He eased open the kitchen door, lowered himself to sit at the top of the basement stairs. Blanche’s snoring came through the ceiling, steady and righteous, but a nickel bouncing in the next block or, God forbid, a drop falling from his galoshes, could jerk her awake, angry, in an instant.
He bent to pull off his right boot. Too hard; his foot popped out with a sudden, loud sucking sound, like he’d freed it from a swamp. Out too came water, puddling onto Blanche’s linoleum.
He held his breath, strained to listen. Upstairs, she slept on.
Every winter, he told her there was no more fixing the boots, showed her the patches curling away like shriveling corn plasters. But every winter, she refused to hear, turned back to the television, telling him he should use better glue.
Slower this time, he pulled off the other boot, peeled off his drenched socks. His naked feet were gray and wrinkly, ghost prunes. Carrying the dripping boots and socks, he padded down the stairs, made wet footprints of flat arches as he crossed the cold concrete. He set the boots by the floor drain, the socks atop the pile of laundry, crept back up the stairs to the kitchen.
The slow, steady engine of Blanche’s snoring continued above his head.
Gently, he separated two paper towels from the roll on the wall. Blanche had fits when he used them for the floor, but he’d forgotten to bring up the sponge mop, and his frozen feet were in no mood for another walk down to the basement. So long as he remembered to take the towels out, hide them in the neighbor’s trash, she might not know.
He dropped the towels on the puddle by the door. In an instant, they were drenched. Two sheets wasn’t enough, but there was no sense risking a third. Blanche was known to keep track of the sheets on the roll. He bent to pick them up, cupping one in each hand, like melting snowballs. With luck, the floor would dry and he’d be gone before she came downstairs.
“Edrow,” Blanche screamed, firing his name like a cannon shot through the floor.
Splat, splat, the soaked paper snowballs hit the linoleum, loud enough to hear upstairs. “It’s barely six o’clock,” he yelled, hurrying to pick them up, as though she could see through the floor. “Go back to sleep.”
“You made it impossible with that ruckus, shoveling.”
No. She’d heard him taking the paper towels, here-a-penny, there-a-penny, from the roll. “There’s a foot of snow, wet like fresh cement. Heart-attack snow,” he shouted, hustling to set the dripping wads in the sink.
He just had to remember to take them with him when he left for work.
“Couldn’t you have pushed the snow instead of scraping it so loudly?” she shrieked.
“Lucky for you that damned snowblower hasn’t started for ten years. That would have really been loud.”
“I told you, you got to drain the gas from it every spring.”
“You told me to buy that blower from the bandit at the Closeout Hut. Piece of crap. It doesn’t even have a name on it.”
“Don’t leave boots by the back stairs.”
“They’re in the garbage, draining,” he shouted, pleased by his wit. “I’m buying new ones, fifty-dollar ones.”
“Glue,” she screamed.
“No more glue,” he yelled.
There was silence, maybe a whole minute’s worth, and then the bedsprings groaned. “The Closeout Hut ran an ad for boots. Seven ninety-five.”
Her voice had lost a decibel, maybe two. His feet were winning. He pressed. “Their stuff is crap,” he shouted to the plaster.
The bedsprings groaned again. “Don’t slam the door,” she yelled.
JERZY SAT AT his desk in the crammed second-floor storeroom, looking down at the cars inching through the blizzard. “We’re going to sell boots today,” Reggie had said that morning, laughing, cupping his hand to catch a few flakes as he dropped into the Seville. And, like always, he’d been right. Downstairs, the old plank sales floor vibrated from all the shoppers, stomping in like cattle being led to trucks on their way to becoming meat. They’d started coming, just like Reggie had said, right as Jerzy taped the banner in the window: BOOTS, $7.95. Fake, fur-lined, vinyl boots, they looked a nice deep blue under the Closeout Hut’s low-watt fluorescents. In direct sun, Jerzy knew, they would be purple. But there would be no sun today; just snow, dirty clumps of it, big as squashed marbles, falling all over the little town just west of Chicago.
