In the Shadow of Sadd

She pulled the handle to establish she had used the toilet. Cream-puss sat in the living room patiently and thoughtfully tapped the index finger of his right hand on the coffee table. What the hell was he up to? she wondered. Shortly afterwards she gained a little more insight:

“Where does Paul live?” he asked.

“He lived here. It was like – what’s it called? Love at first sight. We’d only known each other for a week before he moved in.”

“Did he keep his own apartment?”

Victoria looked desperate:

“I’ve been tricked so much, I don’t know what to believe anymore. I can only tell you what Paul told me: that he had an attic room, I think, and that he was gonna give notice.”

“And you’ve never been to the place?”

“No.”

“Or gotten the key to the place?”

“No. My impression was, it was a pretty scuzzy furnished room that he wasn’t real proud of, and didn’t want me to see. When he moved in here, he had all his stuff in a single moving box. Laptop, CDs, shaving things, socks and underwear. And of course a couple of books on how to care for pets.”

“Hm, hm, hm …” hummed Cream-puss and tapped the tip of his right, polished dress shoe against the floor to the same beat. “Do you think Paul managed to hide any of the money?”

“I don’t know what to think,” answered Victoria warily. “He’s apparently been so full of shit …”

Again she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

“If he had, do you have any idea where he might hide it?”

She shook her head and looked slowly around the living room.

“I have no idea. He couldn’t have hidden anything here.”

“No, but maybe he had another hiding place,” said Christian Berg.

“Is any of the money missing?” asked Victoria.

“I’m not sure. It has to be counted, and that’ll take some time. We’ll have to see. Everything’s a bit more difficult with Jimmy Sadd out of town. He’s the one with the broadest view.”

“Yeah, I suppose he is,” said Victoria mutedly.

***

No, she thought triumphantly, I’m the one with the broadest view. Me, I’m better than all those dickheads when it comes to intelligence and planning. Her thoughts brought her back once again to the drama of the previous night:

Bruno has let himself into Jimmy Sadd’s apartment. Maybe he knows about the secret room. Maybe he doesn’t. But there are moving boxes in the living room, and some might already be full of money.

Bruno can see that something is up, and he puts two and two together. The baby isn’t that dense, after all. Perhaps he can hear Paul inside the money room. Paul is about to shit his pants from sheer terror. He really isn’t a man of any stature whatsoever, that hillbilly. But then he remembers the gun, which is right in front of his face – the one Victoria bought and planted on the shelf so it would be ready.

Victoria listens at Sadd’s front door and hears Paul shout:

“Freeze, or I’ll blow your head off!”

Then she goes into action. Earlier that day she had ‘borrowed’ Sadd’s Saami dagger for just this purpose (so she can later say that she grabbed the nearest and best weapon).

She rams into Paul from behind, and she knows exactly where a man’s heart is located.

Paul barely manages to register that it is she who is cutting him down. Or are there a few seconds of recognition in the eyes of the dying man? The expression of his death mask is certainly one of astonishment.

Victoria has the size and type of breakdown appropriate to the occasion. Her entire body shakes, and she sobs – in a hushed tone, so the neighbors aren’t alerted to the goings on.

“There, there, little girl, come here,” comforts Bruno, clumsily holding her shoulders.

“You just go home and get into bed.”

He guides her across the landing to her own apartment, after carefully shutting the door between them and Paul’s dead body.

“Your intention was good enough. You wanted to save my life. Thanks,” he says. Then he fiddles with the pistol, smiles, and says:

“But it wasn’t even loaded!”

“Oh Paul, oh Paul, what have I done?” sobs Victoria and turns to Bruno:

“He said he was going to a seminar tonight – and was staying overnight. I didn’t even see it was him. I didn’t have time to think, I just wanted to save my little baby … my little baby …”

She strokes his bald head, and he presses against her.

“Mommy, mother hen! Take two of the pink pills and lie down. I’ll take care of everything. You know I’m a professional. I’ll get rid of him, and no one will harm a hair on your little head. What a pearl you are, what a pearl … and that’s what I’ll tell Jimmy. You bet your ass that’s what I’ll tell him! He’ll reward you for this.”

“Thank you, little Bruno, thanks!”

She looks out through the door’s spy hole: Bruno has rolled the body into the blue rug and carries it with such ease and elegance, you’d think it was a rolled-up newspaper. She hears him start the van and drive away.

She then takes her own key to Jimmy Sadd’s apartment and sneaks back over the landing.

***

Christian Berg has gotten to his feet. Finally, thinks Victoria, who now feels confident she knows what his mission has been all along: to find out if Paul made off with, and hid, some of the money.

The attorney sticks his hand into the inside pocket of his coat, then hesitates, while his gaze becomes so removed and inscrutable that Victoria feels a slight shudder run down her spine. Never underestimate anyone.

“It’s something of a coincidence that you just found a young man who knew how to keep an aquarium, isn’t it?” he says thoughtfully.

“To me it was dumb luck. Promise me you won’t tell Jimmy, but I was having trouble keeping his fish alive. I hope he doesn’t count them when he gets home. Two of them died on my watch. Promise me you won’t tell. Promise me!”

She looks up at him, appealing like a little girl.

He smiles reassuringly and reassured:

“I promise, but you have to take care of the fish from now on. You must have learned how by now, right? Otherwise you can take out a book from the library. It can’t be that hard. Maybe you can boost the population before he gets back. Just between us, he won’t be getting out for nearly three months.

“Getting out? I didn’t even know he was in jail,” she answers.

“And you shouldn’t know. You don’t say anything about that, and I won’t say anything about the dead fish.”

He pulls out the envelope from his inside pocket and passes it to her:

“Here’s that little thank you from Jimmy Sadd, for your trouble.”

