It was Joan.
“Mim? I didn’t wake you?”
“No, I was on my way out, actually.”
“I can call back. . . .”
“I’ve only got a couple minutes,” I said.
She didn’t seem to have heard me. “It’s about Steven, I wanted to talk to you about . . . I was going through his things this morning. I haven’t touched them since he died and I was thinking that I should . . . I was really thinking that tomorrow I should start cleaning things out.”
I felt the pressure of the clock, the absurdity of having this conversation at this moment. Over the line, I heard voices, not kids but adults, and wondered if she was calling me from school.
“If you would come over?” Joan asked. “Give me a hand? I’d . . . I think I could use the support.”
“I’ll try,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t.
Her voice got harder. “It’s not the same as a funeral, and I know he wasn’t Mikel, but I’d think you could find the time if you wanted to.”
“No, absolutely. I’ll be there.”
It wasn’t that she heard insincerity; she heard the haste, and took that the wrong way, too.
“I suppose I’ll see you then. If you remember.”
She hung up, and I hung up, and felt the wound like an acid burn, lingering.
But there wasn’t time.
I had to get to the bank.
CHAPTER 36
Catherine Lumley moved to greet me with a big smile and an outstretched hand.
“Wonderful to see you again, Ms. Bracca.”
I know it was just the hangover, but it hurt my eyes to look at the smile. “We’ll be going upstairs, to Alex’s office.”
“Alex?”
“Rodriguez, your banker.”
She took me off the floor quickly, through a doorway and up a carpeted flight of steps. “You have something to carry the cash?”
I patted the strap on my shoulder, for my backpack. “All set.”
“Wonderful,” Lumley murmured.
We came into a quiet hallway with doors along both sides, and at the third down on the right, she stopped and tapped gently, not with her knuckles, but with her lacquered fingernails. I didn’t imagine anyone within could have heard the sound, but there was an answering voice immediately, telling us to come in.
Alexander Rodriguez was much younger than I expected, only thirty or so, and looking like he took his job very seriously. His tie was navy blue and boring, the knot at his throat so small, I wondered if it was actually a clip-on. He rose from behind his desk as we entered, and came around the corner, leaning forward with a hand outstretched.
“Miss Bracca, very pleased to finally meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
“Do you need anything? Water or tea?”
The hangover was making my mouth grow wool, and my headache was committed, so I nodded, which actually, physically, hurt. “Water.”
“Cathy?”
“I’ll be right back,” Lumley told me.
She went out as Rodriguez motioned me to one of the two chairs in front of his desk. I took the backpack off my shoulder and let it rest against my leg, and Rodriguez went back to his seat, moving some paper. One short stack he slid toward me, with a thick pen.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s the Currency Transaction Report. If you could just review the information, make any notes if something needs to be changed.”
I looked at the top form, saw the words “Internal Revenue Service,” and got immediately worried. “The IRS?”
“It’s a formality, part of the way they regulate cash movement,” Rodriguez said. “They’re worried you’re a drug dealer.”
“No, just a musician.”
“Same thing to them, maybe.” He smiled, friendly. “It just tells them where the cash is going when it leaves the bank. Very simple in this instance, since you’re both the withdrawer and the recipient.”
I skimmed, saw that my personal information had been recorded, my full name, where I lived, my Social Security number. Nowhere was there a check box for “using money to pay kidnapper” or anything like that. The form didn’t even need my signature, so I slid it back to Rodriguez, and he added the sheet to the stack on his blotter.
Lumley came back with a plastic bottle of water, and they both watched me, polite smiles in place, as I opened and drained it. Rodriguez handed me another form, this one a withdrawal request.
“Just fill it out like you would normally,” he told me.
While I did so, he got up and opened a filing cabinet in the corner, and was back at the desk when I finished. I signed my name precisely, and he took the request and pulled a card from my file, and I realized he was comparing signatures. When he noticed me watching, he dipped his head apologetically.
“We have to be thorough.”
“It’s nice to know you’re taking such good care of my money,” I told him, although the care he was taking was starting to make me nervous.
But both he and Lumley brightened with the compliment, and I realized just how worried they were about losing my business. Rodriguez tucked the signature card back in my file, replaced the file in the cabinet.
“If you’ll wait here,” he told me, “we’ll be back with the money. It won’t take more than ten minutes.”
“I’ll be here.”
They left, and I looked at the clock on the desk, then checked it against the watch on my wrist. The clock said it was eighteen minutes past eleven, but my watch said it was only a quarter past. I tried taking some calm breaths, telling myself that I had plenty of time to get back home before the call or whatever it was I was waiting on from the Parka Man. My stomach felt raw, and I wondered if draining the bottle of water had been such a good idea.
The door opened, and Lumley entered first, carrying a counting machine in both hands. She set it on the edge of the desk, ran the cord to the outlet in the wall. Rodriguez followed her, carrying a canvas sack with printing on the side, the name of an armored transport company.
“This is going to take another few minutes,” he told me. “We need to make certain of the count.”
Rodriguez set the bag in his chair and began pulling out stacks of bills, hundreds, one after the other. They were wrapped with paper bands around them, marking denominations of ten thousand dollars. Lumley had switched the counting machine on, and it was humming slightly. He unwrapped the first bundle, and fed it into the hollow on the top of the machine, and the hum grew louder, and the bills began snapping forward. He fed another bundle, and another, and the paper kept flowing, and Lumley gathered the stacks and wrapped them in their bands again, setting them aside.
It took another fourteen minutes before they were positive they had six hundred thousand dollars in cash. Sixty stacks of hundred-dollar bills, bundled one hundred bills each.
“All yours,” Rodriguez told me.
I opened my backpack and began shoveling the money inside. If they thought I was eccentric before, this confirmed it, and they watched, bemused, as I fought to get the last three bundles to fit. The zipper on the
