Something for Nothing (38 page)

Shit. Was the trip that Val took to grab the money for Martin that day just a one-time thing? Or, more interestingly, was it something Val had staged to fool Martin? As in “Oh, just a second, watch while I grab thousands of dollars from this secret place—which isn't actually the place where I hide my money.” Martin didn't know—doubted it, in fact—but he felt the energy draining out of him. Finding a rear entrance to the shed had given him a surge of energy, but it was fading away. He felt tired.

And then he felt desperate. He really needed that money. Rex was still whining and growling and scratching at the door—worrying it, a term Martin had heard once in a description of a wolf chewing through something. (He couldn't remember what . . . Maybe his own foot in a trap. Did that make sense?) Martin was pretty sure he was safe—the door wasn't coming off the hinges or anything—but it was unnerving just the same.

He dug through a stack of clay pots, separating each one and looking inside. Most of them had the residue of soil in them, and he guessed that Angela used them for flowers, or maybe to start vegetables. When he didn't find anything, he smashed a few of them onto the ground. Fuck you, he thought. He unfolded a couple of tarps that were lying on a foot stool—nothing. He turned over the lawn mower—just old grass and that big, fanlike blade. He looked overhead and saw, to his surprise, that there was a ladder and a metal canoe. The canoe was upside down, so he could see inside it, but there were some pockets at the ends. Maybe the money was there, in the canoe. He got the footstool, climbed up and felt around. Empty. Just metal and spider webs.

Damnit! he said to himself, out loud. His voice sounded strange in the nearly empty shed—and in the intense isolation of the house and its large spread of property—post–double murder. He stomped his foot, swore, and started muttering. He understood how Hano must have felt as he tore apart Val's house. He probably started out feeling pretty confident. Yes, I killed two people, but when I find the money, it will all have been worth it. But as time passed, he must have gotten more and more frantic, angrier and angrier. In fact, Martin thought, maybe after
Hano had cut off Val's finger, Val had sent Hano on a kind of wild goose chase, one that enraged Hano so much that he had marched back and shot Val without even bothering to push him for more information. Or, Martin thought, pursuing a different line of reasoning, maybe Hano actually did find the money. Maybe it took a while, but maybe he did find it, finally. And maybe that was when he had killed Val. Thanks for telling me where the money is, Val, but I'm still going to kill you (and your wife is dead, by the way). So maybe Martin was wasting his time here in Rex's smelly storage shed of a dog house. Maybe he should go back out through the window and shoot the dog after all.

Martin swore again, and then started to lash out in a frantic temper tantrum. He kicked the lawnmower and the garbage cans, threw the gas can against the wall, swore some more. He felt like walking down to the barn and kicking Val—forcing him to wake up and tell him where to find the money. He took a step forward and kicked at the dog's mattress. It was big and didn't move very much. This made Martin even more pissed off, and he kicked at it again. “Fucking piece of shit!” he yelled. The mattress flipped up and stood on one end for a second. Then it flopped back against the shed wall and slid down again, but with the bottom side facing up now. It had done a somersault.

But in the time it took for it to flip over, Martin had seen a big square of sheet metal below it, a rusty square of corrugated iron. It looked strange sitting there on the cement floor. Why was Rex's mattress on a sheet of corrugated metal?

Martin leaned over and lifted up the mattress. (It was heavier than he'd thought it would be. Why did everything seem heavy all of a sudden?) Yes, he thought, there's a sheet of metal there, and it's right under the dog's mattress.

He threw the mattress to the side, grunting with the effort. Then he dropped to his knees, and wedged his fingers under the metal. It moved easily—it wasn't secured, it was just sitting there. But it wasn't just sitting there doing nothing, because Martin could tell right away—the second he put his fingers under the metal—that there was empty
space underneath it. So in fact the metal was covering something. It was covering a hole. And, he thought as he raised the metal sheet and looked downward to the hollowed-out recess under the metal, it's the hole where Val keeps his money. Or it's where he
kept
his money, that is, because I just found it and now it's mine.

