The Things Money Can't Buy

Leaning against worn bricks in the alley across the street from Ronaldi’s Grill, he watched his young wife laughing at something her lover just said. Her head arched back, her luscious, wavy black mane flowing down behind her, blood red lips framing rows of perfect, expensive teeth. Nothing about her betrayed the fact that she had two children in private East Coast schools and a wealthy, but naïve, older husband. Or maybe everything did. The waiter seemed to be in on the joke and smiled broadly while refilling their champagne glasses. Everyone was in on it but him. Tonight she was the socialite she’d always wanted to be, sparkling, witty, the star of her own reality show. She was stunning, far more beautiful than he had seen her look in the last several years. An elderly couple clinging to each other on their venture through the city’s dark streets, gave him a wary glance and wide berth as they passed. Now self-conscious, Jason Cavitt stepped out of the shadows and started walking north on the glistening sidewalk up Freeman Street, traveling several blocks past his parked Mercedes to give his blood pressure time to normalize. The gun buried deep in his coat pocket was heavy, a dead weight he needed to get rid of before something stupid happened.

Tides of conversations rolled over his filthy body like surf lapping over a bird-shit covered rock. A foamy splash of failing relationships, missed opportunities, asses that needed kicking and asses that needed kissing seeped into Kevin Chamberlain’s dawning consciousness as he stirred on a park bench. He didn’t understand a lot of it, and didn’t care about any of it, but there was a certain satisfaction involved in overhearing private conversations. NSA stuff. He considered getting a job with the government once, but it didn’t work out. The mid-morning sun was a warm hand on his brown, weathered face and he stretched out like a cat on a windowsill, pushing himself up slowly to a sitting position. He scratched his scalp and searched for a cigarette in various fraying pockets until he found a bent half stub and lit it.

The smoke tasted good, like sitting next to a campfire as a kid. A young, almond-eyed girl holding her mother’s hand turned toward him with a curious expression, but a firm tug by mother brought the toddler around to face forward again. Kevin flicked the smoldering butt into the grass, got up and walked about a half-mile through the park in order to see the time and temperature displayed at a nearby bank sign. It was 10:22 in the morning and 65 degrees. He needed food and liquor, and started his search at a nearby trashcan for a piece of cardboard large enough to write his message on: “Homeless Vet. God Bless America.”

He’d claimed a good corner. Two hours later he had enough for a Whopper and a fifth of vodka. He returned to his bench and sat down with his cheeseburger and virgin bottle to truly began his day. Before he’d finished half of his burger, an older man sat down on the other end of the bench, which was cause for concern. This one was dressed in pressed dark slacks, tasseled loafers and an expensive black leather jacket. The precise haircut and gold watch screamed money. It could only be one thing, Kevin new from experience.

            “Hope I’m not intruding.” The voice was resonant and confident. “Beautiful day. I’m Jason.” Kevin ignored the man and kept eating, waiting for the inevitable invitation. “I’ve noticed you sitting over here before. I haven’t been spying on you or anything like that; it’s just an observation. I know there are a lot of stereotypes about the homeless, I mean, I have some myself, but looking at you, I thought, there’s a good looking young man who appears bright and more or less in shape. I think he’s someone who had a future at one time, maybe even a college graduate with plans for a family and house in suburbs, but then something horrible happened in his life. Maybe you lost the one you loved or got mixed up in drugs or simply couldn’t find a job. It’s tough these days. The economy is horrible.”

            Kevin turned to the man. “Hey..listen, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m not interested. Okay?”

            “Really? How did you know—?”

            “C’mon. Guys like you don’t come down here to talk about the weather.”

            The implication startled Jason. “No. No, I’m not here for…that. But I did come with an offer.”

            Wary and cynical, Kevin tilted his bottle up and drank. “Offer.”

