B009XDDVN8 EBOK (14 page)

Which was why, as Augie and I lugged the two plastic paint buckets of cash out of the Grubbins house, we fully expected Ben to slap us both upside our heads and order us to put the damn things back. And put the damn things back we would.

We had closed up the crawl space with the piece of drywall, pushed the wood edging back in place, wiped the whole thing down with our shirts all while Tony was heading into his house. But there wasn’t enough time to get out of there before he ushered his girlfriend through the front door—he would surely have heard the rear door opening and closing—so we hunkered down beside the washing machine and hoped like hell that he went right upstairs to take care of business.

He didn’t.

We could hear his footsteps above us as he tromped into the kitchen and yanked open the fridge, we could hear the clink of bottles as he pulled out a couple of beers. Hunched and breathing as softly as possible, our walkie-talkies turned off so that they wouldn’t squawk, we listened as he turned on the television and sat on the couch and started in on Denise with smatterings of “Oh, baby,” and “You sweet thing,” and “No, wait, watch it. Yowl!” Despite the fear that was choking out throats, we had to stop ourselves from cracking up while listening to him work. There’s a reason to leave porn to the pros.

But finally the television was switched off, the creak of footsteps rose up the stairs. A few moments later a blast of music tumbled down. I was ready to head right out, but Augie put a hand on my forearm as I started to stand.

“Wait,” he said.

“For what?”

“That Denise, she’s a screamer,” he whispered.

“How the hell do you know?”

He just gave me a lopsided smile. And then the screaming began.

Under the cover of rapture, we slipped out the back door and hauled the surprisingly heavy paint buckets across the Grubbins
backyard, past the Madigan swing set, through the bushes marking the edge of the Digby property, to a scrubby patch of grass just off the patio at the back of Augie’s house. Then we turned on the walkie-talkies and called for Ben to come over and hand down, as if from on high, his judgment.

“You guys are morons,” he said after we filled him in on everything, including Augie’s plan for getting away with it all, as we three sat staring at the fortune that lay waiting for us in the buckets, so close and yet still so distant. “They’re going to kill your asses.”

“Our asses,” I said.

“Even worse,” said Ben.

“How are they going to know it was us?” said Augie.

“The moment they find it missing they’re going to beat the shit out of Tony until he gives them a name,” said Ben. “And what name do you think he’ll spit out?”

Ben turned to me, and so did Augie, and I knew then that he was absolutely right, that the money in these pails was a deadly poison aimed right at my heart.

“We’ll put it back,” I said. “As soon as Tony leaves.”

“You’re damn right you will,” said Ben.

“But it would have been something, wouldn’t it?” said Augie.

“We would have been rich as kings,” I said.

“Except for the fact that we couldn’t spend it,” said Ben.

“Not until we could,” said Augie. “But when we could, damn, we would have ourselves a hell of a party. There would be so many tits we’d have to breathe out of a snorkel.”

“Tits aren’t any good to a dead man,” said Ben.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be that dead,” said Augie. “I want to have sex on this money. I want to spread it on a bed and grab Tawni Dunlop and lay her on top of it all and screw her until her ears bleed.”

“Or Sandra Tong,” I said.

“Or Francine Grey.”

“Or Madeline Worshack,” I said.

“Now you’re hitting out of your league, bub,” said Augie. “But you know what I’d really do with the money? Buy a car. Something fast and snappy. And just drive off. Maybe south to New Orleans, maybe west to LA just wander around, like a hobo, except with a car and tons of money. Drinking and screwing and seeing the country mile by mile. I bet there’s more out there than we could ever dream of, stuck here in this stinking pit of a suburb. I bet there’s worlds out there.”

“Augie, you surprise me,” said Ben. “That actually does sound rich.”

“And when it got old, after, like, a decade or two, I’d come home and become a dentist.”

“You crapping on us?” I said.

“No, really, that’s what my mom wants me to do. Go to dental school. It would make her so happy. A dentist in the family. Nothing but smiles all day.”

