her teeth. The baby ignored her, frantically sucking at her breast. When Sarah turned toward me, the smile dropped from her face.
'It's kind of silly,' she said, 'but if we do it right, it might work.'
I came over and sat at the foot of the bed. Sarah turned back to Amanda, stroked the baby's cheek with her fingertips.
'Yes,' she whispered. 'You're a hungry little girl, aren't you?' Amanda's lips worked eagerly at her nipple.
'Go on,' I said.
'I want you to tape him confessing to Pederson's murder.'
I stared at her. 'What're you talking about?'
'That's my plan,' she said. 'That's how we're going to keep him from turning you in.' She grinned at me, as if she were very pleased with this idea.
'Is this supposed to be funny?'
'Of course not,' she said, surprised.
'Why would he confess to something he didn't do?'
'You and Jacob invite him out for drinks; you get him drunk; you take him back to his house, and you start joking about confessing to the police. You take turns pretending to do it -- you first, Jacob second, Lou last -- and when Lou does it, you tape him.'
I assumed that there had to be something logical embedded within what she'd just proposed, and I tried for the next moment or so to find it.
'That's insane,' I said finally. 'There's no way it would work.'
'Jacob helps you. That's the key. If Jacob eggs him on, then he'll do it.'
'But even if we could get him to say it -- and I doubt we could -- it wouldn't mean anything. No one would ever believe it.'
'That doesn't matter,' she said. 'We just need something to scare him with. If we tape him saying it, and we let him hear it, there's no way he'll turn you in.'
Amanda finished nursing. Sarah took a dish towel from the night table and draped it across her shoulder. Then she picked up the baby and began to burp her. She pulled her pajama top back across her breast but didn't button it. They were the pajamas I'd given her for Christmas. She hadn't fit into them then -- her stomach had been too large -- so this was the first time I'd seen them on her. They were flannel, white with little green flowers. I could remember buying them at the mall in Toledo, could remember wrapping them in a box on Christmas Eve and then her opening them the next morning, holding them up against her swollen belly, but it all seemed as though it had happened ages ago. We'd come so far since then, so much had happened -- I'd lied, stolen, murdered -- and now that past, so close in a purely temporal sense, was utterly irrecoverable. It was a terrifying thing to recognize, the gulf that separated the two of us then -- opening our presents together on the floor beneath the tree, a fire burning on the hearth -- from the two of us now, sitting here in our bedroom, plotting how to blackmail Lou and frighten him into silence. And we'd crossed it not in any great leap but in little, nearly imperceptible steps, so that we never really noticed the distance we were traveling. We'd edged our way into it; we'd done it without changing.
'All you have to do is get him to understand that you and Jacob could claim he killed Pederson just as easily as he could claim you did it. If you make him think that Jacob would side with you, he'll never risk bringing in the police.'
'This is dumb, Sarah.'
She glanced up from the baby. 'What harm could come from trying it?'
'Jacob won't want to help.'
'Then you'll have to make him. It won't work without him.'
'He'd be betraying his best friend.'
'You're his brother, Hank. He'll do it if you show him how important it is. You just have to get him so he's as scared of Lou as we are.' She glanced up at me, pushed her hair away from her face. There were hollows beneath her eyes, dark, bruised-looking circles. She needed to sleep. 'It won't end when Lou has his money. He'll be hanging over us for the rest of our lives. The only way it'll stop is if we can make him fear us as much as we fear him.'
'You're saying the tape'll make him fear us?'
'I know it will.'
I didn't say anything. I still couldn't imagine Lou confessing to killing Pederson, not even in jest.
'We should at least try, Hank, shouldn't we? We can't lose anything by trying.'
She was right, of course, or at least it seemed as if she was. But how could I have known then all the loss to which her simple plan would ultimately lead? I could see no risk: if it worked, it would save us, and if it didn't, we'd just be right back where we started.
'All right,' I said. 'I'll talk to Jacob. I'll see if I can get him to do it.'
I TOOK the next day off so I could help Sarah with the baby.
In the afternoon, while the two of them were napping, I slipped out and bought a tape recorder. I went to Radio Shack, in Toledo. I told the salesman that I needed something tiny and uncomplicated. It was for dictation, I said, for recording business letters while I drove to and from work. He sold me one that was a little smaller than a deck of cards. It fit snugly, almost invisibly, into my front shirt pocket, and its record button was extra large, so that you could feel it through the fabric and know which one to press without taking it out to look.
Sarah and the baby were still asleep when I got home. I checked on them quickly, then went into the bathroom and practiced turning the tape recorder on and off in front of the mirror. I did it over and over again -- a slow, casual gesture -- my right hand scratching briefly at my chest, my palm holding the machine in place while my index finger pushed down the button. It looked good, I thought; it was something Lou would never notice.
Later, after Sarah woke up, I tried it out on her. She was in bed, with Amanda in her arms.
'What's the first thing you're going to buy with the money?' I asked, and when she glanced up at me, I scratched at my chest, turning on the tape recorder.
She bit her lip, debating. In the silence, I could just barely make out a soft humming sound coming from my pocket.
'A bottle of champagne,' she said. 'Good champagne. We'll drink it, get a little tipsy, and then we'll make love on the money.'
'On the money?'
'That's right.' She smiled. 'We'll spread it out across the floor, make ourselves a bed of hundred-dollar bills.'
I took the tape recorder from my pocket and rewound it to the beginning. 'Look what I bought,' I said. I handed it to Sarah.
'Does it work?'
I grinned. 'Press the play button.'
She found the button, pushed it in.
'A bottle of champagne,' her voice began, the words emerging one after the other with incredible clarity. 'Good champagne. We'll drink it, get a little tipsy...'
THURSDAY evening, around five-thirty, I telephoned Jacob from the feedstore and suggested we visit the cemetery together, finally fulfilling our obligation to the ghost of our father. He declined at first, saying he was busy, but eventually I managed to badger him into it. We agreed to meet at quarter till six, on the street in front of Raikley's.
By the time I emerged from the feedstore, he was already waiting for me on the sidewalk with Mary Beth. He looked even more overweight than normal, his face puffy, swollen. His jacket was so tight that he couldn't drop his arms to his sides. He kept them extended, away from his body, like an overstuffed doll. The sun had set, and it was dark out. The streetlights cast weak circles of pale yellow light across the pavement at regular intervals along the road. A few cars moved by, and down in front of the pharmacy a cluster of teenagers loitered, talking and laughing
