Something for Nothing (40 page)

He hung up and hurried down the dock to his boat, lugging the bag of money and the big metal box he'd bought at a nearby hardware store (he'd also bought a shovel, but he'd left it in the trunk). When he got to
By a Nose,
he jumped on board, unlocked the door to the lower cabin, and ran to the bathroom to take the dump he'd been holding in since halfway between Pleasanton and Walnut Station.

Then, finally, after grabbing a beer from the half-refrigerator that was tucked under the main counter, he locked himself behind the folding door of the little bedroom, kneeled down, and emptied the bag
onto the left-hand bunk. The bunks came together in a
V
, which was convenient. He could count the money from a pile on his left, and then transfer it to the bunk on the right.

As before, the money seemed to be in packets of a thousand dollars each. After a minute or two of counting, Martin realized that there were a lot more bundles than the last two times. He counted out ten bundles, then swiveled and deposited the bundles to the right bunk, then swung back and counted up another ten. At some point, though, he got confused, because he was at 179 bundles and there was still a pretty good-size pile on the left-hand bunk. He must have miscounted, or he must have been wrong about all the bundles being exactly one thousand dollars in value.

He went ahead and finished his count, and he came up with 448 bundles. But that wasn't possible, was it? He shook his head and did it again—moved the bundles from the right back to the left, and started over. This time he got 447 bundles. Pretty close. Holy shit. So then he started counting the amount in each bundle. He wanted to make sure that there was actually a thousand bucks in each of them. He did this for about ten or fifteen, and then realized he was wasting his time. Yes, there was the same amount of money in each bundle. And yes, it was a thousand. And that meant that he, Martin Anderson, was now in possession of a small fortune. Close to half a million dollars.

Martin thought about a lot of things as he sat on the floor of his boat. Linda, the kids. Val and Angela. Radkovitch. Miriam. But he also thought about the way this was all starting to feel like a fairy tale, one in which he was playing the central role. Or it had the vague outlines of one, anyway. Like Jack, he'd climbed up the beanstalk and outsmarted Rex the Giant, and then he'd taken back the money that had been stolen from him. Okay, it wasn't a perfect parallel—from what he could remember, the giant killed Jack's father or stole his family's money or something like that. But it was pretty close to what had happened to Martin. Hadn't the Arabs stolen his money? And wasn't Mexican drug money pretty much the same as Arab oil money?

He knew this comparison was pretty far off base, but the point was a good one—the bad guys had gotten ahold of all the money. But Martin had gotten it back, and now he was a new person. Or he was about to become one, anyway. Like Jack, he could live happily ever after. He could pay his debts, save his business, even show up Radkovitch—show him that his brilliant plan to sell Anderson Aircrafts to the assholes at the Buick dealership had been stupid. Or premature. Or just dickish, when you came right down to it. Because weren't there factors to consider along with the pluses and minuses in a ledger book? Couldn't he have just looked at Martin—at his business, his horse, his boat—and been able to see that things were going to work out somehow?

Martin picked up a bundle of bills and flicked it with his thumb, listening to the slapping sound it made. Sure, he'd keep Radkovitch around for a while—he could help Martin clean up the books, and make a few investments with his new infusion of money (not that he'd let Radkovitch see all of it, of course—Martin wasn't stupid). But pretty soon, Martin would cut him loose. It would be good to get rid of him. And who knew, maybe there'd be some other changes. He wasn't sure what those changes might be, exactly, but they were all going to be for the better. Because that's what money could do. It might not buy you happiness, but it could definitely grease the wheels. If nothing else, it could ward off misery and worry and everything else that came with a mountain of unpaid bills (to say nothing of a career in crime—if, like Martin, you were desperate and stupid enough to go down that road).

