The Ruins

Jim hesitated before coming down the steps of the old house, avoiding the ones that had rotted away and brushing dust off his jacket as he entered the kitchen, surprised to see Ricky standing there.

“Oh, hey. Uh, check this out. Wait. Where’s Jessy?”

“Outside. Taking a leak,” Ricky said, glancing at the open door.

“Again? Jeez.”

“Oh, cool. You found one of those old Adidas bags. I had one of those.”

“Me, too. We all did. But look at this,” Jim said, pulling the bag open. “There’s gotta be a hundred grand in here. More, maybe”

Inside were bundles of cash, mostly hundreds, bank straps still in place. All crisp and unused. They were old bills, before new anti-counterfeit designs came in a year back. A few old bills were still circulating, but were getting rare. Banks were supposed to turn them in whenever they got one.

“Holy cow,” Ricky said, grabbing bundles out of the bag. Jim was staring down into the bag.

Neither noticed they were no longer alone.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The voice was deep and gravely.

“Uuuhh,” Jim said, looking up, still holding the bag open. “I just found this upstairs.”

Ricky turned to see the visitor. He looked familiar, but couldn’t quite place him. Ricky was holding the bundles of cash to his chest.

“Put those back,” the man said, pointing at the cash with a knife. Ricky dumped the cash back in the bag, eager to comply and get out of there.

“Now, hand me the bag. Slowly.”

“Then what?” Jim asked. Ricky snapped his head around to look at Jim.

“What the hell are you doing? Give him the damn money,” Ricky said in a loud whisper, his eyes wide. Jim ignored him.

“Are we supposed to believe that you’ll let us just walk out of here. After we’ve seen your face. Your face that’s been in the papers all week?”

Ricky looked back at the man. That’s where he’d seen him. The papers had been running the mugshot of an escaped prisoner all week, telling people to report any sightings and keep a distance. Ricky was starting to see why. He closed his eyes. They were going to die.

“I haven’t decided yet. Maybe you give me your ID, and if anything happens to me, I come after your families.”

“It’ll be too late by then.”

Ricky looked at Jim, eyebrows high. He’d always thought Jim was the smart one, but was starting to doubt it.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Jim said, letting the bag drop to one side as he held on by its vinyl straps.

“Oh, really?”

“This much money, most of it hundreds, is going to be hard to spend. You can’t deposit it anywhere, not without raising suspicion. And these being the old bills makes it all the harder.”

The man said nothing. He pushed his lips together. He knew all this. It’s why he’d escaped. He’d read in the prison library about the new bills coming in, and knew he’d have to get out soon if he ever wanted to use the money he’d stashed.

He’d been caught after that last job, but never said where the money was. Figured he could do a few extra years if it meant having the money waiting for him. With the change to new bills, those extra years were becoming too much of a liability – so he needed out. It took a while to plan and execute his escape, but he’d done it. Then these two dorks showed up.

“I work at a bank,” Jim said, pushing the fingers of his free hand into his chest. Ricky turned to look at him, wrinkles forming on his forehead. Jim flashed him a look to keep quiet.

“We get these old bills all the time. We turn them in to the mint, and they send us new ones.”

“Okay. So, what’s that got to do with me?”

“I can exchange these bills for you. Get you smaller ones even, like 20s and 50s. Those’ll be easier to spend.”

The man was quiet. Ricky was starting to feel better. This could actually work. Maybe Jim was smart, he thought, until he opened his mouth again.

“All we need is 10 per cent.”

Ricky was shocked. The man laughed.

“I’ve got a guy,” the man said. “Its all arranged.”

“Is he charging 10 per cent? I’d bet it’s more. A lot more.”

“I trust him. I don’t trust you,” the man said, waving his knife at Jim. “I could just kill you now and take all the money.”

Back to square one, Ricky thought.

“You can trust us. That’s what the 10 per cent is for. It makes us guilty, too. We can’t report you without getting into trouble ourselves.”

The man thought about it. Jim and Ricky looked at each other and nodded their heads. They were about to get out of this, and pocket a bit of cash themselves. That’s when they heard the thud.

They turned to look at the man. He was staring straight at them. Eyes wide open, not seeing, mouth hanging open. The man collapsed to the floor. Behind him was Jessy, still holding a rock the size of a brick, blood smeared across its front. Blood seeped across the floor from the man’s head.

“Noooo!” Jim yelled. “What the hell did you just do?”

“What?” Jessy said. “I heard the guy threaten to kill you both, so went and found a rock. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“This is what you do. You act without any idea about what’s going on. No idea of the big picture.”

“You never give us the big picture.”

Jim dropped the bag and started to think he should have gone with his first instinct – hide the money from Ricky and Jessy and come back for it later. He put both hands on his head and turned away from his two oldest friends, trying to put together what just happened. This day was meant to be a fun outing, and a reunion of sorts. Now this.

They’d discovered this abandoned farmhouse back in junior high, exploring the empty fields beyond their suburb. For a few years, it had been their secret. They made up stories about the people who lived in the house, deciding by the wallpaper whose room was whose, imagining the mother hanging the curtains that still hung in the kitchen window, now just rags. They could see her watching her husband through that window as he worked the fields or fixed the tractor. It became the place they went to gripe about parents and siblings, complain about teachers, try out stolen cigarettes, their first choking sips of alcohol.

