The man inside is asleep, or almost so. There's something wrong with him. He mumbles in his sleep and he shakes. You silently slip around him, hoping for a better view. He is a policeman. Your father has told you to trust such men, but your father may have been lying too. He failed in his duty. He and mother are at home eating ice cream and giving presents to each other, glad to be done with you. Your anger swells. Teddy snarls evil words in your ear.
There are spoked metal wheels with little cars on wires. There is money on the floor beneath them. Cash, Teddy says, there's the damn cash. It looks like the policeman tried to hide the bundles of bills, but some have slipped out, there is green paper sticking up.
You would hide behind the track that wheels ran on. You would crawl. You want the money because everyone else wants the money. Maybe you can show it to your aunt and then yank it away while she reaches for it. You'll laugh in her face. You will be able to buy many friends with the money and your friends will beat up your aunt and that man and your parents. Your friends will throw many hard things at them and your parents will cry and beg forgiveness and you'll laugh at them also.
Teddy tells you to do it. Go on, be careful, grab the cash, baby.
You carefully reach out into the wheels. It's easy, your hands are small. You stick the bills in your shirt until you're all puffed out with a big fat belly. You slide back to where there's a hole in the wall and you slip through it and quietly walk into the bushes. You leave the mill behind. The money is heavier than you expected it to be. You're dirty and sweaty and the paper sticks to your skin under your shirt. It's a warm day, you're very thirsty.
You know what you will do. You'll hide the money and then go back and demand the policeman take you somewhere safe, and for that you will pay him later. You'll come back and pick up the bills and you and Teddy will give him some of them.
Teddy goes, I like the plan, all cops are bent. They'll sell their mothers for a wad of stash.
You creep back into the mill through the hole, ready to approach the policeman. His hands are shaking. He's nervous or sick about something, probably because they don't pay him enough. She'll pay him and he will be her friend.
The door opens and the other policeman enters with his gun coming up and Teddy goes, Oh shit.
~* ~
Crease snapped himself out of it. His heart was clattering in his chest and his pulse ticked so heavily in his throat that it felt like Tucco was tapping the point of a butterfly blade against his neck. Salt stung his eyes and it took a minute to settle down, get Teddy's voice out of his head. Jesus.
He turned and looked behind him and there was the hole that a little girl could've crawled through carrying a couple of short stacks of bills. Fifteen thousand, what his father thought would save him, spirited off by a six-year- old and a stuffed bear.
He moved out from behind the carriage of the trimmer and walked to the rusted flatbed with the bent spoked wheels and cut cables. The broad opening where the slabs of wood would be hauled down the incline led to a two story drop over an embankment. She couldn't have gone that way.
But down at the nearest corner rotted flooring disclosed the crawlspace area beneath the decking. It was large enough for him to climb down into. Seventeen years ago, it would've been smaller, and might've been overlooked by everyone but an angry kid looking to settle a score.
He went out to the 'Stang, found a flashlight in his trunk. It surprised him that it was there, and that the batteries still worked. Except for the spare and a jack, you never found what you needed in the trunk when you needed it.
One time, when a deal had gone sour in an apartment building in the south Bronx, Crease had seen a guy hurl himself into a wall thinking he was going to crash right through. Big guy, went maybe two-fifty of gut, but he had it in his mind he could work up enough momentum to bust out the other side. Get into the next apartment and make a run for it. Crease and Tucco watched the guy smash himself again and again into the wall-which did crack a little, a few paint chips spurting off-while the guy mashed his ribs and busted his face. It got surreal after a while, the guy trying to dig through the sheetrock. Tucco and Crease were enthralled watching him, and finally it was Cruez who came up with his Magnum and put the guy through the wall once and for all.
Crease thought of that scene as he worked to enlarge the hole, kicking out some of the flooring. It took him twenty minutes before he could really climb down, carefully maneuvering himself along the joists and beams and cement foundation built into the side of the hill.
Daylight dappled the groundwork base and rodents squeaked and rasped as he made his way down. There was hardly any need for the flashlight as he braced himself and moved from board to board. He saw Mary Burke doing the same thing, laughing as Teddy spurred her on, thinking about how her family would learn the hard lessons. The bundles under her shirt fattening her up, the bills soft but cold against her skin.
The belly of the building, this was the best place to hide.
He hit bottom and saw, by the sweeping rays of light, a clear path through which he could exit. He shined the flash around and knew Teddy would be extra sharp even now, telling Mary what to do. He'd want her to hide it, just in case.
Lots of hidey holes between the timbers. Crease hunched down, looking up, seeing this place the way someone smaller would. He let the urge to be hidden begin to overwhelm him. He wanted to stay in the shadows, allow them to twist about him and what he had brought into them. Teddy's voice would be loud under the mill, every squeak exaggerated a hundredfold.
Mary had things to do. She wouldn't be able to go with her impulse to play, to enjoy the darkness. Six years old and already so strong. What kind of a woman would she have become?
The timbers and joists and cinderblocks all looked the same. She wouldn't want to stray far. She'd need to find the money again for when she used it to reign over her family.
Bent over, Crease backed up and put his hand out where the first two beams crossed leaving a V-shaped open ledge. He touched paper. His fingertips were electrified and actually pained him. He shined the flashlight down on the area and saw red eyes reflected back at him. He instinctively snapped back as squeals retreated to the distant corners. He reached into the spot again and pulled out wads of rat-eaten, water-soaked, disintegrating bills.
The reason for the girl's death.
After Mary had hidden the cash she'd walked back out around the bottom of the foundation, up the incline to the far end of the mill, and in through the open side where Sarah Burke had originally given Mary the little push to go on. The girl had walked between his drunken father and the greedy deputy busting in the front door, the two guys gunning for each other.
The last thing she would've heard was Teddy going, Oh shit. She'd have hugged him closer and maybe closed her eyes an instant before
Crease sat in the darkness, feverish. He wanted to kill somebody, but everyone who mattered was already dead.
It didn't take much to get you believing in fate.
Thinking your life was wrapped around somebody else's that you hardly even knew. For years the thread connecting you wouldn't be noticed, and then one day it started to tug and you got reeled in.
He pulled out the clumps of money and the shredded bills crumbled to pieces in his hands. He took off his jacket and threw the decaying paper in. The stacks were even smaller than he'd imagined they would be. A lot of the cash had been torn up and dragged off for nests. He knotted the sleeves together, threw the bundle over his shoulder, and climbed back up out of the hole into the mill. He went out the front door and got in the 'Stang and stomped the pedal, throwing mud everywhere.
Finding the cash wouldn't allow his old man or Mary to rest any easier. He couldn't even give it to Reb to show her how little it was. Finding the cash just didn't mean a damn thing.
He never should have come back to Hangtree. He should've marched down to the club where Tucco and Cruez were in the back getting lap dances, walked into the place and shot them both in the face. He would've got his medal and gone on from there.
Chapter Sixteen
