Dirty Money

by Ashley Bartlett

  “You put your family through hell. They asked the police to find you. Hired private investigators. Your mother didn’t leave the house for two months. Your father nearly lost his job. Adriana is in therapy. Didn’t you think about those you left behind?”

  I lost my shit. Punched him so fast, so hard, I didn’t think I could stop. I just knew I had to keep hitting him. Make him stop talking.

  “Reese probably knew. That’s why she doesn’t want you to find her. Because you’ll just leave her like you left them.”

  I moved from his head to his body, pummeling his ribs, stomach, chest. I leaned close, pulled him to me to drive my fist into his kidney. He cursed. I let go of him, moved back to his face. A thick stream of blood leaked from his mouth. His eye was swelling. Lips too. When I broke his nose, Breno grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him.

  “Stop. Stop now. That is enough. Shhh, it’s okay,” Breno said.

  I felt the fight drain out of me. Breno had one arm around Christopher. Another around me. We would have fallen if he didn’t hold us up.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  “I know. Christopher, you still with us?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “See? He’s all right,” Breno said.

  I stepped back, out of Breno’s embrace.

  “Let me help.” I took Christopher’s arm. The one Breno wasn’t holding. We helped him into the backseat of the car.

  “He will be fine,” Breno said.

  “Yeah, I know that. I just got…carried away.”

  “He was lying.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About your parents. There’s no way he could know that. We haven’t been back here since you kids left.”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course.”

  “And Reese might be angry with you, but not for those reasons, I’m sure.”

  “Totally. Thanks.” I knew he was lying. But it was a nice lie.

  “He’s right.” We turned to find Christopher sitting up in the car and watching us. “I was trying to piss you off. Your weak spots are pretty obvious.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled. Just a little.

  “We still need to do the final blow,” Breno said.

  “Ahh, yes. Please hit me in the head some more.” Christopher smiled sardonically.

  “Last time, I promise.”

  Christopher got out of the car. He was moving slowly. I left Breno to help him stand. When I opened the back of the SUV, Esau was awake and trying to kill me with his eyes. I ignored him and grabbed the baseball bat.

  Christopher was waiting. His hands clenched at his sides.

  “Make sure there’s bruising on his temple.” Breno traced a finger from the edge of Christopher’s eyebrow out into his hairline.

  “Got it. Ready?”

  Christopher nodded. I gripped the bat, lined up where I wanted to hit him, and swung. The heavy thud shook my arms on impact.

  “Jesus. Fuck.” Christopher reached out and Breno caught him. Again.

  “Was that hard enough?”

  “It better be. You are not hitting me with that thing again. Christ.” He felt along his temple and winced. “Yeah, that’ll bruise.”

  “’Kay. Lie down and I’ll finish it off.”

  Christopher nodded and climbed into the backseat. There was a tarp already spread over the leather. I took out my knife, cleaned it with an alcohol wipe. Christopher turned his head so the already forming bruise was up. I cut his skin starting near his eyebrow and ending in his hair. My hand shook as I did it, which was good because it wasn’t a clean, straight cut. Blood welled up and spilled down his face.

  “What do you think?” I asked Breno.

  “Good. Perfect.”

  “Looks like he was slammed into a desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean you’re done abusing me?” Christopher was whining now. It made him sound like Ryan. One of their more unattractive traits.

  “Stop bitchin’. It’s my turn now. Clean that, would you?” I handed Breno my knife. Pushed my sleeve high above the bend of my elbow.

  “Do you want me to cut you?” Breno asked.

  “Yeah. Make sure you get the vein.” I pointed to the big vein in the bend of my elbow. When he cut me, I thought it wasn’t so bad. At first. I mean I’d been beaten beyond recognition, shot, and stabbed. A little cut wasn’t going to hurt.

  But it did hurt. Like fucking hell. The sound of the blade slicing though my flesh made it hurt worse. I looked down at the gash in my arm, which didn’t help at all.

