Killing Floor

We listened to each other. We accepted what was being said. But I still thought it was my fault. Wasn’t a hundred percent sure she didn’t think so, too. Despite what she was saying. We didn’t fall out about it. But it was the first faint sign of a problem between us.

We showered together in her tiny stall. Stayed in there the best part of an hour. We were soaping off the stink of the money and the sweat and the fire. And we were still talking. I was telling her about Friday night. The ambush in the storm up at Hubble’s place. I told her all about it. I told her about the bags with the knives and the hammer and the nails. I told her what I’d done to the five of them. I thought she’d be happy about it.

And that was the second problem. Not a big deal as we stood there with the hot water beating down on us. But I heard something in her voice. Just a tiny tremor. Not shock or disapproval. Just a hint of a question. That maybe I had gone too far. I could hear it in her voice.

I felt somehow I’d done it all for her and Joe. I hadn’t done it because I had wanted to do it. It was Joe’s business and it was her town and these were her people. I’d done it because I’d seen her trying to melt into her kitchen wall, crying like her heart was breaking. I’d done it for Joe and Molly. At the same time as feeling I needed no justification at all, I had been justifying it to myself like that.

It didn’t feel like a problem at the time. The shower loosened us up. Steamed some glow back into us. We went to bed. Left the drapes open. It was a glorious day. The sun was up in a bright blue sky and the air looked fresh and clean. It looked like it should look. Like a new day.

We made love with great tenderness, great energy, great joy. If somebody had told me then that I’d be back on the road the next morning, I’d have thought they were crazy. I told myself there were no problems. I was imagining them. And if there were problems, there were good reasons for them. Maybe the aftereffects of the stress and the adrenaline. Maybe the deep fatigue. Maybe because Roscoe had been a hostage. Maybe she was reacting like a lot of hostages do. They feel some kind of a faint jealousy against anybody who hadn’t been a hostage with them. Some kind of a faint resentment. Maybe that was feeding the guilt I was carrying for letting her get captured in the first place. Maybe a lot of things. I fell asleep certain we’d wake up happy and I’d stay there forever.

WE DID WAKE UP HAPPY. WE SLEPT THROUGH UNTIL LATE afternoon. Then we spent a gorgeous couple of hours with the afternoon sun streaming in the window, dozing and stretching, kissing and laughing. We made love again. We were fueled up with the joy of being safe and alive and alone together. It was the best lovemaking we ever had. It was also the last. But we didn’t know that at the time.

Roscoe took the Bentley up to Eno’s for some food. She was gone an hour and came back with news. She’d seen Finlay. She was talking about what was going to happen next. That was the big problem. It made the other tiny problems look like nothing at all.

“You should see the station house,” she said. “Nothing left more than a foot high.”

She put the food on a tray and we ate it sitting on the bed. Fried chicken.

“All four warehouses burned down,” she said. “There was debris exploding all over the highway. The state police got involved. They had to get fire trucks all the way from Atlanta and Macon.”

“State police are involved?” I said.

She laughed.

“Everybody’s involved,” she said. “It sort of snowballed. The Atlanta fire chief called in the bomb squad because of the explosions, because he didn’t know for sure what they were. The bomb squad can’t go anywhere without notifying the FBI, in case it’s terrorism, so the Bureau is interested. Then the National Guard got involved this morning.”

“The National Guard?” I said. “Why?”

“This is the best part,” she said. “Finlay says when the roof blew off the warehouse last night, the sudden updraft of air blew the money all over the place. Remember those burning pieces that kept landing on us? There are millions of dollar bills all over the place. Miles around. The wind blew them everywhere, in the fields, all over the highway. Most of them are partially burned, of course, but some of them aren’t. Soon as the sun came up, thousands of people came out of nowhere, swarming around all over the place, picking all the money up. So the National Guard was ordered in to disperse the crowds.”

I ate some food. Thought about it.

“Governor calls in the Guard, right?” I asked her.

She nodded. Mouth full of chicken wing.

“The governor’s involved,” she said. “He’s in town right now. And Finlay called the Treasury Department, because of Joe. They’re sending a team down here. I told you, it sort of snowballed.”

“What the hell else?” I said.

“Big problems here, of course,” she said. “Rumors are flying around. Everybody seems to know the Foundation is finished. Finlay says half of them are pretending they never knew what was going on, and the other half are mad as hell their thousand dollars a week is going to stop. You should have seen old Eno, when I picked up the food. Looked like he’s furious.”

“Finlay worried?” I said.

“He’s OK,” she said. “Busy, of course. We’re down to a four-person police department. Finlay, me, Stevenson and the desk man. Finlay says that’s half of what we need, because of the crisis, but twice as many as we can afford, because the Foundation subsidy is going to stop. But anyway, there’s nothing anybody can do about hiring and firing without the mayor’s approval, and we haven’t got a mayor anymore, have we?”

I sat there on the bed, eating. The problems started bearing down on me. I hadn’t really seen them clearly before. But I was seeing them now. A huge question was forming in my mind. It was a question for Roscoe. I wanted to ask it straightaway and get her honest, spontaneous response. I didn’t want to give her any time to think about her answer.

“Roscoe?” I said.

She looked up at me. Waited.

“What are you going to do?” I asked her.

She looked at me like it was an odd question.

“Work my butt off, I guess,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot to do. We’re going to have to rebuild this whole town. Maybe we can make something better out of it, create something worthwhile. And I can play a big part in it. I’ll move up the totem pole a couple of notches. I’m really excited. I’m looking forward to it. This is my town and I’m going to be really involved in it. Maybe I’ll get on the town board. Maybe I’ll even run for mayor. That would be a hell of a thing, wouldn’t it? After all these years, a Roscoe for mayor, instead of a Teale?”

I looked at her. It was a great answer, but it was the wrong answer. Wrong for me. I didn’t want to try to change her mind. I didn’t want to put any kind of pressure on her at all. That’s why I had asked her straight out, before I told her what I was going to have to do. I had wanted her honest, natural response. And I had got it. It was right for her. This was her town. If anybody could fix it, she could. If anybody should stick around, working her butt off, she should.

But it was the wrong answer for me. Because I knew by then I had to go. I knew by then that I had to get out fast. The problem was what was going to happen next. The whole thing had gotten out of hand. Before, it had all been about Joe. It had been private. Now it was public. It was like those half-burnt dollar bills. It was scattered all over the damn place.

Roscoe had mentioned the governor, the Treasury Department, the National Guard, the state police, the FBI, Atlanta fire investigators. A half-dozen competent agencies, all looking at what had gone on in Margrave. And they’d be looking hard. They’d be calling Kliner the counterfeiter of the century. They’d find out the mayor had disappeared. They’d find out that four police officers had been involved. The FBI would be looking for Picard. Interpol would get involved because of the Venezuela co