felt bollixed up. Grady would say I told you so. He’d told her she was crazy to go to the apartment. Damn him. Bennie rested her chin in her hand, staring at the bright white screen of the monitor.
Bear was scratching again.
“Bear, no!
“Bear!” she yelled, but the dog couldn’t be distracted. She went over and yanked him back by the collar. The floorboards were scored with nailmarks, crosshatching over the blood. Still the dog pawed frantically at the floor, scraping and scratching to get back, and finally lunged from Bennie’s grasp. He attacked the stain, clawing the floor in a rhythmic motion, one paw after the other. She had never seen him do that before. What was it about the blood that got the dog so riled up? He had scratched it away and was destroying the floor’s finish. He wasn’t scratching at the blood anymore, he was almost digging like a dog in a yard. The retriever seemed to think something was under there. Maybe something was.
Bennie got up and went to the kitchen, looking for a tool. She pulled open a drawer and rummaged through the knives, serving forks, and wooden spoons. She grabbed a small knife and hurried back to the living room, where her co-counsel had succeeded in destroying the top floorboard.
“Good dog,” Bennie said, in a change of heart. She dropped into terrier position beside him, wedged the knife like a crowbar under the floorboard, and pulled it back. The floorboard bent up, offering more resistance than she expected from an old floor. Then she realized that the floorboard and the others next to it were slightly brighter than the rest of the floor. Newer. These boards had been cut and replaced, very carefully. Something was under there.
Bennie yanked with all her might and the floorboard splintered and snapped off. Bear leapt at the open hole and began pawing feverishly. Bennie worked beside him, driving the knife back into the floor, then prying off the rest of the floorboard until it came free. She dropped the knife and peered into the hole. Bear stood beside her, tail wagging with excitement. Nestled underneath the floorboards sat a package wrapped in brown paper.
Bennie reached into the hole for the package, wrenched it out with difficulty, and plunked it on her lap. It was a heavy square of brown paper crisscrossed with coarse white twine. The size of a suitcase but Bennie knew it didn’t contain suits. She tried to untie the string, then broke it when it wouldn’t give way. The package didn’t smell like anything and she wasn’t tempted to shake it. She ripped away the paper, almost afraid to learn what it contained. Peeking through the paper’s jagged tear was a stack of money.
My God. Bennie pulled out a packet fastened with a blue rubber band. It was a six-inch pack of one hundred dollar bills, about one hundred of them. $10,000. There were packs of fifties, twenties, and more hundreds; ten neat stacks across, three front to back, and the package four packs deep, wrinkled and soiled. Bennie was looking at about $500,000 in cash. Jesus. That kind of money, in cash, came only from one place. It even smelled dirty.
Drug money.
Bennie felt sick inside. She had suspected Della Porta was corrupt, and here was proof. And what Carrier had found out, that Connolly was dealing drugs with the boxers’ wives, had to be true. Connolly had played her, had probably been playing her from the beginning. Bennie’s heart felt like a stone wedged in hard ground. She shoved the money back into its hiding place, yanked the blanket chest over it, and tore out of the apartment.
48
Alice lingered at the door to her cell, standing away from the window in the dark. It was just before the last head count, at 12:00 midnight. The prison was silent and still; the radios and TVs had finally ceased their endless noise. Alice would have no problem with the guard, a little money went a long way with Dexter the Pecker. The problem in the house wasn’t the guards, it was the snitches. Lowlifes would do anything, even finger one of their own.
Alice watched as Dexter sauntered down the hall, right on time. The lights were off in the unit and only a small tensor light shone at the security desk near the unit door, where the other guard thumbed through a hunting catalog, waiting for his break. Regs required him to stay at the desk during the head count, but that didn’t mean he actually paid attention.
Dexter approached Alice’s cell, dipping his head to check each door on the way. There were five head counts a day in the house, including one at 3:00 A.M., but what they called last count was at midnight. It was the best time to execute step one of her plan.
The guard drew closer to Alice’s cell. She shifted in the shadows and double-checked that the screwdriver she’d boosted from the computer shop was still in place. It was. Dexter was only two doors away. Her cellie was in her bed, pretending to sleep. Alice wasn’t worried about the kid. She knew enough to keep her mouth shut.
Dexter was one door away, tilting his head toward the cell. Alice moved directly in front of her door. Dexter reached her door and coughed. At the same moment, he slipped his key inside the knob and extracted it smoothly. She shoved her hand in the door to keep it open, and he passed silently, moving on to check the next cell as if nothing had happened.
Alice stood motionless at her door, watching the other guard in the lamplight below. Through the open door she could hear Dexter’s footsteps as he walked along the concrete balcony, pausing at rhythmic intervals to check a cell door. Her hand began to throb in the heavy door but she didn’t open it wider. She didn’t want that hunter looking up at the wrong time.
Alice watched the other guard turn the pages, then close his catalog and look up expectantly. Dexter reached the last cell door on the tier, then walked down the wire steps to the floor of the unit, his electroplated badge catching the light of the lamp as he reached the security desk.
“Ready, Jake,” Dexter said, his voice faint, and the other guard left the unit. After he had gone, Dexter unlocked the unit door and yawned theatrically, the signal to Alice, then walked toward the outdoor area. As he stood in front of the window, his back to the unit, Alice slipped out the door of her cell, flattened her back against the cinderblock wall, and bolted. She sprinted in a crouch under the windows of the cells, hurried down the stairs in her sneakers, then darted out the unlocked door of the unit.
She was on her own. The hallway was quiet, dead-still, and dim. A line of low-wattage lights down the middle of the corridor lighted her path like a runway. She scooted along the wall, running a finger along the cinderblock, her heart pounding. Not with fear, with excitement. The guards’ break room was down the hall to the right, but nobody would come out now. Dexter had brokered the deal. Alice sprinted around the corner into the corridor that led to the computer room. She arrived at the door and stuck a finger into her sneaker for the key. She fished out the key, shoved it in the lock, and slipped inside, breathing hard.
The computer room was dark and empty, but Alice felt right at home. The monitors were lined up against the wall, their dustcovers sloppy, and the seats in a row in front of them. She’d have met Valencia in this room but for the security camera behind the curved mirror. She couldn’t fix everything. It was probably too dark for the camera to pick her up, but Alice wasn’t taking any chances.
She hurried through the lab to the adjoining storage room and let herself in with the same key. The room was full of dusty cardboard boxes that contained ancient 286 machines, castoffs that ended up here for a rehabilitation that would never happen, like the inmates. Sticking out were some Gateway boxes, with those stupid cow-spots in black and white. They were new computers that some rich bitch donated to make herself feel good, and Alice had been mickeying with the inventory to disappear them. She knew two guards who wanted them for their kids and was about to barter them when the Rosato thing happened.
Alice hunched behind the boxes. The plan was for the guard to let Valencia enter through the other door, off the hall, not the one off the computer room. Valencia would probably be worried, wondering why a meeting about her case had to be held in the dead of night, but she’d come anyway, like a sheep to the slaughter. The weak needed only an excuse. They agreed to their own death.
Suddenly the doorknob twisted open on the other side of the room. Alice edged out of sight, flattening against the boxes at the sound. Valencia would be shuffling through the door in the next second, and Alice knew exactly what she had to accomplish. Put her at ease, then kill her. Alice peeked around the box.
