“Just tell me what you want,” Carpington said to me. “You said you didn’t want money before, but maybe you’ve changed your mind. I can get you some.”
“Maybe you’ve saved up some of those weekly payments that are recorded in that ledger,” I said, pulling two sets of handcuffs from my pocket. I grabbed his wrist and slapped one cuff on it while Earl held his gun up to discourage anyone from making any objections. With his left hand, he took his cigarette out of his mouth and tapped some ashes onto the floor.
I forced Carpington’s hand behind his back, brought his other arm around, and cuffed his wrists together like I’d been doing this all my life. I felt a little rush.
“You’re not doing that to me,” Greenway said as I rounded the desk with the other pair.
“Maybe if you’d fixed my fucking shower I’d be feeling a little more kindly,” I said. I reached for his wrist and he drew back.
“Keep away from me!” he said. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Neither do you,” Earl said, and fired off a round into the site plan that hung on the wall behind Greenway.
The shot was deafening and caught me as much by surprise as it did our two prisoners. I felt the blast ring in my ears. Greenway jolted back into his chair and Carpington slunk down in his. With his hands cuffed, he couldn’t stop his slide and went right to the floor.
“Jesus Christ, Earl!” I shouted. “What the hell you doing?”
“Getting their attention,” he said calmly. “Mr. Greenway, would you be kind enough to let my associate here put some handcuffs on you?”
Greenway grudgingly obliged, then settled himself back into his leather business chair, trying to look as though having his hands trapped behind him didn’t detract from his dignity in any way.
“Now,” said Earl, “I need your car keys.”
“Huh?” Greenway said.
“What?” Carpington said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m going to move their cars around back, and the truck. Best that no one thinks anyone’s here, and that means it’s less likely that Rick is going to be dropping by.”
Anything that might keep Rick from showing up sounded like a good idea to me. Carpington and Greenway indicated which pockets held their keys, and I got them out. “Why don’t I do that while you keep them covered?” I suggested.
Earl shook his head, handed the gun over to me in exchange for the keys. “You watch them.”
The gun was warm. I didn’t know whether that was from Earl holding it, or the fact that it had just been fired. My pulse raced as I wrapped my fingers around it.
“Uh, the safety?” I said to Earl. “Which way is the safety supposed to go?”
He rolled his eyes. I knew what he was thinking. This was not the way to inspire fear in your captives. First, I was scared shitless when he fired the gun, and now I needed a tutorial in its operation. “It’s off now. That way, if one of them does something stupid, you can blow their fucking heads off.”
“Sure,” I said. I raised the gun up, moved it around, got the feel of it. Now Greenway and Carpington looked even more nervous, especially when the gun swung in their direction. They must have thought that their chances of being killed had risen exponentially now that the weapon had passed from Earl to me. It wasn’t that I appeared more ruthless. On the contrary. But everything about me screamed incompetence. I made a special effort not to point the gun at either of them. I was as worried about my incompetence as they were.
Earl said he’d be back in a couple of minutes.
“Who’s your friend?” Greenway asked once he heard the main door close.
“Just another happy resident of Valley Forest Estates,” I said, waving the gun about, trying to look casual with it. “So what brings you all out here tonight?”
“We’re having a meeting,” Greenway said. “And we’re expecting someone. You might be smart to finish up your business and get out of here before he shows up.”
“Who would that be? Rick?”
“I think he’s out looking for you right now. He’s very upset with you.”
“You should see my car,” I said, and Greenway just looked at me, not understanding. “He seems like a guy who could benefit from some anger management classes. But then, I guess if he were well behaved, he wouldn’t have gotten the job of killing Sam Spender for you, or Stefanie.”
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do, and that’s why my friend and I decided to pay you a visit tonight, to find out what you do know. Because I have to tell you, it’s very much in my interest to know as much as possible.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with those murders!” Carpington said, struggling to get back up off the floor and into his chair.
Headlight beams swept past the office window. Earl was moving the Caddy around back.
“So if it’s not Rick coming by this evening, who is it?” I asked. “Let me guess. It’s the famous Mr. Benedetto. He’s heard about how much you guys have fucked things up out here and he’s coming to assess the situation.”
Their silence said everything.
Finally, Greenway said, “I have a question, if you don’t mind.”
“Shoot,” I said, then regretted the choice of word as I caught my reflection in the window. I saw a man who looked remarkably like me, but holding a gun, trying to put some fear into a couple of slimeballs. I had no idea who this person was. And I could not believe that he was composing sentences in his head that contained words like “slimeballs.”
“Just who the hell are you and what business of yours is any of this?”
It was a good question, no doubt about it. And one that would take, if you were to do it properly, too long to answer. I said, “I sort of stumbled into all this, but now that I’m in it, I need to know as much about it as I can before I get out. My questions will probably be easier to answer than Mr. Benedetto’s. What’s he going to think when he gets out here and finds the two of you handcuffed, the ledger missing, the negatives gone, plus a few thousand in cash-”
“That money meant nothing,” Greenway said.
