The Money Game

by Michael A. Smith

  “Yeah.”

  “Call me with it.”

  “But you’re right here, Ace.” When Ace gave him a menacing look, Country pressed the number one button for two seconds and Ace’s cell phone rang in the bedroom. “You gonna go get the phone, Ace?”

  Ace grabbed the cell phone from Country and punched the off button. “Ain’t technology amazing. Now, get dressed, Country. We got work to do.”

  Ten minutes later, they left the mobile home and walked toward the old barn. Ace carried a medium-sized suitcase equipped with a combination lock. The paint had long ago worn off the barn, and the wood now was gray and shrunken by the weather, so that there were gaps between the boards. An ancient tractor and various other rusting farm implements sat inside. Morning frost covered everything. Country’s red Ford Ranger sat between the two open doorways. Neither sliding door on opposite sides of the barn worked. The Ford had new tags as of late Wednesday night. He and Country had driven back roads to several adjoining small towns until they found a truck the same color and model year. It had been parked at a rural bar, which made switching the tags easy. The switch might go unnoticed for days, weeks or months. Most people didn’t even know their tag number. It would only become an issue if the cops stopped either truck. Any cop who stopped Ace would wind up with a knife between his ribs.

  A four-by-eight foot wood box rested in the bed of Country’s pickup. In a scavenging trip yesterday afternoon, they’d stolen it from the driveway of a rural Methodist church. The church had etched its name into the lid. Painted on the front and side was the legend: Donate your used clothing and shoes to the needy. With one alternation, it fit perfectly into Ace’s plan. After they got the box back to the bar, he and Country turned it on its side. Ace used an electric keyhole saw to remove a three-foot circular section of the floor. Then, they placed the donation box back into the bed of the truck. Ace tossed a flattened cardboard box inside, so it would cover the hole, in case someone actually donated some clothing before the box served its intended purpose.

  After Ace put his suitcase in back, Country drove the pickup toward the city and Sweetwater Mall. Ace reviewed a drawing of the parking lot and surrounding area he’d constructed after other scouting trips.

  Ace pointed to the shotgun resting in its rack attached to the pickup’s rear window. “We run into any trouble today, I’ll handle it. If I tell you to get this shotgun and help me out, you do it. Hear, Country?”

  “Yes, sir, General Ace!”

  The last time he had been at the mall was to check out Belton Jewelers, follow Cathy Kennedy to a luncheon meeting with her husband, and then scout the area around their house near the country club.

  It was during a rambling bar discussion with Richey about kidnapping/ransom movies and drop spots that Ace had an epiphany regarding Sweetwater Mall. The two-story mall and the parking lots surrounding it comprised a half-mile square, or nearly seven million square feet. There were multi-lane streets on two sides of the mall; the other two sides abutted housing subdivisions to the east and south.

  The land sloped from northeast to southwest and naturally drained rainwater in that direction, which perhaps was the reason it had been chosen as a building site; otherwise, a mall this size would flood even during a minor rainstorm.

  The solution was an elaborate underground drainage system installed before construction of the massive mall building began. Each rainwater catch basin was actually a large square concrete unit, about four-by-six-by-ten feet. There were four pre-formed holes in the unit: two on opposite sides, into which could be fitted 24-inch or 36-inch diameter drainpipes. The rectangular-shaped water collection opening at ground level was approximately 10-by-20 inches, and often included vertical iron bars to keep out large animals and debris. On the top of the unit was a “manhole” that allowed workers to descend into the unit, usually via a metal ladder embedded into the concrete, and clean rubbish from the bottom. An iron lid topped the manhole.

  Workers lowered the catch basins into an excavated hole. Drainpipes were lowered into a series of interconnected trenches. The pipes were connected to the catch basins and the trenches filled with dirt. Workers then paved the parking lot. With each catch basin, only the top portion, including the water collection opening and manhole cover, remained above ground.

  There were nearly three dozen rainwater catch basins at the mall. Their placement, the curbing and the engineered slope of the land effectively drained the water into two large six-foot diameter pipes that came together at a ninety-degree angle in the far southwest corner, where they emptied into a large open ditch, which had a concrete bottom and sides. That ditch and others like it were part of a metropolitan drainage system that eventually channeled rainwater out to several streams and rivers.

