"Did I get it?"
"No." He took his hand and wiped just below it. I laughed harder.
"Shut up." Mulberry reached into the bag, found a napkin, and vigorously wiped the wrong side of his face. "Hmm?" I shook my head, laughing. Mulberry got angry. "Just get it off me." I took the napkin from him and was about to grab it when I burst out laughing and had to slap my knee. "Joy!" he yelled. "Come on." He thrust his chin out toward me. I leaned over and wiped at the pork with the napkin.
We were just inches away from each other. Mulberry made eye contact, and it felt like electricity bolted between us. We both turned away quickly.
The detective grunted. "Like I said, I did some research today," he started. I smiled at him. "Don't look at me like that."
"What?"
"I'm not cute."
I laughed. "You are when you have pork on your chin."
"Listen to me, OK?"
"OK."
"There is a drainage system underneath Eighty-Eight that drains into the river. It goes under the highway straight to the river." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large folded piece of paper. Mulberry unfolded a map onto the coffee table and showed me which one of the hundreds of lines was the tunnel we could take to the river.
"We just have to find how to get into it?" I asked.
"Exactly."
"I found some stuff out today, too."
"Yeah?"
"I know what room Joseph Saperstein walked into in Eighty-Eight right before he was murdered." Mulberry's jaw dropped. I savored his surprise for a second before I continued. "It was the room with all the empty fragile boxes."
"I know what you're talking about," Mulberry said. I popped the last bite of spring roll into my mouth.
"I think we should check it out tonight," I said, my mouth full. Mulberry looked at me. I swallowed. "What?"
He cleared his throat. "Nothing, nothing. Let's check it out tonight."
"There's one thing."
"Yeah?"
"We're going to have to evade Bob."
"Who?"
"That's what I call my tail."
"Are you on something?" Mulberry asked.
"No, really. There's a guy who's been following me. I call him Bob." Mulberry just stared. "He works for the mayor. He's the same guy who threatened me on the subway."
"And he's been following you?"
"Yeah, but he doesn't really seem to be that into it."
"What?"
"I mean, I see him all the time. He nods at me when I wave."
"You wave?"
"Yeah, I think he's bored. But I don't think we should let him follow us tonight."
"OK."
"We can go out the back."
"OK."
Bona Fide Treasure
Going out the back meant taking the elevator down to the basement and following exit signs till we were standing behind the hotel. Mulberry and I found our way onto 79th Street and headed for the park. Armed with police-issued flashlights, we made our way to the hatch in the bushes. Even though I'd told Mulberry that the drainage hatch led to a secret passage, he was still surprised when I pulled on the sprinkler and the door rose.
"Ladies first," Mulberry said, looking down into the darkness. I clicked on my flashlight and pointed it at the steps below.
"Scared?" I asked.
"Just cautious." I led the way. Smelling the river, I wondered if I would really be using it to escape New York. The hatch closed, and I felt Mulberry stiffen.
"The lights will come on soon," I said.
"I'm not worried," he told me. The lights went on as promised.
"Ready?" I asked when we reached the door. Mulberry nodded. I opened the door and led him through the closet to the next door. He pushed past me and led the way to the room with the boxes marked fragile. Our flashlights cast white circles of light on the strange, empty wooden crates. I found a light switch and flicked it. The single bulb in the ceiling splashed light over the room.
Mulberry pulled a crowbar out of his bag and approached the first box. It was an inch or two taller than I, sealed with nails all the way around. Mulberry huffed and puffed, cracking wood to open the case.
"Nothing," he said, peering into the hole he'd made. I shone my flashlight in and saw the inside of an empty box. The next one was the same and so was the one after that; the next three were just as treasureless. Mulberry was red-faced and panting by the time the last box was opened. "What the fuck?"
"They sounded empty," I reminded him.
"Fuck!"
"Not so loud!" He turned away from me. I let out a breath of air, letting it vibrate my lips so he would know that I was exasperated by him.
