I was on the bus, taking my usual late night ride home from work, when I saw the woman. Her bag was slung over the seat behind her and she was staring straight ahead, looking lost in her thoughts. She looked too young to be on this bus at this late hour, too innocent to be in this part of the city alone.
For some reason I felt immediately sorry for her. She looked sad, ready to burst into tears at any second.
She caught me staring and I looked away.
A few minutes later we arrived at her stop and she stood to get off the bus. It was just the two of us, at the end of the route, at the end of the night, the rest of the world sleeping soundly in their houses and apartments all around us.
There weren’t many stops left and I would be getting off soon too. To go back to my lonely apartment and my boring life.
As the doors opened, I saw she had left her bag behind. It was still slung over the back of her seat.
“Miss, wait!” I shouted after her, but it was already too late. She was walking away from the bus and couldn’t hear me.
“Hang on a sec, driver!”
I got up and grabbed the bag, then hustled to catch up with her.
“Hey, Miss! You forgot your purse!”
She looked back at me from a distance. Then she began to run.
“Hey! Where are you going? It’s yours, isn’t it?”
I was confused, but figured maybe it wasn’t hers after all. Maybe she had just sat down there and it had already been on the bus for hours.
Reaching my hand inside, I opened it up and looked to see if the purse contained any wallet or identification.
Tightly stacked piles of cash were stuffed inside. They were marked with bands that said $10,000 on each one. There were at least twenty of them, maybe more.
“What the hell…”
Roughly a quarter of a million dollars was in my hands. I had never seen so much money in my life.
I looked around and saw the bus had driven away and I was alone in a rough area of town, several blocks from where I lived.
Not good.
I had been mugged before in this neighborhood and I usually took steps to avoid that happening again. But I had been blinded by the sad face of the woman on the bus. I had wanted to help her.
Someone cleared their throat behind me, causing me to jump with fright.
“That’s a fancy purse. Are you going out somewhere special tonight?”
A gruff voice was speaking to me and I turned around to see four men had appeared out of nowhere. They were wearing leather jackets with patches identifying them as members of a gang.
“A lady on the bus… She left it behind. I was bringing it back to her,” I replied, as if my altruism would bring me some favor with them.
“Oh yeah? How about that? And they say chivalry is dead.”
One of them, with a homemade facial tattoo, reached out for the bag.
“Oh, hey, I know who that purse belongs to. Let me take it off your hands. I’ll make sure it gets back to its rightful owner.”
I held it back, avoiding eye contact.
“It’s okay. I can return it. It’s just around the corner,” I lied, backing away from them. I had no idea where the woman lived. There was only money in the bag, no wallet or identification as far as I could tell.
“That isn’t very nice. Spider said he knows the lady. Don’t you trust Spider to give it back?” The leader asked, indicating the man to his left with a giant face tattoo of a spider web.
They began to advance on me and my heart thumped faster as they pulled out knives and one of them produced a revolver from his waistband.
Terrified, I dropped the bag and ran.
*
I got home feeling out of breath and guilty for reasons I couldn’t explain. There was a small fortune in that bag - enough to buy a house - and I had thrown it away. Even though the money wasn’t mine, I felt guilty. Somebody was going to be out there looking for it. But now it was gone.
Something told me it wasn’t the last I’d hear of that cash. And I knew somehow I’d see that woman and those gangsters again. Just as surely as the sun would rise the next morning.
*
The next day I went to work and went about my life as normal. I got on my usual bus to get home after my twelve hour shift, looking out the window at the passing buildings and cars on the long journey back to my apartment in the darkness of night.
At some point, I looked up and the woman was there again. In the same seat as the day before. She was looking at me with tearful eyes, but there was something else in them now too.
She looked afraid, and deeply worried.
Eventually the bus cleared out and she came over to speak with me. She sat down in the seat next to mine and we both stayed silent for a minute.
“The bag. Do you have it?” she asked finally.
I shifted in my seat before answering.
“No. I got mugged. I was trying to return it to you. I didn’t realize…”
I lowered my voice.
“I didn’t realize there was a quarter of a million dollars in there!”
She closed her eyes and put her hand to her face as if slapped.
“You…. lost it? You lost my money?”
Her entire complexion turned pale and I saw a bead of sweat roll down her temple.
“Well, I didn’t LOSE it. They stole it from me. They had knives. And a gun. There were four of them. Street toughs - you know the type.”
