'It was stupid, Jacob. If they find the plane now, and they realize that the money's missing, he's going to know right off who took it.'
'But that's the beauty of it. There's no way we'd have mentioned it to him if we were the ones who took the money.'
'Promise me you won't do anything like this again.'
He smiled at me. 'Don't you see how sneaky it is? Our asking him about the plane puts us on his side.'
'It was a risk,' I said. 'It was stupid.'
'But it paid off. We found out--'
'This isn't a game, Jacob. We've committed a crime. We could go to jail for what we've done tonight.'
'Come on, Hank,' Lou said. 'No one's going to send us to jail for this. None of us has records, we aren't criminals. Anyone would've done what we did.'
'You're saying we didn't commit a crime?'
'I'm saying they wouldn't send us to jail for it. Even if they convicted us, we'd get a suspended sentence.'
'Especially if we hadn't spent any of the money yet,' Jacob said. 'I think--'
'I don't care what you think,' I said, my voice rising toward a shout. 'If I feel like you're taking unnecessary risks, I'll burn the money.' I looked from Jacob to Lou. 'Do you understand?'
Neither of them said anything.
'I'm not going to jail because of something stupid you two idiots have done.'
They both stared at me, shocked by my outburst. Mary Beth made a whimpering sound in Lou's arms. I looked out the window. We were on Burnt Road, moving south, surrounded by fields.
I took a deep breath, tried to calm myself down. 'I just want you to be careful,' I said.
'We'll be careful, Hank,' Jacob said quickly. 'Of course we'll be careful.'
Lou didn't say anything, but I could sense him, even with my head turned toward the window, grinning at Jacob.
'Stop the truck,' I said. 'We can count it here.'
JACOB pulled off onto the edge of the road, and we climbed outside into the cold. We were about three miles west of town. Snow-covered fields lined either side of the road, and there were no houses in sight, no lights of any sort. If a car had approached us from either direction, we would've been able to see it for nearly a mile before it reached us.
Jacob and Lou counted the money; I stood behind them with a flashlight. Mary Beth remained inside the empty cab, sleeping on the seat. They organized the packets into stacks; each stack was ten packets high. It seemed to take forever to count them. I divided my attention equally between the piles of money and the surrounding horizon, alert for approaching lights.
The night was very quiet. The wind hissed across the empty fields; the snow made an occasional creaking sound as it settled alongside the road; and over it all, soft but insistent, came the steady shuffling hush, like cards being dealt at a casino, of Jacob and Lou counting the packets into piles.
When they finished, there were forty-four stacks lined up one after the other along the truck's tailgate. It was $4.4 million.
It took a little while for this to sink in. We stood there, gazing at the money. Lou counted the stacks again, touching the top packet of each one with his forefinger.
'How much is that apiece?' Jacob whispered.
I had to think for a second. 'Almost a million and a half.'
We continued to stare at the money, stunned.
'Put it away,' I said finally, shivering in the cold. I handed Jacob the duffel bag and watched it grow solid as he slowly refilled it.
When all the money was inside, I took it back to the cab.
LOU LIVED southwest of Ashenville, in the opposite direction from me, and we drove there first. It was getting colder and colder; a fretwork of ice was forming along the edge of the windshield. The torn rear window flapped in the wind, sending a steady stream of frigid air pulsing through the cab. Mary Beth rode in the back, huddled halfway into the truck, right up against our necks, so that I could hear him breathing in my ear. The bag of money was resting on the floor, wedged tightly between my legs. I held the top shut with my hand.
It was quarter till seven by the time we reached Lou's.
Nancy's car was in the yard, and there were lights on in the house. It was a large, run-down farmhouse, ancient, one of the oldest surviving homes in the area. Lou and Nancy rented it from Sonny Major, whose grandfather had once owned all the surrounding fields, growing corn and cabbage in them; he'd been one of the region's gentry in the high days before the Depression. Things had gone downhill since then. Sonny's father had sold nearly all the land over the years, except for two thin strips along the road. One of these supported the farmhouse; the other, a smaller plot about three quarters of a mile to the south, had a tiny, rusted-out house trailer on it. Sonny lived in the trailer, alone, within sight of the house he'd grown up in. He called himself a carpenter but survived chiefly off the money he made from Lou and Nancy's rent.
Jacob parked in the driveway, leaving the engine on. Lou opened the door and climbed outside, hesitating for a second before shutting it.
'I was thinking we might each take a packet now,' he said. 'Just to celebrate with.' He smiled at me.
I slid over toward the door, keeping the duffel bag between my legs. Mary Beth climbed in through the window, his fur smelling fresh and cold. He shook himself and then sat down on the seat, leaning up against Jacob. Jacob put his arm around the dog.
'Forget about the money, Lou,' I said.
He wiped at his nose with his hand. 'What do you mean?'
'Nothing's going to change in your life for the next six months,' I said.
Jacob patted Mary Beth's side, a hollow sound. There were trees clustered around Lou's house, huge ones with thick, gray trunks rising up tall against the blackness of the night sky. They were swaying a little in the wind, their branches clicking together. Down the road Sonny's trailer was completely dark. He wasn't home.
'All I'm asking for--' Lou started, but I shook my head, cutting him off.
'You aren't hearing me, Lou. What I'm saying is, don't ask.'
I leaned over and pulled shut the door. He stared at me for a moment, through the window, then exchanged a quick glance with Jacob before turning and walking slowly up his driveway.
IT TOOK forty minutes to drive from Lou's house to mine. Jacob and I covered much of this distance in silence, sunk in our own private thoughts. I replayed my encounter with Carl. I'd lied to him; it'd come easily, naturally, and I was surprised by this. I'd never been successful at deceit before. Even as a child I couldn't lie; I hadn't had the self-confidence for it -- the essential calmness -- and had always ended up either giving myself away or breaking down and confessing. As I reviewed my talk with Carl, though, I could find no weak points, no holes in my story. Jacob had overstepped, it was true, asking about the plane, but I realized now that what he'd said wasn't as compromising as it had originally seemed. Perhaps, as he claimed, it might even help us.
I hardly thought of the money. I hadn't yet allowed myself to begin considering it as my own. It was too vast a sum for me to personalize; it seemed abstract, a mere number, nothing more. I felt an edge of lawlessness, it's true -- a cool, cocky feeling rippling with a terrible fear of getting caught -- but it stemmed more from my mendacity with Carl than from any understanding of the magnitude of our theft.
Jacob had pulled a candy bar from the glove compartment and was chewing at it while he drove. The dog sat on the seat beside him, his ears erect, watching him eat. We were on Highway 17 now, making our way into the outskirts of Delphia. Trees were springing up alongside the road, houses beginning to cluster into subdivisions. The traffic slowly thickened. I was almost home.
The thought came to me suddenly, in a little jolt of panic, that if we were to be caught, it would be because