Jerzy would be glad when those boots were gone. Slitting open the shrink-wrapped cartons that morning, spreading the boots on the big tables, had set the place to stinking of mildew and smoke so bad that Jerzy had to pinch his nose. The boots had been in a fire. Reggie had smiled, the day’s never-lit cigar already wet in his mouth, and told him to turn on the overhead fans. No one would notice fans turning on a thirty-degree day, Reggie had said, so long as they thought they were getting a great deal. And from what Jerzy could hear coming from downstairs, Reggie had sure been right about that too. Mixed in with the stomping feet and the babushkas chattering in Polish came the chirpity sound of Reggie humming along with the ringing of the old mechanical cash register. Nobody was saying “fire” in Polish, English, or anything else.
Squinting to see through the snow as Jerzy drove them in, Reggie said it was providence that made him buy the half-truckload of fire-sale boots at 78.4 cents a pair. Jerzy didn’t know providence from apples, but he knew Reggie. Making the old building rumble like some sort of goofity machine, those boots were walking out the door at $7.95 a pair. Reggie had reason to hum.
And when Reggie was happy, Jerzy was happy. Reggie treated him well, took care of everything. Jerzy had worked for Reggie since he dropped out of high school, twelve years now, contented all the time. Except for Agnes, of course. But Reggie had helped him with that too. Jerzy was grateful. He lived rent-free in the basement of Reggie’s house, had a color television and only a two-block walk to the food store for the frozen dinners he microwaved. He’d even saved five thousand dollars. Not much, maybe, for working twelve years, but like Reggie always told him, for what did he need money, with all his needs satisfied?
And regrets? Besides Agnes, he didn’t have any, and that was better than most of the people he saw on television. On TV, everybody seemed to be regretting everything.
Jerzy turned from the window, back to the sales-tax forms on his desk. Reggie had been right, for sure. They were going to sell boots today.
DRIVING IN, DETECTIVE Edrow Fluett got stopped by a traffic accident. He pulled his bubble out of the glove box, stuck it, flashing, on the roof, and radioed Queenie for uniforms. She told him he had to work it himself until the tow drivers got there. She said even the captain was out, working the snow. “And the chief?” Edrow asked, flipping a finger out his open window at a minivan pilot who had stopped to gawk. The chief was at city hall — Queenie laughed — working the mayor, telling him everything was under control.
In no town on the planet did detectives work a traffic accident. No town, that is, save one — the turdweasel burg, stuck like a boil on the west side of Chicago, where his wife grew up.
Edrow got out into the slush, hustled the drivers of the damaged cars — whiners both — to the sidewalk, and stepped back into the center of the highway. And for two hours, he stood in salt-melted snow, waving his arms, screaming into his cell phone for tow trucks, and dodging half-witted drivers. By the time the tow jockeys did arrive — junior turdweasels, both of them full of pimples — his shoes were sodden lumps of pulp, refrigerating the arthritis in his feet.
He headed for his car, eager for the blast of the heater on his toes. But the accident drivers, each a victim, each a liar, were not done. From the sidewalk, they shrieked at him for making them wait outside in the blizzard for their cars to be towed. Edrow stopped the traffic, motioned them to his car in the center of the highway, and, above the blaring horns, told them to report to the station within twenty-four hours so he could ticket them for failing to avoid an accident, driving too fast for conditions, and another dozen charges he had yet to c
onsider. That set them to more yelling, until he raised his arm to restart the traffic. That sent them running for the sidewalk, and Edrow got in his car and drove away.
Now, at his desk, Edrow was watching his shoes change shape on the radiator. Twenty-four ninety-five, Blanche had paid for them, at a place off the interstate where she got lightbulbs. He’d tried polishing them, but like just about everything in Edrow’s life, they never had softened up.
And now they were bubbling up little tumors.
“Edrow?” Queenie buzzed his phone.
“I’m not going out. I’m watching my shoes dissolve on the radiator.”
“Got a report of a break-in at Mart’s Gas Mart.”
“I’m a detective.”
“Yeah, and I’m a queen. I told them you’re on your way.”
He put on his bubbling shoes, drove into the blizzard.
The break-in was to the men’s room.
“I’m standing here, in soaked shoes, because somebody busted into your washroom?” Edrow bent to examine the outside doorknob.
“I need a report for the insurance,” Mart, the turdweasel, said.