It was just like before. He could see the outline of the blocks of money through the green plastic garbage bag. But even at a glance he could tell that there was more money in the bag than there had been for the first two trips. That seemed like a long time ago.

He squatted down, untied the little plastic strip that had been used to seal up the bag, and glanced inside at the money. It was a lot of money. Bill after bill after bill, all stacked together, and (or so it seemed to Martin) all eager to be spent out in the world—eager to move in and out of cash registers and bank vaults, and just generally enter into circulation. Enough time in the dragon's lair. Time to become capital. Better, time to become legitimate capital. No more drug deals—just the kind that involved banks and stores and car lots and (yes) airplane dealers.

Martin lifted the bag out of the hole. He held it up in front of him, assessing its weight the way he would with a big salmon. Heavy. Or, he thought, smiling now, a keeper. With a big salmon, you whacked it over the head with a nightstick or anything else you had handy, and threw it in the big cooler and high-fived whomever you were with. Martin didn't have a cooler, and he was alone (except for Rex, who hadn't let up in his barking and scratching). But he did a little dance, right there in the dog's kennel. Still clutching the green plastic garbage bag, he held his arms up over his head and did a little silent jig. Because this was definitely over the weight limit.

S
everal things ran through Martin's mind on the drive home. The first was that it was a good thing Linda and the kids were staying at Sharon's. Hano was out there somewhere, and for all Martin knew, he might show up at Martin's house at any time; might be there right now, for that matter. Maybe the house had already been ransacked. He pictured Angela lying there on her living room floor, two bullet holes in her back, and felt the sudden need to move his bowels. The fact that Hano had killed Val was one thing—that's what drug dealers did to each other, right? But the fact that he'd killed Angela as well was terrifying. It meant that there really weren't any rules to the game at all.

Plus, even if there actually were a few rules, there wasn't anyone to enforce them. Sure, Jim Slater was sniffing around, trying to figure out what was what. And pretty soon someone would find Val and Angela and call the cops, and then they'd run around, trying to do something. But in point of fact, as soon as Martin had signed on with Val's drug operation—and certainly the minute his plane touched down on Mexican soil—he'd stepped over the boundary, into a world where the police didn't really have much say in things. It was like a science-fiction movie, when you passed over from one dimension into the other. Or like when Dorothy tells her dog they're not in Kansas anymore. That was it—like he'd just stepped over into the Technicolor world of Oz, and there was no way back to the secure black-and-white world of his old life. Sure, he was driving along on a nice summer day out in the suburbs, but really he was off the radar now and on his own. Because what was he supposed to do, call the cops? Call Jim Slater and explain what was going on? That he'd gotten caught up in some silly drug-smuggling thing that had gone sour and now he wanted out? He could see Slater
smiling that weird, sardonic smile of his, nodding, maybe laughing at him. Oh yeah, Martin, I'll help you, he'd say. But you're going to jail for a long fucking time.

The second thing was that he needed to stash the money somewhere. His own house was out (even if Hano weren't lurking out there, Linda had proven herself a genuine nuisance with her snooping and poking around—and how
had
she found the jewelry box, anyway? He'd been too scared and busy to wonder). He thought about his office, but that wasn't much better. His boat would probably be all right, but only short term. He didn't think Hano knew about his Viking; he didn't remember mentioning it to him, and even if he had, Hano wouldn't know where it was docked. Come to think of it, that was probably the place Martin should spend the night. As for the money, though, the boat wasn't good—especially if the cops started looking around. No, he needed a place no one would think of. He thought for an amused second about sneaking back into Miriam's house and stashing the money under her bed. How ironic would
that
be? Thanks for the old coins—here's a bag full of money. I think we're about even.