“Not to mention a ready supply of nitrous oxide,” said Ben.

“Not to mention,” said Augie.

“I’d buy a house for my mom,” I said. “A big white house with a stone patio and a pool. Maybe join a golf club.”

“You don’t play golf,” said Ben.

“I’d learn. Who knows? I might be great. I could be another Arnold Palmer.”

“You can play golf now.”

“Where? The pitch-and-putt at Alverthorpe? Screw that, I’m talking a real course, a real club, the real thing. And I’ll be a club champion, get my name on a plaque. I remember all those stinking plaques with all those stinking names, lining the stinking hallways of that stinking club. I’d put my name right on top of the rest, bigger and bolder and in gold.”

“I only just realized it, J.J.,” said Augie, “but you are the most boring suburban asshole in the world.”

“So says the dentist,” I said.

“You got to admit, J.J.,” said Ben, “it is pretty lame.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but there it is.”

“What about you, Ben?” said Augie. “What would you do with the money?”

“Give it back,” said Ben.

“No, I’m serious.”

“So am I, serious as a bullet in the brain. Give it back, walk away, hope no one is pissed enough to still want to kill me.”

“You’re too big a pussy to even dream,” said Augie. “That’s just sad.”

“I got dreams, son. You know what I would do if I was rich? I’d quit the stinking football team.”

“Ben?”

“You think it’s so much fun having those animals wailing on your ass every stinking Friday night? You think it’s so much fun waking up each morning and having to roll out of the bed because you can’t bend your knee without it screaming? I’d quit the team in a minute, go to college like a regular stiff, study math or engineering, find a job, get a wife, have kids, sit in my backyard with a beer and a barbecue grill and get fat.”

“Get?” said Augie.

“And not worry about whether the all-state end from Norristown is going to squash me like a bug.”

“There would always be room for both of you in my car,” said Augie.

“And I’d have you both to the club,” I said. “Except for you, Ben, because my club won’t let you in without an apron.”

“Wouldn’t it have been sweet?” said Augie.

“Yeah, I guess it would have,” said Ben.

“Get back into position,” I said to Ben. “We’ll stay here with the buckets. As soon as you let us know the coast is clear, we’ll put them back.”

“Shit,” said Augie.

“Shit is right,” I said, feeling suddenly sad, nostalgic even, for the fortune that was slipping out of our hands. Before the night
was over, the money would be safely back in the Grubbins crawl space and we would be safe in our beds and all we’d have left would be another story to tell over beers when we were fat and forty.

“Are we really going to give this back?” said Augie.

“We have to,” I said. “Ben’s right, Augie. There’s no way. They’ll come after us first thing.”

“Yes, they will,” said Ben slowly. “Unless…”

That was the word that changed all our lives. Augie and I both turned to him, surprised as hell. And just then I caught something in Ben’s eye, not greed exactly, but something else, something like a glimpse of freedom. It was a funny thing—you could spend a decade with a guy and still not understand all that made him tick, his dreams, his fears, the ravaging pain in his knee that promised to derail the rest of his life.

“Unless what?” said Augie.

“It’s just a possibility,” said Ben.

“Unless what?” said Augie again.

“Unless we can throw them someone else to blame,” said Ben. “But first we have to swear. It’s nice to have dreams and all, but if we spend even a cent of this they’ll be on us before we have a chance to breathe. We have to swear not to spend any of it until we each agree that it’s safe. And it probably won’t be safe as long as we’re living here in Pitchford.”

“I’ll leave tomorrow, then,” said Augie.

“We can’t run. What would be more obvious? We stay like nothing happened. We graduate. We only move on when the time is right, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And then, even after we leave, we don’t go through the money like maniacs. When we spend it, we only spend bits and pieces at a time. No fancy cars, Augie. No big houses or fancy golf clubs, J.J. No jewels around our necks.”

“What about one little diamond in my tooth?” said Augie.

“We need to swear, on our friendship and on our lives, not to be stupid,” said Ben. “It’s not just you anymore, Augie. We know you can screw up your life, but now we’re talking about you screwing up J.J.’s life and my life, too. If one of us messes up, we’ll all pay. We have to live like this never happened.”

