Cash Burn (10 page)

Only darkness.

* * *

Flip rose.

A light switch clicked downstairs again and again, as if electricity could be pumped in by the motion. A voice cursed.

Flip stole to the bedroom door. His hands flexed, fingers tense, fisting. Flaring nerves drove his fears aside, and the old power overtook him.

Footsteps paced on tile downstairs. Shuffled uncertainly.

More footsteps.

The front door slammed.

Silence.

For a moment, Flip stood, undecided. His eyes scanned the black room for places to hide.

Instead, he moved into the hallway, to the stairs. Hearing nothing, he descended. At the base of the staircase he paused. His ears searched for sound.

He ducked around toward the back of the house.

A whirring noise stopped him. He turned. It was the refrigerator cutting on. In the kitchen, a clock flashed 12:00 incessantly in the face of a microwave oven.

Outside, through the sheer curtains, he could see landscape lights glowing.

* * *

Jason faced the circuit-breaker box.

His feet would not move.

Kathy’s words came to his mind. The night her boy was killed. Dreaming someone was in her room. The power turned off the next morning.

He turned his head. His spine felt like it was outside his back and naked to the wind.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. He could call 911.

And say what? Ask LAPD to swing by because his circuit breaker tripped? He tried to laugh. It came out of his nose in shaky puffs.

He straightened. Walked from the breaker box and went to his car.

Settling in, he reached up for the garage-door opener.

This time the door obeyed, rising like a huge window shade to reveal the empty concrete floor missing Serena’s Mercedes.

He started the BMW and put it in gear, drove forward into the garage, and switched off the engine.

Not moving from the seat, he stared at the door leading to the house. The flat panel of it, doorknob at its edge, revealed nothing of what might lurk beyond it. White familiarity he’d passed through ten thousand times without a thought now reflected his dread.

This is stupid.

He clawed at the handle and sprang the car door open. It slammed closed with the same solid thud he’d loved the first time he drove the sedan.

The door beckoned, and he approached. His hand began to rise to the button that would close the big garage door behind him, but he restrained it. He brought it instead to the knob of the smaller door before him. Felt the friendly ball of it in his hand cool. He turned it.

The gears inside meshed, the latch cleared the jamb. He eased it forward.

A creak like a raven’s crowded the silence as the hinges protested against his entry. He moved ahead, into the space behind the kitchen. He stood in the doorway, the night behind him outside the garage like the promise of escape, and he leaned inside to bring his face around the edge of the door.

No one.

He reached for the light switch.

Fluorescence washed the room. The washer and dryer were in their usual places, surrounded by laundry products and piles of dirty clothes awaiting his attention.

Blood still surged in his veins.

He stepped inside. No sound reached him.

He went to the coat closet and reached inside. An aluminum baseball bat was propped against the doorframe just where he’d left it. He took it up, and confidence came from it.

A smell hovered in the air. Foreign, like spiced rum or cheap cologne, it hung in his nostrils.

The handle of the bat grew slick. He rubbed his palm on his slacks and moved ahead.

He found the kitchen empty, counters shining in the overhead lights. Beyond it, on the family room sofa, the burgundy afghan spread naturally across a corner.

Through sheer curtains and the sliding glass door he saw familiar shapes in the backyard, lit by the softness of the landscape lights.

He went to each lamp. With every turn of a switch, every added glow of a bulb, he hoped for reassurance. But found none.

Bat firmly in his grip, he went to the back window. Shoving against it, he found it solid, unmoving, latched firm.

Next to it was the sliding glass door. He pulled the drape aside with his left hand and stared.

Unlocked.

He seized the handle and pushed the latch down, locking it.

The hairs on the back of his neck tingled. He turned his back to the door and faced the room, every light glaring, no space for shadow.

The weight of his cell phone rested against his thigh.

Well, Officer, my circuit breaker was switched off, and the back door was unlocked, and there was this smell. . . .

He walked to the stairs and stared up toward the hallway. The downstairs lights reached a line of brightness in an angle against the wall up there.

