Deception (21 page)

The smell of
Frank’s
dead body is repulsive and I nearly vomit again as soon as I slide out of the van. My vomit from yesterday is now crusted to the driveway and much of it has already disintegrated. Alicia has her blouse over her nose as she leaps from the van. Her flat, smooth belly protrudes from underneath the material. There’s definitely no baby in there. She nearly passes out upon seeing Frank’s body for the first time and is forced to sit on the rear bumper and wait until Billy and I move him.

The closest neighbor is over a half of a mile away from here, although a barking Labrador can be heard faintly in the distance. The neighborhood is sprawled out and everyone is solitary, so I don’t think we’ll be bothered. If no one had called already about the gun shots from last night, they certainly won’t be calling now. We should be safe.

Billy gazes into Frank’s empty eyes, still open, and shows no emotion. He’s either a quick mourner, or he’s a heartless bastard. I have my own suspicion. I’m sure he’s completely moved on already and is more than a little relieved to not have to deal with the burden anymore.

“Head or feet?” Billy asks.

I don’t respond and just grab Frank’s feet. I’m forced to cover my nose with my bloody shirt, much like Alicia had with her own, to avoid regurgitating. Billy counts to three and we lift the body. He backpedals toward the front door of my house while I stagger forward. My shirt falls from my nose as we lift, and I’m forced to inhale the decomposition.

The body is limp and extremely heavy, kind of like a waterlogged baseball, just magnified a million times. I try not to look at Frank’s face, but it’s difficult not to as it’s right in my vision as I struggle forward. Maggots have already begun to decompose his face through burrowing in the multiple bullet wounds. Various fluids drip from underneath him as we walk, probably from the exit wounds on the backside of his skull. I do all I can to avoid stepping in them. I have to hold my breath for the final few steps to avoid passing out.

Billy tells me to wait as we approach the door, so I do. He rests Frank’s upper torso and head on the doorstep so he can open the front door. I try, but I can’t hold it in any longer, so I drop Frank’s feet to the ground and run to the bushes just next to the door. The dry heaves are painful as nothing ejects from my empty stomach. Between heaves, I glance over to Billy who stands in the open doorway, shaking his head at me.

“I don’t have time for this,” he says, then he grabs two handfuls of Frank’s collar and drags him the rest of the way into the living room. I vomit up nothing again as Frank’s feet disappear into the house.

A moment passes and I’m able to compose myself enough to sit on the stoop with my hands on my head. The front door closes behind me and Billy walks past and approaches the van. Generally I would ask him where he put Frank’s body, but it seems irrelevant, so I don’t. In the driveway, Alicia jumps off the back of the van as Billy hops in the driver’s side front. He moves the van in reverse and onto the lawn. He pulls it forward and parks it horizontally in the driveway so it blocks anyone from entering, or more importantly, from seeing the blood in the driveway. When satisfied, Billy makes his way back toward me and stops when he reaches me.

“Do you have a hose?”

“In the shed,” I say and motion toward the back of the house. Billy takes off in that direction.

A few minutes later, he returns with a green hose, unravelling it as he walks. It stretches all the way to the end of the driveway thanks to the two hoses connected with a coupler that I finagled last summer. He hands it to Alicia and says something to her, instructions I assume. She grabs the hose from Billy’s hands and points it toward the bloodstained cement. She squeezes the handle of the multi-functional nozzle and sprays the water full stream at the stain. She sways the hose back and forth like one would do with a fire extinguisher on an open flame. I continue to watch her as Billy makes his way back toward me.

“What’s with that shed?” he asks as he approaches.

“What do you mean?”

“The three floorboards in the front, they look out of place. What’s the deal?”

“I’m surprised you noticed.”

“I’ve been trained to notice things like that. Is there something underneath?”

“Yeah, a bunker.”

Billy shakes his head in confirmation. “That’s what I thought it was. Well, that’s our spot.”

“Our spot for what?”

“That’s where you can go with the money once you get the guys inside.”

I nod, fully understanding. All of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are starting to fall into place.

Th
e
odor from under
the stairs has gotten worse, and I hold my breath as I climb up to the top. Frank is the last of us to head up the bulkhead stairs and onto the earth above, and he has the shovel from the basement in his hands when he arrives above ground. He jams the nose of the shovel into the soft soil and waits for instructions.

“George and I are going to go track down a compass,” I begin. “You stay here and start digging. If you don’t find anything when we’re gone, we’ll use the numbers on the note as coordinates when we get back.”

“What do I do if I find something?” Frank asks.

“Call me immediately. Don’t do anything, don’t touch anything, and just call me. We’ll be back in an hour.” I motion to George, and he follows me to the van.

