In the Shadow of Sadd

His fingers were still examining the items in the bookcase, but his mind was far away, thinking jealous, bitter thoughts.

He noticed that the metal edge trim on one of the bookcase sections had been cut through. It looked odd. The brushed-steel trim had been cut fifteen centimeters from the section’s side, so the short part of the trim looked like the handle of a modern refrigerator. It was not a repair – it was made this way. He put his fingertips behind the top back of the short piece of trim and pulled outward. He felt a tingle of excitement. He could feel how the steel trim was firmly in place, while the short piece that had been cut was loose, and could be moved slightly before it would spring back into place.

His fingers manipulated the steel trim, which he now believed was indeed a handle. He was certain that pushing or pulling in the right way would trigger some sort of mechanism, and he didn’t think anything bad would happen. He was curious.

Suddenly the short piece of steel trim yielded to his touch, and the entire bookcase section gave way slightly, as though it were liberating itself from the wall. He carefully placed the palm of his hand against the bookcase to prevent it from falling forward – but it remained upright.

But ... detached?

He pushed a little more on the same side as the handle, which was part of the steel trim. The bookcase section swung inwards, and Paul realized right away that the section was mounted to a door.

***

He carefully allowed the door to swing inwards.

He immediately experienced the sensation of having solved a mystery. There was something about the shape of the apartment that didn’t make sense – the living room seemed too narrow in relation to the length. Now he knew why. There was a room behind the bookcase wall. A secret room.

For a second he was about to shut the bookcase door. It was dark inside the secret room. For some reason his thoughts went in the direction of a wine cellar. Jimmy Sadd was the type to have a wine cellar. Paul reminded himself that he had never actually met Jimmy Sadd, but resolved that he could still have an idea as to the man’s character.

When his hesitance had burned off, he pushed the bookcase door all the way in.

He stuck his hand into the room, around the discreetly hidden door frame, to where a light switch might be located. He smiled when his fingers found it, and switched on the light.

***

There was a fluorescent strip light on the ceiling. Paul stepped inside.

There were no windows in the room. Instead there were bookcases – not designer bookcases, but heavy, industrial metal bookcases – along the four walls. Initially he had the sense that he was in an archive of sorts, which would have explained the dry smell of paper. But it was more than that. It was also a slightly sweaty, unclean smell.

There were stacks of papers on all the bookcases. Neat stacks of papers that appeared unusually narrow … a shock wave passed through his body when he realized they were stacks of bank notes. Cash. He approached one of the shelves and stared. Yes, it was real money.

The discovery made him realize just how great a secret he had revealed, and how great his predicament would be should Bruno Hanson suddenly appear out in the living room. He shut off the light, stepped out of the room and let the bookcase section swing back in place. He heard a muted click when it locked back into position.

Relieved, he crossed the floor over to the aquarium. It seemed important to him to be where he was supposed to be.

The fish under the perpetual light swam around slowly in the clear water with the column of bubbles.

His agitated thoughts ran away from him, as he contemplated the striped fish. He couldn’t even begin to calculate how much money there was in the secret room. But there was a lot. And his thoughts ran on. They were used bills, which explained the slightly greasy smell.

So many used bills, hidden in that way, could only mean one thing: Jimmy Sadd was a criminal, and the apartment was in reality his safe-deposit box – perhaps only one of them, but certainly a hiding place for illegal money, which nobody would look for in a run-down, old building in the heart of Hispaniola.

***

He recalled his fantasy from before – Victoria on the zebra-skin rug. That fantasy was a tepid glass of water compared to the reality he had just uncovered.

He tried to imagine the likelihood that Jimmy Sadd – or the gorilla Bruno Hanson, for that matter – would know exactly how much money was hidden in the room. The bills appeared to be bundled haphazardly, in uneven bundles, with a rubber band around each one. They appeared to be bundles of various denominations that someone – maybe Hanson – had collected, perhaps by force, from different people.

He felt it was very unlikely that anyone knew the exact value of the money stashed in the secret room.

This led to another thought: he could pull a few bills out of each bundle. It wouldn’t be easily discovered. There were several hundred bundles, and if he were very careful, he might steal a fortune without it even being missed.

It wouldn’t be a problem, nor would it be a problem for him to continue feeding the rich man’s fish. He realized that he, with relative ease, could set aside a fortune without ever being exposed.

