The Night He Left the Syndicate, I Took His Chair novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: The Wharf Job

"I didn't pay for anything," I said.

"You withdrew twenty thousand dollars in cash on the ninth of March, four years ago," Orson said. "From the dock account. In your name. You handed it to me in a paper bag. Right about there."

"You told me it was for a boat engine."

"Did I?"

"You told me it was for a boat engine, Orson."

"Prove it."

He walked past me up the ramp.

At the top he stopped.

"Plead to the books, Ris. Three years. Or plead to a man's death. Your choice. I'm trying to be kind."

Then he was gone.

The Zippo had gone so hot it burned my thumb.

I let it close.

Then I went to the third pillar, pulled the loose block and opened the box by feel.

I lit the Zippo again and went through the notebooks until I found the year.

March.

The ninth.

Withdrawal, dock account, $20,000 cash. O.G. said: "Pay the kid for the wharf job."

My own handwriting.

I remembered writing it.

I remembered thinking the wharf job was the new pilings on the Lower Wharf.

Two nights later the co-op fish house burned to the waterline.

The co-op had refused to sell its pier to the Table for a year.

The night watchman was sixty years old. He'd gone back in for the logbook.

I had stood in the crowd on the Lower Wharf that night in a black dress Orson picked and watched the roof come down.

And I had known.

I'd known when I saw Orson's face across the fire, calm as a man watching rain.

And I had said nothing for four years.

I closed the notebook and sat on the cold floor with it against my chest.

Then I took my hand off my stomach, because I hadn't noticed I'd put it there.

Six days later I asked Zeke to drive me to the Lower Wharf.

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