The Blue Religion

A Change in His Heart by Jack Fredrickson

Detective Edrow Fluett leaned the aluminum shovel carefully against the shingle siding, brushed snow off one boot, then the other. It was a laugh; the snow was inside his galoshes. They were as old as the siding, and just as cracked. Better he should have shuffled up and down the driveway a few times, scooped up snow with the gaps in his boots, instead of risking a heart attack, shoveling.

He eased open the kitchen door, lowered himself to sit at the top of the basement stairs. Blanche’s snoring came through the ceiling, steady and righteous, but a nickel bouncing in the next block or, God forbid, a drop falling from his galoshes, could jerk her awake, angry, in an instant.

He bent to pull off his right boot. Too hard; his foot popped out with a sudden, loud sucking sound, like he’d freed it from a swamp. Out too came water, puddling onto Blanche’s linoleum.

He held his breath, strained to listen. Upstairs, she slept on.

Every winter, he told her there was no more fixing the boots, showed her the patches curling away like shriveling corn plasters. But every winter, she refused to hear, turned back to the television, telling him he should use better glue.

Slower this time, he pulled off the other boot, peeled off his drenched socks. His naked feet were gray and wrinkly, ghost prunes. Carrying the dripping boots and socks, he padded down the stairs, made wet footprints of flat arches as he crossed the cold concrete. He set the boots by the floor drain, the socks atop the pile of laundry, crept back up the stairs to the kitchen.

The slow, steady engine of Blanche’s snoring continued above his head.

Gently, he separated two paper towels from the roll on the wall. Blanche had fits when he used them for the floor, but he’d forgotten to bring up the sponge mop, and his frozen feet were in no mood for another walk down to the basement. So long as he remembered to take the towels out, hide them in the neighbor’s trash, she might not know.

He dropped the towels on the puddle by the door. In an instant, they were drenched. Two sheets wasn’t enough, but there was no sense risking a third. Blanche was known to keep track of the sheets on the roll. He bent to pick them up, cupping one in each hand, like melting snowballs. With luck, the floor would dry and he’d be gone before she came downstairs.

“Edrow,” Blanche screamed, firing his name like a cannon shot through the floor.

Splat, splat, the soaked paper snowballs hit the linoleum, loud enough to hear upstairs. “It’s barely six o’clock,” he yelled, hurrying to pick them up, as though she could see through the floor. “Go back to sleep.”

“You made it impossible with that ruckus, shoveling.”

No. She’d heard him taking the paper towels, here-a-penny, there-a-penny, from the roll. “There’s a foot of snow, wet like fresh cement. Heart-attack snow,” he shouted, hustling to set the dripping wads in the sink.

He just had to remember to take them with him when he left for work.

“Couldn’t you have pushed the snow instead of scraping it so loudly?” she shrieked.

“Lucky for you that damned snowblower hasn’t started for ten years. That would have really been loud.”

“I told you, you got to drain the gas from it every spring.”

“You told me to buy that blower from the bandit at the Closeout Hut. Piece of crap. It doesn’t even have a name on it.”

“Don’t leave boots by the back stairs.”

“They’re in the garbage, draining,” he shouted, pleased by his wit. “I’m buying new ones, fifty-dollar ones.”

“Glue,” she screamed.

“No more glue,” he yelled.

There was silence, maybe a whole minute’s worth, and then the bedsprings groaned. “The Closeout Hut ran an ad for boots. Seven ninety-five.”

Her voice had lost a decibel, maybe two. His feet were winning. He pressed. “Their stuff is crap,” he shouted to the plaster.

The bedsprings groaned again. “Don’t slam the door,” she yelled.

JERZY SAT AT his desk in the crammed second-floor storeroom, looking down at the cars inching through the blizzard. “We’re going to sell boots today,” Reggie had said that morning, laughing, cupping his hand to catch a few flakes as he dropped into the Seville. And, like always, he’d been right. Downstairs, the old plank sales floor vibrated from all the shoppers, stomping in like cattle being led to trucks on their way to becoming meat. They’d started coming, just like Reggie had said, right as Jerzy taped the banner in the window: BOOTS, $7.95. Fake, fur-lined, vinyl boots, they looked a nice deep blue under the Closeout Hut’s low-watt fluorescents. In direct sun, Jerzy knew, they would be purple. But there would be no sun today; just snow, dirty clumps of it, big as squashed marbles, falling all over the little town just west of Chicago.