"Fuck!" he yelled again and punched the box. It tipped over and Mulberry cradled his fist.
"That's what you get for--" I smelled the river. Looking down, I saw water rushing below the floor. "What the--?" Mulberry looked over at the hole that the box had been concealing.
"It's the drain."
"The drain?" I asked.
"This is it. This is how they were getting in and out."
"Where's the treasure?" Mulberry walked over to another box. He put his weight against it, and the thing tipped over revealing another hole. This one had a net suspended over it in which rested a trunk. Water hummed below. Mulberry and I stared. He reached in and lifted the trunk's lid. It was filled with gold coins. The gold glowed in a way that made it hard to swallow.
"Holy shit." Mulberry finally said. He walked over and knocked down the next box-- another chest. I knocked over the box closest to me. Inside a net was a velvet bag. I pulled it up and opened it. Diamond necklaces and pearl earrings lay tangled together inside the pouch. I looked over and saw Mulberry holding a matching bag, his face dotted with white facets of light.
"Diamonds?" He nodded. A smile spread across Mulberry's face--the smile of a very rich man.
After putting the room back together the best we could, Mulberry and I headed back. "We've got to get a boat that can either handle a heavy load--" Mulberry pondered as we walked through the park.
"Or a couple of boats that we could tie together. Ones that we could inflate once we got down there."
"Good idea." We walked out of the park toward the Excelsior. "I think we have to get it out in one go or he'll notice it's disappearing--and we should do it soon."
"I can get some boats in the next couple of days." We walked to the back of the building.
"I'll talk to my man about price. We might want to hold on to some of it and sell it slowly," Mulberry said in the elevator.
"That sounds smart." I opened the door to my room. Blue greeted us warmly. Mulberry sat down on the couch. I passed him a can of beer. I opened mine, he opened his, and we clinked them together.
"To treasure," Mulberry said, his beer in the air.
"To treasure." We took long sips, watching each other over the edge of our cans.
Boats
Two days later I went to the bank and withdrew my one hundred grand. It was in four envelopes. I put them in my purse next to my gun and walked down to 60th and 2nd to an army surplus store.
"Hi. I called a couple of days ago about some boats." The woman behind the counter was sitting on a stool, and when I say sitting I mean swallowing with her ass.
"You didn't talk to me."
"I spoke to a man."
"What was his name?" She rolled her eyes just to make sure I understood she hated not only her job but also me.
"Joe."
"He's not in today."
"Do you think you could help me?"
"What do you want?"
"Boats. Joe said that he had some boats that could be inflated using a pump and that they would be able to hold the weight of three to four average-size people, approximately a thousand pounds total. He said they were good for whitewater rafting, something about them being easy to navigate in rough currents."
"I don't know." I waited for her to continue, but she just
looked down at her nails.
"Is there someone here who could help me?" I asked with a really nice smile on my face. She found a hangnail and pulled at it with her teeth.
"I'm the only person here," she told me as the skin ripped. I couldn't help but grimace.
"OK. When is Joe going to be in?"
"Not today."
"That part I got. Look, I just want to get these boats. Are you sure you can't help me?" She rolled her eyes again and then turned around to look at some papers on the desk behind her.
"Boats, right?" she asked without turning around.
"That's right."
"Joe left a note." I waited. She didn't turn around.
"And?"
"I'm reading it." She swiveled back on her stool and tried to give me an evil look, but the fat around her beady little eyes made her just look constipated. I tried not to hate her. Anyone as miserable as her deserved my compassion. She looked back down at the note. "Says here he's got it all set up to have them sent over to you if you just pay." She looked back up at me. "It's a lot of money."
"I know how much it is." I pulled one of the envelopes out of my bag and began to count.
"You paying cash?" she asked stupidly.
"Yes." I answered looking up from the cash I was in the midst of counting.
