Thirty-Six
Alicia had said, “Five hundred thousand dollars.”
What the hell, right? If she had said a hundred thousand, and Catherine had said yes right away, then she’d kick herself for
not asking for more.
“That’s ridiculous,” Catherine said, although she didn’t sound as taken aback as Alicia expected. “I can pull some cash together
even though it’s Saturday, but not that much. I could give you a down payment. And then, when the banks open on Monday, we
could talk again.”
How much cash did someone like Catherine keep lying around the house? Alicia wondered. She said, “If you can pull together
a hundred thousand today, we can make this work.”
There was a long pause at the other end, followed by, “Okay.”
Whoa, Alicia thought. She had that much money in the house? And how could the Chartwells let Holden live in that shithole with
that kind of cash at hand? What was wrong with these people?
But what she said was, “Great.”
Now she had to figure out how to do the handoff. Definitely not in person. Couldn’t let Catherine find out who she was. She’d
have her drop the money someplace Alicia could retrieve it. Like in the movies when the ransom money is left in a trash can
and the kidnappers pick it up later. But this time, the criminal roles were reversed. Catherine was the bad guy. And her crime
was worse than kidnapping. She wasn’t going to be calling the police. No one would be staking out the drop-off point.
And hey, who said this had to be the last payment? Soak the bitch for even more money before making her pay the ultimate price.
“I’ll call back with the details,” Alicia said, ending the call.
Think, think, think.
Corky had returned. “He’s not even here today,” he said.
“What?”
“Asshole Wilkins. He’s off. You said he was looking for me.”
“Yeah,” Alicia said. “But I didn’t say he was looking for you today. I just said he’d been looking for you.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t know.”
Corky, annoyed, sat back down, got out his phone, and resumed his video game. Alicia glanced at the clock on the wall. Her
break would be over in two minutes.
Her regular cell phone rang. She took it from her pocket, glanced at the screen.
HOLDEN.
She didn’t have time to talk to him now.
She went back out into the store, returned to her station, removed the “Sorry Closed Use Next Checkout” sign. She turned,
looked out the window and across the street, where a small hardware store and a laundromat flanked an alleyway. Halfway down
it sat a dumpster, up against the wall. Alicia knew trash pickup was not until Monday, so anything left in that bin wasn’t
at risk of disappearing right away. If she told Catherine to leave it there at quarter to seven, it wouldn’t sit there long.
An elderly man was already emptying his cart onto the belt. Alicia gave him a smile and said, “Just one second.” She turned
away, got out her burner—she almost used her regular phone by mistake—and called Catherine.
“You know the Home Hardware and the Coin-Op Laundry, across from the FreshCo, on Cornwall?”
“I . . . uh, yes, I think so.”
“There’s an alley between them, a dumpster in there. Put it there at quarter to seven. And not in a garbage bag! Something
that stands out.”
Catherine recalled a recent trip to a high-end Toronto mall. She’d bought a purse.
“It’ll be in a Longchamp bag,” Catherine said.
Alicia couldn’t believe Catherine would leave a designer purse in a dumpster. “You’re throwing out a purse?” Alicia couldn’t
afford a Longchamp, but she knew the brand.
“The bag the purse came in,” Catherine clarified.
“Oh, right.”
“And—”
Alicia ended the call. The woman had been told all she needed to know. The dumpster, quarter to seven.
Now Alicia just had to get to the end of her shift. How was she supposed to concentrate? Good thing you didn’t need an engineering
degree to wave items over a barcode reader. A few hours from now she could quit this shit job. Once she had that money in
her hands, her first call Monday morning would be to Mr. Wilkins. Take this job and shove it. No, she wouldn’t even call him.
She just wouldn’t show up.
She heard a text arrive on her other phone. Holden, again.
Really need to talk to you.
“There was no price on the shelf for this one,” the elderly man said, holding up a can of beef stew for her to examine.
Alicia looked up from her phone. “Huh?”
“There’s no price.”
“I’ll scan it.”
“If it costs too much I don’t want it.”
“Hang on.”
Beep!
“Four fifty.”
The man pondered this information, grimaced. “I’ll take it.”
She sent it on down the belt to be bagged in a moment, picked up her phone again, and typed:
At work. Later.
She scanned the rest of the man’s items, stuffed them into the two reusable bags he’d brought, and even though it was still
a few hours before Catherine would make the drop-off, she kept stealing glances of the dumpster, making sure it was still
there.
