He patted the tops of his thighs and pushed himself off the desk. “So there you have it.”
“Why’d you hire me?” Trevor asked.
“Why?” Finley’s face was a mask of innocence. “Because you’re a decent young man in need of employment. And you’re doing a very good job. What other possible motive could I have?”
“What about my dad?”
“What about him?”
“He said... he said you might have hired me to get at him somehow.”
Finley shook his head. “Nothing could be farther from the truth. I don’t have it in for your father. He’s a good man. Quite the contrary. I don’t want to get at him, as you say. In fact, just yesterday I offered to help him. You see, I’m going to be running for mayor again, and I think your dad would make a good chief. All I might ever want from him is to keep his ears open. About things in the department. Issues I might want to address in my campaign.”
“What did he say?”
Finley smiled. “Not a lot. But maybe one day you’ll want to tell your father about our little chat here today, and maybe he’d be more inclined to be in my corner. What do you think? Or failing that, I’m guessing that when you go home for Sunday dinner, you hear things. About your dad’s work. Stuff that maybe isn’t part of the public discussion. If you’re ever interested in sharing anything like that, I can tell you right now, I would be an attentive listener.”
Trevor Duckworth swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. He needed a drink, but the last thing he wanted was a mouthful of Finley Springs Water.
“I think,” he said, “I’d better do my run to Syracuse.”
“Good lad,” Finley said. “I like your work ethic.”
Forty-five
Someone was knocking lightly on the door of Marshall Kemper’s apartment.
Sarita Gomez was standing in front of the bathroom sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror, when she heard it.
She froze.
The police had found her. They must have discovered where she worked. Maybe someone had told them she’d been seeing Kemper. So now they were here. She knew she was stupid to think she could hide out for long. She had to get out of Promise Falls. She had to get as far away from here as she could, as quickly as possible.
Sarita stepped out of the bathroom and approached the apartment door in bare feet, trying to step lightly so as not to make any of the floorboards creak. She stood three feet from the door, held her breath.
Another knock.
Then, “Babe! It’s me!” An urgent whisper.
She went to the door, unlocked it, removed the chain. Marshall entered the room with a McDonald’s bag.
“I got breakfast,” he said, setting the bag on the counter of the kitchen nook. He pulled out two coffees, five breakfast sandwiches, and five hash browns. “I was starving and figured you would be, too.”
He unwrapped a sandwich and bit into it, stuffing nearly a third of it into his mouth at once.
Sarita said, “Did you get some cash?”
Marshall said, “Mmphh nth.”
“I don’t feel safe here. I want to get a train to New York.”
Marshall got enough food down his throat to talk. “I didn’t go to the cash machine. I did something else. Somethin’ that’ll give you way more money. Both of us.”
He held out a sandwich to her, but she didn’t take it.
“What did you do?”
“You gotta listen to me, babe. I know you were worried about this, but I’ve got the ball rolling. This is going to work. This is going to set us up good.”
“Tell me you didn’t call Mr. Gaynor.”
“Look, just hear me out.”
“You idiot!”
“No, listen!” He reached out to her with the hand that wasn’t holding a breakfast sandwich, but Sarita stepped back. He took a quick bite of biscuit, egg, and sausage. “This is going to work out. He’s going to give us fifty thousand dollars.”
“Oh, my God. You mentioned me? You told him I was part of this?”
“No, no. I’m not an idiot. When I say us, I mean we get the money. But as far as Gaynor knows, he’s just dealing with one guy, and he has no idea who that guy is.”
“I told you not to do this.”
“Come on, you’re not thinking straight because you’re so directly involved. I’m taking a step back. I can see the whole picture. You have to trust me on this.” He glanced at his watch. “Guy’s going to be calling me very soon. If I haven’t heard from him by ten thirty, so far as he knows, I go to the cops with everything I know. Everything you’ve told me.”
“You can’t do that. You can’t go to the police.”
Marshall rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m not going to the cops! But he doesn’t know that! That’s the beauty of it. That’s why he’s going to come up with fifty thou. A guy like that, he won’t even miss that kind of money. But for us, it’s a chance to start our lives over.”
“You’re making things worse. Things are already bad and you’re making them worse.”
“Come on, babe. How is this worse? This is a solution. This is a way out of the mess.”
“You told me you wouldn’t do this,” Sarita said. “I have to go. I have to get out of here.”
“Hold on. Just for a little while. Maybe another hour? Gaynor’s gonna call me any second. I go get the money; I come back; we go. Anything we need, we can buy it on the way.”
She walked to the window, looked out at the street, walked back. She paced.
“All I ever wanted was to do the right thing,” she said. “When I saw her there in the kitchen, I had to do something and—”
“And you did a good thing. It wasn’t like you could leave the little fucker there. But that part’s over. Now we’re—”
The cell phone in the front pocket of Marshall’s jeans rang.
He tossed his sandwich onto the counter and dug in his pocket for the phone, put it to his ear.
“Right on time, Mr. Gaynor,” Marshall said. Sarita watched him, slowly shaking her head.
She was mouthing, No, no, no, as Marshall put a finger to his lips.
“It wasn’t easy,” Bill Gaynor said.
“But you did it.”
“I got the money.”
“That’s excellent,” Marshall Kemper said. “Now, here’s what I want you to do. You know the Promise Falls Mall?”
“Of course,” he said.
Marshall said, “Okay, so I want you to put the money in one of those eco bags. You got one of them?”
“Yes.”
“You can get it all in there, right?” he asked. “Will it fit?”
“It’ll fit,” Gaynor said.
“Okay, so you put the money in the eco bag. There’s a hot-dog place over on the left side, and right near the end of it there’s a garbage can. Just put the bag in there and walk away.”
“Leave the money in the garbage?”
“I’ll collect it soon enough. But here’s the thing. I’ll be watching. I’ll know what you look like, but you won’t know me. And I’ll be watching to see if anybody’s watching you. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“Because if you try to pull something, then I go to the cops. You get that?”
“I told you, I understand.”
“Okay. You make the drop; you get out. Simple as that. You did the right thing, Gaynor. You’re not going to hear from me again after this. I’m not one of those guys who’s going to come back again and again and hit you up for money. I got ethics.”