Jerzy would be glad when those boots were gone. Slitting open the shrink-wrapped cartons that morning, spreading the boots on the big tables, had set the place to stinking of mildew and smoke so bad that Jerzy had to pinch his nose. The boots had been in a fire. Reggie had smiled, the day’s never-lit cigar already wet in his mouth, and told him to turn on the overhead fans. No one would notice fans turning on a thirty-degree day, Reggie had said, so long as they thought they were getting a great deal. And from what Jerzy could hear coming from downstairs, Reggie had sure been right about that too. Mixed in with the stomping feet and the babushkas chattering in Polish came the chirpity sound of Reggie humming along with the ringing of the old mechanical cash register. Nobody was saying “fire” in Polish, English, or anything else.

Squinting to see through the snow as Jerzy drove them in, Reggie said it was providence that made him buy the half-truckload of fire-sale boots at 78.4 cents a pair. Jerzy didn’t know providence from apples, but he knew Reggie. Making the old building rumble like some sort of goofity machine, those boots were walking out the door at $7.95 a pair. Reggie had reason to hum.

And when Reggie was happy, Jerzy was happy. Reggie treated him well, took care of everything. Jerzy had worked for Reggie since he dropped out of high school, twelve years now, contented all the time. Except for Agnes, of course. But Reggie had helped him with that too. Jerzy was grateful. He lived rent-free in the basement of Reggie’s house, had a color television and only a two-block walk to the food store for the frozen dinners he microwaved. He’d even saved five thousand dollars. Not much, maybe, for working twelve years, but like Reggie always told him, for what did he need money, with all his needs satisfied?

And regrets? Besides Agnes, he didn’t have any, and that was better than most of the people he saw on television. On TV, everybody seemed to be regretting everything.

Jerzy turned from the window, back to the sales-tax forms on his desk. Reggie had been right, for sure. They were going to sell boots today.

DRIVING IN, DETECTIVE Edrow Fluett got stopped by a traffic accident. He pulled his bubble out of the glove box, stuck it, flashing, on the roof, and radioed Queenie for uniforms. She told him he had to work it himself until the tow drivers got there. She said even the captain was out, working the snow. “And the chief?” Edrow asked, flipping a finger out his open window at a minivan pilot who had stopped to gawk. The chief was at city hall – Queenie laughed – working the mayor, telling him everything was under control.

In no town on the planet did detectives work a traffic accident. No town, that is, save one – the turdweasel burg, stuck like a boil on the west side of Chicago, where his wife grew up.

Edrow got out into the slush, hustled the drivers of the damaged cars – whiners both – to the sidewalk, and stepped back into the center of the highway. And for two hours, he stood in salt-melted snow, waving his arms, screaming into his cell phone for tow trucks, and dodging half-witted drivers. By the time the tow jockeys did arrive – junior turdweasels, both of them full of pimples – his shoes were sodden lumps of pulp, refrigerating the arthritis in his feet.

He headed for his car, eager for the blast of the heater on his toes. But the accident drivers, each a victim, each a liar, were not done. From the sidewalk, they shrieked at him for making them wait outside in the blizzard for their cars to be towed. Edrow stopped the traffic, motioned them to his car in the center of the highway, and, above the blaring horns, told them to report to the station within twenty-four hours so he could ticket them for failing to avoid an accident, driving too fast for conditions, and another dozen charges he had yet to consider. That set them to more yelling, until he raised his arm to restart the traffic. That sent them running for the sidewalk, and Edrow got in his car and drove away.

Now, at his desk, Edrow was watching his shoes change shape on the radiator. Twenty-four ninety-five, Blanche had paid for them, at a place off the interstate where she got lightbulbs. He’d tried polishing them, but like just about everything in Edrow’s life, they never had softened up.

And now they were bubbling up little tumors.

“Edrow?” Queenie buzzed his phone.

“I’m not going out. I’m watching my shoes dissolve on the radiator.”

“Got a report of a break-in at Mart’s Gas Mart.”

“I’m a detective.”

“Yeah, and I’m a queen. I told them you’re on your way.”

He put on his bubbling shoes, drove into the blizzard.

The break-in was to the men’s room.

“I’m standing here, in soaked shoes, because somebody busted into your washroom?” Edrow bent to examine the outside doorknob.

“I need a report for the insurance,” Mart, the turdweasel, said.

Edrow stepped inside, took in the taped-shut heat vent, the black streaks in the sink, and the mildew dots on the walls. He stepped out. “Maybe somebody broke in with a hose, to clean it.”

