A Broken Vessel
We set the meet for Thursday afternoon, at Ricardo’s on West Adams. A dive bar that sat empty most of the day, before the office crowd tumbled in on their way home from The Loop.
Mikey and Hoff got there early, grabbing a table in the corner.
I joined them after I’d dropped my daughter Tiffany with the childminder.
Then we drank in silence and waited for Julius Meyer to show.
I ain’t the tallest guy. Even in high school I was the shortest in my class.
Mikey’s the one with the physical presence, or Hoff, with his Germanic broad shoulders.
But when the Meyer kid arrived, he made me feel like a giant.
He might have been five foot if he stood on tiptoes, and skinny too, like someone had twisted him out of pipe cleaners.
His hollow cheeks made him look like a junkie, or one of those hunger strikers you see on the news.
“Which one of you is Brandon McGinnis?”
His voice was surprisingly deep for someone who looked like he weighed less than a sack of potatoes, and it took me a moment to reply. Julius just stood there, staring, hands pushed into his pockets.
“That would be me,” I said finally, half standing and holding out my hand for him to shake. “Stan speaks well of you. Says you might have something for us?”
His hand was limp in mine, a bundle of sweaty sticks, and when he dragged over a chair he slumped in it like someone just cut his strings.
If he’d been my kid, I’d have told him to pull himself together, have a little respect for himself—and his elders.
Made me wonder what kind of home he came from.
I won’t say I pitied him, but I guessed it wasn’t the Waltons back at the ranch.
“Yeah,” he goes, sniffing like his sinuses are bothering him, “but I want in. I need a cut; I’m not giving this away.”
“Well, we don’t work for anyone. But we’ll split you in, if the tip-off’s good.” I looked at Mikey and Hoff. Both nodded. “Why don’t you tell us what we’re talking about, and we’ll see.”
He looked like he was about to walk, but then something in him decided and he sat forward in his seat.
“There’s a farm, out past La Moille. Only one guy living there, and he’s older than you. He’s sitting on ten million, cash. I’m going to take it from him.”
* * *
The way Julius told it, the job should have been one of the easiest we’d pulled—and one of the richest, too.
The man was Milo Southey, only son of Charles and Lorraine Southey.
They’d run one of the biggest soybean farms in the Midwest for almost three decades, had a good reputation for hiring seasonal workers for the harvest. Some rag had written an article on them ten years ago, back in the late eighties, holding them up as a fine example of how mom-and-pop farms were the backbone of the Midwest. They were simple folk but well-liked around town.
Last year the reaper came for both of them.
Lorraine fell sick with lung cancer and was dead within four months.
Charles hung on for almost half a year, then the loneliness became too much.
He was found with a suicide note still clutched in one hand, and the shotgun in the other.
The post-mortem revealed he’d also swallowed every pill he could lay his hands on, just in case.
In the space of six months, Milo had lost both his parents and become the sole owner of the Southey farm.
As for Julius, he’d worked on the farm back in November, bringing in what remained of the soybean harvest. Milo’s parents were barely cold in their graves, but it was already clear he had no idea what he was doing.
Almost half the plants were lost to rot, while the others were poorly fed and unproductive.
The harvest was barely a quarter what it should have been.
Rumors were already circulating that the farm would close inside six months.
Milo Southey still paid them, though—in cash, a fistful of used notes, non-sequential and spotted with mold.
Which was how Julius got to see where the old folks had kept their stash, and just how big it had grown during the years of plenty.
There was a false wall in the main bedroom, disguised as a seam in the wallpaper.
Behind it sat a walk-in closet stacked to the ceiling with money.
Julius knew where the door was, and how to open it.
All that stood between it and us was Milo Southey, a man who was barely able to handle his own affairs, never mind guard a personal fortune that would purchase a large yacht, with change.
We took a vote on it, Mikey, Hoff and me.
Sounded too good to be true, but Lula’s uncle Stan had vouched for the kid—and we all needed the cash. The decision was unanimous.
* * *
Julius said Southey had been getting twitchy, so the clock was already ticking.
Five nights later we bundled into Hoff’s GMC Savanna and headed west on Ogden.
