Deception (20 page)

I hope this isn’t
Billy’s idea of getting away for the night. I know he said he had a place in mind that was close, but I’m not so sure of this strategy. The three of us spent the night in the van in the driveway. I have mentioned this fact, that we’re still in the driveway, a few times throughout the course of the night to him, but he doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to talk about much of anything. None of us get any sleep: Billy from mourning, Alicia from crying, and me because I’m scared to death that if I close my eyes I’ll never wake up again.

When morning finally does come, the sun shines through the front windshield and warms my face. My eyes are heavy and sore from straining all night. By body is exhausted and I could really use some actual sleep, but I have a feeling that’s not in the cards for me today.

The echoes of the chirping birds trickle in through Billy’s open window as he smokes a cigarette. Aside from his occasional puffs and exhales, silence fills the van. No one has spoken for a few hours since I last mentioned to Billy that we should at least park somewhere else. All he did at the time was grunt back to me in response to my recommendations, but the van stayed stationary. He blows out the last of his cigarette and flicks it out the window before cranking it back up by hand. He finally turns to Alicia and me and speaks for the first time since Frank was killed.

“This ends today,” he says. My ears perk up and I look to Alicia, who reacts similarly. “This has gone on for too long, they’re going down tonight.”

I nod, trying not to look too excited. “How?”

“We’ll bait them, well, you’ll bait them, then I’ll finish them.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“This is how it has to be. Someone has to bait them, it’s either you or her.” He points to Alicia. I look to her and see her face overwhelmed with fear.

She couldn’t do it.

“What about you? Why can’t you bait them?” I ask.

“What, are you going to kill them? You wouldn’t kill Frank when he was just sitting there and putting up no resistance. What makes you think you have the balls to pull the trigger with these guys staring you in the face?”

He’s right.

“You’re not cut out for it and I’m not risking the chance that you’ll freeze up,” he continues. “I’m not putting my life in your hands.”

I want to ask him, “What about my life?”, but I stop myself. I should know better by now than to even consider saying something like that to him. Billy doesn’t care about anyone but himself, he never has and never will. He doesn’t care about Alicia and he certainly doesn’t care about me. Despite his reaction to what happened to Frank, he would have sacrificed him to save himself in a second. I have no doubt in my mind about that.

“Fine,” I say. “How do we do it?”

Speaking like an expert, Billy lays out exactly how it’s going to go down tonight, “A couple guys from the Zved’s will drive by the house exactly twenty-four hours after the murder, or damn close to it. They always do. It’s a habit that I’ve been tracking for years but have never been able to prove in court.”

“Why would they come back to the scene of the crime so quickly?”

“To check their work. They always double check their work to make sure that they’re covered. No witnesses. It’s how so many of them stay out of prison. It’s difficult to prove a crime with no eyewitnesses and no DNA evidence. Testimony from a surviving victim would ruin them. It would all be traced back to the roots, and the entire operation would be brought down.”

“But Snake’s dead. You said he was the guy in charge. How do you know they’ll stick to…procedure?”

Procedure: What an ugly word to describe organized crime. I cringe a bit as I say it.

“They still came after us didn’t they? There is always a backup plan, a second in charge, a Vice President I guess you could say.”

I open my mouth to respond, but I stop myself.

Billy notices my apprehension. “Just trust me, okay?” he continues. “I’ve been studying their patterns for years.”

I nod, wondering why he doesn’t just take them down legally, as a cop, instead of doing it this way. It’s a little late for that now I suppose.

“It will be the same two guys as last night since their work isn’t done and they know we’re still at large. They’ll be in a different vehicle from last night, something the total opposite of the van.”

“Okay, then what?”

“Then we bait them.”

He makes it sound so simple, and I almost believe him.

“But the first thing we have to do is clean up their mess from last night.”

“Why bother?”

“If someone sees a dead body or a pile of blood in your driveway, don’t you think they’d call the police and report it?”

I shrug. “What’s wrong with that?”

“We don’t want the police to come just yet. If they come, they make it a crime scene and block off the entire street. No one enters and no one leaves, so our guys won’t be able to drive by and we won’t be able to bait them into the house.”

“Would that be such a bad thing? Why can’t we just take the money and get the hell out of here?”

Billy is becoming frustrated with me. “You don’t get it. If we run, they’ll find us. We’ll always have to have one eye over our shoulder for the rest of our lives. Once they spread the word that three witnesses are on the loose, they’ll set a bounty on our asses and we’ll be hunted like fucking animals.”

I don’t know what to say, but then I remember something Billy had said a day or two back. “Yeah, but you said that they just keep multiplying and adding more men. You said they would just keep sending guys after us.”

Billy just stares, obviously not following me.

“What changes if we kill these guys? Won’t they just send more men after that? You said it yourself, everyone will be looking for us.”

Billy objects by shaking his head. “Not this time. This time is different. I’m taking out the whole operation tonight.”

I’m not sure whether he’s delusional or if he has some master plan that I can’t connect the dots to, but I don’t question him further. I look down at my wrist for my watch, but I realize that I’m not wearing one. All I see is dry crusted blood from the calluses. I think I’m starting to lose my mind. I’m able to squint and make out the time on the small digital clock on the radio in the front of the van.

“It’s nine o’clock,” I say. “They killed Frank at what, 8:15 or 8:30? That leaves us with eleven hours until they come back, so you say. What do we do until then?”

Billy turns his attention back to the front and slides out the door. Moments later, the back doors open and the sun blinds me. I shield my eyes.

“The first thing we have to do is move the body and clean up the blood.”

