Outsourced

31

It was a little after seven when Dan pulled up in Joel’s driveway. The scene outside the house looked like something from a battlefield. With the summer winding down and the days getting shorter, the evening’s dusk added to the eeriness of the scene. Dan couldn’t quite comprehend why a car would be sticking halfway out of Joel’s house until he spotted the two bodies.

He walked slowly up the path to the front door and saw that one of the dead bodies was Shrini. He felt nothing seeing his friend lying there dead with a large gaping hole where his eye should’ve been. He rang the bell and stood mutely until he heard Joel weakly call out for him to come in through the hole in the wall.

Dan walked past another dead body and around the back end of the BMW before squeezing through the opening between the wall and the car. Inside he saw two more dead bodies and then caught sight of Joel propped up in a sitting position. Joel looked white as a sheet, a large puddle of blood underneath him. From what Dan could tell, blood seemed to be spurting out of his leg.

As Dan moved into the room he stared transfixed at one of the dead bodies, realizing it was Viktor Petrenko.

“Hey, pal.” Joel tried to smile. “Here’s the deal.

I’ll give you half of what I got. First bury these bodies, clean up in here, then take me to the hospital.”

“I can’t do that, Joel. I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you any more.”

Joel’s half-hearted smile disappeared. He lifted his gun and aimed it at Dan. “You trust me to blow your head off if you don’t do what I say?”

“Do what you have to, Joel.”

Joel’s eyes glazed over for a moment and then softened back to something more human. “Motherfucker,” he swore. “All right, I can’t blame you. What will it take?”

“I have to get my money first.”

“You give me your word you help me afterwards?”

“You’ve got my word.”

Joel made his decision, nodded slowly. “You try fucking me, you’re dead, understand?”

“Whatever you say, Joel.”

“End of my shooting range, you shovel off a foot of dirt. You’ll find a safe there. Combination two, twelve, two. You’re going to take only half, right?”

“That’s all.”

“Then hurry up. It’s going to take a while to bury these bodies.”

Dan went down to the basement, found a shovel and dug out enough dirt to expose the safe. He opened it, took out the duffel bag that he had used in the robbery, then wiped off whatever fingerprints he might’ve left.

When he got back upstairs, Joel asked what he was doing with the bag. “I thought you were only going to take half,” he demanded.

Dan ignored him and kept walking.

“Motherfucker! We had a deal!”

A bullet whistled past Dan’s ear. When he turned around he could tell from the expression on Joel’s face that the shot had not been meant as a warning shot. The only reason he missed was because his eyes were clouding up and he probably couldn’t see straight.

“You gave me your word,” Joel insisted. His body swayed back and forth. He wasn’t going to be able to keep himself propped up much longer.

“Joel, you’re bleeding out. No matter what I do you’re going to be dead soon.”

As Dan squeezed through the opening in the wall, he heard another shot fired, but had the feeling that this one missed wildly. Walking towards his car, he heard one last Motherfucker yelled out, Joel’s voice now feeble, barely recognizable.

During the ride home he thought about what his next steps were going to be. He no longer had to worry about Petrenko. Eventually the cops were going to find out about what happened at Joel’s house, but what would that prove? Even if they could now tie Shrini and Joel to the robbery they still had nothing to tie him to it… except his cell phone call to Joel. What could they prove from that? They still had no real evidence. Maybe they’d make him go through a trial, but he’d get through it.

He got home after nine. The house seemed quiet. Too quiet. He found Carol sitting alone in the kitchen, her face worn out, her eyes red and puffy as if she’d been crying.

“Where are the kids?” Dan asked.

“At friends’ houses.” She faced him. “That rash you had. That was the same day as the robbery. You got that from the makeup.”

“I told you how I got that-”

“Quit lying to me, Dan. You’ve been lying to me for months. All those meetings with Shrini and Gordon were so you could plan the robbery. Joel was involved too, wasn’t he? I remember that phone call you were so afraid of me overhearing.”

“Carol, please-”

“Quit lying to me, Dan. I can’t stand it.”

Dan sat down across from her. He couldn’t bear to look at all the pain in her eyes. All he could do was bury his face in his hands. “We were going to lose the house. We were going to lose everything we had.”

“So you robbed a bank. You killed a girl. Dan, she was only twenty!”

“Twenty-three,” Dan corrected her.

Carol’s jaw dropped as she stared at him.

“No one was supposed to get hurt,” Dan said quickly. “Gordon went nuts. There was nothing I could do.”

They sat in silence. Dan couldn’t break it. All he could do was wait for Carol to say something.

Finally, she did. “Get out. I never want you anywhere near me or my children ever again.”

“Carol, I love you.”

“I might still love you too, Dan. I’m not sure right now. But I can’t have you around my children.”

“Please, I had to do what I did.” He forced himself to look at her. “I’m going blind.”

“What?”

“I have retinitis pigmentosa. Another year or so and I’ll be completely blind.”

“My God! Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“You had enough to worry about as it was. If I had a job I would’ve had long-term disability to protect you and the kids. But without it what was I going to do? Have all of you end up in the streets?”

