Trash - Andy Mulligan [59]
We threw out the other bits of broken stone and eased her out.
Back to me, Raphael. Like Gardo says, the wind was getting up and it made us want to work faster than ever. Rat got the rope around the coffin. Then, as we slid her out, he squeezed right into the hole so he was safe and firm. That meant he could let it down to us, because six million dollars in a wooden box … I tell you, six million dollars in a box is heavy, if that’s what was in the box – don’t forget we didn’t know that for sure. We only thought we knew, but it felt as heavy as that kind of money ought to be. We got her on the ground, and though we’d all said we’d move fast, we had to see what it was inside, right there and then.
The knife was our screwdriver. Eight screws held the lid, and I know, lifting a coffin lid … you think of all the evil things in the world – in a graveyard, in the middle of the night – but I think all three of us knew in our hearts now, so we just did those screws and lifted it, and like Gardo says, the ghosts were around us, watching.
Oh sweet Lord, the money was there.
The money was there. It was packed in so snug it was like the box was made for it.
You want to know what six million looks like? I will try to tell you.
To me, sitting next to it, it looked like food and drink, and changing my life – and getting a way out of the city for ever. It looked like change, it looked like the future. I don’t know what it looked like. We stared a moment, and nobody spoke. We had the plan, and the plan was not finished yet, and none of us suddenly thought, Let’s keep it all – nobody even suggested we change the last part of our plan. We knew the money wasn’t ours, because even though I never met that man, Gabriel Olondriz – the way Gardo had told us about him, I knew he was a good man, through and through. It was All Souls’ Night, and he was there, I hope and believe, at the front of the ghost-crowd! Right there with us. I think he stayed with us too – I hope with José Angelico, arm in arm – with us all the way.
5
Jun – no longer Rat. My name is Jun-Jun.
And the boys have given me the last part of the story – I guess because the last part was my idea. They dispute that – Gardo says it was his, because he was the only one of us who met Mr Gabriel, but I was the one who knew how to do it – and it did get done at what was once my home, or just above it.
Also, Raphael – he had the whole first part of the story, and I think he knows we tell it together, better, because we are a team now. Who cares, in the end? Who cares who did what when the whole point was we did it together?
We’d talked it all out, asking the same questions: what do you do with six million dollars? How are you going to spend it? Or what would we do, the three of us? Line up in the bank the next morning and ask to put it in a safe? Bury it some place else?
The one thing we knew is that as soon as we had it, it would be taken away – you think we stood a chance of keeping even a million? So I said we should take it to Behala and put it in the trash for anyone who finds it.
Maybe it was the brandy, but what I remember is the boys just laughing at me, and laughing at each other.
We shook it all out of the coffin into the sack and the sheet. José Angelico’s money: the money stolen by the senator-vice-president from hell, from all his own people. We roped up the sack and the sheet and got them on our backs. We took them over the wall, just in case the gates were guarded – every gate in this city is … We stopped off for Pia, of course, and she was so sleepy I had to carry her on my back, so Gardo took one sack, Raphael the other – and off we went into the wind, which was getting strong now, racing along the streets and making a noise, rolling trash ahead of it.
Who did we meet? Who else could we meet but a little gang of baby trash boys doing the night shift, scavenging about with