From my brother Gordon? No. My sister Fern? No. Not Shirley, not Kit, none of my friends here in New York.
It was too much money, just too much.
What story could I tell my father? “Hello, Dad, I want you to wire me four thousand dollars in the next ten minutes because—” Finish that sentence in twenty-five words or less and win…a free trip…a free chance to stay home.
There was a pistol on my desk; not a real one, a mock-up that had been used in a movie called Heller In Harlem. I’d watched some of the filming uptown, for a piece in Third World Cinema, and the producer had given me this pistol as a kind of thank-you. His name and the name of the movie and my name and a date were all inscribed on the handle.
I picked up this pistol, hefted it, turned it until I was looking into the barrel. Realistic little devil. If it actually were real I could kill Edgarson with it.
But it wasn’t real. So there was only one thing to do.
“This is a stick-up,” I said.
The teller, a skinny young black girl with her hair in rows of tight knots like a fresh-plowed field, looked at me in amused disbelief. “You’re putting me on, man.”
“I have a gun,” I said, drawing it out from beneath my topcoat lapel and then sliding it back out of sight. “You’d better read that note.”
It was a note I’d worked on for nearly fifteen minutes. I’d wanted the strongest possible message in the fewest possible words, and what I had eventually come up with—derived from any number of robbery movies—was printed in clear legible block letters on that piece of paper in the teller’s hand, and what it said was:
MY BABY WILL DIE WITHOUT THE
OPERATION. PUT ALL THE MONEY
IN THE SACK, OR I’LL KILL US BOTH.
I realize there was a certain ambiguity in that word “us,” that I might have been threatening either to kill the teller and myself or my baby and myself, but I was relying on the context to make the message clear. My baby wasn’t present, but the teller was.
The only sack I’d had available, unfortunately, had originally come with a bottle of champagne in it, and in white lettering on its green side it clearly stated Gold Seal Charles Fournier Blanc de Blancs New York State Champagne. I’d been using it to hold the tiles in my Scrabble set. I knew it wasn’t quite the right image for somebody trying to establish himself as driven to crime by the financial crisis of his baby’s operation, but I was hoping the note and the gun and my own desperate self would carry the day.
I also had the impression, from some newspaper article or somewhere, that banks were advising their employees—telling their tellers—not to resist robbers or raise any immediate alarm. They preferred to rely on their electronic surveillance—the photographs being taken of me at this very instant, for instance—and not risk shoot-outs in banks if they could possibly avoid it.
Well, this time I was ready to have my picture taken. The clear-glass hornrim spectacles on my face were another movie souvenir, the black cloth cap pulled low over my forehead had just been purchased half a block from here, and the pieces of tissue stuffed in on both sides of my face between cheek and lower gum altered my appearance just as much as they’d altered Marlon Brando’s in The Godfather. So click away, electronic surveillance, this is one picture I won’t have to buy back.
In the meantime, the teller was reading. Her eyes had widened when I’d flashed the pistol, but they narrowed again when she studied the note. She frowned at it, turned it over to look at the blank back, picked up the champagne sack and hefted it—an R fell out, dammit—and said to me, “You sure you on the level?”
“Hurry up,” I hissed at her, “before I get nervous and start shooting.” And I flashed the gun again.
“You’re nervous, all right,” she told me. “You got sweat all over your face.”
“Hurry up!” I was repeating myself, and running out of threats. Once a toy gun has been brandished, there’s nothing left to do with it; brandishing is its entire repertoire.
Fortunately, nothing else was needed. With an elaborately unruffled shrug—I envied her calm under pressure—the teller said, “Well, it’s not my money” (my point exactly), and began to transfer handfuls of cash from her drawer to the sack.
