She touches his arm. “Excuse me,” she says. “Did you just buy the contents of this unit? At the auction?”
He smiles at her, opens wide his big blue eyes. Drops his gaze to her mouth, flicks it up again. She’s about his height. Strong enough to have lugged the groom into the unit by herself, even if he wasn’t yet dried out. “That’s me,” he says. “I plead guilty.”
“But you haven’t unlocked it yet?”
Here’s the moment of decision. He could hand her the key, say, I’ve seen the mess you made, clean it up yourself. He could say, Yes I have, and I’m calling the cops. He could say, I took a quick look, it seems to be a wedding. Yours?
“No,” he says. “Not yet. I bought a couple of other units too. I was just about to open up this one.”
“Whatever you paid, I’ll double it,” she says. “I didn’t want it sold, but there was a mistake, the cheque got lost in the mail, and I was away on business, I didn’t get the notification soon enough, and then I took the first plane I could, but then I was stuck in Chicago for six hours because of the storm. It was so snowed in! And then the traffic from the airport, it was terrible!” She ends with a nervous giggle. She must have rehearsed this: it comes out of her in one long phrase, like ticker tape.
“I heard about the storm,” he says. “In Chicago. That’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear you were delayed.” He doesn’t respond to her financial offer. It hangs in the air between them, like their two breaths.
“That storm’s heading here next,” she says. “It’s a serious blizzard. They always travel east. If you don’t want to get stuck here, you should hit the road. I’ll speed this up for us – I’ll pay cash.”
“Thanks,” he says. “I’m considering. What’s in there, anyway? It must be something valuable, to be so important to you.” He’s curious to see what she’ll say.
“Just family things,” she says. “Things I inherited. You know, crystal, china, from my grandmother. A few pieces of costume jewellery. Sentimental value. You couldn’t sell them for much.”
“Family things?” he says. “Any furniture?”
“Only a little furniture,” she says. “Not good quality. Old furniture. Not anything anyone would want.”
“But that’s what I deal in,” he says. “Old furniture. I run an antiques store. Often people don’t know the value of what they have. Before accepting your offer, I’d like to take a look.” He glances down at her mouth again.
“I’ll triple it,” she says. Now she’s shivering. “It’s too cold for you to be going through that unit right now! Why don’t we get out of here before the storm hits? We could have a drink, and, I don’t know, dinner or something? We can talk it over.” She smiles at him, an insinuating smile. A strand of her hair has come down, it’s blowing across her mouth; she tucks it in behind her ear, slowly, then drops her eyes, gazing down in the direction of his belt. She’s upping the ante.
“Okay,” he says. “Sounds good. You can tell me more about the furniture. But suppose I accept your offer, that unit has to be cleared in twenty-four hours. Or else they’ll come in and do it themselves, and they’ll keep my cleaning deposit.”
“Oh, I’ll make sure it’s cleared,” she says. She slips her hand through his arm. “But I’ll need the key.”
“No hurry,” says Sam. “We haven’t set the price.”
She looks at him, no longer smiling. She knows he knows.
He should quit fooling around. He should take the money and run. But he’s having too much fun. A real murderess, coming on to him! It’s edgy, it’s rash, it’s erotic. He hasn’t felt this alive for some time. Will she try to poison his drink? Get him in a dark corner, whip out a penknife, go for his jugular? Would he be fast enough to grab her hand? He wants to reveal his knowledge to her in a safe place surrounded by other people. He wants to watch her face as she realizes he’s got her by the neck, so to speak. He wants to hear the story she’ll tell. Or the stories: she must have more than one. He would.
“Out of here, turn right,” he says. “Next stoplight, go past it. There’s a motel – the Silver Knight.” He knows the motel bars near all the storage outfits where he bids at auctions. “I’ll meet you in the bar. Get a booth. I just need to check my other unit.” He almost says, “Book a room while you’re at it, because we both know what this is about,” but that would be rushing things.
“The Silver Knight,” she says. “Has it got a silver knight on the outside? Riding to the rescue?” She’s trying for a light touch. Again the laugh, a little breathless. Sam doesn’t play the move back. Instead he opts for a reprimanding frown. Don’t think you can charm me out of it, lady. I’m here to collect.
“You can’t miss it,” he says. Will she skip out on him? Leave him stuck with the fiasco? No one would know how to track her, unless she’d made the mistake of using her real name when she’d rented the unit. It’s a risk, letting her out of his sight, but a risk he needs to take. He’s 99 per cent certain she’ll be sitting in the bar of the Silver Knight when he gets there.
He texts Ned: Traffic shit. Blizzard crap. We’ll PU AM. Nite. He has a strong impulse to slip the SIM card out of his phone and tuck it into the dried groom’s breast pocket, but he resists it. He does go offline, however: not dark, but dark grey.
I dunno, officer, Ned will say. He texted me from the storage place. Maybe around four. He was fine then. He was supposed to come to the shop in the morning, then we were going to take the van and clear out the units. After that, nothing.
What dried guy in a monkey suit? Really? No shit! Search me.
One thing at a time. First, he opens up Unit 56. All is as it should be: several pieces of furniture, good-enough quality, the sort of thing they can resell in Metrazzle. Rocking chair, pine, Quebec. Two end tables, ’50s, mahogany looks like, spindly ebonized legs. Among them, an Arts and Crafts desk. The sealed white baggies are in the three right-hand drawers.
It’s perfect, really. Maximum deniability. There’s no traceable line from them to him. I have no idea how it got in there! I bought the unit at an auction, I won the bid, it could’ve been anyone. I’m as surprised as you are! No, I didn’t open the drawers before I brought it back to the shop, why would I? I sell antiques, not stuff in drawers.
Then the end destination buys the desk, most likely on Monday, and that’s all there is to it. He’s just the drop box, he’s just the delivery boy.
Ned won’t open the drawers either. He has a finely developed sense of which drawers to leave closed.
Sam can leave the shipment safely where it is: no one’s going to bother this locked unit before noon the next day. Him and his van will be well on the way before then.
He checks his phone: one new message, from Gwyneth. I was wrong, please come back, we can talk it through. He has a tug of nostalgia: the familiar, the snug, the safe; the safe enough. Nice to know it’s waiting for him. But he doesn’t reply. He needs this oblong of freefall time he’s about to enter. Anything at all can happen within it.