Broken Promise: A Thriller

Forty-five

Someone was knocking lightly on the door of Marshall Kemper’s apartment.

Sarita Gomez was standing in front of the bathroom sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror, when she heard it.

She froze.

The police had found her. They must have discovered where she worked. Maybe someone had told them she’d been seeing Kemper. So now they were here. She knew she was stupid to think she could hide out for long. She had to get out of Promise Falls. She had to get as far away from here as she could, as quickly as possible.

Sarita stepped out of the bathroom and approached the apartment door in bare feet, trying to step lightly so as not to make any of the floorboards creak. She stood three feet from the door, held her breath.

Another knock.

Then, “Babe! It’s me!” An urgent whisper.

She went to the door, unlocked it, removed the chain. Marshall entered the room with a McDonald’s bag.

“I got breakfast,” he said, setting the bag on the counter of the kitchen nook. He pulled out two coffees, five breakfast sandwiches, and five hash browns. “I was starving and figured you would be, too.”

He unwrapped a sandwich and bit into it, stuffing nearly a third of it into his mouth at once.

Sarita said, “Did you get some cash?”

Marshall said, “Mmphh nth.”

“I don’t feel safe here. I want to get a train to New York.”

Marshall got enough food down his throat to talk. “I didn’t go to the cash machine. I did something else. Somethin’ that’ll give you way more money. Both of us.”

He held out a sandwich to her, but she didn’t take it.

“What did you do?”

“You gotta listen to me, babe. I know you were worried about this, but I’ve got the ball rolling. This is going to work. This is going to set us up good.”

“Tell me you didn’t call Mr. Gaynor.”

“Look, just hear me out.”

“You idiot!”

“No, listen!” He reached out to her with the hand that wasn’t holding a breakfast sandwich, but Sarita stepped back. He took a quick bite of biscuit, egg, and sausage. “This is going to work out. He’s going to give us fifty thousand dollars.”

“Oh, my God. You mentioned me? You told him I was part of this?”

“No, no. I’m not an idiot. When I say us, I mean we get the money. But as far as Gaynor knows, he’s just dealing with one guy, and he has no idea who that guy is.”

“I told you not to do this.”

“Come on, you’re not thinking straight because you’re so directly involved. I’m taking a step back. I can see the whole picture. You have to trust me on this.” He glanced at his watch. “Guy’s going to be calling me very soon. If I haven’t heard from him by ten thirty, so far as he knows, I go to the cops with everything I know. Everything you’ve told me.”

“You can’t do that. You can’t go to the police.”

Marshall rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m not going to the cops! But he doesn’t know that! That’s the beauty of it. That’s why he’s going to come up with fifty thou. A guy like that, he won’t even miss that kind of money. But for us, it’s a chance to start our lives over.”

“You’re making things worse. Things are already bad and you’re making them worse.”

“Come on, babe. How is this worse? This is a solution. This is a way out of the mess.”

“You told me you wouldn’t do this,” Sarita said. “I have to go. I have to get out of here.”

“Hold on. Just for a little while. Maybe another hour? Gaynor’s gonna call me any second. I go get the money; I come back; we go. Anything we need, we can buy it on the way.”

She walked to the window, looked out at the street, walked back. She paced.

“All I ever wanted was to do the right thing,” she said. “When I saw her there in the kitchen, I had to do something and—”

“And you did a good thing. It wasn’t like you could leave the little fucker there. But that part’s over. Now we’re—”

The cell phone in the front pocket of Marshall’s jeans rang.

He tossed his sandwich onto the counter and dug in his pocket for the phone, put it to his ear.

“Right on time, Mr. Gaynor,” Marshall said. Sarita watched him, slowly shaking her head.

She was mouthing, No, no, no, as Marshall put a finger to his lips.

“It wasn’t easy,” Bill Gaynor said.

“But you did it.”

“I got the money.”

“That’s excellent,” Marshall Kemper said. “Now, here’s what I want you to do. You know the Promise Falls Mall?”

“Of course,” he said.

Marshall said, “Okay, so I want you to put the money in one of those eco bags. You got one of them?”

“Yes.”

“You can get it all in there, right?” he asked. “Will it fit?”

“It’ll fit,” Gaynor said.

“Okay, so you put the money in the eco bag. There’s a hot-dog place over on the left side, and right near the end of it there’s a garbage can. Just put the bag in there and walk away.”

“Leave the money in the garbage?”

“I’ll collect it soon enough. But here’s the thing. I’ll be watching. I’ll know what you look like, but you won’t know me. And I’ll be watching to see if anybody’s watching you. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“Because if you try to pull something, then I go to the cops. You get that?”

“I told you, I understand.”

