He knew this comparison was pretty far off base, but the point was a good one—the bad guys had gotten ahold of all the money. But Martin had gotten it back, and now he was a new person. Or he was about to become one, anyway. Like Jack, he could live happily ever after. He could pay his debts, save his business, even show up Radkovitch—show him that his brilliant plan to sell Anderson Aircrafts to the assholes at the Buick dealership had been stupid. Or premature. Or just dickish, when you came right down to it. Because weren’t there factors to consider along with the pluses and minuses in a ledger book? Couldn’t he have just looked at Martin—at his business, his horse, his boat—and been able to see that things were going to work out somehow?
Martin picked up a bundle of bills and flicked it with his thumb, listening to the slapping sound it made. Sure, he’d keep Radkovitch around for a while—he could help Martin clean up the books, and make a few investments with his new infusion of money (not that he’d let Radkovitch see all of it, of course—Martin wasn’t stupid). But pretty soon, Martin would cut him loose. It would be good to get rid of him. And who knew, maybe there’d be some other changes. He wasn’t sure what those changes might be, exactly, but they were all going to be for the better. Because that’s what money could do. It might not buy you happiness, but it could definitely grease the wheels. If nothing else, it could ward off misery and worry and everything else that came with a mountain of unpaid bills (to say nothing of a career in crime—if, like Martin, you were desperate and stupid enough to go down that road).
He set the bundle down, still thinking. He looked at the big stack of money scattered onto the pale yellow of the bunk mattresses. The problem with the Jack and the Beanstalk comparison was that Hano was still out there somewhere. Wasn’t it after Jack had stolen various things from the giant’s house—the bag of money, the goose with the golden eggs, and something else—that the giant got wise to what was going on and chased Jack back down the beanstalk? He was going to fucking kill him, in fact, until Jack caught a break and the giant fell down the beanstalk and broke his neck. But as Martin sat there, listening to the sounds of the marina, the water slapping against the side of the boat, voices carrying across the water, engines running, the occasional horn tooting, he found himself wondering if Hano would be willing to make it quite so easy for him. Would he really just fall and break his neck so that Martin could live his happy, debt-free life? Probably not.
Martin shook himself, tried to clear his head. He stood up, stretched his sore knees, and realized he was pretty hungry. He wanted to jump in his car and drive over to the Sea Wolf for something to eat, but he didn’t want to leave the money behind—and he certainly wasn’t going to take it with him to a restaurant.
He unhooked the sliding door and stepped into the kitchenette. There was plenty of food in the cupboard—a couple of cans of chili, a can of tomato soup, a can of chicken soup, some tuna and some SpaghettiO’s. There was also a bag of hamburger buns in the fridge and a few more beers. Good enough, he thought. This is what you do when you’re hiding out. You rough it a little bit—dig in, disappear.
He turned on the electric stove, opened the chili with the crappy handheld can opener that he was always planning to replace, and put it in a pot. When it was hot, he poured it out onto the hamburger buns. Then he opened a beer, sat down on the couch in the living area that was just beyond the kitchenette, and turned on the little black-and-white TV to KPIX.
If there was news about the murders, it would be on this channel. Probably on the five o’clock news. In the meantime, the A’s were playing at home. It was the first game of a home stand. Catfish Hunter was finishing a shutout against the Orioles. Jesus, that guy could pitch. He was better than Vida Blue. Martin shook his head, thinking about Peter and the game against Gaylord Perry and the Indians. It was only a couple of days away, but it seemed like something way off in the future.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When he woke up, it was almost dark. The TV was still on, murmuring, its dim, flickering images casting a bluish glow in the living room area of the cabin. He’d fallen asleep sitting up, with his head back against the top of the little couch. His neck was sore.
He couldn’t remember his dreams—which, given the way things had been going, was probably a good thing. Did he really need to know what his sleeping, unconscious self had to say to him right about now? Wasn’t it obvious? He didn’t need to remember one of his horrific pursuit dreams to know that he was scared and on the run—that he was confused and unhappy. Sure, finding Val’s money had been a lot like a fairy tale. But lying on his bunk and trying to wake up, it suddenly occurred to Martin that his situation was also a lot like one of those nightmares he was always having, in which he was in enemy territory, and hiding, but the enemy had tracked him down, surrounded him, and was just waiting for the right moment to move in and finish him off.