We’d used it for the First Midwest job, so under normal circumstances I’d have left it in the garage for the rest of the year.
It was the only van big enough at short notice, though, at least without attracting attention or leaving a paper trail. It’d have to do.
We were still crawling out of winter, and as we passed from the city into the country the fields looked barely thawed-out, desolate and brown. Hoff was playing his Maroon 5 shit on the stereo, until Mikey turned it down so he could talk.
“So when we get there, then what? He’ll be in bed, right? So who’s taking care of him while the rest of us grab the cash?”
Tiffany’s mom used to be like this. She’d fill any silence with whatever came into her head, and Mikey was the same.
I found I struggled to remember her now—it was two years since she’d split, over a year since we’d had any contact—but I still recalled her voice on those long drives to see her folks in Tampa.
Personally, I’ve always felt silence is my friend.
We’d already been over the details of the job fifteen times, but that didn’t stop Mikey asking questions as the blackness rolled by outside.
Were we counting the money on site, or taking it with us?
What was the plan if the bags we’d brought weren’t enough to hold it all?
What were we doing with Milo Southey when we’d finished?
Eventually Hoff’d had enough.
“Mikey, man,” he goes, his hands still fixed firmly on the wheel, “I love you like a brother, but it’s time you shut up now.”
“Why?” Mikey was so wired he almost bounced in his seat. “We need to know this, right? Am I right?”
“Two reasons,” Hoff replied. “First, if you don’t, I swear to God, I’m going to put your head through that windshield.”
“And second?”
“Second, we’re here.”
* * *
The farmhouse sat a half mile back from the main road, far enough that the lights didn’t reach.
Hoff rolled us down to it nice and slow, the twin beams cut, the van’s suspension the only sound as it creaked and pinged along the rutted track.
We couldn’t see much of the fields, the sky overcast and the moon hiding behind clouds, but the house loomed blacker as we got close.
About five hundred yards short, I tapped Hoff on the shoulder and whispered, “Here.”
I couldn’t speak for Julius, but the rest of us had been breaking and entering since we were in junior high.
All three of us were head to toe in black, Mikey with his woolen balaclava pulled up to show his face.
Me and Hoff had rags to tie around our mouths.
The kid wore a navy-blue hoodie and dark jeans, which I figured would do.
On a night this black you wouldn’t stand out in a high-vis vest.
We hoped there wouldn’t be much need to get physical.
That was the plan, anyways. There were four of us and only one Milo Southey, caught napping and unawares.
Me and Hoff were packing heat, but I sincerely hoped we wouldn’t have to use them.
We weren’t exactly white-collar criminals, but I was in it for the money, not working on my daddy issues. Our best jobs had always been clean.
The kid wasn’t armed, as far as I knew. He’d been given instructions to hang back, let us do any dirty work. So far, he’d stuck to them.
The closer we got to the house, the worse it looked.
From a distance it impressed us with its size, the great looming bulk of it soaring like a castle in the blackness.
The closer we got, the more we saw the cracks.
Shutters hung from broken hinges, the boards stained with dark patches that I thought were mold.
A damp, musty smell hung in the air, like wood mulch or turned soil.
I wondered if the soybean plants had been left to rot in the fields.
I’d have said the youngest Southey had let it fall into ruin since his parents died, but nothing deteriorated that quickly, not even with the winter we’d had. This was years of decline and neglect.
“Hey. Hey, kid!” Hoff whispered. He’d stopped to point at a bloom of black rot up one wall. “I thought you said this guy had millions? You sure we’re in the right place?”
Julius simply nodded, and pointed to a screen door round the side.
The mosquito netting was torn in three places, like something had swiped at it with a claw.
The door beyond was locked but the frame was so rotten that Hoff had no trouble working the crowbar in.
One heave and the lock split through the soft wood.
The damage came with a muted crack , and we waited a few seconds, in case anyone was awake to hear.
There was only silence, though. No lights came on.
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought it was empty.
Eventually the kid nudged us all awake.
“It’s down the corridor from here, left up the stairs. Master bed’s second on your right at the top. It’ll be the only door that’s closed.”