What You Don't Know, page 10
* * *
We had a screwed up childhood. I mean, really screwed up. We had no idea what a good relationship looked like, what a normal family looked like. We never knew our father—we don’t even know if we had the same father or different fathers. My mother had a long string of men around, all losers. Anyway, Malcolm and my sister, they made it work.
* * *
Lieutenant Dimitri Cora: Everyone we talked to said overall, Malcolm and Blair had a good marriage. However, we couldn’t rule anything out, so we had to really peel back that onion, see if there wasn’t something their friends and family didn’t know about.
* * *
Lieutenant Sharon Donahue: As it turns out, we did find something.
12:45 p.m.
“You heard Tree. I’m in charge,” Dio said, jabbing the sharp point of his thumb against his chest. “That means you got to do what I say.”
“That don’t mean nothin’ to me.” Cookie rolled her eyes.
“Man, Cookie, come on—”
She stormed back into the closet, him following her, the two of them squabbling about who was in charge.
Blair closed her eyes and shook her head over the squabbling in the sandbox. Farrah scooted closer to her.
“There’s only the two of them,” she whispered. “We could try to make a run for it.”
Blair looked over at the closet and shook her head rapidly. “No. Uh-uh. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“What?” Farrah’s voice went up a few octaves. She looked over her shoulder toward the closet. “No, really, Mom, I bet we could do it.”
“No.”
Farrah blanched. “Why not?”
“Because Daddy’s got a plan and we should stick to it. Thirty thousand dol—seriously? These kids have never seen that much money.” She leaned back and shook her head again. “No. Let’s just wait for your father to get back then this will all be over.”
“Since when do you listen to anything Daddy says?” Farrah said, frustration creeping into her voice.
“Farrah, just … please. We’re going to let your father handle this, all right?”
A cackle erupted from the closet and Cookie re-emerged, holding a pair of Blair’s black Louboutins, an agitated Dio behind her.
“Damn, you got some big feet.” She laughed. “Size nine? Yo, I think that’s what men wear.”
“Cookie—”
“Damn, Dio, would you leave me alone? Dang. Always bothering somebody.” Cookie tossed the shoes over her shoulder. “I guess I won’t be taking no shoes with me.” She laughed again, another hearty guffaw at Blair’s expense as she retreated to the closet once more. Dio followed her inside again, until she screamed at him that he was in charge, so act like it by watching them. Seconds later, Dio huffed out of the closet and plopped himself into a chair, stewing as he watched them.
As much as Blair didn’t want it to, the insult about her feet stung. That had been one of Bibi’s favorite targets. Her big, gangly feet.
Big Ugly Blair. Bibi’s uninspiring, yet painful nickname for her eldest daughter.
Like all daughters, she’d grown up wanting to be like her mother. Specifically to be petite like Bibi, adding on that codicil to her seemingly futile prayers every night. Bridget had been the one to draw that lucky number seven. Blair’s awkward limbs and size nine feet made her feel like a marionette next to the two little dolls in the house, all bones and sharp angles. To hear her mother and sister tell it, they had their own problems. Narrow size six feet nessicitating difficulty in shoe shopping because regular shoes just billowed around their tiny little bones. Miniscule size two waists doomed to darling little dresses and cute little capri pants and snug little tops. Hell, they didn’t even have to wear a bra half the time. There was also the unspoken contrast in their hues, Bibi and Bridget’s light skin and light eyes casting a painful shadow over Blair’s dark tint. Blair supposed she must have looked like her phantom father, whoever he was. Maybe another reason her mother had hated her so much. Of course, Blair had a long, curled-over list of reasons why she despised her mother.
