Blood Money

6

At dawn, Bernie Lupus opened his eyes. A ray of sunlight had entered the dark hotel room. He knew that much. It took him a moment to see the figure standing beside the curtain. “What? What’s going on?” he whispered.

“I came to talk while Rita is still asleep,” Jane said. “I don’t think it would do her much good to hear us talk.”

Bernie put on his glasses, looked around the room, then took them off again. He eased himself out of bed, wearing a pair of boxer shorts and an undershirt. He picked up his clothes and walked stiffly into the bathroom.

When he emerged, he said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

She kept her steps at Bernie’s pace. The stiffness seemed to leave him gradually as he moved his limbs. When they reached the door that led to the parking lot, his strides had grown longer, and he stood straighter. Jane walked with him away from the motel toward a little plaza where the stores seemed to be closed. The morning sun glinted off the windows with such strength that his face was lighted by the glow. He said, “It’s going to be a hot day here.”

“The car is air-conditioned.”

He squinted at her. “Who’s going to be driving it?”

She said, “That depends on what we say now.”

“So you’ve been thinking about it.”

She returned his squint. “I’m always thinking. That’s why I’m not dead. What about you? How are you planning to stay alive—on the money you’re holding for the families?”

Bernie shook his head. “I wouldn’t touch it with somebody else’s hand. I told you, I have money of my own from the old days.” He looked at her in amusement. “Danny bought me a couple of nice suits, but I never even tried them on. I always wear this coat. Here, feel it.”

Jane touched his arm, and felt a thick padding. She squeezed it, and recognized the crinkle. “Cash?”

Bernie nodded. “I had a couple hundred thousand lying around the house one time, so I started sewing hundreds into the lining, just in case. I brought some more in envelopes for expenses.”

“Is it enough to last you for the rest of your life?”

“I sure as hell hope not.”

“I mean if nothing happens to you.”

He held the hem of his coat out a few inches. “Feel this.”

Jane touched the hem, and felt hard, round pellets between her thumb and forefinger. “What am I feeling?”

“Diamonds. They’re all more than two carats and less than five, all flawless. None of them are hot, either. I had somebody buy them years ago in Amsterdam, right after they were cut.”

“You can’t sell diamonds on any street corner.”

“No, but they’re worth the effort. I’ve seen women no bigger than you carry a few million bucks on them without working up a sweat. And I got a few million more in my head. I used to deposit it in accounts under the name Milton Weinstein. I can get all I want by writing checks against it … if I can keep remembering the account numbers.”

“Tell me more about your memory problem.”

He walked in silence for a few steps. “It’s not bad yet, but it’s like a fire. You look at it and say, ‘Hey, it’s a little fire.’ But they grow. I’m still about ninety percent. Bits of the other ten keep coming back. I get little flashes, and if I’m quick I can read parts. The mind is a weird little mechanism. You’d think that what’s gotten cloudy would be the old stuff—sheets of paper I saw sixty years ago, wouldn’t you? But it isn’t. It’s only the most recent stuff.”

“That’s too bad. The ones who gave you money sixty years ago won’t be coming to ask you to account for nickels.”

“I should have expected it,” he said. “When my grandfather got old, he used to tell me stories about when he was a kid in Poland. After seventy years, he could tell you the weather on some particular day, the flowers that grew along this muddy road where he walked, exactly what people said to him, and what they were wearing. But he couldn’t tell you what he had for lunch an hour ago. What gets erased is short-term memory.”

“Have you added up how much you still remember?”

He shook his head. “It would be a full-time job to keep track. When you’re hiding money, you’ve got to put it in a lot of different places. If a government accountant sees a hundred thousand someplace, he keeps looking down the list. If he sees a hundred million, he says, ‘Let’s find out who this guy is.’ Pretty early on I had to start putting some in foreign countries, real estate, precious metals. It must be ten billion by now, but it could be twenty.”

“Billion? With a B?”