  “Are you okay? You look a little white.” Breno was concerned. How sweet.

  “Let’s just do this.” I was not going to break down in front of these guys. I wasn’t. “We should have just opened one of my other wounds.”

  “Your other wounds?” Now he was definitely concerned. The two of them were victims of seriously misguided parenting moments. All about ten years too late.

  “Umm, yeah. I was stabbed last week.” I tried to push up my sleeve a little more. But the stitches were too high. “Never mind. I’ll show you later.”

  “What do you mean you were stabbed? And you said wounds.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We can discuss it later.” With that, I extended my arm so the blood would run off my fingertips. I directed the stream at Christopher’s head wound until it looked way more serious than it was. Blood gathered in his hair, then ran down and pooled in his ear.

  “Shit. It’s in my eye.” Christopher reached up to wipe it away. I caught his hand.

  “Sorry. But you have officially been knocked unconscious. Just close your eyes.”

  “Vito better believe you.”

  “Just chill, okay?”

  Christopher closed his eyes and played dead.

  “Come, Cooper. I’ll bandage your arm.” Breno cupped his hand under my not injured arm.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll just be here,” Christopher said.

  “I’ve never seen this whiney side of him,” I said quietly to Breno. “I think I prefer the angry asshole.”

  “He was worse as a twenty-year-old, if you can imagine it.”

  “Sounds horrible.”

  Breno smirked and opened the passenger door to the SUV. “Sit.”

  “I’m covered in mud.”

  “Hmm.” He went to the back of the Escalade. There was a grunt from Esau. He was bound and gagged. Grunting was the most he could do. Breno came back with another tarp. He spread it across the seat. “There.”

  “Thanks.” I kept my feet on the runner outside the car. Breno angled himself between my knees. It only took him a few minutes to tape gauze over my cut. Wiping the blood off my arm and hand took longer.

  “That will have to do for now. Once we get back, you can shower and I’ll bandage you properly.”

  “You remind me of them,” I said quietly.

  “I do?” This seemed to make him both happy and sad. Understandably.

  “Yes, you look like them. But your mannerisms, like the way you use your hands. It reminds me of Ryan. There’s a kindness about you. He’s the same way.”

  His eyes had no trace of their gray, but the look he gave me was melted chocolate and sadness.

  “What about Reese?”

  “She’s her mother. We both know that.” Breno nodded in agreement. “But when her shields slip…I always wondered. In her vulnerable moments, she has your honesty.”

  “Thank you.” He closed his eyes for a second. Like he was trying to preserve that moment. We both knew I was stretching the truth, but the lie was what mattered.

  “Should we go check on the dead man?” I asked.

  “I suppose.”

  Christopher looked like hell. And the look he gave us indicated he was feeling about as good as he looked. We ignored him.

  “You need to drag him,” Breno said.

  “Why?”

  “It will mess up his clothing, get mud on his heels, but not the bottom of his feet. That
way it will look as if you dragged him. You’re working solo here, remember?”

  “Got it.” I went to the other side of the car and took off Christopher’s loafers. Then I went back to his head. I lifted him up so his bloody head was on my shoulder, locked my arms under and around his chest, and pulled. Fuck, grown men weighed a lot.

  The tarp he was on came out with him, but I didn’t care. If I were alone the same thing would have happened. As I dragged him across the ground, the tarp fell away. Halfway to the grave, I started to lose him. I tightened my arms and hauled him a few more feet out of will more than strength.

  “Fuck, man. You’re killing me,” I told him.

  “Are you calling me fat?” Christopher sounded all sleepy and shit.

  “Yep. I’m gonna put you down.” I lowered him to the ground. I was going to be all kinds of sore tomorrow.

  “Come on. You’re almost there,” Christopher said. It sounded encouraging, but he was taunting me.

  “Shut up. You’re dead. Dead guys don’t talk.” I grabbed handfuls of his shirt and dragged him to the edge of the hole. Then I jumped down into it and started pulling. “Don’t catch yourself when you fall, ’kay?”

