Rivers: A Novel (34 page)

Otherwise, Charlie had sat in the window and watched the storm, trying to figure out how he was going to get back and dig again with no men. He thought about Cohen but knew it was a lost cause. He thought about recruiting from the crowd below but he figured he might as well go ahead and cut his own throat now and save them the trouble. He had worked too hard already, dug too many holes. He wouldn’t let the scavengers beat him to it.

He sat in the window and Cohen reappeared along the sidewalk, stopping here and there and talking to someone. Then moving on again. Charlie had always wondered about Cohen and he wondered about him now. Why did somebody like him who didn’t have to stay down here stayed down here? Didn’t make sense to someone like Charlie. He’d tried every time he’d seen Cohen to get him to come and work for him. If you’re gonna be down here, at least make a damn dollar, he’d tell him. At least be the king. No sense in living life with your head tucked between your legs, waiting for your own ass to get blown off. Hell, even your daddy knew how to turn a quarter into a dollar.

He was initially surprised that Cohen would turn him down, but then he came to accept it as routine. It was part of the trips below, part of Cohen driving to the spot, part of Cohen picking out what he needed, part of Cohen paying Charlie for what he took. And Cohen had been a nice tipper and that usually ended the conversation with Charlie happy and unconcerned about Cohen’s well-being. Cohen handed him a hundred-dollar bill, said keep the change, Charlie would quit bugging him about why he did what he did, and see you next time.

He always handed me a hundred-dollar bill, Charlie thought. Never wanted nothing back.

He stood from the chair and Cohen had moved out of sight, along the sidewalk underneath the window.

He always handed me a hundred-dollar bill. And then he heard Cohen making fun of the backhoe. He heard Cohen joking about the fool’s gold and treasure maps and the insanity of digging random holes
in random spots underneath hurricane skies. He heard Cohen say you’d have to be insane to get your ass shot over something that ain’t there. I don’t care what nobody says, there’s no buried money along that beach or next to those casinos. And you’d be better off sticking to the day trade than ducking bullets on a backhoe. I’m telling you.

Over and over and over, Charlie thought, he said the same things and he always handed me a hundred-dollar bill. Always.

Charlie hurried down the thin staircase and out into the street. He spotted Cohen on the opposite side of the square from the café and he cut across the square to get to the café before Cohen. He went in the door and asked the cook if Big Jim was around and she said he just walked in the door.

“Where?” Charlie asked.

She pointed to the swinging door that led into the storeroom in the back. Charlie moved quickly around the tables and he went through the swinging door and Big Jim was sitting in a chair opening a wide rectangular box with a box cutter. The cut-off pool cue was on the floor next to the chair.

Big Jim looked up and said, “Where you been, Charlie?”

“I ain’t got time for that. That boy Cohen. What’d he pay you with?”

“Money,” Big Jim answered and he opened the box flaps and began to take out sleeves of plastic cups.

“Hundred-dollar bills?”

Big Jim nodded.

“Let me see them,” Charlie said.

“I ain’t letting you see them. I already spent them, anyway.”

“You ain’t spent it. I know you got them stuck somewhere and I need to see them.”

“I ain’t showing you that money or where I put it.”

“I bet you will,” Charlie said. “You will or I’m done ever running anything down here for you, making any delivery, taking anybody or anything anywhere. You show it to me or the Charlie train don’t stop here no more.”

Big Jim huffed. Tossed down the plastic cups and got up. “I don’t know what damn difference it makes, but come on.”

Charlie followed Big Jim around boxes and short shelves to the back of the storeroom. Big Jim slid a stack of boxes to the side and knelt down and pulled up a square piece of floor. Underneath was a small rectangular safe. Big Jim spun the knob a couple of times and opened the door. He reached in and pulled out a ragged envelope, and from the envelope he took out a stack of fifties and hundreds. He handed two from the top of the stack to Charlie.

Charlie smoothed them out flat in his hand. The two bills were wavy from having been wet, but otherwise they were awfully straight and clean.

“That son of a bitch,” Charlie said.

CHARLIE STOOD ON THE SIDEWALK
and looked around and saw Cohen walking in his direction. Charlie took out a cigarette and lit it. Cohen waved and walked on to him.