***

The secure nature of this idea made him feel brave, as he went out into the corridor. His imagination continued to run new scenarios. Jimmy Sadd and Bruno Hanson clearly trusted him – or perhaps their trust lay in the secret door. It struck him that Bruno Hanson might not know about the secret room. It was possible.

The thought of stealing all the money came to him as he locked Jimmy Sadd’s heavy front door and walked across the landing to Victoria’s apartment. He stood for a while in the darkness. It was a completely different idea: if he systematically emptied the secret room, he would have to leave Hispaniola immediately – leave the City, the country, never to return. He doubted that a man like Jimmy Sadd, who kept so many greasy bills locked in a secret room, would show any mercy at all to anyone who had stolen from him. His thoughts were still convoluted when he let himself in. He had to act like nothing had happened until he was clear in his own mind about what he had just discovered.

***

“What’s the story with that Jimmy Sadd?” he asked Victoria later. He had made sandwiches and freshened up the bean salad from the day before. Victoria seldom cooked. It didn’t interest her, nor, apparently, did eating.

She shrugged her shoulders. “What do you mean, what’s the story?”

Paul rubbed his chin and leaned back. “I don’t know … sometimes it feels strange to go in there without knowing who the man is, and why he’s so rich.”

“Is he rich?” asked Victoria, raising an eyebrow. Paul smiled at her. She did that often, played dumb when she was deciding how much to tell him. She often did just that when he asked her how much she had earned in commissions that day.

“Of course he’s rich,” said Paul. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have an apartment that he didn’t even use.”

“Who says he doesn’t use it?” she asked.

“You know what I mean. He’s never there.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t use it.”

She smiled at him, and he dropped it. He knew she was teasing him, but he wasn’t sure if she was doing it to hide what she knew, or if she just didn’t know anything.

He pushed his plate aside, got to his feet and walked around the table. She sat him down, straddled him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Who cares about Jimmy Sadd?” she asked.

Paul kissed her, as he imagined himself back inside Jimmy Sadd’s apartment.

“Have you sold anything today?”

She chuckled. “Yeah, I sold everything ... No, it was a pretty good day. Money in the bank. Can you give me a lift?”

Paul knew what she was thinking, so he laboriously got to his feet while she hung from his neck like an ape. He brought her into the bedroom as she laughed and began to stroke his throat and then his hair.

He let her fall down on the mattress before lying down on top of her. Zebra skin or not.

***

Later, when it was completely dark, and she was asleep, and Hispaniola was as quiet as it would ever be, he returned to his thoughts.

Why hadn’t he just told her about the money? He recalled the day Bruno Hanson had shown him around Jimmy Sadd’s apartment for the first time and explained how and how often he should feed the fish.

Bruno was not an unfriendly man, in spite of his appearance. He was a man of few words, but he wasn’t gruff or contemptuous. His manner was really strikingly domestic as they went about their business. Bruno’s arms were enormous, his overdeveloped muscles almost made his shoulders look deformed. He had worn a T-shirt with a symbol depicting the Big Bad Wolf. Paul had reflected that, if Bruno were shirtless, he might be able to see the pale outline of a shoulder holster against his sunburned solarium skin. But that was all in his imagination. Bruno could be a gorilla – but on the other hand, he could also be precisely what he purported to be: an assistant. A rich man’s assistant.

Paul now tried to decide whether he should tell Victoria about the money in the secret room. What was the alternative?

He could just leave it alone, forget about the money.

He could follow his first thought: remove a few bills from each bundle, and in all likelihood avoid discovery. That would give him a small fortune, and it would mean that he wouldn’t have to flee. To flee would be the same as admitting that he had done something wrong. It would be foolish and possibly dangerous.

But if he really did it, he wouldn’t derive any pleasure from his fortune – however limited it was – if he didn’t tell Victoria about the money. It would be idiotic. What could he do with the money if she was unaware of its existence?

The last option – to steal all the money – was clearly the riskiest of the alternatives. He would either have to flee to the other side of the world, or initiate Victoria into the scheme.

Victoria with her poker face.

He smiled in the darkness as he thought of the many ways she could react. She might flip out. Perhaps she’d be in on it. Maybe she’d fix him in her calm gaze and tell him something that would prompt him to keep his fingers off of Jimmy Sadd’s money and mind his own business. There was no telling.