“Ha-ha. The report.”

“There’s no marks on the door.”

“I need the report to collect.”

“Be at the station tomorrow. I’m going to write you up for attempted insurance fraud, filing a false police report, and other violations I’ve got to look up codes for.”

Driving back, heat vents pointed full at his frozen feet, he checked his cell phone for messages. There was only one, from Blanche. “Seven ninety-five,” she’d said, “not a penny more.”

He took it as a victory. She hadn’t changed her mind, carped about glue instead of new boots. He swung over to Main Street, parked in a handicapped space in front of the Closeout Hut. The red letters on the sign were bright, even through the blizzard: BOOTS, $7.95. Crap for sure, but better than glue. He got out.

“YOU AWAKE UP there?” Reggie shouted from downstairs. Jerzy knew Reg didn’t like to come up much, because at 380, stairs made Reggie’s heart beat funny. But, jeez, if the guy climbed a few more stairs, he could lose that weight, and then his heart wouldn’t beat so funny.

“More boots, Jerzy,” Reggie yelled.

Down below, the sales floor went silent as the babushkas paused like the piranhas in the pet store when the clerk was about to drop the dead goldfish.

“Okay, Reg,” Jerzy shouted back, getting up and clumping loudly across the floor. Reggie liked to hear people being purposeful.

There were only four of the big cartons left, each holding twenty-four pairs of boots. Reggie would be mad. Instead of being happy, selling half a truckload of boots at ten times what he’d paid, all he would think of would be the half he didn’t buy, the boots he didn’t sell because he’d run out. It wouldn’t be a happy ride home.

Jerzy dragged the boxes to the landing, knelt to look over the railing. Down below, the Closeout Hut was jammed with even more shoppers than the time Reggie had dumped those microwave ovens that had been missing UL labels. Jerzy did a quick count, each finger being ten people. There were nearly fifty – babushkas, mostly, but also businessmen in suits, young shopgirls wearing lots of makeup – all of them pushing around the tables, grabbing at the boots. It was going to be impossible to empty the boxes without catching some elbows.

THROUGH THE WINDOW, Detective Edrow Fluett saw Hell – a mob of babushkas in black wool, pawing at tables like they were scratching for gold. He turned, started to walk away, but stopped. As soon as he got to the station, maybe within only a minute of setting the remains of his shoes on the radiator, Queenie would catch something else that would send him back into the storm. Another bogus broken lock or a fender bender; the storm was bringing on a frenzy of turdweasel pain. He looked down at his shoes, half-buried in the slush on the sidewalk. They wouldn’t last the day. He turned around and went in.

The place smelled of wet wool, babushka sweat, and… an old fire. And there was a draft. No, not a draft, a wind. Edrow looked up. The bandit had the ceiling fans running. For the fire stink. For shame.

Edrow never flashed his button unless the job demanded. But that day, the job demanded. He could be called, at any instant, to chase crime into the snow. And for that, he needed dry feet. He held up his badge, pushed his way through the mob to the fat guy behind the cash register. He remembered him from the snowblower, the bandit.

“Jerzy,” the fat man yelled.

JERZY SAW SUICIDE down on the sales floor. “What say I just cut the tops off the boxes, skip the tables?” he shouted from the top of the stairs.

Reggie turned away from an old guy to look up. Slither-sucking his cigar from the right to the left side of his thick lips, he shook his head.

“Why not, Reg?”

“I ain’t paying you to think, Jerzy,” he yelled up. “I’m paying you to do. The boots go on the tables. And Jerzy?”

“Yeah, Reg?”

“First, find a men’s size eleven for my friend the detective, here.”

“I wear a size nine,” Reggie’s friend the detective called up.

“Eleven, Jerzy; they’re running a little small,” Reggie shouted, slither-sucking his cigar back to its rightful right-hand side.

Jerzy busted the tapes on the boxes, making his arms windmills, pushing through the stinky boots. Reggie liked to see hustle, always the hustle. He found a men’s eleven and ran them down.

THE KID POUNDING down the stairs like the roof was on fire wasn’t really a kid, Edrow realized. He was a big, hulking young man in his late twenties. But he had a kid’s expectant look on his face, like a beagle’s, waiting for a coo and a scratch. The fat guy ignored it, grabbed the boots, and handed them to Edrow with a slight bow, like he was presenting Cinderella’s slippers. The young man’s face fell. He should have learned by now, Edrow thought. Thanks were hens’ teeth, especially in this turdweasel town.