            “I’ve thought a lot about how to propose my offer, but the preambles seemed to get longer and more boring, with all kinds of wordy and embarrassing detours, so I’ve decided that being direct and to the point would be best. My wife Suzanne has been cheating on me for the past two years with an Italian soccer player named Paolo Santelli, if you can believe that. Even her choice of lovers is a cliché. Anyway, we’ve been married six years. She has this idea that she can have her cake and eat it too, stay married to me and enjoy the money that I’ve been stupidly lavishing on her for years, and have a younger lover tucked away somewhere to meet her physical appetites. I decided recently that she can’t, and I want her out of my life. For good.”

            He got lost for a few seconds in the words “for good” and the burger he was holding rolled out of his hand and landed in the dirt. “Fuck,” he spat, picking it up and blowing off the dust.

            “Don’t worry about it,” said Jason, pulling a hundred dollar bill from his pocket and holding it out.

            “You want me to kill your wife for a hundred bucks?”

            He suppressed a smile. “Shh. No. This is simply to get you another…whatever it is you’re having.”

            “So you don’t want anything for this?”

            “Just your consideration of my offer.”

            Kevin took the bill and stuffed it into a pocket. “I’m a bum and a drunk, but I’ve never killed anyone in my life. There are guys who do that kind of shit for a living. You should get one of them.”

            “On the one hand you’re right. With a professional, I’d be sure the job was done right. The problem with that plan though, is if the killer was found out, and the police determined that a professional hit man was involved, who would be the first name on their list of suspects? The jealous husband. For that reason, it’s best to hire someone who has no connection to me or my wife to…you know. That’s where you come in. I have a simple, but foolproof plan that I’ve come up with, and I’ll pay you $50,000.”

            Two children chasing each other ran by the men. “Fifty thousand dollars?” said Kevin in a reverent tone. “Is this some kind of cop scam to arrest me the minute I say yes?”

            “No, but I like that you’re thinking of all of the ramifications. Shows a sharp mind,” said Jason, handing Kevin a business card. “Go to the library and look me up. You’ll see that I’m the real deal. I guarantee you my plan will work, and you’ll have a lot of life ahead of you to spend that money.”

            “How do I know you wouldn’t turn me in right after the job’s done?”

            “Because the minute you’re caught, you’re going to implicate me. That’s what I’d do. I won’t take that chance. No. I want you to get away. Everything hinges on it.”

            Kevin remembered a time when he had a job and could afford a car and an apartment and a steak now and then. It was like opening an old photo album. The images were dim and yellowed, but they were clear enough to arouse a long buried sense of longing. Could it be real again? “How do you wan to do it?”

            Jason gave Kevin more cash to buy clothes and rent a hotel room. They went  over the details of the plan, and Kevin was to call Jason when it was done.

The following morning, Kevin stood awkwardly in front of the full-length mirror in his hotel room, astonished at the clean and clean-shaven man staring back, wearing new denims and a crisp plaid shirt. His face flushed. It had been a long, long time.

Sitting in a booth at the Denney’s across the street from his hotel, he again saw his reflection in the window, but this was a darker, more ephemeral Kevin, the one who had agreed to kill another human for blood money. Not only was he expected to murder a woman, it was a woman he knew nothing about, except that her husband says she is cheating. He could be lying. He could be a monster like his own father and she was driven into the arms of another man. The waitress set the check on his table and smiled at him. She’d written her telephone number on the back.

            After looking up the address of the Cavitt’s at a library computer, Kevin took a bus that brought him to within a few blocks of their home. It was an upscale area in the hills above the city, with large homes, manicured yards and no shortage of security signs. If he looked like he did only two days ago, he would be arrested here within minutes of stepping off the bus. Now, he was dressed well enough to walk unnoticed in the neighborhoods of the city’s elites. He soon recognized the address of a large Colonial Revival surrounded by a lush lawn and perfectly trimmed ornamental bushes that belonged to the Cavitt family. It was as sterile as a movie set. He walked past, surveying the house. He heard footsteps and turned around, just in time to spot a dark-haired woman coming down the street in her running clothes, cooling off after a long run. As she turned into the Cavitt driveway, Kevin started back up the street toward her.

            “Excuse me,” he called out. “Mrs. Cavitt?” Her face glistening, still catching her breath, Suzanne turned, her expression betraying apprehension.  “Please, don’t be alarmed. I’m a friend of your husband, Jason.”

