Stinking Rich

by Rob Brunet

  “I had but no time to get hold o’ this sucker. You said git a motorcycle and that’s what I did.”

  “If you want to call it that.” Perko shook his head in disgust. “Never mind. It’s not like we’re gonna be in a fucking parade.”

  “Right. No parade. What are we doing?”

  Perko answered by handing the kid the satchel. Inside was a bundle the size of a cigar box, wrapped in meat paper.

  “What’s this?”

  “Dynamite.”

  Jonah fondled the package, grinning.

  “The fuse and instructions are in there,” said Perko, pointing at the satchel. “You can read, can’t you?”

  “’Course I can.”

  “Good. Watch out for the black and green wires. They’re the ones you can’t afford to get messed up. Everything else is pretty straightforward.”

  “Jes’ what is it you want me to blow up with this here dy-no-mite?”

  “Not what. Who.”

  “Who? What? You want I should kill some-un fer ya? What are ya, nuts?”

  “You get all coochie-cooed with them chicks I sent to your room?” Perko had set him up at Aunt Helena’s Mexican Restaurant and Motel.

  “Uh-huh.” Jonah drooled.

  “You want to see them again someday?”

  “Ooohhh yeah.”

  “Then read the damn instructions. Make sure you know the drill. Especially the remote. Then wait till I let you know where and when to plant ’em. You pull it off, I can promise you a lot more of what you had today.”

  Jonah gulped and nodded like a child. He took the satchel Perko handed him and put the package back in it before tying it to the back of the yellow bike with a bungee cord.

  “Go back to the hotel. The Pay TV’s all taken care of. Wait for my call.” Perko handed Jonah a prepaid mobile phone.

  “What about if I git hungry?”

  “Room service. Just don’t order Mount Saint Helena’s Nachos.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trust me.”

  Twenty-Three

  Well past midnight, Danny pedaled to the rise above Ernie’s cabin. He had taken the bicycle from the back of the RV and said good-bye to Granny. She’d agreed to drive due south—and fast—to lead the cops away from his true destination.

  “Heck, maybe they won’t catch me,” she’d said before waving and speeding off. “Imagine Dickhead’s face if I stole this rig for real.”

  It had taken all day and all night for Danny to cover the remaining ground. Although he’d bulked up behind bars, prison was the very definition of a sedentary lifestyle. At least the bike had one of those cool water bottles. He kept it refilled at Tim Hortons outlets along the way.

  Granny had insisted he put on a pair of Dickhead’s racing pants but he drew the line at the neon blue and yellow spandex top. He’d stuck with the ever dirtier Woody Woodpecker. No one gave him so much as a second look. One cop had even flashed his lights, friendly-like, when he passed Danny on a bridge.

  Coasting down the final hill, he stretched his legs out to either side as if flying. It’s all been worth it, he thought. He could have whooped like a victorious child, but the last thing he needed now was to wake one of Ernie’s neighbors. He rolled silently onto the wooded lot and leaned the bike against a tree trunk.

  Staring at the charred remnants of Ernie’s former home, Danny felt a stab of sadness for the old man; somehow, he knew, he was responsible for his death. He shrugged it off as soon as he spotted a long-handled spade leaning against a tree. Things were going his way. Lighting a Marlboro from Dickhead’s pack—a parting gift from Granny—he looked around the once-familiar lot.

  That fateful night, before running the three-wheeler off the cliff, Danny’s options had been few. His first thought had been to conceal the bag of cash in the woodpile, but he would have made one hell of a ruckus restacking enough logs to cover it, and Ernie would have been sure to hear. The garden shed which was joined to the main cabin by a breezeway had been padlocked, so that was out. The fact the shed was locked also meant he couldn’t even get his hands on a shovel to do a rough temporary burial. Never mind that it had been just a day and a half since he and Terry had buried Lester; digging another hole in the stone-infested Kawartha ground was the last thing Danny felt like doing that night.