“Your size and color, sir,” the fat man said, making a joke.

Edrow made his own joke. Glancing up at the fans whirling overhead, he gave the boots a long sniff to let the fat guy know he wasn’t being fooled by the tornado blowing through the store. The boots stank, but they’d be dry. Edrow handed the bandit one of the two fifties he kept hidden in his wallet.

“Call it eight even.” The fat man smiled around his limp cigar, a big shot giving away a few pennies of the state’s sales tax. He put the fifty in his right pants pocket, already bulging, made the change, two twenties, two singles, out of his left. It wasn’t Edrow’s concern if the bandit never rang the register; Edrow wasn’t the Illinois Department of Revenue, chasing sales-tax cheats. It was a turdweasel town.

Edrow turned to push through the babushkas.

“Spell me for a minute, Jerzy,” Edrow heard the fat man say behind him. “I gotta make a pit stop.”

Outside, Detective Edrow Fluett stopped to look through the window. Jerzy was pulling a big carton through a swarm of old women. Farther back, the fat man was pulling himself up the stairs by the handrail like he was dragging cement. It was painful, watching him. He must have weighed four hundred pounds.

REGGIE NORMALLY WAITED until the end of the day for the pit stop, so as not to make the climb twice, but as the older man started pulling himself up the stairs, Jerzy saw that his pants pockets were already packed solid. Lots of babushkas that morning, buying two, three pairs of boots. That meant lots of fifties. Reggie thought Jerzy was too stupid to know about the hidey- place under the chair mat. But Jerzy was the one who mopped the floor. And Jerzy was the one who brought the deposits to the bank, deposits that never had fifties. Jerzy knew. He just never said anything.

Fifteen minutes later, the toilet flushed, which could have been just for fooling, and Reggie thumped down the stairs, for sure his pockets, and maybe his body, emptied. Jerzy ran back up, in a hurry to wash the stink of fire off his hands.

But as he crossed the storeroom, he saw that Reggie’s chair mat was bumped up in the middle. Reggie hadn’t put the floorboard back right.

Jerzy stopped, but kept clumping his feet on the floor. Even above the babushkas, a part of Reggie would be listening to make sure Jerzy was being purposeful, crossing the floor to get right back to work. Jerzy thought about fixing the board, but maybe Reggie had left it that way as a test to find out if Jerzy knew about the hidey-place. Best to leave it alone, he decided, and clumped to the bathroom to wash his hands.

At his desk, he kicked off his shoes and tried again to work on the sales-tax form. It didn’t require much, just recopying the numbers Reggie had already penciled on a photocopy, then signing “Jerzy Wosnowski, President” on it. It was capital B Boring, copying all those numbers, and it took forever. Jerzy once asked, since Reggie always did the calculations to begin with, why he didn’t just sign the form himself instead of making Jerzy recopy everything. “You’re the president, Jerzy. You have to sign the official documents,” Reggie had said, and that had made Jerzy feel good, being trusted to sign important documents.

But that snowy, gray afternoon, feeling good about responsibilities wasn’t enough to stop the boring, and Jerzy’s eyes kept wanting to look at that bump in the chair mat. What if Reggie hadn’t left the board cocked up on purpose? He’d think Jerzy was being a nosy neighbor. Reggie hated nosy neighbors.

Jerzy had never really wondered what was in the hidey-hole, figuring it was only a day or two’s worth of the fifties Reggie grabbed before they hit the cash register. And, for sure, Jerzy had never thought seriously of looking. Reggie had the ears of a cat. He could hear from downstairs whenever Jerzy crossed the room, moving inventory or going to the can.

Except on a day like today, when there was too much racket from the babushkas.

Jerzy stared at the bump in the mat and decided it wasn’t obvious enough to be a trap. Reggie had just been in too much of a hurry. Best to leave it alone.

Except when Reggie came up after they closed the store for desk time – that’s what Reggie called it, “desk time” – he would see the board sticking up and would think Jerzy had been snooping.

Jerzy crossed the floor in his socks, careful to stay off the squeaky boards. Downstairs, the babushkas shouted, the cash register rang, and Reggie hummed.

Jerzy moved the chair, then the mat, and got down on his knees. For a minute, he paused. He had to lift the secret board anyway, to put it right. It wouldn’t be snooping, just glancing.

He pulled up the board. And stopped his breath.

