“Not much. This and that and Germany and destiny.”
“Quite a chat.”
“Very gloomy and Wagnerian.”
“Hannah?” She laughed. “You must bring out something in her. She doesn’t usually get much further than Louella Parsons. Louella O. Parsons. What do you think the O stands for?”
“Are you trying to change the subject?”
“Trying.”
“All right. How about banks?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there a bank in Santa Fe everyone uses? Where do you go, for instance?”
She laughed. “That’s certainly changing it. I don’t go anywhere. We’re not allowed to have accounts off- site.”
“What do you do? Keep it in a sock under the bed?”
“There’s not very much to keep, for a start. What there is we keep in a post account. I suppose everyone does. Why do you want to know?”
“So if you made a large cash purchase, you’d have to withdraw the money from this account? I mean, you wouldn’t write a check?”
“No. Cash. I suppose if it were a lot, you’d get a money order from the post office. Except I never do. It always just goes somehow.”
Connolly was quiet for a minute, thinking.
“Now may I ask why?” she said.
“I was just wondering why anybody would carry a lot of cash, when a check is so much easier.”
“Not anybody. You mean Karl, don’t you?” she said, her voice suddenly tight. “They said he was robbed. Is that why? He was carrying a lot of money?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you—” She hesitated. “The police?”
“No,” he said easily, “but naturally we’re curious too.”
“Naturally.”
“I didn’t realize you knew him.”
“Everybody knew him. He was security. There’s no escaping you.”
“Did you like him?”
She seemed surprised by the question, at a loss. “He was all right, I suppose,” she said finally.
“So you weren’t tempted by his coupons?”
“What?”
“You said before that G-2 had lots of coupons.”
“Did I? Quite the elephant, aren’t you? No, I wasn’t tempted by his bloody coupons.”
“Just mine.”
She sat back in the seat, smiling involuntarily. “Just yours.”
“Well, that’s something, anyway. Maybe next time it’ll be for the pleasure of my company.”
“Is there going to be a next time?”
“Isn’t there?” he said quietly.
She turned to look at him. “I don’t know,” she said seriously. “Don’t ask me, okay? I don’t know.”
When she changed cars in Santa Fe, she shook his hand nervously and tried a casual goodbye, but since they were both heading back to the Hill, she didn’t leave him after all. He followed her car up to the Parajito Plateau, watching her glance into the rearview mirror as she spurted ahead, then waited for him to catch up, darting along the empty desert road like birds from the mesa in a courtship flight. She drove fast, carelessly ignoring the speed limit, but he trailed smoothly in her wake, close enough to keep eye contact in the mirror, until finally she laughed and waved and, allowing herself to be pursued, they drove together.
5
Mills was uncharacteristically official about getting Bruner’s account records.
“We’d need some kind of order,” he said. “They have the same legal protection as real bank records would. We can’t just—”
“How long would it take to get them?”
Mills sighed. “About an hour.”
But Bruner’s account was no different from his passbook, as orderly as his room had been. Connolly scanned the even columns, month after month of regular deposits, with no significant withdrawals. When he compared them to the payroll records, he found himself staring at an unrevealing window into Bruner’s life. Once he deducted the subsidized rent from his salary, he was left with the account deposit and the same amount of pocket money each time.
“Look at this,” he said to Mills. “Did he have any expenses?”
“Well, Karl was close with a dollar. He never grabbed a check if he could help it.”
“But this goes all the way back to ‘forty-four. At the most, a ten-dollar variance here and there.”
“Clothes, probably,” Mills said.
“What about his car? That can get pretty extravagant these days.”
“He fiddled that.”
“How fiddled?”
“Whenever he needed gas, he’d sign up for escort duty-you know, taking the scientists around-and he’d top up from the motor pool supply. Repairs, same thing. He was like that. What exactly are you looking for, anyway?”
“Three two-hundred-dollar withdrawals in the last six months.”
Mills whistled. “You’re kidding. Where did Karl get that kind of money?”
“That’s what I want to know. According to these, he saved everything. So where did he get the extra money? He hasn’t touched this account in over a year.”
“Maybe he had it from before.”
“Maybe. Then why not bank it?”
“The Europeans are funny that way. Some of them don’t trust banks at all. They just stash the money or put it into gold or something they can carry. You know, refugee stuff. Maybe he brought something over with him and then sold it.”
“No. Why do that and turn around and buy something else?”
“What did he buy?”
“Turquoise jewelry.”
“Karl?”
“That’s what I thought.”
Mills was quiet for a minute. “Then he must have been trying to hide it.”
“How do you mean?”
“Keep it off the books. Put it somewhere you couldn’t trace it. You know, sew it in your jacket lining to cross the border, that kind of stuff.”
“You’ve been seeing too many movies,” Connolly said.
“Maybe, but they did it. They weren’t allowed to take anything out. Professor Weber’s wife had her earrings ripped out on the train.”
Connolly winced. Another European story.
“Okay, but where did he get it? He didn’t deposit it, but somebody must have taken it out. Tell you what, let’s have a look at all the records.”
“Are you kidding? Do you know how many people we have up here?”
“Over four thousand. But not all of them have accounts, and we can eliminate the crews and the enlisted
