No Safe House

Fifty Terry

Vince went down to his knees, then threw out both his hands to brace himself. I thought he was going to pass out, but he spent a moment on the floor there, on hands and knees, panting and catching his breath.

“Call 911,” Cynthia said to me.

“No!” Vince bellowed.

She struck off for the kitchen.

“Don’t call!” he yelled, looking down.

She returned with a glass of water. “Drink this,” she said, holding it in front of his face. He took one palm off the floor so he could do as he was told. Grace was perched halfway up the steps to the second floor, taking it all in, her eyes fixed on Vince.

He took a couple of sips and handed the glass back to Cynthia. I was next to her now, extending a hand.

“Here,” I said. He grasped it, hard, and with great effort got back up on two feet. “Over here,” I said, moving him to the closest living room chair.

“No time,” Vince said, his voice breaking.

“Just for a minute,” Cynthia said. “Till you have your strength back.”

“I have to... have to start making the rounds.”

“Damn it, sit for a minute,” Cynthia said. “Do you have chest pains?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Just... I’m just tired. A wave kind of came over me...”

“Drink some more of this.”

“Something stronger...”

“Drink the water.”

He took two more gulps, handed the glass back again.

“Fill us in,” I said.

“Some guy. Using Jane’s phone. He said they’ve got her. They want everything.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“She got one — two words out. Mine, and then she said, ‘Don’t,’ and then they wouldn’t let her say anything else. But it was her.” He made fists with both hands, opened them, closed them again. “I’ll kill them,” he said quietly. “All of them.”

Cynthia glanced at me, then said to Vince, “No one doubts you for a second about that, but right now you have to figure out how to get her back.”

“You think I don’t know that? But after I do, I swear to God...”

He looked at both of us, and for a moment I thought I saw a flicker of self-pity in them.

I asked, “What did you mean when you said they want everything?”

“Everything!” he said, as if it should be obvious. “Everything I’ve got! Everything I’ve put away for people. The money, anything else. They want it all.” Vince shook his head. “If that’s what it takes to get Jane, fine, they’ll get it. But after that, I’m a dead man. And if I’m a dead man, I’m taking them with me.”

I had an idea what he was getting at, but he must have seen confusion on our faces, so he spelled it out more clearly.

“I’m paying a ransom with other people’s money and property. One day, they’re gonna want it back, and they’re not gonna be happy when I tell them I gave it all away. These are not forgiving people. I’m talking bikers. I’m talking bank robbers. I’m talking drug dealers. I’m a dead man walking, in more ways than one. So these fuckers who took Jane, I don’t care how many I take down, or what happens to me after.”

“It’ll matter to Jane,” Cynthia said.

Vince shrugged. Defiantly, he stood bolt upright out of the chair. But his top half swayed slightly and he had to put his arms out for balance.

“Shit,” he said.

“You can’t do this,” Cynthia said. “You’re not well. You’ve got to let somebody else handle this. You have to call the police, Vince.”

“No!” he shouted. Weak as he was, he could still make his words echo off the walls. He pointed a meaty index finger at both of us. “No police.”

“Vince, for God’s sake,” Cynthia said, keeping her voice calm. “They’ve got experience with this kind of thing.”

“They got no experience with handling this kind of thing the way I intend to handle it,” Vince said. “Christ, can you imagine if I called the cops? They’d love that. They’d put the cuffs on me and spend a week busting my balls before they got around to looking for Jane.”

I thought he was probably right about that.

“No, no way. I’ll handle this.”

“Do you know who has her?” I asked.

His head went side to side slowly. “But I got an idea. I think I recognize the voice. A woman. Someone who brought some cash for me to hide a few days ago. Now I think maybe she was sizing me up, seeing how the operation works. I was wondering that about those two guys who came to see me last night, too. Maybe they’re in this together.”

“What two guys?”

“Logan, and his asshole brother, Joseph. The donut eater.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“There was something about them didn’t smell right. But the woman, she must have an idea how much money and stuff there is. She said bring it all. Said if I didn’t, she’d know. Son of a bitch. If she really knows, then I’m gonna be coming up short.”

“The Cummings house,” I said. “You got ripped off last night.”

“Two hundred grand, and incidentals,” Vince said, his jaw tightening. “I gotta go.”

He took a couple of unsteady steps toward the door.

“What about your guys?” I asked. “You said you’ve got nobody.”

Another shrug. “Eldon’s dead. Gordie’s dead. And Bert, he’s bailed. Abandoned me. Disloyal fuck.”

Cynthia gasped. “Two of your men are dead? These people who have Jane, did they kill them?”

A shake of the head. “No. Eldon... had a problem. And Bert said Gordie was in an accident. Minutes ago. Hit by a truck.”

“You mentioned Nathaniel,” Cynthia said. “You said dog walker.”

“They thought he might have ripped off the stash last night. Picked him up for a chat. Things didn’t go right.”

“Is Nate — what happened to Nate?” Cynthia asked.

“Got away.”

Cynthia looked relieved. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Pull together what I can, in the time I’ve got. Bert, Gordie got to a few places where we tucked stuff away. But not all. They were running out of time — some people were home; they couldn’t get in without causing a scene. Had to find out if we’d been hit anywhere else. They pulled together a few hundred thou, some other stuff. I can raise maybe another couple hundred, buy myself some time.”

“How much time do you have?”

“She’s calling me again after one. Gives me better part of four hours. Gotta get moving.”

