“Are you suggesting that I stole the bank’s money?” Cox shouted.
Hoffman looked astonished. “Mr. Cox has been a trusted, valued employee of Midwestern National for almost four years.”
“Well, I’ve been a trusted, valued employee of Curtis Tool and Die for a hell of a lot longer,” Blanchard snapped. “What does any of that prove?”
“All right, all right.” Salzberg tapped his teeth with his pen, speculatively. After a moment he said, “Flynn, question the other employees; maybe one of them saw or heard something. Mr. Hoffman, I’d appreciate it if you’d detail someone to find out exactly how much money is missing, and whether or not this list Blanchard claims to have given can be found. You might as well have Mr. Cox’s cage and possessions gone through too.”
Cox was disbelieving. “You mean you’re taking this thief s word over mine?”
“I’m not taking anybody’s word, Mr. Cox,” Salzberg said calmly. “I’m just trying to find out what happened here today.” He paused. “Would you mind emptying all your pockets for me?”
Purplish splotches appeared on Cox’s cheeks, but his voice was icily controlled when he said, “No, I do not mind. I have nothing to hide.”
It appeared that he hadn’t, as far as his person went. He did not have either the list of coins of an appreciable amount of money.
Salzberg sighed. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go over it again...”
Some time later, Hoffman and Flynn rejoined the group. A check of receipts and records had revealed that a total of $35,100 was missing. No list of coins had been found in or about Cox’s cage, and a careful audit of the rest of the bank’s funds had failed to show an unexplained overage in another teller’s cash supply. None of the employees Flynn had questioned had been able to shed any light on the matter; no one had been near Cox’s cage at the time Blanchard had been there, and no one had had any idea that things were amiss until Cox shouted to the guard to stop Blanchard.
Salzberg looked pointedly at Blanchard. “Well, Mr. Cox doesn’t seem to have the money, and it doesn’t seem to be here in the bank. This alleged note of yours isn’t here, either. How can you explain that?”
“I can’t,” Blanchard said. “I can only tell you what happened. I didn’t steal that money!”
Salzberg turned to the guard, Sam. “How far outside did he get before you collared him?”
“No more than a couple of steps.”
“Did he have time to pass the money to an accomplice?”
“I doubt it. But I wasn’t paying any attention to him until Mr. Cox yelled.”
“I don’t know much about big money,” Blanchard said coldly, “but thirty-five thousand must be a lot of bills. I couldn’t have passed that much to somebody in the couple of seconds I was outside the bank.”
“He’s got a point,” Sam admitted.
“Why don’t you search the guard?” Blanchard asked in a voice heavy with vitriol. “Maybe I passed the money to him.”
“I was expecting this,” Sam said. He stepped over to Flynn, raising his arms. “Shake me down and we’ll get the idea I had anything to do with this out of everybody’s mind.”
Flynn searched him expertly and, not surprisingly, the guard was clean. “What are we going to do?” Hoffman asked. “That money has to be somewhere, and this man Blanchard obviously knows where.”
“Maybe,” Salzberg said carefully. “Anyway, it looks like we’ll have to take him downtown and see what we can do there about shaking his story.”
“Go ahead, then,” Blanchard snapped, “but I want a lawyer present while I’m questioned. And if charges are pressed against me, I’ll sue you and the bank for false arrest.”
They took him down to police headquarters and placed him in a small room, leaving him alone until a public defender could be summoned. Then he was subjected to an unending stream of questions, and through long hours he told the exact same story he had in the bank, vehemently proclaiming his innocence.
Shortly after eleven he was taken to Salzberg’s office. The detective looked tired and grim as he explained that the three men with whom Blanchard was to have played poker that night had confirmed the game and the fact that he was to have been banker; that an investigation had borne out that Blanchard did not have a criminal record, had in fact never been arrested; that he was well-liked and respected by his neighbors and his co-workers at Curtis Tool and Die; that the holdup note had had only Cox’s and Hoffman’s fingerprints on it; that a search of Blanchard’s apartment had revealed no evidence that he had manufactured the note; and, finally that another search of the bank had been undertaken — Cox and the guard and the other employees again questioned extensively — without anything new having been learned or the whereabouts of the missing money discovered.
Salzberg rotated his pen between his fingers, leaning back in his chair. He watched Blanchard for a moment, and then he said, “All right, you’re free to go.”
“You mean you finally believe I’m telling the truth?”
“No,” Salzberg said, “I don’t. I’m inclined to believe Cox, if you want the truth. We checked him out, too, as a matter of routine, and his background is even more spotless than yours. But it’s his word against yours — two respectable citizens — and without the money we’ve simply got nothing to hold you on.” He swung his body forward suddenly, his eyes cold and brightly hard. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Blanchard: we’ll be watching you — watching you very carefully.”
“Watch all you like,” Blanchard said exhaustedly. “I’m innocent.”
On a night three weeks later, Blanchard knocked on the door of unit 9, the Beaverwood Motel, in a city sixteen miles distant. As soon as he had identified himself, the door opened and he was admitted. He took off his coat and grinned at the sandy-haired man who had let him in. “Hello, Cox,” he said.
“Blanchard,” the bankteller acknowledged. He moistened his lips. “You made sure you weren’t followed here, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“But the police are still watching you?”
“Yes, but not nearly as closely as they were in the beginning.” Blanchard cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. “Stop worrying, will you? The whole thing worked beautifully.”
“Yes, it did, didn’t it?”
“Sure,” Blanchard said. “Salzberg still thinks I passed the money to an accomplice somehow, but he can’t prove it. Like he told me, it’s your word against mine — and they’re taking yours, just as we expected. They don’t have an idea that it was actually you who passed the money, much less how it was done.”
The room’s third occupant — the stout, gray-haired man who had been at Cox’s window when Blanchard entered the bank that evening — looked up from where he was pouring drinks at a sideboard. “Or that the money was already out of the bank, safely tucked into the inside pockets of my coat, when the two of you went into your little act.”
Blanchard took one of the drinks from the gray-haired man and raised the glass high. “Well, here’s to crime,” he said. “Perfect crime, that is.”
They laughed and drank, and then they sat down to split the $35,100 into three equal shares...
97
Queasy Does It Not
Jack Ritchie
I had been just about to leave when my buzzer sounded.
She was about five feet six, had raven black hair, and I had never seen her before.
Her eyes seemed to calculate my apartment. “For two hundred twenty-five dollars, you are not lost. You have come to absolutely the right place.”