“Just get in,” I said, and she climbed up into the truck with the bag and slid over, but she kept looking at me. I was a bit of a mess.

She turned on Merker. “What did you do to him?”

“Oh, he’s fine,” Merker said, grabbing the bag out of Sarah’s hands. He unzipped it, opened it wide. “Motherfucker,” he said.

I almost said it myself. The bag was jammed with cash, made into bundles with rubber bands. Most of it, it appeared, in tens and twenties.

“Is it all here?” he asked Sarah accusingly.

“No, I left half of it in the safety-deposit box,” Sarah snapped. “Of course it’s all there.”

“Okay, okay,” Merker said. “Sheesh.” He took out one packet of cash and handed it to Sarah. “For your trouble.”

“No thank you,” she said.

He tossed it back into the bag. “Okay, but don’t forget I offered. This is amazing. Did you have any trouble? They didn’t ask for more ID? They were okay with the signature?”

“I was in and out,” Sarah said. She went to touch my nose, but held her hand an inch away when I recoiled. “Are you okay? What did he do to you? What happened?”

“I had a plan,” I said. “It didn’t work.”

CHAPTER 39

39

MERKER WAS EBULLIENT. So maybe he didn’t have half a million dollars in the bag. Maybe it was only three hundred thousand. Of course, he’d have to count it to be sure, but the thought that he had this much of his money back had planted an enormous grin on his face.

He was rocking back and forth behind the wheel, as though listening to the beat of a rock song, but the radio was off.

“The living’s gonna be easy from here on,” he said. “I think me and Leo’ll go south. Get a place in Florida or something. Or maybe we’ll go to Europe, one of those countries over there.”

“South of France is nice,” I said, not really knowing why.

Merker made a farting noise with his lips. “Fuck no, I hate the French. I’m gonna stick with Europe.”

“Definitely not foreign editor material,” I said to Sarah, who had taken off the red wig and tossed it down on the floor like a dead rat.

“What’s that?” Merker said.

“You’ll have to get some foreign material,” I said. “Like travel books. Read up on the places you want to go.”

Merker nodded. “That’s not a half-bad idea. Where would you find books like that?”

“I’d probably try a bookstore,” I said. I touched my finger to my nose, checked it for fresh blood. My wound seemed to be drying up, but I still looked as though I’d walked into a bus.

“So all I gotta do now is pick up Leo, turn you over to the beauty queens, and we are on our way.”