Numbers

1

The clock on the bedside ticks over to show 4:00. 4am isn’t a time everybody has seen. It’s late enough that even the staunchest of late-night revelers and club staff have fallen into bed but early enough that the first of those fabled early birds haven’t even thought about a worm yet. It’s a time seen only by the wanderers, the chronic insomniacs and those with secrets that keep them awake, staring at the clock.

He goes over the night’s events in his head. Normally at this time things would be fuzzy, one moment blurring into the next as the mixture of alcohol and class A narcotics did a number on his senses. Not tonight though. Tonight? This morning? Whatever, he tries to keep his head straight. Right now, he’s a regular 4k projector, running last night’s feature in technicolor cinemascope. It was just another Friday night, mostly. A tour of the bars, some deals on the streets and finishing up in the clubs. It hadn’t been his best night so he was a little irritated when the lights came on to signal closing time and he still had four baggies he hadn’t managed to move. Part of it was down to the clubs being quiet. Part of it was down to the lack of regulars in their usual haunts. Sure, some of it was down to the brunette he met standing at the bar in Maggie’s who took up way too much of his time before she went back to her friends. At least he got a number though, that was a plus. He would have called her too but that thought is a lifetime away now.

The movie keeps playing in his head. He’d left Ruby’s at about 2:45 and was going to hail a cab to head home. Maybe if he had he’d be asleep by now. Instead, with the genius wisdom of one who has had one too many, he decided he couldn’t be bothered getting into the random arguments with other punters over who gets which cab and took the short walk to where he had parked his own car earlier. He didn’t live that far, there was nobody on the roads, he hadn’t had that many. All the usual rationalizations convinced him he was on the right track. He’d be home in bed at 3.15 and wouldn’t have to worry about picking up the car tomorrow. That was mistake number one.

The car was a navy-blue Chevy Cavalier. It was his ‘work’ car. He had a yellow Camaro parked at home with bumble bee stripes and an autobot decal over the gas tank but he never used that when he was carrying. The cops were always more likely to pull over an expensive car in the early hours in the entertainment district for a stop-and-search. Drug dealers were flashy, they figured. The Cavalier is non-descript. Any trouble and nobody can remember anything other than ‘dark saloon’. It was a good idea, in theory, but he’d never really had cause to test it. Right now, it’s still the only thought keeping him from outright hysteria.

When he got to the car, he took the remaining merchandise out of his pockets and slipped it into a little space he’d cut behind the glovebox. If he did happen to get pulled over it would be better to take a ticket for being a little over the limit than for possession, that much he was smart enough to realize. He lit a cigarette, started up and hit the road. He hadn’t been driving for two minutes when it happened. Hell, he was still in the entertainment district. He rounded a corner onto Oak and was just taking a drag when the guy appeared out of nowhere. They say alcohol slows reaction times but he wouldn’t have had time to react if he’d been stone cold sober. The guy had probably thought the same thing as him, “there’s nobody on the streets at this hour” and just walked into the road without looking.

When you hit somebody with your car, everything goes into slow motion. You see details you’d never otherwise notice. Every sound, smell and taste is heightened. The squeal of brakes in your ears. Metal in your mouth, rubber in your nose. Where do they come from? What’s that he’s carrying? Are those tassels on his shoes? Is he on the phone? A million thoughts ran through his head in a microsecond before the inevitable, hideous sounds of flesh meeting metal, then the crunching and grinding of breaking bones before the sickening sight and sound of blood splattering across the windshield. The final empty thud of a skull meeting asphalt brought everything back to full speed and induced immediate panic.

He screeched to a sideways stop to avoid running the poor bastard over a second time. In his head he jumped out, ran over and tried to help, immediately dialing 9-1-1 and giving all the details he could remember. In reality, he sat stock still, looking through the blood-stained windshield at the lifeless body on the street ahead. His survival instinct kicked in. He scanned the street in front and behind, making sure there was nobody around. The street was quiet. There was a light on in the second building on the right but nobody had come out. Maybe that was where this guy had come from. It looked like a late-night café-cum-dive bar or something. There was a single small window made up of those glass brick things everybody seemed to love in the 70’s and “Leon’s – Deli Food and Fine Wines” was written over the single metal door. He didn’t know the place but doubted there was anything “fine” about it, or hadn’t been in years. If anyone was still in there, they couldn’t see out anyway. He put the car in drive and was about to hit the gas when he spotted the briefcase lying on the street about 30 yards ahead.

