Page 51 of Safe Enough

“Then how?”

“In the parking garage. The guy leaves the cash in the trunk. Maybe in a supermarket bag. The parking attendant takes it out and puts it in the other guy’s car. Which is always there because that garage is convenient for the office building. The real handover is out of sight and out of mind. Everyone is distracted by the shiny briefcase.”

No one spoke.

Celia said, “Shorty says it’s a win-win for us. We can check the car real quick, as soon as the guy is out of it, and if after all there’s nothing in it, then we can always catch up to the guy in a couple of steps, and take him down anyway, like we’re supposed to. Shorty says we have nothing to lose.”

The phone rang again. The Port Authority cops, at the Jersey mouth of the tunnel. The guy had just come through the E-ZPass.

We got going. We waited in the parking garage.

Nothing to lose.

Shorty was right. The cash was in a yellow plastic grocery bag in the trunk of the guy’s car. As evidence, it was as good as anyone else got, and better than most folks. It contributed mightily to the bust of the year. In front of Celia we felt inhibited about claiming all the credit for ourselves, so mostly we told the truth, and as a result the story got out quickly, about a hero cop shot in the leg on Monday, who then lay in his hospital bed and fought through the agony and by Friday had engineered one of his new department’s most spectacular successes, all through brainpower alone. He got a medal for his leg, and another for the parking garage, and then he was in the newspaper, which is what ultimately made him a legend. The union was right about the photograph. It helped a lot.

DYING FOR A CIGARETTE

The producer’s notes came in. The screenwriter saw the email on his phone. The subject line said Notes. The phone was set to preview the first several words of the message, which were Thanks again for making time for lunch today. The screenwriter looked away. He didn’t open the email. Didn’t read more. Instead he backed up and sat down on the sofa, stiff and upright, straight like a poker, palms cupped on the cushions on either side of his knees.

His wife sat down in his lap. She was an hour back from the beauty parlor, still in her afternoon attire, which was a cream silk blouse tucked into a navy linen skirt, which when standing fell just above the knee, and when sitting, especially in a lap, crept a little higher. She was wearing nothing underneath either item. She wondered if he could tell. Probably not, she thought. Not yet. He was preoccupied. She lit a cigarette and placed it between his lips.

He said, “Thank you.”

She said, “Tell me about lunch.”

“It was him and three of his execs. I think at least one of them was financial.”

“How did it go?”

“Exactly like I was afraid it would.”

“Exactly?”

“More or less,” he said. “Possibly even worse.”

She said, “Did you make the speech?”

“What speech?”

“About dying.”

“It’s only a line. In the first paragraph. Not really a speech.”

“Did you say it?”

He nodded, tightly, still a little defiant.

He said, “I told him for years I had been a good little hack, and I had always done what he wanted, as fast as he needed it, overnight sometimes, even sometimes on the fly while the camera was rolling. I told him I had never let him down, and I had made him millions of dollars. So I told him overall I figured I had earned the right to be left alone on this one. Because finally I had the one great idea a guy might ever get in his life. I told him I would rather die than see it compromised.”

“That’s the speech I was talking about.”

“It’s only a word.”

“With a lot of preamble.”

“It’s a strong first paragraph, I agree.”

“How did he take it?”

---