Anthony Boucher - Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 1, 1960

“Get anything?” Meyer asked.

“Yeah. Grossman thinks the killer was wearing gloves.”

“That’s nice,” Meyer said.

“Also, I think I know what this key is for.” He lifted it from the desk.

“Yeah? What?”

“Well, did you see these canceled checks?”

“No.”

“Take a look,” Carella said.

He opened the brown bank envelope addressed to Claudia Davis, spread the canceled checks on his desktop, and then unfolded the yellow bank statement. Meyer studied the display silently.

“Cotton found the envelope in her room,” Carella said. “The statement covers the month of July. Those are all the checks she wrote, or at least everything that cleared the bank by the thirty-first.”

“Lots of checks here,” Meyer said.

“Twenty-five, to be exact. What do you think?”

“I know what I think,” Carella said.

“What’s that?”

“I look at those checks. I can see a life. It’s like reading somebody’s diary. Everything she did last month is right here, Meyer. All the department stores she went to, look, a florist, her hairdresser, a candy shop, even her shoemaker, and look at this. A check made out to a funeral home. Now who died, Meyer, huh? And look here. She was living at Mrs. Mauder’s place, but here’s a check made out to a swank apartment building on the South Side, in Stewart City. And some of these checks are just made out to names, people . This case is crying for some people.”

“You want me to get the phone book?”

“No, wait a minute. Look at this bank statement. She opened the account on July fifth with a thousand bucks. All of a sudden, bam, she deposits a thousand bucks in the Seaboard Bank of America.”

“What’s so odd about that?”

“Nothing, maybe. But Cotton called the other banks in the city, and Claudia Davis has a very healthy account at the Highland Trust on Cromwell Avenue. And I mean very healthy.”

“How healthy?”

“Close to sixty grand.”

“What!”

“You heard me. And the Highland Trust lists no withdrawals for the month of July. So where’d she get the money to put into Seaboard?”

“Was that the only deposit?”

“Take a look.”

Meyer picked up the statement.

“The initial deposit was on July fifth,” Carella said. “A thousand bucks. She made another thousand-dollar deposit on July twelfth. And another on the nineteenth. And another on the twenty-seventh.”

Meyer raised his eyebrows. “Four grand. That’s a lot of loot.”

“And all deposited in less than a month’s time. I’ve got to work almost a full year to make that kind of money.”

“Not to mention the sixty grand in the other bank. Where do you suppose she got it, Steve?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense. She wears underpants trimmed with Belgian lace, but she lives in a crummy room-and-a-half with bath. How the hell do you figure that? Two bank accounts, twenty-five bucks to cover her ass, and all she pays is sixty bucks a month for a flophouse.”

“Maybe she’s hot, Steve.”

“No.” Carella shook his head. “I ran a make with CBI. She hasn’t got a record, and she’s not wanted for anything. I haven’t heard from the feds yet, but I imagine it’ll be the same story.”

“What about that key? You said...”

“Oh, yeah. That’s pretty simple, thank God. Look at this.”

He reached into the pile of checks and sorted out a yellow slip, larger than the checks. He handed it to Meyer. The slip read:

“She rented a safe-deposit box the same day she opened the new checking account, huh?” Meyer said.

“Right.”

“What’s in it?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Look, do you want to save some time, Steve?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s get the court order before we go to the bank.”

The manager of the Seaboard Bank of America was a bald-headed man in his early fifties. Working on the theory that similar physical types are simpático , Carella allowed Meyer to do most of the questioning. It was not easy to elicit answers from Mr. Anderson, the manager of the bank, because he was by nature a reticent man. But Detective Meyer Meyer was the most patient man in the city, if not the entire world. His patience was an acquired trait, rather than an inherited one. Oh, he had inherited a few things from his father, a jovial man named Max Meyer, but patience was not one of them. If anything, Max Meyer had been a very impatient if not downright short-tempered sort of fellow. When his wife, for example, came to him with the news that she was expecting a baby, Max nearly hit the ceiling. He enjoyed little jokes immensely, was perhaps the biggest practical joker in all Riverhead, but this particular prank of nature failed to amuse him. He had thought his wife was long past the age when bearing children was even a remote possibility. He never thought of himself as approaching dotage, but he was after all getting on in years, and a change-of-life baby was hardly what the doctor had ordered. He allowed the impending birth to simmer inside him, planning his revenge all the while, plotting the practical joke to end all practical jokes.

When the baby was born, he named it Meyer, a delightful handle that when coupled with the family name provided the infant with a double-barreled moniker: Meyer Meyer.

Now that’s pretty funny. Admit it. You can split your sides laughing over that one, unless you happen to be a pretty sensitive kid who also happens to be an Orthodox Jew, and who happens to live in a predominately Gentile neighborhood. The kids in the neighborhood thought Meyer Meyer had been invented solely for their own pleasure. If they needed further provocation for beating up the Jew boy, and they didn’t need any, his name provided excellent motivational fuel. “Meyer Meyer, Jew on fire!” they would shout, and then they would chase him down the street and beat hell out of him.

Meyer learned patience. It is not very often that one kid, or even one grown man, can successfully defend himself against a gang. But sometimes you can talk yourself out of a beating. Sometimes, if you’re patient, if you just wait long enough, you can catch one of them alone and stand up to him face-to-face, man-to-man, and know the exultation of a fair fight without the frustration of overwhelming odds.

Listen, Max Meyer’s joke was a harmless one. You can’t deny an old man his pleasure. But Mr. Anderson, the manager of the bank, was fifty-four years old and totally bald. Meyer Meyer, the detective second grade who sat opposite him and asked questions, was also totally bald. Maybe a lifetime of sublimation, a lifetime of devoted patience, doesn’t leave any scars. Maybe not. But Meyer Meyer was only thirty-seven years old.

Patiently he said, “Didn’t you find these large deposits rather odd, Mr. Anderson?”

“No,” Anderson said. “A thousand dollars is not a lot of money.”

“Mr. Anderson,” Meyer said patiently, “you are aware, of course, that banks in this city are required to report to the police any unusually large sums of money deposited at one time. You are aware of that, are you not?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Miss Davis deposited four thousand dollars in three weeks’ time. Didn’t that seem unusual to you?”

“No. The deposits were spaced. A thousand dollars is not a lot of money, and not an unusually large deposit.”

“To me,” Meyer said, “a thousand dollars is a lot of money. You can buy a lot of beer with a thousand dollars.”