The Switch

64

The man, who looked around forty, had short brown hair and a smudge of lipstick on his left cheek. He reeked of booze.

The woman right behind him was a pale blond whose lipstick was a mess. She was blushing a violent pink.

“N-no,” the man said. “We’re — we’re fine, we were just — I’m with Century 21 — are you from Coldwell Banker?”

Tanner shook his head.

“Sorry, I thought it was off the market,” said the man.

“No,” Tanner said. “I’ve got a buyer who’s going to show up at any second.” He tugged the backpack off his shoulder and set it down. “Sorry about that.”

The disappointed horny couple turned and stumbled down the broad concrete front steps into the night.

Next to the orchid on the black table stood a square white envelope with his last name on it, in Sarah’s neat printing. She must have come by.

On the card inside it said only

“Huh?” he said aloud.

“Goes right to your hips”? Was that some kind of joke he didn’t get? Some women talked that way, about ice cream and slices of pie, but fortunately that wasn’t Sarah’s style. The only time she’d say something like that — actually, now he remembered — was quoting her mother explaining why there was never a cookie jar in the house. You eat that, it goes straight to your hips, her mother warned her. Which only made Sarah more fond of cookies. Because no one wants to be told something like that.

Cookies. She was talking, for some reason, about cookies.

He shone a path down a short hallway to a giant industrial kitchen with high ceilings. The inevitable Sub-Zero fridge and freezer, the obligatory Wolf range, a half-mile of white granite counter. The place was big and well equipped enough to service a bustling restaurant.

There, on a stretch of granite counter on his right, was a large white egg-shaped canister on a low metal stand. On the front of the egg it said COOKIES.

He lifted the lid. Inside was another white envelope. This one was fat. It was scotch-taped closed. He tore open the flap and saw a thick bundle of bank notes.

“Jesus.”

He counted out the hundreds and fifties and twenties. Three thousand five hundred dollars.

“Sarah,” he said aloud, chidingly, to no one. She must have taken out her own money, from her own, neglected account, and there sure wasn’t much. This had to be most of what she had. She shouldn’t have done it.

Still, he was relieved she had. He needed the money.

Tanner awoke early to make sure he wasn’t surprised by another Realtor. Since the house was temporarily off the market, he didn’t need to be quite as fastidious as at the last house. He bathed in an amazing glass-walled shower that produced steam and jetted water at him from all around.

He dressed in the new clothes and made a mental note to find a Walmart and buy some inexpensive ones. The shower had woken him up, but he still needed coffee, and badly. Like a lot of people, Tanner was a caffeine addict. Being in the business, he was used to having coffee throughout the day, an occupational hazard.

The walls of the front of the house were glass. He found the right button to electrically lower the blinds to provide some privacy. He peered outside through the slats, spent a good ten minutes that way, looking for watchers. Saw nothing, no one walking by. It was early, still dark out.

He left the house, locked it up and the padlock as well, and got into the stolen Mazda. Then there was another consideration: What happened when the car was reported missing? How long would it take for the police to do something about it? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to be pulled over and asked for license and registration. Yet he couldn’t imagine its owner was paying very close attention, since it had been left overnight behind a building. It wasn’t as if he’d stolen someone’s Ferrari. It was a cruddy old Mazda.

Connecting the wires to start the car took a matter of seconds. He wanted to get out of town, find another library — an analog solution to a digital problem — and figure out his next move. And call Tanner Roast to check in. Yesterday’s research had told him that you could buy bus tickets with cash, no ID. Traveling by bus was one way to stay under the radar, one of the few ways left. But he’d decided that today he would buy a used car with some of Sarah’s money, and ditch the stolen one.

In Framingham he found a diner that looked good. It was nothing like the one in Southie where he and Lanny sometimes used to meet. Didn’t have that abandoned-railroad-car look. But it already had customers, and it was before six.

It was a cash-only place, which was fine with him, because he now had lots of it. He sat at the counter. The waitress poured coffee without asking, as if she knew. It was not bad. A little watery, but freshly brewed, good beans. Everything at this diner was supersized. Pancakes were the size of dinner plates. Hash browns were heaped up high. Even the coffee mugs were unusually large.

He thought of Lanny — he couldn’t help it — and felt guilty. His mistake, picking up the wrong computer, had led directly to Lanny’s death. A good person had lost his life.

There was no way to undo what he’d done.

The counter filled up with customers. He had more coffee, ate eggs and bacon and buttered toast, with pancakes on the side. Nothing healthy. He was risking his life, being out here, on the run. Watching what he ate seemed pointless.

The guy at the counter next to him smiled, watching Tanner eat ravenously. “Good stuff, right?” the guy said.

Tanner smiled.

“Coffee’s okay too, huh?”

“Yep, it is.”

“But it doesn’t compare to yours,” the guy said.