Flashback

“The chits are there,” said Leonard. “We could go back to that cafeteria the Gunner person showed us and have some lunch. It’s been a long time since that breakfast with the convoy.”

Val said nothing as he looked through his father’s small desk. The single drawer was empty except for a remote and flexible generic keyboard mat for the TV. Normally, Leonard knew, the resident’s phone would operate the TV and its computer functions.

Val then looked through the closet, going through his father’s hanging shirts, trousers, and sport coats. He pulled a mass of rope and webbing out of the corner. “What the hell’s this stuff?”

“Your father must have taken up climbing as a sport,” said Leonard, noting the metal-clip carabiners and ascender-handgrips that had been called jumars back in the last century.

“Like hell,” said Val. “I’ll bet you anything that this is the Old Man’s way off the roof if something goes bad in here. See this?” He held up a small rectangular bundle of orange-and-black nylon.

“What is it, Val?”

“Some sort of flotation device,” said his grandson. “Maybe a belly boat like fishermen use. The Old Man rappels down off the roof into that grassy area, inflates this thing, and paddles his ass across the river.”

“It’s wise to take precautions in case of fire…,” began Leonard.

Val barked a laugh and started going through the built-in wall drawers.

“Your father won’t like it that you’re invading his privacy,” said Leonard.

“My… father… can kiss my serene ass on my couch of many colors,” said the boy. “If I find the money, I’m out of here.” He tossed some flashback vials onto the bed from where they’d been tucked under clean underwear.

“You wouldn’t even wait to say hello to your father?”

“No.”

Val looked under the bed, behind the big flatscreen, in the toilet tank and shower. He came back into the room, looked at the cubie’s rifled-through drawers, and muttered, “Wait. I remember when they used to try to hide stuff from me in the house…”

Val pulled out the drawers and dumped their contents on the floor. He flipped the upside-down drawers onto the bed, waving Leonard aside. There were stacks of colored folders attached by duct tape to the underside of each drawer.

“Hey,” said the boy.

“It doesn’t look like money,” said Leonard. “And your father will be furious when he comes home and finds…”

Val had torn away the tape and was stacking the many dossiers on the nearby desk. First he flipped through the pages—obviously hunting for cash—but then sorted through the files, arranged them in some order, and began reading.

“Jesus Christ,” breathed the boy.

“What is it?”

Without speaking, Val tossed the folder he’d just read through to his grandfather. He did not look up from reading the second one. “Jesus Christ,” he said again.

Leonard began reading with perhaps the worst sinking feeling he’d ever had outside of the day his wife Carol had come home to tell him she had ovarian cancer.

These were photocopies of some sort of grand jury report. All the evidence, photostats, phone records, and other information led to one conclusion—that five and a half years ago, Major Crimes Unit Detective First Grade Nick Bottom had learned that his wife was having an affair with a Denver assistant district attorney named Harvey Cohen and had arranged to have them both killed in what would appear to be a highway accident.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Dr. George Leonard Fox.

Val finished speed-reading through the last dossier, stood up, pulled the coiled climbing rope from his father’s closet, and dumped it on the floor. He opened his own duffel bag and started pulling things out even while he emptied the pockets of his own jacket.

Leonard realized that the boy was stuffing his pockets with magazines for the pistol and with handfuls of bullets.

Then Val threw the coils of climbing rope and carabiners over his shoulder, walked out the door, and disappeared into the warren of cubies in the former Baby Gap.

“Val!” Leonard ran to the outer door of the store and shouted after the boy, but his grandson was out of sight, probably down the frozen escalator or around the bend in the mall mezzanine.

Leonard pivoted in helpless circles. What could he do? He could phone the Gunny G. security person and tell him to stop Val from leaving, but of course there was no phone in Nick Bottom’s mess of a cubie. Leonard’s chest hurt from his short run from the cubie; he could never catch Val in time.

The old man went to the railing and looked down to the first level of what had once been a bright and upscale shopping mall. Garbage bags were stacked outside of all the grimy-windowed and grubby-tiled former storefronts, and the place stank. If it hadn’t been for the little light coming through dirt-crusted skylights—a few of them propped open above—the mall would have been dark and airless.