No Safe House

Forty-eight Terry

Once Teresa had been dismissed, Cynthia and I continued to search the house. We finished with the boxes we’d dragged out from the furnace room and turned our attention to a crawl space under the stairs. There were another half a dozen boxes in there. I hauled them all out into the middle of the room and then we each grabbed one and went to town.

I’d briefly considered waiting until Vince showed up — assuming he kept his word and came over — and letting him lead us to it, but the thought that something in our home had been secreted there was so unnerving we both wanted it found, and out of there, as soon as possible. Especially if its presence made us some kind of target.

Grace came back down and asked what we were doing.

“We’re looking for money,” I said.

She blinked. “This is where you keep your money?”

“No. We think there may be some hidden in the house.”

“What? Why?”

“All good questions.”

“Can I help look?” she asked.

“Knock yourself out,” Cynthia said.

“It’s somewhere in the basement?”

“We don’t know where it is. It just seemed a logical place to start,” I said.

“If I find it, can I keep it?” our daughter asked.

Together: “No.”

She didn’t look happy about that, but was still intrigued. “Do you know how much it is?”

We told her we did not. She said she was going to look in the garage, and we gave her our blessing. Cynthia, who had just emptied a box of Grace’s childhood drawings, stopped and blew some hair out of her eyes.

“What if it’s not in any of these boxes?” she asked. “What if it’s, I don’t know, in the walls?”

I stopped. “It’s possible. But no, I don’t think so. If he hid money in our house, he’d want to be able to get to it quickly. He’s not going to want to rip off drywall to get to it. And besides, he’d have had to get it in there. I don’t exactly remember returning home one day and finding one of the walls replastered.”

“Then it must be tucked away somewhere. After you pulled all these boxes out, did you see if maybe it was jammed in between the studs or anything?”

That seemed like a good idea, since the walls were unfinished in there. I crawled over on my hands and knees and went back into the storage area under the stairs, feeling around between the studs. I didn’t come up with anything.

“What about under the beds?” Cynthia asked.

“Too obvious. Too risky, too. We keep small suitcases under there. Something hidden there could be stumbled upon.”

Upstairs, the doorbell rang.

We looked at each other nervously. We didn’t want Grace answering. She’d be able to hear the bell from the garage. I charged up the steps two at a time, shouting, “I’ll get it!”

Grace was coming through the doorway that joined the kitchen to the garage. “Who is it?” she asked.

“Just stay there.”

I got to the door and took a quick peek through the small pane of glass that was at nose height.

Vince Fleming.

I turned the dead bolt, opened the door, and said nothing.

“I’m here,” he said. With forced politeness, he added, “Can I come in?”

I let him in. Cynthia reached the top of the stairs and stopped when she saw who it was. “You son of a bitch,” she said.

Vince said nothing. He looked like he was expecting this.

“You goddamn lousy son of a bitch,” Cynthia said, putting a little more into it this time. “I shared a beer with you. You sat there and talked to me about your life like you were almost a human being. But that was an act. You’re something vile. Something absolutely despicable.”

Vince looked very tired. “Go ahead. Get it out of your system.”

“You blackmailed Teresa. To get into our house whenever you want.”

He shook his head. “Not blackmail. I offered to help her son.”

Her cheeks flushed. “Why us?”

“Why not you?” he shot back. “You’re perfect.”

“I still don’t quite get this,” I said. “What it is you’re doing. How you used us.”

“I hide things for people,” he said. “People who can’t afford to have these things found by the authorities. Money, drugs, guns, jewelry, anything. I hide it where no one would think to look. In the homes of people who are above suspicion. Good, upstanding folks whose places would never be searched by the police. You fit the profile.”

“If I’m supposed to feel flattered,” I said, “I don’t.”

“There are lots of people that fit that profile,” Cynthia said. “So again, why us?”

Vince ran his tongue over his teeth. “I drive by here once in a while. I saw your cleaning lady arrive one day. I got this idea, a service I could offer. I decided to start with you. Seemed like the least you could do for me.” He paused. “Considering everything.”

“I don’t believe this,” Cynthia said.

“I started recruiting others. Other cleaning ladies, babysitters, nannies. People who are trusted by their employers.”

“Let me guess,” Cynthia said. “At least one dog walker.”

Vince nodded.

“Nate told me, last night, he had something going on with you that he wanted out of. He wouldn’t say what. You dragged him into this after you met him at my apartment.”

