Breaking the Bank

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  Under her coat, she started to sweat. The blouse, clearly made of some infernal synthetic material, stuck to her armpits like Saran Wrap. She stopped outside the courthouse to adjust her skirt, which had twisted uncomfortably on her waist, and noticed there was a run in her panty hose. No spare pair and no time to go buy one either; there was nothing to do but submit her bag and her person to the security guards at the entrance and, once inside, scan the space for Cox.

  He was there, of course, topcoat draped neatly over his arm, briefcase clasped firmly in one small hand. His suit today was also gray flannel—she fervently hoped no one would think they planned it— and his shirt was the palest shade of lilac. His hammered gold cuff links looked heavy enough to bruise.

  “You’ve got a run,” he observed. “It just happened on the way here,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “I’ve got a fresh pair. Hang on.” He set down the briefcase and snapped open its heavy clasps. Inside, on top of the neatly arranged papers, were several pairs of panty hose in unopened packages. There was also a necktie, a box of Band-Aids, a bottle of mouthwash, and a comb.

  “You carry these around with you?” He certainly thought of every-thing.

  “You think you’re the first client to spring a leak on court day?” He handed her one of the packages. “Go to the ladies’ room and put them on.”

  When she emerged, she saw Stuart deep in conversation with Cox. Lloyd was nowhere in sight, which was a relief. The expression on Stuart’s face—so intense, so absorbed, so focused—reminded her of how he looked at eight, at ten, at fourteen, at seventeen. He was her brother. No one else knew what it was like to be the children of those particular parents, in that particular family; Stuart was a witness, the witness, to their shared past, a touchstone for everything that had ever happened to her and everything that ever would. She was glad he was there.

  “Hey, Stu,” she said, touching his sleeve. “Hey, yourself.” He hugged her. “I was just grilling Chris on your prospects. I think you’re in good hands.” Good, though small, thought Mia.

  “There’s something I just found out,” Cox said. “Costello isn’t going to press you on the locket. At least not today.”

  “Not any day,” said Mia. “Look what I have.” She pulled out the receipt.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t produce one,” Cox said, narrowing his eyes as he read.

  “I was wrong.”

  “Well, that takes care of one headache,” he said, folding the receipt and tucking it into his briefcase. “Now we just have to deal with the bill. But you know what to do in there, right? You’ve been coached.”

  “Coached by the best,” she said. He nodded. They rode up in the elevator and followed the small stream of people headed toward the courtroom.

  Cox had been right when he said that the joint would be jumping. The rows of wooden benches—pewlike, Mia thought—were almost completely filled. There were twenty-year-olds and seventy-year-olds, blacks and whites, Asians and Latinos. Here was a big burly guy wearing wraparound sunglasses; he was accompanied by a woman in a black vinyl coat, open to reveal her plunging neckline and a complicated array of gold necklaces. Next to her sat a young woman with badly bitten-down nails; she was with an older woman who was furiously winding a skein of yarn around one wrist.

  Mia saw Costello up near the front. And there was Fred, seated on one side. Mia waggled her fingers at him, a tentative wave. He waggled back. Since he had told her he would be here, she was not surprised. What did surprise her, though, was the sight of Patrick, sitting in the last row. What was he doing here? Suddenly, it seemed like there was a small grenade in the room. The blouse felt as if it were glued to her underarms; she had better not take off the coat. Patrick caught her looking at him, and he mouthed something; she was not sure what he was trying to say, but it seemed to contain the words College Girl.

  “Come on,” Cox whispered, as he steered them toward a bench near the front. “We have to find a seat.” Stuart worked his way in first, then Cox, and finally Mia, who awkwardly pressed past all the people in the row, murmuring, “Sorry” and “Excuse me” as she went; she accidentally stepped on the foot of a grossly overweight woman whose peroxided hair revealed a stripe of rich, dark brown at the scalp.