The group is what finally infused Blair with confidence about her looks. Finally made her feel beautiful for the first time in her life. Stylists and wardrobe mistresses buzzing around her with glamorous gowns and gorgeous shoes and sparkly eye shadow, transforming Cinderella for the Ball. After “Keep Me” had hit so big, a magazine profile of the group had referred to her as “the stunning Blair Johnson.” Stunning. Not gawky. Not ugly. Not ordinary. Not an “interesting face,” which everyone knew was code for ugly. Stunning. As in lovely. Beautiful. Pretty. That’s what the dictionary told her when she looked up the word. She didn’t tell anyone, but she’d clipped that article and carried it in her wallet for years. Not because of vanity. Because of the acceptance.
The doorbell sounded from downstairs. Blair and Farrah gasped as Dio bolted up in his chair and Cookie ran out of the closet. They all four looked at each other, fear in their eyes.
Dio flew across the room, grabbing Blair’s neck. “Who’s that? Who’s at the door?”
“I’m not psychic,” Blair wheezed. “I have no idea.”
The doorbell sounded again.
“What if it’s the cops?” Cookie asked, hopping from foot to foot. “What if they got to the bank and they called the police and Tree got caught?”
“Mom—”
“That—” Dio loosened his grip on Blair’s neck. “Did you set up my boy to get caught? Huh? You and Ol’ Boy set us up?”
The doorbell chimed once more.
“Mom—”
“I don’t know who it is, but if you don’t let me answer the door, they won’t go away. They might call the police.”
“Oh my God. Mom—”
“Jesus Christ, what?” Blair snapped at Farrah, who grimaced.
“I forgot. Zoey. I told her to stop by.”
“Zoey? Oh God.” Blair pursed her lips and shook her head.
“Who?” Dio asked.
“One of my girlfriends, she—”
“Get up.” Dio wrenched Blair out of the chair. She yelped as he ripped the tape from around her hands. “All right. You go down there. You go down there and get rid of whoever that is.”
Farrah scooted closer to him. “It’s my friend, I should be the one to go down there.”
“I—wait, what would Tree do? What would he want me to do?” Dio muttered as his head swiveled between Farrah and Blair, panic slashing his face.
“Please. Let me talk to her. I can get her to go away faster and better than my mom can,” Farrah said.
“No, no, no. I don’t trust you. You might try to do something,” Dio said. “No. Me and Ol’ Girl going down there together.”
“Mom—”
“It’s all right, Farrah.”
“And you say anything, you do anything, I will blow your fucking head off.” Dio looked at Cookie. “Watch her.”
Dio hustled Blair down the stairs and across the living room toward the front door, his fingers digging into her arm. He pulled out his gun and held it to her lower back.
“You get rid of whoever that is.”
She exhaled before she opened the door.
Zoey smiled, the sun glinting off the copper ends of her shoulder-length locs.
“Mrs. Gilbert, hi, how are you?”
“What do you want, Zoey?”
She flinched and her chin trembled. “Oh. Um … is Farrah here?”
Blair licked her lips, her eyes flicking to her left where Dio stood behind the door, out of Zoey’s sight, the point of his gun digging into her spine.
“Farrah’s at school. In Indiana.”
“Um, okay, yeah, but we were texting last night that she’d be home and she asked me to come over around twelve-thirty. I can’t make it tonight and I asked her to take my gift to the party.” Zoey held up the iridescent light pink shopping bag from Rock N Rags to illustrate her point. “Phoebe’s birthday party. Tonight?”
Blair bit her top lip. “Right. Yeah, she did.” She snatched the bag from Zoey, who jumped back startled. “I’ll give it to her.”
“Okay, but um … She is home, right? Didn’t she drive in last night?”
Next to her, the agitation in Dio’s breath inflated with each painful inhale and exhale. This was about thirty seconds from becoming a straight-up bloodbath. She had to get rid of her.
“Zoey, you’ve caught me on a bad day. There’s just so much going on here today.” She held up the shopping bag. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“Is Farrah’s phone broken?”
Blair swallowed, the barrel of the gun poking her side. “What?”
“Her phone. I—well first I texted her and she wasn’t answering so I tried calling her a few times, you know, before I came over and it keeps going to voicemail—”
“It’s a really bad time, Zoey,” Blair said, pushing the door to close it. “I’m not kidding. I really can’t talk to you right now, so you … you’ve got to go.”
