“I’m ravenous.”
SERIAL NUMBERS
JIM RAN INTO THE APARTMENT, slammed the door behind him and leaned his weight against it, as if his meager 170 pounds could keep all the possible dangers of the world from entering: the cops, the dead, the dozen or more finger-pointing witnesses.
Dripping with sweat from the long sprint through alleyways and semi-hidden stairwells, he dropped the heavy, army-green canvas bag to the floor, ripped off his jacket and knit cap and tossed them carelessly aside. Then he turned and, with a tension-breaking exhale, slammed home the heavy deadbolt, securing the door.
He’d done it. He’d pulled it off!
Allowing himself a relieved grin of victory, he picked up the large, lumpy bag and strode through the small apartment’s main living space to enter the bedroom.
It was in here that he would fulfill the fantasy.
The small room was stifling, the warm air heavy with moisture. Jim had heard news that a thunderstorm was hovering ever closer to the city, but for now the weather was more densely heated than an iron stove, stoked by late summer’s dying fire. He crossed the bedroom to the lone window and jerked it open, welcoming the cool air drifting inside, the breeze permeated by honking cars and the drone of the train only a few blocks away.
It had been no more than a few minutes since he’d tossed the dismantled gun, and what bullets remained, into a sewer drain (along with the mask and the overly large Salvation Army overcoat he’d been wearing to conceal his clothes, face, and body type), but now that he was safely home, it felt like a different lifetime.
Laughing out loud, almost giddy now, infused with the gleeful knowledge that he was—amazingly, unbelievably—a wealthy man, Jim turned to the bed, unslung the sack’s straps from his shoulder, and plopped the heavy bag down atop the double-bed’s fitted white sheets. His fingers caressed the hard teeth of the inviting—and still sealed—zipper.
First things first.
Humming an upbeat pop song (one of the hot hits of the summer), Jim slowly removed, piece-by-piece, his sweat-sodden clothes.
Shirt. Undershirt. Pants. Underwear. Socks.
He stripped himself down until he was bare as a newborn baby boy, and then (finally!) began to fulfill that long-wished-for childhood dream, a simple act he’d held onto all these hard years, until the arrival of this very moment.
Relishing a soft cushion of soot-scented air against his heated skin, Jim yanked the bag toward him, slowly unzipped it from one end to the other, then unceremoniously dumped a massive hoard of bills—mostly 50s and 100s—on top of the sheet. He dropped the empty bag to the hardwood floor and, like a child playing with a pile of leaves, pushed his hands into the mass of paper, messing up the tightly packed bundles (fluffing them! tossing them!) until he had a healthy mound of loosely strewn bills, about three-feet high and equally wide, to leap into.
His breath quickening with a borderline erotic-level response, Jim yelped out a boisterous, “YEE-HAW!” and dove, arms spread wide, into the mass of paper money.
Laughing wildly, joyfully, at the ceiling, the walls, Jim rolled back-and-forth through the bills. Within seconds, the money was stuck all over his sweaty skin—his face, arms, back, and buttocks.
He paused, reveling in the feel of the paper covering his body, panting heavily as he stared upward. It was in this moment of brief reprieve, however, that his mind betrayed him. Like the shadow of a passing cloud, his revelry darkened.
Jim recalled the surprised, angry look on Harry’s face when he’d pulled out the gun, apologetically announced his intention to double-cross his oldest friend, his soon-to-be former partner-in-crime. “Sorry, Harry,” he’d murmured, trying to ignore the pained look in the other man’s eyes, right before he pulled the trigger. Twice.
On the heels of this, Jim felt a quick tug of guilt at the memory of the young kid (couldn’t have been a day over eighteen, he thought) who’d stupidly tried to stop him on his way out of the bank and received a fatal bullet in the gut for his trouble.
Jim shut his eyes tight and shook his head, pushed away the bad memories, the haunting faces, angry at them for spoiling this moment. After all, business was business! And there was no way in hell he was going to let a few tough decisions ruin his…
“Ow!”
A deep, piercing pain shot through his bicep, as if someone had grabbed the skin there and pinched him. Pinched him hard.
Confused, Jim lifted his arm, inspected the area where he’d felt the pain.
“What the hell?” He pressed a finger to the sore spot on his skin, pulled it away and bemusedly inspected the smear of red on the fingertip.
He was bleeding.
A papercut? he thought. Then a darker idea pushed its way to the forefront of his mind.
Or did something just … bite me?
“Ow! Fuck!”
Jim kicked his feet as sharp, stinging pain lit up the skin of his ankles, toes, and calves. Goddamn it! Something was biting him. And it fucking HURT!
Yanking a wet bill from his cheek, he started to sit up, wanting to get off the bed and figure out what the hell, what-the-hell-exactly, was attacking him.
Bed bugs? Maybe, but they’d have to be the biggest damn bed bugs he’d ever encountered. Fleas? Mice?
Then Jim froze, stared down at his cash-covered body with a sense of disbelief, a look of horror on his face.
Did they do something to the money?
The idea screamed across his brain like a flaming meteorite headed for earth, scorching the muddled sky of his thoughts, gouging his consciousness with a dark line of fear.
Poison? Did they poison the …?