“I guess not,” I said. “Since it was fake. Is that the machine”-I pointed to the one outside Greenway’s office door-“you used to print the stuff?”
“Look,” said Greenway, “it wasn’t something we did very often. Just when our cash flow was a bit down. Stefanie, I don’t know what was up with her, sounds like she printed up a ton of the stuff before she decided to make a run for it.”
Carpington said, “Fake? You were printing fake money?”
Greenway rolled his eyes. “No, Roger. We were printing real money. We got a franchise from the Mint.”
“So you were paying me in counterfeit funds?” He was aghast. Imagine, buying a councilman’s vote with bogus cash. Was that ethical?
“Not all of it, just the odd bill here and there. Look, you got to buy stuff, people accepted it, what are you worried about?”
“Why was Stefanie making a run for it?” I asked.
Greenway almost looked sad. “I don’t know. I treated her well. Gave her one of our houses to live in.”
“She needed a place to conduct your business. She fucks Carpington on your orders, he’s happy and votes for your development. Plus, there’s the added bonus of the hidden camera, so if he blabs, you’ve got something to show his wife and kids.”
If Carpington had had his hands free, he’d have put them over his eyes and wept. I turned to him as another set of headlights swept past the window. Earl was hiding the second car.
“Isn’t that about it, Roger? A little sex, a little cash, plus the occasional romp in the trunk with Quincy, and you’d vote any way he wanted you to?”
He nodded, his eyes moistening.
“Plus, you knew about Spender, that Rick smashed his skull in down by the creek. And if Greenway could order Rick to do that, he could just as easily order him to do it
to you.”
Carpington swallowed hard. “I’ve been scared out of my mind for so long. I took the money, I, I slept with Stefanie. But I swear to God, I just wanted it all to end somehow, if I could just find a way that it wouldn’t ruin me and my family, or hurt my chances of being elected mayor.”
Where was this guy from? Neptune?
“You know, Roger,” I said, “I think this is the sort of thing, that if it all came out in the open, might work against you in a mayoral campaign.”
“Listen,” said Greenway, thinking, looking for a way out. “What if we give you Rick?”
“Pardon?”
“We say it was Rick who did these things, killed Spender and Stefanie, but we didn’t know anything about it.”
“So you know he killed Stefanie, too?”
Greenway shrugged. “You’ve seen him in action. You know what a hothead he is. Who wouldn’t believe it was him? But you leave us out of it. You let us go about our business. I could make it worth your while.”
I said, “Would you fix my shower? And do something about the caulking around my bedroom window?”
“Of course. We’d make everything right. I’ll send in a team. We’ll fix your place up, give you some more upgrades you opted not to get when you purchased. What about a pool? We could put in a pool for you.”
“Well,” I said, appearing to consider his offer, “it’s awfully tempting, but I’d really rather see the whole lot of you go to jail.”
“No!” Carpington said. “Let me make a deal! I’ll tell you everything! Just don’t let them send me to jail! I wasn’t the only one either! There are other politicians, from other towns.”
“Roger!” Greenway bellowed. “Shut up!” And he rose up, a somewhat wobbly action since he didn’t have his hands available to push himself out of the chair, and started coming around the desk toward Carpington. It looked as though he was going to try to kick him. “Shut up!”
“Sit down!” I shouted. I mean, really shouted. I thought, for a moment, that maybe Earl had returned, that it was him giving the order, but then realized the two words had come from me. I raised the gun, pointed it in Greenway’s general direction, but not right at him, still not trusting myself.
Just as well, too. It went off.
My best guess is, when I shouted, every muscle in my body tensed, including the one in the finger that was on the trigger. I thought squeezing off a shot would require more pressure, more deliberation, but nope. One moment, things in the office were, relatively speaking, calm, and the next, there was a huge hole in Greenway’s desk.
“Oh shit, I’m so sorry,” I said.
Greenway jumped back, fell into the wall. Carpington screamed. The door burst open. Earl shouted, “What’s happened?”
I stood there, gun in hand but pointed now at the floor, and said, “I shot the desk.”
I felt I had not made sufficient apologies to Greenway. “Really, I’m very sorry, I’ll pay for any damages. I really didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Earl took the gun from my hand. “Looks like I got back here just in time.”
I surrendered the weapon without hesitation. Earl took the half-inch of cigarette from between his lips, exhaled, and said to Greenway and Carpington, “I think I just saved your lives.”
“Thank you,” Carpington said. “Thank you so much.”
To me, Earl said, “Their cars are around back, and I was just about to hide my truck when I heard the shot. You about done here?”
“I think so,” I said.
Outside, we heard the familiar sound of tires crunching on gravel. Earl slipped back into the main part of the office that was still in darkness and peered through the blinds.
“What kind of car does Rick drive?” he called out.
“A little sedan,” I said. “Import, four-door.”
“No, this ain’t Rick then. It’s a big Beemer. Seven series.”
Greenway said, quietly, as though resigned to some terrible fate, “That would be Mr. Benedetto.”
“The more the merrier,” said Earl, who moved into position behind the door. When the first knock came, Earl swung the door in, held the barrel of the gun to Benedetto’s nose, and said, “Won’t you come in?”