“Okay. You make the drop; you get out. Simple as that. You did the right thing, Gaynor. You’re not going to hear from me again after this. I’m not one of those guys who’s going to come back again and again and hit you up for money. I got ethics.”

“Whatever,” Gaynor said. “When do you want to do this?”

Marshall looked at his watch again. Sarita could see him thinking, timing things.

“One hour,” Marshall said. “Don’t be late.”

“I won’t.”

Gaynor ended the call. Marshall looked at Sarita and smiled. “We’re going to be rich, babe.”

“Fifty thousand is not rich,” she said. “Even someone as poor as me knows fifty thousand is not rich. You’re a fool.”

“I’m gonna finish my sandwich and then I gotta go,” he said. He put a hand behind her neck and pulled her toward him. Kissed her. “You just wait. I’m going to take care of you.”

Marshall got a seat in the far corner of the food court. It wasn’t as busy as he’d hoped, eleven o’clock on a weekday morning. There were a few seniors sitting around drinking coffee, some of them clustered together, shooting the shit. What they did, Marshall knew, was arrive here before the shops opened, do their mall walk, traipsing from one end of the place to the other twenty or thirty times in their goofy-looking running shoes; then they bought some coffee and doughnuts and sat around and talked for three hours because they had nothing else in the world to do. This was their last stop before they hit Davidson Place.

Marshall bought himself a newspaper and a Coke and sat at a table that gave him an unobstructed view of the hot-dog stand and the nearby garbage receptacle. It was one of those units with one opening for trash, another for recyclables, and a place on top to leave your plastic tray. The food court was at the end of a broad hall, which meant there was only one direction Bill Gaynor could come from.

Ten minutes after Marshall had settled in, he saw a man approaching.

The man was carrying a baby up against his chest with one arm, and an eco bag hung from the end of his other arm. At first Marshall thought, Who brings a baby to pay off a blackmailer? Then he thought, Oh, yeah, his nanny didn’t show up for work today.

Duh.

Marshall tried to keep his focus on the sports pages of the Times Union, the closest thing you could get to a local paper these days. Every few seconds he’d steal a quick glance at the man.

He strolled past where Marshall was sitting, heading in the direction of the garbage.

Marshall felt a tingling all over. So close to so much money. When Gaynor had his back to him, Marshall could not take his eyes off the bag.

Gaynor reached the trash, took a quick look around, pushed open the hinged door, and shoved the bag inside. Baby still in his arm, he turned and walked back in the direction he’d come from. Marshall waited until he was out of sight.

“All right,” Marshall said, getting up, leaving his paper and Coke behind. He began walking briskly toward the trash.

At a table just a few steps away from it, an elderly man cut short his discussion with three other seniors and jumped to his feet. He moved — a lot faster than Marshall thought he should have been able to at his age — toward the trash bin.

“Get out of my way, old man,” Marshall said under his breath.

The old man had nothing in his hands to throw away. Once he’d reached the trash, he opened the door with one hand and reached in with the other.

“Hey!” Marshall shouted from thirty feet away. “Hey!”

He closed the distance in a second, put his hand on the man’s arm and started to pull it out.

“Get your paws off me,” the old man said.

“What the hell are you doing?” Marshall asked.

The man said, “Guy just threw away a perfectly good bag.” He’d found it and was pulling it through the opening. “See? That’s a good bag. No good reason to throw away that—”

“Give that to me,” Marshall said. “That’s mine.”

“I found it!” the man said. Then, seeing that it had paper stuffed in it, he added, “There’s something in here.”

“It’s mine. Let go of it. He left it there for me, you dumb bastard.”

The man was no match for Marshall, who ripped it from his hands. The man yelped in pain. “You twisted my arm, you motherfucker!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! But it’s mine!”

Marshall ran.

Behind him, the old guy shouted, “Hey! He broke my arm!”

Just keep moving. Don’t look back.

Marshall nearly ran into the glass doors on the way to the parking lot, they were so slow to retract. He had his keys out, unlocked the van from fifty feet away, jumped in behind the wheel, and keyed the ignition. He tossed the bag onto the seat next to him, threw the van into drive, and tore out of the lot as fast as he could.

A mile down the road, he pulled into a Walmart lot, stopped the car, and reached over for the bag.

His heart was pounding and his shirt was soaked with sweat. What the hell was that old guy doing, rooting around in the trash? Who needed a used eco bag that badly?

Marshall thought the bag should have been a little heavier than it was. But then again, when was the last time he’d carried fifty grand? How much was that supposed to weigh?

Gaynor had placed some newspapers over the top of the bag. Marshall tossed them into the foot well in front of the passenger seat, expecting to see bundles of cash with rubber bands around them.

There was an envelope. A business envelope. A very thin business envelope.

“Jesus, the guy didn’t write a check, did he?”

He tore it open, found a single sheet of paper inside. Gaynor had written the following: