The Trillionaire Chapter Six: The Road to Hell Via Money Spent

Tori felt like a boss.

It took considerably more than three telephone calls, but within a week she had negotiated temporary use of the abandoned warehouse across from the trailer park.

The arrangement wasn't quite the lease she'd imagined.

The property belonged to a small holding company whose owner seemed delighted that anyone was willing to pay him for a building he'd been unable to rent commercially. Once he learned that Tori was an emancipated minor, however, the conversation became considerably more complicated.

He wanted identification.

He wanted a copy of her emancipation order.

He wanted a deposit.

Most importantly, he made it absolutely clear that she was renting the building for private storage and personal recreational use.

No business.

No public events.

No structural alterations.

No overnight occupants.

Tori agreed.

She wasn't planning any of those things anyway.

She had briefly fantasized about buying the warehouse and turning it into a community center for teenagers in the trailer park. Her monthly allowance wasn't remotely large enough for that, and the trust documents made it clear that substantial purchases required approval.

Tori could have called Mr. Kenton and asked.

She didn't.

She wasn't ready for the adults managing her father's estate to know that she'd begun spending money on abandoned warehouses.

So she paid the deposit and one month's rent from her allowance.

When the keys arrived, Tori walked across the road and unlocked the battered side entrance.

The building smelled like dust, hot concrete, and something dead.

She stood inside.

"Okay."

Maybe community center had been ambitious.

Still, the main floor was enormous. The concrete was reasonably smooth, and most of the roof appeared intact. It was shelter from the New Mexico sun, and somewhere Jesse and his friends could skate without worrying about traffic.

Tori brought over a broom from the trailer and started sweeping.

She blocked the stairway leading to the offices upstairs after discovering that several steps had partially rotted through. She found broken glass near one wall and spent an hour picking it up.

The bathrooms didn't work.

Neither did the electricity.

Tori considered having the utilities turned on, then reconsidered. That would mean deposits, bills and more paperwork.

For what she wanted, the building was good enough.

Or at least she thought it was.

For their next date, Tori casually mentioned the warehouse to Molly.

"I think one of the doors is open."

Molly looked at her.

"You want to break into a warehouse?"

"We're not breaking anything."

"That's still trespassing."

"I've never seen cops over there."

That was a lie.

Molly considered this for approximately three seconds.

"Okay."

Tori smiled.

She still didn't tell her she'd rented it.

The secrecy made the whole thing more enjoyable.

That Saturday evening, Tori, Molly, Jesse, and Rocky met inside.

Jesse's reaction made the money worth it.

"No way."

He dropped his skateboard onto the concrete.

"Where did you find this?"

Tori shrugged.

"It's been here forever."

The boys immediately began testing the floor.

Molly produced a bottle of Black Velvet she'd stolen from her father's cabinet.

Tori frowned.

"He knows you took that?"

"No."

"Molly."

"He's got another bottle."

That apparently settled the ethical issue for Molly.

Tori took a small sip anyway and immediately regretted it.

"It tastes like gasoline."

"You're supposed to get used to it."

"Why?"

Molly couldn't answer that.

Rocky had brought a battery-powered radio. Music echoed through the cavernous building while Jesse practiced tricks across the concrete.

Tori sat beside Molly and watched.

Everyone was happy.

More surprisingly, Tori was happy.

There had been a point after her mother's death when Tori had privately accepted that happiness might simply be over for her. Other people got childhoods, families, weddings and ordinary lives. Maybe she'd already received whatever portion of happiness had been assigned to her.

But sitting in that ugly warehouse, watching Jesse nearly fall off his skateboard while Molly laughed beside her, Tori felt something she hadn't expected.

Contentment.

Not excitement.

Not distraction.

Something quieter.

For a few hours, she felt normal.

Maybe she was going to be okay.

The following week, Tori bought Mr. Ronny's truck.

Calling it a truck was generous.

It rattled.

The passenger window wouldn't roll down.

The upholstery smelled permanently of cigarettes.

The transmission repair consumed enough money that Tori briefly wondered whether walking everywhere had really been so terrible.

But when she turned the key and drove out of the trailer park by herself for the first time, she didn't care.

She had transportation.

She had money in the bank.

She had somewhere to go.