She put her face in her hands and began to cry.
“Oooh, Sadie! Why?! Why is this happening to us!?”
The driver turned around in his seat and looked back at us. We were once again the only passengers at the end of the route.
“Everything okay back there?”
“Yes, fine!” I shouted back to him. “We’re alright.”
“I wasn’t asking you!” He yelled at me. “Miss, is he bothering you?”
She didn’t answer, but the silence seemed to be enough for him to drop the issue.
The bus pulled over at the next stop and the woman ran off. I got up and followed after her, feeling as if I had done something terrible.
I caught up with her and grabbed her arm gently, turning her to face me.
“What was that money for, anyways? Who carries around that sort of cash!? What are you, a drug dealer?”
She was sobbing as she stumbled away from me, but stopped and turned around reluctantly.
“It was ransom money! My daughter, Sadie was kidnapped…. I shouldn’t be telling you this. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone! They’re going to kill her. They said this is my last chance. But I don’t have any more money! That was it! I mortgaged my house to a loan shark! I sold my jewelry! They took everything from me!”
Her story began to sink in. Someone had taken her child and she had been told to leave the money on the bus. She did as she was told… But I had picked it up, ruining everything.
I felt my face turning red with shock and horrified embarrassment.
“Oh no… I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize that was what the money was for. What can I do to help you? I feel awful about all of this.”
She walked towards me slowly. Then put her hand on my arm.
“You could get the money back. We could get it back. The two of us.”
She opened up her purse and showed me a pistol she had concealed inside.
“This was my ex’s. He left it at my place and never came back for it. I know how to fire it - I’ve been to the gun range.”
“No, no, no, I can’t…”
“You don’t have to. Just tell me something. What did they look like? The gangsters. Were they wearing leather jackets with patches on them?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“I may be a mother, but I wasn’t always living such a clean life. I know those guys from the old days. It was Tommy and his friends, I’ll bet. I saw them at the pawn shop earlier picking out a new TV and speakers. Those bastards are spending my money! They’re gonna get Sadie killed!”
I tried to get her to put the gun back into her pocket. Looking around nervously, I began to realize I was going to go through with this. I was going to help this woman, regardless of the danger to my life.
Maybe it was the fact that I had been bored with things for a while, maybe it was the full moon up above, calling me to do something insane. Maybe it was just destiny. But whatever it was, I listened.
“Easy… We’ll get the money back, okay? Just tell me where these guys live. Maybe we can call the cops and they’ll…”
“No! If the kidnappers find out the cops are involved they’ll kill her! We have to do this ourselves. And we have to do it tonight!”
I thought about this for a few long moments. There was still a problem with the plan.
“Even if we pull this off, you’re still gonna be short on the ransom money. How much does a TV cost? And speakers? A grand?”
“At least a couple thousand for the ones they were buying. All top of the line…”
I sighed and dug out my wallet.
“Come on, let’s go to the ATM. Then we’ll go find Tommy and his friends. It’s 3AM, so hopefully they’re sleeping and we can sneak in and out without getting caught.”
Tears stood in her eyes as she regarded me with newfound respect.
“Mister, I really misjudged you. You’re a good man. Thank you. My daughter thanks you too.”
*
After a quick stop at the bank machine, the woman led me towards a low apartment building. It was dark and quiet on the street, the only light coming from a flickering street lamp and the full moon glowing orange overhead.
“I just realized I don’t know your name,” I said, feeling increasingly nervous.
“It’s April. April Granger.”
She waved me across the street and I followed after her as she led me towards the staircase at the back of the building.
“Come on. Up here.”
The steps were made of black iron and we proceeded up them as quickly and quietly as possible. Despite our efforts at stealth, the old rusted staircase rattled and shook beneath our feet, wobbling precariously as if several critical bolts had come loose or were missing entirely.
When we got to the top there was a door standing ajar, the wind blowing it gently back and forth. Inside was a dark, junk-filled space with what appeared to be a TV flickering with blue light in a distant room.
The woman was quickly going inside, pulling the door open, but I hesitated.
“What are you doing? Let’s go.”
I tried to think of what to say, of some better option than this, but came up short. The woman needed my help and I had agreed to give it to her. But this felt too dangerous, too reckless.