“Wait. Just hang on,” Cynthia said. “Let me get this straight. You have to go to how many homes? Where the money’s hidden?”

He rolled his eyes up into his forehead, thinking. “Five — maybe six — oughta do it. If the money’s there. If we didn’t get ripped off like at the Cummings.”

“And you’ve got keys and security codes?”

“At the office.”

“And if the people are home? What then? You going to shoot them? But get them to hold the ladder first so you can get into their attic? You’re already woozy. I don’t see you crawling around cramped spaces. There’s no way you can do this.”

“This has nothing to do with you,” he said and took another step toward the door.

But it did. What happened at the Cummings house had everything to do with us. Grace had been there. Someone had seen her, and might still consider her a threat. Until we knew who that was, we were still very much involved.

Cynthia pressed on. “You don’t want to call the police, but you think you can barge into people’s homes and they won’t dial 911?”

He had the door open, then raised a hand high and placed it on the jamb, leaning into it.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” he asked, his back to us, his voice breaking. I could see his body heaving with each exhausted breath.

“Give us a minute,” I said, then touched Cynthia’s arm and led her into the kitchen, past Grace, still sitting on the stairs.

“What?” she whispered once we got there. I closed the door so Vince, as well as Grace, could not hear what I was going to say.

“I can’t believe I’m thinking this way, but maybe we should help him,” I said.

“The only way we can help him is to call the police.”

“I don’t know about that. You were saying, what happens if he goes to these houses and someone’s home? What’s he going to say? ‘Hi, I hid money in your attic. You mind if I come in and get it?’ For sure that’ll get him arrested. But the alternative, going to the cops, that may not work, either. He needs to be able to get into those houses and get the money if he’s got a shot at saving Jane.”

Cynthia wasn’t certain. “But if he explains things to the police, makes them understand, quickly — You remember that detective? The woman? Rona Wedmore?”

“I remember.”

“If Vince talked to her, if we talked to her with him, maybe they wouldn’t waste a lot of time worrying about Vince’s business. They’d worry about Jane.”

“It’s not just about Jane,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want anything to happen to her, but there’s more at stake than just her.”

Cynthia looked at me blankly for a second, but then she got it. “Grace.”

“Yeah. Once this whole can of worms gets opened, everything’s going to come out. Including the business about our daughter breaking into that house. And there’s the matter of who was there, who may be worried that Grace got a look at him.”

She was shaking her head. “But nothing that bad even happened in the house. Grace has heard from Stuart. Those texts. He’s okay. If we call the cops, Grace may not be in as much trouble as we first feared, and we’ll be helping Jane at the same time.”

I wasn’t so sure.

I decided to try another tack with Cynthia.

“That man out there, I know what he is. He’s a thug. I get that. But I still feel I owe him. For how he helped us before. If he hadn’t come with me that night, I wouldn’t have found you — you and Grace — in time. And like they say, no good deed goes unpunished. He nearly died.”

Cynthia’s eyes softened. “I don’t feel any different. I know the sacrifice he made. But what can we do? Jesus, Terry, what the hell can we do?”

“I have an idea how we can get into those houses so he can get the money. Any house where there are people.”

“How?”

“Mold.”

She blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Mold,” I repeated. “Your latest project. Mold infestation in houses. In damp attics. Health risks. Fucking spores floating around in the air getting into people’s lungs.”

“I’m not following.”

“Get your purse,” I said.

She didn’t ask why. Instead, she went out into the hall and was back in ten seconds.

“They’re talking out there,” she said.

“What?”

“Vince and Grace. They were talking, and then stopped when I came in.”

I couldn’t care about that right now. “Get out your ID.”

“What ID? My driver’s license?”

“No. From the health department.”

Something sparkled in her eyes. She knew what I was thinking. Cynthia dug into her bag, pulled out her official ID from the Milford Department of Public Health.

“That’s what you’re going to show when they answer the door,” I said.

She nodded. “I tell them we’re checking homes in the area. That there’s some kind of mold epidemic.”

“Has there ever been a mold epidemic?” I asked.

“Not that I know of,” she said. “But I’ve got pamphlets on household mold in the car. It outlines the risks. There’s pictures in them that’ll scare any home owner to death.”

“We tell them we need to see the attic. That that’s where it grows.”

“We?”

“You tell them,” I said. “But I’ll be with you. With a ladder. We leave Vince in the car because he’ll scare the hell out of people.”

“It’s beyond crazy,” Cynthia said.

“I know.”

I could tell she was considering it, though. She said, “If you thought you had mold in the attic that could make you sick, wouldn’t you want to know? We get in, we get up in the attic — that can be your job — you get the money, and we get out.”

“Yeah.”

I thought I’d won her over to the idea, but then she shook her head. “No, it’s too crazy, too risky. I want to help Vince — I really do — and I want to help Jane, but the best way to do it is to call the police. And with Stuart alive—”

On the other side of the door, Grace let out a mournful wail.

We found her in tears, her back leaned up against the wall, standing across from Vince.

“He’s dead,” she told us. “Stuart’s dead. They made it up. The texts, they were all bullshit. Vince told me.”

Vince looked at us with heavy eyes. “I needed you to stop nosing around. But we’re past that now. There’s no sense lying about any of this anymore.”

Through tears, Grace said, “He says I didn’t shoot him.”

Vince nodded wearily. “Last night, I was using the gun as leverage. But Eldon’s gun, the one Stuart gave your kid, it hadn’t been fired. Full clip.”

Cynthia turned and said to me, “I’ll get the pamphlets.”