The space between the joists was crammed with bundles of money, each an inch thick. He pulled one out. They were fifties, rubber-banded together. Jerzy counted the bills. Two hundred. He made the numbers on his fingers. Each bundle contained ten thousand dollars. There were twenty-six bundles jammed in the narrow place. Two hundred sixty thousand dollars. Jeez Louise. He put the bundle back. He didn’t want to know about that much money.

But as he reached to set the floorboard back, he saw the two white envelopes scrunched next to the money. The closest one was addressed to Jerzy and was from the State of Illinois Department of Revenue. He picked it up, took out the letter inside. It was dated two weeks before and said “Third Notice” in scary dark letters, followed by a bunch of words about an audit of sales-tax returns, discrepancies, and liability for prosecution. “Discrepancies,” “prosecution”… the words beat loud around him, like he was inside a dinosaur heart. They were bad words.

He reached for the second envelope. Thank God this one was not from the State of Illinois. It was blank except for his first name written in pencil. There was something about the handwriting…

Then he knew. His hands shook as he pulled out the slip of notepaper.

“Dear Jerzy,” Agnes wrote. “I’m not going to call the store anymore. Reggie always tells me you’ll call back, but you never do. So for the last time, come with me to technical college in Milwaukee. My aunt says you can live in her house too. You have to be brave. Agnes.”

He dropped the letter, squeezed his goofity hands together to make them stop shaking. She must have left it with Reggie just before she went to Milwaukee, ten months ago. About a month before she’d been killed by a bus.

Reggie, you son of a bitch.

IN THE CAR, outside the courthouse, Detective Edrow Fluett held his stocking feet under the heater vent for a blessed last few minutes. On the floor next to him, the blistered tan leather on his lightbulb-store shoes looked like butterscotch pudding, bubbling and puckering in midboil. He pulled on his new boots. The vinyl was rigid and didn’t want to bend. But the boots were dry.

He walked, stiff-legged in his unyielding boots, into the courthouse. He had to testify against a burglar he’d arrested six times. With luck, this time they’d put him away, flush another turdweasel from the turdweasel town.

REGGIE, YOU SON of a bitch.

Reggie hadn’t liked Agnes. “Don’t throw your life away on a broad, Jerzy,” Reggie had said. “You’re the president of the Closeout Hut.” And because Reggie was always right, Jerzy had listened. He told himself he didn’t even know Agnes that well. She worked at the drugstore a few blocks over, and they gave each other silly greeting cards and had Cokes a couple of times at lunch was all. But he’d gotten to thinking about her all the time, and then she went away, and he figured she’d left him behind, like her job at the drugstore. He never figured she cared enough to be calling or to leave a note. “She doesn’t need you anymore, Jerzy,” Reggie had said when Agnes left. “She had a change in her heart.”

Reggie, you son of a bitch.

Jerzy forced away the sound of Agnes’s voice, the way she smiled. He picked up the letter from the state. “Discrepancies,” “prosecution.” They were coming after him, Jerzy – Jerzy the president – the one who signed the sales-tax returns that didn’t tell about those fifties under the floor.

And Jerzy understood: Reggie could never have let him go off with Agnes; he needed him like the pet-store lady needed the little goldfish, something to toss to the piranhas.

Reggie, you son of a bitch.

“WHAT’S THAT SMELL?” Robison, the sergeant, blathered, loud as always, as he tossed his jacket on the pile on the coat tree.

“What smell?” Queenie said, like she didn’t know.

“Smells like a fire in here.” Robison, ever the turdweasel, wrinkled his nose toward Detective Edrow Fluett. “Edrow, you been on fire?”

Edrow stuck a foot out past his desk. “Eight bucks.”

“They’re purple.”

Edrow looked down at his feet. Sure as shit, the boots were purple. But worse, the drops the boots had left on the tile floor were purple too. The boots were running, purple, like ink.

“Turdweasel,” Edrow said.

“JERZY, YOU ALIVE up there, boy?” Reggie called from downstairs.

Jerzy was still on the floor, squeezing Agnes’s letter. All afternoon, he’d been trying to feel her in the paper. But she was gone. He looked up. Outside, the sky was black. It must be time to go to the bank. He put the letters back, replaced the floorboard, and slid back the chair mat, not much caring if Reggie heard him. He grabbed the zippered bag and went down.

“Your eyes are all watery,” Reggie said when Jerzy got to the bottom of the stairs.

“I’m getting a cold,” Jerzy said, pulling his coat off the rack.

