Money, Money, Money

by Ed McBain

  “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 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.”

  “Frank what?”

  “All he gave me was Frank.”

  “Where wass this?”

  “I was living in Eagle Branch at the time. He was introduced to me by someone I know.”

  “Andhisname? The one who introduce you?”

  “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. If the money was short …”

  “Dee moneywassen short.”

  The gun in her face again.

  “Then why …?”

  “We delivered quality cocaine. We expected …”

  “I don’t want to know about it.”

  “Wherewassthis in Eagle Branch?”

  “A bar.”

  “Tell us his name. The one who introduce you.”

  She suddenly wondered how much Randy Biggs had got for introducing her to the man who’d paid her $200,000 for making four trips to Mexico, to transport—at least on the last trip, anyway—what now turned out to be cocaine.

  “Wha’ wass his name?” the one with the gun said again.

  “I told you …”

  “We don’ want to kill you,” the other one said.

  “Then tell him to put the gun away.”

  “Su nombre,”the one with the gun said.

  She knew with absolute certainty that he would kill her in the next instant if she did not give up Randolph Biggs. She wondered what she owed Randy, wondered what she owed the one who’d called himself Frank and who seemed to have offended these men in some unspeakable way. She decided this was not the Persian Gulf. She was not sworn to tell them only her name, rank, and serial number.

  “His name was Randolph Biggs,” she said.

  2 .

  DETECTIVE STEVE CARELLA WISHED that one of the lions hadn’t dragged the victim’s left leg into the 88th Precinct. That was what brought Fat Ollie Weeks into the case. As it was, most of the vic’s body was being consumed by three lionesses, a young lion, and a big thickly maned patriarch, apparent leader of the pride, none of whom seemed at all disturbed by a fascinated audience of detectives, zoo personnel, and television reporters gathered outside the Lion Habitat at the Grover Park Zoo.

  Half of the zoo was in the 87th Precinct.

  The other half was in the 88th.

  By Carella’s rough estimate, four-fifths of the vic’s body was in the Eight-Seven. The remaining fifth, the vic’s leg, was over there in the Eight-Eight, where Fat Ollie—watching a young lion claw and gnaw at the leg—was beginning to get hungry himself.

  This was Saturday morning, the twenty-third day of December, the true start of the big Christmas weekend that only yesterday had included the first full day of Hanukkah, now history. Carella and Meyer had caught the squeal some twenty minutes ago, at a quarter past seven, when the man in charge of the zoo’s Animal Commissary called the police to report that a woman had wandered into the habitat and was at that very moment being attacked by a pride of lions who hadn’t yet been fed this morning.

  At seven-thirty-sevenA.M ., there was a heavy layer of snow on the paths that wound past the barred fence, and the moat beyond that, and then the island habitat where the lions and lionesses feasted. The television reporters were having a field day. Never before had a photo op like this one presented itself, a pride of lions tearing apart a woman wearing nothing at all on one of the coldest days of the year, the animals greedily feasting on the woman’s flesh and bones. Some fifty feet away, in the 88th Precinct, a solitary lion contentedly gnawed on the victim’s leg.

  Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks had caught the squeal some ten minutes after Carella and Meyer had, which was when the young lion had dragged the leg over into the Eight-Eight. None of the detectives were particularly happy to have caught a case like this one—oranycase for that matter—a half-hour or so before their shifts ended, especially on a holiday weekend, when they had shopping to do and trees to put up and gifts to wrap.

  On a morning when the temperature hovered at just above freezing, Ollie was wearing only a sports jacket over dark slacks, a white shirt, a food-stained tie, white socks, black shoes, and a red woolen watch cap. He had eaten breakfast an hour ago, but all the activity out there on the island was making him wonder if the zoo’s coffee shop was open yet. By contrast, Carella and Meyer were both wearing heavy overcoats, gloves, and mufflers. They were each and separately wishing Fat Ollie hadn’t been dragged into the case by the victim’s leg. They were each and separately wondering how they were going to get the victim off the island before there was nothing left of her but chewed-over bones.

  The Emergency Services truck had arrived not five minutes ago, and the captain in charge of the ES Squad was talking to the zoo’s Assistant Director, a man named William Boyd, who had been notified at home by the Commissary Superintendent who’d told him that one of their people had just finished feeding the great apes and was approaching the Lion Habitat to deliver two hundred pounds of horse meat enriched with vitamins and minerals when he spotted a woman being attacked on the island there. Boyd was now advising the ES Captain that he should take his truck and his team and go home.

  “Our own personnel are quite capable of getting onto the island and recovering whatever’s left of the dead woman,” he said.

  The ES Captain told him it might be very risky for a “civilian” to go over there to retrieve the body while the lions were in a “feeding frenzy,” as he put it, though in all truth the animals seemed to be taking their morning meal in a leisurely manner. The ES Captain’s team tended to agree with him. The team had rescued people trapped in elevators, had scissored open automobiles with people squashed inside them, had plucked charred bodies from sizzling electrical cables, had even picked the locks on cell doors when hookers plugged them with bubble gum to avoid court appearances. This, however, was the first time they’d ever seen a woman being chewed to ribbons by half a dozen lions. Which did not stop them from becoming instant experts.

  One of the guys on the team suggested that maybe they should go for the leg first, as a sort of training exercise. Throw the young lion over there in the Eight-Eight somethingelse to eat, lure him away from the leg, lay a ladder across the moat, snatch the leg away from him while he was thus distracted. The ES Captain was of the opinion that human flesh was something of a treat for these animals and it might not be easy to tempt them away from it with ordinary fare. Ollie was getting hungrier and hungrier. Carella and Meyer were watching the pride at work. Over on the island, the ground around the kill was disturbed, the snow trampled and spattered with blood.

  Ollie wandered over to where the ES Captain and his team were discussing their next move. The Captain’s name was Ernie Levine. This being the Hanukkah weekend and all, Ollie figured it wouldn’t hurt to remind Levine that he was a Jew.

  “Hey, Ernie,” he said, “what’re you doing on the job, your holiday and all?”

  Levine knew Ollie from previous jobs. He greeted him with something less than enthusiasm.

  “Hello, Ollie,” he said briefly.

  “You put up your Hanukkah bush yet?” Ollie asked.

  “We don’t have anything like that in our house,” Levine said.

  “You light all ten of your candles?”

  “Nine,” Levine corrected.

  “You think that lady out there is kosher?” Ollie asked. “Cause I hear lions don�
�t eat pork.”

  “Eatthisa while,” Levine said, and briefly grasped his crotch, and then walked over to where the zoo’s General Director had just arrived in a dither. The director’s name was Alfred Hardy. He was in his late thirties, Carella guessed, a tall slender man you’d figure for a lawyer or an accountant rather than somebody running a small city. Which was what the Grover Park Zoo was, in effect: a small city within a much larger city. Hardy took one look at the situation and told Levine he wanted everyone out of here while his people performed what to him was a simple rescue operation. Levine explained that there was nobody to rescue anymore. The victim was already dead and in fact being consumed at this very moment. Hardy said there were five healthylions to rescue. Levine said he would have to clear that with his Deputy-Inspector.