Edrow stepped inside, took in the taped-shut heat vent, the black streaks in the sink, and the mildew dots on the walls. He stepped out. “Maybe somebody broke in with a hose, to clean it.”
“Ha-ha. The report.”
“There’s no marks on the door.”
“I need the report to collect.”
“Be at the station tomorrow. I’m going to write you up for attempted insurance fraud, filing a false police report, and other violations I’ve got to look up codes for.”
Driving back, heat vents pointed full at his frozen feet, he checked his cell phone for messages. There was only one, from Blanche. “Seven ninety-five,” she’d said, “not a penny more.”
He took it as a victory. She hadn’t changed her mind, carped about glue instead of new boots. He swung over to Main Street, parked in a handicapped space in front of the Closeout Hut. The red letters on the sign were bright, even through the blizzard: BOOTS, $7.95. Crap for sure, but better than glue. He got out.
“YOU AWAKE UP there?” Reggie shouted from downstairs. Jerzy knew Reg didn’t like to come up much, because at 380, stairs made Reggie’s heart beat funny. But, jeez, if the guy climbed a few more stairs, he could lose that weight, and then his heart wouldn’t beat so funny.
“More boots, Jerzy,” Reggie yelled.
Down below, the sales floor went silent as the babushkas paused like the piranhas in the pet store when the clerk was about to drop the dead goldfish.
“Okay, Reg,” Jerzy shouted back, getting up and clumping loudly across the floor. Reggie liked to hear people being purposeful.
There were only four of the big cartons left, each holding twenty-four pairs of boots. Reggie would be mad. Instead of being happy, selling half a truckload of boots at ten times what he’d paid, all he would think of would be the half he didn’t buy, the boots he didn’t sell because he’d run out. It wouldn’t be a happy ride home.
Jerzy dragged the boxes to the landing, knelt to look over the railing. Down below, the Closeout Hut was jammed with even more shoppers than the time Reggie had dumped those microwave ovens that had been missing UL labels. Jerzy did a quick count, each finger being ten people. There were nearly fifty — babushkas, mostly, but also businessmen in suits, young shopgirls wearing lots of makeup — all of them pushing around the tables, grabbing at the boots. It was going to be impossible to empty the boxes without catching some elbows.
THROUGH THE WINDOW, Detective Edrow Fluett saw Hell — a mob of babushkas in black wool, pawing at tables like they were scratching for gold. He turned, started to walk away, but stopped. As soon as he got to the station, maybe within only a minute of setting the remains of his shoes on the radiator, Queenie would catch something else that would send him back into the storm. Another bogus broken lock or a fender bender; the storm was bringing on a frenzy of turdweasel pain. He looked down at his shoes, half-buried in the slush on the sidewalk. They wouldn’t last the day. He turned around and went in.
The place smelled of wet wool, babushka sweat, and . . . an old fire. And there was a draft. No, not a draft, a wind. Edrow looked up. The bandit had the ceiling fans running. For the fire stink. For shame.
Edrow never flashed his button unless the job demanded. But that day, the job demanded. He could be called, at any instant, to chase crime into the snow. And for that, he needed dry feet. He held up his badge, pushed his way through the mob to the fat guy behind the cash register. He remembered him from the snowblower, the bandit.
“Jerzy,” the fat man yelled.
JERZY SAW SUICIDE down on the sales floor. “What say I just cut the tops off the boxes, skip the tables?” he shouted from the top of the stairs.
Reggie turned away from an old guy to look up. Slither-sucking his cigar from the right to the left side of his thick lips, he shook his head.
“Why not, Reg?”
“I ain’t paying you to think, Jerzy,” he yelled up. “I’m paying you to do. The boots go on the tables. And Jerzy?”
“Yeah, Reg?”
“First, find a men’s size eleven for my friend the detective, here.”
“I wear a size nine,” Reggie’s friend the detective called up.
“Eleven, Jerzy; they’re running a little small,” Reggie shouted, slither-sucking his cigar back to its rightful right-hand side.
Jerzy busted the tapes on the boxes, making his arms windmills, pushing through the stinky boots. Reggie liked to see hustle, always the hustle. He found a men’s eleven and ran them down.
