“Please?” she said.
“Well,” he said again, and read off the address like a prisoner of war revealing under torture the location of an infantry division.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Cass said.
“YES?” a man’s voice said.
“Delivery,” she said.
“What kind of delivery?”
“Pair of eyeglasses,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m from Eyewear Fashions. Somebody found your glasses, brought them in this morning. Did you want me to bring them up?”
“Thank you, yes, come on up. Hey, terrific. It’s 2C, on the second floor.”
The buzzer sounded. Cass opened the entry door at once and felt in her tote bag for the reassuring grip of the Browning automatic. No elevator, of course. She climbed the steps to the second floor and yanked the gun out of the bag as she came down the corridor. She used the muzzle to tap gently on the door to 2C.
When Will opened the door, he saw the redheaded woman whose apartment he’d ripped off. Moreover, she was holding in her fist what appeared to be a .45 automatic. He tried to slam the door shut on her, but she hit it with her shoulder at once, shoving it in against him, almost knocking him off his feet, he hadn’t realized she was that strong. She was in the apartment in a wink, slamming the door behind her, and whirling on him with the automatic pointed at his head.
“Where’s my money?” she asked.
“Don’t get excited,” he said.
“My money,” she said. “My furs,” she said. “You’re a thief,” she said. She kept using the gun for punctuation, which made Will believe she was somewhat unstable and therefore capable of hysterically pulling the trigger.
“Don’t get excited,” he said again. “Everything’s here, all of it’s here, no need to go waving the gun around like that.”
She was maybe five-eight, five-nine, taller than she’d looked from the rooftop across the way, a tall good- looking redhead wearing a red fox jacket open over blue jeans and a bulky green turtleneck sweater that made her look like Christmas although it was still three days away.
“Get it,” she said.
“Would you mind putting up the gun?” he said. “Makes me nervous, you standing there with a gun in your hand.”
“Get my stuff,” she said.
“Right away,” he said.
“You fuckingcrook,” she said.
He wanted to tell her that a Khmer Rouge soldier had once pistol-whipped him with a weapon just like the one in her hand, but instead he went to the closet and took from it the long sable coat and the mink stole, and carried them to where she was standing alongside the sofa, the gun still in her hand, and dumped them onto the cushions, and then went back to the closet to take down from the shelf the shoe box containing what he’d last counted out for Horne as $8,000 dollars in hundred-dollar bills. He was hoping she knew how to handle that big gun in her fist because he sure didn’t want to get hurt here.
“Take off the lid,” she said, and waved the gun again.
“It’s all here, I just counted it last night.”
“That what you do in your spare time, you crook? Count other people’s money?”
“I’ll be happy to count it for you now,” he said, taking the rubber-banded white envelope from the box. “Or you might want to put down the gun and do it yourself.”
“You count it,” she said.
He removed the rubber band, took the bills from the envelope, began counting the money for the second time in as many days, a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred, nine hundred, a thous …
“Stop!” she said.
“What?” he said.
“Hold it right there!”
“Why? What …?”
“That isn’t my money,” she said.
“What do you …?”
“That isnot my money! What are you trying to pull here?”
“Ma’am, I can assure you …”
“That isnot my money! My money had funny marks on it. And it smelled sweet.”
“Lady,all money smells sweet.”
