A Simple Plan

'There's four point eight million dollars in that bag?' I asked, as if I were ready to believe it.

'No,' Renkins said. 'That's five hundred thousand.'

'Where's the rest?'

He shrugged, glanced at Fremont. 'We're not sure.'

I gazed off at the town. There were two birds fighting over something in the gutter up the block. They screeched loudly at each other and took turns trying to fly away with it, but it was too big, neither of them could lift it. I couldn't tell what it was.

'So there are four point three million dollars out there, just floating around?'

'It'll turn up,' Fremont said.

I looked at him, closely, but his face was absolutely expressionless. Renkins was staring up the street at the birds.

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'We had the money for two hours before Mr. McMartin had to take it to the drop site. We couldn't mark it -- we were afraid the kidnappers would detect the markings and kill the girl, so we put together a task force of twenty agents, and they wrote down as many of the serial numbers as they could.' He smiled at me, like he was letting me in on a joke. 'We ended up recording just under five thousand of them, one out of ten of the bills.'

I didn't say anything. I simply stared at him, struck dumb. I couldn't really bring myself to grasp what he was saying.

'We'll track it down,' he said. 'It's just a matter of waiting for the numbers to turn up. You can't go around passing hundred-dollar bills without eventually sticking in someone's memory.'

'The money's marked,' I said slowly. I looked down at my feet, frowning, trying not to react to this news, trying to appear calm, distant, uninvolved. I concentrated my whole mind on my boots, forced myself to think up names for their color, occupying all my energies on this task, knowing implicitly that I'd collapse if I allowed myself to try to lift the full weight of Fremont's revelation.

'That's what it amounts to,' he said. 'Marked money.'

'Crime doesn't pay,' Renkins said.

Tan, I thought, oatmeal. With a strain I managed amber. But the knowledge slipped in around the words, waterlike, seeping through the cracks. The money was marked.

Fremont offered me his hand. I forced myself to take it, struggled to match its firmness. Then I repeated the ritual with Renkins.

'Our knowing about the serial numbers,' he said, 'that's confidential, of course. It's the only way we'll be able to catch whoever else is involved in this.'

Fremont nodded. 'So if you talk to the press...'

'Yes,' I said, 'I understand.'

'If we need you, you'll be around?' Renkins asked.

'Of course,' I said. I gestured across the street toward Raikley's. 'I work over there.'

They both glanced at the feedstore. 'We probably won't have to bother you,' Renkins said. 'It seems pretty cut-and-dried.'

'Yes,' I said weakly.

Sepia, I thought. Terra-cotta. Adobe.

'I'm just sorry you had to get mixed up in all this. It's a tragedy, the whole fucking thing.'

He gave my shoulder a parting pat, and then they turned, one after the other, walked up the town hall steps, and disappeared through the double doors.

I watched my feet make their way toward the curb. They shuffled out into the street, then moved across it to the other side. My car was there, a little ways down the block, and my boots guided me around its rear end, stopping when they reached the door. Magically, my hand emerged from my jacket pocket, holding the keys. It unlocked the door, pulled it open, and my body bent at the waist, my head ducking forward, as I dropped into the seat.

And it was only then, safe in my car with the door shut firmly behind me, that I let my mind slip free, allowed it to settle on Fremont's words, absorb them like a sponge, swelling with their import.

The money was worthless.

My first reaction, one that had even begun to trickle out while I was standing there with Fremont and Renkins on the sidewalk, was an overwhelming wave of despair. The bloodied corpses of Pederson and Nancy and Sonny and Jacob all rushed forward to confront me -- four lives I'd ended with my own hands to protect my hold on the bag of money, money that was nothing now, simply stacks of colored paper.

Fatigue followed directly behind despair, like rain from a cloud. It was my body's reaction to the horror of what I'd done -- a bonenumbing tiredness, a feeling of surrender and acceptance. I sank in the seat, my head falling forward on my chest. I'd been living for almost three months beneath a tangled knot of strain, a knot that had just been loosened, severed even, in one sharp stroke. There was some relief in that at least -- for now it was truly over. I could go home and burn the money, the final fragment of damning evidence, the last loose end.

Move.

The thought flickered through my despair and fatigue, a warning from some deep corner of my mind, some frontier outpost that was still planning, still cautious, still carrying on the fight, unaware that the war was over.

If Fremont or Renkins were to glance out Carl's window, it whispered, they'd see you sitting here in a daze. It might set them thinking. Start the car. Drive away.

The voice had strength to it, the strength of caution. It was a voice I'd been listening to with care for nearly three months, and, automatically, as if conditioned, I listened to it now, too. My hand rose, inserting the key in the ignition.

But then I stopped.

On the street corner behind me, perhaps fifty feet away, was a phone booth, the sinking sun glinting off its Plexiglas sides.

Drive away, the voice said. Now.

I scanned the street. Across the intersection, in front of the church, a woman moved down the sidewalk with a little girl in a stroller. She was talking, and the child was twisting around in her seat to watch her. They were dressed brightly, in matching yellow parkas. I recognized them -- they were Carla and Lucy Drake, the daughter and granddaughter of Alex Freedman, the owner of Freedman's Dry Cleaning. I'd gone to high school with Carla; she'd been in Jacob's class, three years ahead of me. I watched her now as she and her daughter made their way up the walk to St. Jude's and disappeared inside.

The voice persisted, a tone of urgency creeping in: Drive away.

I ignored it. I had a view of Carl's office window, but the sun was glinting off it like a mirror. Fremont and Renkins were invisible behind it.

I glanced back at the phone booth, then scanned the street one last time. It was empty.

I climbed quickly from the car.

SARAH answered on the third ring.

'Hello?' she said.

I paused, a long, weighty moment. Sitting in the car, I'd thought that telling her immediately would help somehow, would diffuse the grief I felt pressing down on my heart, allow me to shift some of it onto hers. I'd wanted her to know, so that I could soothe her, could tell her that it would be all right, because by doing so, I knew that I would soothe myself, too. But as soon as I heard her voice, I realized that I couldn't do this over the phone; I had to be there; I had to be able to touch her while I talked.

'Hi,' I said.

'Are you still at the police station?' she asked.

'No. I'm out on the street. On a pay phone.'

'We can talk then?'