Reggie looked at him funny but nodded as he emptied the cash register into the zippered bag. The store was almost empty now. Only a few stray boots, size mismatches, lay on the tables. Jerzy pulled on his orange knit hat (one of their top closeouts – Wonder how many secret fifties that had got?) and went out the door.

On the sidewalk, he saw the purple in the snow where the boots had bled in the slush. He wanted to kick at it, kick at the lies.

“Heard you were selling boots today, Jerzy,” the teller, a nice girl who reminded him of Agnes, said when he got to the bank.

Today she looked so much like Agnes he had to look away.

“Jerzy, you all right?” she asked when he didn’t answer.

“Lots of boots today,” Jerzy said.

“So how come no fifties, Jerzy?” Always she kidded him about there being no fifties.

Because that son of a bitch Reggie stashes them in the floor, he wanted to yell, right next to the letters he steals before people can read them. But he didn’t yell. He just took the receipt and left.

DETECTIVE EDROW FLUETT walked to his car, grateful that it was dark and people couldn’t see the purple footprints he was making in the snow. His feet were cold from the hard vinyl. When he got home, he was going to leave the boots in the middle of the kitchen floor, dripping purple, so Blanche could see what eight bucks bought at the Closeout Hut.

But as he put the key in the ignition, he remembered what he hadn’t remembered earlier. He’d forgotten to take the two soaked paper towels out of the sink. Advantage lost. Hell was coming.

“WATCH IT, JERZY!” Reggie shouted.

Jerzy hit the brakes, let the semitrailer pull ahead. The whole ride, he’d been seeing Agnes, dead Agnes, outside the windshield wipers, instead of the highway. And now he’d almost slammed into the back end of a truck.

He squeezed the steering wheel. “Who owns the Closeout Hut, Reggie?” he asked.

“What the hell kind of question is that?” Reggie said, shifting his bulk but still staring straight ahead for more trucks.

“I mean, because you’re the owner, Reg, you’re the guy who’s responsible?”

“I should have bought the whole truckload,” Reggie said around his limp cigar. The entire car smelled dead from that wet cigar.

Jerzy wanted so bad to scream at the fat face. But he didn’t; he kept his eyes on the taillights of the truck in front and spoke easy. “So why am I the president?”

“I could have sold another half-truck,” Reggie said.

Jerzy let it go. He didn’t need the bastard to tell him why Jerzy was president. Besides, more important thoughts were crowding into his head.

As they pulled in the driveway, Reggie rubbed his chest. “I think I’ll take a rest tomorrow, let you go in alone. Business will be slow.”

If his insides hadn’t been scrunching, Jerzy would have made a laugh. Slow, baloney. The Closeout Hut was going to be packed tomorrow with people angry as wasps about dissolving purple and stinky fire smells and the mildew they’d seen on their socks. Tomorrow was going to be as bad as the day after Reggie unloaded those tiny tin microwaves. Then, there’d been so many people lugging back the bitty ovens, they’d lined up outside, banging on the glass, yelling about radiation leaks from the loose-fitting doors. That day too, Reggie had stayed home, “taking a rest,” leaving it to Jerzy to point to the ALL SALES FINAL signs and tell the babushkas there was no cash in the register.

But this time it would be okay. In fact, after thinking all afternoon, Jerzy had decided he needed Reggie to stay away. And to make sure, Jerzy had pointed to the purple splotches in the snow as they walked out to Reggie’s Seville. Reggie kept moving like he didn’t see and pulled at the door to the car. But Jerzy knew he saw.

DETECTIVE EDROW FLUETT lined up the blistered shoes and the dripping boots just inside the kitchen door.

“You get a raise, so we can afford to pay for paper towels to do what a sponge mop does for free?” Blanche carped through the television noise as he passed through the front room on his way to the stairs. He said nothing, went up to sit on the edge of the bed. He peeled off his wet black socks.

“Shit,” he said. His feet were purple, like he’d spent the day soaking them in wine.

That fat turdweasel was going to hear from him tomorrow.

BECAUSE JERZY WASN’T allowed to drive the Seville unless Reggie was in it, he had to leave at six thirty the next morning. He didn’t mind. It had stopped snowing. And he needed the walk, train ride, and second walk to go over the plan. Reggie always said planning made perfect. That day, Jerzy needed perfect.

