After Death(5)

“Thank you. But that’s not my life’s purpose.” He pulls the empty duffel bag in front of him and begins to scoop packets of hundred-dollar bills into it.

Seeking guidance, Santana says, “Carter, what the hell?”

Harris’s smartphone is in an interior pocket of his sport coat, and Santana’s smartphone is in the left back pocket of his jeans, and Woodbine’s smartphone is in a pocket of his robe. Although none of those devices is set on vibrate, they begin to shake three times more violently than ever before. Simultaneously, an eerie keening issues from the phones at three times the volume they previously produced, a ululant shrillness suggesting the angry shriek of an ungodly monstrous insect. The batteries instantly overheat. The three men are so startled that they fall into momentary confusion. Santana cries out—“What, what, what?”—and Harris curses, and Woodbine steps out of his slippers as he staggers back from the island, and they claw at themselves to get rid of whatever threat has manifested in their clothing. In the first three seconds, as Rudy Santana plucks the phone from his back pocket, scorching his fingers—“Shit, shit, shit!”—Michael punches his face, breaking his nose, and Santana falls, and Michael stomps on the wrist of the gun hand, and Santana’s fingers spasm open, allowing Michael to stoop and take the pistol by the barrel. In the following three seconds, Michael pivots to Harris, who has put his .45 on the island and is frantically shrugging out of his coat, which has begun to smoke, and Michael clubs him with the butt of Santana’s pistol, just hard enough to put him out for a few minutes.

Carter Woodbine presses his back against the refrigerator, sucking the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, which blistered when he retrieved his hot smartphone from a pocket and threw it across the room. In the throes of his reaction, he has shrugged his left arm out of the sleeve, so the open robe hangs from his right shoulder. Standing barefoot in his disheveled jammies, he looks no more impressive than a large child who’s been caught on a forbidden post-midnight raid of the cookie jar.

The smoking phones have fallen silent.

After dropping Santana’s pistol in the duffel bag, holding Harris’s .45 in his right hand, Michael says, “Don’t test me.”

Removing his wet thumb and forefinger from his mouth, Woodbine says, “I’m not stupid.”

“Lacking evidence, I’ll take your word for it.”

On the floor, cradling his injured wrist in his good hand, blood bubbling in the deformed cartilage of his nostrils, Santana breathes through his mouth, spitting out curses between inhalations.

Michael scoops bundles of cash into the duffel bag with his left hand.

“How did you do that?” Woodbine asks.

“Do what?”

“You know what—with the phones.”

“Trade secret.”

“You think you’re cute.”

“My mother thought so, but I never could see it.”

“I’ll find you.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“You’re dead.”

“Been there, done that, didn’t care for it.” He has taken maybe 10 percent of the cash on the kitchen island. The bag is heavy. “I should set the rest on fire, knowing how you got it and what worse you’ll do with it.”

At the prospect of losing it all, Woodbine decides respectful silence is the best response.

As he zippers the bag shut, Michael says, “What is it with people like you?”

Repressed rage forces Woodbine to speak through clenched teeth. “What people would that be?”

“Those who had every advantage but went bad.”

“There isn’t bad or good.”

“Then what is there?”

“Opportunities. You take them or you don’t.”

“What name do they give that philosophy at Harvard?”

“Nihilism. It works. Looks like you live by it, too.”

“I only take from nihilists. Doesn’t make me one.”

“So you feel virtuous.”

“No. It just makes me a different kind of thief.”

Michael backs out of the kitchen with the .45 in his right hand and the duffel bag depending from his left.

In consideration of the Heckler & Koch, Carter Woodbine is slow to follow. He’ll probably try to use a landline to make a call. It won’t work.

Michael steps out of the apartment foyer into Woodbine’s public office and closes the door that is hidden by the cubist painting. It bears the signature of Picasso. He studies the work for a minute, twice as long as is fruitful.

He crosses the room and is about to step into the reception lounge when he hears Woodbine struggling with the Picasso door. The electronic lock is frozen and will remain that way until Michael decides to allow it to function, perhaps in an hour or two.

He follows the hidden stairs to the ground-floor lobby, takes the hallway to the rear of the building, and passes through a door into the upper level of the two-floor garage reserved for employees and clients, where he switches on the lights. The attorney’s white Bentley sedan is parked in the most convenient of the spaces. A glass-walled office is provided for a valet who is on duty during business hours for the sole purpose of bringing the vehicles of the law firm’s four partners to and from the front entrance, so that they do not need to bother themselves with negotiating the alleyway. This cubicle is protected by an electronic lock that is integrated with the building’s security system. Michael releases it without triggering an alarm, enters, locates the Bentley’s key where it hangs from a pegboard, and closes the door behind him.