When I don’t open the back doors, George slips into the passenger’s side in the front, and I let him sit there without restraints. He’s deeply involved at this point, and I’m willing to bet he wants to see this thing through to the end now. We’re close to finding the cash, real close, and his freedom is within his grasp. He would have to be stupid to try something at this point considering how far he’s made it.

As I drive back toward the outskirts of town at speeds greater than the posted limits, I begin to ramble, “We’re close. I can smell it. Can you believe it? I knew he had the money, I knew he did. I told myself I’d get revenge on those fuckers one day, and today is that day, my friend. Can you believe it? He buried the money, huh? Of course he did. Fucking Adrian. He never was too smart. Why would someone bury a bunch of money? Some little kid could have stumbled across it or a raccoon could have dug it up or something.”

George doesn’t say anything, and he just nods periodically. I doubt if he’s even listening.

“Ten million big ones. Early retirement, blue skies, sandy beaches. I’m going to be living the dream.”

I drift off into a daydream of sailing across the Atlantic, Alicia by my side, with small islands in view in the distance. There’s not a cloud in the sky and a light breeze blows Alicia’s hair through the summer air. We’re sipping wine and have the ocean to ourselves, and we’re as happy as can be. The dream is becoming a reality, and I swear I can feel the sand in between my toes as I drive.

I pull in front of the old police station and park on the street. I don’t know why I didn’t pull into the garage in the back, but something told me it wouldn’t be necessary. Or maybe it was that I forgot where I was going, as I was indulged in my fantasy. I get out of the van and head for the front door, and the outlines of where the old letters used to be for the Police Department are blatantly obvious on the side of the brick building. I realize as I unlock the door and head inside that I have made a mistake, and that this gives George too much insight into what’s happening. I can only hope he doesn’t notice while I’m inside.

Alicia must hear me enter, because she slides out of one of the offices at the far end of the corridor and waits for me. She glares at me in disgust as I approach her.

“What the hell is going on?” she demands.

“We found the money.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t have it. Not yet. It’s buried in the ground. We’re going to get it after this.”

She stares at me, dumbfounded. “So you didn’t find the money then?”

“Well not yet, but we’re going to find it.”

“Where is it buried?”

I pause for a moment. “I’m not quite sure.”

Alicia rolls her eyes at me and raises her voice, “Do you not understand what you’re putting me through? You leave me here all day, by myself, and you don’t tell me what’s going on. I don’t know if you’re alive or dead or if you have the money or if you don’t. Those guys might come back at any time, and I’ll be here by myself with no weapon and no defense. They’ll rape me and leave me for dead. Do you realize all of this?”

“You’re overreacting.”

“I’m not overreacting! I thought we were partners in this thing? How come I’m never included in anything?”

“You have a role to play! George thinks you’re having his fucking baby! If you’re with us all the time, you’ll distract him and he might screw something up. We can’t have that. We’ve talked about this.”

Alicia puts her head down and turns away. She knows I’m right.

I take a breath and calm myself down, then I speak to her softly, “I’ll get the money. We’re so close I can taste it.” I place my hand on her face and begin caressing her silky skin. “It’ll be just you and me and the open water before you know it.”

I pull her face toward me and try to kiss her, but she spins out of my grasp and slides back into the office. Part of me wants to storm in there after her and tell her what will happen if she disrespects me again, but I don’t. Instead, I turn around and head back out to the street to the van, forgetting what it was that I came in here for in the first place. I slide into the van and slam the door, now a little irritated from the discussion with Alicia.

Fucking women.

She should be thanking me for putting my life at risk for the betterment of our future together. She’s ungrateful and undeserving, and I’m starting to think I’d be better off without her. Maybe I should just get rid of her and take all the money for myself. There will be other beautiful women who will gladly be willing to obey me for a taste of the good life. I could find another way to get out of here.

---

Frank is exhausted when
we return. He sits in the shade and uses the shovel as a crutch as he tries not to pass out. He has dug a bunch of holes, and it’s pretty clear he hasn’t found anything. He devours the bottle of water that I picked up at the outdoor store and tossed to him. I flip open the blade of my switchblade and cut through the packaging of the compass. I hand it to George once I’m able to tear the final corner of the stubborn plastic seal. I read the note aloud and George spins himself around until the arrow on the cheap compass points to 282 degrees, which is westerly, which follows the note perfectly.

282w53s.

I’ve read it probably a hundred times and have spoken it to myself a hundred more. We are still having a problem with the second part. You don’t use more than one figure when using a compass, unlike with longitude and latitude, so the 53s must mean something else. Added together, 335 degrees is northwesterly, which doesn’t make much sense as the “N” is absent from the note. Subtracting the two figures, however, makes some sense, so we run with that. Not only does 229 degrees point us southwesterly and use both letters on the note, but it could also be a subliminal message within the note.

282w53s.

