“So could you put these on your machine and see if …?”
“Not now,” he said. He was already moving around the counter toward a small closet on the side of the shop. “Call me tomorrow morning,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. He was putting on his coat. “I appreciate it,” she said, and smiled sweetly.
You prick, she thought.
HORNE CAME BACK to see Will at ten-thirty that night. He came unannounced, and when he pressed the buzzer downstairs to say he was there, Will was enormously surprised. He’d never expected to see those hundred-dollar bills again. Tonight, Horne was wearing a blue car coat with a faux fur collar, wide wale, dark brown corduroy trousers, and a brown fedora. By comparison to this afternoon, he looked positively dapper.
“Will, I must apologize,” he said.
“Why’s that?” Will asked.
“These arenot the ransom bills.”
“I didn’t think they were,” Will said, but he was tremendously relieved nonetheless.
“We checked the serial numbers, and except for that one bill they simply didn’t match. So … I’m sorry for whatever inconvenience the Department may have caused you …”
“What department is that, by the way?”
“Why, the Treasury Department,” Horne said, looking surprised. “The U.S. Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department.”
“I didn’t know that,” Will said.
“Not many people do,” Horne said. “So if you’ll just let me have that receipt I gave you earlier today …”
“Okay,” Will said, and fished in his wallet for it.
Horne carried the receipt to the kitchen table, sat, removed from his briefcase a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills, and handed them to Will.
“If you’ll just count these,” he said.
“I’m sure I can trust the Treasury Department,” Will said.
“Even so,” Horne said, “I’d feel safer if you counted them.”
Will sat across from him at the kitchen table, and began counting the bills. Horne took out his pen and drew a straight line under the list of serial numbers on the receipt. Just below the line, he wrote the wordsReceipt of $8,000 acknowledged in full. It took maybe a minute and a half for Will to count all eighty bills. They were all there.
“If you’ll just sign this,” Horne said, and handed him the pen, and passed the receipt across the table to him. Will signed his name to it. Horne folded the receipt and put it into his briefcase.
“Mr. Struthers,” he said, and extended his hand. “Please keep your nose clean.”
“You, too, David,” Will said, and opened the door for him. Horne stepped out into the hallway. Will closed and locked the door behind him. He listened at the wood until he could no longer hear Horne’s footfalls in the hallway or on the steps. Then he whirled away from the door, grinning, and slapped his hand on his thigh and shouted, “Will Struthers, you are one lucky son of a bitch!”
CASS’S PHONE RANG at precisely two minutes past ten on Friday morning. Today was the first full day of Hanukkah, the twenty-second of December, three days before Christmas. The man calling was Wesley Hand.
“The optician?” he said.
“Yes, Mr. Hand?”
“I checked the glasses …”
“And?” she said at once.
“As I told you, most prescriptions fall into routine categories,” he said, “what we call plus-one biopters, absolutely commonplace. That was the case here. But I remembered the frames. He insisted on the mocha brown frames, even though I said they wouldn’t go well with his coloring.”
“Whatwashis coloring?” Cass asked.
“Dirty blond hair, blue eyes, the mocha brown frames were all wrong. He’d have done much better with the midnight blue.”
“But he insisted on the brown.”
“Yes.”
“Which is how you remembered him.”
“Yes.”
“What was his name?” she asked at once.
“I have it right here,” he said. “It’s Wilbur Struthers.”
“Do you have an address for him?”
“I do,” Wesley said. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to give this to you?”
“Oh, yes, I’m positive. May I have it, please?”
“Well …”