At last. But everything was taking too long. The big clock on the wall read five minutes past twelve and I was a long long way from P. J. Malone’s. (I’d thought it better to do my bank robbing outside my own immediate neighborhood.) I wanted to again urge speed on the girl, but I was afraid to emphasize even more the contrast between her calm and my frenzy so I remained silent, jittering from foot to foot as wads of twenties and tens and fives disappeared into my nice green sack.
She filled it, till it looked like Long John Silver’s Christmas stocking, and then she pulled the little white drawstrings at the top and pushed the sack across the counter to me. “Have a nice day,” she said, with an irony I found out of keeping under the circumstances. She might not be taking this seriously, but I was.
* * *
I was three minutes late but Edgarson was still there, lunching at his leisure in a high-sided booth at the back. I slid in across from him and he gave me his encouraging smile, saying, “There you are. I was beginning to worry about you.”
“Save your worry.” In his presence I realized how much I hated him. I’m not used to being helpless, at the mercy of another person, and if I ever had the chance to even the score with this bastard I’d leap for it.
He must have seen something of that in my face, because he became immediately more businesslike, saying, “You have the money?”
“You have the negative?”
“I sure do.” He withdrew from inside his coat a small envelope, opened it, held up an orange-black negative, and then put it back inside the envelope.
“I’ll want to inspect that,” I said. (Scenario: He hands me the negative, I pop it into my mouth and swallow it. Then what does he do?)
But he was smiling at me and shaking his head. Revised scenario: He keeps the negative, mistrusting me. “First you give me the money,” he said. “Then you can inspect this picture all you want.”
“Oh, all right.” Reaching into my pockets, I said, “I didn’t have time to get a cashier’s check. You won’t mind cash, will you?” Fistfuls of the stuff began to pile up on my paper place mat. Even Edgarson lost his bucolic cool at that. Staring at the money, he said, “Well, I’ll be damned. No, I don’t mind cash, not at all.”
The waiter arrived then, gave the money an astonished look, and said, “Did you intend to order anything, sir?”
“Jack Daniels,” I said. “On the rocks.”
“Just one glass?”
“Ha ha,” I said. Gesturing at the money, I explained, “I robbed a bank.”
“Ha ha,” the waiter said, and went away.
I looked at Edgarson. “I did rob a bank, you know. You’ve put me through a lot today.”
He’d had time to recover. Smiling in bemusement, shaking his head, he said, “You sure are an interesting fella to watch. I’ll say that for you.”
“Don’t bore me with your shoptalk.” I tossed over a small envelope from my publisher’s bank, where I’d cashed his advance check. “There’s fifteen hundred. You can count it, if you want.”
“I might as well,” he said, and proceeded to do so.
I kept dragging out my other money, most of it in twenties and tens with a few fifties sprinkled here and there. The eight-sixty from various pawnshops, the six hundred from the bad checks, the four-fifty from the nostalgia shops, the two seventy-five from the checking account. And another envelope; tossing it to him, I said, “My former savings account. Two thousand seven hundred sixty-three dollars and eighty cents.”
“It’s an amazing thing,” he said, placidly counting, “but most everybody’s worth more than they realize.”
“Fascinating,” I said, and pushed across the pyramid of loose bills. “Here’s another twenty-one eighty-five.”
The waiter,
returning, placed my drink where my money had been and said, “How does a person get to be your friend?”
I picked up the drink. “Put this on his bill,” I said.
“I should think so,” the waiter said, and left.
I sipped and Edgarson counted. Then I sipped some more and Edgarson counted some more. Then I sipped some more and Edgarson said, “I make that six thousand four hundred and forty-eight dollars so far.” The bills, upon being counted, had disappeared into his clothing, and now he shoved my eight cents back across the table to me, saying, “We don’t mess with change. But we would like to see some more green-backs.”
“Out of my green sack,” I said, delving down inside my shirt and bringing out the swag. Propping the sack like a dildo in my lap, I loosened the drawstrings and started pulling out more cash.