“It’s all set,” Catherine told Crane over the phone.
“You do what I said?”
He’d instructed her to find a small box, fill it with paper, heavy enough to feel like cash. Old magazines, a catalog. Once
filled, wrap the box in plain paper and secure it with several rounds of duct tape.
“Don’t want her opening it on-site,” he said. “Ideally, she takes it home with her, opens it there.”
“I did all that.”
She told him where she had been told to leave the bag, a dumpster in an alley.
“I can find it,” he said.
“I heard beeps.”
“What?”
“The last time she called me, I could hear beeps. Like when you go to the grocery store and they scan your items. Lots of
beeps.”
Crane thought about that. “There’s a grocery store across the street?”
“Yes.”
“You sound on edge. Can you do this?”
“Yes. It’s the least of my worries. Call me after you’ve talked to her?”
Her false naivete made him smile. Acting like she didn’t know what was going to happen. Like she was worried someone was listening
in, that this would be proof she had no idea what was going to happen. Deniability.
“Of course,” he said. “We’ll have a little chat.”
Alicia missed it when it happened.
When it got to be fifteen minutes to seven, she was dealing with a woman whose credit card was declined.
All the checkouts were busy and there were four people with loaded baskets behind this woman.
When the first card failed, she tried a second, and when that one was declined as well, she opened up her wallet for cash and found she only had eight dollars.
There was more than fifty bucks’ worth of groceries on the register.
“I don’t know why this is happening,” she said. “Can we try this one again?”
Alicia indulged her, but she could see how this was going to go. This woman would ask if she could just take the groceries
now, run to an ATM, and come right back with the cash.
Fat chance, Sally.
Although, for the briefest of moments, Alicia considered treating her. She was coming into a small fortune. Why not share
the wealth?
And then, just as quickly, she came to her senses.
The woman abandoned her groceries at the bagging end and stormed out. Corky was called to gather up the items and reshelve
them. The people still in line were rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. Alicia finally snuck a peek across the street,
but there was nobody lifting the dumpster lid, no one in the alley at all.
Fingers crossed, Catherine kept her promise.
When it was seven, Alicia took one last look around the store, thinking she would never have to come here again. She cashed
out, hit the break room—Holden texted her again and she ignored it—and took off her grocery store smock, grabbed her purse,
and was out of there.
Don’t be too obvious, she thought. Don’t come tearing out of the store like it’s on fire, run across the street so quickly she’d have to dodge
traffic. No, she came out the front door slowly, hung a right, walked down to the corner, waited for the light to change and
crossed the street, then backtracked, pausing to look in the window of a dress shop along the way, then when she reached the
alley slipped in when she was confident no one was looking her way.
She went straight to the dumpster, lifted the lid.
Phew. The stench. Maybe she should have picked a different spot. But there was the paper Longchamp bag sitting atop a pile of green garbage bags, within easy reach, thank god. The last thing Alicia wanted was to jump in there.
She slipped her fingers into the handle of the bag, lifted it out, let the lid slam shut. It had a nice heft to it, this bag.
She’d wondered what that much money would feel like. She looked inside, saw a box, about the size printer paper would come
in, mummified in duct tape. She’d hoped to get a glimpse of the cash right away, but she’d have to wait until she got home.
Annoying, but then again, Catherine was smart to have the cash wrapped up tight.
Alicia tucked the box under her arm, tossed the bag it had come in, and headed for home. Yet another text dinged on her phone,
probably Holden. Whatever his current crisis was, it could wait.
Her apartment was in a low-rise not far from her work. A fifteen-minute walk most days, except in winter when the sidewalks
were icy or hadn’t been cleared of snow. She used her key to get into the lobby, went to the elevator, and took it up to the
fourth floor.
Once in her small apartment, Alicia put the box on the kitchen table, brought out a pair of scissors and a sharp knife from
a drawer, and started hacking her way into it, cutting through tape that ran along the top flaps.
Her heart hammering away with expectation, she opened the box.
It was filled to the top with old copies of National Geographic, Time, The New Yorker, and car magazines. She started lifting them out of the box, tossing them onto the table, hoping that maybe beneath them
she might find some actual cash.
“That cunt!” she said out loud. “That fucking cunt!”
Enraged, she grabbed one magazine and flung it across the room, where it hit the wall and landed on the couch.
She got out her phone, the one she used exclusively to make her calls to Catherine, but just as she was about to enter the
number, there was a loud knock at her door.