The House of Santander - novel

His eyes popped open, and that was that. He turned over to look at the clock radio, fluorescent dial broadcasting the bad news; 3:30 AM. Hotter than hell in here, he thought, throwing the damp sheet off of him. It looked as though the small air-conditioner's compressor had given up the ghost. The fan still made noises in imitation of a real air-conditioner, but, all that came into the small bedroom was moisture laden air, redolent of the oil slicked waters known as Manhasset Bay, lying some five hundred yards south of the house.
He glanced at the sleeping body of his wife who was snoring lightly, and decided to get up and have a cigarette. He sat up at the edge of the bed and slipped on the swimming trunks he'd discarded on the floor only four hours earlier. Grabbing the half empty pack of generic ultra lights atop Loretta's dresser, he padded quietly down stairs, opened the front door and went out onto the patio. He managed to grab the screen door before it went crashing back into its jamb, with a sound he knew would wake the entire neighborhood.
He sat down in one of the six white, molded plastic chairs, which surrounded the wobbly patio table, and lighted his first of the day. Dragging deeply, he leaned back and felt the coolness of the morning's condensation, which had accumulated on the chair's injection-molded latticework.
The table and chairs lay in total darkness, shielded from the harsh glare of the mercury-vapor street light by the umbrella-like boughs of a Japanese maple. Thirty feet of paved walkway was separated from the street by tall hedges and a makeshift wooden gate. Ricky Madagan sat stock-still and quietly smoked his cigarette; a wraith-like figure, a halo of exhaled smoke accumulating over his head, he was virtually invisible to any casual passerby.
He had just snuffed out the cigarette, when he heard the car pull up in front of the house. He heard a door open.
"Date prisa, Miguel!" a voice said, loudly.
"Callate, cabron!" another voice whispered, fiercely.
Ricky Madagan heard, rather than saw, the latch on the front gate lift off its hinge, and then he made out the gate swinging inward. His body tensed. He barely breathed, as he watched a slender figure deposit what looked like a duffle bag, evidently heavy, behind the thick hedges inside the gate. The figure retreated, latching the gate and, moments later, Ricky heard the car door slam and the vehicle drove away.
He continued to sit quietly, the street, once again, draped in early morning silence. He waited for what seemed two or three minutes, and then, rose from his concealed position. He walked to where the duffle bag was secreted, lifted it up and retraced his steps to the patio table.
The bag was extremely heavy, weighing about fifty pounds, Rick estimated. He set it down in front of him and opened the zipper, from right to left. He spread the opened bag's top with both hands and saw that it was crammed full of what appeared to be plastic bags, each stuffed full with a white powder and sealed shut with some kind of masking tape. They were crushed flat, each one some two inches thick and each forming, roughly, a rectangle some eight by ten inches. He took one bag out of the duffle and, weighing it in one hand, estimated that it went about two pounds, maybe more. Peering into the open duffle bag, he guessed that there were at least twenty or twenty-five of the plastic bags. He was in no doubt as to their contents. It was either heroin or cocaine. Must be fifty or sixty pounds of the stuff, he thought, nervously. Struggling with the weight of the bag, he took it into the house, trying to think of a place to hide it.
Suddenly, from the living room bay window, he saw the reflections of oscillating multi-colored lights. He put the bag in the hall closet and went silently to the window, shielding himself from view behind the floor length drapes, which framed it.
Two police cars were parked on either side of the street, pointed in opposite directions and two patrolmen were walking up and down the street, using hand-held flashlights to probe the darkness of the neighborhood's homes and front lawns. One of the cops was directly in front of Ricky's house, his flashlight playing over the gate and into the surrounding shrubbery.
Moments later, the two prowl cars drove away, their overhead lights out. All was quiet again. Ricky went back to the closet and hefted the duffle bag out. He took it down to the basement and stashed it behind stacks of liquor boxes, filled with books that had yet to be unpacked, after three years. He glanced at his cheap Rolex imitation. It read 4:45. He went back upstairs and looked out the front window again. The street was quiet. No traffic.
He returned to the bedroom and laid down, eyes staring at the ceiling. His mind raced with the events of the last hour or so. He hadn't counted the individual bags, but assuming that there were something like twenty five of them, each weighing two pounds or so -maybe a kilogram each- he knew he suddenly had a lot of money on his hands. If it was cocaine and each kilo was worth twenty thousand dollars, he reckoned, then, he had about a half-million dollars down in that basement.