He looked blankly at the TV. It was a sitcom—The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Probably a summer rerun. Mary was yapping at her boss, Mr. Grant, about some newsroom crisis. Ugh.
So he’d definitely missed the five o’clock news. And the seven o’clock news. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was just about 8:35. He’d been more tired than he’d realized. He never took long naps like that. On the other hand, he didn’t usually stumble onto the scene of a double murder and then find $450,000, either.
He wanted to have a beer, but thought better of it. Instead, he had a glass of water, splashed some water onto his face, and then went forward to load the money into the metal box he’d bought. The dimensions were printed on the side: 18″ × 10″ × 12″. Pretty much the size of a bread box. Or a big bread box, maybe. It was some sort of ammo box, apparently, but you could use it for anything (like burying money). It was painted army green, and the metal was nice and thick. The best part was that it was designed to stay dry inside. It had a rubber gasket around the opening, so it really sealed up when you pushed the side handle down. It would definitely keep moisture out; the guy at the store had been clear on this point.
He counted the bundles one more time as he loaded them in. This time he got 451. Okay, then—it was probably $450,000, and he was just miscounting. The box was pretty full when he finished packing it. He was about to close the lid and seal it when he realized that he should keep some of the money (no sense burying all of it). He took five bundles of bills off the top. He paused, and then took another five. Then he gave in and took five more. Then he thought about the fact that he might need to leave the box buried for a long time, and that he wanted to be able to give Radkovitch some of the money: to pay off some bills . . . and to impress him. But it couldn’t be too much, of course. Okay. So finally he took out twenty-five more. That made forty—or forty-one, including the one he’d grabbed back at Val’s house and used at the gas station. He’d give thirty to Radkovitch and keep the other ten for himself.
He sealed up the box, walked back into the kitchen, and set it on the counter. He looked around for a minute, then stooped and opened the little cabinet under the sink. There was an old red tool box in there; he squatted down, lifted out the top tray, and put the forty bundles in there. It wasn’t a great hiding place, but sometimes the obvious places were the best. Look at Val’s hiding place for his money—it had fooled Hano. And it would have fooled Martin, too, if Val hadn’t been so nonchalant about walking in there and grabbing the money.
Val had obviously trusted him, Martin thought. Maybe Val thought he was too weak to be taken seriously. Or maybe it was because he thought of Martin as a friend—someone he could trust. They’d known each other for a long time, and they’d had some good times together, especially at the track. It was possible that, had someone asked Val to list his ten best friends, Martin might have been one of them. Maybe somewhere around seven or eight, maybe nine. But now Val was dead.
He closed up the toolbox and fit it back inside the cabinet. Then he tucked the metal box under his arm and headed up to the deck. It wasn’t quite dark, but it would be by t
he time he got out to Walnut Station and the orchard behind his neighborhood—behind Miriam’s house.
He rehearsed things as he drove. If some nosy neighbor came out and asked him what he was doing out there in the dark, he’d say that his son had left something, and that his wife had sent him out to look for it. “It’s not like I was gonna say no to her,” he’d say, playing the role of beleaguered suburban husband and father. There was no way it wouldn’t work. Even a cop would buy it. But he only rehearsed it once or twice, because it wasn’t going to happen. No one was going to stop him, because no one was going to see him. He’d be invisible. He’d bury his box, slip away, and wait.
Walnut Station looked sleepy as he pulled into town. There were some older teenagers driving around, looking for something to do post–Fourth of July, but for the most part it was dead. Perfect. He drove to the spot where he’d pulled into the orchard before, when he’d broken into Miriam’s house. He turned off his headlights and then inched along, making sure he didn’t plow into a walnut tree. He drove for about fifty or sixty yards, until he was right in the center of the orchard. He rolled down the window, turned off the engine, and listened. Some crickets, some frogs, a few doors opening and closing in the distance, a voice or two (was that Hal Weaver, yelling at one of his kids?). A car drove past on the frontage road, but the headlights didn’t come close to penetrating this deep into the orchard. He’d been right—he was invisible.