  Then he had noticed the outhouse. It stood between the cabin and the road, nestled among three maple saplings for shade and screening. Although nearly three feet long, the satchel was less than twelve inches square at either end—small enough to squeeze down the toilet. He lifted the seat and stuffed the bag through the hole, listening to it drop with a thud onto the pile of shit below. The bag was brown, the hole was dark, and the outhouse smelled pretty much like any other. Danny scooped a couple of trowels full of lime from Ernie’s barrel and sprinkled them over the bag. His stash would be safe from cops and dogs alike until morning, he had told himself. He was right about that, as it turned out. And had he not sparked up that fateful joint in the donut-hole bedecked Timmies trailer, sending smoke signals out to the pack of police dogs, he would never have been caught and thrown in jail.

  This time, Danny vowed, no more stupid mistakes. All he had to do was dig up the money and disappear. He gave the outhouse a little shove; it wouldn’t budge. Ramming the head of the shovel beneath the two-by-four foundation, he leaned on the handle with all his weight to pry it loose from the ground. The damp two-by-four structure creaked as he put his shoulder into it. He pushed the tiny building back on its heels until it was propped up against a poplar tree that stood behind it for that very purpose.

  Immediately, the shit pit stench rose up to greet him and made him grateful for the darkness. If he didn’t breathe too deeply, he could pretend it wasn’t night soil he was digging. He piled the mess onto the ferns that grew next to the outhouse and marveled at how much shit one man could produce. Lucky thing Ernie had lived alone.

  It took half an hour of digging for Danny’s shovel to strike the first stone. The hole was more than three feet deep. His back muscles knotted and he still hadn’t unearthed the bag. He figured the satchel must have shifted to one side or the other, so he squared off his digging to the full perimeter of the pit. He went at it for another twenty minutes, telling himself shovelful by painful shovelful that the next one would hit pay-dirt. But when Danny had reached bottom from edge to edge to edge, and there was still no sign of treasure, he hurled the shovel at a tree and stumbled across the yard to where he had left the stolen bicycle.

  Trembling from exertion, he flopped down in front of an oak trunk and lit a cigarette. The smoke curling around his face and hair wasn’t near strong enough to mask the smell of composting excrement.

  He didn’t realize he was crying until he wiped his face with a grimy hand and felt fresh tears mix with the sticky sweat on his cheeks. His shoulders started to shake, setting off a full body tremor as the perspiration on his back evaporated into the cool autumn night. The shivering made the cigarette heater dance where he held it propped on his right knee—a blurry red smear that lurched with every sob.

  He’d blown it. Again. Instead of collecting his payday and celebrating his self-determined early release, Danny was now an escaped con with no cash and nowhere to go. His chest ached and he gagged on a drag from the cigarette, smoke burning his nostrils even as the warm nicotine rush rubbed the edge off his shakes.

  What the hell had happened?

  Could Ernie have discovered the satchel? Impossible! The man’s vision was so weak, he couldn’t even make out his own hand in front of his face unless it was wearing a bright orange glove. And there was no way the cops had found his loot. For the past four years Danny had lived in fear of them pulling him into a prison interrogation room to tell him they had found the cash and were going to use it to link him to the grow op and keep him locked up for an extra few years. They never did.

  He stubbed out one cigarette and mindlessly lit another. What now? His grand plan, his permanent freedom, his
ticket to Margaritaville—dashed and destroyed, leaving him with nothing but one big pile of crap. A spandex-clad fugitive on a ten-speed. Or a thirty-six speed, or whatever the fuck.

  A screen door slam across the road jerked him out of his pity party. He heard a woman’s voice call out, “You stay close, Wort. Just do your business and back on inside to bed.”

  Danny rolled to the ground beside the oak tree and pressed himself flat. He listened as a dog snuffled toward him, kicking up leaves along the way. After years of nightmares involving canine predators, Danny was in no mood to face a real dog in the dark. Belly to the ground, he tried to slither into the underbrush, praying the poison ivy wouldn’t be active this late in the fall.

  When he heard the dog growl and let out a single low bark, he realized how close it had come; he pushed himself to his knees, wondering if he could outrun it on the bike. Remembering how Shooter had once chased him in his car, he decided to stand and fight. He bent to the ground and felt around for a stick, coming up with nothing better than a fallen branch with leaves still attached. Where was a good baseball bat when you needed one?

