eightieth and last bill, and looked up at her and said, “Satisfied?”
She did not answer him. She rubber-banded the bills again, and dropped the wad into her tote, leaving the white envelope on the table. Then she took off the red fox, put on the sable, draped the fox and the mink over her arm …
“Would you like something to carry those in?” he asked.
She looked at him.
“Little bulky that way,” he said. “Let me see if I’ve got anything.”
Not trusting him for a minute, she followed him into a bedroom with an unmade bed and what looked like a week’s laundry strewn all over the floor. He opened a closet door, rummaged around inside there, and came up with a duffel that looked like the one she’d carried in the Army, except her name and rank weren’t stenciled in black on the side.
“Thanks,” she said, and folded her furs into the bag, first the fox jacket and then the mink stole. Pulling the drawstrings tight through the grommets, she wondered if she should offer to pay for the duffel, and then asked herself if she was losing her mind, the man here was a thief who’d caused her a great deal of unnecessary trouble. She slung the duffel over her shoulder, backed toward the front door with the gun still in her hand, and without saying another word, walked out.
Will still considered himself lucky.
She’d forgotten to ask for the four hundred dollars and change he still had left over from the five he’d borrowed yesterday.
SHE STOPPED AT A BANK ostensibly to change three of the hundreds into twenties, tens, and fives, but actually to test the bills. She was still wondering why a Secret Service agent had exchanged her own world-weary hundreds for these obviously used but relatively fresh ones, and she was relieved when the teller held them up to the light to check the security strip, and then changed them without raising either an eyebrow or a fuss. It was close to three when she came out of the bank but yesterday had been the shortest day of the year, and with the heavy clouds overhead, the afternoon seemed already succumbing to dusk. The day was still piercingly cold. She was grateful for the sable, luxuriating in its long silken swirl, feeling like a Russian empress all at once, $8,000 in cash in her handbag, the city all aglitter for Christmas, what more could a person wish for?
How about caviar and champagne? she thought.
THE TWO MEN WERE SITTING in their overcoats, one on either side of the Christmas tree in her living room. They popped out of the dusky gloom the moment she turned on the lights. The larger of the two men had a gun in his hand and it was pointing up at Cass’s head.
“Buenas noches,”he said and smiled. “We are here for dee money.”
She thought at once that it was really shitty of Wilbur Struthers to recruit two Latino goons to reclaim the money he’d stolen from her in the first place, the son of a bitch. But here they were, both of them smiling now, somewhat apologetically it seemed to her, but perhaps she was mistaken. She put down the brown paper bag with the caviar she’d bought at Hildy’s Market and the Dom Perignon she’d bought in the liquor store on Twenty- sixth Street.
“What money?” she said.
“One million seven hun’red t’ousan dollars,” the one on the other side of the tree said.
“I think you’re in the wrong apartment,” she said.
“I don’t theenk so,” the first one said.
Very heavy Spanish accents on both of them, something suddenly clicked. The men on the narrow dirt strip in Guenerando, Mexico, except that earlier this month they’d been wearing baggy white cotton pants and wrinkled shirts.
“I don’t know what money you’re talking about,” she said.
“Dee money we paid you for a hun’red kilos of pure cocaine,” the one with the gun said.
“I don’t want to know anything about that cargo,” she said.
“You delivered the money, we gave you dee fockin cocaine …”
“I didn’t know what the cargo was. I don’t know anything about the money, either. All I did was hand it over.”
“We know that.”
“We know you were only dee messenger.”
“We want to know whogave you dee money.”
“I don’t know his name. Look, if the money was short, I’m sorry. You should have counted it more carefully. Anyway …”
“We did coun’ it carefully.”
“It took us a fockinhour to coun’ it.”
“We counted itvery carefully.”
“Dee moneywassen short,” the one with the gun said. “Who gave it to you?”
“I told you, I don’t …”
“His name,por favor .”
The gun was in her face now.
“He called himself Frank. But I’m sure that wasn’t his real name.”