            “Really?” she asked, stretching her calf muscles. “Suzanne.”

            “Kevin.” He now stood a few feet away. “Yeah, he told me a lot about you.”

            “Huh. He’s at work, so you can just call him. I’ve—“

            “Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”

            She backed up a step. “Listen Kevin, I don’t want to be rude, but—“

            “Your husband knows about your affair. He saw you and your lover at Ronaldo’s.”

            Suzanne’s demeanor changed instantly from wariness to stone cold anger. “What is this? Are you some kind of goddamned private eye?”

“No. Your husband told me about it. He hired me to murder you.”

Suzanne took a defensive stance. “Murder me?”

“I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal.” That said, he drew out a long kitchen knife from his belt and advanced toward the woman. Having ample time to prepare, Suzanne cocked her right leg and then swung it forward with all the power she could tap into. The top of her foot landed squarely on Kevin’s testicles and he crumpled to the sidewalk like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Standing over the moaning man, she kicked the knife into a patch of ivy, then quickly surveyed the neighborhood for any prying eyes. Satisfied she hadn’t been seen, she grabbed Kevin by his collar and dragged him down the driveway into the garage, out of sight of her neighbors.

            The blinding pain began to subside, and Kevin looked around the garage through his tears. His eyes landed on Suzanne’s running shoes. He twisted his aching body to a sitting position and could now see that she was holding a hammer and angry as hell. “Sorry,” he said.

            “Sorry?” she yelled, then immediately brought the decibel level of her voice down. “You are the worst fucking assassin on the entire planet.”

            “I never killed anyone before.”

            “That’s obvious. My five-year old daughter could have done a better job than you. I cannot believe Jason would hire a bum off the streets to murder me and not a professional.”

            “We did discuss that—“

            “Shut up. I should call the cops right this minute, but…”

            “But what?” he asked hopefully. 

            “You’re mine now. I own you. Say it.”

            “What?”

            “Say I own you.”

            “I…you own me.”

“Good. Now I want you to kill Jason. I’ll pay you $60,000.”

            “Is this a joke?”

            “Deadly serious.” She reached into a small fanny pack secured around her waist and pulled out a black box device about the size of a cigarette pack. She held it out and suddenly there was an arch of light and loud electric pop. “It’s a stun gun. I carry it with me everywhere. What does this have to do with Jason? My husband has a pacemaker. Ironic, for someone who never really had a heart to begin with. Anyway, if you were to take this device and hold it right here on his chest, where the heart is, for a second or two, it would disrupt the pacemaker, and he’d die. The beauty is, it won’t leave a mark and it will look like the pacemaker simply malfunctioned, which happens. It’s really easy and almost foolproof, even for an idiot like you. Call Jason and tell him it’s done and to meet you at the hotel. At some point you get up, take the stun gun out of your pocket, put it to his heart and press here. He’ll be dead in a matter of seconds. Did he pay for the hotel room?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Perfect. Just wipe down the room of fingerprints, toss the stun gun in a dumpster and you’re done. Then come back here.”

            “What if someone sees me at the hotel?”

            Suzanne shifted her stance. “I can’t think of everything. Wear a damn hoodie or comb your hair different. You can figure it out.”

            “But I’m not a killer.”

            “Listen. Either you do this or I call 911 right now. You can do it. I get what I want and you get what you want. Think of it this way, you’re not actually killing Jason, his pacemaker is doing it for us.”

            “I’m homeless, not retarded,” he said rising slowly and painfully to his feet.

            “Take it or leave it.”

            Kevin grabbed the stun gun out of Suzanne’s hand and dropped it in his pocket. “I’ll see you later.”

            “Wait,” she said. ”Not that I don’t trust you, I mean, we’ve known each other for a whole ten minutes and during that time you tried to kill me, but before I hand over $60,000, I’m going to need some proof that he’s dead. Bring me back his wallet. If they have any suspicions about his death, they’ll think it was a robbery.”

