“If we do this, a man is going to get killed.”
“A bad man.”
“How can you be so okay with it?”
She shrugged. “I’m just trying to be realistic. Jack isn’t a nice guy. You tried to stab him this afternoon, and nobody would tell you that was wrong.”
“I know. And believe me, I wouldn’t shed tears if he died. It’s just that planning it out ahead of time seems… evil.”
She was silent for a long time. Finally she said, “We’re not evil people, baby. We’re just in over our head.”
He could hear the buzz of traffic, faint through the double-paned glass. Cars heading north, cars heading south. Thousands of lives being lived, choices being made. No way to know which ones would end up meaning everything.
Tom said, “Pass me the phone.”
He’d given the business card to the detective, but he remembered the number. Some things made an impression. One of them was having your life threatened by a drug dealer. He dialed, pressed Send. A bass voice rumbled through the phone, not the guy in the suit. “Yeah?”
“I need to talk to…” He hesitated, realizing he didn’t even know the name. “This is Tom Reed. He-”
“Hold on.”
There was the muffled sound of conversation blocked by someone’s hand. Then a familiar voice came on the line. “Mr. Reed. Do you have what I asked for?”
“I tore my house apart. Top to bottom. What you’re looking for isn’t there. I’m sorry.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“I know. But I have the answer to the question you asked,” Tom said. “Yours. I’m on your side. And I can prove it.”
“How?”
“By telling you where to find Jack Witkowski.”
There was a long pause, and then the voice said, “Smart man.”
ANNA SAT ON THE EDGE of the bed and watched her husband negotiate murder.
Tom’s eyes were rimmed in black, but his voice was steady and his words carefully chosen. Despite everything, he was still strong. She felt a flush of love, and something else. Pride? Maybe it was wrong to feel pride in her husband’s ability to hold his own against criminals. If so, she didn’t care. It was the two of them against the world. Popcorn morality could wait. Perhaps one day she would agonize over what they were doing to Jack Witkowski. Perhaps it would haunt them both. But she doubted it.
Tom said, “I’m not going to tell you that.”
He said, “I’m on your side, but I’m not an idiot.”
Then, “That will work.”
Finally, “Tomorrow morning.”
He closed the phone, then opened it again long enough to stab the power. When it beeped off, he set it on the windowsill, then leaned back into the chair, a mod blue thing, boxy and too large. He put his arms on the armrests, then closed his eyes and rolled his head back. “He wants to meet for breakfast.”
“He’ll do it?”
“He was excited. I think he’d rather this than get his dope back.”
“And you think he’ll leave us alone afterwards?”
“I think so. He seems… professional. I’m sure he believes we don’t have the drugs – I mean, why would we lie about that? Not like we can sell them on the street corner. Plus, we’re white, educated, employed taxpayers. He kills us, it’s going to be investigated. Can’t see why he’d want that. Besides, after we help him…” He ran a tongue across his lips.
She finished his sentence in her head. Just to see. There was a twinge, definitely. A momentary regret. But most of the emotional turmoil she was swimming through had more to do with fear. Fear that it wouldn’t work, that something would go wrong, that Tom would end up hurt. Measured against that, the twinge of moralitywas a trickle against a tidal wave. Who wouldn’t put their loved ones ahead of everything else? “So what now?”
He rubbed at his forehead with his good hand. Shrugged. Said, “Want to see if there’s anything good on TV?”
THEY’D LEFT THE CURTAINS OPEN, and the faint reflection of city lights swam on the darkened ceiling. Tom had looked at the clock two minutes ago, knew that it was just after three, but felt a powerful urge to look again. Didn’t.
The pain in his hand synced to his heart, his fingers swelling and shrinking with every beat. He remembered one time talking to a doctor about stomach problems, the doc asking him to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten, which he’d found strange. How would you know what pain really was? Couldn’t it always get worse? That was the way of life. You thought you understood things, had a grip on what was good and what was bad, and then wham, something came along that redefined your spectrum.
“Are we greedy?” He spoke to the darkness.
After a moment, she said, “For taking the money?”
“No. Yes.” He stared upward. “Not just that. Are we greedy people?” A car horn sounded outside, muted by the glass into a faint and ghostly wail.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Not more than anybody else.”
“Six on a scale of ten.”
“What?”
He shook his head. Said nothing. They lay on the bed, the comforter piled at their feet, only the sheet stretched over them. From the angle, he couldn’t see the city outside the window, just an indigo glow creeping to midnight blue. Beneath that never-dark sky lay the depths of Lake Michigan, black ripples frosted white. He didn’t know how to sail, but had always wanted a sailboat. He imagined being on one now, skimming over inky currents like the edge of a dream, just him and Anna and a cold wind and the hollow lap of water and the city’s fevered light dwindling behind. Head east, sail all night, into a sunrise scrubbed clean by solitude.
“What are you thinking, baby?”
“Something Jack said.” He flashed back to the moment, the twitch of adrenaline, the pressure of the knife in his pocket. The way Jack had gestured with one hand to encompass their living room, their marriage, their life. “He asked why we took the money. What we wanted that we didn’t already have.”
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t know what to say. I mean, we aren’t as well off as it must have looked to him. He didn’t know about mortgage payments and fertility treatments and how badly we wanted a baby and how you hated your job. But…” He held his hands in the air, then folded them behind his head. “I don’t know. Even with those things. He had a point.”
In the quiet of the room, he could hear her breathing. “You know what I think? Everything finds a balance. An equilibrium.” Her voice low. “I think rich people are fundamentally about as happy as poor people. It’s the way we’re wired. When things are good for any length of time, we take them for granted. When they’re bad, we get used to them. Our heads level everything out.”
“That’s kind of convenient.”
“What do you mean?”
“As an argument. It makes it easy not to worry about things or try to change them. It excuses us from concern.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not true. Give somebody a million dollars, they’re going to live it up for a while. But eventually, the lifestyle will become normal. It won’t thrill. They’ll end up feeling more or less the same way they always did.”
“So what’s the point?”
“I don’t know. Live a good life. Be nice to people. Have a family, and love them well.”
He thought about it, staring at the liquid stir of light on the ceiling. “Maybe you’re right. I look back at the problems we used to have, and I wonder what the hell was wrong with us. I mean, were we really sweating all that nonsense? Everything that mattered at the time, now it seems…” He pursed his lips and blew air like he was scattering the pods off a dandelion.
“I know,” she said. “Worrying about advertising. House payments. Jesus. Even the baby thing.”
They fell silent for a long spell, time marked in steady intervals by the slow throb of his hand. Finally he said, “We were greedy.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess we were.”