by Marcus Sakey
His wife looked at him across the table, cocked her head. “You still hungry after all that?”
“I thought you might want something.”
“God, no. I couldn’t eat another bite. You’re going to have to roll me home.” She turned sideways, pushed her belly out. “See? I look like I’m four months pregnant.”
He glanced up fast, expecting to see her face falling. It happened all the time, people firing little jokes they didn’t realize had barbs. Sometimes, like now, it was even one of them who slipped. But the smile on her face didn’t curdle. She caught his look, said, “What?”
“I…” He spread his hands.
She shrugged, her eyes still bright. “I’m tired of everything being a minefield.” Held up her sake cup in a toast. “To us.”
He raised his. Started to clink, then stopped. “Anna…”
“Wait.” She leaned forward, tapped her glass to his, then drank it in a swallow. Set it down but didn’t release it, her fingertips rolling around the rim. She hesitated, then said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
His first thought was that she was pregnant. He’d often imagined how she would tell him, how she would probably tease her way into it, surprise him. But the way they’d been drinking, it couldn’t be that. He sipped his sake and waited.
“I want you to hear me out first, okay?” Her words echoing the ones he had planned to say himself.
“Sounds serious.”
“It is. It is and it isn’t. I guess that’s why I’ve been talking like an idiot all night. I’ve been afraid to tell you. It’s going to sound like a bad thing at first. But it’s not.”
Feeling nervous, he said, “Okay.”
She took a deep breath. Looked up from the table. “I lost my job.”
“What?”
Anna held up a finger. “Let me finish, okay?” She waited for him to nod, then continued. “You know I’ve been missing a lot of work. All the appointments and everything? Well, I guess today was the last straw. Lauren called this afternoon. She said she was sorry, but that she had been getting complaints from the client. The agency promised we’d deliver this quarter, but we’re way behind schedule. The truth is, that’s mostly because of client delays, but you can’t tell them that. Lauren needed to hang it on somebody, and I’d missed a lot of work, so…” Anna shrugged. “She picked me.”
“Wait. They can’t just fire you. Not without a warning.”
“She did warn me. A month ago.”
“You never told me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. We were in the midst of everything with the doctors, and I just didn’t want to talk about it.”
He didn’t like that she was keeping secrets, but let it go. “Still. You could go to HR-”
“Let me finish.” She twisted her napkin in her lap, then caught herself, folded it, put it on the table. “Tom, I wasn’t happy there. I haven’t been happy for a long time. I’m sick of advertising. I work so many hours, and for what? To dream about Excel spreadsheets? To convince people in Wichita to buy cheap jeans they don’t need?” She shook her head. “You made me realize that the other day.”
“Me?”
“When you said you missed us. Missed the way we used to be.” She looked at him, her eyes a bridge she invited him to cross. “You were right. I’ve been working too hard. We’ve been working too hard. But before, we couldn’t do anything about it. With the house, the medical bills, the credit cards – there was no way either of us could take a breath, much less try and figure out what we really wanted to do. Now…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t have to. The words rang in his head. Now that we have the money...
The same thought he’d had this morning, he realized. As he sat through his stupid meeting, taking a beating that wasn’t his, he’d found comfort in realizing that the money gave him an out. He hadn’t taken it, but then, he hadn’t been forced to.
“I’ll get another job,” she said. “I’m not saying I want to stay home and eat bonbons. But now I can take time, a little, to figure out what I want to do. Maybe teach, or go back to school for nursing. Something where the work matters, you know? Now that we’re okay financially, think how much better this could make everything. We’ll be able to spend more time together, to get back to being the people we want to be. You and me against the world. Like tonight.” She smiled, then reached across the table and laid her hand on his, slim fingers cool, the diamond on her ring alive in the candlelight. “It will even help us conceive. Stress is one of the big factors. If I’m happier, more relaxed, it’s going to make the odds better. This could turn everything around for us, baby.”
His head was a whirl. He understood everything she was saying. It all made perfect sense. He knew that she had stopped enjoying her job a long time ago, that she was doing it for the mortgage, and the health insurance, and the bills that came every week. They had both been sacrificing the present to the future.
And, man, how she glowed tonight. Smiled and laughed in a way that he had feared lost forever…
He thought of the man in the suit and his bodyguard. Of wet lips and white teeth and a big black gun. Of the call already placed to the detective, the message he couldn’t take back. He had to tell the truth. He had to. Even though it would kill her.
“What do you think?” Her face traced in candlelight, a hint of cheekbone, the delicate hollow of her throat. He remembered one time kissing that hollow, telling her he wanted to pitch a tent and spend the rest of his life there, and her laughing, laughing against him.
“Tom?” Her lips slightly parted, as if she were preparing to smile, or to cry.
“I think it’s great,” he said, and squeezed her hand.
12
THE LADDER WAS THIN and wobbly and impossibly tall, and he was at the top. The whole thing swayed with every breath, then swayed further when he tried to compensate. He smelled dust. Put his hands up to brace against the ceiling, but the motion only made the ladder lean further. A long, creaking shudder. The wood groaned. Everything started to topple. He scrabbled for purchase, fingers tracing slickness, straining to hold, but the weight was too much, and the ladder tipped, falling toward the surrounding dark.