Slowly, he climbed out, still looking around to make sure no one was watching. It was a stupid move, he knew it, but he’d had a slow night and something about that briefcase told him to wait. He walked past the guy still lying there, not moving. The growing pool of dark sticky liquid around the guy’s head told him he’d probably never move again, at least not on his own. There was a fancy looking smartphone a few feet away, the light still on. So, the guy had been on the phone, it wasn’t entirely his fault. If the thing was still working then it was sturdy and sturdy and fancy-looking means expensive. For a second he thought about picking it up but at the last minute figured those things can be tracked, so he left it where it was. He moved on to the case. His first thought was that it was like his Cavalier, pretty cheap and non-descript. He was going to leave it but again, something made him pick it up. Maybe it was the expensive phone, maybe it was his own habit of hiding valuable behind cheap or maybe it was the thought of a guy out, on the phone with a briefcase at 3am. Either way, before he even realized what he was doing he was back behind the wheel, the briefcase was in the back seat and the car was in drive. He had no idea what he was doing but it was done and there was no going back. As he pulled away, he looked in the rear-view and saw light had spilled out from the door of Leon’s. A silhouetted figure was standing there, seemingly staring at the fleeing Chevy. He glanced at the shape still lying in the street. Was that movement? A trick of the light maybe? No way that guy was getting up. No way. He drove home. He stayed straight and watched the needle all the way. It never went over fifty-five.

2

He sits on the edge of the bed now, staring at the briefcase lying open on the desk beside him. Sleep’s not coming, that much he knows so he has stopped trying. The briefcase had seemed a waste of time at first, a stupid risk that hadn’t been worth taking. A calculator, pens, notepads, a book by some guy named Hammett that he felt he recognized but couldn’t be sure. He was about to toss it when he noticed the little slip of cloth loose in one corner. Pulling at it he felt a moment of excitement when the bottom of the case came away to reveal a single large, inch thick manilla envelope. While one part of his mind thrilled at the thought of what something hidden like that could hold, another part screamed at him to question who would have use of a false bottom in a briefcase, in the middle of the street on the phone at 3am in a not-so-savory part of town. He considered not looking in the envelope and just throwing the whole thing in the furthest dumpster he could find, but what would be the point? If anyone was going to come looking for this thing and found him, wouldn’t it be worse to not have it? Anyway, nobody saw him, did they? Ok, somebody came out after he left but there’s no way they could have seen his plates. Even if they did, who would be able to track him down? Cops don’t go around with briefcases with false bottoms and anyway, the Cavalier was registered to his bitch ex who was living out somewhere on the west coast. Hell, it was probably just some guy coming out of a backroom poker game after a good night. Not so good in the end, pally.

He nearly had himself convinced he was in the clear, right up until he opened the envelope. It was packed with cash. Twenty neatly wrapped bundles of twenty-dollar bills. He counted one of the bundles. Fifty notes. Twenty thousand dollars. He felt the blood rush to his face. This was a good night after all. Twenty grand. Enough to make his day, maybe not enough for anyone to go to the trouble it would take to track him down. All good. That’s always the way, right? Everything seems just perfect right up until the world comes crashing down. It would have been perfect if there had only been the money in there. It wasn’t the money he was staring at now. He didn’t care about that now. It was the book. The little black book that had been slid in on top of the cash. A simple notebook, one of those flip-top ones with the rings that you hold in one hand, you know? It seemed innocuous enough that most people might have just dismissed it but a cold chill ran down his spine. A life spent on the streets meant he knew what he’d see even before he lifted the cover.

Twenty grand. Twenty grand and a small black book. A book that means he’s not surprised to hear the sound of tires on the driveway at 4am. He’s not surprised to hear the footsteps outside the window. He had been so sure nobody had seen him, so careful not to get stopped driving home. He’d never really looked in the rear-view.

He flinches when the knock comes on the door and looks one more time at the book, sitting there with the first page open.

It was just numbers. Three rows. A number, three numbers and a dollar value.

He’s crying as he opens the door.