by Steven Gould
As if there isn’t going to be enough confusion as it is.
Still, I’d been in a hurry, so I hadn’t really looked at how much money I’d stolen. I sat back on the bed and stared.
Each layer of the piles was five packets by five. Call it a little over a foot along the wall by two and a half feet out from the wall. There were more ones than any other denomination, three stacks each over four feet high. There was one stack of fives just under two feet high, one stack of tens about a foot and a half high, one stack of twenties about nine inches high, almost one layer of fifty-dollar bills, and seventeen packets of hundred-dollar bills.
I jumped to the Stanville Library and borrowed a calculator from behind the circulation desk. I counted the layers and did all my calculations twice. I did them more than twice if the first two times didn’t match.
There were twenty-five packets per layer. That meant there were, for instance, twelve hundred and fifty dollars per layer of ones and twenty-five thousand dollars per layer of twenties. I had one hundred and fifty-three layers and six packets of ones, which gave me, in singles alone... I dropped the calculator onto my lap and fell back onto the bed shaking.
I had one hundred and ninety-one thousand and four hundred dollars in one-dollar bills. When all the calculations were done and redone, I had a nine hundred fifty-three thousand and fifty dollars, not counting the seven hundred and sixty dollars in my jacket pocket.
Nearly a million dollars.
Since there were seventeen packets of hundred-dollar bills, I divided the five-through-hundred-denomination packets into seventeen of the nylon bags. This gave me almost fifty thousand per bag, give or take a year’s salary. Then I stuffed enough one-dollar packets in each one to fill it the rest of the way up. In some bags this added as little as seven hundred dollars. In some of the bigger bags it added as much as thirty-two hundred dollars. Then I stuffed the last three bags, the larger duffels, with one-dollar packets, until they were almost too heavy to pick up. There was still a pile of ones two feet high. I counted the layers and put it at thirty thousand dollars. Even when I refilled the cardboard box from the vault there was twenty-five hundred dollars left.
Jesus! Where am I going to put this stuff?
From the street outside there was the sound of a siren, an almost continual noise in New York, but this one was closer than most. I stopped breathing. When the sound continued past, I drew in a shuddering breath and cold sweat beaded my forehead. It reminded me how dangerous this neighborhood was. It reminded me of the bathroom incident just down the hall and of my mugging.
Here I was, a rich man for only an hour, and I was paranoid already. Money doesn’t solve all problems, I thought. It just makes new ones.
I wondered what time it was. I’ve got to get a watch! I jumped to the Stanville Library and saw that it was 3:30 A.M. I put the calculator back behind Circulation and was about to jump back when I glanced up.
The Stanville Library was built in 1910, a large granite building with fourteen-foot-high ceilings. I knew this because Ms. Tonovire, the librarian, used to practice her tour on me. When they added air-conditioning to the library, in 1973, they put in a suspended ceiling to cover the ductwork. This was about ten feet high.
I climbed the magazine shelves back in Periodicals and pushed on one of the foot-and-a-half-by-three-foot panels. It lifted up and slid to one side. It was dark above.
I jumped back to the hotel room and moved ten of the bags to the top of that duct, spacing them out to distribute the weight. I also put the box of ones there.
The hotel room seemed empty without the piles of money or the jumble of filled nylon bags. The one bag that was left I zipped shut and slid under the bed. Then I took off my shoes, turned off the light, and lay down.
My body was tired but my brain raced, nervous, excited, exalted, guilty. I don’t want to get caught. Don’t let me get caught! I shifted, trying to make my body comfortable. My mind wouldn’t stop. I kept hearing noises in the street and couldn’t sleep. I tried to reassure myself. How would they catch you? If you spend the money carefully, you’re home free. Besides, they couldn’t keep you, even if they had a clue that you’d done it.
I rolled over on my side.
The library? What if they decide to clean the tops of shelves? Won’t they be suspicious when they find my footprints in the dust? I shook my head and tried to burrow deeper into the pillow.
