Except when Reggie came up after they closed the store for desk time — that’s what Reggie called it, “desk time” — he would see the board sticking up and would think Jerzy had been snooping.
Jerzy crossed the floor in his socks, careful to stay off the squeaky boards. Downstairs, the babushkas shouted, the cash register rang, and Reggie hummed.
Jerzy moved the chair, then the mat, and got down on his knees. For a minute, he paused. He had to lift the secret board anyway, to put it right. It wouldn’t be snooping, just glancing.
He pulled up the board. And stopped his breath.
The space between the joists was crammed with bundles of money, each an inch thick. He pulled one out. They were fifties, rubber-banded together. Jerzy counted the bills. Two hundred. He made the numbers on his fingers. Each bundle contained ten thousand dollars. There were twenty-six bundles jammed in the narrow place. Two hundred sixty thousand dollars. Jeez Louise. He put the bundle back. He didn’t want to know about that much money.
But as he reached to set the floorboard back, he saw the two white envelopes scrunched next to the money. The closest one was addressed to Jerzy and was from the State of Illinois Department of Revenue. He picked it up, took out the letter inside. It was dated two weeks before and said “Third Notice” in scary dark letters, followed by a bunch of words about an audit of sales-tax returns, discrepancies, and liability for prosecution. “Discrepancies,” “prosecution” . . . the words beat loud around him, like he was inside a dinosaur heart. They were bad words.
He reached for the second envelope. Thank God this one was not from the State of Illinois. It was blank except for his first name written in pencil. There was something about the handwriting . . .
Then he knew. His hands shook as he pulled out the slip of notepaper.
“Dear Jerzy,” Agnes wrote. “I’m not going to call the store anymore. Reggie always tells me you’ll call back, but you never do. So for the last time, come with me to technical college in Milwaukee. My aunt says you can live in her house too. You have to be brave. Agnes.”
He dropped the letter, squeezed his goofity hands together to make them stop shaking. She must have left it with Reggie just before she went to Milwaukee, ten months ago. About a month before she’d been killed by a bus.
Reggie, you son of a bitch.
IN THE CAR, outside the courthouse, Detective Edrow Fluett held his stocking feet under the heater vent for a blessed last few minutes. On the floor next to him, the blistered tan leather on his lightbulb-store shoes looked like butterscotch pudding, bubbling and puckering in midboil. He pulled on his new boots. The vinyl was rigid and didn’t want to bend. But the boots were dry.
He walked, stiff-legged in his unyielding boots, into the courthouse. He had to testify against a burglar he’d arrested six times. With luck, this time they’d put him away, flush another turdweasel from the turdweasel town.
REGGIE, YOU SON of a bitch.
Reggie hadn’t liked Agnes. “Don’t throw your life away on a broad, Jerzy,” Reggie had said. “You’re the president of the Closeout Hut.” And because Reggie was always right, Jerzy had listened. He told himself he didn’t even know Agnes that well. She worked at the drugstore a few blocks over, and they gave each other silly greeting cards and had Cokes a couple of times at lunch was all. But he’d gotten to thinking about her all the time, and then she went away, and he figured she’d left him behind, like her job at the drugstore. He never figured she cared enough to be calling or to leave a note. “She doesn’t need you anymore, Jerzy,” Reggie had said when Agnes left. “She had a change in her heart.”
Reggie, you son of a bitch.
Jerzy forced away the sound of Agnes’s voice, the way she smiled. He picked up the letter from the state. “Discrepancies,” “prosecution.” They were coming after him, Jerzy — Jerzy the president — the one who signed the sales-tax returns that didn’t tell about those fifties under the floor.
And Jerzy understood: Reggie could never have let him go off with Agnes; he needed him like the pet-store lady needed the little goldfish, something to toss to the piranhas.
Reggie, you son of a bitch.
“WHAT’S THAT SMELL?” Robison, the sergeant, blathered, loud as always, as he tossed his jacket on the pile on the coat tree.
“What smell?” Queenie said, like she didn’t know.
“Smells like a fire in here.” Robison, ever the turdweasel, wrinkled his nose toward Detective Edrow Fluett. “Edrow, you been on fire?”