Through the morning heat,
the strap of the gas mask is rubbing obnoxiously against the back of my neck as I work to remove more of the siding from Snake’s house. The temperature has been slowly rising with each passing hour, and I can feel the sun beginning to crisp a thin layer of my exposed skin. Removing the vinyl siding from the outside of the house is meticulous work, but I’ve managed to remove all but a few of the horizontal panels with the crowbar. The remaining panels will stay where they are, as they’re above the melted safe and out of my reach.

Snake was taller than I am, but I’m taking a calculated risk that he didn’t hide the money high above his reach either. Doing so would seriously hinder his ability to get it down if needed to in a rush. Each of the wooden studs that frame the house are spaced out evenly, and I’ve torn out most of the insulation while searching for the cash. Upon finding nothing, I toss the crowbar to the ground and walk around to the front of the house to find Frank.

I enter the house through the busted doorframe and I’m careful to step around the mess. While I was tearing the exterior of the house apart, Frank has been inside doing the same. He has opened up all of the windows and kicked out the screens in an effort to air out the poisonous levels of carbon monoxide. We don’t have a meter to test the levels in the house, so we’re wearing our protective masks just in case. It would be too late by the time we figured out the levels were too high if we went without masks, so we’ll just have to deal with the lack of comfort of them while we work.

The mud stained carpet in the living room has been torn up, the ripped vintage wallpaper covers numerous fist sized holes over the drywall, and the cushions on the couch have all been shredded. Frank used his pocketknife to do most of the damage it appears. The rubber mallet that I threw last time we were here still rests implanted in the wall. I scramble toward the kitchen to wash the fiberglass from the insulation off of my hands and forearms, as the rosy blemishes are already spreading like the plague up my arms. Through the open window above the sink, I see George pacing the perimeter of the lawn in precise squares with his head looking down at the ground beneath. He continues to obey me, like a good boy.

I poke my head in the bathroom and bedroom before heading down to the basement. I don’t feel the need to check Frank’s work, as I already did an exhaustive destruction of Snake’s property previously, so I don’t expect that Frank has found anything. The basement door is cracked open and I can see a faint glow from the light creep through the doorframe. I push the door open and march down the stairs.

Snake is definitely dead. The color has completely left his body and he’s as pale as an albino. His head is below his torso as it rests on the bottom stair, so gravity is holding his eyes open. Even for me, it’s disturbing to look at. I climb over him and his pool of soupy blood without checking his pulse, and I find Frank looking in and around the washer and dryer under the stairs.

“Having any luck?” I ask, which startles Frank. He jumps and nearly hits his head on the low hanging ceiling.

“You scared me, boss.”

“Sorry. Did you find anything?”

“No, nothin’. I didn’t find no money or no safe or nothin’.”

I’m not surprised. “Me either.” I sigh, feeling a little discouraged and defeated.

“What do we do now?” Frank asks.

“I don’t know, Frank. I really don’t know.”

There is a brief silence.

“So, I was thinkin’, boss, do we really need Georgie around anymore?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I was just thinkin’. Naw, it’s stupid. Forget it.”

“No, go ahead, tell me what you’re thinking.”

Frank pauses and looks me over, and he can’t tell if I’m being genuine or not. I actually am.

“Well, it’s just that he’s already helped, a lot, and now that we have the key, I was just thinkin’ we don’t really need him anymore.” He cowers a bit, waiting for me to attack him. Instead, I ponder his suggestion. He may be right in that I’m not sure we really do need George anymore, but the job isn’t quite finished yet. And I don’t want him running around Topeka with the knowledge that he has either.

“We don’t have the money yet though. We still need him to help us find it. Once we have the money, we’ll let him go. That was part of the deal all along.”

Frank shrugs and looks away.

“He won’t get hurt,” I continue. “I promise, okay?”

Frank won’t look at me, but he nods in agreement. I can tell he doesn’t believe me.

“Okay?” I press.

“Okay,” Frank finally agrees.

“He won’t get hurt, I promise.”

Frank looks up. “I like him.”

“I know, Frank.”

The door at the top of the stairs creaks and interrupts our conversation. Frank and I look in the direction of the stairs and see George slowly making his way around Snake’s body. He looks like he might vomit at the sight.

"What did you find out?" I yell to him.

"Nothing," George says. "What about you?"

I shake my head, then I turn back to Frank and whisper to him, “We’ll finish our conversation later. I’ll think about what you said. Deal?”

Frank smiles and nods.

Moments later, George yells out for us from across the room, so we walk over to him. He points out some fresh dirt on one of the shovels that is near the bulkhead door. Frank empties out the barrel that rests next to the shovel and we find some more fresh soil underneath some grass clippings. George and I make eye contact upon this discovery and a light bulb goes off in my head.

We’ve been looking in all the wrong places. I know that now. It seems so obvious now, and my energy has suddenly returned. I had underestimated Snake’s intelligence, as he would have to be stupid to leave the money inside the house. On the other hand, I gave him too much credit too. He wasn’t smart enough to hide the cash somewhere else, like in a safety deposit box in a bank. I want to kick myself, as I’ve sent myself on a wild goose chase, and I think it’s all been unnecessary up to this point. The money is buried somewhere, I’m certain of it. Now, the big question is where.

I remove the note from my pocket and hand it to George at his request. He hands it back to me moments later and I read it again. 282w53s must be coordinates: 282 degrees west and 53 degrees south. That’s where the money is buried. The three of us rush out the basement door and up the bulkhead stairs, with me leading the way.