  “Ow!” wailed the woman, and several people turned to glare at Mia.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mia said, as the woman struggled to bend over so she could massage her instep. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Why don’t you sit down?” said Cox gently, taking Mia’s arm. Stuart looked over to see what was the matter. Giving the woman a last, apologetic look, Mia sat down. Knowing that Patrick was here threw her off balance. She willed herself not to look at him, though she was sure she could feel him looking at her.

  “Milosz Karnov,” called out a policeman standing at the front of the courtroom. “Milosz Karnov, please approach the bench.”

  The man with the sunglasses got to his feet and walked up to where the judge was seated. The judge. Mia had not really looked at him before, but she looked now. He was in his sixties, with a long, sorrowful-looking face and the big, down-turned eyes of a basset hound. His dark robe and wooden gavel seemed like props—not entirely real yet still menacing. He spoke quietly so she couldn’t hear him, but his authority was clear; Mr. Wraparound seemed to lose his swagger and nodded his head meekly in response to something the judge said. A suited man with slicked-back hair—his lawyer?— interrupted, and the judge swiveled slightly so that he could turn his full, accusatory gaze in the man’s direction. The man fell silent. More words were exchanged between the judge and Mr. Wraparound. Then the judge rapped his gavel—Mia could hear its implosive sound even from where she sat—and Mr. Wraparound left the courtroom, escorted by his lawyer and the woman in vinyl, who tottered behind on her spiky heels.

  Mia sat riveted as versions of this drama unfolded once, twice, three times. The young woman with the ragged nails approached the bench.

  The woman with the yarn began tugging on the strand with both hands; Mia waited for it to snap.

  Then the officer at the front of the room called out her name:

  “Mia Saul.” It sounded as if she were being summoned by God. Mia stood, inched her way back across the row of bodies—the overweight woman recoiled visibly—and approached the bench. As she moved forward, Mia felt like everyone in the room was staring at her; she imagined that Patrick’s smoldering gaze might have the power to burn through cloth, leaving two singed, round holes where it penetrated the back of her coat.

  Then she felt a hand at her elbow, and she looked up. Cox. It was Cox, escorting her to the bench. Her breath released slightly. Cox was here; he would know what to say. And indeed he did. His delivery was even smoother, more mellifluous than it had been the first time she had heard it, in Costello’s dreary office. He had clearly been practicing, and he glided through the whole song and dance—her heroic plight as a single mom, her seamless alibis—as if he really were onstage. Costello was scribbling madly on a legal pad while he spoke, and even Stuart looked deeply impressed.

  “And so I think you’ll have to agree, Your Honor, that my client had nothing whatsoever to do with Mr. Wedeen’s unfortunate death.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cox, for your stirring presentation,” said the judge. His voice had a thick, almost clotted quality, as if he badly needed to clear his throat. “But there’s still the matter of the mysterious ten-thousand-dollar bill, which, so far, no one has been able to explain. And I have to say that the presence of this bill—its origins, its history—fascinates me.”

  “Well, Your Honor, that bill—”

  “I’d like to hear from Ms. Saul directly, Mr. Cox. I’ve heard everything you’ve had to say, and now I think it’s time for Ms. Saul to offer her version of events.” The judge turned those big canine eyes in Mia’s direction, and for a few seconds, she couldn’t say anything.

  “Ms. Saul?” He sounded impatient. “We’re all waiting.” He gestured to the di
strict attorney on his left and the court officers standing nearby.

  Still nothing. Cox was discreetly pumping his clenched fist, in pre-victory mode, and the judge’s eyes continued to bore into her. Then she thought of Eden, and she found the words that had been eluding her.

  “I do want to explain about that bill, Your Honor,” Mia said. “Even though the story seems to defy explanation.” She launched into the story of the cash machine, its escalating offerings, culminating in the ten-thousand-dollar bill that she sold to Weed shortly before his death. She abandoned the script that Cox had dictated, all the coy little glances, the girlish shrugs, and instead told the story openly and forthrightly, just the way it had happened. She didn’t look at Cox as she spoke; she didn’t dare.

