The Windfall

The Windfall

1997

Ellis stared down at the cashier’s check, a slim blue bridge to a new life.

What’ll you do with it? Captain Bryant had asked her back at the station. Something good, I hope.

Something good meant different things to different people. To former trailer trash like her, it was a way out. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say so, but instead she’d just smiled and shook her head.

I don’t know yet. Pay off some bills, probably.

Bryant had scoffed. Boring. You should treat yourself. It’s not everyday you catch a murderer, you know.

She leaned her head against the cool glass of the taxi window and watched the city unroll in the dark tube of Monday evening. Summer had come and gone so quickly, taking the sun with it. Once the cold set in it wouldn’t leave for months, the biggest downside to moving north. She was a sunshine girl, needed the shimmer of heat over blacktop to keep her head right.

Maybe she would travel. Head to a warmer climate. $20,000 would buy one hell of a vacation, and she’d still have some money left over to pull herself out of debt. Or she could just make another move and stay put this time, put Philly behind her.

Lazy, Grandma whispered in her mind. You always took the easy way out. Never was one to stick around when things got real.

But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Ellis had stayed in Miami after the deaths of her mother and grandfather, had stayed even though she’d dreamed of escape for at least a decade. She’d kept a promise to take care of Grandma until the end. Even when the end got messy.

Ellis pulled a small black notebook from the breast pocket of her coat and flipped it open to the last page, where a list of names and dates glared at her accusingly. A hit list, to be precise, with only one name missing a check mark: Judge Thomas Birch, her boss. An image floated through her mind: the black book falling from a man’s coat pocket, landing right in front of her on the courthouse stairs. He was distracted on his cell phone and didn’t notice the loss of it. She’d knelt to pick it up and when she stood again the man was gone, having disappeared into the throng of people leaving on their lunch hour.

I didn’t get a good look at him, she’d told Captain Bryant. He was walking in front of me. But I overheard the end of his phone call, and he threatened Judge Birch’s life.

Of course, she hadn’t overheard any such thing, but she had seen the news stories about three unsolved murder cases that police believed were linked, so the names she saw as she flipped through the book were familiar. It was as easy as connecting the dots, really, and it had paid off. $20,000, a reward offered by the city for information leading to an arrest. Ellis had nearly choked on her Lean Cuisine when she heard the news reporter say that James Deveroux had been taken into custody on suspicion of murder.

Suspicion. That’s how it started: a hunch, intuition. Ellis had connected the names of dead men--all government officials--and had a feeling her boss was next. It was that same intuition that had told her to keep the little black book a secret.

Guilt twisted her stomach into a slick fist. It was pure old-fashioned detective work that got Deveroux caught; they checked the sign-out sheet at security and questioned all the men whose names came before Ellis’s. Still, she’d profited from it all, and it didn’t sit easy with her. She was involved now. She’d hidden evidence in a murder investigation.

Yes, I stayed with Grandma even when it got messy, she thought. But how messy will my ending be?

***

It was the scrap of paper that bothered her.

Stuck between the last two pages of the little black book, hardly the width of her index finger, it had clearly been ripped in a hurry. It held a word and a set of numbers: Ungers 6395, it read. The name was maddeningly familiar to Ellis, but she couldn’t pull it up in her memory. A restaurant, maybe? But no, a look through the phone book didn’t show an Ungers.

She shook her head as if to clear it and laid back on her bed, looking up at the cheap ceiling fan. Her apartment had never felt like home no matter how she decorated it.

That’s because it ain’t home, Grandma whispered. You’ll never be able to live outside of Miami. You can’t escape your family. We’re all you got.

They were the last words Grandma had spoken to Ellis before the end began, before her mind started its irretrievable slipping. Ellis had locked herself in the bathroom to cry into a washcloth, certain that Grandma was right. She would never be able to escape the ring of petty criminals she’d been born into, no matter how far away she moved. The instincts to lie and steal were in her blood. She’d moved to Philly anyway, desperate to put those neon alleyways behind her, but obviously Grandma had been right. There was a little black book on her nightstand that proved it.

Ellis yanked on her coat, making a sudden decision. She would leave now instead of tomorrow, take the last flight to Hilton Head. She needed white sand and pink skies, a different kind of warmth than Miami offered.