He set the bundle down, still thinking. He looked at the big stack of money scattered onto the pale yellow of the bunk mattresses. The problem with the Jack and the Beanstalk comparison was that Hano was still out there somewhere. Wasn't it after Jack had stolen various things from the giant's house—the bag of money, the goose with the golden eggs, and something else—that the giant got wise to what was going on and chased Jack back down the beanstalk? He was going to fucking kill him, in fact, until Jack caught a break and the giant fell down the beanstalk and broke his neck. But as Martin sat there, listening
to the sounds of the marina, the water slapping against the side of the boat, voices carrying across the water, engines running, the occasional horn tooting, he found himself wondering if Hano would be willing to make it quite so easy for him. Would he really just fall and break his neck so that Martin could live his happy, debt-free life? Probably not.

Martin shook himself, tried to clear his head. He stood up, stretched his sore knees, and realized he was pretty hungry. He wanted to jump in his car and drive over to the Sea Wolf for something to eat, but he didn't want to leave the money behind—and he certainly wasn't going to take it with him to a restaurant.

He unhooked the sliding door and stepped into the kitchenette. There was plenty of food in the cupboard—a couple of cans of chili, a can of tomato soup, a can of chicken soup, some tuna and some SpaghettiO's. There was also a bag of hamburger buns in the fridge and a few more beers. Good enough, he thought. This is what you do when you're hiding out. You rough it a little bit—dig in, disappear.

He turned on the electric stove, opened the chili with the crappy handheld can opener that he was always planning to replace, and put it in a pot. When it was hot, he poured it out onto the hamburger buns. Then he opened a beer, sat down on the couch in the living area that was just beyond the kitchenette, and turned on the little black-and-white TV to KPIX.

If there was news about the murders, it would be on this channel. Probably on the five o'clock news. In the meantime, the A's were playing at home. It was the first game of a home stand. Catfish Hunter was finishing a shutout against the Orioles. Jesus, that guy could pitch. He was better than Vida Blue. Martin shook his head, thinking about Peter and the game against Gaylord Perry and the Indians. It was only a couple of days away, but it seemed like something way off in the future.

W
hen he woke up, it was almost dark. The TV was still on, murmuring, its dim, flickering images casting a bluish glow in the living room area of the cabin. He'd fallen asleep sitting up, with his head back against the top of the little couch. His neck was sore.

He couldn't remember his dreams—which, given the way things had been going, was probably a good thing. Did he really need to know what his sleeping, unconscious self had to say to him right about now? Wasn't it obvious? He didn't need to remember one of his horrific pursuit dreams to know that he was scared and on the run—that he was confused and unhappy. Sure, finding Val's money had been a lot like a fairy tale. But lying on his bunk and trying to wake up, it suddenly occurred to Martin that his situation was also a lot like one of those nightmares he was always having, in which he was in enemy territory, and hiding, but the enemy had tracked him down, surrounded him, and was just waiting for the right moment to move in and finish him off.

He looked blankly at the TV. It was a sitcom—
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
. Probably a summer rerun. Mary was yapping at her boss, Mr. Grant, about some newsroom crisis. Ugh.

So he'd definitely missed the five o'clock news. And the seven o'clock news. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was just about 8:35. He'd been more tired than he'd realized. He never took long naps like that. On the other hand, he didn't usually stumble onto the scene of a double murder and then find $450,000, either.

He wanted to have a beer, but thought better of it. Instead, he had a glass of water, splashed some water onto his face, and then went forward to load the money into the metal box he'd bought. The dimensions
were printed on the side: 18″ × 10″ × 12″. Pretty much the size of a bread box. Or a big bread box, maybe. It was some sort of ammo box, apparently, but you could use it for anything (like burying money). It was painted army green, and the metal was nice and thick. The best part was that it was designed to stay dry inside. It had a rubber gasket around the opening, so it really sealed up when you pushed the side handle down. It would definitely keep moisture out; the guy at the store had been clear on this point.

