Cache Money

Drug dealers. Greg hated them.

Well, at this point in his life, anyway. It was a different story twenty years ago. Back then, whom else could supply the weed, coke, uppers and downers that constituted his daily psychotropic diet? The dealers were his buddies, his bulwarks against sobriety.

Things were different now. Greg had been straight for decades. His drug use had cost him a marriage, several jobs, and a college degree. No way he was going to go down that road again. His one indulgence - courtesy of hard-won discipline - was to have a brewski with the other guys on the paint crew on Fridays after work One and done. The new Greg.

He had long ago made peace with the fact that he earned his daily bread wielding a paint brush instead of a pen. Maybe things could have been different if his brief days in college hadn’t been spent majoring in dropping acid. Instead of a livelihood filled with briefs, prescriptions, office memos or sales targets, he was surrounded by caulk, spackle, primers and enamels. But he was okay with that. It beat being dead.

Greg’s thoughts were returning to those days because the house he was working in - a crumbling Victorian in the Powelton Village section of Philadelphia - had been the home of a drug dealer who was found shot dead in his bed. Although it was obvious that the murder was drug-related, the police had no suspects. They also came up short when it came to finding material evidence; a search of the house had failed to find any drugs, weapons, or cash. It would be a while before this case was closed.

In the meanwhile, life had to go on. Greg was hired to restore and paint the room where the man died along with several other areas by the victim’s father, who was the actual owner of the house. Greg’s heart went out to him; the pain still fresh from losing his only son was evident in the older man’s every word and gesture. Now, he just wanted to fix-up the house, put it on the market, and be done with it.

Greg was working in the master bedroom, the scene of the crime. He had already done all of the prep, and was busy rolling walls. When he came to the hulking iron radiator set close to one wall, he had to switch over to a skinnier roller with a shorter nap cover, so as reach the area behind it. He lifted the slab of slate sitting atop the radiator in order to get access. What was revealed stopped him in his tracksl.

Wedged between the wall and the back of the radiator was a large black handgun sitting in a brown leather holster. The slab which had served as a shelf had obscured it from view. The significant dust and dark shadows of the radiator had hidden it as well. Forensics couldn’t really be blamed for missing it.

Greg reached for the pair of gloves he kept in his back pocket for use in dealing with particularly hard to clean paints. He put them on, bent down, and, verrry slowwwly, lifted the holstered gun up and laid it gently on the floor. He had to assume it was loaded. He might have been able to tell if he slid the gun out a bit, but he wasn’t about to do that. Greg’s fearlessness in ingesting every controlled substance known to man did not extend to handling firearms. He had managed to remove it from its hiding place, but that was it. He wanted nothing more to do with it.

It occurred to Greg that maybe an ammo magazine or some loose bullets might have been hidden as well. He stepped over to the radiator and peered into the shadows. This time, he was surprised to see what looked like a large, dark sack or bag of some kind. He reached down and again, very carefully - there might be another gun in it, after all - pulled it up.

It was a heavy-duty, zippered pouch; similar to ones used for bank deposits. And it was full.

Greg sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, and looked at the bag in his hands. He wanted to open it. But he was afraid. He had already moved evidence. If he opened the bag, could he be accused of tampering with it as well? Any further handling of both the gun and the bag should rightfully be done by the authorities. His duty now was to give them a call. If he did, he could yet be the hero. If he didn’t…well, then they would still be in the dark. In which case, it would just be his secret.

Greg unzipped the case. He was greeted by the sight he both hoped for and feared. Inside were many rubber-banded bundles and stacks of cash. He picked one up and flipped through it. The bills seemed to be mostly fifties and twenties, with one or two hundreds. Greg turned the pouch upside down and gave it a shake. Out tumbled all the rolls of bills, along with a pen and a small black notebook of some kind. The plot was thickening.

Greg picked up the notebook and started leafing through it. Talk about a smoking gun, evidence-wise. The book was filled with names, phone numbers, and occasional addresses. Alongside each name were columns of numbers, many of them crossed out, some with minus signs in front of them, some not. Greg didn’t need to see a dollar sign to know what they meant. This was the dealer’s ledger, his tally of who paid what and who owed what. You’re not going to be a successful drug dealer if you can’t also deal with numbers.