On the way out, she grabbed the little black book and shoved it back in her breast pocket. No sense in leaving it for someone to find if she decided not to come back.

***

The cab driver, Eddie, flicked his eyes back and forth between the mirror and the road as he talked about his wife, his job, his granddaughter Morgan.

“She’s the sweetest kid you can imagine,” he said. “Seven years old and smart as a whip. She fell and broke her foot a few weeks ago at soccer practice and the doctors say she might need an operation, but her mom can’t afford it. I’ve been bustin’ my hump since then, working double shifts. Every fare helps.”

Ellis smiled at his reflection but didn’t offer conversation. She was exhausted from overthinking, and the city lights were lulling her into a comfortable sort of trance as they slid by. The downtown area was illuminated with strands of white twinkle lights, although Christmas was still a month away. They reminded her of better days.

At a stop light near the edge of town, Ellis suddenly sat up in the backseat.

“Pull over,” she commanded, tapping Eddie on the shoulder.

“What? Where?”

“There,” she said, pointing to the right side of the street.

A delivery van was leaving a parking space in front of a building. The small, hand-lettered sign on the outer brick wall read:

Youngers Auto Body & Tow

6395 Broadway

“Wait for me,” she told Eddie, and slid out of the car before he could protest.

The lone window was dark, showing no movement within. The business hours were painted in white on the front door: 9-5, Monday through Friday. They’d been closed for a while, then. Ellis tried to act nonchalant as she moved down the sidewalk, but froze as she realized it ended in a dark alleyway. Youngers Auto Body backed up against the alley on one side and a parking garage on the other.

Memories of Miami flashed through her mind, lapping at her senses like wildfire through tall grasses. Her father had done business in alleys like this one, and her uncles. Ellis had been introduced to the city’s underbelly at a young age, but it never got any easier to navigate.

She couldn’t even be sure of her motivations, but something was calling to her. Intuition, maybe, or perhaps just curiosity. What had James Deveroux wanted with this seemingly benign auto shop?

She inched down the alleyway, throwing a quick look over her shoulder at Eddie the cab driver. He was still waiting, but she couldn’t see his face through the dewy windshield. A pity. She could have used a kind face just then.

When her foot bumped something hard, she jerked back and flattened herself against the wall of the body shop, heart beating a tattoo inside her chest. It was a cardboard box, about a foot long and half as wide. Ellis eyed it warily but made no move to touch it.

“Did James send you?” a voice rasped in the darkness, and Ellis jumped.

The alley was just shadows upon shadows, vague shapes without definition, but after a moment one of the shapes moved. Ellis pressed herself against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible. Her bladder suddenly felt painfully full.

“Who are you?” the man asked, closer this time, and when Ellis didn’t answer, he lifted his arm.

Sparks in the darkness, an explosion that clanged in her ears like a church bell. Ellis screamed, her body thrown back by the force of the bullet. She was tossed like a rag doll and landed in a heap in the alley, arms bent beneath her at an awkward angle. Another shot went wild and hit the box in front of her, ripping it to shreds. Faintly, she could hear footsteps running into the distance.

“Hey! Are you okay?”

Ellis squinted up into the glow of a flashlight and held up a hand to show she was still breathing. Eddie crouched over her, eyes wide.

“I heard the shot, which way did he go?” he said. “I’ll run down to the payphone and call the cops.”

“He’s gone,” Ellis said, waving dismissively at him. The last thing she wanted was the police.

The cabbie looked worriedly down at her. “Where are you hit?”

Everywhere, she wanted to say. Her body felt as though it had been dropped from a great height onto a pile of cars. She sat up with care and gingerly pressed a hand to her chest, where the pain was radiating outward, but when she pulled her fingers away there was no blood. After a moment she reached into the breast pocket of her coat and felt the little black book, rubbed a fingertip over the bullet lodged firmly in the middle.

“I’m fine,” she said. “He missed me.”

A sudden wind kicked up, spilling the contents of the box. For a moment it was snowing in the alleyway as shreds of paper flew into the air; a few seconds later, hundreds of bills caught the breeze and swirled into a funnel shape before landing softly on the wet stones. A windfall, Ellis thought crazily, and laughed.

“Eddie,” Ellis said, “I think your granddaughter is going to get that surgery after all.”