He counted the bundles one more time as he loaded them in. This time he got 451. Okay, then—it was probably $450,000, and he was just miscounting. The box was pretty full when he finished packing it. He was about to close the lid and seal it when he realized that he should keep some of the money (no sense burying
all
of it). He took five bundles of bills off the top. He paused, and then took another five. Then he gave in and took five more. Then he thought about the fact that he might need to leave the box buried for a long time, and that he wanted to be able to give Radkovitch some of the money: to pay off some bills . . . and to impress him. But it couldn't be too much, of course. Okay. So finally he took out twenty-five more. That made forty—or forty-one, including the one he'd grabbed back at Val's house and used at the gas station. He'd give thirty to Radkovitch and keep the other ten for himself.

He sealed up the box, walked back into the kitchen, and set it on the counter. He looked around for a minute, then stooped and opened the little cabinet under the sink. There was an old red tool box in there; he squatted down, lifted out the top tray, and put the forty bundles in there. It wasn't a great hiding place, but sometimes the obvious places were the best. Look at Val's hiding place for his money—it had fooled Hano. And it would have fooled Martin, too, if Val hadn't been so nonchalant about walking in there and grabbing the money.

Val had obviously trusted him, Martin thought. Maybe Val thought he was too weak to be taken seriously. Or maybe it was because he thought of Martin as a friend—someone he could trust. They'd known
each other for a long time, and they'd had some good times together, especially at the track. It was possible that, had someone asked Val to list his ten best friends, Martin might have been one of them. Maybe somewhere around seven or eight, maybe nine. But now Val was dead.

He closed up the toolbox and fit it back inside the cabinet. Then he tucked the metal box under his arm and headed up to the deck. It wasn't quite dark, but it would be by the time he got out to Walnut Station and the orchard behind his neighborhood—behind Miriam's house.

He rehearsed things as he drove. If some nosy neighbor came out and asked him what he was doing out there in the dark, he'd say that his son had left something, and that his wife had sent him out to look for it. “It's not like I was gonna say no to her,” he'd say, playing the role of beleaguered suburban husband and father. There was no way it wouldn't work. Even a cop would buy it. But he only rehearsed it once or twice, because it wasn't going to happen. No one was going to stop him, because no one was going to see him. He'd be invisible. He'd bury his box, slip away, and wait.

Walnut Station looked sleepy as he pulled into town. There were some older teenagers driving around, looking for something to do post–Fourth of July, but for the most part it was dead. Perfect. He drove to the spot where he'd pulled into the orchard before, when he'd broken into Miriam's house. He turned off his headlights and then inched along, making sure he didn't plow into a walnut tree. He drove for about fifty or sixty yards, until he was right in the center of the orchard. He rolled down the window, turned off the engine, and listened. Some crickets, some frogs, a few doors opening and closing in the distance, a voice or two (was that Hal Weaver, yelling at one of his kids?). A car drove past on the frontage road, but the headlights didn't come close to penetrating this deep into the orchard. He'd been right—he was invisible.

He was about to open his door when he paused and thought better of it. Gotta take care of the interior light, he thought. It didn't have an
on-off switch—it just came on no matter what. He leaned forward, felt around under the seat, and pulled the .22 pistol out from its hiding place. (Did it know it was always being stashed away?) Then he grabbed it by the barrel, and, closing his eyes, smashed the butt hard against the light on the ceiling. It was an awkward angle, and he had to do it three times. Whack, whack, whack. The first time nothing happened, and the second time he only cracked the fixture cover. But when he hit it a third time, the whole thing exploded, pieces of plastic and glass falling down onto his head and shoulders.

He climbed out of the car, pleased that he'd been so clever about the light. He must have seen someone do it once in a movie, but he wasn't sure, couldn't remember which one. But it made sense. You didn't want a cop (or Derek Hano, for that matter) driving by and thinking, “Hey, why is someone sitting in his car out in the middle of that orchard?” The obvious assumption would be that it was kids smoking pot or drinking beer, and so a cop would be sure to pull in, check it out. And even with his planned excuse, Martin didn't want to risk it.

He shut the door and walked back to the trunk. He was stumbling a little on the uneven clods of dirt, and realized that he shouldn't have kept his alligator shoes on. They'd given him trouble the last time he'd been out here—why hadn't he changed into his boat shoes?