            Kevin was waltzing among cutthroats and psychos. There was no room for a peevish attitude. “Sure,” he said, turning back toward the street.

            “And make sure you get rid of the stun gun. Very important.”

            The hotel room was dark. Traffic rumbled by on the highway. Kevin sat on the edge of the bed, a plastic cup filled with vodka in hand, staring at the stun gun on the nearby desk. A voice was telling him to just stand up, walk out the door and never look back. He was being used by a couple of soulless millionaires to do their dirty work since that was all poor people were good for. Let those two lunatics sort out their own lives. But sixty thousand dollars…

            At precisely four that afternoon, there were taps on Kevin’s door. He unhooked the chain and let a smiling Jason Cavitt into his room.

            “Kevin, good to see you,” he said, shaking Kevin’s hand as he would a long-time customer. A man used to controlling the environment around him, Jason went to the window and threw open the curtains. Kevin squinted, but said nothing. “So, you did it?” he asked, sitting on the bed and crossing his legs.

            Yeah. Peace of cake, actually.”

            Jason rubbed his chin. “Really. I just drove by the house on my way here and didn’t see any police or ambulance.”

            Hands in his pockets, Kevin’s fingers rested on the hard plastic exterior of the stun gun. He’d practiced his approach many times. “No one’s found the body yet.”

            “Right. How do I know she’s actually dead?”

            “Here. I’ve got proof,” said Kevin. Pulling the stun gun from his pocket, he found the trigger and leaned into Jason’s space. The older man wasn’t fast enough to react before Kevin placed the gun against his shirt pocket and sent 10 million volts through skin and bone to an ailing heart. Kevin immediately backed away as Jason opened his mouth to speak, but before words could escape, he grabbed his chest. His face turned red and then purple. Eyes bulged from their sockets and his expression rearranged itself from surprise to muscle-twisting agony. Jason tried desperately to breath but could not, and in a matter of seconds, his body went limp and he fell to the carpet at the foot of the bed.

            Stepping back, Kevin experienced a full-body wave of panic and started shaking. He’d just killed a man. The cops would be coming through the door any minute now. A lifetime behind bars or worse. He ran to the bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left but the gag-inducing taste of guilt.

            Light-headed, trembling, Kevin sat on the bed, his back to Jason’s body. He needed a drink badly, and poured vodka into a plastic cup. The drink went down like water and he poured another. The alcohol was soon doing its job and he was starting to settle down and think through the situation.          

            Close the curtains. Wipe down the room. He took a clean washcloth from the bathroom and wiped every hard surface he could find. Have a drink. He had a drink. Get his wallet. Grimacing, he pulled Jason’s wallet out of his jacket pocket. Have a drink. He had another drink, but he knew he couldn’t stay any longer. He slipped the pint into an inside pocket of his jacket, gave the room one last look, and then opened the door a crack to peer out. Seeing no one, he slid out of the room and walked briskly across the parking lot toward the bus stop.

He’d shoplifted plenty of times. Even stole a purse once, but the current mix of terror and exhilaration was a totally new high. The farther he was from the scene of the crime, the more convinced he was that he could get away with murder. No one at the hotel saw his face. There were no fingerprints. Surely there was no reason why Jason would have told anyone about meeting Kevin in the park or they deal they struck. Then a new thought elbowed its way to the front. $60,000.

            The twenty-minute bus ride into the hills turned into the sweetest ride he’d ever taken as he argued with himself about how to spend the money. He’d won the lottery, been dealt a royal flush, found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Jason was old, had heart problems and would have died in a few years anyway. An attractive young woman sitting across the aisle from him looked up from her book and sent an embarrassed smile in his direction. This was opening day of a whole new season for him, he thought, suddenly realizing he used to love baseball.

            He wore a conspicuous smile as he strolled up the sidewalk, turning his face to the sun for what seemed like the first time in his life. He crossed a street and could see the roof of his destination up ahead. Several steps later, a man’s voice came from out of nowhere.

            “Hey. Stop right there.”

