Big Bucks

Arnold Miller pulled himself up the stairs to his tenth floor apartment with more energy than he used on the other days of the week after the garage closed.

Today was Friday, and tonight he was going to see Francine.

He opened the door to his place and saw Ricky sitting in front of their little black and white television set, engrossed in one of the comedy shows that Arnold never bothered to watch.

“Hey Boo-Boo!” Arnold called out in his best Yogi Bear impression. Ricky turned his head around, grinning at his older brother. At 5’9, 32 years, and 200 pounds, Ricky was far from little, but he had the mind of a six year old. “How’re you?”

“I’m good, Arnie! How’re you?”

“Couldn’t be better, Rick, m’boy!” he returned jovially.

Arnold set down his lunch pail and hung up his coat, then walked straight into the kitchenette.

“Getting ready for work Ricky? Mr. Pickens sure would be disappointed if this was the first night you were late to get the street cleaning equipment and start sweeping when he told you to.”

“I was just about to, Arnold, honest!”

“I know, Rick!” he chided, cheerfully.

“You goin’ drinking tonight, Arnie?” Ricky asked with his face back to the tube.

“You know I don’t go drinking, Ricky,” Arnold admonished.

“Hunting! Hunting, that’s what I meant to say!” Ricky yelped, twisted back to look at his brother, arms raised to shield himself from a blow that hadn’t landed in the twenty years since their dad ran off and left his wife Nancy working two jobs to support them. Arnold sighed.

Their father, Jack, who’d won a football scholarship to a college in north Jersey but lost it all for involvement in the accidental death of a frat pledge, had held up such high hopes for his sons. Arnold showed a love for football when he was only four years old, but a fall from a tree that same year broke his leg in three places and left him with a permanent limp. Jack’s hopes were renewed when Nancy got pregnant not long after, but when the doctor came into the waiting room to tell him that there’d been complications during the delivery and the baby - an otherwise healthy 8-lb boy - had brain damage, he never regained the sense of pride he dreamed he’d have for his children.

Jack read to Ricky and did arithmetic problems with him, like Nancy said he could to help brain growth. Ricky was twelve years old and could barely solve kindergarten-level material. Jack, who’d turned to drink after Ricky’s birth, wasn’t lenient when it came to mistakes, either. Arnold would always try to get between the two when dad was hitting Ricky, but his bum leg hindered him more times than not when he was coming to Ricky’s rescue.

“I know you meant to say it right, Ricky. You always do.”

“I wish I was normal, Arnie,” Ricky frowned.

“Hey,” Arnold countered, taking a seat next to his brother on the patched up brown sofa. “You’re doing just as well, if not better, than lots of guys who do have it all together upstairs. You got a steady job that you’re good at, you got a brother who loves you, you got a place to live, and one day…”

“One day, when you catch some big bucks, we’re gonna be rich!” Ricky finished, beaming.

“Exactly! Now how’s about you getting ready for work and me getting ready to go hunting?”

An hour later, Arnold chuckled to himself as he guided his beat up old Ford down the path worn in the forest floor.

“Hunting” was the excuse he gave Arnold on every Friday that he went to see Francine. It wasn’t entirely a lie, though; their trysts did take place in cabin her husband went to on his hunting excursions. It’d worked out even better when, recently, Francine brought up the large inheritance her husband had come into after the sudden death of the relative. Should he die within six months of receiving the money, it’d go to her.

Francine, who Arnold had met when she brought her car into his shop after its brake line snapped, was married to a cop named Al. He was a man with a bad temper and a bad heart after twenty-some years in the force. It made for plenty of ways that he could be dispatched while leaving his wife and her lover looking innocent and free to take the money: the “big bucks” that Ricky thought had twelve-point antlers.

The sunlight was fading, the mesh of the trees all around making it even darker, but Arnold found the little cabin with no difficulty. He drove around the back and saw Francine’s green Pontiac sitting there like always.

There was another car sitting next to it.

Arnold stopped the car, stunned. She was with another man!

“That filthy tramp!” he spat, parking the car where he’d stopped, slamming the door when he got out.

He stormed over to the front door, his limp more pronounced than when he walked normally, and threw the flimsy door open, expecting to catch his girl caught up in a passionate embrace.

Instead, he saw the usually vivacious brunette backed against the wall, trembling and staring wide-eyed at a large body sprawled face-down at her feet.