When people asked how she'd suddenly managed to afford a truck, Tori gave them a vague story about money from medical programs she'd participated in.

It wasn't entirely a lie.

She'd certainly been stuck with enough needles.

But Tori noticed something changing in herself.

Before Sweden, her ambitions had been small because they had to be.

Food.

Rent.

A car.

A job.

Survival.

Now she caught herself wanting things she had never seriously considered.

College.

A condominium.

Travel.

Maybe a business someday.

Maybe the warehouse.

The strange part wasn't wanting those things.

It was beginning to believe she might actually get them.

Her mother had always treated wanting more as dangerous. Money corrupted people.

Possessions trapped them. Wealth turned human beings cruel.

Tori had seen enough of her father to understand where that fear came from.

Still, she wasn't convinced poverty made anyone better.

Poverty had nearly killed her mother too.

Tori didn't know what the correct answer was.

She only knew she wanted more.

Whether that represented ambition or corruption remained to be seen.

The next Saturday, Rocky brought friends.

His friends brought friends.

Tori counted eleven people she hadn't invited.

She should have stopped it there.

Instead, she looked around at everyone laughing and decided it was fine.

The warehouse was enormous.

What difference could eleven people make?

By midnight, someone had brought beer.

Tori didn't know who.

Coors Light and Miller cans appeared everywhere. Somebody had another radio. People danced. Skateboarders took turns using the open floor.

Tori even recognized several people from school.

Some didn't immediately recognize her.

She liked that more than she expected.

Tori had always been the skinny poor girl with the sick mother.

Now people talked to her differently.

Maybe she carried herself differently.

She still wore the same cheap clothes.

She still lived less than a block away in a trailer.

But something had changed.

Confidence, perhaps.

Or simply the knowledge that she no longer had to ask permission for every small thing she wanted.

The party continued until morning.

Tori finally locked the building sometime before noon.

She was exhausted.

She was also absurdly proud of herself.

She had created something.

People wanted to be there.

What she didn't understand yet was that once people wanted something, keeping control of it became considerably harder.

Tori didn't return to the warehouse for several days.

When she finally did, the rear door had been forced.

There were people inside.

At first she was furious.

Then she recognized one of them.

His name was Danny. He'd gone to school with Molly. Tori had heard that his stepfather beat him and that he'd recently been thrown out.

"How long have you been sleeping here?"

Danny looked embarrassed.

"Couple nights."

Tori stared at the blankets on the floor.

The lease explicitly prohibited overnight occupants.

She knew what she should do.

Tell them to leave.

Instead, she went home.

Molly helped her load the old sofa from the trailer into the truck.

"What are you doing with this?"

"Getting rid of it."

"Where?"

"The warehouse."

Molly stopped.

"Why?"

"People need somewhere to sit."

Molly stared at her.

Tori stared back.

"Are you secretly running this place?"

"No."

That answer came much too quickly.

Molly narrowed her eyes.

Tori changed the subject.

They delivered the sofa.

Seeing Danny asleep on it later gave Tori an uncomfortable sense of satisfaction.

This was what she wanted money to be.

Not mansions.

Not servants who wouldn't look people in the eye.

Not private airplanes carrying children across oceans because an old man wanted something from their veins.

A sofa for somebody who didn't have a bed.

That mattered.

Tori remembered her father's face while her blood was being collected.

She remembered his complete absence of guilt.

Money had insulated him from other people's humanity.

Tori refused to let hers do the same.

If wealth really was poison, as her mother had believed, then Tori intended to find the antidote.

By July, the warehouse had developed a life independent of Tori.

That should have frightened her.

Instead, she found it flattering.

People came even when she wasn't there.

Danny and several other displaced teenagers slept there regularly. Skaters used it during the day. Parties happened on weekends.

Tori stopped trying to be the last person out.

She spent weekdays studying for college placement tests and filling out community-college paperwork. On Friday and Saturday nights, she went to the warehouse mostly to see Jesse.

They'd disappear into a quiet corner and sit together for hours.

Tori liked him.

More than liked him, probably.

But she never invited him to the trailer.

The trailer was hers.

It was the last place in the world that still belonged to Tori and her mother.

She didn't want anyone else inside that memory.

Then, one Friday night, Tori arrived at the warehouse and immediately knew something had changed.

She didn't recognize most of the people.

These weren't teenagers from school.