Edrow stuck a foot out past his desk. “Eight bucks.”
“They’re purple.”
Edrow looked down at his feet. Sure as shit, the boots were purple. But worse, the drops the boots had left on the tile floor were purple too. The boots were running, purple, like ink.
“Turdweasel,” Edrow said.
“JERZY, YOU ALIVE up there, boy?” Reggie called from downstairs.
Jerzy was still on the floor, squeezing Agnes’s letter. All afternoon, he’d been trying to feel her in the paper. But she was gone. He looked up. Outside, the sky was black. It must be time to go to the bank. He put the letters back, replaced the floorboard, and slid back the chair mat, not much caring if Reggie heard him. He grabbed the zippered bag and went down.
“Your eyes are all watery,” Reggie said when Jerzy got to the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m getting a cold,” Jerzy said, pulling his coat off the rack.
Reggie looked at him funny but nodded as he emptied the cash register into the zippered bag. The store was almost empty now. Only a few stray boots, size mismatches, lay on the tables. Jerzy pulled on his orange knit hat (one of their top closeouts — Wonder how many secret fifties that had got?) and went out the door.
On the sidewalk, he saw the purple in the snow where the boots had bled in the slush. He wanted to kick at it, kick at the lies.
“Heard you were selling boots today, Jerzy,” the teller, a nice girl who reminded him of Agnes, said when he got to the bank.
Today she looked so much like Agnes he had to look away.
“Jerzy, you all right?” she asked when he didn’t answer.
“Lots of boots today,” Jerzy said.
“So how come no fifties, Jerzy?” Always she kidded him about there being no fifties.
Because that son of a bitch Reggie stashes them in the floor, he wanted to yell, right next to the letters he steals before people can read them. But he didn’t yell. He just took the receipt and left.
DETECTIVE EDROW FLUETT walked to his car, grateful that it was dark and people couldn’t see the purple footprints he was making in the snow. His feet were cold from the hard vinyl. When he got home, he was going to leave the boots in the middle of the kitchen floor, dripping purple, so Blanche could see what eight bucks bought at the Closeout Hut.
But as he put the key in the ignition, he remembered what he hadn’t remembered earlier. He’d forgotten to take the two soaked paper towels out of the sink. Advantage lost. Hell was coming.
“WATCH IT, JERZY!” Reggie shouted.
Jerzy hit the brakes, let the semitrailer pull ahead. The whole ride, he’d been seeing Agnes, dead Agnes, outside the windshield wipers, instead of the highway. And now he’d almost slammed into the back end of a truck.
He squeezed the steering wheel. “Who owns the Closeout Hut, Reggie?” he asked.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” Reggie said, shifting his bulk but still staring straight ahead for more trucks.
“I mean, because you’re the owner, Reg, you’re the guy who’s responsible?”
“I should have bought the whole truckload,” Reggie said around his limp cigar. The entire car smelled dead from that wet cigar.
Jerzy wanted so bad to scream at the fat face. But he didn’t; he kept his eyes on the taillights of the truck in front and spoke easy. “So why am I the president?”
“I could have sold another half-truck,” Reggie said.
Jerzy let it go. He
didn’t need the bastard to tell him why Jerzy was president. Besides, more important thoughts were crowding into his head.
As they pulled in the driveway, Reggie rubbed his chest. “I think I’ll take a rest tomorrow, let you go in alone. Business will be slow.”
If his insides hadn’t been scrunching, Jerzy would have made a laugh. Slow, baloney. The Closeout Hut was going to be packed tomorrow with people angry as wasps about dissolving purple and stinky fire smells and the mildew they’d seen on their socks. Tomorrow was going to be as bad as the day after Reggie unloaded those tiny tin microwaves. Then, there’d been so many people lugging back the bitty ovens, they’d lined up outside, banging on the glass, yelling about radiation leaks from the loose-fitting doors. That day too, Reggie had stayed home, “taking a rest,” leaving it to Jerzy to point to the ALL SALES FINAL signs and tell the babushkas there was no cash in the register.