  Ace’s conversation with Richey had recalled a memory of the time he, Kandie and her kids walked on the sidewalk in the area where the largest drainage pipe opened into the ditch. It became the final piece of his plan to become rich.

  Ace had Country park the pickup on the west side of the mall, near Longnecker Road, between two restaurants. Ace had decided it was the perfect place to place the stolen clothes donation box. The large north-south diameter drainage pipe was buried far beneath the sidewalk. There were a half-dozen catch basins opening into it. One was right between the two restaurants, to the right of a flight of concrete stairs leading up from the parking lot to the sidewalk. Pedestrians could get to the mall from the sidewalk, or take the crosswalk to the other side of Longnecker Road.

  Ace and Country took the church collection box out of the pickup bed and set it directly over the manhole cover. They worked quickly and no one paid them any attention. Country held open the lid while Ace crawled inside and used a crowbar to remove the iron manhole cover, which he slid to one end of the box. Then, he placed the flat cardboard box over the manhole and covered it with donated clothing that had been in the box when they stole it.

  When he was done, Ace crawled out of the box. He then took a three-foot long piece of red ribbon from his pocket, knelt and tied it to one of the iron bars on the grate covering the opening into which rainwater flowed. He made sure it hung down into the drainpipe.

  Ace grabbed a tool belt from the pickup bed and said, “Let’s go.” Country followed him up the stairs to the sidewalk. Ace walked south, counting his steps.

  “Where we goin’, Ace?” Country asked.

  “Shut up, Private, unless I ask you to talk.”

  After ninety-eight steps, they arrived at the southwest edge of the mall parking lot. Here, the large diameter drainage pipe emptied into the paved ditch. Bushes had been planted alongside the sidewalk, partly for aesthetic purposes. In addition, the bushes discouraged anyone from climbing down into the ditch.

  “Follow me and keep your mouth shut,” Ace said, as he squeezed through the bushes and scrambled down the concrete embankment. Then, he walked to the entrance to the drainage system. If anyone had stopped them, Ace planned to tell them they were city workers. If that didn’t work, he had three different types of knives with him.

  A six-foot high iron gate prevented anyone from entering the drainpipe. The vertical and horizontal bars were spaced about twelve inches apart — big enough to let the rushing water through but small enough to keep people and large animals out. Ace examined the hasp and padlock that secured the gate to the concrete wall. The U-shaped staple and metal base bolted to the concrete wall was rusted and loose.

  Using a claw hammer, Ace pried the base from the wall, opened the gate, and began walking up an incline toward the mall. They were right below the sidewalk. They both had to stoop slightly, so as not to bump their heads on the top of the tunnel.

  “What we need is a dog, Ace,” Country announced.

  Ace shined the flashlight in his partner’s anxious face. “Why?”

  “To scare off any critters.”

  Ace counted his steps as he walked back north. They walked by two other openings, each allowing a shaft of light that
briefly illuminated the large drainpipe. There was no water in the large collection pipe, although sediment and leaves covered the floor. By the time he counted to eighty-five, Ace’s light illuminated the red ribbon ahead, and he said, “Hot damn!”

  The ribbon dangled from the bars covering the opening into the underground pipe.

  “Hold the flashlight,” Ace said. He got down on one knee and squeezed into the shaft below the manhole. He lifted up the cardboard box and clothing enough to stick his head into the collection box.

  Ace backed out and told Country, “Now, you look inside the box.” He handed Country the flashlight.

  Country did as he was told and exclaimed, “Gollee!”

  “Okay, make sure the cardboard and the clothes cover the hole.”

  When Country had completed his task, Ace moved him near the opening into the drainpipe, where the red ribbon was tied. “Look through the bars and you can see your pickup, right?”

  Country stooped and pushed his face against the bars before saying, “Yeah.”

  Ace took a piece of orange chalk out of his tool bag and wrote on the wall, “Country’s Hole.”