  When she was through, she could feel the judge’s silent attention had intensified, like sunlight through a magnifying glass.

  “Mr. Cox,” he said at last. “You didn’t mention before that your client was delusional—”

  “But I’m not,” said Mia firmly. “Not at all. And I can prove it, too.” Had she really said that, out loud, to the judge and everyone else within earshot? Had she just offered to expose her magic, not only to Patrick, who was some kind of weird, kindred soul, but to the world? The judge stared at her silently and she stared back. The last time she had gone by the bank, the machine had been out of order. So her offer was a huge gamble. But hadn’t it all been a gamble? A horse race, the Kentucky Derby, waiting for that dark horse to hug the rail in the last lap and burst on through to the finish line?

  “Prove it?” the judge asked at last. He looked over at the D.A., who tapped the side of his head, as if he were testing a melon for ripeness, and shrugged. “How?”

  “Well, I know this would be unorthodox—”

  “Your Honor, you’ve got to believe this woman. She’s telling the truth.” Patrick’s voice rang out from the back of the courtroom, and everyone, but everyone, turned around to stare. “That machine she’s talking about? It’s for real. I know, ‘cause I’ve seen it.” He was standing now, arms outstretched beseechingly. The hood of his white parka framed the back of his blond head, a fallen halo.

  “Who is that?” growled the judge. “I have no idea,” Cox said.

  Fortunately, no one looked at Mia, who was shaking her head and silently saying, No, no, no.

  “Get him out of here,” said the judge. “Now.” Even before he was finished speaking, police officers stationed at opposite corners of the room began to converge.

  “You can haul me away, but you can’t shut me up,” Patrick said. “Be-cause I’m telling the truth, and so is she. She’s not like everyone else, see? The machine gave her that money because it knew she wasn’t, and then she started giving it away, to people she didn’t even know, people like me—”

  “Clear the aisle, clear the aisle,” barked an officer. At first, the people in Patrick’s row appeared frozen; there was no movement in any direction. Then, as if everyone had been given the cue simultaneously, they all started shoving and jostling in an effort to get out of the way. Patrick remained where he was, calmly watching the exodus. Two officers approached him from either side; one had a hand on his gun. But Patrick offered no resistance to the silver bracelets that were snapped onto his wrists.

  “That’s right, go ahead and cuff me,” he said, almost tenderly, to the officer. “They cuffed Jesus, too, didn’t they? Cuffed him good and nailed him to that cross. But they couldn’t shut him up, either, even when those motherfuckers crucified him.” He looked down at his shackled wrists. “That’s ‘cause the truth will out, even if you pigs in blue try to stifle it. You can’t. You just can’t.” He allowed himself to be pushed along the aisle and toward the door. Just before he had been pushed through it, he suddenly halted, colliding with one of the officers, who grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “Keep the faith, College Girl,” he sang out. “I love you!”

  No, she thought again, no, no, no, no. But there was another voice, soft and clear, urgently whispering beneath it, and that voice breathed yes. If Patrick said anything else, Mia didn’t hear it because he was out of earshot now, dragged out the door and along the corridor.

  The room erupted in a frantic buzzing. “Did you hear—?”

  “Did you see—?”

  “Who the hell—?”

  “What the fuck—?”

  “College Girl? Who’s College Girl?”

  “Order in the court!” roared the judge. He slammed the gavel down hard, and his long jowls shivered from the impact. “Order in the court!”

  “Everyone can sit down now,” said one of the remaining officers. “Show’s over.” He began shepherding all the displaced occupants of Patrick’s row back to their seats. It took a few minutes, but eventually, people filed back in and settled down. The buzzing and whispering continued.

  “Ms. Saul, do you know that man?” asked the judge. He looked to Mia as if he had aged perceptibly in these last few minutes.

  “Actually, I do, Your Honor.”