             Confused, Kevin turned to his right and watched with alarm as a police cruiser pulled up beside him. He stopped, thinking this had to be the most unlucky coincident ever. Two sour-faced cops with squinty, suspicious eyes got out of the car and approached him warily.

            “You’re not carrying a weapon are you, Sir?”

            “A weapon? No.”

            “Where are you going?” asked the black officer.

            “I…just walking. Taking a walk.” The shirt under his jacket instantly clung to his damp body.

            “Step over here to the car and place your hands on the hood.”

            Kevin did as he was told. “What’s this all about, Officers?”

            “Do you know a Suzanne Cavitt?” asked the first cop, patting up and down Kevin’s leg.

            “No. I don’t recognize that name.”

            Kevin’s knees nearly gave out when the cop pulled Jason’s wallet out of his jacket pocket. The grim man took out the driver’s license and compared the photo to Kevin’s face. “Where did you get this wallet?”

            The bitch had turned him in, he suddenly realized. She set me up. “I…found it. On the street.”

            The cops looked at each other. Knowing this brief communication would result in spending the rest of his time on earth behind bars, he whipped around before they could get hands on him and took off running across a lawn toward the back of a house. He heard the cops calling out, but he was now running for his life.  

            Three evenings later, Suzanne Cavitt poured her second glass of wine and slow danced her way to the living room where she joined Paolo on the couch, nuzzling up under his arm.

            “You have made an amazing recovery,” he said in his thick Italian accent.

            “Mmm?”

            “You are no longer the grieving widow in black from this afternoon.”

            “Now I’m the grieving widow swimming in money. Let’s move. We can go back to Italy, get a house on the Mediterranean side. You can see your friends and family.”

            “I wouldn’t mind going back, but—”

            “You could play for an Italian team again instead of the San Jose Earthquakes.

            “Sounds good to me.”

            “I need to get some more crackers.” Several beats after Suzanne had disappeared into the kitchen there was a scream.

            “What happened,” shouted Paolo running into the room.

            Suzanne was leaning against a counter, eyes wide, a hand over her mouth. “I thought I saw someone outside,” she said, measuring her words carefully.

Paolo went out the back door and surveyed the deep, dark yard. “I don’t see nothing,” he said, closing the door. “Was it a ghost?”

He was smiling, but Suzanne was not. “It wasn’t a ghost I saw.” She thought for a moment of telling Paolo about Kevin, but decided against it. How could they release him? I’m just seeing things, she decided. They wouldn’t have let him go.

“Come on,” chided Paolo. “Who was it?”

“Just some creepy kid from the neighborhood. Let’s make sure everything’s locked up.”

“Okay. Whatever you say, boss.”

Under blue moonlight coming through the windows, the two lovers lay sprawled and naked on the bed like spent wrestlers. It was 3:30, and only the intermittent snores of Paolo disrupted the early morning stillness. They didn’t hear the footsteps on the carpeted stairs. A dark mass glided across the bedroom floor and hovered like smoke on Suzanne’s side of the bed. She stirred, then her eyes flittered open and her forehead creased as if she sensed something was wrong. After a beat, she turned over and was now looking up. Kevin was leaning over her, his face a bloodless death mask, eyes simply dark holes, his clothes wet and matted. He clasped a large knife in his two hands, holding it like a divining rod over her heart, then raised it quickly up and brought it down in one furious motion. Suzanne screamed into the darkness, convinced death was coming for her, and screamed again and again until Paolo shook her.

“Suzanne,” he shouted. “Why are you screaming? What’s wrong?” He repeated these questions several times until his lover recovered enough to realize that she had not been stabbed, and that there was no one standing next to her. Paolo was leaning on an elbow next to her, a look of concern on his brown face. Suzanne scanned the room, her heart still racing madly, but there was nothing out of place, nothing disturbed. Fear turned to confusion and she sat up, wondering what had just happened.

“I…I was being attacked. A man was standing over me with a knife and….”

“It was just a nightmare. There is no man.”

“But it was so fucking real, Paolo. So very real.”

“I’m sorry. It must have been very frightening. Did you know who was the man in your dream? I hope it wasn’t me.”