And as it went, as he lost all hope, as his calves and the inside of his pelvis shivered with the electric anticipation of falling, and even as his body tumbled free, deep inside and delineated by fear, Tom Reed felt something like relief.
His eyes snapped open. The pillowcase was wet, and Anna was beside him, her breath faintly sour with sleep. He took a breath, flipped the pillow, and turned on his side.
Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.
After dinner, they’d grabbed a cab. Anna had taken his hand and held it the whole ride, smiling to herself. He’d opened the window, and the rush of air and blur of lights and pressure of her hand had combined to allow him to forget everything but sensation. A moment outside of time, and for the brief ride home, he let himself soak in it.
But after they trudged up the steps and opened the door, the alarm had given its quick succession of beeps, and every fear had tumbled back into his head. They brushed their teeth and fell into bed, too tired and buzzed to talk or make love, and she had drifted off almost immediately.
For him, sleep didn’t come so easy. He lay staring at the ceiling, trying to think of a way out. A way to keep the money and lose the bad guys and have the life they wanted, simple and happy and complete. He replayed the conversation with the man in the suit a hundred times. Each time, he almost woke Anna to tell her everything; each time, he decided against it. It wasn’t about deception. Tom just wanted to make everything right first. Between the pregnancy attempts, and the break-in, and now her job, she had enough on her mind. He’d tell her when he’d figured out what to do.
He stared and thought and wished he still smoked. His mind seemed to be working in circles, slow orbits around wet lips and white teeth and a big black gun. Around a threat, and a promise, and a h
ope. Around a voice-mail message. Around a tomorrow approaching too quickly.
Sometime after three, it had come to him. A possible way out. So simple he’d overlooked it; the truth, of all things. More or less. He’d slipped into a shallow sleep broken by dreams of falling.
It took most of the day to get hold of Detective Halden. They traded voice mails until nearly three o’clock. When they did finally connect, Halden suggested that Tom come by the station. They could have a cup of the world’s worst coffee, he said, and talk in one of the interview rooms.
“I’m in for the coffee,” Tom said, “but could we meet halfway? There’s a Starbucks on the corner of North and Wells. I need to talk as soon as possible.” A partial truth; he did want to talk soon, but he also didn’t want to do it in a police station, on the cop’s home court.
The coffee shop had that standardized coziness, the same anywhere in the country. Tom supposed that was one of the comforts of chains, but it was one of the horrors too. Soon there’d be no point going anywhere. He ordered a coffee, no whipped cream, no flavored syrup, no caramel, just coffee, in a large cup – did anybody actually feel more international by saying “venti” instead of “large”? – and took a seat at a corner table by the window.
Halden arrived a few minutes later. He nodded at Tom, then got a coffee of his own, sweeping back his jacket to reveal his silver star. The girl at the register smiled, and Tom noticed she didn’t charge him.
“Mr. Reed.”
“Detective. Thanks for coming.”
The cop sat down, crossed his legs ankle-on-knee, and sipped at his cup. He didn’t start firing questions, just leaned back and let Tom take his time.
Remember, you’re scared and confused and have nothing to hide. It wasn’t a hard role to play. Two of the three were dead accurate. “I’ll get right to it. Someone is threatening my wife and me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I was having lunch yesterday, and this guy I’ve never seen before sat down, started talking. He knew my name, and my wife’s. And he asked me if I loved her.”
Halden ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek. “Your names were in the paper.”
“It gets worse.” Tom paused. “He was part of the Shooting Star robbery.”
The cop leaned forward. “How do you know that?”
“He bragged about it.” Tom gave it a minute, let the lie – not lie, exaggeration – sink in. “He said that some men had cost him face. He said that Will Tuttle was one of them. He said that because I had sheltered his enemy, I was now an enemy myself.”
“ ‘Sheltered his enemy’? He say it that way?”
“Yeah. He had a story that led up to it, about Genghis Khan. I think he was trying to scare me.” Tom took a sip of coffee, went back to that moment, the man saying Anna’s name, that she was lovely. “It worked. I’m scared shitless. He had a guy with him that looked like a gangster, big guy with a gun.”
“He drew a gun?”
“No. Just let me see it in his holster.”
The detective nodded slowly, his face giving nothing away. “What then?”
“He said that I had to pick a side. That the men who had done the robbery had taken some of his merchandise. He didn’t say what, I assume drugs. That’s what the papers have been saying. Anyway, he said it was in my house, and that if I didn’t give it to him, he would kill us both.” Another helpful exaggeration, the more-or-less version of the truth.
“This was yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“At lunch, you said.”
“Right.”
“So why did you wait to call me?”
Tom sighed, shrugged. Looked at his fingers tracing shapes on the table. “I thought maybe if I found what he was looking for, he’d just leave us alone. I went home and tore the place apart.”
“And?”
“If it was there in the first place, then whoever broke in earlier this week took it. The other bad guys.” He shook his head, put on his best victim expression. This was the moment he had to sell through. “Detective, I don’t know what to do. We’re normal people. All of a sudden we have drug dealers and murderers coming after us. My wife is terrified. So am I. We need help.”
