“What next?” the Stick asked.
“I?m going to sit here for a while, while Baker plumbs the murky depths,” I said.
“It?s swarthy depths,” said the Stick. “He?s plumbing the swarthy depths.”
“Right, swarthy,” I said.
We watched Baker?s air bubbles playing on the surface of the river while I mentally catalogued the
events of the previous five days. Ideas were forming slowly. There?s a thin line between what is
logically true and what is fact, what can be proven and what can?t. Most of my ideas were logically
true. Proving them was going to be touchy. I decided to go for broke, throw the long bomb, and break
up the ballgame. it was a risky plan but Stick loved it. I knew he would. It appealed to every perverse
bone in his body.
Facing Nose Graves had been nervy. Now it was time to try something rash.
68
MONEY TALK
It was nearly five when I went to the bank. It was closed but I had been watching the place for two
hours and I knew Seaborn was still there, Now I could see him, through the double glass doors, sitting
back in his office behind that massive desk, talking frantically into the phone.
I tapped on the front door. A bank guard, swaybacked by time, shuffled slowly up, tried to talk to me
through the door, and gave up. I could have driven to Key West in the time it took him to open the
door. He fiddled with his keys, took two or three stabs at the latch before he got the key in, arid finally
got the door open a sliver.
“We?re closed,” he said, in a patronizing voice that sounded like it was squeezed from a balloon.
“Open at nine in the morning.”
“I?ve got an appointment with Mr.
He looked me up and down, sizing me up. “I?ll check with the president,” he said. “What was the
name?”
“Khmer. it still is.,,
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said.
He closed and locked the door and shuffled across a wide, cold, marble lobby to the office in the back.
I could see his stooped frame, silhouetted in Seaborn?s doorway. Finally he turned and sine-footed
back to the door. He didn?t have a fast bone in his body.
He opened it another sliver.