“Yeah. It would be worse, except that even in the old days I only saw a small part of the take. These guys liked to have most of their money where they could reach it. And I lost customers, too. There were fathers who trusted me, and sons who didn’t. The amounts got bigger each year, but they were a smaller and smaller part of gross receipts.” He paused. “You must have come up with a counterproposal.”

“Not exactly,” she answered.

“Why not?”

“My interest in this is Rita,” said Jane. “You’re an unexpected complication.”

He nodded. “I never thought of myself that way. I guess I’d better get used to it, though, now that Danny’s dead. Keeping me out of sight would have been a good deal for him. He would have been a very rich man.” He turned his head a little and held her in the corner of his eye. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I think I can take Rita to a safe place and teach her to live quietly for long enough so they don’t find her. I can’t guarantee that I can keep you from being found, but I can make it very difficult.” She looked at him to judge his reaction. “I think I can arrange something that will help your son without making him too strong.”

“You want something in return,” he said. “What is it?”

She walked on. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have a general idea that appeals to me. I’ll tell you what’s on my mind. I’ve always been careful to stay out of the Mafia’s way. There’s never been any question that if I ever happened to attract their notice, there wouldn’t be anything left of me. And I never had any illusion that I could do them noticeable harm, so I never thought of how to go about it. One of the families you’ve been helping happens to be looking for people I’ve made disappear in the past few years. I won’t say who, and I won’t say which family. It occurred to me that I would like it if the families were weaker. My friends would be that much safer. And I would be too.”

“So you want to hurt the Mafia. How?”

“I want you to take all of their money and donate it to charities.”

“What?”

“That’s my price.”

“That’s your price? Ten billion dollars?” He grinned at her, but his expression slowly changed. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You don’t want any, you just want to give it away? I didn’t think anybody would be able to hear what I had to say last night, then go to sleep and not wake up thinking about being rich.”

“You wanted a way to help Vincent without giving him enough to get himself killed. It happens to coincide with what I want: I don’t want any of the rest of them to have it either.”

Bernie laughed, looked at her, then laughed again, a high, rheumy hoot that ended in a cough.

“I guess that means no,” said Jane. She held out the keys to the car. “You’d better take these now, because I’ve got a plane to catch.”

Bernie drew his hands back and stuck them into his pockets. “I didn’t turn down your deal. Just let me think for a minute. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about it, either. Once in a while I would say to myself, ‘What I ought to do is screw these guys and give it all away.’ But it’s not easy. It’s a tough thing to do with that much money. It means dreaming up lots of tricks.”

“I saw somebody do something like it once,” said Jane. “I know how hard it is.”

“And you have a way to take care of Vincent?”

“We can offer him a way to be comfortable for the rest of his life without taking any risks. Whether he agrees or not is up to him. It’s the best I can do … or at least, the most I’m willing to do.”

“It would have to come from my money,” he said. “Nothing from them.”

“Of course,” said Jane.

Bernie walked along for a few seconds, thinking. Finally, he shrugged. “It’s probably the best either of us can do.”

“You’ll consider it?”

“You think I’ve got to go through a pile of other offers before I decide?” he asked. “I’ll do it.”

“Good,” said Jane.

“You don’t sound as though you mean it,” said Bernie. “Honey, I think you’ve got to open up just a little more.”

She looked at him. “It’s what I think should happen. It’s not what I want to do. It takes time, and it’s dangerous.”

“Ice cream,” announced Bernie.

“What?”

“Homemade ice cream. You got to crank a machine to get it, it’s got raw eggs so it’s the biggest source of food poisoning. It’s full of fat and sugar, so it’ll give you strokes and heart attacks. If you eat it too fast, you can actually freeze some nerve in your head and go blind.” He smiled. “Tastes good, though.”

Jane smiled back at him. “Tastes very good.”

They turned around and walked back toward the motel. As they came into the hallway, Bernie touched her arm. “Wait. Have you figured out what we do with Rita?”

“That’s something I’ve wondered about since you turned up,” said Jane. “What’s your interest in her?”