“Frannie?” he called weakly.

She looked up, wild-eyed, then ran to him, clinging to him and burying her face in his chest.

“Al … he followed me here, Arnie!” she shrieked. “I got here not fifteen minutes ago and was waitin’ for you when he burst in and started shoutin’ at me. He had a gun with him, Arnie! I … I was just so scared, I … I don’t even remember what happened clearly … I … I tried to hit him and he dropped the gun. I was quicker than him and grabbed it. When he tried to hit me again, I - I - I shot him!”

“Don’t … don’t worry, Francine,” he muttered, rubbing her back as she settled into crying softly, staring at the huge body of the man who would’ve likely killed him.

“You’re sure he’s dead, Frannie?”

“Pretty sure,” she sniffed. “What’ll we do?”

“We … we can say it was in self-defense…”

“The police’ll never believe it. A woman having an affair and her husband just coming into all that money.”

“Wait … he was dealing with the Matola gang, wasn’t he, Frannie?”

“Well, I know Al and his partner were stakin’ out the pharmacy where Anthony Matola was meetin’ people when they gave him the money they owed him. I know Al went into the place a few times to look around--”

“That’s it! We’ll say that … Al told you he found something out that could’ve put the whole gang behind bars, so then they … lured him out here and shot him.”

“None of them would’ve known where this lodge is, or what time he’d be here, though.”

“Then you can say that … that you noticed a car waiting around the house then following him up once when he went there or something.”

“Arnie, that’ll never fly.”

“It’s the Matola gang. The cops’ve been looking for any way to bust them. It’s a sure thing that they’ll be blamed for this and you’ll be free to--”

“To claim the inheritance!” she finished, her eyes sparkling.

“It’s a sure thing, baby!” he repeated, hugging her. “Now … we need to bury him.”

Francine sent Arnold out to a shed to get a shovel and dig a plot while she wrapped Al’s body in a tarp that she said he kept in the cabin.

When he returned, there was a large oblong lump sitting in the middle of the floor and Francine was huddled in the corner, staring at it, glassily.

“You … you did a good job of wrapping him up, Frannie,” Arnold said, walking over to sit down next to her. “It crazy, the things that adrenaline can do, y’know? I didn’t think a wisp of a thing like you could get a guy that big wrapped up that tight in the few minutes I was outside.”

“Get him outta here, Arnie,” she begged, in a tiny, distant voice. “I don’t wanna see him no more.”

“Okay, baby,” he answered, standing and stooping forward, working his hands under the body and hoisting it up over his shoulder in one quick movement that threw him off his balance.

“Woah, buddy!” he shouted, regaining his footing and laboriously hauling it outside. Arnold stumbled around the back of the cabin, swaying under the weight of Al’s body, then let it fall hard next to the hole he’d dug. One of the ends came open slightly, though Francine had tied off both ends and the middle. He could see a shock of dark brown hair. Arnold jabbed the lump with the blade of the shovel and sent it rolling into the plot with a loud “thud” then shoveled the dirt back into the hole with a mechanical speed. He didn’t bother to smooth it over when he was done. He just stared at the ground.

Arnold wondered what parts of Ricky’s brain had been damaged at birth; how they’d been damaged and what could be done to fix them. They couldn’t be any more complex than a car engine, and Arnold could take care of engine problems with his eyes closed. After Frannie collected the insurance money, he’d take Ricky to the best surgeon in the world and get the doctor to fix the problems that he never could.

The sun was setting behind Arnold when he walked back into the cabin. The grave he’d dug was shallow, but filling in even three feet of earth made him sweat and his muscles ache. Seeing Frannie standing in the back of the shadowy room stripped down to her underwear did little to rejuvenate him.

She stalked forward, smiling coyly, and wrapped her arms around him.

“C’mon Frannie, I just…” Arnold couldn’t bring himself to say “just buried your husband.” He put his arms around her.

“I wanna forget him, Arnie,” she whispered, pulling him to the floor.

There was no moon because rain was starting to fall. The complete darkness and the faint, steady tapping on the thatched roof was calming. Arnold and Francine were still lying on the floor, their clothes forming a blanket under their bodies. The cabin only had one room and no electricity. The sound of her voice was the only thing telling him that she was still there.

“What’d ya wanna do with the money, Arnie?”

“Buy a house, get Ricky help. I wanna see if I can get a doctor to make his brain right.”