***

The next morning they were up and at it a little earlier. Victoria was in a good mood, and the mouse was running merrily on the wheel in its cage. They had time to eat a proper breakfast, and when she had poured him his coffee, he decided to make his move. He’d done enough thinking.

He said, “Listen, riddle me this...”

She sat down and narrowed her eyes. But she smiled. She liked it when he said something mysterious, or shared a crazy thought with her.

“What?” she said.

“What would you say,” he began calmly, “if I told you one day that I’d found something very valuable ... money, for instance.”

“Found?”

He nodded. “Yes, found. Some money that was just lying around. And I can grab it without being discovered, so we could take a vacation, or buy something ... a new car.”

She nodded. “Yeah, and ...?”

“Would you be in on it?”

She regarded him skeptically, with the gray light over her bleached hair. “You mean, like a wallet on the street?”

“No, I’m talking about a lot of money, that someone might have forgotten.”

She thought about it. “And you don’t know who the money belongs to?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

She started to smile. “Is it Lansky? Did he leave a fat envelope behind in his rat nest?”

“No. I told you, it’s just a riddle.”

She smiled even wider. “Bullshit it is ...”

Paul wondered why it never worked out the way he thought it would, when he had planned out a specific conversation with her. There was no way around it.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll give it to you straight, on one condition. That you don’t flip out. I’ll tell you what the deal is, and if you don’t like it, we’ll just leave it alone. Okay?”

“Okay,” she nodded. She was curious, and that made him feel a little more secure.

He told her the whole thing, down to the smallest detail.

She watched him closely as he spoke, finding her cigarettes, taking one out without looking at the pack, and then lighting it.

When he was finished she said, “You’re bullshitting me.”

Paul shook his head. “Nope.”

Victoria stood up. “Show me.”

“I have to go to work.”

“F*ck Lansky,” she said. “F*ck the telephone. If this is true, I want to see it. Now.”

“Okay,” said Paul.

***

Nothing had changed, except that it was a little brighter in the living room than the evening before. It was pouring, so it was still the light over the aquarium that provided most of the light.

Paul pulled the handle in the bookcase and swung the section to the side, as though he had done so a thousand times. He stuck his hand in and turned on the light.

“There you go,” he said.

Victoria stepped into the secret room.

“F*ck,” she said. “F*ck ...”

“Yeah, f*ck,” said Paul.

She looked at him with giant eyes. “It’s true.”

“I told you.”

“Yeah, well ... it’s true! F*ck ...”

For some reason, it worried him more with the two of them being there. It seemed more dangerous.

“Okay, if you believe me now, stop saying ‘f*ck’ and let’s get out of here.”

She nodded, but at the same moment, her eyes fell on one of the shelves full of money.

“Hey, a gun,” she said, as she stepped over and picked it up. It looked too big and heavy for her pale hand.

Paul narrowed his eyes. “Leave it. Don’t wave that thing around.”

Victoria hesitantly returned the weapon to its place. “This is just too crazy,” she said.

“Out,” said Paul and stepped out through the door opening. “What if Hanson suddenly comes in?”

They crossed back over the landing.

As soon as they had shut the door she embraced him. He could feel how excited she was. He thought about the money, about the well-used bills, about the black gun in her hand, about the secret door – while she pulled him into the living room, and in one long motion tore his pants off, swept aside her panties under her skirt and steered him into position, as she sat on the edge of the table.

Her excitement was contagious, but somewhere in the back of his head was the thought that, no matter how he looked at it, their passion had been triggered by something that was inherently dangerous.

***

From that moment on, the money was everything. The world just wasn’t the same. Paul knew it – he could feel it throughout his body. And he knew that Victoria didn’t think of anything else either. For a while they thought as individuals, as if both were wary of saying something the other might disagree with. Thieves think that everybody steals, thought Paul – the question was, does everybody steal?

He remained quiet over the following days. It was important that Victoria said in plain language how she felt about the money. Paul could take the bundles of cash in stride – they weren’t going anywhere. But Victoria’s female instinct, her ability to make a decision, or take decisive action, meant everything to him.

***

Two days later he brought Jimmy Sadd’s name up – not with Victoria, but with Lansky. Paul knew that the fish in Sadd’s apartment were purchased at AnimalCity. It seemed likely that Lansky knew Jimmy Sadd.