I tried deep breathing. It didn’t work. I tried counting backward from a thousand but that brought up images of the money-stacks and stacks of money. The fifty or so thousand dollars under the bed seemed to push at me through the bed, seemed to have a presence that was almost animate. Dammit, it’s just a bag of paper! I pounded the pillow, pushing and rearranging it, then firmly closed my eyes.
An interminable amount of time later, I sighed, sat up, put my shoes back on, and jumped to the library.
Only when I’d dusted the top of every shelf in the building and dawn sunlight was coming in the windows of the library could I put the duster away, jump back to Brooklyn, and fall asleep.
“Well, what kind of watch are you looking for?”
“I want one that lets you see what time it is in several different time zones. It should also have an alarm of some kind, be waterproof, and look classy without being pretentious. I want it to look nice in dressy situations, but I don’t want to be hit over the head every time I walk through a questionable neighborhood, just because I’m wearing it.”
The clerk laughed. He was a wearing a closely trimmed beard and a yarmulke, the little circular hat some Jews wear. It was new to me—I’d only seen them before on TV. He spoke. “Given it some thought, I see. What was the price range you wanted?”
“Doesn’t matter. I just want those features.”
The store was on Forty-seventh Street, a jewelry/electronics “boutique.” I’d come here first thing, jumping to the subway at Grand Central Station, then walking the remaining six blocks.
The clerk pulled three different watches out of the case.
“All three of these do what you want—the time zone thing and alarms. This is the cheapest—it’s fifty-five ninety-five.”
I looked at it. “Not very dressy.”
He nodded, very agreeable. “Yeah. These other two are much classier. This one”—he pointed at a watch in gold metal with a gold and silver metal strap—”lists for three hundred and seventy. I think we have it on special for two ninety-five.” He pointed at the other one, a slim watch with a lizard-skin strap. “This one doesn’t look as flashy as the other one, but it’s gold-clad silver where this guy”—he held up the gold-metal-banded watch,—”is anodized stainless steel.”
I prodded the slim watch. “How much?”
He grinned. “Thirteen ninety-six and thirty-five cents.”
I blinked. He started to put the expensive watch away. “I love to watch a customer’s eyes when I tell them that. It’s not as if we’re up on Fifth Avenue. I don’t know why it’s even in the inventory.”
I held up my hand. “I’ll take it.”
“Huh. This one?” He reached for the flashy gold watch with his other hand.
“No. That one, the fourteen-hundred-dollar job. What’s that with tax?” I thought for a moment, then reached into my right front pocket—that’s where I’d put twenty hundred-dollar bills. When I started counting them out onto the counter, he grabbed his calculator quickly.
Behind him a row of televisions of varying size and shape all showed the same program, an afternoon soap opera. It ended and a “News Before the Hour” logo came on, then showed the outside of the Chemical Bank of New York. I stared. Reporters poked microphones at a grim-faced man who was reading from a sheet of paper. None of the sets had the volume on.
The clerk noticed and looked over my shoulder. “Oh, the bank robbery. Won’t be long before they get them.”
My stomach was hurting and I felt like my knees would collapse. I managed to say one word: “Oh?”
&
nbsp; “A million dollars gone from the vault from the time they closed it to the time they opened it again? It had to be an inside job. If that money wasn’t there when they opened the safe then it wasn’t there when they closed it.”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“The news broke at eleven-thirty,” he said, counting my change out on the counter. “Apparently a teller tipped the press. There, fifteen hundred and eleven fifty-five out of fifteen twenty leaves eight forty-five.” He looked back at the TV. “Whoever did it is going to have to hold that money for a long time.”
I carefully stowed the change. “Why’s that?”
“Well, all the employees with access are probably going to be watched like hawks. When they spend one penny they can’t account for, whammo!” He handed me the receipt and warranty card for the watch. “You need anything else? A nice VCR? A camcorder? Computer?”