“It’s still pissing down. Don’t you have an overcoat?” she asks.

“It’s over in Sadd’s apartment. I’ll be there for the rest of the day. There are some people coming to clean up.”

“Darn it, maybe I should find another place to sleep, the walls are so thin,” she says.

“I must ask you to be a quiet as possible. I hope you get some rest.”

“I’m tired as an old-age home, and it’s really tough to get through this, I’m not kidding!”

“Of course it is. Is there anywhere you can go? My wife is ill sadly – otherwise I’d ask you ... we have a nice house out in The Villa Grove ... but that’s no good. My wife is too ill ...”

“Thank you, I’ll figure something out. I have a friend … and a sister,” says Victoria, exhausted.

***

She walks around slowly, saying goodbye to her things: goodbye worn-out mattress, goodbye leaky shower cabin, goodbye garbage-bag-stinking cabinet under the kitchen sink, goodbye moaning telephone, goodbye dirty windows, goodbye noisy refrigerator, goodbye big clock where the second hand moved too slowly while I faked my orgasms …

Was there anything at all she’d actually miss? Yes, the white sofa is relatively new, and it’s been comfortable to lie on and sit in, while she serviced her customers. But good god, now she can afford one in silk and gold, if that’s what she wants.

But it isn’t. She can’t imagine owning anything. She wants to drift away, as in a dream, moving easily from one luxury hotel to another, always following the sun. Yes, that is very important. There’s always a place where the sun is shining, and that’s where she’ll be – beautiful and elegant and mild and good. Who is this adorable and interesting woman sitting alone eating caviar? Will she continue to use junk? Maybe, maybe not. Junk is, after all, a loser thing, an escape – no way around that. And she is no longer a loser.

She packs little, opting instead to buy new things as soon as she’s over the border. She puts only the necessities into a little weekend bag, so it won’t matter if she meets Cream-puss on her way down the staircase.

She doesn’t though, meet Cream-puss. He’s probably sitting around keeping an eye on the people who are mopping up Paul’s blood. It wouldn’t do to have them find the treasure chest. There’s still a lot of money in there.

Personally, she had been satisfied with two moving boxes of large bills. She could just barely drag one at a time. She doesn’t know how much money is contained in the two boxes, but she knows it’s more than she can spend in her lifetime.

Everything went precisely as she had planned:

As soon as Bruno left with Paul’s dead body, she went back into Jimmy Sadd’s apartment and dragged two of the moving boxes out of the secret room. She and Paul had decided that he would pack the large bills first, and as far as she could see, there were no denominations under 1,000 in the boxes that were now in her own apartment. She didn’t have to dig deeper than one hand’s worth into a corner of the box before she had counted to a quarter of a million. So there was at least a hundred million. Probably more.

When Sadd eventually realized that some money was missing, he’d assume it was Paul who had managed to stash it somewhere. And there was no asking Paul where it was.

Would she be suspected for travelling? Doubtful. She had risked her life to protect Bruno and Jimmy Sadd’s money. And for a little extra security, she’d launch a rumor that she felt the cops were after her. A couple of phone calls to the girls, and that would be that. And Jimmy Sadd would understand the situation and accept that she was gone. After all, that’s what he’d given her the two thousand for.

She tosses the weekend bag inside and gets behind the wheel of her rusty Golf. She looks up at Sadd’s windows. If Cream-puss is standing there, he’ll wave to her. He isn’t, and doesn’t. She drives around the corner and into the backyard – all the way up to the door. Then she goes quietly up the back staircase and back into her apartment.

Müsli is tearing around on the running wheel. She carefully lifts the cage with the mouse and places it on the table. Then she lifts the white sheet cloth from the little table where the cage had stood. And the first moving box reveals itself. It’s unbelievably heavy – about eighty pounds, she guesses. But a hundred million can give you strength you didn’t know you had, and she succeeds not only in getting it across the floor and down the back stairs, but also into the trunk of her car.

The sweat is dripping off of her when she gets back to her apartment to get the second box, which is hidden in the wardrobe – under the pile of clothing that pours out when the doors are opened.

When she once again reaches the yard and is confronted by the most difficult part – getting the box into the car – fortune smiles upon her.

“Can I give you a hand, miss,” says a big garbage collector and tosses the box into the trunk.

“Thanks a lot,” she says, and sends the man the sexiest look she can muster.

It is still raining. The windshield wipers screech as they move back and forth. The rubber is worn down. Everything on this wreck is worn to shit, thinks Victoria and laughs aloud with delight. She has at least a hundred million in the trunk, and ahead of her, all the freedom money can buy.

She’s out of the City now, and decides to find a radio station with music.

She turns on the car radio. At least that works.

The voice on the other end is loud and clear:

“It’s 2:00 pm. You’re listening to the news on Radio Fake, FM 112.8 MHz:

Police have uncovered a large-scale counterfeiting operation, and have today indicted mob boss Jimmy Sadd, who will be arraigned in a few hours. The police are calling it the biggest counterfeiting case in history. After finding the production facilities a couple of days ago, in a property owned by Jimmy Sadd, police have found several large stashes of the counterfeit bills in other properties owned by the gangster. Authorities believe that additional stockpiles are likely located around the City, and advise the public to exercise caution when receiving especially large bills.

The false bills are of a very high quality, and have been processed in a way that makes them look and feel used. They are very convincing, but if you examine them more closely, the characteristic thread is not implanted in the bill, but printed onto it, just as the watermark is not as clear as with real bills ...”

Victoria shuts off the radio. She shrugs her shoulders, takes the next exit and turns the car around. She has to get back to the City. To her life in the City. It’s still raining, and the worn-down wipers grind against the windshield.