He got to the Hut at eight, taped the new banner in the window just as the first of yesterday’s customers, a short babushka, marched up. She was holding two pairs of boots by their laces, like they were fish stinking on a string. Her face was mad. But when she saw the banner, she stopped. And she smiled.

“I’LL BE DAMNED,” Detective Edrow Fluett said in front of the Closeout Hut. At first he thought it had to be a stunt, something the bandit had schemed to screw his customers. But the happy babushka faces coming out the door told him otherwise. And when he got up to the cash register, the hulking man-kid took care of him so quickly Edrow didn’t think to open his mouth, and he left there knowing he should have brought that no-name snowblower back years ago, instead of leaving it to rust in his garage. He shook his head. His years on the job were making him see too many turdweasels.

He whistled all the way across town, to the sporting-goods store.

THE NEXT MORNING, after shouting Jerzy’s name a hundred times, Reggie thumped down the basement stairs. “What the hell, Jerzy?” he yelled through the door, huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf. “The Seville’s not out, warming up.”

Reggie’s TV had been blasting those goofity real-life shows the previous evening when Jerzy got home, the signal he didn’t want to talk. It was okay. Jerzy was tired. He’d stayed downtown, had soup and a grilled cheese at the diner he used to go to with Agnes for Cokes. A couple of people in there nodded and smiled at him. They’d been in the store earlier.

Jerzy spent the night sitting on his wood chair. He hadn’t even tried to sleep.

“I’m sick, Reg,” he said now, from inside his room. “I been throwing up. You gotta go in alone today.”

“What the hell, Jerzy?” Reggie gulped in air from the other side of the door. “With my heart, you know I don’t like to drive.”

“Call a cab, Reg.”

“That’s money.”

Jerzy made a cough, then another because the first one sounded so good.

Reggie huffed some more. “Any problems yesterday?”

“Everything got took care of.” Jerzy made another cough.

Jerzy watched the doorknob, afraid Reggie would come in to sit to catch his breath. But after a couple of long minutes, the breathing on the other side slowed, and Reggie hauled himself up the basement stairs. The back door slammed, and five minutes after that, the Seville pulled out of the driveway.

DETECTIVE EDROW FLUETT took the call that morning because the uniforms were out making sure all the wrecks from the snow had been towed. This one, he didn’t mind. His feet were dry and warm, and he figured one good turn deserves another.

UPSTAIRS, REGGIE’S PHONE started ringing at noon, and then every half hour after, but Reggie always locked his door. So Jerzy stayed at the table, except when he had to go to the bathroom, to practice.

THAT EVENING, DETECTIVE Edrow Fluett’s headlamps swept across the white stone and orange brick of the newer ranch as he pulled into the driveway. He’d gotten the address from the call list they had of business owners. The house was dark. But he’d get out anyway, to try the side door. His feet were warm and dry.

But first he called Blanche. “You were right. There’s no need to spend more than eight bucks for boots.”

He listened, and smiled. Sometimes, both had to give.

JERZY KNEW THE Seville’s engine. The headlights outside didn’t belong to it. He sat in the dark for what seemed like hours, until at last the back doorbell rang.

He stomped up the basement stairs to sound purposeful. Switching on the outside light, he opened the door.

The man in the dark raincoat looked surprised. “Jerzy Wosnowski?”

Jerzy recognized the old man from the first time with Reggie, and from yesterday, when he’d come back.

The man held up a police badge bigger than the ones the TV guys had. “Mind if I come in?”

Jerzy held the door open.

THE KID – THE man – had startled him, appearing like a ghost in the sudden light. “You always keep the lights off?” Detective Edrow Fluett asked as he stepped inside and stomped his feet on the rug.

“I been asleep. I didn’t feel too good today.”

Convenient, Edrow thought.

The kid-man surprised him again, started down the stairs. Sweet Jesus, Edrow thought. Reggie keeps Jerzy in the basement, in the dark, like a gerbil.

JERZY SWITCHED ON the light in his room. All the time he’d lived in Reggie’s basement, he’d never had a visitor except for Reggie, and that was hardly ever, because of all the stairs. But that didn’t mean Jerzy hadn’t planned how to be polite. He slid out the one chair for the policeman and went to stand next to the refrigerator.

DETECTIVE EDROW FLUETT sat down. Sales-tax forms were scattered on the table. “Working from home?”

The hulking young man nodded. “Making sure I kept all the worksheets. Just because I’m the president doesn’t mean anything. Reggie figures the numbers; I just copy.”

Kid-man was talking in riddles. “What?”

