“I’ll get him here,” he told Vince. “You wait. I’ll get the little bastard here right now and we’ll sort this out. I can’t believe it. The stupid bastard.”
Vince waited while Eldon listened to Stuart’s phone ring.
“Pick up, you little pisser. Shit! Voice mail. Hey, where the fuck are you? You get your ass home right now! Now!”
He ended the call, shook his head in frustration.
Waited.
“I can’t believe he’d — Wait. Shit, how do you know this? How do you know he actually did this?” Alarm washed over his face. “Cops? Shit, did the cops pick him up?”
“No.”
“Then what? How? Maybe you’ve got it wrong. There’s no way he’d do this. He respects you, Vince. He may be dumber than a bag of hammers, but he respects you — he does.”
“I don’t think he was there for the money,” Vince said calmly. “He knew about the Porsche in the garage. He broke in to find the keys, go for a joyride.”
Eldon almost looked relieved. “That’s all?”
“No. Not by a long shot. Even if all he wanted was car keys, he must have known, from reading your notebook when it wasn’t safely stored away in your fucking pants, when the Cummings would be away. So he thought it’d be a safe time to break in, get the keys, have some fun.”
“Okay, the kid’s an idiot. I don’t know what to say. I’ll talk to him. We’ll make this right. What’d he do? Confess? Was he there when somebody else ripped us off? He try to stop them, and figured he had to tell you what went down? Vince, come on, I need to know.”
“If Stuart could get a look at the book, who else might have seen it?” Vince asked. “Who might he have told? About which houses were on the list? About when people were away? About which houses had security systems and which ones didn’t? About where the stuff was stashed in the house?”
Eldon furiously shook his head. “Nobody. Look, do you know where he is? You’ve got him, right? Is he with Gordie? Bert?”
“Sit back down, Eldon.”
The man came around the front of the couch, sat, leaned forward, elbows on knees.
“What aren’t you telling me, Vince?”
Vince paused. “I want you to listen carefully. I’m going to tell you how we’re going to do this.”
The color started to drain from Eldon’s face. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re going to tell people — anyone who happens to ask — that he’s gone away for a while.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Does Stuart go back to school in September? Or’d he drop out when he turned sixteen?”
“He says he’s not going back, but I’ve been telling him he has to stay in school. He wants to make anything of himself, he has to stay.”
“So if he doesn’t return, that’s not going to surprise anyone.”
Eldon appeared to be suffering from some kind of tremor, his head moving back and forth by tiny degrees, almost too fast to see. “No, no.”
“There’ll be cell records. You’ll get calls from his phone, from across the country, while he sees the good old U.S. of A. Anyone asks, you can tell them about the places he’s been. How this was something he talked about doing for a long time, hitching across this great country. We’ll arrange cash withdrawals from ATMs to match. Here and there.”
“Stop, Vince. Please stop.”
“So there’ll be a record. You understand the importance of that. And then, one day, you’ll stop hearing from him. Maybe the last call will be from California, or Oregon. Someplace like that. So that’s where the police will start looking for him. By then, the trail will be so cold, it won’t ever lead back here, to the business we run.”
“No.”
“Is that a no, you won’t go along with that?” Vince asked. “Or is it just difficult for the realization to sink in?” His tone softened, and he extended a hand, close to Eldon’s knee, but he could not bring himself to touch him. “He put all of us in a very difficult spot.”
“You didn’t do it. Tell me you didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t. Someone else. And we’re gonna find out who. Bert and Gordie and me, we’re going to do that, for you. We’re gonna find who killed your boy and make them pay — you can count on that.”
Eldon’s chin quivered.
“But where Stuart was when this went down, that creates a significant problem for us. We couldn’t have the Cummings return home to find a body in their kitchen. Nor could we move him someplace and let him be found. There’d be questions. Things that’d be hard to explain to the cops. Stuart had his faults, but I know you loved him. I understand that. I know what it is to lose a child. I got an idea what you’re going through. But I also see what has to be done. This son of a bitch who killed your boy, that’s also the son of a bitch who took our money. Money that was entrusted to us. Left in our care. That all complicates things, Eldon. That’s why I need to know I can count on you. I need to know that you’re going to—”
“Where is he?” Eldon asked, the words coming out in a whisper.
“Eldon, we’ve looked after it.”
Eldon stood, took a step toward Vince, pointed a trembling finger at him. “You son of a bitch. You’re telling me my son is dead, and you don’t have the decency to let me have one last look at him?”
“Things have been moving very quickly.”
“I want to see him! I want to see my son! You fuck! Where is Stuart?”
Vince wanted to get out of the chair, not have this man towering over him, but the chair, the way it sloped back, it was going to be an effort and a half to get the hell out of it.
“I told you, we’ve looked after him.”
Eldon stared incredulously at him. His voice went low. “Tell me you didn’t take him to the farm.”
“Eldon.”
“Tell me you didn’t feed him to the pigs. Tell me you did not feed my boy to the pigs.”
“I gotta get out of this fucking chair.” Vince gripped the wooden arms, tried to pull himself forward, gain some leverage. But suddenly Eldon placed the flat of his hand on Vince’s chest and shoved. Vince fell back, the front of the chair springing up for a second, the whole thing nearly toppling over.
“Eldon, you need to calm the fuck down.”
“You miserable sack of shit. Do you feel anything? How could you do that?” He kept jabbing a finger in the air in front of his boss’s face. “I bet it was you. All this talk about someone else being in that house. I bet it was you.”
“No.”
“This whole thing of yours, this plan to safeguard other people’s money. It’s all a scam, isn’t it? The whole thing. You sucker these dumb, scared bastards into leaving their stash with you, and you’ve just been waiting until you’ve got enough. Then you’re going to help yourself to all of it. One day, Gordie and Bert and me come to work and you’re fucking gone, and then when these assholes drop by to get their money back, we’re left with nothing but our dicks in our hands. Is that what Stuart figured out? Did he catch you in the act? Is that why you killed him?”
Spit was flying out of his mouth as he ranted. Vince glared at a drop on the sleeve of his Windbreaker.
“Is that how it went down?” Eldon continued. “Stuart broke in to steal a car and find you there? All these questions, asking me where I was, why I was late — that’s all bullshit, isn’t it? An act. You fuck.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Vince said. “Any other time, you talking to me like that, that’d be something I couldn’t forgive. But I’m going to make some allowances. You’ve suffered a loss. You’re in shock.”