Page 60 of Havoc

Storm calls church at eight the next mornin'.

Not that night. That's the first thing that's wrong. Twenty-two years and I have never once known that man to leave a thing sittin' overnight, and he did, and every man who walks into that room at eight o'clock knows it.

He's already in the chair when we come in. Same clothes as last night. He ain't slept and he ain't hidin' that he ain't slept.

Ransom doesn't sit down.

"Fore we start," he says. "Safe's eighteen short."

The room turns.

"Went in it at six-forty this mornin' for the pawn shop money Prez authorized Thursday. Counted it twice and then I got Tyrant out of bed to count it a third time." His rings are off and lined up in front of him and he ain't looked at me one time. "Duplessis's eleven from Friday and seven under it. Gone. Carpet was flat and the door was shut and it was locked when I got there.

"Four men got that combination."

Tyrant's got the book open.

"Nothin' in it," he says. "No draw, no note, no page. Whoever took it didn't write it."

Deacon puts both hands on the table.

Nobody says a word for about four seconds, and I sit there in a room I've sat in twice a week for fifteen years and understand that if I let those four seconds turn into six, three men at this table are going to start lookin' at each other.

"I took it," I say.

Warden shuts his eyes.

That's the only thing anybody does for a while. Blitz has gone white around the mouth. Raider's leant back with one arm over the chair next to him and he's lookin' at the ceilin'.

"Say the rest," Storm says.

"Sunday mornin'. Eighteen thousand, out of the floor safe, and I didn't write it because there wasn't anywhere to write it that wasn't worse." My hands are flat on the table. I put 'em there on purpose this time. "Four o'clock Sunday I met Lucien Arceneaux at a Chevron off the interstate in Gonzales and I put it in his hand for nine more days on the clock.

"He called me Friday. Not you. Me, on my phone, and he give me seventy-two hours to bring him her and the item or he starts sendin' his own people into this parish, and I bought him off with club money and I did not put it to this table."

"Alone," Warden says.

"Alone."

"You met that man alone."

"Yeah."

"And he took it." Ransom's got both hands flat now. "Eighteen thousand dollars against a twenty-two-year balance nobody's ever been able to name, and he took it in a gas station parkin' lot with no paper and no witness and no accountin' to his own house."

"He did."

"You understand what that means."

"I understood it when he said where," I say. "That's why I offered it."

Ransom sits back.

He looks at me for a long moment, and there's somethin' underneath his face that ain't anger, and it's worse.

"Boy," he says. "You just made yourself a partner to a man who's stealin' from Rémy Arceneaux. There ain't no un-doin' that. He's got a receipt on you now and it's got your face on it."

"That's the money," Storm says. "That's a separate matter and we'll come to it.