  He nodded. When I yanked, he fell hard. But he kept his hands out of the mud.

  “Ouch.”

  “Don’t move.”

  “Couldn’t even if I wanted to.” Christopher coughed, which made what were probably very realistic blood spatters.

  Breno helped me out of the hole. We looked down at our gruesome handiwork.

  “Perfect,” I said. For the first time, I thought this might actually work. “What do you think?”

  “Amazing.” And he sounded amazed. “He looks pale from the cold, which is good. Except the blood still looks a little fresh.”

  “Shit.” He was right.

  “Are you going to take the pictures?” Christopher asked from his grave.

  “The blood looks too fresh.”

  “Can you wait like five minutes?” I knew it was asking a lot. But hopefully the blood would look a little older and drier by then.

  “What the hell? It’s my funeral, right? Who cares if I’m comfortable?”

  “I know you’re being sarcastic, but this is for your own good. So stop bitching.” I was so kind.

  Breno and I stood over Christopher to wait with him for all of sixty seconds. But then we got cold so we got in the car. We left him out in the cold for more than the promised five minutes. It was a battle between heated leather and frozen mud. Hard decision.

  Christopher was doing an awesome impression of dead. The blood had dried, his face and extremities were bluish-white, and his face was slack. His shirt was half open from me dragging him, which worked out well because it exposed the bruises forming on his torso.

  “That’s perfect. Don’t move.” I worked my cell phone out of my pocket. “Breno, go like way, way over there. I don’t want any hint of you in these.” He listened. Wisely.

  I crouched down and carefully framed each shot. I didn’t want any footprints in the snow to show up. Their feet were definitely bigger than mine. After I had about ten from different angles, I stood.

  “Are you finished?” Breno asked from the far side of the SUV.

  “Yeah, come look.” I held out my phone. “Hey, Christopher. You’re good. Get your ass up.”

  Breno took my phone. “These are great. Yes, very convincing. Christopher, you need to look at these.”

  Christopher didn’t move.

  “Christopher,” I said. “You can get up now.”

  “Yes, stop playing around.”

  “Shit.” I jumped into the hole, careful not to land on him. I checked his pulse. He was alive, but his skin was fuckin’ cold. “He’s freezing. Help me get him out of here.” When I lifted Christopher’s shoulders so he was sitting, he opened his eyes and blinked at me.

  “Hello, Vivian.” Very formal. “I fell asleep.” He closed his eyes again.

  “Hey, you with me?” Nope. He was totally not with me.

  Breno jumped down next to me. Between the two of us we were able to lift him until he was on his feet. Sort of.

  “I will pull him up. You push from down here. Hold on a minute.” Breno levered himself up and out of the grave while I pinned Christopher against the wall of damp dirt. He cupped under Christopher’s armpits as I grabbed his legs and shoved upward.

  “Got him?”

  “Yes.”

  Breno dragged him onto the snow-covered ground. It took another five minutes to get him into the SUV. We stripped off his wet clothes and covered him with a blanket. The wound on his head had already stopped bleeding. That was probably good.

  “Any idea how to deal with hypothermia?” I asked.

  “No. Do you think that is why he fell asleep?”

  “Probably. He’s cold as fuck.”

  “I’ll turn on the heat.” Breno climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine again. “We need to get him somewhere warm.”

  “Yep.” That much was obvious. “We’ve done what we can here. Let’s take care of Esau.” We couldn’t do anything else for Christopher until we were out of there.

  Esau covered his fear when we opened the back and started hauling him out. But the smirk he was going for didn’t reach his eyes. We dragged him to his grave. He didn’t start screaming until we dropped him in. He caught my eye and started shaking his head when I handed Breno the gun.

