Andrew Shaw: $20 Lust

She moaned my name, moaned once and twice and three times. I clutched her and held her and loved her with every atom of my being. It was getting better now, getting to a peak where no adjectives applied, getting to perfection. And you cannot describe perfection.

You can only enjoy it.

The peak approached and blinded us. We were there together now, to the very top of the world. Then, all at once, there was no world beneath us.

Only Cindy and I, alone together, floating in free fall in space.

It was over. I held her while she cried salty tears.

I lay on my back and thought about things. I thought about the way I had led Reed and Baron to her, lead them to her room so that they could kill her.

And hated myself.

I knew something now. I knew that we were together as long as we lived, knew that nobody on earth could keep us apart. I knew that the world was our world now, that it belonged to us, that we had it by the tail.

“Ted?”

I took her hand.

“What you were going to tell me,” she said. “You can tell me now.”

She was right. Now we had no secrets.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. I reached over for the cigarettes on the night table, lit two of them and gave one to her. For several moments we smoked side by side in silence.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Here it is.”

We left the car there in the morning. It was hot and we didn’t need it anymore. That wasn’t all we left behind. We left the twenties.

In ashes.

We burned them in the motel room, burned a few bills at a time in the john and flushed the ashes in the toilet. Have you ever watched close to fifty grand converted into smoke and ashes?

It’s quite a sight.

We saved a couple bills. Not many. Enough for food and hotel bills and bus fare to San Francisco. That was all we needed. Any more would have been taking chances.

We weren’t taking any chances.

We left the car and we left the motel and we left the ashes. We walked down the road to the nearest town. It had a bus stop. The bus made a few stops until it reached a town that had a little more to say.

The bus from that town went to Frisco. We were on it, tense and excited and a little scared. Not too scared. We were growing up, Cindy and I. It was going to take a lot to scare us. Parts of us were steel, tough and strong.

“It’s a chance,” she said.

“We’ve taken plenty of them. We’ve taken worse chances than this one. We’ve stuck our necks out in front of Reed and Baron. This is nothing next to that.”

“I know.”

“This is the only way,” I told her. “You can look at it mathematically. It’s an equation.”

“A human equation.”

“Maybe. Maybe two and two is four. Maybe something a lot more complex than that. But it adds up just the same. It adds up and makes sense.”

“I know, Ted.”

“The phony stuff. The fifty grand. It was worth plenty to Reed and Baron. Worth double its face value. But it was strictly a closed market, baby. A closed market is a buyer’s market. You didn’t have something you could turn around and sell to anybody else. Reed was the only customer. And he wasn’t buying. He was going to kill for it.”

I lit a cigarette. I wasn’t sure whether or not you could smoke on the bus. It was one of those hick bus lines, not Greyhound or anything, and for all I knew smoking wasn’t allowed. I didn’t really care. “So you played it the only way. Getting in touch with him, getting him to come down, then running when he showed. Didn’t make much sense, but then neither did anything else.”

“He was the only customer.”

“That’s just it,” I said. “This way it’s different. What Reed has is what’s valuable. Especially with the bad stuff gone. Now his plates and his paper can set somebody up for life. With no chance involved.”

“Somebody like us,” she breathed. It was a prayer. I hoped it would be answered.

“Somebody like us. Somebody very much like us, in fact. All we have to do is take it.”

“Sure,” she said. “That’s all.”

I put out the cigarette. “We can manage it,” I said. “Let’s go over it again. Casper’s the only one at the hangout?”

“As far as I know. Bunkie Craig may be there. If he’s out of the hospital.”

“Is that where he would go?” She nodded.

“He might be out. It’ll be just as well that way, come to think of it; get him out of the way. Nobody else knows about the deal?”

“Just the guy who fixed the plates.”

“What about him?”

“He won’t talk,” she said softly. “I read about him a few days ago. They found his body in a ditch. Reed doesn’t believe in letting people know too much. Not unless they’re with him all the way. The boy was hired, then fired, then dead. That’s how it goes with Reed.”

“Four left,” I said. “Reed and Baron, Casper and Craig. Lori and Musso are dead. Just the four of them.”

“Four,” she echoed.

“Four. Then you and me and the money. No set sum, Cindy. As much as we ever want. As much as we ever need.”

Thinking about the kid Reed had killed must have jarred her a little. It showed in her face. Not obviously, but I knew her well enough to see it.

“We could just get out of it,” she said. “We burned the money. They don’t have to chase us any more.”

“You really think so?”

She looked at me.

“They’ll chase us until we’re dead.” I said. “Because they don’t know we burned that money. Because we know more than they want us to know. We can’t beg out now. We either go through with it or run like rabbits.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry, Ted.”

“That’s okay.”

“I don’t think sometimes.”

“Forget it.”

I held her hand and lit two more cigarettes.

We were tired when we hit Frisco. Tired enough to sleep. Not because we wanted to sleep, not because we wanted to waste any time. Because we had to be rested, had to be fit when we laid it on the line.

And there were plans to make. I bought a box of shells for the gun, practiced with it empty so I would be able to aim it straight. Hitting Musso had been dumb luck. I’d have to be good this time.

Then we hit the sack. We stayed at a second-grade hotel — good enough so we wouldn’t draw stares, cheap enough so we could afford it.

And close to the hideout.

The gang’s headquarters was a frame house on Grand Street, a clapboard affair that needed painting badly. I got a look at it from the cab. It looked like any other house on the block, no better, no worse — and certainly no more likely to hold a counterfeiting printing press and a gang of thieves. I caught my breath when I looked at it. I wondered who the neighbors were, what Reed did when door-to-door salesmen dropped by. Things like that.

And I could feel the excitement. We were close now, too close to turn back, ready to roll. I had a tough time sitting still. That’s how I react to tension. I get a surplus of nervous energy and there has to be a way to dissipate it. I felt like hitting somebody but there was nobody handy to hit. There would be. Later.

I wiggled my toes, snapped my fingers, felt silly doing it but couldn’t sit still otherwise. Cindy gave the cabby the hotel’s address and we went back there and sacked out.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Right?”

“Right. In the morning. A quick breakfast and we move. We can’t waste time.”

“Suppose Reed is back already?”

I shook my head. “He won’t be,” I said. “Not a chance in the world. He’ll be looking around for us, putting out feelers. He may have called, though.”

“Then Casper will be waiting for us.”

I shook my head. “Like hell he will. Nobody will figure us for a move like this. Casper’ll be sitting on his behind waiting for something to happen. Alone or with Craig — either way he won’t be a problem.”