But wait a second. The image of walking into Miriam's house conjured up the previous frames in the film, the part where he parked the car in the orchard. How about there? Not in one of the tree houses that were out there (if only things were that easy). No, how about driving in there with a big fucking shovel and burying the money? It wasn't a bad idea. Get a metal box of some sort, dig a hole, and bury it. It would be a treasure chest. Of course, if some kid found it, it would be the most exciting day of his life, and Martin would be screwed. But what were the odds of that? It was just an orchard, for Christ's sake. And the beauty of it was, the ground was already turned over. It would be impossible to tell that someone had been digging there. Or pretty hard to tell, anyway. Plus, it was just for a little while, until he could get Radkovitch to help him figure out what to do with it. How to get it into a bank without attracting suspicion. That's what he'd hired him for, right? He knew how to work the system.

Okay then. That was the plan. Drive to the orchard behind his neighborhood and bury the money. But he was going to need to wait until dark to do it. And he was going to need a metal box, one of those things that sealed up and kept moisture out. He could get one at a hardware store, he was pretty sure.

He drove along, thinking. He'd drive to the marina and hang out on his boat until nightfall. Then he'd drive back to Walnut Station, park the car way back in the orchard, and bury the money. How hard could that be?

He was just passing Walnut Station, and wondered if he could get away with zipping over to his house for a change of clothes (and to take a dump—he really needed to go). It would probably be all right. And it would be great to be in his own bathroom. But it was also a bit risky . . . maybe a little too risky.

Where was the closest hardware store? He was wondering if that sort of place would be open the day after the Fourth when he glanced down and saw that he was just about out of gas. The little line on the fuel gauge was on empty. Was below empty, in fact. What the fuck? He said it out loud in the car. Unbelievable. Where had his gas gone? True, he hadn't filled up in a while, hadn't even been out to his pump in Hayward for a couple of days. But had he driven all that much? Not really. Out to Pleasanton and back a couple of times. And out to Oakland for a
Racing Form
. Not enough to drink up a whole tank.

What the hell? Linda never drove his car—ever. She hated it, said it was too big, that it was embarrassing, even. And she'd driven off in her Mustang with the kids, so clearly she'd had gas. Could Sarah have snuck out for a joyride, maybe with some older boy? Pretty unlikely, even for her. Then he remembered Ludwig saying recently that he'd been caught out with no gas a couple of times, and that he had begun to suspect the kids in his neighborhood: there were some teenagers that hung around together at the end of the block, listening to music and smoking dope, and he had a feeling they'd been siphoning it. “I'd have done it, too, when I was that age,” Ludwig said. “But I'll still knock the
shit out of them if I catch them.” And then Martin thought about all the teenage assholes hanging around in the parking lot at the fair. Jesus, he thought. Someone siphoned my gas.

He looked again at the gauge. He was going to have to stop for gas before getting out to Oakland. Right away, in fact. Right here in town—in Walnut Station. He could try and make it to the next town up, to Alamo, but he had a feeling he wouldn't make it. He groaned. It would be his first visit to an actual gas station since the start of the gas crisis, and his first stint in a gas line . . . and there was sure to be a line. He pictured himself sitting in a long line of cars as Hano drove past, on the lookout for Martin Anderson. Why not just put a target on the passenger door of his car, make it easy for him? He imagined the leadin on the local TV station: “Next up, a bizarre set of murders rocks the suburban East Bay. In the first incident, a Pleasanton man and wife were brutally murdered in their luxurious hillside home. In the second, a Walnut Station man was gunned down in his car while waiting to fill up at a gas station. Police suspect that the murders are connected, and that narcotics trafficking is involved. More after this break.”

At least I can use the bathroom at the gas station, he thought. Can I leave the car in line while I go, or do I have to park, go to the bathroom, and then get into line?

He pulled into the Standard station, the one at the far end of town, past the junior high school. There actually wasn't much in the way of a line, only five or six cars in front of him. A lot of people were probably out of town for the holiday. Plus, it was still early afternoon. The next real crunch would be around five or six, as people got off work. He stared at the cars in front of him. There were a couple of pickup trucks with construction or landscape guys, and a couple of moms. One was in a station wagon, and the other one was in a newish-looking Volvo.