“Gangsters. Jesus.” Tom shook his head. “What the hell are we doing?”
She looked over at him. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and his posture rigid. She could almost hear the whir and clank of his thoughts colliding. “Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Why did you ask what they were going to do to Jack?”
He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess just to make it real.”
“Is it going to bother you?”
He shook his head. “I wanted to see if it would. Whether planning something like this was going too far. But when Malachi said what he said, I didn’t feel a thing. The truth is, I don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to Jack. After what he’s done…” He shrugged. “Fuck him.”
“So we’re going ahead.”
“I don’t see any choice. You?”
She shook her head. They rode in silence, Anna looking at a familiar world gone strange. A guy on a bike, a woman walking a couple of dogs, a kid at the bus stop wearing a T-shirt that read “You looked better on MySpace.” It felt like one of those ant farms, a pane of glass that let you stare into something that was supposed to be hidden. Only, the world was normal, and it was her eyes that had changed. “You sure about stowing the money?”
“Yes.” His voice was firm. “We’ve been careless. What if the car got stolen or towed? What if Jack happened on it? What we’re about to walk into, as exposed as we’re going to be, that money may be our lifeline. We need to protect it.”
“Things could go right too, you know.” She turned to look at him. “Don’t forget that. If we pull this off, it’s all over. Malachi will be done with us, and Jack will be gone. No one will know we have the money. We’ll be able to go back to our life. Only better.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
They’d rented a space at the storage facility off Belmont years ago. In D.C. they’d kept separate apartments, so when they moved in together, they’d had twice as much furniture as space. Tom’s had been garage-sale crap, but he’d been sentimental about it – or hedging his bets, something Anna had wondered at the time – and so they’d rented a ten-by-ten and piled stuff to the ceiling. Eventuallythey’d hauled most of it to the garbage and surrendered the lease, but when, leaving the restaurant, Tom had suggested that they needed to move the money, the place had jumped to Anna’s mind.
He went inside to rent a unit while she walked to a Sun-Times machine. Dropped coins into the slot, then opened the front and pulled out the whole stack of papers, including the one in the display. By the time she’d returned to the car, he was waiting, the duffel bag in one hand, cell phone in the other. He shook his head, closed it. “Detective Halden again.”
“You check the message?”
“No. I’m nervous enough. Let’s get on with it.”
He’d gotten the smallest available unit, a five-foot cube on the third floor. The hallway was fluorescent and concrete, marked by roll doors. Their footsteps echoed. Tom bent to fit the key into the lock and haul the door clattering upward.
The space was clean and blank. The two of them stepped inside, then dragged the door closed behind. Tom unzipped the bag and upended it. Bundles of ragged hundreds tumbled out, and Anna had the same surreal feeling as when they first found the money, that same breathless skipped heartbeat. All that freedom piled up on a concrete floor. In the confined space, she could smell it, a dank, unpleasant odor of humanity.
Tom shook the last straggling bundles from the bag, then set it on the floor and held it open. Anna piled the stack of newspapers inside. They bulged against the side much like the money had. Tom hefted it, testing the weight. “It’s close enough.”
Anna tore the band off one bundle, then dumped the money on top of the newspaper and smeared it around. At a glance – a quick glance – it might look like they had undone all the money and were carrying it loose. Thin, but better than nothing.
She looked up to find Tom staring at her, one side of his lips curled up in a smile. She could see a bead of sweat on his upper lip, and the weathered lines beginning to form around his eyes, and then he leaned in and kissed her, one hand going behind her head, and she went with it, her tongue sliding into his mouth, his beard stubble rough against her lips, the two of them bending across a pile of money to breathlessly neck like high school kids. When they finally parted, she put a hand against his cheek. “What was that for?”
“Luck,” he said. “And gratitude.”
“Gratitude?”
“Not everybody has a partner in crime like you.”
“We’re doing okay, aren’t we? For a couple of regular people, I mean?” She could feel the pounding of her pulse. For just a second, she had a flash of what they were up to, how crazy it was, like the moment on a roller coaster just before the plummet when it was way too late to get off.
“We’re going to be okay,” he said. “I promise.”
She forced a smile. “Cross your heart?”
THE CAB REEKED OF APPLE from the air freshener hanging over the mirror. Tom wrinkled his nose, watched the blocks crawl. Anna had suggested parking the Pontiac away from the mall and taking a cab, a good idea.
He remembered that kiss, in the cramped unit, his knees propped on three hundred thousand dollars as he tasted her. The whiff of desperation they’d both tried not to acknowledge. He looked over, squeezed her hand, got a thin-lipped smile in return.
The rain had started, fat gentle drops that stole color, reducing the streets to a tapestry of grays. People crab-walked under umbrellas, and shopkeepers sniffed the air from the safety of their awnings. The cab passed a discount electronics store, a rug mart, a couple of artsy boutiques, a falafel joint. There was a toxic lightness in his chest. He’d gone skydiving once, back in college, and remembered most the staticky panic as the plane circled upward, the sense that he was moving closer and closer to something irrevocable.
The driver pulled to the side and tapped the meter. Windshield wipers slip-slopped back and forth. Outside was the block-long gray bulk of Century Mall, baroque columns rising above the movie marquee, shimmering display windows and glass doors below. Tom passed the driver a twenty, waved off the change. They needed all the good karma they could get right now.
“I know what you’re going to say, but please, would you consider letting me do this-”
“We’re in it together.” Her face shone pale, but her shoulders were set. “Let’s just get through it.”
He nodded, blew a breath, and they walked to the entrance, Anna stepping ahead of him to open the door. The duffel was unwieldy, kept banging against his knee, but he found himself grateful to have something to hang on to. Inside, the hum of the rain and the whir of tires was replaced by pop music and a jumble of chemical smells from the bath shop. The woman behind the information desk didn’t look up from her novel as they passed.
Century Mall was a squared spiral rising four stories around a center courtyard. It had always reminded Tom of the Guggenheim, only instead of paintings, the walls gave way to two dozen shops: clothing and laser hair removal and lingerie and a tanning place. A ramped walkway ran all the way around, and from where he stood, he could look up at a cross section of commercialism rising to a broad glass ceiling spotted with rain. In the middle and down a level was a gourmet grocery store, one of those places that sold prepackaged sushi and elaborate salads. “Where do you think is best?”
“We’ll want to end up around the second floor, so no matter where they are, Malachi’s people aren’t too far away.”
“So we can’t start there. Up top, then?”
They waited at the glass elevator. Tom rocked on his toes, looking around, trying not to seem nervous. Anna stiffened. She turned to face him, then whispered, “There’s a cop here.”