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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

53

THE NEXT MORNING, Marina said nothing when Trey, clad in work clothes, came downstairs for breakfast, which he ate alone because Marina went outside to begin the washing.

It wasn’t washday.

She paused at the sight of an ICE truck parked in the Chrysler’s spot, then reasoned he would have to have a truck for his whisky. She commenced working, not pausing when he emerged, went to the truck, then went back into the house with heavy boxes. He went back and forth several times, then didn’t emerge again until Marina had washed and wrung the clothes and began hanging them up on the line.

Then he began bringing empty boxes out and throwing them into the truck. That took considerably less time.

“When you get done with that,” he said on his way back to the house, “I need your help. Please.”

She said nothing, although she was surprised and What? was on the tip of her tongue.

Still, she finished in record time and scurried into the house. He was sitting at the dining room table bent over a ledger with cash and papers spread all over it. Her brow wrinkled and she took the chair he pulled close to him.

“What was in the boxes?”

“Your daddy’s books,” he said gruffly, pointing to the once-empty bookcases flanking the radio, now stuffed.

Marina had no idea why Trey would be interested in them, but said nothing.

“This is the speak’s take for last night,” he said, bringing her attention back to the table. “I’mma teach you how to do the books.”

Shocked, Marina could say only, “Uh … ”

“The house books,” he clarified, shoving away the thick ledger and all the cash with it. Then he dug in a pile of papers and found a very thin ledger with a thin stack of blank pages in it. He put it and a pencil in front of her. He pulled a stack of envelopes to him and said, “I was waiting until I got the utility bills to find out how much it takes to run the house. Now I got ’em all. You were right about fifty being generous, but I’mma give you a hundred fifty anyway ’cuz it helps me cook the speak’s books.”

“Oh.”

“You said you took bookkeeping? Double-entry?”

“Yes.”

“A’ight. Normally, I’d take you to the bank, but my granddaddy’s called me damn near every day since we got married demanding I get my money out of it ’cuz somethin’ to do with the stock market, which I don’t know what that has to do with me, but he’s rich an’ I ain’t, so I’mma do it anyway.”

Marina didn’t dare correct either his grammar or his diction, although both were getting worse. He was too angry and his speech was his concern, not hers. She found it endearing.

“C’mere.”

He led her to the bookcase and pulled out one of Father’s thick Bible concordances. He thumbed about a hundred pages in, opened it, and showed her. Her mouth dropped open. There was a square hole about two hundred pages deep, just right for fitting a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

“That’s ten thousand dollars.”

She gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide, her heart thundering in her ears. He snapped the book shut and put it back, touched the spines of two more books— “Each.” —then led her back to the table. “I have about six bank accounts and move my money around to hide it in case Treasury goes looking, but I still have a couple grand in my operating account. Payroll, inventory, whatnot. Be suspicious if I didn’t. Everybody else might keep that kinda cash on hand, but I’m not that stupid and I know how to bury my numbers. In any case, left a little money in the others, maybe a hundred each account and that’ll earn interest—not enough, but if my granddaddy’s right, it ain’t worth it.

“So, I don’t like havin’ this here, but going to a safe deposit box is suspicious if I get tailed, and Boss Tom had a tail on me I didn’t know about the whole time I was courtin’ you. I want a better hiding place, but even Boss Tom didn’t think there might be cash in your daddy’s books. There was some tucked away in his radio and divan, too.”

“Trey,” Marina croaked, trembling. “What if somebody—”

“Yeah, ’zackly, but I’mma do what my granddaddy says an’ I’ll figure out a better hiding place later.”

It made her feel better that he didn’t like keeping that much money around any more than she did. For the next three hours Trey patiently took her through her bookkeeping duties, where to go to pay the utilities, when to write checks and when to use cash, and then how to hide money in plain sight.

“The books are gonna say I allow you one-fifty a month, which I do. You’re gonna put down that you spent more on groceries than what you actually did. Nobody’s gonna look twice at the amount of bacon and eggs you buy.”

“But who’s going to bother with household books?”

“My books will say I give you that much, so it needs to be verifiable. Hide it in groceries, linens, dishes, cleaning supplies, whatnot. Books, a standing account at Kresge’s, say. Fabric store, five’n’dime. Make sure you go over budget every month—on paper. Don’t keep the receipts with the fake books. Cats’ll think you’re spending me out of house and home—” She squeaked a protest. “—but you and I’ll know it ain’t true and that’s gonna have to be enough. What you really do with it, well, that’s your money to do with what you want.”

“Trey, that’s … Why?”

His mouth tightened. “You need your own money. I could say I’m paying you to do your job, but even if that was how I thought of it, which I don’t, if it makes you feel better to think of it that way, then it’s less than I’d pay for a bookkeeper and maid and washerwoman and cook, not to mention a wet nurse and nanny. Unfortunately, if I gave you that much, then it’d be obvious what I’m doing, or I would.”

It was odd, though not hurtful, to think of herself as doing a job he’d pay someone else to do.

“So if you want to keep your own private set of books for that, that’s up to you.”

“It’s a way to hide that money, too?”

“Yes. Now, look. I’ve never shown or told anyone any of this. I trust you or I wouldn’t have married you.”

She gulped. “Why?”

“Because you told me to pay Gene to do the job right with Dot. You don’t know this, but it told me you were sneaky enough to do whatever you need to do to get what you want and it would mean you had to keep your mouth shut.”

“Sneaky?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yeah, and that’s a compliment. I was thinking how I want a partner, not just a best pal and whether you wanna be or not, you’re stuck with me and if I thought you weren’t smart enough to help me, or you weren’t a steady and loyal pal like you are to Dot, we wouldn’t be here.”

Touched, she nodded. “Yes. I want to be a good wife to you.”

“An’ I appreciate it more than you know. So now put the house books aside. I’mma show you the speak books and how I hide money.”

53

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