He was about to open his door when he paused and thought better of it. Gotta take care of the interior light, he thought. It didn’t have an on-off switch—it just came on no matter what. He leaned forward, felt around under the seat, and pulled the .22 pistol out from its hiding place. (Did it know it was always being stashed away?) Then he grabbed it by the barrel, and, closing his eyes, smashed the butt hard against the light on the ceiling. It was an awkward angle, and he had to do it three times. Whack, whack, whack. The first time nothing happened, and the second time he only cracked the fixture cover. But when he hit it a third time, the whole thing exploded, pieces of plastic and glass falling down onto his head and shoulders.
He climbed out of the car, pleased that he’d been so clever about the light. He must have seen someone do it once in a movie, but he wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember which one. But it made sense. You didn’t want a cop (or Derek Hano, for that matter) driving by and thinking, “Hey, why is someone sitting in his car out in the middle of that orchard?” The obvious assumption would be that it was kids smoking pot or drinking beer, and so a cop would be sure to pull in, check it out. And even with his planned excuse, Martin didn’t want to risk it.
He shut the door and walked back to the trunk. He was stumbling a little on the uneven clods of dirt, and realized that he shouldn’t have kept his alligator shoes on. They’d given him trouble the last time he’d been out here—why hadn’t he changed into his boat shoes?
He opened the trunk. Peering into the darkness, he spotted the shovel, and set it against the bumper of the car. Then he lifted out the metal box. It felt heavy—substantial.
It was dark, but the backyard lights from the Weavers’ house and the people who lived next to them, to Martin’s left (the Hermans), gave off just enough of a glow to allow him to see what he was doing. He walked about twenty feet, and then he picked a tree that was directly behind Miriam’s house, three rows back. He measured out from the tree the length of two shovels, aiming directly away from Miriam’s house; due east, he was pretty sure. Then he started digging.
Soon he was panting and sweating with the effort of pushing the shovel into the ground and moving spade after spade of dirt. The top layer was awkward because of the big chunks of hard dirt left from the most recent plow job. But once he was past this, it wasn’t too bad. It was good soil, not too dry or hard.
As he dug, he thought about pirates—Captain Kidd, Long John Silver, and the rest of them, burying their treasure along the Atlantic coast or in the Caribbean somewhere. He had a dim memory of reading Treasure Island at some point. Had he read it with Peter? Maybe an abridged version? He wasn’t sure. Anyway, he knew that he was too far inland for any self-respecting pirate. The ocean was forty or fifty miles away. But maybe he was a new kind of pirate. A suburban pirate. Yes, that was it—he was a new brand of outlaw, one who lived on the other side of the coastal hills. He stole from either the rich or other criminals—it didn’t matter to him. But like the pirates of old, he didn’t put his money into banks or other places where it might be traced. Because he was off the radar. He buried his money, and kept it safe from recessions, depressions, and all the other financial crises lurking out there. It would just be there in the ground, waiting for him, and whenever he needed some, he could go dig up his metal box—his treasure chest—and inside would be the solution to his troubles.
He dug for about fifteen minutes. He could’ve stopped sooner, but he wanted to make sure that he buried the box deep enough to really hide it. He didn’t want the blades of some plow to rip into it, open it, and let the moisture in. And he sure as hell didn’t want Hal Weaver’s kids to find it. Imagine that. First the guy inherits a steel mill, then he manages to land Miriam as his wife. And then, out of nowhere, one of his kids wanders into the house with a treasure chest full of money. “Guess I’m just lucky,” he’d say to Martin at one of their cocktail parties (if Martin ever managed to get himself invited to one of these again, that is).