“We would’ve managed somehow.”

“How? On welfare? In a project somewhere?”

“We would’ve managed,” she repeated stubbornly. “Dan, it’s too late now to fix things. There’s nothing you can do except leave.” She paused. “I won’t tell the police what I know, but you have to leave.”

Dan stared at her helplessly. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he knew there was no point arguing with her.

“Let me at least give you the money,” he said.

“No, don’t you dare even try.”

“Jesus, Carol-”

“Just leave, please.”

“What are you going to tell the kids?”

“I’ll think of something.”

Dan tried to think of some way to change her mind but knew in his heart there was nothing he could do. He got up, walked slowly, stopped once to look back at his wife and then left.

Resnick hated the way things were left. He had nothing concrete to charge Wilson with and he wasn’t going to risk having the guy’s wife and kids massacred as some sort of ploy. He was stuck and he hated being stuck.

He lifted a finger to the bartender, indicating another bourbon was in order. As he downed the shot, he made a decision. He got off his barstool, threw twenty bucks down and left the bar.

He didn’t have any real plan as he drove to Wilson’s house, but somehow he was going to get through to the guy. If it meant dragging him to Mary O’Donnell’s bedside, he was going to get through to him.

When he got to Wilson’s house his wife answered the door. He felt a tug at his heart when he saw lines creasing her face that hadn’t been there only hours earlier. She told him her husband wasn’t home and she didn’t expect him to come home any time in the future.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Something personal between the two of us. Nothing I care to discuss.”

Resnick hesitated, then asked if he could come in.

“I really have nothing to say to you.”

“Please, just give me a few minutes.”

“Fine, a few minutes.”

She tried to smile as she stepped aside. Or maybe she was trying to keep from crying. Resnick couldn’t tell which it was.

He stood in the living room, waited for her to take a seat on a sectional sofa, and then took a seat kitty-corner to her.

“This looks like an expensive house. Pretty expensive neighborhood also.”

Carol didn’t respond.

Resnick felt another tug at his heart while he watched her sitting with her hands clasped tight together, struggling to keep her composure. “When your husband lost his job, things must’ve gotten difficult financially,” he said.

She nodded, bit her lip. “I found a job. Dan got himself a contract. We did okay.”

“His contract pay anywhere near what his salary used to?”

She shook her head.

Resnick took a deep breath and let the air out slowly. He hated what he was doing but he had no choice. He handed her the same crime-scene photos of Mary O’Donnell and Margaret Williams that he had shown Dan earlier. Her face went white as she looked at them.

Resnick said. “I know your husband planned the robbery. He’s responsible for what happened to those two women.”

“I can’t tell you anything,” she said, her voice coming out in short gasps.

“Mrs. Wilson, I know you had nothing to do with this, but I need your help.”

She broke out sobbing, her face becoming a mask of pain and hopelessness. Blindly, she stood up, her shoulders rising up and down rhythmically with her sobs. Then she held out her arms.

Awkwardly, he stood up. He knew this wasn’t right. He was trying to put her husband away, for Chrissakes. But what was he going to do, just let her stand there and bawl?

She fell into him, her head hard against his chest as she sobbed.

Damn, this is just not right, he thought. He put one arm around her and patted her back.

He understood fully what she was going through. She had just lost her husband, the father of her children – really her whole way of life. As he held her, felt the smallness of her body and her tears soaking through his shirt, he started thinking of his own losses. His beautiful wife, Carrie, and that heart-wrenching smile that she had. All those years wasted in his self-imposed isolation. And Brian…

It was the first time he had truly let himself think about losing Brian – actually admit to himself that he was never going to see his boy again – and the thought overwhelmed him.

Brian was gone.

There was no way of ever bringing him back.

His boy was really gone…

As the realization forced itself upon him, the pain became so unbearable he didn’t think he could live. It was as if his heart were going to explode. All of the pain came crashing down like a tidal wave, catching him in its currents, tossing him about in a dizzying fury. God, how could he survive this? Survive knowing his boy was really gone. That he’d never hold his Brian again. Never see his boy again. How in the world was that possible?

Resnick realized he was sobbing also and that he was holding Carol even tighter than she was holding him.

Dan drove until he was bleary-eyed, until he couldn’t focus any more, and then stopped at the first roadside motel he came to. Where was he, Ohio? Indiana? He had no idea. All he knew was that he was exhausted.

The desk clerk asked him if he had any bags. Dan couldn’t help laughing when he told him only one. The clerk looked at him as if he were crazy. Fine, let him.

When he got to his room, he dumped the contents of the duffel bag on to his bed. Packets of hundred-dollar bills covered the bedspread, some of them spilling on to the floor. He guessed he had over a million dollars. There were a bunch of silk bags among the money. He emptied out dozens of diamonds from them.

All that money lying in front of him. All those diamonds glistening under the dim light from a sixty-watt bulb.

He tried to figure out what he was going to do with all of that money. Finally, he came to the conclusion that he didn’t have a clue.

Not a fucking clue.