All that neat stuff—but I didn’t have any place to put it yet. “Perhaps later.”
“Any time. Any time at all.”
I ate at the Jockey Club in the Ritz Carlton, just south of the park. The bell captain looked at me funny when I walked through the lobby and down the stairs to the restaurant, but the hostess saw me to a table and acted like it was a pleasure. I picked the most expensive thing on the lunch menu.
While I waited for the food I played with the controls on my watch and watched the other patrons to see how they were dressed and how they acted in a fancy restaurant. There were fresh flowers on each table and the waiter brought hot rolls and butter automatically.
I didn’t have much experience in restaurants—not since Mom left. She’d tried to do more than show me how to eat with my mouth closed, but I was self-conscious.
When the food came, I only ate half of it. There was too much of it and I wasn’t too hungry. The news program had upset me, made me paranoid again.
I tried to pay the waiter when he brought the bill, but he gently corrected me. “I can take this up to the cashier for you, if you wish, or you can just pay on the way out.”
I said I would do that and thought for a moment how he’d guided me without making me feel stupid. If it had been my father he would have said, “Pay the cashier, dipshit. Don’t you know anything?” The difference was considerable. I left the waiter a twenty-dollar tip.
Paying for a fifty-dollar lunch seemed unreal, just as buying the watch earlier seemed a game. It was like playing with Monopoly money, like playing make-believe.
What would you do, Davy, if you were rich?
I’d be happy. I walked across the street and into Central Park, green and lush, and somehow alien in the middle of all the concrete and steel.
Well, I can try.
PART II:
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
Chapter 5
I met Millie during the intermission of a Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It was my sixth time to see it. After paying the first time, I just popped to an alcove at the back of the mezzanine five minutes after eight. The houselights are off by then and I would find a seat without any trouble. If it looked like someone arrived late and was headed for my claimed seat, I would bend down as if to tie my shoe and jump back to the alcove. Then locate another empty seat.
I don’t mind paying, but I often don’t decide until after curtain time that I want to see it. Then the box-office attendant will waste my time trying to get me to buy a ticket for another night. Too much trouble.
This was a Thursday-night show and the crowd was surprisingly heavy. I was pressed against the balcony railing drinking overpriced ginger ale and watching the lines at the bathrooms.
“And what are you smiling about?”
I jerked my head around. For a moment I thought it was one of the ushers about to evict me as a gate crasher, but it was this woman, not much older than me but apparently over twenty-one—at least, she was drinking champagne.
“Are you talking to me?”
“Sure. Maybe that’s presumptuous of me, but in a crowd this dense, intimacy is a foregone conclusion.”
“Well, yes it is. My name is David.”
“Millie,” she said with a vague wave of her hand. She was wearing a dressy blouse and black slacks. She was pretty, wore owl-like glasses, no makeup, and had her shiny, black hair cut long on top, then tapering in to the neck. “So what were you smiling about?”
I frowned. “Oh... I guess I was feeling a little superior, not having to wait in line. Does this temporary intimacy extend to talking about bathrooms?”
She shrugged. “Why not? I’d be in line myself, but I ducked out in the first act. I’ll probably have to do it again later. What’s your secret? Bladder of iron?”
I turned red. “Something like that.”
“Are you blushing? Wow, I thought teenage males talked about bodily functions continuously. My brothers certainly do.”
“It’s hot in here.”
“Yeah. Okay. We won’t talk about excretory functions anymore. Any other taboo subjects?”
“I’d rather not give you any ideas.”
She laughed. “Touché. You a local?”
“Sort of. I travel a lot, but this is home for now.”
“I’m not. I’m here for a week of the touristy stuff. Gotta go back to school in two weeks.”
“Where’s that?”
“Oklahoma State, majoring in psych.”
I thought for a moment. “Stillwater?”
“Yeah. I guess you do travel.”