This time I also did some counting, since I hadn’t had a chance yet to find out how much I’d made from my first excursion into major crime. Sorry, second excursion; I was forgetting Laura. “Two hundred,” I said, and flipped a stack of twenties across the table. “One eighty,” and a stack of tens. And so on and so on and so on.
And yet the bottom of the sack was reached too soon. I’d needed thirty-six hundred dollars, but my total profit from the bank job was only two thousand, seven hundred eighty.
Edgarson noticed it, too. “Nine thousand, two hundred and twenty-eight dollars,” he said at last. “I make you seven hundred and seventy-two dollars short.”
“I can’t rob another bank,” I said. “You’re just going to have to bend your principles in this case, or by God I’ll kill us both.” I clutched at the toy gun beneath my coat, letting Edgarson see as much of it as the bank teller had seen. “I’ve gone through enough today. I can’t go through any more.” My voice was rising, and it was by no means entirely fake.
Edgarson made calming patting motions in the air. “Take it easy,” he told me. “Take it easy, Mr. Thorpe, there’s no reason to get upset. Why, if I can’t make allowances here and there, what sort of fella would I be?”
I could tell him what sort of fella he was, but I didn’t. I merely sat there and glared at him and clutched the inscribed handle of my pistol.
“Now,” he said, and it seemed to me that through his professional calm I detected just the slightest hint of uneasiness. “Now, I think you’re being honest with me,” he said, “and you really can’t raise any more money than this, and I think it just wouldn’t be fair of me not to accept this nine thousand dollars and call it square.”
I relaxed somewhat, but my hand remained on my gun. “All right,” I said.
He took out that envelope again and extended it to me. “Here you are, my friend.”
I finally released the gun, and used that hand to take the envelope. Having peered at the negative and seen vaguely that it was the right one, I said, “And this is the only copy, right? I shudder to think what would happen if you suddenly came back with another one.”
“Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “you wrong me. There aren’t any more negatives, and there aren’t any more prints. And once I put in a false report, I couldn’t very well go back and call myself a liar, now, could I?”
That made sense. “All right,” I said.
“Speaking of which,” he said, withdrawing two larger envelopes from an inner pocket, “here’s the report I won’t be turning in. You might want to keep it yourself. This other one’s the report I will turn in, if you’d like to take a look at it.”
I would, but I glanced through the truthful one first. “Agitated manner…hurrying in a guilty fashion…seeming nervous and upset…” This Edgarson wasn’t a subtle writer, but he got his message across.
The false report made for pleasanter reading. Making sure which was which, I gave him back the false one and put the truthful copy in one of my moneyless pockets.
Edgarson signalled for the check, then said to me, “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
My hand strayed toward my pistol. “What was that?”
He did his air-patting gesture again. “Nothing to get upset about,” he assured me. “You just happened to mention you were in some sort of marital difficulty with your wife, so I’d like to suggest you have a talk with one of the staff people at my agency. It’s surprising sometimes just how—”
“What?” I couldn’t believe it. “You’re sitting there and hawking your goddam detective agency at me?”
Very earnestly he said, “You can’t do better than Tobin-Global, Mr. Thorpe. Seventy-four years of reli—”
“Stop talking,” I told him. “Do us both a favor, Edgarson, and stop talking.”
The waiter provided a welcome interruption by showing up with the check. While Edgarson gathered pieces of my money with which to pay it, the waiter gave me a look and said, “I get off at three.”
“Tell him,” I said.
Edgarson paid, and the waiter went away, and I said, “I want to come along with you when you turn in the report.”
He frowned. “That might not be wise, having the two of us seen together.”
“I’ll wait outside. But I want to know for sure you’ve gone straight to your agency and turned in that report.”
Shrugging, he said, “If it will ease your mind, Mr. Thorpe, come right ahead.”
* * *
Tobin-Global Investigations was in the Graybar Building, back of Grand Central. I rode up in the elevator with Edgarson and paced the corridor while he went inside. He was gone about three minutes, and then he came back, smiling, flashing his jacket pocket where the envelope no longer protruded, saying, “All done, Mr. Thorpe. It’s turned in and your worries are over.”