“You’re just the man I need to see,” Cohen said.

“Yeah? I was about to say the same thing,” Charlie said. “Let’s go in there.” He pointed at the café. They walked in the door and Mariposa had come down and she sat at a booth alone. They walked over and Cohen sat down next to her. Charlie stood.

“She with you now?” Charlie asked.

Cohen nodded.

“You sure?” Charlie asked.

“Would you sit down?”

Charlie slid into the other side of the booth.

“I need some gas,” Cohen said. “You got some?”

Charlie looked around the café and put the cigarette in his mouth.

“Charlie?”

He took a long drag and then stared at Cohen with an expression of knowing. “I got news,” he said.

Cohen looked at Mariposa, then back at Charlie. “About what?”

“About this witch hunt I been on since forever.”

“You mean treasure hunt?”

“Whatever you wanna call it.”

“Let me take a guess,” Cohen said and he grinned. “You know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.”

“Better than that,” Charlie said. He smoked again and then he smirked at Cohen. “I know
the
guy.”

Cohen asked Charlie for a cigarette. He lit it and he looked out of the window and then back to Charlie.

“I think you know him, too,” Charlie said.

“How would I know him?”

“You know him. I’ve known him since he was a boy. Used to be buds with his daddy. Watched him ride horses. Watched him play ball. Even gave him a few Santa Claus toys way back when. You’d think knowing somebody like that would make you friends with him. But evidently it don’t.”

Cohen laughed a little. “That’s some theory.”

“It ain’t a theory. Are we gonna play the game or get to it ’cause I’m all outta patience.”

“What makes you think I know where the pretend money is buried?”

“I don’t think you know where it’s buried, ’cause it ain’t buried no more. I think you know where to touch it.”

“What I think is this rain is making you crazy.”

Charlie finished his cigarette and dropped it in the metal ashtray next to the ketchup bottle. He then leaned to the side and pulled out his pistol and showed it to Cohen and Mariposa. “Put your hands on the table,” he said.

“Charlie.”

“Put. Your hands. On the table.”

Cohen did as asked.

“You too, honey.”

Mariposa set her hands on the table.

“I told you I ain’t playing around, Cohen,” Charlie said and he moved the pistol beneath the table. His eyes were scattered and wild. “I want you to look around. See where you are. There ain’t nobody in this café or outside this café that don’t need something from me. There ain’t nobody around here who wants my truck to stop showing up. There’s no law worth mentioning. You’re sitting in one of Charlie’s towns. I
can buy anybody out there for a pint of tequila. So what I’m gonna do is count to five. When I hit five, she’s gonna catch a bullet where she don’t wanna catch it. In between one and five, you decide if there’s something you want to say to me.”

“Charlie, come on,” Cohen said.

“One.”

“Me and you can talk, just put it away.”

“Two.”

“Cohen,” Mariposa said in a shaky voice.

“Three.”

“I have it,” Cohen said.

Charlie opened up his coat and took out a flask and handed it to Cohen. Cohen unscrewed the cap and drank and handed it back. Charlie drank and set it on the table. Outside the rain drummed against the awning and more people filed onto the sidewalks. Cohen looked around the café as if there were an answer to his predicament written across the wall.

“How long you had it?” Charlie asked.

“Had what?” Mariposa said.

Charlie laughed. “Hell, you ain’t even told your girlfriend? I don’t feel so bad now.”

Cohen sat still and stared.

“How long you had it?” Charlie asked again.

“Pretty long.”

“You little shit. All those goddamn times you knew I was out there and you knew all these crazy assholes were down there digging and shooting and sometimes just shooting and you let me keep on. I oughta blow your kneecaps off right now and make you crawl to it.” His jaw was clenched as he spoke and it seemed the pistol might fire at any second.

Mariposa said, “Cohen?”

“Don’t say nothing else,” Charlie ordered her. He then licked his lips, scratched at his cheek. “You’re a curious son of a bitch, Cohen. I’ll give you that. Besides being a fucking liar, you’re sitting on Fort
Knox and living out there all alone like the rest of all those waterlogged weirdos when you could be any damn place you wanted. All because of what? ’Cause of Elisa? Gimme a goddamn break. I wish your daddy was here right now so he could slap your dumb ass for being so stupid.”