"What do you need the boats for?" she asked right before popping a taffy into her mouth. I looked up at her. She was working her jaw hard, and I could just make out the muscles through the fat of her cheeks.
"Taking 20 girl scouts whitewater rafting in the Catskills."
"That what happen to your face? Was it a rafting accident?" I didn't answer her. "Seems suspicious to me you buying these boats with cash," she said through the taffy. I ignored her. "I said it seems to me that you wouldn't want to walk around with that much cash." I ignored her again. She gave up, and I listened to her cheeks smacking together as I finished counting. I laid it on the counter but kept left my hand on it.
"I'd like a receipt, please." She rolled her eyes again.
"Fine." She reached for a receipt pad, but it was too far away. She was going to have to get off her stool. I realized it before she did. She kept reaching with her thick arm, her round fingers straining to extend.
"I don't think you can reach it," I said.
Her head whipped around to look at me. "I think I know how to do my own job." She went back to reaching for the pad. I did a terrible job stifling a laugh and snorted. She looked back at me, her face red with effort.
"Did you just make a piggy noise at me?"
"Excuse me. I snorted because I had something in my nose." She eased herself off her stool.
"People like you think you're so great." She muttered as she picked up the pad. It took her a minute, and both hands, to climb back up on the stool. She took her time writing out the receipt.
"Name?" she asked.
"Just write down the product I'm buying, the amount paid, and the date. You could put a note about the delivery if you wanted." She glared at me.
"I know how to do it."
"Then you know you don't need my name." She wrote out the rest of the receipt in silence. She ripped it off the pad, handed it to me, and gathered the money up.
"When can I expect the boats to be delivered?" I asked.
"Sometime today."
"Can you be more specific?"
"No." She smiled, pleased with how unhelpful she was.
On my walk home I decided it was time to talk to Bob. He was walking a block behind me. I stopped. He stopped. I walked toward him. He walked away. "Bob!" I called to him. "Bob, wait up!" He looked over his shoulder and stopped. He waited on the curb, out of the way of pedestrian traffic. "Bob, I'm glad you're here. I need to talk to you." He glanced around, probably looking for Bob. "I want this to be over. I've come into some money. I want to leave town. I want to make it out of this alive." He didn't say anything. "Look, tell Kurt," Bob flinched at my use of the mayor's first name, "that I'm going to get the gold from Charlene, and I will bring it to him on Tuesday night." Bob nodded. "Tell him I'll meet him in his office at eight, OK?"
"Ok," Bob said. Bob sounded normal.
This Is It
I went back to my room and wrote a letter to Jackie. I explained why her husband died and why she was being blamed. I told her about James and what really happened. I wrote that I was sorry and hoped that this letter would do something to ease her pain. I signed it and mailed it.
The boats showed up at 5:30. I'd told the man downstairs that a delivery for room 1864 was coming to the front desk, and he should call me when it did. He had smiled and nodded. When I went to pick them up, he was smiling at me. "Your delivery." He waved at the four boxes stacked next to the desk.
"Can I borrow a pushcart to take them up?" I asked.
He put a hand on the top box. "We don't usually accept packages in this manner. I mean for rooms that don't exist." I pulled out a fifty and laid it on the desk. He smiled, slid the bill into his pocket, and then went to get me a pushcart. He even helped me bring the stuff to my room. The boxes were heavier than I had anticipated, and I worried that Mulberry and I would have trouble carrying them. Blue could carry one, but that left three. I just hoped that Mulberry could handle two.
I ripped open the boxes and unfolded one of the boats. Made of reinforced rubber, it took seven minutes to blow up with a high-powered pump. The pump had a rugged, all-steel cylinder base with a six-foot hose curling off one end and a power cord off the other. "Speeds deflating too!" I read off the box. Blue sniffed at the boat spread out flat on the floor.
Mulberry showed up around six and stood over the boat with a big nervous smile on his face.