Bernie looked down at the carpet. “I guess it’s another crummy thing that happens when you get old. When your body gets soft and weak, your mind does the same thing. You get sentimental about whatever it is that makes people alive. Some skinny little kid who moves quick and doesn’t seem to be affected by gravity is a kind of miracle. She has so much of it that she kind of throws it off around her like heat and light. It kind of kept me going.” He gazed at Jane as though he had not seen her before. “You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

Jane gave her head a little shake. “She told me some of her story. I knew I didn’t have time for more of it if I was going to get her out of there.”

Bernie said, “She’s not as delicate as she looks. Just the opposite—sort of like a little animal. A raccoon, maybe. Ever try to keep one out of your garden?”

“I’m a big-city girl,” Jane lied. “I buy my vegetables frozen.”

“I had a bodyguard years ago, right after they built my place. He was right from Sicily, and they thought he’d be good because he didn’t know anything. He planted a bunch of grape vines, I guess because he was homesick. But the place was right where a raccoon used to live. The new house doesn’t faze her. She wants those grapes. You put in a fence, she climbs it. You put up a bit of wire on top, she shimmies through. You electrify it, she climbs a big tree nearby and drops into the middle of the vineyard, then digs under to get out. If you put in a moat, she swims it. You stay up all night watching for her, then the second you doze off she’s back. There’s a maddening persistence there, but it’s not stupidity. She just puts up with what she has to, because she’s going to survive, no matter what. She’s going to keep coming at you until you get tired and go away, or you put a bullet into her. Seeing her die would be a shameful thing. Besides, she’s the best friend I’ve had since Sal Augustino.”

It took Jane a second to identify the moment when the raccoon had transformed back into Rita. “Friend?”

“I know,” said Bernie. “It sounds pathetic in a man my age. Living like I did is lonely. She used to take the time to talk to me. Nobody else did. Once in a while when things were slow, I’d get her to play a game of cards. I could tell she wasn’t much interested in cards: too much sitting still for a person like her, I guess, and too much thinking about something that’s pointless. I guess she was lonely too. We’d kind of look out for each other when there were other people around. And she got to go out—you know, shopping for groceries and so on. So I’d use her for my eyes and ears. She’d come back and describe everything she saw and heard out there. Seeing her was like getting a visitor in jail. Until you’ve been there, you don’t know what that is.”

“I understand,” said Jane.

“So what do we do with her? Before we do anything that’s probably going to bring the roof down on our heads, we’ve got to—”

The door beside Bernie’s opened suddenly, and Rita glared at them. “Where have you two been?”

Jane stepped inside and pulled Rita with her. When Bernie had entered, he closed the door behind him. “What are you doing up at this hour?” he asked.

“Looking for you,” said Rita.

“We went for a little walk,” Jane said. “Don’t worry. If we were going to abandon you or something, we wouldn’t be here. Bernie wouldn’t have followed you all the way from Florida, and I wouldn’t have driven half the night to get you here.”

Rita gave her a sullen look. “I fell asleep and everything changed, didn’t it? Now it’s you and Bernie. What are you going to do with me?”

Jane said, “What I had planned to do all along. I’m going to get you some very good identification that says you’re somebody else. Then I’m going to find you a safe, pleasant place to live and try to teach you to be that other person. When I’m satisfied that you’ve learned enough to stay alive, I’m going to leave.”

Rita looked at the floor, then back up at her. “I … I’m sorry. I’d rather go with Bernie.”

“What?”

She looked at Jane apologetically. “I’m sorry. I came to you and begged you to help me. And I know there’s a way you do these things, because Celia told me. I have to do everything you say, as soon as you say it and not even ask any questions. Now you’ve gone to a lot of trouble and taken me all the way here. But I don’t want to go off by myself and hide somewhere. I’d rather go wherever Bernie’s going.”

Bernie looked amazed, and even a little frightened. “Wait, kid. Who invited you? I just didn’t want you on your own without any money. But you won’t be on your own. Jane will help you.”