“Don’t say her name again,” Cohen said.

“Don’t start crying.”

“And I didn’t lie to you.”

“Call it what you want but we both know what it is and that shit don’t matter right now anyway because we got real business to get into. The long and short of the real business is that you’re about to get up and take me to it. You and her both.”

“She don’t have nothing to do with this.”

“We’ll call it collateral.”

Cohen shook his head. “I can’t go right to it ’cause I don’t have it.”

Charlie leaned his head back and shook it in disbelief. “Oh God,” he said. “We really gonna keep on like this. Really?”

“I know where it is.”

“Hell yes, you do. And we’re going.”

“It’s down there.”

“That’s bullshit. Ain’t no way you’re up here and it’s down there.”

“It ain’t bullshit. I already told you the other day we had to run out of there when them others showed up and that’s where it is. In the Jeep where I left it when we took out.”

Despite what he felt about Cohen now, Charlie thought that he was telling the truth. He was too smart to keep lying with a pistol aimed between his legs.

“How much is it?” Charlie asked.

“I never counted it.”

“Holy shit. More money than you can count. Always hear people say that but I never heard anybody say it that meant it.”

Cohen leaned back. He looked at Mariposa. She stared at him as if unsure who he was.

“What you driving?” Charlie asked.

“Truck. Still need gas.”

“I got that.”

“But we need to wait, Charlie. It’s brutal out there right now.”

“It’s been brutal.”

“Hasn’t stopped for weeks. We barely figured out how to get up here.”

“I know it’s bad and it’s getting badder with every drop that hits the ground. Won’t be no better time than this minute.”

Charlie drank from the flask again. Paused and thought. “She’s gonna ride with me in the U-Haul and you’ll follow.”

“No, hell no,” Cohen said.

“Hell yes. If you think I’m piling you two up next to me and driving through this mess then you’re the crazy one. First time I look off you’ll be on me. She rides with me and you follow. U-Haul’s heavy anyhow and we’re gonna need that.”

“I wanna know what’s going on,” Mariposa said.

Charlie picked up his cigarettes and took one from the pack and said, “You tell her.”

Cohen rubbed his hand at the back of his neck and then looked at her. “In the Jeep I have a lot of money. Money Charlie and everybody else has been looking for. We’re going to get it.”

“I don’t wanna go get it,” she said.

“Me, neither.”

“I didn’t want all my men shot dead, neither,” Charlie said. “And I didn’t wanna spend the last two years of my life dodging shotguns and hurricanes digging for a pot of gold when your boy here knew where it was. But at this juncture you are both sitting in the world of have to. Hell, I wouldn’t worry about it. The way I see it, Momma Nature knows us. She’ll take care of it.”

He lit the cigarette and stuck the flask back in his pocket, then knocked the pistol three times underneath the tabletop and told Cohen to stand up. When Cohen stood, Charlie checked his coat and pants for a gun. He found the bowie knife and he took if off Cohen’s belt and stuck it on his own.

“You can have this back when you deliver,” Charlie said and then he waved the pistol at Mariposa. “Now move your ass. I’m ready to go.”

“Not yet,” Cohen said. “You gotta let me do something first.”

“I know that one, son.”

“No, I mean it. We got two others with us. You saw them yesterday in here. A boy and his little brother and they’re upstairs. I can’t run off on them without saying something.”

“They’ll be all right.”

“They’ll be all right if we’re all right, but what if we’re not? It won’t take but a second, Charlie. They’re boys.”

Charlie looked around. Told Cohen to stand still right next to this table. Then he walked to the doorway of the café and looked out along the sidewalk, his head turning back and forth and on his tiptoes some. He saw familiar men standing half a block to the left and he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled and then waved. A moment later two men approached and Charlie talked to them, the pistol in his hand waving in the direction of Cohen and Mariposa. The two men listened carefully and Charlie reached in his front pocket and handed them some money. Then he turned and came inside and the men followed him over to Cohen.

“What are they for?” Cohen asked. The men were young but worn, one a head taller than the other. They were dressed in layers of mismatched coats and smelled and looked like wet dogs. One of them had a nervous shake in his hand and the other had a brown birthmark the size of a dime above his right eye.