THE W HOTEL ON LAKE SHORE was hipster heaven. Anna dug the décor, the mod chairs and muted colors, trip-hop playing over the lobby sound system. It made her feel cooler than she was.
When the woman behind the desk asked her name, Anna told the truth. Then she said, “I can give you a credit card. But could you put the room in a different name? My ex-husband…” She trailed off with a meaningful look.
“Of course,” the woman said. “I understand. What name would you like?”
“Ummm… Anna Karenina?”
“You sure? Love didn’t go well for her either.”
“I suppose not.”
“How about Annie Oakley? He shows up, you can shoot him, then ride into the sunset.”
Anna laughed. “Thanks.”
The room was all sleek planes and Asian light fixtures. Broad windows gave onto the lake and Navy Pier, the Ferris wheel burning bright against indigo skies. It made her want to take off her clothes and order champagne.
Tom set the duffel bag on the ground, then collapsed into the overstuffed chair beside it. His face was drawn and his lips pressed tight. He rested his left elbow on the arm of the chair so that his hand was above his head. It was swollen and crusted with blood.
“How is it?”
“It hurts.” He said it simply. He wasn’t much of one to complain, would always drive her crazy with his refusal to go to a doctor no matter how sick he was. What’s the doctor going to do? he’d say. I’ll be better by the time I could get an appointment.
She moved to the edge of the bed. Nervous again, not sure how to talk to him, what to say. “Want me to tape it up?”
“Let me have a couple of drinks and some pills first.”
They’d bought a bottle of bourbon at the CVS, along with medical tape, gauze, antiseptic cream, antibacterial soap, Advil, and a splint. She shook out a couple of capsules and passed them to him, then dug the booze out of the bag. She knew you weren’t supposed to mix ibuprofen and alcohol, but against the scale of their current concerns, that rule seemed laughable. She poured three inches into each glass. He took his wordlessly, eyes out the window.
“I’m sorry, Tom.”
He nodded, still not looking at her.
“It was stupid. I should have trusted you. I do trust you. It was just… It was stupid.”
He sipped his drink. Shrugged. Said, “Doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Then you want to know the worst moment?” He turned, hit her with an expression hard to read. “It wasn’t when I saw the money was gone. It wasn’t when he stomped on my fingers. It was after all that. I still didn’t believe you’d taken it. Jack told me you had, but I refused to believe it. Until I looked in your eyes and realized he knew you better than I did.”
“That’s not true.”
He raised his eyebrows. Took another swig.
“What about you?” She could feel herself on an emotional tightrope, self-loathing on one side, fury on the other. “How do you know who he is? What have you been doing that you haven’t told me?”
“Trying to save our lives.” His tone was level, uncombative, and it helped steady her on the rope. She said, “What does that mean?”
“Jack isn’t our only problem.” Tom drained the rest of his bourbon, leaned for the bottle. Anna beat him to it and poured into the glass he held. When she finished, he flashed a smile, nothing much, just a quick thank you, more habit and courtesy than anything, but still. “Someone else is after us as well.”
“Who?”
“Genghis Khan.”
“Huh?”
“Just listen,” he said. She opened her mouth, then shut it, leaned back against the headboard, and nodded. He told her about his meeting with the man in the suit, about the threats against them both. About his conversation with the detective, his careful dance of exaggeration and obfuscation. Told her about talking real estate with Jack Witkowski while a knife burned in his pocket. She listened quietly, assembling the larger pattern: thieves that preyed on the Star buying drugs. A betrayal and a murder. Everyone scattering, one man left holding all the goods – a man who hid in a quiet rental apartment, the bottom floor of a two-flat in Lincoln Square. A grand epic had been playing out around them. “The guy in the suit, did he say how long we had?”
“No. But not long. He’s probably looking for us now.”
“Do you think he’s dangerous?”
“Definitely.”
“Worse than Jack?”
Tom shook his head. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“I guess not.” She rubbed at her temple. “What do we do?”
“We go to the cops,” he said.
“We’d have to tell them everything.”
“So?”
“Tom, we’d have to give up the money. Not just the cash we have left, but the stuff we’ve already paid too. We’d have to hire a lawyer.” A thought struck her. “God, I don’t even have a job now! How would we pay for it? We’d lose the house.” She shook her head. “There has to be another way.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
She hesitated. Even if everything went perfectly, if they somehow rode out the storm, if the police caught Jack and the drug dealer, if a lawyer kept them out of jail, they would lose their chance for a child. Time and debt would guarantee it. They wouldn’t even be able to adopt. She’d researched the process, knew how stringent it was. People could be disqualified if the adoption agent just got a bad vibe. She imagined the interview: Well, sure, we are nearly bankrupt. True, we stole money from our deceased tenant. Yes, we did have to sell our house to cover our legal defense against felony charges. But we’re good housekeepers. You can overlook the rest, right?
If they went to the police, they risked everything. If they didn’t, they risked their lives. “I can’t believe this. It’s crazy.”
“I know.”
“I mean, it was just a coincidence. A nothing little thing. Our tenant deciding to make a cup of coffee. That’s all. If he hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been a fire. We wouldn’t have found the money. All of this would have been different.”
“But there was, and we did. Now we have to deal with it.”
The most crucial decision in her life could be traced to a cup of instant coffee. It hurt to think about. “We don’t have to call the cops right now, do we?”
He shook his head. “Soon, though. The longer we drag it out, the less friendly they’ll be.”
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“I don’t know. Take the money, obviously. I can’t imagine them locking us up or anything. We’re not exactly murderers.”
“Will they protect us?”
He didn’t answer for a long time. Finally he said, “They’ll do what they can.”
She thought back to the apartment, Tom on his back, Jack kneeling over him, that big gun pointing at her beautiful husband’s face. Remembered how loud the shot had been, how it had left her ears ringing for half an hour. An explosion, flame and fury. She had an image, quickly walled away, of what all that power could do to a human being. To Tom.
They had gotten lucky. Plain and simple. Lucky in the alarm, in the panic code, in the police response time. They hadn’t beaten Jack, not by a long shot. They’d gotten lucky.
And even with that luck, all they’d done was get away. He was still out there. Smart and dangerous and now pissed off. Would the police protect them? Could they? For how long? “Maybe we should leave town. Hit the road.”
“We’d have to come back sooner or later.”
“I guess.” She shook her head. “I’d just like to be farther away from him. From both of them. I’d feel better if we were in Detroit.”
He was sipping at his bourbon when she said that, and made a sound sort of like a laugh that quickly turned to a cough. He shook his head and swallowed hard, eyes watering.
“What?”
Tom beat at his chest, coughed. “What you said.”