Afterburn

we knew that wasn't our money. Yours was all in hundreds. We watched you out in that fisherman's shack next to the ocean, working on the boat. You were fucking some divorced housewife with a fat ass. We knew everything. We paid her to tell us everything you said. We also bugged her phone in case she was lying. It made no sense to us. You weren't acting like you had any money at all. You spent hours in your garden with the tomatoes. We checked, we watched. We bribed the prison to tell us about Christina's phone calls. Nothing. She didn't tell anyone about any money, not even her mother. Who had the money? Nobody heard anything. Usually you hear something. Maybe nobody had the money. It was a big problem. We're talking five million dollars. Meanwhile, Frankie started acting funny. Wigged out. Couldn't take the pressure. He moved to Phoenix. Started driving to Las Vegas. We followed him, checked him out. I talked to him. He said, Audit me, go through every fucking piece of paper, Paul. Turns out he kept very good records. I'm an accountant, I should know. He could reconcile every dime of expense with every dime of income. We followed it back to the origin. He was clean.'

Rick watched Paul exhale, blink, their eyes avoiding each other. He knew all his mannerisms. Paul was getting old enough that he looked a lot like their father when Rick was young. We were all related, Rick thought, but not really family. We didn't know how to be together.

'So,' Paul continued, moving the car toward the Manhattan Bridge, 'we kept studying it. Tony had videotaped the money going into the boxes, the boxes being marked, the boxes going into the truck. Somewhere between Virginia and New York, the boxes disappeared. We didn't have a satellite beeper on the truck, because other people could track it that way. We thought that would be creating evidence. We didn't ask you because we had you being watched and we didn't want you to think we were suspicious. We knew the mileage on the truck when it left and had to find out what was on it now. We bought back the truck at a sheriff's auction. But some fucker had driven it something like three hundred miles over what the expected mileage would be. There was no time for you and Christina to put those kinds of extra miles on the truck. We figured that the police used the truck in one of their setups, and this accounted for the extra miles. Anyway, we tore that truck apart looking for something, some hidden compartment, whatever. Nothing.'

Rick remembered now. They'd pulled off the interstate west of Philadelphia and eaten an early lunch with Christina's parents. Never told Tony, since he'd have forbidden it. But Christina had said, We're so close, ten miles. I miss them, I miss my father. Her father hadn't looked too good. Thin, coughing in the summer heat. But big on moving to Florida soon. Christina clearly worried about them. Rick had taken a nap in the back bedroom, tired from the drive. Maybe an hour, not much more. Then they had pulled back on the road to New York and driven right into the fucked-up situation. The cops came out of nowhere. Just a load of air conditioners, and all this.

They reached the Manhattan Bridge, which would take them into Chinatown. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. Paul cleared his throat. 'She took the two boxes, Rick.'

'I don't believe it.'

'She took the boxes off the truck, hid them, figured out a way to flag the cops, and went to prison. You never knew. That's what we found out with your arm. You never knew. She was smart enough not to tell you.'

'That's bullshit,' said Rick, feeling cold and alone.

'Hey, we cut off your arm to see if you knew! I told Tony that you didn't know, but he didn't believe me! I tried to give you a way out!' cried Paul. 'I gave you the card and the money. I had the card set up so I'd be informed of all your charges within ten minutes. You can set it up that way, say it's a minor's account. I thought I could track you like that, if I had to.'

'That was how they got me at the fucking whorehouse?'

'Yeah, yeah. Tony insisted.' Paul eased up behind a cab. 'I figured sooner or later we'd find her, but you had to stay in it.'

'You knew I would.'

'I figured, yeah.' Paul sounded tired now. He didn't like problems and messes. He liked money. You traded one for the other, round and round.

'They were really supposed to put the arm in the cooler?' Rick asked, shifting the shotgun.

'Yes.'

The exhaust from the traffic was coming in the broken rear window. 'They didn't.'

'That was Tony fucking with me personally.' Paul rubbed his eyes. 'We've been having some problems. He's getting erratic.'

'Maybe he's the guy I need to shoot.'

' No.' Paul was emphatic. 'We're going to talk this out and then go home, Rick.' Paul glanced in the mirror. 'At the end of the day everybody gets more or less something and then we go home. I go home, you go home. You gotta understand that you're out of it now. You paid for what you did do and what you didn't do. You got to step out of it now. Tony will come up with some kind of payment, some kind of job.'

'He'll kill her, Paul. I don't care what he says to you.'

There was no answer from Paul.

'Do you know where she is?' Rick asked.

'Not exactly.'

Rick picked up the car phone. 'Find out.'

'Wait, wait.'

'You've been talking to them, right?'

'They don't have her,' Paul said. 'Not yet. But they're waiting for her to show up with a bill of lading that pays off the money.'

'Why is she going to show up with that?'

'Because right now they have her boyfriend on the same table you were on. He put up the money.'

'She cares about him that much?' It didn't sound right.

'No, they also have her mother down in Florida.'

'What did they do to him?' Rick asked.

'I don't know except that he's a tough fucker. An old guy, too. He was still alive half an hour ago. I told Tony to fucking take him to the hospital.' Paul shook his head in disgust. 'These people have no judgment.' He looked at his watch. 'She was supposed to get back to them like four hours ago.'

'Why's it taking so long?'

'Because Tony is unrealistic about how paperwork in the real world works,' Paul said bitterly.

They were off the bridge, onto Canal Street heading west. Chinese people everywhere. 'Take me there now,' said Rick.

'Why? You can get out of this,' Paul argued. 'I can say to Tony, We fucked up, his arm is gone, we have to give him some money so he can go away.'

Rick lifted the gun and blew out the rear passenger window on his side. The sound hurt his ears; the car filled with smoke that was soon sucked out through the broken glass. He reached in his pocket for two more shells.

'What?' Paul screamed. 'What?'

Rick breathed heavily, as if to set himself toward the next task, then touched the warm barrel to his brother's neck. 'I already went away, Paul. I didn't like it.'

M and R Bar-Dining Room

264 Elizabeth Street, Manhattan

September 28, 1999

A simple document, and finally, hours and hours too late, she was holding it in her damp little hand. Didn't look anything like five million dollars. Merely a triplicated form, containing its own serial number, sequentially date- stamped and signed by the shipping agent, the captain of the container ship itself, a vessel of South Korean registry, then the spot-buyer, and now one Sally Rahul. Transferable by endorsement. Various customs stamps were affixed. It stated that container NZ783A1490RF, manufactured in Beaumont, Texas, packed in Seoul, contained two thousand three hundred Nikon camera bodies and sixteen hundred 200-millimeter telephoto lenses. The shipment had been paid for and, upon presentation of the bill, could be picked up at a certain loading dock in Newark within ten days. Like picking any item up at a warehouse, just that the numbers were bigger. The paper didn't have Tony's name, it didn't have Charlie's name, it didn't have Christina's name. Of course, you could trace the bill number back to the spot-buyer's office on lower Broadway, and then you'd have Charlie's name and the