“You could test the forms, like they do on TV,” Jerzy said. “It’s Reggie’s handwriting. And his fingerprints are on them, for more proof. I just copied. Ask Reggie; I didn’t know about the letters.” Jerzy stepped to the table, handed him what looked like an audit notice.

The hulk thought Edrow was from the Department of Revenue. Worse, the hulk needed Reggie alive, to answer to the state.

Edrow put the audit notice down. “Listen,” he said, “I’m afraid I got some bad news for you.”

“WE FOUND REGGIE Loomis dead in your store today.” The cop was looking right into Jerzy’s eyes, like they were windows and he could see through to the middle of Jerzy’s brain.

Jerzy dropped his eyes, noticed the policeman was wearing new boots, nice ones with rubber on the bottoms and tan leather on the tops, the kind hunting guys wore. Jerzy raised his head, made his mouth tremble, like he’d done in the mirror every time he had to go into the bathroom. “He was robbed?”

The policeman’s eyes didn’t blink. Reggie always said looking somebody right in the eyes made them trust you. Jerzy concentrated on the policeman’s eyes, but it was hard because they didn’t blink.

“Heart attack,” the policeman said. “Must have happened first thing. A woman passing by saw the front door wide open and called us.”

“At least nobody killed him,” Jerzy said, looking at the wall above the cop’s head.

“NOT A ROBBER, anyway,” Detective Edrow Fluett said.

The kid-man said nothing, kept looking above Edrow’s head. His face was blank, but maybe that was shock.

“I found him dead on the stairs,” Edrow said.

“He didn’t like those stairs on account of his weight,” Jerzy said to the wall.

“That bothers me,” Edrow said.

“Me too. I kept telling him, ‘Reggie, you gotta pull off those pounds.’”

“I meant that he died on the stairs. The coat rack’s on the first floor.”

“I don’t get it,” Jerzy said.

Edrow stood up so the hulk would have to look at his eyes. “Why would Reggie go charging up, still with his coat on, if he didn’t like the stairs?”

“To use the bathroom,” Jerzy said.

“With his coat still on and buttoned up?”

“You got to go, you got to go,” Jerzy said.

“We looked around upstairs, found a loose floorboard,” Detective Edrow Fluett said.

JERZY FURROWED HIS brow like the people on TV when they didn’t understand something. “I don’t know about a floorboard.”

“I’m thinking it was a hiding place, except there was nothing in it.” The cop’s eyes were hot on Jerzy’s face, but they didn’t blink.

“I don’t know about a floorboard,” Jerzy said again, still with his brow furrowed. It was beginning to hurt, but he could hold it a while longer.

“I’m thinking when Reggie first arrived, he saw something right away that made him go charging up the stairs.” The cop reached into the pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a crumpled roll of paper. “Something that made him forget about shutting the front door, something that made him race upstairs, to check under that floorboard.”

“But you said nothing looked like a robbery,” Jerzy said. He relaxed his forehead. He was doing fine.

“NOT A REGULAR kind of robbery.” Detective Edrow Fluett tapped the crumpled roll of paper against Jerzy’s chest. “This was in Reggie’s hand. He must have ripped it off the window when he ran in.” He slipped off the rubber band and unrolled the first few inches for Jerzy to see.

“I make banners for the window,” the kid-man said.

“Like this one yesterday? Huge red letters saying fifty bucks back for each pair of returned boots?”

“Reggie didn’t know those boots were junk until he sold most of them. He said we would give fifty bucks back to anyone returning a pair. He said they’d buy from us forever if we did that.”

“That cheap bastard said fifty dollars back on an eight-dollar purchase?”

The kid-man nodded.

“So, all those smelly boots piled on the tables by the front window where someone coming in would see them first thing…?”

“Yesterday I took back just about every pair Reggie sold. Even yours.”

Edrow glanced down at his new fifty-dollar boots. “Fifty bucks back. I couldn’t believe it,” he said, looking up.

“Reggie said it would make you want to shop us again and again and again.”

“Reggie was a real son of a bitch,” Edrow said.

Jerzy shrugged.

Detective Edrow Fluett turned toward the door, but then he stopped.

THE COP HAD a slight smile on his face, and Jerzy was sure he was seeing into the center of his brain, where Jerzy kept the truth.

But the cop just smiled wider. “What about all those signs on the wall: ‘All Sales Final’?”

Jerzy felt he could afford a little smile of his own.

“Reggie had a change in his heart.”