“Where are the marks?”
“What marks?”
“The writing, the funny writing!” She picked up a handful of bills, spread them open like a fan. “Do you see any writing on these bills? These bills are clean! Smell them! Do you smell anything sweet?”
“No, ma’am, but …”
“What did you do with my money?”
“Thisisyour money.”
“It isnot my money! What’d you do with my money?”
“Lady, I’m telling you for the last time, thisis your money. Inyour envelope. They even gave me a receipt with the serial numbers on it. I had to sign it to …”
“What do you mean? Who?”
“To get the money back. I had to sign the receipt.”
“Get itback? Where was it?”
“At the Department.”
“What department? What are youtalking about?”
“The Treasury Department. A Secret Service agent took the money to check the serial numbers.”
Oh Jesus, she thought. Those Mexicans tipped me with hot money. Slowly, trying not to lose control, reminding herself that she had been in worse situations than this—she had once flown a Chinook helicopter over a desert blooming with black shrapnel, she had flown through horrific firestorms from below and had not lost it, she was not going to lose it now—slowly, carefully, she asked, “Why did they want to check the serial numbers?”
“Don’t worry, they didn’t match,” he said.
“But why did they want to check them?”
“They thought they were ransom bills.”
Calm, she thought. Stay calm. Just hear him out. Just try to get to the bottom of this.
“What ransom?” she asked calmly.
“There was a kidnapping,” he said. “The ransom was paid in hundred-dollar bills. They thought these might be the bills.”
“What made them think that?” she asked evenly, calmly.
“Because the serial numbers on a bill I cashed …”
“You cashedmy money?”
“Just that one bill. I didn’t spend any more than that. And the serial numbers on itdid match.”
Don’t shoot him, she thought. Just remain extremely calm.
“Did matchwhat?” she asked.
“Did match the numbers on one of the ransom bills.”
“A bill the Secret Service was looking for.”
“Yes.”
“Why the Secret Service?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you say they took therest of the money …”
“Yes. To check the serial numbers. Which didnot match. So they brought all of it back.”
“Brought backthis money here on the table.”
“Yes. Your money. In your very envelope. Right there on the table.”
She stood there nodding, looking down at the money, trying to make some sense of everything he’d told her. Then she said, “This is not my money.”
Will wished she would stop repeating the same words over and over again when her goddamn money was sitting right there on the kitchen table, in plain view for the entire world to see. Why wouldn’t she just let himcount it, for Christ’s sake, and then get out of here with her goddamn furs and her gun?
“Ma’am,” he said, “I am telling you for the last time that this is your money that the Treasury Department returned to me. I gave them a signed receipt with all the serial numbers on it, stating that the money was all here because I counted it last night and there was indeed eight thousand dollars here. Now if you’ll let me count it for you now, ma’am, I’m sure it will come to eight thousand dollars all over again because nobody has touched a cent of it since Mr. David A. Horne, with an ‘e,’ left here.”
“I’ll let you count it for me,” she said. “But it isn’t my money.”
Goddamn broken record, he thought, and began counting all over again. She kept watching the bills as he passed them from one hand to the other, counting, “twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three …” shaking her head as if trying to dope out the great mystery of what had happened here, when it was all so simple a caterpillar could grasp it, “thirty-four, thirty-five” and on and on, money, money, money, “fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty,” if he had to count these damn bills one more time, “seventy-one, seventy-two …” and at last he counted the