THE KID POUNDING down the stairs like the roof was on fire wasn’t really a kid, Edrow realized. He was a big, hulking young man in his late twenties. But he had a kid’s expectant look on his face, like a beagle’s, waiting for a coo and a scratch. The fat guy ignored it, grabbed the boots, and handed them to Edrow with a slight bow, like he was presenting Cinderella’s slippers. The young man’s face fell. He should have learned by now, Edrow thought. Thanks were hens’ teeth, especially in this turdweasel town.
“Your size and color, sir,” the fat man said, making a joke.
Edrow made his own joke. Glancing up at the fans whirling overhead, he gave the boots a long sniff to let the fat guy know he wasn’t being fooled by the tornado blowing through the store. The boots stank, but they’d be dry. Edrow handed the bandit one of the two fifties he kept hidden in his wallet.
“Call it eight even.” The fat man smiled around his limp cigar, a big shot giving away a few pennies of the state’s sales tax. He put the fifty in his right pants pocket, already bulging, made the change, two twenties, two singles, out of his left. It wasn’t Edrow’s concern if the bandit never rang the register; Edrow wasn’t the Illinois Department of Revenue, chasing sales-tax cheats. It was a turdweasel town.
Edrow turned to push through the babushkas.
“Spell me for a minute, Jerzy,” Edrow heard the fat man say behind him. “I gotta make a pit stop.”
Outside, Detective Edrow Fluett stopped to look through the window. Jerzy was pulling a big carton through a swarm of old women. Farther back, the fat man was pulling himself up the stairs by the handrail like he was dragging cement. It was painful, watching him. He must have weighed four hundred pounds.
REGGIE NORMALLY WAITED until the end of the day for the pit stop, so as not to make the climb twice, but as the older man started pulling himself up the stairs, Jerzy saw that his pants pockets were already packed solid. Lots of babushkas that morning, buying two, three pairs of boots. That meant lots of fifties. Reggie thought Jerzy was too stupid to know about the hidey- place under the chair mat. But Jerzy was the one who mopped the floor. And Jerzy was the one who brought the deposits to the bank, deposits that never had fifties. Jerzy knew. He just never said anything.
Fifteen minutes later, the toilet flushed, which could have been just for fooling, and Reggie thumped down the stairs, for sure
his pockets, and maybe his body, emptied. Jerzy ran back up, in a hurry to wash the stink of fire off his hands.
But as he crossed the storeroom, he saw that Reggie’s chair mat was bumped up in the middle. Reggie hadn’t put the floorboard back right.
Jerzy stopped, but kept clumping his feet on the floor. Even above the babushkas, a part of Reggie would be listening to make sure Jerzy was being purposeful, crossing the floor to get right back to work. Jerzy thought about fixing the board, but maybe Reggie had left it that way as a test to find out if Jerzy knew about the hidey-place. Best to leave it alone, he decided, and clumped to the bathroom to wash his hands.
At his desk, he kicked off his shoes and tried again to work on the sales-tax form. It didn’t require much, just recopying the numbers Reggie had already penciled on a photocopy, then signing “Jerzy Wosnowski, President” on it. It was capital B Boring, copying all those numbers, and it took forever. Jerzy once asked, since Reggie always did the calculations to begin with, why he didn’t just sign the form himself instead of making Jerzy recopy everything. “You’re the president, Jerzy. You have to sign the official documents,” Reggie had said, and that had made Jerzy feel good, being trusted to sign important documents.
But that snowy, gray afternoon, feeling good about responsibilities wasn’t enough to stop the boring, and Jerzy’s eyes kept wanting to look at that bump in the chair mat. What if Reggie hadn’t left the board cocked up on purpose? He’d think Jerzy was being a nosy neighbor. Reggie hated nosy neighbors.
Jerzy had never really wondered what was in the hidey-hole, figuring it was only a day or two’s worth of the fifties Reggie grabbed before they hit the cash register. And, for sure, Jerzy had never thought seriously of looking. Reggie had the ears of a cat. He could hear from downstairs whenever Jerzy crossed the room, moving inventory or going to the can.
Except on a day like today, when there was too much racket from the babushkas.
Jerzy stared at the bump in the mat and decided it wasn’t obvious enough to be a trap. Reggie had just been in too much of a hurry. Best to leave it alone.