Some looked well into their twenties.

The music was louder.

There was more alcohol.

She smelled marijuana and something chemical she couldn't identify.

Tori found Rocky.

"Who are these people?"

He shrugged.

"Friends."

"Whose?"

"People's."

That wasn't an answer.

A man shoved another man near the center of the floor.

Someone shouted.

Within seconds, there was a fight.

Then another.

The crowd collapsed inward.

Tori backed away.

Someone swung a bottle.

That was enough.

She headed toward the door.

Sirens approached outside.

The entire building seemed to react at once.

People ran.

Tori ran with them.

The police called the following morning.

The officer wanted to speak with the person responsible for the property.

Tori's stomach dropped.

"I'm renting it."

There was a pause.

"You're the tenant?"

"Yes."

"How old are you?"

Tori closed her eyes.

"Fifteen."

Another pause.

"I'm emancipated."

That led to a much longer conversation.

The officer informed her that police had documented underage drinking, unlawful overnight occupancy, and other activity at the property. The building owner would also be contacted.

If Tori continued allowing people to use the warehouse in that manner, she could face consequences under the lease and potentially other legal problems depending on what occurred there.

Tori's fantasy collapsed almost immediately.

She called the landlord.

"I'm ending the rental."

He was already aware of the police response.

He was considerably less friendly than he'd been when taking her deposit.

Tori agreed to surrender the property at the end of the rental period and not hold any more gatherings there.

Then she called the police back.

She told them people had begun entering without her permission and asked what she was supposed to do if they returned.

The answer was humiliatingly obvious.

Call the police.

Of course.

Tori hung up.

She felt stupid.

She had wanted to help people.

Instead, she'd accidentally created an unsupervised party venue full of alcohol and squatters.

So much for being a philanthropist.

She decided she was finished with the warehouse.

That evening, she met Jesse at a go-kart track instead.

A normal date.

They ate terrible food, raced each other, and eventually drove Mr. Ronny's truck beyond town where they parked beneath an enormous desert sky.

For several hours, Tori forgot the warehouse existed.

She returned home shortly before two in the morning and collapsed into bed.

The answering machine woke her.

Tori opened her eyes.

A man's voice was speaking from the living room.

She couldn't understand the words at first.

Then she heard police department.

Tori sat up.

She stumbled into the living room and restarted the message.

"Miss Pontius, this is Detective Alvarez. I need you to contact me regarding an incident at the commercial property you've been renting. We'd like you to come in and speak with us as soon as possible."

Tori's heart began pounding.

Then came the sentence that emptied everything else from her mind.

"There has been a death at the property, and we're investigating it as a homicide."

Tori stared at the machine.

She played the message again.

A homicide.

At her warehouse.

She grabbed the telephone and called Mr. Kenton's office.

Voicemail.

"Mr. Kenton, it's Tori."

Her voice broke.

She stopped.

Started again.

"I need you to call me. I screwed something up. Something really bad happened."

She left her number even though he already had it.

Then she sat on the floor beside the telephone.

Twenty minutes later, Molly appeared at the door.

Tori almost didn't answer.

Molly pushed inside the moment it opened.

"Oh my God. Did you hear?"

Tori couldn't speak.

"The warehouse. There was this huge party last night. Bigger than any of the others. Rocky said people came from all over. There were drugs everywhere."

Tori stared at her.

"There was a fight," Molly continued. "Then the cops came. It took forever to clear everybody out."

Tori already knew what came next.

She didn't want Molly to say it.

"When they finally got everybody outside, there was this guy on the floor."

"Molly."

"He'd been stabbed."

"Molly, stop."

"He was dead."

Tori folded forward.

Her hands covered her face.

Molly went silent.

"Tori?"

Tori began crying.

Not the quiet crying she'd learned to hide.

Her whole body shook.

Molly crouched beside her.

"Tori, what's wrong?"

Tori tried to answer.

Nothing came out.

Molly put a hand on her shoulder.

"Tori?"

Finally, Tori looked at her.

There was no point hiding it anymore.

She had wanted to give people somewhere to go.

She had wanted to prove money could make something better.

Instead, someone was dead.

Tori wiped her face.

"The warehouse isn't abandoned."

Molly stared at her.

"What?"

Tori swallowed.

"I rented it."