“Oh, you must have some work going on today, because—” Zoey shook her head. “Anyway, okay, sorry, just let Farrah know—Well, I guess just tell her to text me, let me know if she still wants to go to Walker Brothers for Dutch Babies tomorrow before she drives back to school.”
Blair slammed the door shut, the shopping bag slipping out of her trembling fingers and thudding to the floor. Maybe Zoey would tell someone, her mother, someone, that something weird was going on at the Gilbert house. Alert the authorities. Something.
“Good job,” Dio said, still pushing the point of the gun into her spine. “Now get back upstairs.”
She glanced back at the door, her slender hopes now pinned on a nineteen-year-old.
12:55 p.m.
“So you got our cover story?” Tree asked. He kept licking his lips and sniffing. Nerves. Drugs? Or maybe it was the thrill of getting close to the smell of thirty thousand dollars in cash. Of feeling the heft of it in his hands.
“Yeah, Tree, I got it,” Malcolm muttered.
“You make one move. You do one thing, Im’a call my partner and my girl back at the house and tell them to blow Wifey and Ol’ Girl’s fucking brains out. You hear me?”
“Tree, I already told you, I don’t want any trouble,” Malcolm said, his hand resting on the car door. Tree nodded at him that it was okay to exit. Malcolm took a deep breath and got out, his eyes scanning the parking lot and street beyond for a police car, some sort of security.
There was none.
Resigned, he headed toward the heavy glass door of the bank and pulled on it.
Locked.
He yanked on the brass handle again, his stomach crashing to the bottom of his shoes. There were no lights on inside, no movement at all. His eyes flicked down to the transparent sticker bearing the bank’s hours, his heart sinking even further.
Twelve thirty. Twelve fucking thirty.
“What’s wrong?” Tree sniffed, his own eyes darting around them. “What’s the problem?”
Malcolm sighed and shook his head a little. “Bank’s closed.”
“Closed? What you mean, closed?” Tree reached into his pocket for his phone, illuminating the screen. “You said they was open until one. It’s not one.”
“They are. They’re supposed to—” Malcolm dragged his hand over his head, a forgotten, throwaway conversation with his assistant that they’d be closing one hour earlier starting in a few weeks, jamming into his brain. Why the hell hadn’t Blair said something to him just now? She always kept on top of stuff like this. Appointments, hours, locations, names, dates, places. She knew his memory was full of holes, even on a good day.
Maybe she’d forgotten, too. The terror was scrambling all of their brains.
“Okay, look, I forgot. They changed their hours. I thought they closed at one. They’ve always closed at one—”
Tree kicked the trashcan, the sole of his shoe thundering against the metal slats. He hissed, “fuckfuckfuckfuck,” before kicking the trashcan again. He paced and rubbed his palms across the top of his matted dreads, muttering.
“Tree. Tree!”
He ignored Malcolm, continuing to grouse to himself as he marched across the tiny patch of sidewalk, his agitation rolling off him in waves. Like a player stomping around on the field after the ref threw a flag on him.
“Look—”
He rushed back over to Malcolm, his index finger pointing down. “You promised me money, stacks of it, you said.”
“And you’ll get it.”
“You playin’ me? Huh? Huh?”
“Tree, do you—do you think I would have wasted your time, my time, coming all the way over here if I thought the bank would be closed? Huh? You think I would do that?”
“You trying to trick me. I know you are. Think you damn smarter than me—”
“Why would I try to play you? What am I gonna get out of that? And come on, man, you and I both know you’re too smart for me to try and pull anything over on you.”
Tree stopped short and drew up his shoulders. “That’s right,” he said, smugness threading his words. “And don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t. I couldn’t. I could tell the minute you got to my house that you were the brains.”
Play him.