He had come this far…he would go a little further. Greg took off the rubber bands roll by roll and did a quick counting. Well, as quick as his gloves would allow. But he wasn’t about to take them off now. The fewer fingerprints anywhere, the better.

The total came to around $20,000.00, probably a bit more. Not necessarily a tidy sum for a well-connected drug dealer, but certainly one to Greg. Life-changing, even. Greg’s paint van was on its last legs; the odometer read 165,000 miles, it had almost as many dings and dents. He had been looking around for another van for a while, but everything within his budget wasn’t much better than what he already had. Twenty thousand dollars wouldn’t get him a new van, but it could definitely get him a younger one, both in mileage and appearance.

What to do, what to do. Greg thought about the money. Who did it belong to? Not the customers; they got their drugs. Some might even still owe money, if the ledger was accurate. Not to the dealer; he was gone. They were ill-gotten goods anyway. Would the dealer’s father want it? Highly doubtful. Slim chance it would go to him anyway. Did it belong to the state? It might. They would hold it in an evidence room for God knows how long, for use in a trial that might never happen, given the lack of suspects. And evidence rooms were not immune from the scourge of sticky fingers, especially as time passed.

The more he thought about it, the more Greg convinced himself that the cash should rightly go to him. He had been diligent where others weren’t. Others had searched; only he had found. If this discovery didn’t entitle Greg to be both Finder and Keeper, what would? The doctrine had to come into play sometime.

But Greg wasn’t going to keep everything. He had a plan. He re-bound the money back into rolls. Then he went over to his work bag which held all his brushes and hand tools and dumped them out. He lay the rolls of bills along the bottom and then filled the bag back up again.

Next he put the pen and notebook back in the pouch and placed it behind the radiator again. On top of it - very carefully - he put the gun and holster, arranged as it was before. Lastly, he replaced the slate slab. Now, everything was as it was before. Minus the twenty thousand dollars, of course.

Painting was over for today. Tomorrow, Greg would bring his helper Sly to the job. He would instruct him to finish painting the room, starting with behind the radiators. It would be Sly who would make the great discovery of the gun, who would get to be the hero. They wouldn’t touch it. Together, they would call the police and wait for their arrival. The fact that beneath the gun would be found a bag with a notebook full of incriminating details would be an additional surprise. The fact that there wasn’t any money in it might appear odd to the authorities, but what did Greg and Sly know about such things? They were just painters.

It was a good plan.

Greg picked up his work satchel, went downstairs to the entry foyer, shut off the lights, exited, and locked the door. He went over to his van, unlocked it, and threw in the bag. He sat in the ripped driver’s seat, turned the ignition, and was more happy than usual when the engine cooperated and started right up.

He thought about things as he rode home. Any decent detective would probably give Sly and him a pretty good grilling. Suspicion is a cop’s default mode of being. But Greg had one thing going for him. He had been a drug addict. After years of hiding, denying, and conning people, he had gotten adept in the fine art of lying. It can be an extremely effective skill, just not one you can put on a resume. Greg knew how to make anyone believe almost anything. Even himself! Somewhere within the foggier zones of his conscience, Greg suspected that he was pulling one over on himself. In his soul, he knew he wasn’t doing the right thing. But his soul was proving to be no match for his mind. Driving home with twenty thousand more bucks than he had when he left it made him a more than willing sucker for his own con. Hey, there’s one born every minute! He was putty in his own hands.

It was a bumpy ride home, thanks to the van’s lousy suspension. But Greg was used to that. What he wasn’t used to were the recurring jabs of a guilty conscience. He tried to ignore them, but they kept coming. Great. Another bump in his road to get used to. Would it always be there? Or would it go away with the old van once he bought a new one?

Greg didn’t know the answer. It was a gamble, with his peace of mind as the ante. But he had an ace up his sleeve, something he learned in recovery. There was only one tried and true way to deal with this murky moral situation, a way that had worked for Greg in the past. He knew how to proceed.

One day at a time.