"Can Blue carry one?" he asked. Blue wagged his tail at the sound of his name. It thunked against the air pump.
"That's what I was thinking," I said.
"How much weight can they handle?"
"A thousand pounds each."
Mulberry circled the boat. "What about currents?"
"We should be able to make it."
"How do we attach them?" I showed him where the end of the boat had thick plastic loops to run rope through, then I showed him the rope we would run through it. "You ever used a boat like this before?"
"No. Have you?"
"No." We both stood staring down at the boat.
"Do you think you can take two of them with two things of gold, if I take the third boat with the jewelry, the other chest of gold, and Blue?" Mulberry scratched at his stubble-covered chin.
"I should be able to." We spent some more time looking at the boat.
"I got us life vests," I told him.
"Great." I found them in the box with the rope and pulled them out. They were black and sturdy looking. "This is insane," Mulberry said.
"I know."
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Are you?"
"Yes."
"So am I."
"Alright."
The Last Walk We Ever Took in New York
Blue's tail wagged wildly as we walked toward the park. He was carrying one of the boats on his back in a pack I bought for him at Dog's Camp!, a store for dogs who camp. Mulberry carried a boat, the air pump, rope, and his life vest in his backpack. Mine held one of the boats, a life vest, and extra bullets. The straps hung heavy over my shoulders, pulling me back. Mulberry and I each carried an oar.
My gun was tucked into a holster Mulberry had lent me. He'd taught me how to load the gun and persuaded me to buy an extra clip and fill that with bullets, too. He didn't like the idea of letting me march into the mayor's office to blow his brains out, especially since my experience with guns began and ended with when I shot my molding.
But I didn't care. I knew that I could do it. I had this sick and unnatural confidence in my trigger finger. "Just squeeze it," Mulberry told me, "don't pull it." I repeated this to myself as we walked. Just squeeze it. The night was hot, and sweat pooled between me and my pack. We
had the streets to ourselves. Everyone was at home with the air conditioning humming.
Mulberry had trouble getting into the drainage hatch with his bag on, and we shared a moment of suppressed laughter when he got stuck. Blue wagged his tail and barked. Mulberry and I both told him to shut up. Blue smiled at us and thunked his tail through the air.
Once inside, we moved quickly to the room with our booty. I dropped my pack next to Mulberry's and pulled my gun out. I put the extra clip in my back pocket. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
"You don't have to do this," Mulberry told me. I opened my eyes and saw him watching me. "Taking the gold and gems is enough."
"It'll be OK. Just leave me a boat." Mulberry nodded, and I turned to go. Blue tried to follow me. "No boy. Stay here." I closed the door in his face. I heard him whimpering softly as I moved toward the room with the paisley couch.
I was surprised by how fast the memories rushed back at me when I opened the door. The place was a shambles. A splattering of blood arched across the floor from when the mayor had hit me with the sign. I tried not to think about how much I had lost since then. I turned the sprinkler and began to drop.
Lots of people kill other people every day. People get drunk and drive into other people. Men kill their wives; wives kill their husbands. Sons kill their mothers; daughters are killed by their fathers. Strangers kill other strangers for sexual satisfaction. Doctors kill patients because their hands slip. Humans are constantly dying because another human fucked up, or got angry, or horny, or bored, or drank too much.
Before that summer I had experienced one death--my father's. He died of cancer. First, he got so thin you could see his skull in his face and then he died. At his funeral, James held my hand and told me that it would be OK. He told me that our father was in a better place, which after watching the cancer eat him from the inside out was easy to believe, especially for a 7-year-old. Our father was gone. We would never hear his voice again or smell his smell. But he also would never yell at us. He wouldn't be around to be disappointed in us when we got to be teenagers. He would never tell us he didn't like our lifestyle or our decision-making. My father remains the father of little children. We never had a fight about curfews or grades. He pushed us on swings and helped us build sand castles. That's what happens when you die. You stop.