Coyle’s fingers interlaced tighter on hers. “No,” he assured her. “That’s the beauty of it. Nobody would get hurt. You’d just wait a few seconds until I’d left, then pretend to faint. By the time they’d revived you I’d be blocks away. You’d show them the note, say you fainted from the reaction and were too frightened to press the alarm.”
He built a wry smile. “If you appeared truly shocked they might even let you take the rest of the day off to recover.” His smile warmed. “I’ll be at your place waiting with the plane tickets.”
“Oh, Willard, please don’t ask me to do it!”
“It’s our future, Myra. I’m talking about us.”
Her lips trembled. “I’ll have to think about it,” she pleaded.
“Of course.” Coyle gave her hand a final squeeze. “Think about our happiness.”
Once the seed had been planted and adroitly nourished, Coyle held no doubt of its fruition. Three nights later, Myra capitulated. The fact that she had at intervals appeared uncertain did not deter Coyle. The girl was obviously hopelessly smitten with him. She would act out the charade.
At nine-thirty, Coyle stubbed out his cigarette, collected a small flight bag, and left the apartment. The weather continued inclement and the bank was some twelve blocks distant. He hailed a taxi.
It was ten o’clock exactly when he walked into the bank. Pleased to be precisely on schedule, Coyle was even more gratified to note the rain had curtailed the morning’s activities. There were but two patrons at the moment, neither of whom were at Myra’s station.
Casually, he approached Myra, passed her the flight bag and the demand note. She did not look at him, but a tic was pulsing in her cheek and her hands shook as she stuffed money packets into the bag.
A ripple of concern coursed through Coyle. If, after all his planning and nourishment, Myra cracked, went to pieces—
“Easy!” Coyle’s lips were taut with the whisper. “Easy!”
Myra still did not glance at him or speak, but she managed to get herself in hand. In another moment she returned the bag to him.
Exultation surged through Coyle. He moved briskly, but without undue haste, to the exit. The uniformed guard on duty evinced no interest in him and Coyle reached the street without incident. Another cab answered his wave.
A half hour later, excused for the balance of the day as Coyle had intimated, Myra also flagged a cab. The trip to her modest midtown apartment was brief, but for Myra it was an eternity. She saw little of the traffic. Her mind was a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. Paying off the cabbie, her chest constricted, her palms were slick. This was the moment of truth, the moment she desperately feared.
Coyle was not in the apartment.
For several agonizing pulse beats, Myra stood transfixed. Then, slowly, with tremendous effort, she forced herself to sit down. In her heart of hearts she had known this was how it would end. Coyle’s professed love had been feigned. From that first fatal day he’d used her, manipulated her to acquire the small fortune that would assure “their” future, and then ditched her to fly off to wherever his whim fancied.
Her plain features tight and vacant, Myra stared out the window at the rain.
At the airport, Coyle’s suavity deserted him and his emotions turned riotous when he saw the contingency tactic Myra would have undone prior to their boarding had he played the scenario straight.
His protests died in his throat as officials opened the flight bag and discovered $53,000 with the bank’s identifying wrappers still intact. Crammed in between the bills were the two gleaming steak knives that had tripped off the security gate’s metal-detection system.
The Last Quarter
by Mary Braund
She and her customers liked pretty things...
The Indian appeared in the shop doorway for the third time that week. The dirty unwashed drunken stench of him drifted in through the open door. Caroline threw down her dusting mop, the one with curling chicken feathers, in exasperation. He did not alarm her — he was too incapably drunk to be of any harm to anyone — but he was becoming an embarrassing nuisance. He braced his two arms against the doorjamb in an effort to hold himself steady and swayed backward and forward between his outstretched arms, his legs barely holding him upright. He forced his swollen lips open into an agonizing semblance of a smile and the broken brown teeth were a sickening sight.
“Lady,” he exhaled, his voice cracked and hoarse, his eyes swivelling as separate entities to get her into focus. “Got a quarter, lady? I jus’ need a quarter.” The same old line.
“Go away.” Caroline spoke up firmly. “Go away and don’t come back.” Which is what she had said before.
“Jus’ a quarter, lady. Tha’s all I need. Please, lady.”
“No! I haven’t got any money with me.” That wasn’t true, of course, but give him anything and he would just keep coming back. Though he seemed to be becoming a regular fixture without any encouragement, in any case. Thank heavens there had never as yet been any customers in the shop when he made his morning rounds.
She picked up the dust mop and took one step toward him. He flinched from her as though he expected her to hit him, but she wouldn’t have gone any nearer to him because the sight and smell of him disgusted her. It escaped her understanding how anyone could be in such a stupor at ten o’clock in the morning. She thought of the cheap liquor circulating in his veins and shuddered. He really couldn’t be much older than she was herself, though it was difficult to judge his age from the ravages of alcohol and the way his body did not belong inside the assorted ragbag of clothes that hung on him. His hair was black, greasy, and spiky, sticking up around his head absurdly as though he had tried to cut it himself, but, oddly, it was the hair that shafted a small sense of pity through her because it seemed as though sometime he had attempted to make himself presentable.
She stifled the feeling quickly. He was bad for business and she had to get rid of him. Quickly. Where he ate, how he slept, what he did with himself all day long were of no concern to her.
“Jus’ a quarter, lady,” he mumbled, knowing it was a lost cause, and then he backed away as she waved the dust mop at him, losing his hold on the door and staggering backward into the street, reeling and sagging inside the legs of his tattered pants. She watched him move away, swaying, setting his feet down carefully as if the sidewalk were hot, moving one leg after the other in an enormous effort. She could hear him mumbling to himself as he passed from her sight in search of better pickings, and she allowed herself a deep breath of relief.
Poor devil, she said to herself. He was a human being, after all, wasn’t he? Poor sick creature. Why didn’t someone take care of him?
Who that should be she didn’t know and hadn’t the time to care. She had work to do. Dust the furniture, clean the brass and copper, arrange the flowers in the old cut-glass pitcher, make the shop look enticing and attractive to anyone coming in search of an antique. She rubbed a little lavender-scented polish on a dark oak table. The patina of a hundred years needed no enhancement, but the sweet smell of it pleased her and would please a potential customer.
They would drift in soon, the odd bored housewife, the young couple in search of a special piece, the businessman looking for something different as a present for his wife or girl friend. Caroline had not been in the business long enough to judge which of them might buy something, but she welcomed most of the people who came in, anyone that looked respectable or interested. Most of all, she liked the people who would stop and chat and allow her to show her most prized pieces, because she wasn’t in the antique trade just to make money but also because she liked the look and feel of old, pretty things.