Michael Smith - Rivers

THE CAFÉ OWNER WASN’T THERE, so Cohen went out across the square. He made his way around to the back of Charlie’s building but he found the door locked. He beat on it but there was no response and he didn’t figure Charlie could hear from upstairs even if he was there. So Cohen set out to find somebody to tell him where he could get gasoline.

Charlie was sitting in the top-floor window and he had watched Cohen come out of the café and over to his building. But then Cohen had disappeared into the alleyway alongside and Charlie decided he didn’t want to talk to him right now. He didn’t want Cohen to come in there and see what he would see.

The building had been a checkpoint for him and his men for as long as he’d been tracking back and forth with the U-Haul. A handful of folding chairs and a couple of cots and empty beer and liquor bottles littered an otherwise empty space. The hardwood floors bowed and a bathroom in the back sometimes worked.

Charlie got up and looked at the man lying on the cot. He had been lying there for two days, slowly bleeding to death, slower than Charlie wanted. He’d been shot in the low back and through his shoulder and he was lying there dying. Charlie had promised to find him some help but they both knew there was none to be had. The first day Charlie had tried to talk him through it with the promise of that money-filled trunk at their fingertips. How there were fewer people to split it with now. I can’t help they came from all sides like a bunch of goddamn fleas. You know they all been sitting and waiting for us anyhow. That backhoe is the key to the promised land. Another five minutes and we’d have been gone. One more shot is all.

Otherwise, Charlie had sat in the window and watched the storm, trying to figure out how he was going to get back and dig again with no men. He thought about Cohen but knew it was a lost cause. He thought about recruiting from the crowd below but he figured he might as well go ahead and cut his own throat now and save them the trouble. He had worked too hard already, dug too many holes. He wouldn’t let the scavengers beat him to it.

He sat in the window and Cohen reappeared along the sidewalk, stopping here and there and talking to someone. Then moving on again. Charlie had always wondered about Cohen and he wondered about him now. Why did somebody like him who didn’t have to stay down here stayed down here? Didn’t make sense to someone like Charlie. He’d tried every time he’d seen Cohen to get him to come and work for him. If you’re gonna be down here, at least make a damn dollar, he’d tell him. At least be the king. No sense in living life with your head tucked between your legs, waiting for your own ass to get blown off. Hell, even your daddy knew how to turn a quarter into a dollar.

He was initially surprised that Cohen would turn him down, but then he came to accept it as routine. It was part of the trips below, part of Cohen driving to the spot, part of Cohen picking out what he needed, part of Cohen paying Charlie for what he took. And Cohen had been a nice tipper and that usually ended the conversation with Charlie happy and unconcerned about Cohen’s well-being. Cohen handed him a hundred-dollar bill, said keep the change, Charlie would quit bugging him about why he did what he did, and see you next time.

He always handed me a hundred-dollar bill, Charlie thought. Never wanted nothing back.

He stood from the chair and Cohen had moved out of sight, along the sidewalk underneath the window.

He always handed me a hundred-dollar bill. And then he heard Cohen making fun of the backhoe. He heard Cohen joking about the fool’s gold and treasure maps and the insanity of digging random holes in random spots underneath hurricane skies. He heard Cohen say you’d have to be insane to get your ass shot over something that ain’t there. I don’t care what nobody says, there’s no buried money along that beach or next to those casinos. And you’d be better off sticking to the day trade than ducking bullets on a backhoe. I’m telling you.

Over and over and over, Charlie thought, he said the same things and he always handed me a hundred-dollar bill. Always.

Charlie hurried down the thin staircase and out into the street. He spotted Cohen on the opposite side of the square from the café and he cut across the square to get to the café before Cohen. He went in the door and asked the cook if Big Jim was around and she said he just walked in the door.

“Where?” Charlie asked.

She pointed to the swinging door that led into the storeroom in the back. Charlie moved quickly around the tables and he went through the swinging door and Big Jim was sitting in a chair opening a wide rectangular box with a box cutter. The cut-off pool cue was on the floor next to the chair.

Big Jim looked up and said, “Where you been, Charlie?”

“I ain’t got time for that. That boy Cohen. What’d he pay you with?”

“Money,” Big Jim answered and he opened the box flaps and began to take out sleeves of plastic cups.

“Hundred-dollar bills?”

Big Jim nodded.

“Let me see them,” Charlie said.

“I ain’t letting you see them. I already spent them, anyway.”

“You ain’t spent it. I know you got them stuck somewhere and I need to see them.”

“I ain’t showing you that money or where I put it.”

“I bet you will,” Charlie said. “You will or I’m done ever running anything down here for you, making any delivery, taking anybody or anything anywhere. You show it to me or the Charlie train don’t stop here no more.”

Big Jim huffed. Tossed down the plastic cups and got up. “I don’t know what damn difference it makes, but come on.”

Charlie followed Big Jim around boxes and short shelves to the back of the storeroom. Big Jim slid a stack of boxes to the side and knelt down and pulled up a square piece of floor. Underneath was a small rectangular safe. Big Jim spun the knob a couple of times and opened the door. He reached in and pulled out a ragged envelope, and from the envelope he took out a stack of fifties and hundreds. He handed two from the top of the stack to Charlie.

Charlie smoothed them out flat in his hand. The two bills were wavy from having been wet, but otherwise they were awfully straight and clean.

“That son of a bitch,” Charlie said.

CHARLIE STOOD ON THE SIDEWALK and looked around and saw Cohen walking in his direction. Charlie took out a cigarette and lit it. Cohen waved and walked on to him.

“You’re just the man I need to see,” Cohen said.

“Yeah? I was about to say the same thing,” Charlie said. “Let’s go in there.” He pointed at the café. They walked in the door and Mariposa had come down and she sat at a booth alone. They walked over and Cohen sat down next to her. Charlie stood.

“She with you now?” Charlie asked.

Cohen nodded.

“You sure?” Charlie asked.

“Would you sit down?”

Charlie slid into the other side of the booth.

“I need some gas,” Cohen said. “You got some?”

Charlie looked around the café and put the cigarette in his mouth.

“Charlie?”

He took a long drag and then stared at Cohen with an expression of knowing. “I got news,” he said.

Cohen looked at Mariposa, then back at Charlie. “About what?”

“About this witch hunt I been on since forever.”

“You mean treasure hunt?”

“Whatever you wanna call it.”

“Let me take a guess,” Cohen said and he grinned. “You know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.”

“Better than that,” Charlie said. He smoked again and then he smirked at Cohen. “I know the guy.”

Cohen asked Charlie for a cigarette. He lit it and he looked out of the window and then back to Charlie.