He had a larger-than-life quality about him. Tall, broad, heavyset, immaculately dressed in a dark suit and expensive overcoat. Silver hair, wire-rimmed glasses, big bushy eyebrows. His mouth was wide and turned down at the ends. He didn’t blink when Earl shoved the gun in his face, and he stepped into the Valley Forest Estates sales offices calmly.
Greenway called out from his office, “Mr. Benedetto! I can explain! We’re just having a bit of a situation here.”
I stepped out of his office. “Hi, Mr. Benedetto. I’ve heard a lot about you. And my friend and I would love to stay and chat, but we’ve pretty much finished conducting our business here.”
While Earl kept the gun on him, I went back to Greenway. “Where’s my phone?” I asked him.
For a moment, my question didn’t seem to register. Then he recalled grabbing it at the construction site. “Desk drawer,” he said. “Top right.”
I looked inside and sure enough, there it was. I slipped it into my jacket pocket. “Good night, gentlemen,” I said.
“Hey,” said Carpington, trying to show me his cuffed wrists. “What about a key?”
I shrugged, smiled. “It’ll just save the cops the trouble when they get here.” And I walked out, past Benedetto, Earl following me. We ran to his truck and got inside, backing out of the lot and heading up the street.
“What about Benedetto?” asked Earl. “Should we have used our last set of cuffs on him?”
I shrugged. “I think we’ve got what we need, regardless of whether he’s walking around free.”
I took a couple of deep breaths, and then, out of nowhere, started making whooping noises.
“Whoa! Jesus! Did you see us in there? Were we bad?”
“We were bad,” Earl said.
“We were baaad!”
“Sure,” he said, lighting up. “We were bad.”
“We were some bad motherfuckers, weren’t we?” I slapped the dashboard. I felt like we’d just walked out of a scene in Pulp Fiction. “I can’t believe we went in there, pushed them around, got some information. We kicked ass, didn’t we?”
Earl nearly smiled. “Yeah, kicked ass. Nearly killed them, too, you dumb fuck.”
We drove along in silence for a moment. I realized we were heading out of the neighborhood, nowhere in particular, it seemed.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“Hey, you’re the navigator. I just wanted to get us away from there. I thought maybe we needed a drink or something.”
“No,” I said. “No. I gotta finish dealing with this. I think I’m ready to go to the cops. I’ve got what I need.”
Earl nodded thoughtfully. “There’s a couple of things,” he said.
“Okay.”
“First, I’d appreciate it if you could keep me out of this. I was happy to help you out tonight, but maybe you can find a way to keep from mentioning my presence to the authorities. I don’t want them coming by and asking a lot of questions. I’ve got a business to run.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do what I can. I guess it depends on how much Greenway and Carpington say. They’ll probably have enough to worry about without filing any sort of charges about our busting into their offices.”
“I expect. And there’s something else, that can’t come from me, since I’d like to keep a low profile.”
“What?”
“When you call the cops, you might want to suggest to them that they check those clowns’ cars. I noticed, when I was moving them, there’s a lot of shit in those cars, books and files and stuff. Might be just the thing they’re looking for.”
I nodded. “Sure, I’ll be happy to pass that along.”
“You want me to drop you at the police station?” he asked.
I thought. “No. There
’s a street behind ours, where I parked Stefanie Knight’s Beetle. I’ll pick it up, drive it over to the police station, get them to give me a ride home later.”
“Sounds good.”
He turned around, headed back to our neighborhood, and pulled up alongside the Volkswagen. As I opened the door, I said, “Thanks, Earl. You didn’t have to do this.”
“S’okay. Just remember to do what I told you.”
I nodded, slammed the truck door shut, and, as Earl drove off into the night, reached into my jeans for the VW keys. I got into the car, fired it up, and decided to check that my cell phone was on.
I dug it out of my pocket and saw that Greenway had turned it off, not keen to have to take my messages, I guess. I watched the tiny screen as the phone became activated, searched for a signal. And then: “You have 4 new messages.”
I could guess who they were from. Before I went to the police station, I thought I’d better give Sarah a call at work. It was time to come clean. She was going to be pissed, I knew that, but there was going to be no way to keep all this from her once the police were involved.
Without bothering to check the messages, I called her extension at work.
A male voice answered. Not Dan. Thank God. “City.”
“Sarah Walker, please.”
“Not here. Can I take a message?”
“It’s her husband. She go home in the middle of her shift?”
“Some emergency. Had to go home.”
And I thought, What if that was her who phoned when I was hiding out in the construction site? And when a strange voice answered-Greenway’s-and said I was unavailable? What would she have thought? Especially when she was unable to raise me, or the kids, at home?
Shit.
“Thanks,” I said, and then, as soon as I’d ended the call, I realized the gravity of what Sarah’s colleague had just said to me. Sarah had gone home. To the one place where I’d felt, all night, it was unsafe to return.
I started to key in our home number when the phone rang shrilly. I nearly dropped it. I pressed the green button and put the phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Zack?” Sarah.
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