282 degrees west with 53 degrees subtracted points us southwesterly. “S” for subtract and “SW” for southwest. It all seems to fit, and my heart is pumping full of adrenaline as Frank begins to dig.

I wait impatiently as Frank uses the one shovel at a rapid pace and tosses the earth in every which direction. I expect to see another safe or storage box of some kind at any second, but the hole just keeps getting deeper and wider without any sign of the prize. George senses there is something missing too, and he paces behind me as he continues to play with the angle on the compass.

“I don’t think this is right,” he eventually says, and my heart sinks. I know he’s right although I don’t want to admit it. We’re definitely missing something.   

“What do you mean?” I ask, hoping he has a clue.

George goes on to explain what’s missing. I’ve never actually used a compass before, besides in a science class in high school many moons ago, and I only vaguely read the instructions on the back of the package. As George explains how the compass is really only used as a directional tool and not so much a locator tool, my memory becomes clearer.

The 282 degrees is just a direction, which means the cash could buried anywhere on the path from here to Timbuktu. The 53s must be our measurement. 282 degrees west, and 53 something. What is that something?

We toss ideas back and forth and come up with nothing. My brain is mush and I’m mentally exhausted. I try to come up with some unit of measurement, anything, that starts with an “S”, but I’m drawing a blank. There must be something. As I try to brush the frustration away and clear my head, George calls for me as he stands near the corner of the house. I make my way in that direction, with Frank following.

“What?” I say as I approach.

“What about steps? 53 steps,” George says.

He has my full attention immediately, and I feel stupid for not thinking of it myself. He points the compass in the direction of what remains of the protruding melted safe on the exterior of the house, and I move up close and glance at the glass face. I look up at the safe, then back at the compass.

I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe it.

The safe is at exactly 282 degrees.

I push George out of the way and slide my back up against the house. I count out fifty-three steps and use the compass to keep myself in line with the proper degree path. The ground is firm as I slam my feet together on the final step. “Here,” I yell out, then Frank and George run over to me.

Frank grabs the shovel and he frantically begins to dig. This is it, I can feel it. The hole that Frank had dug before is just a few feet away, and I wonder if we would have gotten this far over at some point. The many holes scattered across the lawn are filling with water, in my mind, and mouth is suddenly dry.

The end is near.

The dry soil is piled around the perimeter of the growing hole, and the anticipation is unbearable. If Frank stopped digging for a moment, I’m almost certain he and George could hear the drum of my heartbeat through my chest. I can feel it thumping on my eardrums. Frank digs and digs until he finally pauses when the shovel jams into a solid object in the ground. It’s either a rock or a storage box.

Please be a box.

Frank winds up and jams the shovel again, and the thud radiates louder this time. We look at each other and our eyes light up. I rip the shovel from his hands and push him to the side. I jam the shovel into the hard surface myself for confirmation, then I apply pressure in an effort to find out how large it is.

Realizing that it’s way bigger than a rock, I throw myself to my knees and frantically start digging with my hands. The coarse soil and jagged pebbles cut into my dry, cracked hands, but I ignore the discomfort and push onward. A corner of a rustic wooden box slowly appears through the dirt, but it won’t budge upon my shaking it. I search for a handle to pull on for leverage, but I come up empty. I push more dirt off the top of the wooden panel until the entire top of the secured box is visible. I wedge my hands along the edges and try to move the box, but it still won’t budge. Before I can ask for help, Frank jumps across from me and gets himself in a position to help me hoist it up and out. I wedge my hands further down the edge of the box as far as I can reach, and we yank as hard as we can on a silent count of three. With each inch we pull the box upward, the sand caves in around the edges like an avalanche and the pressure is immense. My arms are shaking and my teeth are grinding, but with one final thrust the box pops out of the hole. I stumble backwards as we drop the heavy oak next to the now sunken cloudy gravel pit.

The perspiration pours off my forehead, and I’m drained from the intense physical activity on such little sleep and malnutrition. The box must be double if not triple the size of the safe that’s in the wall, or what’s left of it, and it looks plenty big enough to hold what I think it does. I can feel the brass key poking into my thigh from inside my pants pocket, so I reach my hand in and twist it out. I grip it tightly and stare at the hole on the top of the latch on the lid of the box.

You better fucking fit.

My hand shakes as I bring the key to the lock and jam it in. The key fits like a glove, and I turn it until the crusted mechanism snaps open. I remove the lock and slowly open the lid, and I hold my breath until the light sneaks in.

Stacks and stacks of Benjamin’s fill every square inch of the box. They’re piled to the top of the wood and lined across the bottom in a perfect linear pattern. The bills are banded together, in stacks of thousands or ten-thousands I’m guessing, and they look brand new.

“We fucking did it,” I say before collapsing to the ground with a bevy of emotions.