Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

He set himself to do the checking which had engaged Miss Tully, leafing in a desultory way through the amassed holdings of one John M. Jessup, of Larkimer County, a livestock dealer. If Beau remembered rightly, Jessup was about seven feet tall, had a sparrow’s voice, wore two pairs of glasses, had cleaned up on beeves in the First World War, and hadn’t been in at the bank since Truman left office. Beau always remembered people. But even those facts did not move Beau to wider ratiocination. What moved him was the observation, in his hands, of ten one-thousand-dollar bonds, issued by Hobart Metal Products when they had expanded the works on the west side of town.

Just half those, Beau thought, would get me out of all my worries. Only then did he recall the rarity of Mr. Jessup’s visits. And only after that did he glance at the sonorous Miss Ames.

“How would you like,” he said, “to go across to Sherman’s and get me— us —some coffee?”

She took the slight falter in his voice for an employer weakness. “Not much. It’s raining.”

“You go underground. There’s a passage. One of the girls down in the stenographic pool will show you.” Beau made up, that time, for his prior lack of assurance.

The girl said, “Oke,” stuck her gum on the under edge of her desk, rose, and began to make up: there might be boys in the passageway.

When she had departed, Beau studied the opaque glass walls of his cubicle and decided they were, indeed, opaque. Then he looked briefly from the door, at an empty corridor. After that he tried to remember the present market value of Hobart Metal bonds. He thought it was par, but wasn’t sure. If he were going to borrow five, he might as well be certain and take six. He folded them on their creases and tucked them carefully into an inside breast pocket. Only then did he remember his exposure in the window. He whirled with horror and stared up at the stacked panes across the street. Lights shown in everyone and rain poured between. There were faces and people moving, but no one seemed to be interested in him, in anything in his direction which—when you considered—probably looked like nothing but a lot of teeming rain.

He took the inventory list and correctly reduced the number of listed bonds from ten to four. He then made out, in a disguised writing, a receipt for six bonds and signed it with an indecipherable scrawl, using a bank pen and bank ink. He pulled out the nib afterward, put in a new one, and pocketed the old. Nobody, he thought, could prove who had written the receipt or show with what it had been signed. Not even experts. And, anyway, the absence of the bonds would go unsuspected.

It took two more days to complete the transaction and set his mind at rest. Or momentarily at rest.

The following morning was still rainy. Taking Netta somewhat into his confidence, he explained it would be “useful” if she alibied him with a slight cold. She did not enquire more deeply. She called the bank and talked about “a couple of degrees temperature” and “doctor’s orders.”

It happened, owing to Country Club contacts, that Beau knew an officer in the Ferndale Branch of the Owen National Bank of Commerce, who was a “good man to go to in a tight spot.”

His name was Wesley Martinson. Beau had cultivated the man, played a few rounds of golf with him, come to call him “Wes”—probably because his subconscious mind invariably noted down the fact that a fellow useful in a tight spot might someday be handy to him. Beau had that kind of foresight—quantities of it.

Wes greeted him without surprise, ushered him into a private room in the branch bank, sat, performed smoking amenities and said, “Well, Beau, what can we do for you?”

Beau had pretty much taken the measure of his man, through the medium of a hundred off-color stories retailed by Wes with almost writhing relish. Beau therefore chuckled and said,

“Frankly, I want you to help me perform a small robbery.”

Wes chortled. “Son, that’s what banks are for. And you’ve come to the right banker.”

Beau took the bonds from a very old and battered big envelope which bore his name and in which for years he had kept unpaid bills. It looked exactly like something that had lain in a vault a long while, holding bonds. He threw the parchment-stiff, aging paper on Wesley Martinson’s desk. “Want to borrow on these.”

Wes picked them up, studied them and said, “They don’t look counterfeit.”

Beau chuckled. “Nope. Something I stashed before the tax rate knifed us. Trouble is, I don’t want the little woman to realize I’m borrowing on them.”

The other man frowned. “I see.”

“The hell you do see! However, I’ll let you in on the sight, one of these days. She has”—Beau made curves with his hands. “All blonde, and when I say all, I mean all .”

Wes unconsciously ran his tongue along the underside of his long top lip. “Isn’t that kind of skidding around, for the cashier of Sloan?”

“With her you don’t skid, son. She’s safely married.”

As Beau knew, the invention suited his own need for cover as well as the other man’s mind. Wes chuckled. “I guess Owen National can help you maintain your little relationship. Security’s okay. You know the rates.”

“I should!” Beau said and took the proffered pen.

Not that evening, but the next, Beau made his way to The Block. He was determined, having obtained the needed money, and a few hundreds extra, for private use when and if and as needed, to expose himself to no further risks. So he approached by bus, then taxi, and then a second taxi and at last on foot.

Jake was there, in his littered office. He took the five one-thousand-dollar bills without comment. He dug in a greasy file for some time, produced Beau’s I.O.U.’s, handed them over, and then looked across his cigar stub. “Where’d you get the dough?”

“Borrowed it,” Beau answered cheerfully.

“Off who?”

“Friend.”

“What friend?”

“I can’t say. It was—a woman.” Beau was suddenly very nervous. He had entered the gambling place confidently, whistling a little. He had thought that all Jake wanted was the money. He realized, in a new way, that he was in the windowless back room of a stone building which once had been a house and was now empty, pretty much. At least the big downstairs room, with the wheels and dice tables under dusty canvas, was empty and had been for months-since the latest police cleanup.

“What woman?” Jake said.

“I told you…. Look! I paid. We’re square. So what?”

Jake didn’t have a mean face, a vicious face, even a very Italian face. He looked like every other man who stands in a dirty white apron beside a green-grocery stall in an open market. He hardly lifted his voice. “Toledo,” he called, and Toledo, who did have a vicious face, came in from the dark hall.

It was not necessary to say anything to Beau about the meaning of Toledo’s summons.

Toledo had, a month before, landed three crashing blows on Beau’s face, flooding him with agony, weakening his knees, almost making him throw up.

“I just want to know,” Jake said, “if this is hot money. I don’t care whether it’s hot or not. I take it, either way. I just want to know. Ask him, Toledo.”

Before Beau could cry, “No!” the first blow knocked him off his feet and halfway across the dirty, worn carpet. He got up. He got out a handkerchief. Shaking like a rabbit in a snake’s mouth, he said gaspingly, “Okay. I had to borrow a couple of bonds from a dead account at the bank. You guys won’t wait. The bank can.”

“Whose account?”

“I forget,” Beau said.

“Ask him whose account, Toledo.”