“I can do that,” said Augie.

“I can, too,” I said.

“We all better hope that’s true,” said Ben.

“But when can we start having fun?” said Augie.

“Later, much later,” said Ben. “But with this in our pockets, we’ll always land soft no matter what slams into us. And we’ll get laid plenty.”

“God, I hope so,” I said.

“But not now. Now we just bury this shit and forget about it. Agreed?”

I looked around at my best friends. Ben had his stern face on, like he was a substitute teacher. Augie was nodding like a bobblehead. I couldn’t see myself, but I was sure my face was more green than anything else, revealing the raw fear I was feeling, but also the surge of opportunity that was rushing into my veins like a drug.

“I’m with you guys,” I said. “All the way.”

“Me, too,” said Augie.

“All right,” said Ben, “let’s put our hands together and swear.”

And we did. As friends, as brothers eternal, as the immortal three. We clasped our hands over the buckets of money, looked into each other’s eyes, and swore to all of Ben’s conditions, swore not to be stupid, and most of all swore to take care of each other for the rest of our newly wealthy lives.

“Now what?” said Augie.

“Now we bury this shit someplace dark and deep, someplace that will keep it safe for months, years,” said Ben. “And then I’m going to make a call.”

We picked Augie’s house to hide the stuff at first because he had no siblings and his parents weren’t home that night. We pulled the buckets into Augie’s crawl space, covered them with old boards, and packed around enough dirt so you couldn’t see that anything was there. Then Ben hiked to a pay phone on a deserted part of Easton Road, he held the handset with a handkerchief, he used his old-man voice.

Thirty minutes later, from our separate houses, we watched as the whole of the Pitchford police force poured onto Henrietta Road.

I had the bird’s-eye view from my bedroom window as the police busted down the Grubbins door, as they charged into the empty Grubbins house, as the street swarmed with cop cars and dark vans. And then later, as Tony Grubbins came home after dropping off Denise and heading back from the party, limping for some reason and absolutely stoned, only to find a posse of cops waiting for him. And in the darkness, from my bedroom window, I was smiling ever so slightly at the sight of Tony Grubbins, handcuffed, with a cop on either arm, being led to a police car with its lights flashing red and blue, red and blue.

I backed away from the glass and held my breath until the son of a bitch was driven away for good. And I thought just then, in the swell of youthful ignorance, that my life, whatever future shape it obtained, was already made, when the truth of it, as my life itself would later prove, was exactly the opposite.

S
CHOONERS WAS ONE
of those bars that attaches itself to boat docks like mussels latch on to wooden hulls. It had the usual decor of the seaside sailors’ tavern: buoys, fake lobsters, maritime paintings, a great iron bell, fishing nets hanging about the place like cobwebs on a spider farm. But over the years the discoloration that attacked the clapboards and roof shingles on the exterior of the shack had leached inside, so that the buoys, the paintings, even the fake plastic lobsters held the same deathly pallor as the drunken old seamen sprawled about the joint, noisily slurping their well liquor.

I stood in the doorway of Schooners for a moment, as out of place in my tan pants and pink shirt as a cow on a fishing trawler, trying to find Harry in the dank, smoke-filled room. He wasn’t at his usual spots: with the hunchbacked old-timers at the bar, in a booth making time with some alcoholic hag, playing dominoes at a table with the two Koreans. I was about to turn around and head for Harry’s boat, when I heard a toilet flush.

A few seconds later the bathroom door burst open, slamming against the far wall, and out staggered an old man still hitching up his filthy blue trousers. He was rawboned and bent, with deep crevices around his eyes and a roughly shaved jaw. His nose was busted flat, his hands were scarred and swollen, his eyes were bleary with drink, his shirt was plaid, his pants were held up by a
pair of wide leather suspenders. He blinked at me as he stumbled out of the bathroom, smiled his orange checkerboard smile in recognition, and belched.