His heart was pounding in his chest. He didn't really have any idea what the stuff was worth, but, he'd seen news stories where the police had confiscated bags and bags of dope, wrapped just the way these bags were. They always gave figures which indicated its wholesale value, which, he seemed to recall, was in the twenty thousand dollar per bag range, and then would follow with its "estimated street value", some astronomical multiple of the wholesale worth. It was possible that he was sitting on millions of dollars worth of dope. Ricky Madagan, dope dealer! Jesus Christ! Dope dealer!
Maybe he should just get up, get dressed, and take the duffle bag over to the Port Washington police station, up on the boulevard. Explain to the desk sergeant, or whoever was in charge -he'd never been in the place- and get it over with. On the other hand, that was a lot of dough sitting down there. And what, exactly, would he explain?
"Officer, I was sitting out on my patio, at 3:30 in the morning, when this Spanish guy opened my front gate and put this here duffle bag behind my bushes. Then, he just drove off. I looked inside the bag and saw all this dope. Figured you'd like to know about it."
"Well, that's real civic minded of you there, Mr. Madagan. Mind telling me what took you so long. I mean, it's 5:30. You live about, what is it, ten minutes from the precinct here? What happened? Your car break down, or something? Sure you brought all the dope with you? Didn't keep a few bags for yourself? Those little parties, get-togethers with family and friends? You got any I.D. on you, Mr. Madagan?"

Ricky didn't care for the way that scenario was playing out in his mind's eye. He turned and looked at the clock radio. 5:45 AM. Time was slipping by. The opportunity to do the right thing was fading fast. In an hour, the alarm would go off and he and Loretta would get up for work. They'd have coffee, make the bed, decide what to take out of the freezer for dinner that evening, then head for the car. He would drive her over to North Shore Hospital, where she was a registered nurse in the O.R., and he would head for his office at All American Real Estate, in Flushing. He was an associate broker, had been for the past two years, and was looking to open his own office.
They'd been married for five years now. No kids, yet. Money wasn't tight; they had a few bucks in the bank and, probably a hundred thousand in equity in the house. But, they both agreed, they didn't have quite enough to begin a family.
Should he tell Loretta about the dope? Maybe wait a few days. See what happened. What if those Spanish guys came back, looking for their bag?
"Hey, man. You happen to see a gray duffle bag loaded with bags of dope? We left it right over there, behind your bushes, the other night. NO? YOU SURE? Hey, man! That's our ******* dope! You want I should maybe cut off your cojones? Where's the ******* bag, cabron?"
Maybe they were Colombians. Those guys didn't screw around. He'd heard about some of the weird **** they pulled. Why, down in Jackson Heights, they were knocking each other off like flies. Maybe they were hooked up with those cartel people, Medellin. ****! Those guys were worse than the Mafia. If they thought he had their dope, his ass was grass.
He realized he had to get that bag of dope out of the house. But, how? He knew he couldn't leave it in the basement. These guys would break into the house and the first place they'd look was in the basement. No matter where he hid it, the first place they'd look was exactly there. He could imagine no hiding place in the house that wouldn't be discovered immediately. It was as if the bag were emitting a homing signal that would reveal its whereabouts, even were he to dig a whole, a mile deep, and bury it. No, he had to get it the hell out of the house. He would have to chance moving it to the car. But, what then? The cartel guys and the cops were, undoubtedly, keeping him and his house under surveillance. They'd know his every move. If he tried to move that bag out of the house, they'd be on him in a second. There would be a shoot out between the cops and the drug dealers. He'd probably be shot. Shot, with the duffle bag clutched in his hand. His blood red hand. He'd be caught, red handed.
The clock radio went off.




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