What would you do for $20,000?

What would you do for $20,000? I mean, it’s not a million dollars so you still have to go to work in the morning. But it’s not chump change, you could buy that new TV you wanted and still have some cash leftover to maybe buy some stock and hope that those guys from Reddit will drive it up and you can triple it. Or go on that vacation you always wanted with the girl that always shut you down. Whatever you like. It’s all there, in 10 $2,000 straps of 20 dollar bills waiting for you. Untraceable.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to kill anybody, have sex with a stranger, or blow up a building, and you won’t even go to jail if everything goes right. What did I do for $20,000? Let me tell you. It all began when I was walking in the park and found a small black notebook on a bench…

My name is Danny. I was doing my regular walk home from old Mr. Campbell’s barber shop. I heard someone call him Neil once, but to me he was always Mr. Campbell. I just turned 22 and working there part time to help make ends meet sweeping up the hair and keeping the combs clean, washing the windows, that kind of thing.

So like I said, I was walking in the park after work and I see this black notebook on a bench. No one was around and it was getting dark, so I figured “What the hell?” and picked it up.

When I looked at it, man, you won’t believe it, but it had my name on the cover! It said, “Daniel, please read” on it! I looked around again and no one was there. Not even a dog or Mrs. Starlings cat… nothing! So I sat down on the bench next to the trash can and opened it up. No writing anywhere else but on the first page, I checked. It said:

“Daniel, we have been watching you and want to help you out. You don’t want to live with your mother forever, do you? Beside you is a trash can. If you pull out the trash bag you will find a large envelope with $20,000, a set of instructions, and a small ziplock bag with a substance inside. If after you read the instructions and decide not to continue, no problem, just return the envelope, substance and money within 12 hours in the same container. If even one dollar is missing, we will come for you. Remember Daniel, we are watching.”

So what did I do? Like a goof I lifted the trash bag, which must have been just changed because it was close to empty, and there was the envelope. It was heavy, with lots of stuff in it. I looked around again really slowly this time, but still couldn’t see anything, I hesitated, thinking this might be some kind of prank, but after I peaked inside and saw all the green, I stashed the envelope and the black book in my jacket and ran home as fast I could.

When I got home I ran up the stairs to my bedroom and as soon as the door was shut I ripped open the envelope and threw everything on my bed. The money was all there, just as the note promised. I counted it all, twice. Twenty grand, in all its glory. I carefully stacked the cash on my bed. Breathing heavily, I picked up the note saying what I had to do to keep the cash, leaving the ziplock bag where it had fallen.

It read: “Daniel, This is all we are asking you to do. Carl Goheen has an appointment at the barber shop you work at tomorrow morning at 11 am for a hair cut before his televised debate with Senator Smoot. We want you to mix the fluid in the plastic bag with the water Mr. Campbell will use to cut his hair. Nothing will happen immediately so nothing can be traced back to you, and it won’t hurt him long term. Do that, and you keep the money. All of it. Signed, A Friend.

I must have read it a hundred times. Mess with one of Mr. Campbell’s clients after he has been taking care of the neighborhood for 50 years? Hell no! I crumbled that note up and threw it at the wall as hard as I could. I picked up the ziplock bag and opened my door and headed to the bathroom and held it over the toilet. Just as I was about to drop it in, I started thinking, as long as it didn’t hurt anyone, and better yet, couldn’t be traced back to us…

Leaving the bathroom and going back to my room, I inspected it thoroughly. The first thing I noticed was that it looked just like shampoo, with a light blue tint and gooey when you squeezed it. I opened the bag and sniffed it, yup, just like shampoo. Reluctantly, I reached my hand in to touch it. I figured if it burned I could wash it off quick like, and I wouldn’t go through with it. The money would be great, but Mr. Campbell is almost like family, giving me a job, giving out free haircuts when people couldn’t afford them, a real stand up guy. I felt like I owed it to him to make sure it was safe like they said. So I closed my eyes, reached in and touched it and felt… nothing! It was like putting your hand in cold soup, but no pain at all!

But the note said that nothing would happen immediately, so I got a little scared. What if it burned my hand off later? But the rest of the night, nothing changed, I felt no different, and my hand felt fine. I stacked the money underneath my socks in my dresser (ma had stopped doing my laundry when I graduated high school so it was safe there) and decided if when I woke up tomorrow and nothing had happened I would do it.

When I got up the next morning, I looked at my hand all my fingers were still there and I felt no pain. So I decided if I was ok, so would Carl Goheen.

Now, before I go any further, I couldn’t care less about politics and knew nothing about where either of them stood on anything. Goheen could have been to the right of Hitler and Smoot could have been to the left of Stalin and I wouldn’t have known. All I cared about was surviving, and if there was no harm in putting whatever it was into his hair, why not? If whoever sent the note came after me, I would say I did it but they must have mixed it up wrong because nothing happened.

When I got in to work that morning, I was amazed that it was so easy to put the stuff in the mixing bowl that Mr. Campbell used to spray down everyone’s hair. I just put everything in the bag in, used an extra straw I picked up that morning to mix it in, and it was like it wasn’t even there. I poured it into the bottle, popped on the top, and we were in business. By the end of the day, if it hadn’t been for the money under the socks, it would have been like none of it had happened because when I got home both the note and notebook were gone.

Well, we all know what happened during the debate. Midway through taking a question on where the country was headed, Goheen’s hair started to fall out. First one at a time so you could hardly notice it, but then it was just a steady stream til he was as bald as a baby’s butt. He went ballistic, cursing on the air and yelling about conspiracies about how everyone was out to get him. His hair did grow back and there were no long term effects just like the note said, but I stopped caring about him the second I turned off the tv set when his hair started pulling a Niagara Falls all over his podium.

See, we had more customers that got hair cuts that day, but not too many that we needed to change out the bottle. So about the time of the debate, twenty other people had their hair fall out. Their lives moved on and they were fine but word got around what had happened and it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and it all came back on Mr. Campbell.

I sent an email to Senator Smoot the next day, threatening to go to the press and putting everything out in the open. I would have too, but the day after that I woke up with a note on my pillow that said, “Daniel, stop what you are doing. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.” On the other side of the note was a picture of my mom coming home from work. So that was that.

After that, people stopped coming in to the barber shop. I felt so bad, I tried to tell Mr. Campbell what had happened, even would have given him the money if he wanted it. I just didn’t know how to tell him it was all my fault. But there was never the right time and in the end, it didn’t even matter.

A month later he killed himself. Took a shotgun to his mouth after writing out a letter saying that his reputation was ruined and he had nothing left to live for. I found what was left of his skull on the ceiling one morning and screamed and screamed until I passed out.

That was a year ago, and I still have the money, and I still live with my mom. I take it out and count it once a month to make sure it’s all there, and it always is. Maybe when I don’t feel so guilty about ruining an old man’s life that cared and trusted folks a little too much I will spend it and get out of here. Maybe never.

So if you ever get a black notebook telling you to do something for a lot of money, ask yourself: What would you do for $20,000? Think hard about what you will have to live with after you do it. Think hard.