After a few years, they got too old for secret forts, soon had their own cars and had abandoned the place altogether, leaving it to further ruin. When Ricky, the only one still in town, saw a story in the paper about the fields being approved for development, he reached out to Jim and Jessy for one last trip to their old haunt.

“It’s been too long,” he’d emailed them, too nervous to phone directly and unsure who he’d call first. “We should go out to that old farmhouse, before it’s gone, and maybe put everything else behind us.”

Ricky waited nervously to hear back, checking every couple of hours for replies. Jessy was first, a day later. “Ya, sure. I’m in,” was all he’d said. Ricky was disappointed his old friend wasn’t more excited, but was glad he was up for it. Jim replied the next day with a suggested date – not great for Ricky, but he could make it work – and the plan was set.

“Do you think that wallpaper with the trains is still up in one of the bedrooms?” Jessy asked as the three made their way to the farmhouse that afternoon, hoping to break the silence.

The path was almost completely overgrown, but they only lost their way a couple of times. They’d been down it so many times as kids they could follow it like old packhorses, even decades later.

“Well, I doubt anyone’s changed it,” Jim said, slipping Jessy a half-smile. Ricky was glad he’d sent that email.

Jessy was still holding the rock.

“Why don’t you try thinking before you act,” Jim yelled. “For once.”

“You think too much,” Jessy shot back.

“Stop it. Both of you. Think. What the hell are we going to do?” Ricky said, his arms hanging limp as he looked looking down at the body. “You think he’s dead?”

Jim and Jessy just stared at Ricky.

“Of course he’s dead. Half his head’s caved in,” Jessy said.

“Ya. Thanks to you,” Jim said. “We had a plan, you know? A good plan.”

“What, cuz you’re a ‘banker’.” Ricky said, making air quotes. “You work in a bloody Money Mart, and from I hear, you’re lucky to have that job.”

“Who told you that? You know what? Never mind. Money Mart is even better for us. The quality of people coming into that place, it’d be easier to switch out the cash for new bills, pocket some for ourselves.”

“Christ, that was your plan? Always with the schemes,” Jessy said. “When do they ever work out? I mean, really.”

“Ya, sure. Everything’s my fault. Never yours. Ricky gets you all nervous about this or that and you go out and blow it all up.”

“You refuse to see when things are blowing up. Trusting you cost me my marriage.”

“Denise was a …”

Ricky was holding Jessy back before Jim could finish the sentence.

“Let’s just deal with this situation,” Ricky said, pointing at the body on the floor, as Jessy and Jim stared darts at each other.

“What’s to deal with. The guy’s that escaped con, right? No one’s going to be upset that he’s dead,” Jessy said. “I heard he killed his accomplices.”

“I know the feeling,” Jim muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Jim and Jessy resumed to staring at each other.

“We throw the rock in the swamp,” Ricky said, hoping to move things along. “I doubt a rock can hold fingerprints, but might have DNA. Jess’s, I mean.”

“And what about this guy?” Jessy said quietly, motioning to the man on the floor, the adrenaline wearing off and the reality of what he’d done pushing to the surface.

“We leave him here,” Ricky said.

Both Jim and Jessy began to object, but Ricky cut them off.

“We’d never got all that blood cleaned up. So, we leave him here to be discovered. Maybe not even until they come to tear this place down. That’s like weeks away, maybe months. We’ll be long gone by then.”

“Look at you,” Jim teased. “Who’s the little schemer now?”

“I’ve always had ideas, you just never listened.”

Jim held his hands up in mock surrender. Jessy was thinking.

“That could work,” he said. “No one knows we’re here, right? I didn’t tell anyone. You guys?”

“What, did I tell my wife I’m going to my old fort, at 46 years old? No way,” Jim said.

Ricky said he’d told no one.

“Fingerprints,” Ricky said, running through possible problems in his head. “They could still find us by fingerprints. None of us have fingerprints in the system, right?”

Jim shook his head. Jessy turned away.

“Jess?” Ricky said.

“I got a couple of DUIs a few years back,” Jessy said, shrugging his shoulders. “They took my prints.”

The three stood in silence.

“Ok then. We’ll just have to wipe the place down,” Jim said, and turned to pull the rags from the kitchen window. “Do you remember where you’ve been in here, what you touched?”

“I barely made it inside when I had to go out for a leak.”

Jim gave Jessy a sympathetic nod.

“Well, that’ll make it easier, then,” Jim said.

The three divided up the rag and began wiping down everywhere Jessy pointed. Plus a bit more. Just to be safe.

“I heard about your health problems,” Jim said, working next to Jessy. “My cousin was the same, had to get the surgery, but was way better after.”

“Ya, my doctor and I are trying diet changes, see if that works.”

“Fingers crossed, buddy. Oh, and by the way, the wallpaper with the trains is still there.”

Ricky listened in, and hid a smile. The place wiped down, only one issue remained.

“We leave the money here. I know, I know,” Ricky said, seeing the look on his friends’ faces. “But this way, anyone comes by and finds the money, with this body here, they’re not going to raise a fuss. It buys us more time.”

“An investment in our future,” Jessy said, trying to convince himself.

“There’s cameras everywhere at the Money Mart, anyway,” Jim said as he stuffed the bag in one of the kitchen cupboards.

Jim paused and briefly rested his hand on the closed cupboard door before turning to leave with the other two – each of them stealing a backwards glance at the closed cupboard as they walked out.