The RMP officer patrolling Charlie Sector of the Pecan Street Division hung his hat beside him when he started his tour of duty at 7:45 A.M. this morning, and it is still there at 9:15. Like Tom Hanks talking to the volleyball in Cast Away, Officer Searles has begun talking to his own hat of late, a good argument perhaps for putting a second officer in the cars. Searles considers this good police work, however. Talking things out loud, so to speak, checking out the scene with someone else, even if the someone else is only your own hat.
“Narrow it down to blue cars,” he tells his hat. “No sense checking the tag on a red car, for example.”
He is slowly cruising the parking lot of the Pecan Street Mall. The mall opened at nine, and there are already plenty of parked cars in the lot.
“Weekend shoppers,” he tells his hat.
He is coming around the northern end of the long mall building, making a turn past the new Barnes & Noble that just came in last week, when he spots a pale blue four-door sedan parked some four ranks back from the front doors of the store.
“Hey!” he tells his hat. “A blue one! But is it a Chevy?”
The car is a Chevy.
It is, in fact, a four-door full-size sedan that Searles identifies at once as an Impala. On the right rear bumper there is a sticker that reads WE TRY HARDER. Searles takes out his pad, studies the notes he took this morning at roll call.
“We may have just won the lottery,” he tells his hat.
He pulls up alongside the blue Impala, engages the parking brake of his own vehicle, leaves the engine idling, and gets out of the car. He bends over, takes a look through the left rear window of the Impala. Empty. He drapes a handkerchief over his right hand, tries the back door. Locked. He tries the front door on the driver’s side. It opens to his touch. He leans into the car.
There is a red baseball cap on the backseat.
Christine is afraid to go tell him what happened.
Phony bills! Super-bills! What the hell is this, some kind of science fiction? Bills printed in Iran? He’ll never believe her. He’ll think she’s trying to pull a fast one, he can be so damn suspicious sometimes.
She has stopped for breakfast in a diner on U.S. 41, not far from the bank where she tried to cash the counterfeit bills. Can you imagine them just taking the money from her like that?
We’ll have to confiscate them.
What does that mean?
By law, we’re required to send them to the Federal Reserve in Washington. I’m sorry.
Yes, but what do you mean, confiscate? Will I be out three hundred dollars?
I’m afraid so, miss. The bills are counterfeit.
I guess I should’ve cashed them someplace that doesn’t have a machine.
She guesses she should’ve.
Fuckin thieves.
Worse than a stickup in a dark alley.
But what was she going to tell him?
Never mind being out three hundred dollars. If the bills are phony — well, they have to be phony, the bank has a damn machine! So, yes, let’s say the bills are very definitely phony. Which means they are out not three hundred dollars but two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which further means the whole damn scheme has gone up the chimney. Unless he can come up with another idea, he’s never been short of ideas, it was his idea to do this thing in the first place.
She is afraid to go tell him.
“More coffee, miss?”
The waitress.
“No, thanks,” she says. “Just a check, please.”
What do we do now? she wonders.
Here we are with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in perfectly fine-looking fake money we can wipe our asses with, and we’ve got two kids on our hands we won’t know what to do with now that—
“Here you go, miss.”
“Thank you,” she says, and takes the check, studies it. Six dollars and twenty cents for an orange juice, a cup of coffee, and a toasted English. At least on the Cape, they didn’t get you by the food. All they did was get you by the bills.
Smiling in spite of herself, she leaves a dollar tip on the table, and then walks to the cash register. She has a ten-dollar bill in her wallet, and she can just as easily pay for her breakfast with that. But suddenly…
I guess I should’ve cashed them someplace that doesn’t have a machine.
…the thought comes to her.
She opens her wallet and takes out another of the hundred-dollar bills.
“I’m sorry,” she tells the cashier. “I don’t have anything smaller.”
The cashier looks at the bill, snaps it sharply between both hands, the bill making a crisp little cracking sound, holds it up to the light to check the security strip, and then rings open her register and begins counting out change…
“Twenty-five, fifty, seven dollars,” she says, placing the coins on the countertop. And then three singles, “Eight, nine, ten.”
Watching her counting out more bills now.
“Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred. Thank you, miss, have a nice day.”
Christine picks up the cash.
“You, too,” she says, and walks out of the restaurant and across the parking lot to where she left the red Taurus.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asks.
Alice looks at him across the breakfast table. It occurs to her that she has not sat at this table with anyone but her kids since Eddie’s death.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m okay, Charlie.”
“We’ll get them back, don’t worry,” he says.
There is something confident and comforting about his manner. It reminds her of Eddie’s self-assurance when first they met. But Eddie was very young then, and Charlie, of course, is fifty-six, though there is about him the vigor of a much younger man. She finds this strength reassuring, and realizes all at once that if she were facing a dozen hungry lions, she would rather have Charlie at her side than a hundred Wilbur Sloates.
“Something?” he says, and smiles.
“No,” she says, and returns the smile. “Nothing, Charlie.”
He hears a sound outside, and turns toward the living room windows. A car is pulling into the driveway. Alice has begun dreading the appearance of anyone here at the house. Every new appearance seems to bring her children closer to greater peril. A car door slams. A moment later, the front doorbell rings.
“Want me to get it?” Charlie asks.
But she is already on her way. She looks through the peephole, and then immediately unlocks the door and throws her arms open wide. The sisters embrace. Carol looks up into her face.
“Hey, honey,” she says.
“Hey,” Alice says.
She leads Carol in, locks the door behind them. Charlie is standing now, a napkin in one hand.
“Charlie,” she says, “this is my sister, Carol.”
“Never would’ve guessed,” Charlie says, and extends his free hand. “Damn if you don’t look like twins.”
“I’m a year older,” Carol says.
“Have you had breakfast, hon?”
“Could eat a bear.”
Alice goes to the stove, pours a cup of coffee for her sister, carries it to the table. She realizes she is smiling. For the first time since Wednesday afternoon, she is smiling. She cuts a few slices of rye bread, pops them into the microwave. Charlie is asking Carol how the trip down was. She’s telling him there was a lot of traffic, but it was moving fast. Alice carries the bread, a slab of butter, and a jar of raspberry jam to the table. Carol digs in.