The Fixer

2

His first instinct was to conceal. Without even thinking about it, he swiveled, placing his body between Jeff and the tarp-covered heap, blocking Jeff’s view.

… view of what?

Whatever was in that hulking pile, a couple of feet high by maybe four feet wide, Rick knew what was on top of it: packets of money. Packets of hundred-dollar bills. Maybe not the whole pile; that would be crazy, flat-out inconceivable. Packets of money atop… what? A pile of papers, maybe files.

The whole pile couldn’t be cash. That wasn’t possible. He tossed the packet back onto the heap.

He couldn’t think clearly. He needed to look again, but without Jeff around. Because what he’d seen had blown his mind. He’d held, in his very own hand, ten thousand dollars. A hundred hundred-dollar bills. In one single packet. And that was just the top of the pile.

Money that obviously wasn’t his father’s, because Len had no money.

“Looked like cash you were holding there,” Jeff said. Something about his tone, lower and insinuating, had changed. He sounded more aggressive.

A shadow obscured his face. Rick couldn’t see his eyes.

Rick tried to give a dismissive chuckle, but his mouth was dry and it came out hah, more scornful than he intended. “I wish.” He clambered out of the opening in the wall, forcing Jeff to back up out of the way. “Bunch of old register receipts is what it is.”

“Well, let’s drag it out here into the sunlight.”

“Another time.” Rick sounded weary and bored. He glanced at his watch. “I’m going to need to get going.”

“Well, now, hold on a sec-do we have a deal?”

“In principle, yeah. But we’ve got to talk about what kind of work you’ll be doing, how long it’s going to take, all that.”

“Well, sure.”

“I’m not thinking a gut renovation, just so you know.” Rick put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder, on the coarse cotton duck of his barn coat, guiding him out of the room and toward the stairs. “Minimal destruction. Repairs and improvements, mostly. Second and third floors. Paper over the cracks.”

“I don’t know as I agree about that, Rick. There’s rotten wood all down through the middle of the house. Serious water damage. Probably from a worn pipe boot-water’s been leaking into the ceiling for years. Or maybe it’s from stopped-up gutters or leaking chimney flashing. Rain’s been seeping down into the house for years, making wet spots. Causing wood rot and mold. Gonna have to cut out the rotten wood and plaster in some parts. Not everywhere. Just some parts.”

Rick groaned. “You serious?”

“I’ll take you through and show you.”

Rick shook his head. “I believe you. But I’m gonna want you to draw up a plan. Put it down on paper so there’s no misunderstanding.”

“Sure, sure.”

“How soon could you do it?”

“I could get started on it tonight. Like I said, it’s slow, this time of year.”

“Sounds good,” Rick said.

As soon as he’d gotten Jeff out of the house, Rick rummaged in the kitchen drawers and found a flashlight. He clicked it on but its batteries were dead. He found a D cell battery nestled among an assortment of stray Ziploc sandwich bags and swapped it for one of the old ones, and that provided enough juice to generate a feeble light.

He went back upstairs to his father’s study. Its window looked out onto the Hollenbecks’ yard, which meant that Jeff could see into the room. But pulling the venetian blinds closed would cast the study into darkness, and the overhead light was burned out here, too. It also would look strange for him to pull the blinds, as if he were trying to hide something from Jeff.

He left them open and returned to the crawl space. It still smelled of squirrel urine, but now he barely minded. He directed the sputtering beam of watery light at the tarp-covered pile. He yanked at the tarp, hard, and popped some more of the staples. He pulled the flap back and shone the light to see what was there.

It was a neat square stack about a foot and a half tall and maybe two or three feet per side. It gave off a musty odor. From what he could discern, by directing the failing light back and forth over the pile and lifting random packets, it was all banknotes. Top to bottom.

He was able to count 398 packets before the flashlight died. Most of them-290 packets-were hundred-dollar bills; the rest-108 packets-were fifties. He found a dog-eared gas station receipt in his wallet and scrawled a calculation on it. The total was 3,440,000 dollars.

More than 3.4 million dollars.

He felt a strange vertiginous sensation, as if he were plummeting headfirst into space. His head was spinning, swimming. He picked up one of the packets of hundreds and rifled through it with his thumb. He inhaled its musk. He could smell mildew and tobacco, solvent and ink and sweat. Some of the banknotes looked as if they’d never been circulated: They were crisp and unmarked. Others were dog-eared and creased.

He glanced at the off-center engraving of Ben Franklin on the front of the banknote, with shoulder-length hair and a constipated expression. It certainly looked legit, not counterfeit, though he was no expert.

How long had this pile been walled up here? The bills looked new-uncirculated, anyway-but they’d probably been inside the wall for a few decades.

He only knew he couldn’t leave them here.