Is it wrong to steal from a thief?
He rolled up on one elbow, tipped some coke on his knife and sniffed it. Oh God good. How lucky he’d pocketed some when he’d left the plane, because he needed to stay high for what he now had to do. The coke felt lovely and warm sinking through his chest, his stomach, his arms and legs. This golden glow.
Lady Coke I love you. How many times have I buried myself in your luscious flesh, felt your lissome skin against my chest? How many times I’ve kissed every inch of your tantalizing body? Tasted every cell of your sacred heat?
How many times have I inhaled you with the dedication of a lover? Made you mine?
How many times have I followed your counsel, to grave success?
I’m not giving you up again. Never again. I promise.
He turned over restlessly in his sleeping bag. Must have hiked twenty-five miles today, most of it through deep snow. How come he wasn’t tired?
How come he was trying to sleep when he knew he couldn’t?
Zack would go apeshit about his portfolio. Like it was a big thing, twelve million bucks. That wasn’t real money. And he, Steve, had done his best to make it grow.
Zack had said no risks. But no risks didn’t grow it, and Steve’s job was to grow it. Not his fault the markets went sideways. Not his fault at all.
But it was his fault. He couldn’t deny it, didn’t want to.
Zack had wanted the money protected and now it was gone.
He had savaged his friend’s well-being.
You can’t blame yourself for everything, Marcie had said.
But that’s how you get ahead, he’d told her. Taking responsibility for everything.
Trying to fix everything.
He had to tell Zack about his lost money.
The tent above his head sank toward him with the weight of new snow.
ZACK WOKE, wondered why. A sound, an absence? Had to piss.
He banged on the tent sides to shake off the new snow, squirmed out of his sleeping bag, tugged on his unlaced boots, unzipped the tent fly and crawled out.
The snow had stopped. A carious moon glared through the branches. Cold stung his nostrils like fire. He shivered, had a moment’s sorrow for all the animals out in this frozen night, without a sleeping bag or tent or fire or even a gun to protect them.
And death comes fast, at the tiniest mistake.
Or even no mistake.
He shuffled to the side of the tent and pissed with a long deep sigh, burning a hole in the snow.
From Steve’s tent a faint line of tracks led down toward the distant highway and came back up again. And new tracks led up the mountain toward the plane. He must have gone uphill to piss, Zack decided. But why so far?
Was he crazy, out in this deadly night?
Zack checked Steve’s tent. Empty.
Steve’s rifle and the pack frame he normally stowed down one side of the tent were gone.
Zack ducked back into his tent for his coat, hat, gloves, gun and headlamp, laced his boots, zipped his tent shut and followed Steve’s tracks uphill over the ridge toward the plane.
THE CAVE
THE MOON was crystal, the wind like dry ice in his lungs. Steve’s tracks were following the same trail he and Zack had made coming back from the plane, now just a trace under the new-fallen snow. Steve was moving fast, sure of being alone.
When Zack followed him to the ridge above the plane he could see the dark thread of Steve’s tracks but no sign of the plane, realized it was now nearly buried in snow. From it another set of tracks climbed the far side of the valley, a tiny figure toiling up it, bent under something on his back.
Zack reached the plane as Steve came running downhill, an empty pack frame slung over one shoulder. The plane’s door was open, in the light of his headlamp Zack could see that one coffin was empty, the other half-gone.
Steve came up panting, bent over to catch his breath. “Too high up here. Can’t breathe.”
“What are you doing?”
Steve huffed a laugh. “Moving our coke. You can help with what’s left.”
“Our coke?” Zack sat down in the snow. “You are nuts!”
“I hid it in that cave up there we found last year.” Steve sucked in a breath. “Now it’s ours. All ours.”
Zack remembered the cave, undiscovered, a few arrowheads on a stone ledge, blackened earth from ancient fires. It had seemed sacred, and they had touched nothing. “We have to put it back!”
“Are you totally crazy?” Steve shook him. “We’re going to be rich!”
“I already am rich, soon as I cash out. I don’t need your stolen drugs.”
“Yes you do.” Steve clapped him on the shoulder. “Look, man, it’s hard to tell you, but I’ve just learned your money isn’t available right now.”
Zack felt his muscles tighten. “Isn’t available?”
“We put it in auction rate securities, remember? Citigroup? Now they’re saying they won’t release it.”
“You said it was cash equivalent! You promised me! Buy however many millions you want, they give us one-fifty over Libor and a seven-day redeem.” Zack held himself back from hitting Steve, smashing him down. “That’s what you said!”
“That’s what they said. It’s in the prospectus. The SEC backed it. S&P and Moody’s rated it Triple A, no risk. But now with other values going south there’s been a run on them. Merrill Lynch, UBS, Citigroup, they’re all getting hit. Trouble is, the cover’s only eight percent, and they’ve already blown past it. So it’s sucking money, money they don’t have.”
Zack nearly fell to his knees. All his years, all the work, all the pain and the freedom it had bought, gone. “You’re saying they’re worthless?”
“For the moment.” Steve waved a hand at the plane, uphill toward the cave. “So this coke, it can make us whole again.”
“You,” Zack tried to hold down the wrath rising inside him, “you’re saying you’ve lost my money?”
“Mine too. I’m in as deep as you. I’m suing them, but …” he waved a hand uselessly, “you know …”
Zack looked away, head spinning, the night black and ominous. At the future with no money. The job he was losing.
At Haney the Rat and the Vegas guys who wanted their two million bucks.
He glanced at Steve, this guy he’d trusted absolutely. Wanted to smash him down. Wanted to understand what is it I’m not understanding? Maybe it isn’t Steve’s fault?
“Give me time,” Steve said. “I’ll figure a way.”
Zack realized he wasn’t breathing, inhaled. Already the shock was wearing down: This is the new reality. Deal with it. “Who’s this lawyer?”
“He’s a securities specialist. Used to work for the SEC. Says we have a chance of getting some of it back.”
“Some of it?”
“Thirty cents on the dollar. Maybe. And I’m pushing the New York and Massachusetts DA’s to look into it. They don’t like it either, it drives up their muni rates.”