The Guardian
Lit Up — February’s Prompt: Movie Quotes
“You pay for everything in this world, one way or another.” — Mattie Ross, True Grit
People say there’s no such thing as the perfect crime. I happen to agree, as this stark truth was waiting in my mailbox, of all places, nestled in a pile of bills, credit card applications and grocery store fliers.
The crisp, white envelope had no address, stamp or postmark, and when I took it inside and ran a long fingernail along the gluey flap, it clung to itself as though desperate to stop me from reaching its contents.
I dropped the torn envelope on the counter and unfolded the single sheet of paper, my heart lurching at the pasted patchwork of individual magazine and newspaper letters staring back at me:
I kNOw WhaT yOU did. ComE TO tHe WEsT sT TavErN aT 9pM. AsK For RoSs.
Acid burned my throat, and I managed to stumble to the bathroom in time to heave watery bile into the toilet, tears streaming down my face. Whenever I thought about that night, I tasted the ashes of searing flesh, felt the smoke singeing my lungs and coating my nostrils. Though I didn’t regret what I’d done, it hadn’t been pleasant, and the fact that someone else knew about it sickened me with dread.
After rinsing out my mouth, I twisted my hair into a messy bun with shaking hands, then abandoned my pencil skirt and blouse for jeans, a long-sleeved gray shirt, puffy black jacket, and black trainers. I left my apartment at 8:30 and drove under the moonless Baltimore night to West Street, parking a block away from the tavern. As I hiked uphill to the bar, my head pounded, protesting the January wind’s icy fingertips that clutched at my exposed ears and tugged the hair at my temples.
The place wasn’t crowded when I stumbled over the threshold into the dim interior; only a few tables had customers, and the bar was anchored by a single patron and a bartender watching sports highlights on a small television hanging in the corner.
Not seeing a hostess or waitress, I approached the bartender. “Excuse me.”
He tore his eyes away from the screen. “Yeah?”
“I’m looking for someone named Ross.”
His eyebrows lifted in recognition, and he pushed back the DuClaw tap, spilling amber liquid into a pint glass. “You want the group in the corner, behind you on your right.”
I hesitated. “Okay. Um, do you know them?”
He gave me a crooked smile and handed me the beer. “On the house. They’re waiting for you. Better hurry.” He folded his arms and went back to the television.
Since my palms were sweaty, I used two hands to hold the chilly glass as I made my way to the round table in the corner. Three heads tilted up as I approached, their faces shadowed under baseball cap brims.
“Ross?” I said.
“Sit down, Jessie,” the one on my right said.
I set the beer down in the middle of the table, then sat in the empty chair and glanced around the table. Even at eye level it was hard to see their faces in detail, but they all appeared to be women.
“We’re glad you’re here,” the same woman said. “I’m sorry if we alarmed you with that note.”
“If you alarmed me? Wasn’t that the point?”
“We wanted to get your attention, to make sure you would come.”
“You’ve got it,” I said, my face growing hot as apprehension nudged my circulation into overdrive. “Who are you, and what do you want? Who’s Ross?”
“This is Emily,” she said, pointing at the woman on my left, and then at the woman across from me. “And this is Theresa. I’m Rita. Ross is no one. You know True Grit?”
“Which one, the book or the movie?”
“Doesn’t matter. The main character is Mattie Ross.”
“I know,” I said. “What about it?”
“Well, as you know, Mattie is a young girl who sets out to avenge her father’s death. She doesn’t let the fact that she’s young or female stop her.”
“Fine. What does that have to do with me?”
“We know about Ryan.”
A wave of sickness swept away the tiny hope I’d been nursing that they hadn’t known about it after all, that maybe this was a misunderstanding. “What exactly do you think you know?” It was pointless, but I had to ask.
“The fire. We know you set it, and why you did.”
I blinked, and a tear broke free from the corner of my eye. “I…”
“You don’t have to explain,” Theresa said, her voice low and hoarse.
“No, I suppose I don’t.” I swiped my fingers across my cheek. “What say we cut straight to the part where you blackmail me. You should know that although I work at a bank, I have about $500 in my savings account, and that’s it.”
“Hold on,” Rita said. “Let’s rewind here. We’re not trying to threaten you.”
“Then what the hell are you trying to do?” I felt like a yoyo at the end of a fraying string, plunging back and forth between hope and despair.
“We want to hire you,” Emily said.
“Hire me?”
“The police never suspected arson,” Rita said. “However you did it, you didn’t leave any evidence behind.”
“How do you know that?” The anxiety I’d been choking on for the last two months clawed its way up to the top of my throat.
Rita slanted her hat brim back so I could see a little more of her face. Lines stamped the corners of her eyes and hugged her mouth like parentheses. “I work at the station, in dispatch, and I’m friends with the detective on the case. They completed their investigation last week, and ruled it accidental. Said the curtains caught fire because a coil space heater got too hot.”
