, every drop of sweat. Even if I lied, my turncoat body would tell the truth.

  “No,” I said.

  Marcus kept up the stare.

  “All right,” he said finally. I guess I passed.

  “And we’re all on the same page about the weekend? Is that correct?”

  Their play was good, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from Davies. He’d given me a cover story—they’d been trying to stop it and failed—just plausible enough to ease my conscience. No one is a villain in his own mind. I could see myself misremembering, replaying the evening in my head until what Henry said was true.

  He made the yes sound so easy, just one more baby step like all the others I’d taken here at Davies Group. Each was so small that you barely noticed it. Then one day you turn around and can’t believe it, can’t do a thing about it: you’ve pawned your soul. His questions sounded like he was double-checking on dinner plans, not covering up a double murder and the corruption of the Supreme Court. It was so easy: just a yes. All eyes were on me once again.

  “Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “Excellent, Mike. And I’m sure you realize we reward loyalty here at Davies. Marcus, who’s the youngest to ever make partner here?”

  “Collins. He was thirty-six.”

  “You’re at the front of the line, Mike.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Now, take your time with this. Discretion is key, of course, but this needn’t be the last conversation we have.”

  Davies gave me another twenty-five minutes or so, feeling me o
ut. I played along as a good soldier, not showing the fear, though every word he spoke tightened my stomach until it pained me to talk.

  “So we’re fine,” he said, finally.

  “Yes.”

  He passed me the tray. I gathered my things, and then he led me to the exit. Just before I left, Davies turned me around to face him with a hand on my shoulder.

  “And if there’s anything you maybe forgot to mention, you should tell me now. I’m glad you’ve been here long enough to appreciate, without my having to underscore the point, the gravity of the situation. There will be an extraordinary amount of attention, and pressure. Come speak to us. Because if you decide to talk out of school, I’m sure you realize that we’ll know about it before you do.”

  “Absolutely.”

  They waited a decent interval for the payoff so it wouldn’t look like a quid pro quo. It was a quarterly bonus and a merit-based pay raise: all in all, it came to an additional $200,000 over the next year. Marcus let me know that there was a bit of a slowdown in cases. If I wanted to take any time off, I could have as much as I liked.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  JUST TAKE THE MONEY and keep your mouth shut. If I had done that, things would have been so much easier. But despite my best judgment, I couldn’t sell my soul to Henry just yet. I wasn’t an evil corporate goon (though soon enough I was a wanted man, a notorious double murderer). Saying yes to Davies and Marcus was really the only way to handle the conversation. If I was going to run to Rivera or to the Feds, or if I planned, in a fit of suicidal pique, to find the evidence from Haskins and take down Henry myself, I had to pretend to play along with my bosses to buy time. What else could I do? Give Davies and Marcus a from-the-heart Jimmy Stewart–style stem-winder and then hold their hands while they confessed to the police? Not a chance. I could only play along or pretend to. I knew it, and I was fairly certain that Davies and Marcus knew it too and would be watching my every move.