Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

“Why do you need to know that?” Logan asked.

“When you go into your local Bank of America branch with a stack of cash, do you just tell them how much it is and they say okay?”

Logan grunted. He put the backpack on the bed, unzipped it, and reached in with both hands to bring out stacks of bills held together with rubber bands.

“Each stack is a thousand,” Logan said. “There’s seventy of them.”

“Seventy grand,” Vince said flatly. “I thought you said it was a lot.”

He shook his head, grabbed three stacks at random. If they each came out to a thousand, Vince wouldn’t bother counting the rest mechanically. He slipped off the rubber bands and set the stacks, one after the other, into the machine. Once he had the bills nicely tucked in, he hit the button and the bills fanned like tall grass in the wind.

After he’d checked the third stack, Vince said, “Okay. Now we’ll see that we have seventy of them stacks.”

It didn’t take Vince long to count them, making them into seven piles of ten. Gordie didn’t help. As he’d been instructed, he was there to watch, and besides, it was hard to count bills with a gun in your hand.

“Now what?” Logan asked.

“I take my service charge,” Vince said, pocketing five thousand-dollar stacks. “That covers you for six months.”

“Motherfucker. That’s high. What if I want it back before the six months is up?”

Vince shook his head. “Minimum charge.”

“Fine,” Logan muttered. “I’m outta options. The police may be watching us. Last week, they had a warrant to search our warehouse. Didn’t find anything, the fucks. But they know what properties we own. And Swiss banks aren’t what they used to be, either.”

“No,” Vince concurred. “I think we’re done here.”

Logan appeared uncertain. “Aren’t we supposed to get something?”

Vince cocked his head. “A toaster?”

“A receipt?”

Vince shook his head. Vince had brought some brown paper Whole Foods shopping bags to put the money in, but Logan pointed to the backpack and said, “You can keep that.”

Joseph said to his brother, “Check it out.” He was pointing at Vince’s crotch. “Guy’s pissed himself.”

Vince bent his head down to examine himself, saw the dark, wet stain to the side of his zipper. “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath.

Gordie bit his lip. This happened occasionally, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to point out to the boss. At least not in front of others.

Joseph took a step toward Vince. “Hey, I was out of line pointing that out. Sorry about that. Don’t be embarrassed. My uncle, he’s older than you now, but there’s been times when he’s had the same problem. Thing is, though, those times it happened, he was three years old.”

He flashed that grin again. Vince turned his head away from Joseph and fixed his eyes on Logan.

“Your mother still alive?” he asked.

“Huh?” Logan said.

“Your mother. The one who pushed you and your brother out her cooz. She still alive?”

Logan blinked. “Yeah. She is.”

“What are you gonna tell her?”

“What am I gonna tell her about what?”

“What are you gonna tell her when she asks why you didn’t do more to save your brother? Why you didn’t get him to control his mouth? Why you let him get himself killed by being an asshole?”

Logan’s eyes shifted to the left, looking beyond his brother to Gordie, who had his arms raised and extended, a gun pointed at the back of Joseph’s head.

Logan swallowed slowly, then said to his brother, “Apologize to the man.”

Joseph turned around long enough to assess his situation, then looked at Vince and said, “I may have spoken out of turn. You have my sincerest apology.”

“It’s gonna cost you another five to leave your stash with me,” Vince said.

Logan nodded, caught his brother’s eye, and tipped his head toward the door. The two of them left the room.

When the door closed behind them, Gordie lowered his weapon and said, “All you had to do was give me the nod.”

Vince glanced down again at his pants. “I got a change of clothes in the car.”

“I’ll go,” Gordie offered. He was used to this.

Before he reached the door, Vince’s phone buzzed again. He looked to see who it was and frowned. Not with disappointment, but curiosity. It wasn’t one of his guys keeping watch outside.

He put the phone to his ear.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said. “What’s up?”

His face grew dark as he listened. “Tell me again which house.” He listened a few more seconds. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know. You done good.”

Vince put the phone into his jacket and spoke to Gordie. “We need Bert. Tell Eldon to take care of the money. Then tell him to take the rest of the night off.”

“Why? We’re not going back to your place for a drink or—”

“Do it. Get rid of him.”

“What’s going on?”

Vince put a hand out to the dresser, steadying himself. “We may have been hit.”

“Jesus,” Gordie said.

“It’s worse than that,” Vince said.

I was thinking I must have heard Grace wrong. There was no way she could have said what I thought I’d heard.

“You what?”

“I think — I don’t exactly know for sure — but I think I might have shot somebody,” she said.

So I’d heard right. But it didn’t make any sense. I felt as though I’d just been pushed off the top of a tall building and there was no one down there with a net. The sidewalk was coming up very, very fast.

“Grace, I don’t understand. How could you think you shot somebody?”

“He gave me the gun.”

“Who gave you the gun?”

“Stuart.”

This was going to be bad.

“He wanted me to hold on to it. But then we thought we heard something, and it was dark, and I don’t know what exactly happened. But there was this loud noise, like a gun went off. Like, this huge bang. And I didn’t think it was me, that I was the one who made the gun go, but I was the one who was holding the gun, and Stuart didn’t have one, but I’m not sure because it was all so dark and crazy and I’ve never touched a gun before and I was so scared and then I thought I heard a scream but I don’t even know now if it was somebody else or me. I just ran. I was going to go out the front door, even if it set off the alarm, although the little light was green, but when I turned the knob, it was locked and I couldn’t figure out how to open it, so I went back through the basement and went out the window and I didn’t know what to do at first — I was kind of paralyzed or in shock or something, I don’t know, and I got my phone out and then I just ran and ran until I got to the gas station and I wasn’t sure what to do and finally I decided the person I had to call was you even though I knew you and Mom would be really mad but I didn’t know what else to do and it wasn’t my fault. I mean, maybe it was my fault, but I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.”

And then she dissolved into tears. Not just tears, but huge, racking sobs.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking against the wall. She raised her head, and even though her eyes were looking my way, it was as if she didn’t even see me.

“My life’s over,” she said. “My life’s completely fucking over.”

I got down on the floor next to her, putting my arms around her and holding her as tight as I could.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “We’re going to sort this out. We’re going to sort it all out.”

Knowing, even as I said the words, how unlikely that was. This was no fender bender. This wasn’t getting arrested for drinking underage. This wasn’t something we’d be able to smooth over in a hurry.