“Stop kidding around. Okay? It wasn’t you, but it was someone I met once. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Suzanne lay in Paolo’s arms until they both drifted into a fitful sleep.

            Slouched over the kitchen counter the next morning, a tired Suzanne brought the coffee cup to her lips and sipped. Sun filled the room with yellow light as Paolo served up French toast and attempts at conversation.

            “How come you don’t want to talk about this man in your dream? Was he an old lover?”

            “No. Nothing like that. He just did some work for me. That’s all.”

            “So it was a one-night standing.”

            “It’s one-night stand and we didn’t have one. There’s more truth to the clichés about Italian men then I ever imagined.”

            “What cliché’s? Huh? That we are sexual gods? The cream of the lovers crop?”

            Suzanne buried her face in the crook of an arm. “Oh God, please stop. I’m going to go take a bath.”

            “But you didn’t eat your breakfast.”

            She slid down off the stool and walked wearily toward the hallway. “I’ll heat it up later.”

            “I’m going for a run,” he called after her.

            “Okay.”

            The steamy water rumbled and roiled into the tub. Suzanne pealed off her clothes and threw them in a pile on the floor. The room filled with gauzy steam and she tested the water with her hand. Finding the ideal temperature, she stepped in and slowly lowered her body into the amniotic fluid. It wrapped her in a blanket of warmth and comfort and she gratefully slid down into the forgetfulness of the caressing liquid. There were moments of bliss, of floating in a warm world of pure comfort like a secret lagoon only you knew about. Complete surrender to the moment. Then something moved under her. Her eyes popped open as the strangeness of the moment connected with her senses. Her body was being slowly pushed up in the water. Terror shot through her like a jolt of electricity. In her peripheral vision she saw a shadow slowly rising from the water. Something had broken the surface right next to her, only inches from her face. Her body trembling, she slowly turned her head to the right. Her nose nearly touched the rotting face of Kevin staring up, shedding bath water and loose skin. His head slowly turned toward her, until his dead eyes locked onto her fear like radar. “Bitch,” he mumbled. “It’s payday.”

Before she could loosen enough throat muscles to scream, a hand rose up from the water and clamped tightly over her mouth, while a second hand reached around her torso. Limbs flailing and splashing, Suzanne’s struggling body was pulled beneath the water until it eventually went limp, and she floated under the surface, her mouth open, dead eyes still wide with panic. She was alone.

 Veteran Detective Paul Delgado pulled up behind another unmarked car parked in front of the Cavitt house. He clipped his badge on his jacket pocket, got out with a grunt and wound his way around the squad cars and an ambulance parked in the driveway. As he walked the narrow stone path to the front door, a handcuffed Paolo Santelli dressed in running clothes was escorted out of the house by two uniformed cops. The look on the handsome man’s face was one of utter confusion as if he’d just woken up on another planet. A familiar face followed behind the shackled athlete.

Paul smiled and extended his hand. “Don, good to see you. It’s been awhile.”

The other detective, a pale, lanky man with a day-old shadow shook hands with Paul. “Jesus Paul, where you been hiding? You still wasting your money on Giants tickets?”

“Next year. You’ll see. What the hell’s going on here?”

“This Italian guy called in and reported his girlfriend drowned in the tub. When we checked it out we found bruises on her face and abdomen. Wasn’t no accident.”

“Is the vics name Suzanne Cavitt?”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“She’d made a complaint a few days ago to her close personal friend Chief McDowell, that a man was hanging around the property, acting weird. Uniforms stopped a homeless guy near here…Kevin Chamberlin…and questioned him. They found a wallet on this guy that belonged to Mr. Cavitt, who, we later learned, died of a malfunctioning pacemaker in a hotel room. But wait, this is the best part. Turns out, the husband had hired Chamberlin to kill his wife. Can you believe this shit? So yesterday Chamberlain was spotted in West Oakland. Idiot found a gun somewhere and was killed in a shootout. The Chief asked me to swing by and let her know.”

            “Rich people.”

            “Look at what their money got them.”