Ed Mcbain - Money, Money, Money

“Well, gee, I don’t know,” the man said.

“You are?” she asked.

“Wesley Hand,” he said.

He was perhaps twenty-eight or twenty-nine, a round little man with moist blue eyes and a pleasant looking face except for the complexion. He looked sincerely concerned about the eyeglass case she now put on the counter top. He also looked bewildered. She guessed that was his natural expression.

“Is there some way you could do that for me?” she asked. “Help me locate the owner?”

“That might be difficult,” he said. “Except for some very special prescriptions, most eyeglasses …”

“Isn’t there some machine or something you can put them on?” she asked. “To see what the prescription is?”

“Well, sure, but …”

“Because maybe it’s one of thespecial ones, you see.”

“Well …”

“I would appreciate it,” she said, and flashed what she hoped was a warm and convincing smile.

“I close at six,” he said, and glanced up at the clock.

“Well, how long would it take …?”

“And I have to be someplace.”

“The thing is, I found them earlier today,” she said. “So chances are he’ll be missing them by now.”

“Uh-huh.”

“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 …”

“Please?” she said.

“Well,” he said again, and read off the address like a prisoner of war revealing under torture the location of an infantry division.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Cass said.

“YES?” a man’s voice said.

“Delivery,” she said.

“What kind of delivery?”

“Pair of eyeglasses,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m from Eyewear Fashions. Somebody found your glasses, brought them in this morning. Did you want me to bring them up?”

“Thank you, yes, come on up. Hey, terrific. It’s 2C, on the second floor.”

The buzzer sounded. Cass opened the entry door at once and felt in her tote bag for the reassuring grip of the Browning automatic. No elevator, of course. She climbed the steps to the second floor and yanked the gun out of the bag as she came down the corridor. She used the muzzle to tap gently on the door to 2C.

When Will opened the door, he saw the redheaded woman whose apartment he’d ripped off. Moreover, she was holding in her fist what appeared to be a .45 automatic. He tried to slam the door shut on her, but she hit it with her shoulder at once, shoving it in against him, almost knocking him off his feet, he hadn’t realized she was that strong. She was in the apartment in a wink, slamming the door behind her, and whirling on him with the automatic pointed at his head.

“Where’s my money?” she asked.

“Don’t get excited,” he said.

“My money,” she said. “My furs,” she said. “You’re a thief,” she said. She kept using the gun for punctuation, which made Will believe she was somewhat unstable and therefore capable of hysterically pulling the trigger.

“Don’t get excited,” he said again. “Everything’s here, all of it’s here, no need to go waving the gun around like that.”

She was maybe five-eight, five-nine, taller than she’d looked from the rooftop across the way, a tall good-looking redhead wearing a red fox jacket open over blue jeans and a bulky green turtleneck sweater that made her look like Christmas although it was still three days away.

“Get it,” she said.

“Would you mind putting up the gun?” he said. “Makes me nervous, you standing there with a gun in your hand.”

“Get my stuff,” she said.

“Right away,” he said.

“You fuckingcrook,” she said.