But this time it would be okay. In fact, after thinking all afternoon, Jerzy had decided he needed Reggie to stay away. And to make sure, Jerzy had pointed to the purple splotches in the snow as they walked out to Reggie’s Seville. Reggie kept moving like he didn’t see and pulled at the door to the car. But Jerzy knew he saw.
DETECTIVE EDROW FLUETT lined up the blistered shoes and the dripping boots just inside the kitchen door.
“You get a raise, so we can afford to pay for paper towels to do what a sponge mop does for free?” Blanche carped through the television noise as he passed through the front room on his way to the stairs. He said nothing, went up to sit on the edge of the bed. He peeled off his wet black socks.
“Shit,” he said. His feet were purple, like he’d spent the day soaking them in wine.
That fat turdweasel was going to hear from him tomorrow.
BECAUSE JERZY WASN’T allowed to drive the Seville unless Reggie was in it, he had to leave at six thirty the next morning. He didn’t mind. It had stopped snowing. And he needed the walk, train ride, and second walk to go over the plan. Reggie always said planning made perfect. That day, Jerzy needed perfect.
He got to the Hut at eight, taped the new banner in the window just as the first of yesterday’s customers, a short babushka, marched up. She was holding two pairs of boots by their laces, like they were fish stinking on a string. Her face was mad. But when she saw the banner, she stopped. And she smiled.
“I’LL BE DAMNED,” Detective Edrow Fluett said in front of the Closeout Hut. At first he thought it had to be a stunt, something the bandit had schemed to screw his customers. But the happy babushka faces coming out the door told him otherwise. And when he got up to the cash register, the hulking man-kid took care of him so quickly Edrow didn’t think to open his mouth, and he left there knowing he should have brought that no-name snowblower back years ago, instead of leaving it to rust in his garage. He shook his head. His years on the job were making him see too many turdweasels.
He whistled all the way across town, to the sporting-goods store.
THE NEXT MORNING, after shouting Jerzy’s name a hundred times, Reggie thumped down the basement stairs. “What the hell, Jerzy?” he yelled through the door, huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf. “The Seville’s not out, warming up.”
Reggie’s TV had been blasting those goofity real-life shows the previous evening when Jerzy got home, the signal he didn’t want to talk. It was okay. Jerzy was tired. He’d stayed downtown, had soup and a grilled cheese at the diner he used to go to with Agnes for Cokes. A couple of people in there nodded and smiled at him. They’d been in the store earlier.
Jerzy spent the night sitting on his wood chair. He hadn’t even tried to sleep.
“I’m sick, Reg,” he said now, from inside his room. “I been throwing up. You gotta go in alone today.”
“What the hell, Jerzy?” Reggie gulped in air from the other side of the door. “With my heart, you know I don’t like to drive.”
“Call a cab, Reg.”
“That’s money.”
Jerzy made a cough, then another because the first one sounded so good.
Reggie huffed some more. “Any problems yesterday?”
“Everything got took care of.” Jerzy made another cough.
Jerzy watched the doorknob, afraid Reggie would come in to sit to catch his breath. But after a couple of long minutes, the breathing on the other side slowed, and Reggie hauled himself up the basement stairs. The back door slammed, and five minutes after that, the Seville pulled out of the driveway.
DETECTIVE EDROW FLUETT took the call that morning because the uniforms were out making sure all the wrecks from the snow had been towed. This one, he didn’t mind. His feet were dry and warm, and he figured one good turn deserves another.
UPSTAIRS, REGGIE’S PHONE started ringing at noon, and then every half hour after, but Reggie always locked his door. So Jerzy stayed at the table, except when he had to go to the bathroom, to practice.
THAT EVENING, DETECTIVE Edrow Fluett’s headlamps swept across the white stone and orange brick of the newer ranch as he pulled into the driveway. He’d gotten the address from the call list they had of business owners. The house was dark. But he’d get out anyway, to try the side door. His feet were warm and dry.
But first he called Blanche. “You were right. There’s no need to spend more than eight bucks for boots.”
He listened, and smiled. Sometimes, both had to give.
JERZY KNEW THE Seville’s engine. The headlights outside didn’t belong to it. He sat in the dark for what seemed like hours, until at last the back doorbell rang.