  “I’m sorry, Esau, really,” I told him. And then Breno shot him. Once. In the head. I jumped into the grave, checked his pulse. There was nothing. Just a rapidly spreading pool of blood. I stripped the tape off his mouth, cut the ties from his wrists and ankles, and reached up to Breno.

  Just like that, it was done. My well-intentioned, but psychotic mentor was gone. It took far less time to fill in the hole than it did to dig it out. The snow picked up again as his face disappeared. It got heavier and heavier as we covered his body. By the time we were done, Breno and I were standing in two inches of snow. Esau wouldn’t be found for a very long time, if ever.

  *

  Christopher was somewhat coherent by the time we passed Placerville. Or at least he had some color back in his face and extremities. He mumbled in his sleep from time to time.

  It wasn’t snowing here, at least not yet. Nothing was open. I directed Breno onto Main Street. The corporate businesses on the eastern end, all newer, were empty. I jumped out and tossed a bag of muddy clothes and various other evidence into the Dumpster.

  “Are you sure that will be safe enough?” Breno asked when I climbed back in.

  “Yes, it was nearly full. They’ll pick it up in the next few days.”

  “No one will go through and notice?”

  “No, most of the homeless are in the shelter because of the weather this time of year. And Dumpster diving won’t impress the kids around here.”

  He nodded. Good enough. We drove down Main Street to get back on the freeway.

  “This is a quaint little town,” Breno said.

  “If you’re white and straight.” He seemed confused. “I’ve had a few bottles thrown at my head here. The galleries and restaurants are safe enough, but the bars are hick town to the core.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Totally.”

  “Where is everyone? Why are the shops closed?”

  “Seriously?” He spared me a glance. “It’s Christmas morning.”

  Silence. At first. “How did I miss that?”

  “You’ve been preoccupied, I guess.”

  “I am sorry, Cooper. We will need to spend the day celebrating, I suppose.”

  And we did. None of us knew exactly what to celebrate. Maybe warm showers and family we didn’t know we had. Maybe the promise that next year would be better.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I got back to Chicago, I stayed with Vito. Ostensibly, this was because Vito was concerned about me. He wasn’t. He didn’t trust me worth shit. But that didn’t last long
. We got to his house and immediately went to his study. Madge, his wife, who was a total dog, brought us coffee. I figured that meant Vito actually loved her. Not the coffee. The fact that she was a dog. He could have had some mindless trophy wife, but he had this sweet, ugly thing instead. And she really was sweet. After twenty-four hours there, I would have married her.

  So we sat in his study staring at each other. I took out my phone and tossed it to him.

  “What is this?”

  “My cell phone. I don’t want it back. It’s yours.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Look in the pictures.”

  It took him a few minutes. The way people over fifty pretend they know how to operate a cell phone, but they can only work their own. I knew the second he found the pictures. For that second, that fraction of a second, he looked happier than I’d ever seen him. Then he schooled that expression into one of stoicism. For my benefit probably.

  Just like that, I was golden.

  “I need to inform some people about this.”

  “I know.”

  “May I keep the pictures?”

  “They’re all yours.”

  “Do you want credit?”

  And there it was. The question. He’d protected me from any of Tommy’s friends who might have wanted revenge, though it didn’t seem Tommy had any friends. I knew Christopher didn’t have friends either, but still.

  “Don’t take out a billboard or anything.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “You can tell the people who matter.”

  And he did.

  I spent the next week jumping at every sound, letting Vito hear me scream away the nightmares, getting angry at anything that moved, and sometimes at shit that didn’t move. It was all build up for one conversation. Vito tried a couple times to get me to spill. I ignored him. It was Madge I finally opened up to. It was the best performance of my life.

  We were in the dining room. Breakfast was finished. I was staring into my empty coffee mug when she carefully took it from my hands and filled it.

  “Thanks.”

  “It might help if you talk about it.” She sat across from me. “When you’re ready.”

  I smiled at her, but it was an empty sort of smile. “Nothing to talk about.” She just waited. “Really. I killed someone. I’ve done it before.”