“Ricky’s your brother, right Arnie?”

“Yeah, my little brother.”

“He’s just like a little kid, y’know? I mean, he’s a big guy, but the look on his face is just like a little kid’s.”

“Yeah,” Arnold agreed, thinking back to that afternoon, before another thought struck him. “Hey Frannie, you never saw Ricky. How’d you know what he looks like?”

“Oh, well … you said he’s slow. I had a cousin who was slow. They all sorta have this look like little kids.”

“Yeah, I s’pose. But like I said, I’m gonna get a doctor to check him out. Then I’m gonna buy us all a house. Maybe a great big duplex, that way you and me can have one side and Ricky can have the other side all to himself. And I’ll hire maids and butlers to do everything for him.”

“That sounds nice, Arnie,” Francine mumbled dreamily, snuggling closer to him.

“D’ya wanna have kids, Frannie? We can have a whole mess of kids if you want.”

“Sure. Al never wanted kids. He always thought…”

Francine kept talking, but the mention of Al halted Arnold’s thoughts. The man she was talking about was lying under three feet of dirt only yards away. The dull drizzle of the rain was rising to a fervent drumming.

“Damn it,” Arnold groaned. “I bet his body will get dredged up when the ground gets muddy. I should’ve buried him deeper.”

“Nothin’ you can do about it now. Besides, as far out as we are, the only way he’ll get discovered is if he crawls outta the ground himself,” she giggled.

“That’s a spooky thought, Frannie,” Arnold said, bristling. He started seeing images of something bloody and gray moving the dirt out of its way and staggering to its feet, silhouetted by the pouring rain.

The wind was howling, shaking the small shack and a sudden clap of thunder made Francine jump. Arnold had jumped, too, hoping that Francine hadn’t noticed.

A bolt of lightening filled the bare room with white for a second before another loud boom sounded.

“That didn’t sound like thunder, Arnie.”

“Probably a tree limb hitting the wall or something, baby,” though he was saying it more to reassure himself.

They waited a few more seconds. The wind kept howling, the thunder bellowed once or twice more and Arnold was sure that storm really was the only thing acting up.

Then there was another sharp booming sound. It was closer and more concentrated. It came from the other side of the front door.

“Arnie!” Francine shrieked, her fingernails digging into his chest. His heart had stopped beating. He couldn’t remember how to move.

Several more blows were rapidly delivered before something huge impacted and sent the door bursting inwards and slamming against the wall.

The rain was pouring in from the darkness, but nothing else.

Arnold attempted to chuckle and say “That was one hell of a wind” but he’d only managed some sputtering when an overdue sliver of lighting illuminated a hulking figure hanging in the doorway.

They were left in darkness, but he could see it tumble towards them, full-speed, roaring. .Arnold grabbed for Francine as she skittered away. He tried to dodge it, then thrashed around and blindly threw punches where he felt it pawing at him. He knew it was futile, but kept squirming when his arms and chest were locked in vice-like grips by something solid and huge, smelling like rain, earth, and death.

Arnold started to scream. He screamed for God and Jesus and any kind of help from anyone.

Then the thing holding him started screaming back, barking profanities until a shrill voice, Francine’s, yelled “Shut up!”

A light ignited, spilling dim yellow over everything in the cabin. Arnold saw that he was being restrained by a man. The man looked angered, shaken, and rain-soaked, but alive and aware; no trace of blood or bullet holes or head trauma.

“Al, can you shoot him or will you just cuff him?”

Francine was standing to the side, looking perturbed. One hand held a lantern and the other was on her hip. Arnold was dumbfounded, and didn’t resist when the man turned him towards to wall and pressed his knee into his back, then fastened his wrists together and let him fall to the floor.

“Damn, now I wish I’d brought my gun,” the man, Al, muttered. “I was supposed to come in here and find him attacking you, after all.”

Arnold’s mouth opened and closed a few times, as he attempted to ask what was going on, but had no idea how to speak anymore. Al eyed him, sympathetically.

“I guess you’ve got a right to know what’s going on, don’t you?

“Well, y’see Arnie, I’ve known about your carrying on with my wife for some time now. I gave her hell when I first found out and I was set to hunt you down, but then a friend of mine at the bank mentioned that they were handling a large sum of money going from a man who’d just passed away, to his heirs. The man’s name was Jack Miller and the heir was Arnold Jack Miller. In the event that he couldn’t collect the money, it’d go to any children he had. Now, seeing as how I’m in the process of apprehending you for first degree murder and about a month ago, Francine told me that you put her in the family way, we can all see how this problem has been solved.