He stomped up the basement stairs to sound purposeful. Switching on the outside light, he opened the door.
The man in the dark raincoat looked surprised. “Jerzy Wosnowski?”
Jerzy recognized the old man from the first time with Reggie, and from yesterday, when he’d come back.
The man held up a police badge bigger than the ones the TV guys had. “Mind if I come in?”
Jerzy held the door open.
THE KID — THE man — had startled him, appearing like a ghost in the sudden light. “You always keep the lights off?” Detective Edrow Fluett asked as he stepped inside and stomped his feet on the rug.
“I been asleep. I didn’t feel too good today.”
Convenient, Edrow thought.
The kid-man surprised him again, started down the stairs. Sweet Jesus, Edrow thought. Reggie keeps Jerzy in the basement, in the dark, like a gerbil.
JERZY SWITCHED ON the light in his room. All the time he’d lived in Reggie’s basement, he’d never had a visitor except for Reggie, and that was hardly ever, because of all the stairs. But that didn’t mean Jerzy hadn’t planned how to be polite. He slid out the one chair for the policeman and went to stand next to the refrigerator.
DETECTIVE EDROW FLUETT sat down. Sales-tax forms were scattered on the table. “Working from home?”
The hulking young man nodded. “Making sure I kept all the worksheets. Just because I’m the president doesn’t mean anything. Reggie figures the numbers; I just copy.”
Kid-man was talking in riddles. “What?”
“You could test the forms, like they do on TV,” Jerzy said. “It’s Reggie’s handwriting. And his fingerprints are on them, for more proof. I just copied. Ask Reggie; I didn’t know about the letters.” Jerzy stepped to the table, handed him what looked like an audit notice.
The hulk thought Edrow was from the Department of Revenue. Worse, the hulk needed Reggie alive, to answer to the state.
Edrow put the audit notice down. “Listen,” he said, “I’m afraid I got some bad news for you.”
“WE FOUND REGGIE Loomis dead in your store today.” The cop was looking right into Jerzy’s eyes, like they were windows and he could see through to the middle of Jerzy’s brain.
Jerzy dropped his eyes, noticed the policeman was wearing new boots, nice ones with rubber on the bottoms and tan leather on the tops, the kind hunting guys wore. Jerzy raised his head, made his mouth tremble, like he’
d done in the mirror every time he had to go into the bathroom. “He was robbed?”
The policeman’s eyes didn’t blink. Reggie always said looking somebody right in the eyes made them trust you. Jerzy concentrated on the policeman’s eyes, but it was hard because they didn’t blink.
“Heart attack,” the policeman said. “Must have happened first thing. A woman passing by saw the front door wide open and called us.”
“At least nobody killed him,” Jerzy said, looking at the wall above the cop’s head.
“NOT A ROBBER, anyway,” Detective Edrow Fluett said.
The kid-man said nothing, kept looking above Edrow’s head. His face was blank, but maybe that was shock.
“I found him dead on the stairs,” Edrow said.
“He didn’t like those stairs on account of his weight,” Jerzy said to the wall.
“That bothers me,” Edrow said.
“Me too. I kept telling him, ‘Reggie, you gotta pull off those pounds.’”
“I meant that he died on the stairs. The coat rack’s on the first floor.”
“I don’t get it,” Jerzy said.
Edrow stood up so the hulk would have to look at his eyes. “Why would Reggie go charging up, still with his coat on, if he didn’t like the stairs?”
“To use the bathroom,” Jerzy said.
“With his coat still on and buttoned up?”
“You got to go, you got to go,” Jerzy said.
“We looked around upstairs, found a loose floorboard,” Detective Edrow Fluett said.
JERZY FURROWED HIS brow like the people on TV when they didn’t understand something. “I don’t know about a floorboard.”
“I’m thinking it was a hiding place, except there was nothing in it.” The cop’s eyes were hot on Jerzy’s face, but they didn’t blink.
“I don’t know about a floorboard,” Jerzy said again, still with his brow furrowed. It was beginning to hurt, but he could hold it a while longer.