  He clenched the branch in his shaking fist as he more sensed than saw the dog continue toward him. The mutt growled steadily.

  “Get lost,” Danny hissed, hoping like hell he could frighten the dog without raising his voice. He backed away slowly, waving the branch in front of him. He still couldn’t see the damn dog.

  “Wort, baby,” the woman’s voice called out again. “Where you going, Wort? Yoo-hoo. Wortie-boy. Home, Wort. C’mon back to bed. Wort?”

  Danny listened, feet rooted to the ground, and stopped waving the branch. The dog paused, too, snuffled as if tormented, then began to growl again. To Danny, it sounded angrier than before.

  Without warning, the dog leapt at the extended branch, barking madly. By the time Danny realized the fluff ball was small enough to strangle with his bare hands, the woman from across the street was charging over with one of those 100-watt flashlights.

  The dog had latched onto the branch and wasn’t letting go. Danny held his arm fully extended, the dog dangling like a fish, jerking itself back and forth as it tried to wrest the prize from his grasp.

  “I’m sorry, mister. He just loves to play. He’s a Leo. Lotsa Lhasas are. Wort, you let go now.”

  Danny dropped the branch and stared dumbfounded into the harsh glare of the flashlight.

  Upon hitting the ground, the dog stood up and gave its head a good shake. It whimpered a bit and pulled the branch over to where the woman had stopped a few steps short of Danny.

  “Do you mind pointing that thing somewhere else?” he asked, shielding his eyes with his hand.

  “Sure. I mean...No. What’s going on here, anyway?” She kept the flashlight pointed straight at him.

  “I...uh...I’m just...” Danny wiped his nose on his sleeve, his mind racing to come up with a plausible lie. He said, “This is Ernie’s place, right?”

  “Uh-huh. So?”

  “Well, I, uh, see, I heard there was a fire here. Thought I should see if he’s alright.”

  “The fire was last Tuesday,” the woman said. She kept flashing the light from side to side then bringing it back to Danny, as though she was trying to make sure he was alone. “Ernie is dead.”

  “Okay. Geez, that’s too bad. Well, I guess I should be...”

  She cut him off. “What on earth is that god-awful smell?”

  “That what? Oh...”

  Danny realized his nostrils had gone numb. Glancing down at himself, he saw his shit-smeared outfit was covered in bits of leaves and twigs. He looked as though he’d been dipped in molasses and rolled in All-Bran. “Uh, sorry. I think that’s me you smell.”

  “What is it? Manure? If it is, I think your cow might be sick or something.”

  “It’s uh...it’s from...”

  “Wait! You’re with that creepy lawyer, aren’t you? She sent you, didn’t she?”

  “What? Who? What lawyer?”

  “Don’t you play games with me, MISTER,” the woman said. The dog named Wort said grrrrrr and sneezed. “What the hell are you people looking for?”

  “Listen, lady. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just need to get my stuff. Something that belongs to me. What’s it to you, anyway? This ain’t your property, is it?” Danny shifted a little to the left, hoping her flashlight wouldn’t illuminate the upended outhouse forty feet away.

  “What’s it to me? What is it to me? It’s the middle of the night—THAT’S WHAT IT IS. I don’t know who you think you are, mucking around in the ashes where a wonderful man burned to death. People poking around here every day and now you and—”

  Wort growled, a snout full of tiny teeth bared in Danny’s direction.

  “Even my dog is upset. That’s what’s it to ME, MISTER.”

  The flashlight danced as the woman shook with anger.

  “I’m just a guy who lost some stuff. No big deal,” Danny wheedled. “And Ernie—the guy who lived here—he was my friend, too.”

  “Oh, so now you’re a friend of Ernie’s? You expect me to believe that?”

  “We go way back.”

  “Then how come I’ve never seen you before. It’s not like Ernie had a lot of visitors, you know.”