  Ace laughed. “Can you read that, asshole?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, now listen carefully. Tomorrow, when I tell you, you drive your pickup over to the mall. I’m gonna show you where to park.”

  “You mean park where I’m parked now, Ace?”

  “No, no,” Ace said, shaking his head. “You’re going to park on a street south of the mall. We’ll go there in a few minutes. You walk over to this pipe, come inside like we just did. Bring a flashlight. Walk up to this point here where I’ve written your name on the wall.” Ace untied the red ribbon and put it in his pocket. He didn’t want anyone to see it and get curious. “You wait right here until someone drops a bag into the box. You’ll hear it. Be quiet, and don’t stand near the grate, so someone could see you. Don’t say anything. Don’t talk at all. When the guy walks away and you’re sure he’s gone, you get into the shaft, shove the cardboard aside, grab the bag and pull it through the hole. It’s gonna be the same suitcase that’s now in the back of the pickup.”

  Country looked skeptical. “Really?”

  “Yes. It will be full of money. It’ll weigh about forty or fifty pounds, but you’re easily strong enough to handle that, right?”

  “I think so, Ace.”

  “If you don’t understand anything, call me on your phone by pressing one. If you have any problem getting a signal, hold the phone near the grate. Whisper, don’t talk loudly. Understand?”

  “I think so, Ace.”

  “Let’s pretend now that you got the bag full of money and you walk back to the opening.”

  They did and Ace rigged the lock so the gate would stay shut. He walked up the side of the ditch embankment opposite the sidewalk. Another thick stand of bushes along the south edge of the mall allowed them to walk to a dead-end street without anyone seeing them from the mall parking lot. Twenty feet from the dead end, another street ran south. With Country following, they walked on the sidewalk down this street to another intersection. To the right, the street ended once again at a barricade between the end of the street and the drainage ditch.

  “You park here,” Ace said, pointing at the spot. He knelt and used the chalk to draw a large X on the pavement. “Then walk back to the pipe. You open that gate and walk up the pipe to the place where I wrote your name on the wall. Wait for the guy to drop the bag of money into the collection box. Get the bag, come back to the pickup and call me on your new cell phone.”

  Country had listened intently. Suddenly, he snapped to attention, delivered a military salute and said, “Yes, sir, General Ace.”

  “Good, now let’s walk back and get your pickup. We’ll drive back down to this spot. We’ll park, walk over to the gate, and go over it all again.”

  “Okay, Ace.”

  “We’re not going to stay with Rhonda tonight. We’re gonna rent a hotel room, drink a lot of beer, order in pizza and watch a movie. Okay? Now, you repeat exactly what you’re going to do tomorrow when you drive down here to pick up the money.”

  It took Country a half-dozen tries to repeat his schedule to Ace’s satisfaction. However, Ace planned to grill him several more times through the end of the day, and perhaps even get Country to write down his tasks tomorrow, and carry that piece of paper with him, in case he forgot anything.

  About three o’clock, Ace had Country rent the room, show his driver’s license and pay in cash. Actually, Country was buffer number two. It was an old, cheap, v-shaped motel complex dating from the last century and frequented by truckers, hookers, the homeless, teenagers and guys like them. It was just off 110th Street. They rented two rooms with a connecting door. One room was the last room on one wing of the motel complex, meaning that it did not adjoin another room. The occupant of that last room could make as much noise as he or she wanted without attracting any attention.

  Ace and Country walked across a street to a Seven-Eleven where they stocked up on beer and enough snack food to satisfy Country for several days. Before he left the motel again, Ace got the dummy situated in front of a television and found a channel playing back-to-back reruns of Gunsmoke, one of Country’s favorite shows.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  At five o’clock, Ace walked about a half mile to a Holiday Inn, pulling the wheeled suitcase that featured a combination lock. The hotel was located on the other side of the Interstate from the ratty motel where he and Country were staying. While walking, he called Kandie on her burner phone. Kandie blitzed him with many questions and comments until he was finally able to slow her down and have her start over. She told him two sheriff’s detectives had questioned her and Richey at The Stadium about Hank and Melvin’s death. Did he know they were found dead in Hank’s car that was pulled from the bottom of a lake?