A slow smile curled around Tree’s lips, Malcolm’s words seeming to have the intended effect. “Man, those other two couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag. I got to think of everything. Can’t trust them to do nothing.”
Malcolm nodded. He’s falling for it. “I mean that’s obvious. Real obvious. They don’t seem too bright to me.”
“Man, you ain’t never lying about that.”
“All right. Like I said, I know I’m dealing with a really smart man here. Someone I can talk to. Someone I can do some business with. And because of that, I’m being straight up with you. It was an honest mistake on my part, man. For real. Believe that.”
Tree folded his arms across his chest. “So what you gonna do about it?”
“All right, I already told you, you can have whatever you want at the house. Whatever car, jewelry—”
“Man, I want cold hard cash sitting in my hands.”
“Listen … think about it this way. I give you a whole fistful of gold jewelry and you take it to the pawn shop and see at the pawn shop, they can melt that down, and that’s how you get the cash. Because they do it by weight, right? And the price of gold is hot right now. Like real high. You could clean up, bruh. Clean. Up.”
Tree’s face seemed to quiver and droop as he thought of the possibilities. He sniffed. “Go on.”
“Tree, you need to look at the big picture. You saw how happy your girl Cookie was, right? When she was showing you all that jewelry? She was like a kid in a candy store, right?”
“Yeah,” Tree mumbled in acknowledgment.
“You know women. They love ice. Love it. Man, you let her keep all that hardware, she’ll love you forever. Come on, now. You know I’m right.”
Tree scoffed. “Maybe.”
“All right, she got a birthday or something coming up?”
“She said something about next month.”
Malcolm held up his palms in victory. “All right then. We just cut out the middle man. Direct to the consumer. Happy early birthday, Cookie. You let her take whatever ice, whatever stones she wants. You clean up on the gold, split it with just you and your man, Dio, and boom!, everybody’s happy. See? You see how this works? Plus the cars, plus the cash. Man, you gonna come out of this on high. I’m telling you.”
Tree sighed. “All right, fine. I’ll take the damn jewelry.”
“Electronics. TVs, computers, iPad, whatever. And look. We’re already at the bank, right? There’s a drive through ATM right over there and I can withdraw five thousand from it right now.”
“You say you can give me five thousand right now?”
Malcolm pivoted toward the ATM, ready to shove his card into the blinking green slot, when another, more urgent message flashed across the screen.
* * *
THIS ATM IS UNABLE TO DISPENSE CASH AT THIS TIME. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
* * *
He banged the side of the machine, his heart racing, his head moments from exploding.
“What’s the problem, Mally Mal?” Tree asked from behind him.
He pursed his lips, frustration and oddly, fear, stopping him from turning around to face the boy. “ATM’s out of service.”
“You serious?”
“We can go to another ATM and take out some money and—Tree, listen to me—when we get back to the house, I’ll write you a check, fifty thousand. You take it to any bank you want. They can call me to verify it.”
Tree stopped short, opening his mouth to say something before turning his head slightly toward the bank. He pointed at the glass, tapping on the neat white lettering denoting the bank’s hours.
“Says here they open at nine on Monday. I think you and me need to be here first thing Monday, right when they open the doors. Fifty thousand. Cash. No checks. No money orders. Cash. You feel me?”
Malcolm blinked, not sure he’d heard right. Had this punk just played him? Had this punk just announced that he and his crew would be making themselves at home at his house for the next day and a half while they waited for the bank to open?
He had. That son of a bitch had.
It was a rare thing for someone to outsmart Malcolm Gilbert. A very rare thing. He could count on one hand the number of times it had happened in his life. Less than one hand.
“I just offered to go to another ATM to take out some money. What, that’s not good enough for you?”
Tree shuffled over to him. “You not in charge, Mally Mal. What I say, is how we do it. And I say, we gonna be back here first thing on Monday morning.”
They stared each other down, both breathing heavily, both unable to take their eyes off the other. He had to think about Blair and Farrah. He had to play it cool until he could come up with something else.