The girl’s eyes were beginning to well up. “Please, Bernie. I worked for you for a year. You know I won’t be any trouble. I can help you a lot.”

Jane looked at Bernie, waiting. He said, “I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve always tried to seem like this nice old man, but that’s not what I am. The reason I lived in that house is that I worked for the Mafia. I was hiding money for them. They don’t get money from some nice clean enterprise. It came from things like lending somebody’s father a few bucks so they can make him pay ten times that in interest, or they’ll break his legs. Or from taking girls younger than you and forcing them to have sex with twenty strangers a day. You told me your mother was locked up for drugs. There’s a good chance the money from bringing it in came to me.”

“You sound like I’m five years old,” said Rita. “You didn’t do any of those things, any more than I did. You couldn’t have left if you tried.”

Bernie looked at Jane in desperation, so Jane said, “You saw what happened when they heard Bernie was killed. They seem to be tearing the country apart looking for anybody who might know anything. Right now, the only one I know about is you.”

“They’re not looking for Bernie, because he’s dead. And he’s smarter than they are. It said in the paper he was. If he doesn’t get caught, neither do I.” She said to Bernie in a pleading voice, “This isn’t her problem. It’s our problem. She’s this nice woman, and we’re just going to get her killed.”

Jane said, “I’m afraid you don’t know everything … ”

“I know enough.”

Bernie said, “Danny isn’t going to meet me somewhere. They caught him in your hotel and killed him.”

She closed her eyes to hold the tears back. “Then you’re the only friends I have left. I want to go with you. I can help with what you’re doing.”

“What is he doing?” asked Jane.

“Not him. Both of you. You’re going to take all the money he hid for the Mafia.”

“Why would you think that?” asked Bernie.

“Because you hate them. That’s why you pretended to die. I watched you sometimes when those men came to the house. And I watched you looking out the window at them when they left. You hate them.”

Bernie looked at Jane, his eyebrows raised.

Jane took in a deep breath and sighed. “I guess when you know enough to get yourself killed, it won’t make things any worse if you have the story straight. Yes. We’ve decided to try to retrieve all the money he was holding in his head for the families. What we want to do is steal it and donate it to charities.”

Rita’s body straightened and her head bobbed backward as though something had jumped up at her. “Get real.” She waited for Jane or Bernie to say something, then cocked her head. “All of it?”

“Every penny, if we can.”

Rita glared at her, then let her eyes move to Bernie, then back to Jane, as though she was still waiting for one of them to reveal that it was a joke. Very slowly, her eyes widened, and her lips curled up at the corners. “It’s kind of funny.” After a pause, she said softly, “Okay.”

“What do you mean, ‘Okay’?”

“I’m in. I’ll help. Maybe it’ll pay them back just a little bit for Danny.”

“You don’t seem to understand what this means.”

Rita’s smile lingered on her lips, but her eyes were still wet from the tears. “I understand enough.”

“I’m not sure you do,” said Bernie. “I’m holding money that belongs to twelve families. Not little ones, either. Right now they think I’m dead, and they hate me for dying. They can’t wait to die too, so they can go track me through hell to kill me again. If they ever get one whiff of a suspicion that I’m alive and gave away their money, they’ll go crazy. There will be hundreds of guys out looking for me every day. They’ll still be looking when nobody’s seen me for forty years and I’d have to be a hundred and fifteen years old. Then they’ll quit. You know what will happen then?”

“What?” said Rita.

“They’ll start looking harder for you.”

“I’ll be fifty-eight,” said Rita. “And I’ll know that I at least did something to them before they got me.”

Jane stood closer and looked into Rita’s eyes. “We’ve told you what we’re going to do. What you’re going to do hasn’t changed. You’re going to a place far away where you can pass as a different person.”

“What am I supposed to do there? What’s the use of it?”

“Who knows?” said Jane. “Maybe so that when we’re dead, there will be somebody alive who knows what we were trying to do.”