“I think so. I mean, yes. I can find it.”
“Okay, it’s box number 2149. You go in—well, it can’t be you. But whoever it is, you show your ID if they ask for it, but they might not if you’ve got a key, you tell them the box number, you sign in, they take you into the safety-deposit box room, you use the key to open the box, you take it into a little booth. The money’s in there.”
“Trixie, I don’t know where—”
“I know. You’ll have to find someone. Zack, you have to find someone who can pass as me.”
I was feeling overwhelmed. I couldn’t begin to imagine how we could pull this off, how we could give Merker what he wanted, how we could keep Katie alive.
“Maybe Gary knows someone,” Trixie said. “He knows hookers and dancers all over the place. He can find someone to be me for fifteen minutes. Someone who can wear the wig, do my signature. She has to sign in. They usually check my signature against the one they have on file.”
“Shit,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m even considering this.”
“And I can’t believe they’re gone,” Trixie said, wiping her nose again. “I did it all. I’m responsible for all of this. Gary didn’t really…they’re not really gone, are they? Claire and Don?”
I nodded.
“How…Did Katie see?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t ask her that.”
“You’ve seen her?” Trixie brightened. “You’ve seen Katie?”
“Yes. She’s okay. But she’s pretty shook up.” The truth was, I didn’t want to know whether Katie had seen Don and Claire murdered. “She asked me to tell you,” I paused, having a hard time getting it out, “that she needed you to be her mother all the time now.”
Trixie dropped the phone, put both hands to her face. Her body shook. The guard took note but didn’t move. Inmates getting bad news, of one kind or another, had to be a pretty regular occurrence.
“Trixie, listen to me,” I said, the handset still resting on the counter. I rapped the glass. She pulled her hands away, her eyes red and raw, and picked up the handset. “Trixie, you can tear yourself up about this later, but right now, we have to get this money to Merker.”
She nodded, pulled herself together. “It’s in the box. He can have it all.” She paused. “I need you to let me know when it’s done. When they let go of Katie. I need to know that she’s okay.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said. If I was alive to, I thought.
The guard opened the door, the signal that Trixie’s time was up. She touched her fingers to the glass. I put my hand up, mirroring hers.
“I gotta go,” I said, looking into Trixie’s eyes. “I gotta do this thing. It’s going to be okay.”
She looked away. She had to know I had next to no faith in my own words.
“You were quite a while,” Merker said when I got back into the truck. “I hope you didn’t do anything stupid.”
“You’re still here, aren’t you?” I said. “Don’t you think the cops would have surrounded you by now if I’d told them anything?”
“Maybe you’re up to something funny, but it hasn’t gone down yet.”
“Okay, why don’t we sit here and wait and see, forget about getting the money. Why don’t you call Leo, see if everything’s okay there.”
“I did. It is.” He paused. “So what’s the deal?”
“It’s in a safety-deposit box,” I told him. “Downtown. But we have to go to her house first. Get the key, some ID.”
“Yes!” He banged his fist on the wheel again, but not in anger this time. “She say how much is there?”
“Just under three hundred thousand.”
“Fuck! Are you shitting me? What happened to the rest?”
“I don’t know. She had to set up a new life. I guess that cost money.”
“That’s just totally fucking unacceptable.”
“Then why don’t you go in there”—I tipped my head toward the prison—“and discuss it with her.”
“Shit,” he said, more quietly, thinking about it. “I guess three hundred thou is better than nothing.” He turned the truck around, headed south, to the neighborhood where Trixie and I were once neighbors. I hardly needed to give him directions to her place. Surely, even if you can’t remember why you killed someone, you can remember how to return to where it happened.
“So hang on a sec,” Merker said, his nose twitching. “How the fuck we supposed to get into her safety-deposit box?”
“You’re going to have to find somebody. A woman with some passing resemblance to Trixie. Once you put a red wig on her, almost any woman will do.”
“Red wig?”
I told him about the ID with the color photo of Trixie in the wig. That whoever played Trixie, as Marilyn Winter, would have to sign in. Merker was thinking.
“There’s this one chick, I don’t know. Her boobs are about right, and she might pass if she’s got the wig on.”