“Look, if you’re too scared I get it. This is my problem, I’ll fix it myself,” she said, abandoning me and going inside.
I swore under my breath and went after her, following her into the dark building.
The smell inside the place was terrible - a mix of burnt hair and plastic odors that reminded me of when I had lived next door to crack addicts. There was another sour stink beneath that, similar to rotten eggs mixed with old garbage.
We crept past hoarded piles of trash - old stained mattresses and bed frames, boxes with black mold and rotten bottoms, and stacks of broken appliances and kitchen equipment. The place looked like a junkyard, and I noticed the occasional rat scampering across the floor, and more than a few fat cockroaches on the walls and ceilings.
A sound could be heard from up ahead and I realized it was someone snoring. Whoever it was, they were asleep. And that was good news for us. The last thing I wanted was a confrontation.
My nerves were raw and my legs shook with each step as we moved toward the sound. There was that blue, flickering light drawing closer as well and I realized it was the static of a broken TV set. The soft hiss of its entropy could be heard getting louder as we entered the room.
Inside, several men in leather jackets were laying around, sleeping on couches. The sounds of them snoring was reassuring, but it was still terrifying to be in such close proximity with these men, who I figured were capable of murder without hesitation.
“There,” the woman whispered, pointing to a bag at the far corner of the room.
She pointed at me and motioned that I should go to retrieve it. Meanwhile, she pulled out her pistol and aimed it towards the center of the room, at no one in particular. If any of them woke up, the sight of it would hopefully silence them.
I began to make my way across the perimeter of the large room, ducking under the woman’s gun as she held it out at arm’s length.
The piles of junk crowding the room made it difficult to maneuver, but I managed to get to the purse after several close calls, at one point tripping over a black extension cord which had been nearly invisible on the floor, and almost knocking over a lamp.
I picked up the bag and glanced inside, seeing it was still bulging with stacks of neatly piled cash. Tucking it under my arm, I began to walk back towards the woman, glancing around at the men nervously.
On the way back I made sure to keep an eye out for the pesky extension cord, stepping intentionally over it with the bag in my hands.
Of course, I was so distracted focusing on that, I knocked over a beer bottle which had been perched precariously on the ledge of a table.
The beer bottle tipped over and crashed to the floor, shattering glass everywhere and startling the whole room awake. The gangsters leapt to their feet, shouting at us and pulling out weapons.
“Run!” the woman yelled, and she didn’t have to tell me twice.
I threw her the bag and started to run, only to find myself face to face with a laughing gangster as I rounded the corner.
The woman was smiling too and I couldn’t understand why. She wasn’t running, either. She was just standing there, holding the purse.
“What are you doing? RUN!” I yelled, and she only laughed harder.
It felt like I was in a nightmare suddenly, as I was surrounded by men with knives in this dark, static-filled room, the hissing sound of snow underlying their booming laughter.
One of the men grabbed me and began reaching into my pockets.
“Where is it, where is it…” he muttered, then pulled out my wallet triumphantly.
He opened it to reveal thousands of dollars in cash.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked the woman, who was still laughing. She was walking over to one of the gangsters and proceeded to grab him and kiss him.
“Usually we have to do this part first before getting the mark to go to the ATM. You did it all for us yourself. Thanks for the cash,” she said, opening her purse.
She began to leaf through the bills inside the bag, showing me they were all blank, white paper, beneath real bills on top.
“The old purse on the bus trick. It works every time,” one of the gang members said, laughing.
Spider joined in with his high-pitched cackle.
“You really are stupid,” the woman said, pointing her pistol at me. “But we don’t need you anymore. I saw your PIN number at the ATM. Now we can empty out your bank account and your apartment.”
“What do you want us to do with the body, Wendy?” one of the guys asked her, and I realized that she was the one running this gang.
“Dump it in the river, same as the other ones. Why do you even gotta ask, Spider?”
She turned back to look at me and smiled, then squeezed the trigger.
The shot should have killed me. But it didn’t, and I survived, despite all odds, and played dead. Luckily they didn’t check too hard for a pulse.
They dumped me in the river, but I’ve always been a good swimmer, and I managed to make it to shore and got to a hospital.
I don’t know when, but I know when they find out I’m alive they’ll be coming for me again. I’m terrified of what will happen when they find me.
When I get discharged I’m gonna have to get home on the bus.
On second thought, maybe I’ll take an Uber instead.