  “It’s been a while. I’ve been sort of tied up.” He needed to calm this woman down, get her to leave him alone, let him figure out what to do next. The shit-bedecked spandex was starting to get itchy. He scratched his thigh. He said, “I know Terry, too.”

  “Terry who?”

  “Terry Miner. The fireman. I read in the newspaper how he helped put out this fire here. Saved someone’s dog, I think. Yeah, that’s it. He’s a hero or something. Good friend of mine.” The flashlight was getting steadier.

  “The fireman Terry?”

  “Yeah. Good ol’ Terry the fireman.”

  “He’s your friend?”

  “Yeah. That’s right,” Danny said. “We go way back.”

  “Oh, you go way back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like you go way back with Ernie.”

  “Yeah.”

  For a moment, the woman was silent, her dog’s huff-and-puff breathing the only sound punctuating the dark forest air. Finally, her voice stronger now, the woman said, “Terry is an asshole. A real creep.”

  Danny swallowed. “Oh...it’s not like we’re pals or nothing. I just know him is all.”

  “Uh-huh. And so, what? You come here in the middle of the night looking for some guy you know who’s a fireman? Or, no, let’s see, you’re here to pay your respects to Ernie? I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to do better than that. This is private property, and I’ve had just about enough of weirdoes hanging around here all hours of the day. I think maybe I’m just going to call the police.”

  “No no! Don’t do that,” Danny said, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

  “Why not? Maybe they’d like to talk to you. You and that creepy lawyer, too. Maybe they’d like to know whether you had something to do with the fire.”

  “I couldn’t have.”

  “You can tell that to them.” She started to turn away, then stopped. “Ernie was a good man. A harmless man who burned to death for no reason. And I’m just sick to my stomach thinking—”

  “My mother took care of Ernie sometimes,” Danny blurted. “Ernie McCann was my friend, too.” He couldn’t believe he felt tears welling in his eyes again.

  “Your mother? What are you talking about? Some other someone I never saw?”

  “She helped him go shopping. We’d come over for lasagna after. He was my friend. He even helped me when—”

  “What?” said the woman, cocking her head and taking a step back toward him. She shone the flashlight straight in his face. The harsh glare made him squint, but Danny kept looking at her, holding her gaze even as every bone in his body told him to jump on his bike and ride away. Finally she spoke. “Where did your mother work?”

  “Most
ly at The Boathouse. In Buckhorn. By the locks.”

  “No way. You’re not Danny, are you?”

  Danny gulped. Did she know he was a fugitive? Was she going to turn him in? Before his mind could leap to nastier conclusions, she said, “You are Danny. You’re the one Ernie told me about. He had your picture. Couldn’t see it himself, but he had a picture of you in his wallet. A real fan of yours, you know. Said you got in some kind of trouble, though, and had to go away.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  The breeze picked up, and the woman coughed as she caught wind of Danny’s sweat de toilette.

  “You know, you really stink.”

  “I think you mentioned that already.”

  “I can smell you from here.”

  “Well, the winds kind of—”

  She cut him off again. “Listen, you still haven’t told me what the hell you’re doing here, but I know one thing for certain. If Ernie were alive, he’d be helping you. Maybe you should come over and get cleaned off. ”

  Danny couldn’t believe his ears. He said, “Get cleaned off?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a shower you can use. I’ll put on some soup.”

  A shower and hot soup? His instincts for danger had been honed in prison, and he felt none here. This woman was for real; it made no sense to him but he was in no position to argue. Besides, where the hell else was he going to go? “Sounds about perfect,” he said. “What’s your name anyway?”

  “Judy. Judy Jackman. This here is my dog, Wort.”

  “Oh yeah? Wort? Nice dog.”

  Wort barked.

  Danny followed Judy Jackman across the street and out behind her cabin to where she pointed at a hose hanging over a tree branch. The hose ended in a simple flat head shower nozzle.

  “It’s really not all that cold,” Judy said. “It’s fed from a big black bag on top of my roof. In the summer, when it’s sunny, the water can actually get uncomfortably hot. I just filled it this afternoon, though, so it’s probably a little bit chilly. Well, sort of. Maybe in between.”

  “Do you have some soap?”