Vince said nothing.

“You’re some piece of work,” Cynthia said.

“Someone took what you had stashed at the Cummings house,” I said. “But it wasn’t Stuart. He and Grace were there when someone else was ripping you off.”

“Yeah,” Vince conceded. “Which is why my guys have been checking out our other locations, to see whether we got hit in more than one place. That’s what Bert was attempting to do here.”

“Where is it?” I asked.

His eyes went north. “Attic,” he said. “That’s where we usually tuck stuff. No one ever goes up in the attic. We put it in between the joists, under the insulation. No one’s going to find it.”

“Unless they already know it’s there,” I said.

He looked at me with dead eyes. “Yeah.” He rubbed his hands together.

“This money you’re hiding,” I said. “How much of it’s yours?”

“None of it. I take my cut off the top. Like I said, I store it for others.”

“So if it goes missing,” I said, “you’re in deep shit.”

He smiled patronizingly at me. “Yeah, I am. But you don’t have to worry about me leaving anything with you anymore. I’m here to take it off your hands.” A pause. “Assuming it hasn’t been taken. There’s not all that much here, at least not in cash.”

“So we’re just supposed to let you go up there?” Cynthia asked.

“I can wait here if you’d rather do it,” he said. “Might take you a while.”

We both hesitated, glanced at each other. “I’ll get a ladder,” I said.

I was turning to go get it when Vince’s phone started to ring. He reached into his pants and pulled out his cell. He looked at it, said, “It’s Jane.”

“She know all about this?” I asked.

He shook his head as he put the phone to his ear.

“What is it, honey?” he said. But his expression changed from mildly curious to deeply concerned. “Who the fuck is this? This Bryce?”

He listened. His face darkened.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Who the hell is—?”

He said nothing for several more seconds, then exploded.

“If you hurt her, I’ll fucking kill you. I will rip out your fucking heart. I will—”

Someone at the other end was trying to tell him something, but Vince wasn’t done.

“No, you shut up, you — you gotta be fucking kidding. There’s no way I can pull that together, no way! You put her on the phone! I wanna talk to her! I wanna hear her voice.”

He waited. I didn’t know whether he was holding his breath, but I was, and I was pretty sure Cynthia was, too.

“Baby?” he said tentatively.

When Jane came on, she shouted loud enough that we could hear her, too.

She said, “Vince, don’t—”

Nothing more.

“Put her back on!” he shouted. “If you — Okay, okay, just don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt her. Tell me what you want.” A pause. I saw color draining from his cheeks. “That could take some time. It’s not all in one place. It’s complicated. I’m not trying to bullshit you. It’s spread out for security—”

He stopped talking, took the phone away from his ear. He’d been hung up on.

Very softly, Cynthia said, “Vince. What’s happened to Jane?”

But Vince was already entering a number into his phone, putting it to his ear. “Come on, pick up, pick up. Son of a — Gordie! Call me! Right fucking now!”

He ended the call, entered another number. Droplets of sweat had broken out on his forehead.

“Jesus, pick up... Bert! Is that you? Okay, okay, look, are you with Gordie? I tried to call and he — what? Slow down! Slow down! How did that happen? A FedEx truck? How the hell did he get hit — and what happened to Braithwaite? Jesus, he walks dogs. He’s not fucking James Bond!”

He put a hand to his forehead, held it there. “Look, look — I don’t care about any of that right now. Just — shut up and listen to me — don’t worry about that now. We’ve got a situation... Yeah, something else... yeah, more important. Somebody’s got Jane!”

More questions from Bert.

“That’s what I said. They’ve got Jane and they say they’re going to kill her if we don’t — Don’t tell me you don’t care!”

Vince’s eyes looked as though they’d pop out of his head. He’d taken his hand from his forehead and put it over his chest. “Are you listening to me? Listen! I’m at the Archer house. Whatever you’re doing, come by here and pick me — What?”

His face was dark like the bottom of a well.

“No, you listen. You still work for me. You get your ass here right—”

And then he stopped. A second hang-up within as many minutes. Slowly, he slipped the phone back into his jeans and looked at us, a man who’d lost all hope.

“They’ve got Jane,” he said. “And I got nobody.”

He reached out to the front hall table to steady himself, but his hand slipped on some mail lying there from the day before.

That was when his legs melted under him, and he went down.