Yesterday, when Tom had left the first message for Halden, his plan had been to come clean. Give up the money and beg for help. It had seemed the only way. But as he’d lain in bed last night, he’d remembered that the drug dealer didn’t know about the money, or didn’t know that Tom and Anna had it, at least. All he wanted from Tom was his drugs back – and that was an opportunity.
It was risky, bringing in the police. It would certainly count as choosing sides in the drug dealer’s mind. And if Halden decided to take a close look at them, he might come across the bills they’d paid. All of Anna’s predictions about bankruptcy and even jail time might come true.
But the man in the suit had already made it clear he was willing to kill them. Going to the cops couldn’t make it worse. Besides, Tom had just handed the detective a lead on Chicago’s highest-profile robbery in years. It was misdirection, sure, but it was essentially accurate. It would put them on the right trail. And so long as the cops were following the bad guys, they couldn’t be looking too hard at the good ones.
Halden gestured with the coffee cup. “This man, he tell you his name?”
“No.”
“How were you supposed to contact him?”
“He gave me a business card.” Tom took it from his back pocket, set it on the table. He’d stared at the number so long he had it memorized, suspected he’d know it in twenty years. “He said to call. To do it soon, or he would… hurt… Anna.” The worse he made the guy seem, the more time pressure he applied, the better it was for them. “Can you get his name from the phone number?”
Halden shook his head. “I doubt it. It’ll probably be a disposable.” The cop leaned forward to pick up the business card, holding it by the edge. Looked at it for a long moment. Then he said, “You know, when I got your message, I thought maybe you had something else to tell me.”
Tom held himself steady. He’d gone round and round trying to remember exactly what he had said. “What do you mean?”
“You mentioned you’d been thinking about what I said.”
“That these were bad men? That’s why I called.”
“No, what I said as I left.”
“What was that?”
Halden’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t jerk me around.”
“I’m not.”
The detective sipped his coffee, set the cup down. “Mr. Reed, by now you’re starting to understand the type of people involved in this. These aren’t forgiving guys. You don’t want to mess with them. If you’ve got anything to tell me, anything at all, now would be a good time. Maybe your last chance.” Halden stared, letting the moment hang. Tom’s palms were wet. The little kid inside of him, ever afraid of punishment, wanted to give in, to just tell the truth. To fall off the ladder and bask in the relief of falling.
But what he said was “Detective, I didn’t know what you were talking about then, and I don’t now. All I know is that someone is after me and my wife. And we need your help. Please.”
The cop stared at him, gaze level. Didn’t blink, didn’t look away. Finally he said, “What else can you tell me about this guy?”
They talked for another half hour, Halden having him run through it again and again. Tom had expected that, and kept his story to almost exactly what happened. Where the drug dealer had been smooth and professional, his violence implied, Tom made him rougher, meaner, more explicit. Other than that, he recounted every detail: the cut and color of the man’s suit, the Rolex he wore loose on his left wrist, the manner of his speech, his “associate” Andre, even the story about Genghis Khan. He remembered the names the guy had asked about, Jack Witkowski and Marshall Richards, and thought he saw something quicken behind the cop’s eyes.
Halden took it all down in the same binder he’d used in their kitc
hen, precise handwriting flowing from a gold pen. Finally he said, “Okay.”
“What will happen?”
“I’ll run this up the flagpole and get back to you as soon as possible.”
“But what-”
“I’m not sure yet, Mr. Reed. If this guy was involved in the Shooting Star, he’s going to be a top priority. My guess is that we’ll set a trap for him, maybe ask you to call him and say that you found his product. You’d be willing to do that?”
Tom had anticipated that, but made sure to hesitate visibly before saying, “Yes. If that would mean you catch him.”
“It may. I’ll be back in touch with you soon, probably later today. Keep your cell phone on.”
“What about us?”
“Why don’t you and your wife check into a hotel? It won’t be more than a night or two.”
“What if he finds us?” No need to fake the concern in his voice.
“He won’t.” Halden set down the cup, adjusted his tie. “He knew your names because he read a paper. He probably staked out your house, followed you to work, then waited for you to go to lunch. Supervillains are comic book stuff. This guy just has a Tribune subscription.”
Tom nodded slowly. “I guess we could use the rest.”
“There you go. Pamper yourself. Pamper that wife of yours.”
They stood up, Detective Halden passing him another business card, telling him to call immediately if anything more occurred, his tone stern. Tom nodded, shook hands, and they walked out together. Halden was dialing his cell phone even before he opened the door to his pale blue Crown Vic. Tom smiled.
The risk had paid off. The promise of closing the Shooting Star case was too tasty an opportunity for Halden to miss. It was a sexy case, the kind of thing that would no doubt earn him a lot of credit. Like anybody else, Halden wanted to move up. He’d be focusing on the drug dealer, working his bosses, trying to set a trap as quickly as possible. It would keep his attention where it belonged.
Feeling ten pounds lighter, Tom dug out his own cell phone.
“Hey, baby,” she answered.