Clifford Simak: The Money Tree

'You do this job for me, Chuck, and I'll pay you everything I owe you. Not only for this one, but for all the others, too. This is one that I need real bad and I need it fast. You see, this car went off the road and into this lake and the insurance company claims-'

'Where is the car now?'

'It's still in the lake. They'll be pulling it out in a day or two and I need the pictures-'

'You want me, maybe, to go down into the lake and take pictures underwater?'

'That's exactly the situation. I know that it's a tough one. But I'll get the diving equipment and arrange everything. I hate to ask it of you, but you're the only man I know…'

'I will not do it,' Doyle said firmly. 'My health is too delicate. If I get wet I get pneumonia and if I get cold I have a couple teeth that begin to ache and I'm allergic to all kinds of weeds and more than likely this lake is filled with a lot of water lilies and other kinds of plants.'

'I'll pay you double!' Jake yelled in desperation. I'll even pay you triple.'

'I know you,' said Doyle. 'You won't pay me nothing.'

He hung up the phone and shuffled back up the bar, dragging the bottle with him.

'Nerve of the guy!' he said, taking two drinks in rapid succession.

'It's a hell of a way,' he said to Benny, 'for a man to make a living.'

'All ways are,' said Benny philosophically.

'Look, Benny, there wasn't nothing wrong with that bill I give you?'

'Should there been?'

'Naw, but that crack you made.'

'I always make them cracks. It goes with the job. The customers expect me to make them kind of cracks.'

He mopped at the bar, a purely reflex action, for the bar was dry and shiny.

'I always look the folding over good,' he said. Tm as hep as any banker. I can spot a phoney fifty feet away. Smart guys want to pass some bad stuff, they figure that a bar is the place to do it. You got to be on your guard against it.'

'Catch much of it?'

Benny shook his head. 'Once in a while. Not often. Fellow in here the other day says there is a lot of it popping up that can't be spotted even by an expert. Says the government is going crazy over it. Says there is bills turning up with duplicate serial numbers. Shouldn't be no two bills with the same serial number. When that happens, one of them is phoney. Fellow says they figure it's the Russians.'

'The Russians?'

'Sure, the Russians flooding the country with phoney money that's so good no one can tell the difference. If they turned loose enough of it, the fellow said, they could ruin the economy.'

'Well, now,' said Doyle in some relief, 'I call that a dirty trick.'

Them Russians,' said Benny, 'is a dirty bunch.'

Doyle drank again, morosely, then handed the bottle back.

'I got to quit,' he announced. 'I told Mabel I would drop around. She don't like me to have a snootful.'

'I don't know why Mabel puts up with you,' Benny told him. 'There she is, working in that beanery where she meets all sorts of guys. Some of them is sober and hard working-'

'They ain't got any soul,' said Doyle, 'There ain't a one of them truck drivers and mechanics that can tell a sunset from a scrambled egg.'

Benny paid him out his change.

'I notice,' he said, 'that you make your soul pay off.'

'Why, sure,' Doyle told him. 'That's only common sense.'

He picked up his change and went out into the street.

Mabel was waiting for him, but that was not unusual. Something always happened and he was always late and she had become resigned to waiting.

She was waiting in a booth and he gave her a kiss and sat down across from her. The place was empty except for a new waitress who was tidying up a table at the other end of the room.

'Something funny happened to me today,' said Doyle.

'I hope,' said Mabel simpering, 'that it was something nice.'

'Now I don't know,' Doyle told her. 'It could be. It could, likewise, get a man in trouble.'

He dug into his watch pocket and took out the bill. He unfolded it and smoothed it out and laid it on the table.

'What you call that?' he asked.

'Why, Chuck, it's a twenty-dollar bill!'

'Look at that thing on the corner of it.'

She did, with some puzzlement.

'Why, it's a stem,' she cried. 'Just like an apple stem. And it's fastened to the bill.'

'It comes off a money tree,' said Doyle.

'There ain't no such thing,' objected Mabel.

'Yes, there is,' Doyle told her, with mounting conviction. 'J. Howard Metcalfe, he's got one growing in his back yard. That's how he gets all his money. I never could get it figured out how all these big moguls that live in them big houses and drive those block-long cars could manage to make all the money it would take to live the way they do. I bet you every one of them fellows has got money trees growing in their yards. And they've kept it a secret all this time, except today Metcalfe forgot to pick his money and a wind came along and blew it off the tree and over the wall and-'

But even if there was such a thing as a money tree,' persisted Mabel, 'they could never keep it secret.

Someone would find it out. All of them have servants and the servants would know…'

'I got that all figured out,' said Doyle. 'I been giving this thing a lot of thought and I know just how it works. Them servants in those big mansions aren't just ordinary servants. They're all old retainers. They been in the family for years and they're loyal to the family. And you know why they're loyal? It's because they're getting their cuts off the money trees. I bet you they salt it all away and when it comes time for them to retire they live the life of Riley. There wouldn't nobody blab with a setup like that.

'And if all those big shots haven't got something to hide, why has every one of them big houses got big walls or thick hedges around the back of them?'

'But they have garden parties,' Mabel protested. 'I read about them in the society section all the time- '

'You ever been to one of them garden parties?'

'No, of course I haven't.'

'You bet your boots you haven't. You ain't got no money tree. And they don't invite no one except other people who likewise have money trees. Why do you think all them rich people are so snooty and exclusive?'

'Well, even if they have got money trees, what difference does it make? What are you going to do about it?'

'Mabel, would you maybe be able to find me a sugar sack or something?'

'We have a lot of them out back. I could get you one.'

'And fix up a drawstring in it so once I got it full, I could jerk the string and tighten it up so the money wouldn't all spill out if I had to-'

'Chuck, you wouldn't!'

'There's a tree outside the wall. I can shinny up it. And there's a branch sticking out into the yard. I could tie a rope to that…'

'But they'd catch you!'

'Well, we'll know if you get that sack for me. I'll go out, hunt up some rope.'

'But all the stores are closed by now. You can't buy a rope.'

'Know just where to get some,' said Doyle. 'Fellow down the street has eighteen, twenty feet of it fixed up for a swing out back. Took pictures of a kid swinging there just a day or two ago.'

'You'll have to drive me over to my place. I can't fix the sack in here.'

'Just as soon as I get back with the rope.'

'Chuck?'

'Yeah?'

'It isn't stealing, is it-this money tree?'

'Naw. If Metcalfe has one, he hasn't any right to it. It's fair game for anyone. It's more than fair-it ain't right for a man to have a thing like that all to himself.'

'And you won't be caught for having counterfeit…'

'Now, how could it be counterfeit?' demanded Doyle, just a bit aghast that she should suggest it.

'Nobody's making it. There ain't no plates and there isn't any press. The stuff just grows, hanging on that tree.'