“Ricky!” Arnold sputtered, the only thing he could think of. “Ricky’ll get the money … then he’ll … he’ll have his own house and an army of maids and butlers to do anything he wants and he … he’ll never have to worry about not doing good enough at some hand-out chump job and…”

He was cut off from a fit of wicked, mingling laughter.

“Who do you think you’re charged with murdering, dummy?” Francine spat, giggling.

Arnold stared at her, wide-eyed, but instead of seeing Francine, he saw the huge lump lying in the middle of the floor, then next to the hole in the dirt, and then the under a cover of earth.

“NO!” Arnold bellowed, before Al kicked him in the stomach. He slumped down on his side, in a fetal position, mewling.

“This is all a dream. I killed you and buried you and now Frannie and I are on our way to the bank to collect the money and buy a house and…”

“Shut the hell up,” Francine snapped. “God, you’re babbling worse than your lummox brother was when we got into your apartment and Al finally subdued him. Good thing the chloroform knocked him out quick. I don’t think I could’a stood hearing him yell ‘Arnie, Arnie! Help me, Arnie!’”

“You bitch!” he screamed at her, before his voice descended into sobs and he closed his eyes. “Ricky … oh God, Ricky…”

“You think we could drug him too, Al? I don’t wanna hear him talking anymore.”

“Nah… he’ll probably stay like this for a while. It wouldn’t make sense for him to be drugged when the squad gets here, anyway.”

The mournful wail of the wind filled the silence before Al spoke again.

“C’mon, we should be going. You’ll need to work up some pretty good tears on the way to the police station.”

There was more silence, and scuffling noises, like the two of them were gathering up their things.

The wind kept wailing low.

Then screamed.

Then busted the door open again, roaring.

“What the hell?!” Al hollered amid Francine’s screaming and the howls of the wind which sounded more like a man.

Arnold opened his eyes and shoved himself into a sitting position. A huge, mud-covered thing which he could only hope was a man had barged into the room and pinned Al to the floor. He yelled while the man raised and lowered his fists into Al’s head and chest like a jackhammer and shrieked. Al was silent after a few seconds.

Francine was cringing in the corner, her eyes darting from the man attacking Al and the door. Finally, she scrambled to her feet and ran. Like a frog being circled by a fly, the man’s torso didn’t even move; he swung his arm backwards and caught Francine in her midsection. She darted back, unsteadily and fell, impacting hard. She didn’t move after that.

“Christ!” Arnold gasped, then sucked in his breath, seeing that the man’s grime-caked face was now on him. Like an animal, he lumbered forward on all fours.

“Christ, Christ, Christ!” Arnold screamed, pushing his feet out and trying to raise himself up or at least fend the guy off, twisting and squirming until the slick arms were clamped around him, the dirt-streaked face only centimeters from his, the eyes narrowed and hardened with purpose.

The eyes, familiar.

Arnold started to cry and laugh at the same time.

“Hey … hey, Boo-Boo!”

***

After they’d composed themselves, around dawn, when Francine and Al’s bodies were starting to smell, Arnold drove Ricky into town, straight to the police station. Arnold told them everything: the plot which was a plot to cover up another plot. He didn’t see any reason to lie.

As it turned out, Al had told another officer the whole plan to get Ricky killed and Arnold locked up, and the banker friend of Al’s talked about the unusual interest he’d had in the case of the Miller brothers’ inheritance. Their testimony helped Arnold dodge any criminal charges, though no one was quite sure what he could be charged with.

Arnold collected the inheritance and paid a few fines, but then was done with the whole thing.

Ricky spent a few months in a mental health facility; one where he actually got help to overcome what’d happened. The only thing Ricky understood was that some bad people had done something bad to him and that he’d done something bad back to him.

Arnold put most of the money in the bank. He bought a small three-bedroom house, and hired a maid to take care of cooking and cleaning. There was an army of tutors and helpers for Ricky, and it soon got to the point where they said Ricky might be capable of living on his own.

Arnold wouldn't hear of it, though. Their rooms were right next to each other and they both had nightmares for a long time, but Arnold was the one who woke up screaming more often, and Ricky was the one who'd run in to comfort him.