  Ace was mainly concerned that someone was tailing Kandie. He told her to drive over to Sweetwater mall and walk around in the mall to see if she could pick up a tail. He told her to reverse walking abruptly, to see if anyone stopped, or turned their head, or turned away. He told her to buy a hooded sweatshirt at JC Penney, go into a restroom and put it on. Then leave the west entrance of the mall and walk to Longnecker Road. There was a southbound bus stop there. She should take the bus to 110th Street and get off. Ask the driver how to catch a bus along 110th until she got near the Holiday Inn. Get off there, go to the hotel bar, and wait.

  About an hour later, Kandie got off the bus. Ace watched from the other side of the street, where he sat on a mass transit bench for passengers waiting to go the opposite direction on the street. He didn’t see anyone who appeared to be following Kandie. No cars pulled into the Holiday Inn parking lot after she went inside. He waited another ten minutes and concluded that it was safe.

  If the cops were on her tail and confronted them inside the hotel bar, Ace wouldn't surrender. Either he’d kill them, or they’d kill him. Although Ace had thought about abandoning Kandie at this point, he had a critical role for her to play. Buffer number three. It was still worth the chance.

  Kandie sat at the bar, waiting. When she saw Ace walk into the room, Kandie jumped and ran toward him, throwing herself into his arms, certain he’d catch her.

  “Oh, my God, I thought you’d left town!”

  He steered her over to a booth removed from the few patrons in the bar. The waitress brought Kandie’s drink from where she’d left it on the bar. Ace ordered a beer.

  “Where’ve you been staying?” she asked breathlessly, sliding into the booth. She cast a curious glance at the suitcase.

  “A safe place. You don’t want to know where. That way, you don’t have to lie to the cops.”

  “On Wednesday, I told those two detectives I hadn’t seen you since last Sunday and didn’t know anything about Hank and Melvin. Richey backed me up, saying he hadn’t seen you since the Friday before.”

  Ace smiled and chuckled. It was as if he owned a pack of tra
ined dogs that did tricks for treats. He was supremely confident that tomorrow also would go as planned.

  “What went wrong, Ace?”

  “Hank and Melvin were hurt worse than I thought,” he replied, calmly. “They died and I decided to get rid of the bodies. I ran their car into a lake.”

  With frustration and confusion in her voice, Kandie asked, “Why didn’t you just explain what happened to the police? None of it was your fault!”

  “I didn’t think they would believe me. I didn’t tell you before, but I was in prison for theft.”

  With a wave of the hand, Kandie dismissed that consideration as unimportant. “But what happened in my apartment wasn’t your fault!”

  Ace sighed, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “Yes, we have moral justification for what happened, Kandie, no doubt. They were gonna kill me, rape you. But, we couldn't spend the next two or three years defending ourselves in court. We don’t have money for a good lawyer. The state has a whole team of lawyers. They get paid for convictions. We’d probably lose in court, Kandie. If they charged us with something, they could hold us in jail on some high bail amount for a year before our trial. Even if the court eventually found both of us innocent, you’d lose your kids in the process, Kandie. I was just thinking of you.”

  “What can we do, Ace?”

  He smiled and nodded. He had the answer to their problems. “Maybe you forgot, Kandie, but that night before all the trouble, we were talking about our future together. I told you I was working a deal. I gave you the cell phone then, remember?”

  She hesitated and then smiled. “You said we’d have plenty of money if things went right. You had something you wanted me to do, right?”

  “Exactly, and nothing has changed. The deal is going down Saturday morning. Tomorrow.”

  Her excitement was palpable. “What is it, Ace?”

  Ace looked around in exaggerated fashion, to indicate he didn’t want anyone to hear the forthcoming secret. He leaned across the table, and whispered, “Richey dug up some dirt on a big shot at Biederman’s who’s using the trucks and railroad cars to bring in drugs. That’s the real reason they fired him. Now, Richey has demanded a payoff if they want him to keep quiet.”