He flipped the switch on the wall and lit the staircase from above.

When his foot touched the fifth step, the lights went out.

He dropped to the steps. Curses rose to his lips, but he sealed them shut. The bat was in both hands now, gripped like a lifeline.

Blind, his eyes groped for purchase in the sudden darkness.

Coward!

He got his feet underneath him and rose, back gliding against the wall, face toward the banister, still blind.

He moved down the stairs and into the living room. Slowly, shapes began to emerge, lit by the streetlight’s weak glow seeping through the front window. A sofa. The neck and odd-shaped head of a lamp and lampshade.

The blood pounded in his ears, a torrent. His eyes held fast on the light outside the window, in the world where the normal scene of his street was painted, still.

Something moved behind him.

He spun around.

“Hello, Jason.”

17

“Who’s there?”

Flip could hear Jason breathing like a locomotive. “Did I scare you?”

“Who is . . . ? Phil?”

“Yeah.” Flip settled onto the arm of the sofa. He twirled his penlight in his fingers. He wanted to switch it on to see the expression on Jason’s face, but he left it off. The darkness was better. It was always better.

“You break into my house? What’s the matter with you?”

“You don’t return my calls. Not very polite.”

Jason snorted. “You don’t know anything about polite. When did you get out?”

“A while ago.” Something Jason was holding gleamed momentarily in the faint light from outside. “What’s that you got there?”

Jason hefted it. He went to a lamp and felt around underneath the shade.

“It’s a bat, isn’t it? You got a baseball bat.” Flip wanted to laugh at him or take it from him.

Jason clicked the lamp switch, trying to get the bulb to light without electricity. “Did you mess around with my circuit breaker?” Then he froze. “Oh no. It was you.”

“What was?”

“Tell me you didn’t do it. Tell me you didn’t kill Greg.”

“Who’s Greg?”

“Tell me you didn’t break into Kathy’s house and kill her son.”

“All right.”

Behind Flip’s back, the battery-operated clock in the kitchen ticked. Jason’s heavy breathing was the only other sound in the house.

“I didn’t think even you could sink that low.” Jason’s voice sounded strained.

“Where’s Serena? You two getting along?”

“We’re not done with Greg yet.”

“Yes, we are.”

Jason stepped to him. Against the streetlights filtering through the curtains, he was a black silhouette. His shape reminded Flip of how it used to be between them, and all the old emotions began stirring heavier inside him, anger ahead of them all.

“I’ll turn you in.”

Flip laughed. It felt good, like an antidote to the fury. “No. You won’t do that.”

“I will. I swear it.”

“Sure. Think how much it will mean to your career.”

Jason was silent. Flip let his words take root.

“I was hoping Serena would be home. It’s been a long time.”

The grinding of Jason’s teeth sounded wooden in the darkness. “What do you want, Philip?”

Flip angled the penlight at him and turned it on.

Jason put a hand up to shield his eyes. “Turn that thing off.”

He did. “Just wanted to see your face. We don’t look like each other much anymore. Remember when we were little, how people used to say we could be twins?”

“We were never alike.”

“We were always alike. The only difference between us was I knew it and you didn’t.”

“No.”

Snickering sizzled out of Flip’s nostrils. “Still denying it. I figured maybe you’d understand things a little better after all these years.”

“I’m going to ask you again. What do you want?”

“How’s Dad? I haven’t been to see him yet.”

“Stay away from him.”

“How can I do that? Our dear papa. He must be worried sick about me.”

“He gave up on you a long time ago. Just like the rest of us did. Why did you come back? Why don’t you just go away forever and put us out of our misery?”

“No, you’re not getting rid of me that easy. You owe me, Jason.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Flip jumped off the sofa. Jason couldn’t back away fast enough. Flip grabbed fistfuls of Jason’s collar. “You owe me everything.”

The aluminum bat gonged against the carpet. Jason dug his nails into Flip’s wrists. “Let go of me, Phil.”

“
Everything
.” Flip smelled wine on Jason’s breath. He shoved him, releasing his collar.

Jason stumbled into a table.