“You’re sure?” I swallowed the thickening lump. “They closed it?”
“Done. It’s over.”
I buried my head in my hands and sobbed, my shoulders releasing some of the tension that had wound tighter and tighter like a tinker toy since the night of the fire. Salty tears tumbled down my cheeks and into my mouth. Rita and Emily each put a hand on my back until I caught my breath and wiped the damp from my face with a table napkin.
“Take a drink,” Rita said, handing me the DuClaw.
I gulped it down, then looked around the table. All three women were watching me, and a little of the anxiety pushed back against the relief. “You said you wanted to hire me?”
“Yes,” Rita said. “We wouldn’t have even known you existed if it hadn’t been for Emily.”
We all turned to Emily, who tipped her hat back and gazed at me with familiar almond-shaped blue eyes. “Just so you know,” she said, “I made Rebecca tell me. She didn’t want to.”
“You her sister?” I asked.
“Half. She said he would have killed her if you hadn’t gotten to him first. I had no idea how bad it was; he kept her from seeing us, and she never was much of a talker.”
“Unless she’s ratting her friend out, evidently,” I said, tasting the bitter betrayal on my tongue.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “If it makes you feel any better, she only alluded to it, and that was after I hounded her. The fact that you’re here confirms it.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t seen Rebecca since a week after the fire. She’d quit the bank, citing heartache, though her face had lost the stoniness we’d grown used to seeing over the last two years. Before she left town, she promised never to tell. “What is it you’re wanting me to do?”
Theresa slid a picture across the table, and I picked it up. It showed a couple: a man with dark eyes and hair, wearing jeans and a Washington Capitals hockey jersey, with his arm around a short blond woman’s shoulders. Her lips were curled into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, which showed faint bruising underneath. I looked from the picture to Theresa, whose blond hair peeked out from under her cap. “Who is this you’re with? Boyfriend or husband?”
“Husband,” she said, her voice gritty. “I’ve left twice, and each time it’s a little worse when he finds me. He says he’ll kill my mother if I leave again, and I believe him.”
“Why don’t you go to — ”
“Don’t even say it,” Rita said. “You know they can’t do anything.”
“This is insane, what you’re asking me,” I said. “Rebecca was my friend. I loved her, and I watched her waste away for two years until I couldn’t stand it anymore. It’s not like I go around doing this sort of thing at random. Sometimes I still can’t believe what I did.” It was the closest I’d ever come to admitting my crime out loud.
“We can pay ten grand,” Rita said.
I squinted. “Is that what it costs these days to sell your soul?”
“You’re getting a conscience now?” Rita said. “It’s a little late.”
“I’m not a violent person.”
“Maybe not,” Theresa said. “But he is.”
I looked back down at the picture. He looked like a regular guy, someone no one would suspect of being a monster. Then again, so had Ryan. “What if I say no? Are you going to turn me in?”
The women exchanged glances. “We would rather not compel you,” Rita said. “But you sure as hell aren’t giving us a reason not to.”
“What about the good I did for Rebecca? That’s your argument for me to do this, isn’t it? For the good?”
“I don’t care why you do it,” she said. “Do it for the ten grand, do it for the good of it, do it because it gets you off. The point is, you’ve already made the leap, and since you’re good at it, there’s no reason you shouldn’t do it now.” She pulled an envelope out of her jacket pocket and dropped it on the table in front of me.
I lifted the flap with my thumb and forefinger, as though it might bite me, and saw a stack of bills. “What’s this?”
“Five thousand now, five thousand when it’s done,” she said.
I toyed with the edge of the envelope. It was checkmate, and we all knew it. I couldn’t say no, because they would turn me in. At the same time, by hiring me to commit murder, they were just as guilty as I was. We were complicit together, snared in a murderous pact, whether justifiable or not.
“I’ll do it,” I said, heart pounding as I folded the envelope flap back down. “I presume you’ll be in touch with details for me?”
Rita and Emily smiled, while Theresa folded her hands into a peak over her nose.
“We’ll meet you here on Thursday of next week, same time,” Rita said. “We’ll have everything you need, keys, codes, et cetera.”
I nodded, then leaned across the table to Theresa. “You sure about this?” I said. “Once it’s done, it can’t be undone.”
She nodded, and I scooped the envelope off the table and stuffed it in my pocket. My chest was buzzing with adrenaline, and I felt like I could lift the bar table over my head if I wanted to. It was the same kind of high I felt after making the decision to take care of Ryan, only this time I didn’t feel the angst, and my earlier reluctance had faded away as though it had never existed.
“Thank you,” Rita said.
It struck me as funny, her thanking me when I didn’t have a choice. I let a chuckle escape.
Rita gave me a lopsided smile. “At least we paid you.”
I stood up and leaned down in front of Rita’s face. “This is an important point, and one that I’m learning the hard way. You pay for everything in this world, one way or another.”
