Hideaway

you right now. Probably hasn't been one living with you for years. Sorry, but I was snooping around the house while you were out cold, even though I knew it wasn't really right of me. Sorry. But I just wanted to get a handle on you, try to understand what you get out of this.”
    Redlow said nothing because he couldn't understand where all of this was leading. He was afraid of saying the wrong thing, and setting the kid off like a bottle rocket. The son of a bitch was insane. You never knew what might light the fuse on a nutcase like him. The kid had been through some analysis of his own over the years, and now he seemed to want to analyze Redlow, for reasons even he probably could not have explained. Maybe it was best to just let him rattle on, get it out of his system.
    “Is it money, Mr. Redlow?”
    “You mean, do I make any?”
    “That's what I mean, sir.”
    “I do okay.”
    “You don't drive a great car or wear expensive clothes.”
    “I'm not into flash,” Redlow said.
    “No offense, sir, but this house isn't much.”
    “Maybe not, but there's no mortgage on it.”
    The kid was right over him, slowly leaning farther in with each question, as if he could see Redlow in the lightless room and was intently studying facial tics and twitches as he questioned him. Weird. Even in the dark, Redlow could sense the kid bending closer, closer, closer.
    “No mortgage on it,” the kid said thoughtfully. “Is that your reason for working, for living? To be able to say you paid off a mortgage on a dump like this?”
    Redlow wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but suddenly he was not so sure that playing tough was a good idea, after all.
    “Is that what life's all about, sir? Is that all it's about? Is that why you find it so precious, why you're so eager to hold on to it? Is that why you life-lovers struggle to go on living—just to acquire a pitiful pile of belongings, so you can go out of the game a winner? I'm sorry, sir, but I just don't understand that. I don't understand at all.”
    The detective's heart was pounding too hard. It slammed painfully against his bruised ribs. He hadn't treated his heart well over the years, too many hamburgers, too many cigarettes, too much beer and bourbon. What was the crazy kid trying to do—talk him to death, scare him to death?
    “I'd imagine you have some clients who don't want it on record that they ever hired you, they pay in cash. Would that be a valid assumption, sir?”
    Redlow cleared his throat and tried not to sound frightened. “Yeah. Sure. Some of them.”
    “And part of winning the game would be to keep as much of that money as you could, avoiding taxes on it, which would mean never putting it in a bank.”
    The kid was so close now that the detective could smell his breath. For some reason he had expected it to be sour, vile. But it smelled sweet, like chocolate, as if the kid had been eating candy in the dark.
    “So I'd imagine you have a nice little stash here in the house somewhere. Is that right, sir?”
    A warm quiver of hope caused a diminishment of the cold chills that had been chattering through Redlow for the past few minutes. If it was about money, he could deal with that. It made sense. He could understand the kid's motivation, and could see a way to get through the evening alive.
    “Yeah,” the detective said. “There's money. Take it. Take it and go. In the kitchen, there's a waste can with a plastic bag for a liner. Lift out the bag of trash, there's a brown paper bag full of cash under it, in the bottom of the can.”
    Something cold and rough touched the detective's right cheek, and he flinched from it.
    “Pliers,” the kid said, and the detective felt the jaws take a grip on his flesh.
    “What're you doing?”
    The kid twisted the pliers.
    Redlow cried out in pain. “Wait, wait, stop it, shit, please, stop it, no!”
    The kid stopped. He took the pliers away. He said, “I'm sorry, sir, but I just want you to understand that if there isn't any cash in the trash can, I won't be happy. I'll figure if you lied to me about this, you lied to me about everything.”
    “It's there,” Redlow assured him hastily.
    “It's not nice to lie, sir. It's not good. Good people don't lie. That's what they teach you, isn't it, sir?”
    “Go, look, you'll see it's there,” Redlow said desperately.
    The kid went out of the living room, through the dining room archway. Soft footsteps echoed through the house from the tile floor of the kitchen.