When he was finished digging—or thought he was finished—he stepped into the hole. It came up to his thighs, almost. This will work, he thought. He set the box into the hole, climbed out, and worked quickly to fill it back up. When it was full, he very carefully picked up a bunch of large dirt clods like those covering the top layer of the orchard, and set them on top of the area he’d disturbed. This took longer than digging the hole itself, but that was okay. It’s all in the details, he thought.
The whole thing had taken less than an hour, probably only forty-five minutes. But he was exhausted. Sitting in his car, sweating, dirty, Martin took in the view from behind his street—from the east side of Miwok Drive. Most of the houses had lights on in the backyards, and in several of the yards people were outside, talking, laughing, listening to music. In two of the ones he could see, people were swimming in their pools. You could hear the kids splashing and yelling. At one house they were playing Marco Polo. It was all very pleasant and dreamy. Isn’t that what they’d paid for when they’d moved to the suburbs?
Actually, though, Martin thought, with the exception of the Weavers, he didn’t know anything about his neighbors. And certainly Martin’s family had never been invited over for any of these little backyard activities. No late-evening phone call with an offer to bring the kids over for a swim, we’ll have a drink. No, this was as close as he’d ever come to knowing any of them. And while, yes, they’d been invited to the Weavers a couple of times, they’d barely scratched the surface of any kind of real interaction.
Martin had a sudden urge to be in his own house. The one sitting just a few hundred yards away, down the street on Miwok Drive. He was dirty, his clothes were soiled and smelly, and he just wanted to feel the feel of his own house, even if only for a few minutes. Yes, Derek Hano might be sitting in the living room, waiting silently and patiently for Martin to come blundering in, but Martin didn’t care. Or at least he didn’t care enough to not want to take the chance. He really wanted to go home.
Plus, he did have a gun. It was only a .22, but he might be able to surprise Hano, and put a couple of slugs in him before he had a chance to react—before he had a chance to realize that Martin Anderson wasn’t fucking around, at least not when it came to some cocksucker breaking into his house and messing with his stuff, his furniture, his life. (He had a sudden, excruciating vision of Hano walking into his bedroom and discovering his Styrofoam heads and their fake hair. What would Hano think of that? Martin pictured him standing in the bedroom, pissed off. He’s searched the room, searched the whole house, but no money. He doesn’t l
ose his cool, though. Instead, he picks up one of Linda’s eyeliner things and draws a frowning face on one of Martin’s Styrofoam heads. That would be his warning to Martin. I’m not done, it would say.)
He started the car and, with his eyes fully adjusted to the darkness, negotiated his way back out of the orchard. He pulled out onto the frontage road, careful lest a cop was lurking. But all was quiet in Walnut Station, and he drove quickly back around to his street—took a left onto Muwekma Way, stopped at the four-way intersection of Muwekma and Miwok, and then drove toward his house, which was about a dozen houses up, on the right. He kept driving, barely glancing at it. Everything looked quiet enough. But of course he wasn’t sure. When he was well past his house, he turned around, pulled over, and parked.
He took a deep breath, made sure he had his gun securely in hand, and hopped out of the car. At least there wouldn’t be any glow from the interior light. He started to walk, realizing that no one actually walked around in this neighborhood, especially after dark. People didn’t even walk their dogs—and if they did they seemed odd. So he wondered if he was a bit conspicuous as he moved along. The street was pretty dark, and it was likely that no one could even see him (and that no one would have cared if they did). But he had a feeling that his effort to affect an ambling gate—just a guy out walking in his neighborhood—was transparent. Which was absurd, because he really was in his own neighborhood, just outside his own house. Had a cop stopped him, his story would have been pretty hard to challenge—better, even, than his planned alibi for being out in the orchard: “I live right there. See? That’s my house. What’s the problem?”
Martin walked quickly up the left side of his circular driveway (he liked the fact that he had this setup, thought that it set him apart from all the people with the boring, perpendicular driveways). Then, quietly (he remembered with relief that Arrow wasn’t around to bark), he undid the latch on the gate and slipped into the backyard. The house was dark, except for the light in the kitchen. It cast a dim glow out into the backyard, and reflected quietly off the water in the pool. It looked peaceful. Another peaceful aquatic setting out in Walnut Station.
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