“Jimmy Sadd?” repeated Lansky, his eternal smile and diffuse, relaxed manner relieved by subdued concentration. “What about him?”

“Nothing,” said Paul. “I feed his fish, but I’ve never met the man – which is strange sometimes, if I happen to be in his apartment.”

“What’s strange?” asked Lansky, lighting his cigar.

“Well, walking around the place without knowing who the man is. What does he do?”

“I don’t know,” said Lansky and blew a grayish, yellowish cloud of smoke up toward the ceiling. “I have no idea.”

It struck Paul as odd. Lansky, who traditionally had nothing against gossip, and who on the least provocation would pass on the most scandalous rumors about cocaine-sniffing society women, or men who had multiple mistresses sequestered in apartments around town – that same Lansky didn’t have much to say about Jimmy Sadd. It seemed odd. Wouldn’t a man like Jimmy Sadd, with his right hand, Bruno, his endless absence, his deserted apartment, attract a steady stream of gossip?

“Sometimes I wonder if he even exists,” he prompted Lansky.

“Of course he exists,” said Lansky.

“Where does he live? I mean, where does he really live?”

“Who knows? Maybe he has a mansion on the moon.”

“But you must have met him.”

“Yes, I’ve met him.”

“What’s he like?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s he like?’ How should I know? A guy buys some fish and a tank, and you want to know what kind of man he is? He’s a man who likes fish. I sold him some fish. That doesn’t mean I know what he eats for breakfast. What’s wrong with you?”

Lansky was clearly not himself – for a few seconds there he seemed like a totally different person. Fear isn’t in his nature. Without a jovial grin and smiling eyes, for just a moment, he looked like a different person – perhaps like Jimmy Sadd, Paul contemplated.

***

That was that. Paul understood that the normally loquacious Lansky didn’t feel like saying anything about Jimmy Sadd, though it was obvious he had something to tell. Paul thought of The Godfather. But he didn’t press Lansky further. If he was paranoid, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine Lansky on the phone at his cluttered desk, telling Jimmy Sadd that his fish-boy wanted to know all about him – and the metallic voice on the other end saying, “Okay, I’ll take care of it.”

So Paul dropped the subject of Jimmy Sadd and went out to feed the animals and clean the cages.

***

Late that same evening he lay on the mattress next to Victoria. Outside it was raining for a change – no longer the dreary, pouring daytime rain, but a rumbling downpour that hammered long cables of water down onto the muddy Hispaniola landscape.

Paul couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Victoria always fell asleep quickly. He was jealous. Imagine being able to just check out like that. It made no difference what was taking place around her – Victoria simply wasn’t the type that allowed the problems and thoughts of the conscious state to infect her sleep. Paul supposed that she would live longer. He had always considered his own insomnia an infirmity that tapped him of life and energy. He would age prematurely, he thought now. How typical that his thought pattern became more and more gloomy the longer sleep evaded him. He had once asked Victoria how she could fall asleep so quickly and sleep so soundly.

“I find a good position,” she said. “Then I relax completely, from my toes up through my legs, my body, my arms ...” The way she said it was almost sleep-inducing in itself. “And then I think of something wonderful.”

“What?”

She had smiled at him. “You. Summer. A cornfield, where the sun is shining and a lark is singing. Something nice and relaxing.”

Yeah right.

It irritated him that he was so negative, but that kind of nonsense didn’t work on him.

He turned toward the edge of the mattress. The mouse was also sleeping soundly in its cage. Its wheel stood still. You’re like that mouse, he thought. You’re nothing but a mouse in a cage. You don’t have a stupid wheel to run on, you have a whole city. You aren’t free. You’re a slave. Not even a happy slave, with a car, package vacations and expensive leisure activities. You’re not a happy golfer. You’re a slave mouse, and every now and then, when you start to feel a little free, it only hits you harder when you realize that you’re not free – you’re just a slave who spends most of his short life working for a gangster of a pet-shop owner, and dreaming about sandy beaches and living the life in Paradise. You dream about Victoria’s brown breasts and her free, happy smile. It’s a dream, sonny – a sad, drawn-out dream. One day it’ll be over, and when that happens, you’ll still be whining about it being over already. It’s hell.

Somehow he must have psyched himself to sleep. Maybe it was the monotonous thunder of the rain that lulled him to the other side.

***