A Lie With Weight

I enjoyed handing over the decoy. Not enough, never enough, but there was a nasty little thrill in watching the officer believe he had taken something from me. The receipt lying openly on my table made the whole arrangement feel almost respectable. The real plate is under the floor, and I hate that I trusted a loose board with the only piece of the puzzle I cannot replace.

Rale has become more real since the records began dissolving. I keep giving him a face, a stance, perhaps a voice too irritating to remember properly. That is dangerous. A name on an invoice can be challenged. A person is harder. I imagine him deciding whether to come with proof or machinery, and I am tired of conceding that I do not know which is worse.

I told Rosa the recording would hold. I wanted to sound certain. Mostly I wanted her to stay on the line after we had finished arranging the exchange, though I made sure there was always one more detail to confirm.

The rain was kind, in a cruel way. It gave me something to do besides watch the window. I am keeping score now: who knows about the plate, who believes the cases are where I said, and whether Rale has spent a single day thinking about me. I am nowhere near the top of that list, and I hate admitting how much I want to be the thing he cannot simply file away.

There is still that other find, the one I never declared. Sometimes I think it is the only thing I have genuinely kept. Perhaps because it was mine before anyone learned how to call it evidence. I will not write it down properly. Some pages are safer unfinished.