“I have to be sure,” I said. “I want to be able to sleep nights.”
“Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “I’m not any kind of trouble for you at all. Now, a man in my job has to turn in his reports, and I just turned in mine, and I wouldn’t dare tell a different story later. Not where there’s a murder mixed in.”
“So I’m safe from you.”
“Absolutely.”
“Good,” I said. “Now I wonder if I could ask you a favor.”
He seemed doubtful. “Yes, sir?”
“Sooner or later the police will come ask me about last night, and I’d like to try on you what I plan to tell them and see what you think of it. From a professional point of view, I mean.”
Relieved, expansive, he said, “Well, I’d be happy to, Mr. Thorpe. That’s a very good idea.”
So, standing there in the corridor with him, I told him the story: “I took Laura to a press preview late yesterday afternoon, and then to dinner, and then home. At dinner, she told me she was worried because she believed her husband had hired somebody to murder her.”
He frowned at that. “Oh, now, Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “I don’t think you ought to start making things up, you’ll just create suspicion. It’s better to tell a simple straightforward story.”
“Well, wait a minute,” I said. “Listen to the way this one works out, and see what you think.”
Shrugging, he said, “If you insist, Mr. Thorpe, I’ll listen.”
“Fine. Anyway, at dinner Laura told me there’d been somebody hanging around and she was afraid it was the hired killer. Well, of course I didn’t believe her, I told her she was imagining things. Then, when I took her home, she pointed out a man loitering on the other side of the street and said that was the one she’d meant.” I gave Edgarson a long slow look up and down. “I think I could give a pretty clear description of that man,” I said.
His brows were coming down in an angry straight line over his eyes. “Just what the hell is all this?”
“To get on with the story,” I said, “I volunteered to go upstairs with Laura to her apartment and stay with her a while, but she said no, she’d rather be alone because she was going to try phoning her husband and maybe settling their differences once and for all. So I said good night and went home.”
“I don’t know what you thin
k you can gain with a story like that,” Edgarson told me, “but if you tell it to anybody you’ll just make trouble for yourself, not for anybody else.”
“You told me you entered that apartment last night,” I reminded him. “I know you moved the body, because you found that envelope under it. Are you absolutely sure you didn’t leave any fingerprints, any traces of yourself at all? If you’re certain, then you’re probably safe, it’ll just be your word against mine.”
“Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “you’re a grade A son of a bitch, do you know that?”
“Of course,” I said, “I could tell a simpler story.”
If it weren’t for the pistol he knew to be in my pocket, I think he would have tried taking a poke at me. “You’d goddam better,” he said.
I smiled at him. “And you’d goddam better give me back my nine thousand dollars.”
* * *
It was good to be home again, my possessions once more about me. And it was very good to have been able to do Edgarson in the eye. If I hadn’t been able to even the score with him somehow it would surely have rankled in my mind a good long time, but as it was the expression on his face as he’d handed back fistful after fistful of green paper was a memory I would treasure always.
After a leisurely shower and shave, and a nice lunch of chicken breasts in grape sauce (left over from Kit’s last visit), I sat at my desk to tot up the results of the day’s activities and to learn that Edgarson had stiffed me for two hundred thirty dollars. I chuckled indulgently; let him save face if he wanted. Even with that petty larceny, and the incredible interest the pawnbrokers had charged me for the two-hour use of their money, my bank robbery had left me nearly twenty-four hundred dollars richer than when I’d gotten up this morning. My checking account was healthy, Edgarson was no longer a threat, and surely it wouldn’t be impossible to replace that R left behind at the bank. Life, all in all, was not unpleasant.
And what did the evening hold in store? A screening, a dinner for two? Checking my calendar, I saw that today’s notation read, “Dinner, Laura, 7:30.”
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