Flip lifted the bat from the floor and ran his palm along the barrel. “If it wasn’t for you, I never would’ve done any of the things I’ve done.”

“You can’t blame me for that. I never wanted you to do any of it.”

“I do blame you for it. All of it.”

Jason came toward him. “Fine. Go ahead and blame me. I don’t care. Blame me for all the stupid things you did. It doesn’t make any difference. But stay away from me. Stay away from Serena. Stay away from Dad. Stay away from the people I work with, and stay away from their families.”

“Your family. It’s my family too.”

“Not anymore. And it’s too late to go back after what you’ve done. I can’t believe you could do that to Kathy. Now it’s too late, Phil.” The toes of his shoes tapped against Flip’s. His winy breath puffed against Flip’s cheeks. “I ever see you again, I ever hear you’ve gotten anyplace near my family or my friends, I’m going to blow the whistle. No matter what it does to my career.”

Jason’s eyes, even this close, were invisible in the darkness of his face with the lighted window behind him. It would be so easy to close those eyes for him, forever.

He clenched his fist and plunged it into Jason’s belly.

Jason doubled onto Flip’s arm. His knees gave out. Flip had him by the armpit and lowered him to the floor.

He bent over him, put his mouth to Jason’s ear. “I’m not going away, Jason. I’ll be right here, close.” He put the end of the bat against Jason’s cheek. “I might need something now and then. And you’ll give it to me.”

Without breath, Jason tried to speak. It sounded like he was trying to threaten Flip again.

“No, you won’t turn me in. It would destroy your precious career. You know it, and I know it. Big banker with a convict brother? Not to mention what I could tell them about you. You’d lose it all. The job, the wife, the house. You’d have nothing. Then you really would be like me.”

He shoved Jason’s face into the carpet and walked out.

18

In his Explorer, Tom Cole adjusted the seat. The churn of the motor vibrated like a massage, reclining, reclining. He relaxed his neck so his head was against the headrest. He had to adjust his position every hour or so anyway, or surveillance would turn into torture.

With his head back, he caught in the window’s reflection a blurred image of his mustache, like a ghostly hedge. He reached up and ran his palm down the whiskers, pulling down on the skin around his mouth. His eyes were so tired, they felt like he was stretching them.

A couple walked quickly past the building. They found their car, and the man hustled his date into the passenger side and stepped around the front end as if he’d stolen something. But they were probably just nervous about the neighborhood. They should be, with Flip living here.

Without taking his eyes from the entrance, Tom worked his radio to find a better station. He found an oldie. Chicago’s horns and Terry Kath’s vocals beat out “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and Tom sang along softly.

The readout on his radio told him another twenty minutes had passed. He opened his cell phone and redialed Flip’s number. Six rings, seven, eight. He let it go on.

Eleven twenty-two and still not home.

A Jethro Tull song came on. This station was deep into the ’70’s. What was the name of this one? Tom knew the words before Ian Anderson toned them out. Here was the title. “Living in the Past.”

He tried Flip’s phone number again.

A solitary pedestrian, hunched and with his hands buried in the pockets of his steel-colored jeans, skulked up the sidewalk past Tom’s Explorer. The cigarette poking out of the corner of his mouth dripped a gray worm of ashes down the front of his T-shirt.

Tom disconnected from the incessant ringing of the phone.

Eleven twenty-five.

In the side mirror, he watched the domed back of the man receding down the sidewalk.

Commercials drove him away from the radio station. He scanned through the channels but found only classical, rap, and a religious station.

He clicked off the noise.

Eleven forty.

Redial.

Three rings, four.

A click and rustle. “Yeah.” The voice came through the lines with the texture of a shovel in rocks.

“Where’ve you been?”

Flip must have been holding the handset against a gaping mouth. His breath was a tornado through the receiver. “What are you calling me for?”

“I’m coming up.” Tom shut the cell phone before Flip could answer. He slipped the keys from the ignition and was out of the car and across the street. He buzzed Flip’s room.

He buzzed five times before the door clicked open. He struggled up the stairs.