“Not to Oklahoma. My grandfather went to school there, back when it was Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical.”
“Where do you go to school?”
“I don’t. Haven’t the aptitude.”
She looked over her glasses at me. “You don’t sound particularly stupid.”
I blushed again. “I’m just taking my time.”
The lights began dimming for the second act. She finished her champagne and dropped the plastic glass in the trash. Then she stuck out her hand.
I took it. She pumped it twice firmly and said, “Nice talking to you, David. Enjoy the rest of the show.”
“You too, Millie.”
I cried during the second act. Sweeney’s wife, who’s had her child stolen away from her and has been driven mad by rape, is revealed to be the mad, dissolute street beggar/prostitute, but only after Sweeney kills her when she witnesses the murder of her rapist, Judge Turpin.
The first time I saw this scene I decided I didn’t like it. I went away, in fact, with a very negative impression of the show. It was only after I found myself examining the face of every bag lady on the street to see if she was my mother that I realized why I didn’t like the scene.
Still, I didn’t stop looking at bag ladies and, after a while, I started returning to Sweeney Todd.
I skipped the finale and jumped to Grand Central Terminal. It’s one of the places you can find a cab late at night. I stuck my hand out and this black man, perhaps twenty-five and raggedly dressed, jumped out in the street. “Cab? You need a cab? I’ll get you a cab.”
I could have walked to the regulated taxi stand on the Vanderbilt Avenue side, but what the heck. I nodded.
He stuck a chrome police whistle in his teeth and blew it, two sharp piercing blasts. Down the block a cab pulled over two lanes and pulled up. The black guy held the door for me. I handed him a bill.
“Hey, man. Two dollars to get a cab. Two dollars.”
“That’s a ten.”
He stepped back, surprised. “Oh. Yeah. Thanks, man.”
I had the cabbie go back across Forty-fifth to the theater where Sweeney was showing and had him park it on the curb. I stood on the sidewalk, one foot still in the cab, and fended off people who wanted the cab. “I’m picking someone up. This cab is taken. I’ve already got this cab. Sorry. No, I don’t want to share this cab. I’m waiting for someone. Go away.”
I was beginning to question this endeavor when Millie finally appeared, looking very New York wit
h her purse around one shoulder and her neck, her face very determined and purposeful.
“Millie!”
She turned, surprise on her face. “David. How did you get a cab?”
I waved my hands and shrugged. “Magic. Let me give you a lift.”
She came closer. “You don’t know which way I’m going.”
“So.”
“I’m staying down in the Village.”
“Close enough for government work. Get in.” I held the door for her and told the driver, “Sheridan Square.” I frowned. Close enough for government work. My dad used that phrase. I wondered what other things I did that were like my father.
Millie frowned. “Where is that?”
“It’s in the heart of the Village. It’s also near some really great restaurants. You hungry?”
“What is this? I thought we were just sharing a taxi.” She was smiling, though. “How much is the fare going to be? I was going to take the subway back. I didn’t exactly budget for a cab. I’d heard how impossible it is to get one after the theaters let out.”
“Well, it’s true. It felt like planet of the zombie taxi-seekers there while I waited for you.”
“You were waiting for me?” She looked nervous for a moment. “My mother told me not to talk to strangers. How much is the cab going to be?”
“Forget the cab. I offered a lift, not half a taxi. And I’m good for something to eat if you want.”
“Hmmm. Just how old are you, David?”
I blushed and looked at my watch. “In forty-seven minutes I’ll be eighteen.” I looked away from her, at the passing lights and sidewalks. I remembered the events surrounding my seventeenth birthday and shuddered.
“Oh. Well happy almost birthday.” She stared ahead. “You act older than that. You dress awfully nice and you don’t talk that young.”
I shrugged. “I read a great deal... and I can afford to dress like this.”
“You must have some job.”
I wondered what I was doing in this cab with this woman. Lonely. “I don’t have a job, Millie. I don’t need one.”