  “Then would you please tell me how you know him? And what possible relevance that outburst of his had on what we’ve been discussing?”

  “He’s seen the machine in action,” said Mia. “So he knows I’m telling the truth.”

  “Ms. Saul,” said the judge, setting down his gavel and leaning over the high podium behind which he sat. He brought his face disturbingly close to hers; she could see the pores on his nose, the tiny black dots on his chin that would, if unshaven, have turned into a beard. “You seem like a reasonable woman. An educated woman. Do you really expect me to believe that there is a cash machine in New York City that’s been dispensing money it does not debit or record in any way, shape, or form?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And that the bank has had no inkling that it’s handing out money in this fashion?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said, remembering the cordoned-off machine.

  “Let me ask you this then. Did it ever occur to you to tell the bank about their error?”

  “No, Your Honor.” She felt her whole body heating miserably and wished she could have taken off the coat.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s hard to explain . . .”

  “That’s what we’re here for, Ms. Saul. Explanations.” His face was still closer to hers than she would have liked, but something in his expression had changed. He seemed kinder somehow, almost avuncular. He even reminded her of her own uncle Bernie, with those long, velvety-looking earlobes of his.

  “I thought that the money was some kind of signal.”

  “A signal? What kind of a signal?”

  “Something telling me to hang on. Things weren’t going well for me. My husband had left me, my daughter was getting in trouble in school. I lost my job and had to move. The money seemed like it was a gift. Like it was meant just for me.” She paused, steeling herself before she uttered the next, most outlandish revelation of all. “And then, when the machine gave me the ten-thousand-dollar bill, I found out that I was right—it was a gift for me. The machine said so.”

  “The machine said so?” His voice scaled up in disbelief. “You are standing here and telling me that an automated teller machine communicated with you?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “How?”

  “Words appeared on the screen. A gift. For you, Mia. Use it well. So I really did think the money was intended for me.”

  The two bushy caterpillars of the judge’s eyebrows arched high in surprise.

  “I didn’t know why I was chosen to receive it, but I didn’t ask. And then when I started giving it away, I thought, well, this seems fair. I’d been given something; it was only right to give something back.”

  “So you gave away the money you received?”

  “Not all of it. But some of it, yes. To homeless people, cabdrivers, a couple of my neighbors who looked like they could use some help.”

  “And you gave money to that man w
ho was here earlier? The one who had to be removed from the courtroom?”

  “Yes,” Mia said, “I did.”

  “Well, this is all most interesting,” said the judge. Costello was still scribbling away. “But it’s very difficult to believe.”

  “Come and see for yourself,” said Mia, thinking of that dark horse again, only this time he was going for the Triple Crown. “Come to the bank, and I’ll show you.”

  The judge looked at her for a long moment, and then he turned to the district attorney. “Do it,” he said. The D.A. looked back at him with a “what the hell?” look, but the judge didn’t falter. “Send two of your men over there with her. Tomorrow morning. First thing.” He banged the gavel again. “Court’s adjourned for fifteen minutes.” He stood, black robe bunching around his ankles, and disappeared through a door just to the right of the podium. Costello jumped up, dropping her pad on the floor.

  There was more furious hissing, but Cox was hustling Mia down the aisle and out of the room.

  “What men?” said Mia, trying to match his pace. “What’s he talking about?”

  “The D.A. squad. They’ll go with you to the bank tomorrow morning to see this alleged money machine of yours.” He stopped. “I don’t know what you were doing in there, but all I can say is that I really hope it works.”

  “That makes two of us,” Mia said. What had she been doing in there? Did she think that the judge would just believe her without proof ? The door opened again, and there were Fred and Stuart. She could feel their questions, rising up like steam from boiling water. But Mia shut her eyes, shut them out. They would have to wait. Right now, close enough to smell, was the dark horse, her dark horse, his bright eyes bulging, his great column of a neck in a lather, as he came thundering around the track.