The general public, of course, is unaware of just how common this sort of thing is in the world we live in. It’s almost a cliché to say so, but white-collar crime like that perpetrated by Herbert Q. Luminous costs the taxpayer every bit as much as the much more publicized and dramatic sort of crime performed by the Mafia, or what is known as grimy-collar crime. The white-collar criminal, more often than not, doesn’t even belong to the Mafia, as, for instance, Herbert Q. Luminous didn’t belong to the Mafia.
And there are other differences.
Law enforcement officials and others struggle daily with the effort to get across to the general public the dangers of white-collar crime, the soaring costs, the difficulty of apprehending the perpetrator — you can’t arrest a person just because they dress nice — but on the other hand, what if everybody who wanted to get something across to the general public did get it across? What then, eh? Never thought of that, did you?
It’s almost a cliché to say so, but very few people have.
Herbert’s embezzling followed the usual pattern, as did his relationship with Floozey. But the time came when his nervousness, his apprehension about his apprehension by the forces of the law, had grown in him to the point where he couldn’t keep silent any longer, and he finally confessed to Floozey the truth about his taking funds from his employer, imploring her not to think the less of him for his crimes, as he had done them for her.
Far from condemning him, Floozey congratulated him, and demonstrated her new respect for him in most convincing fashion. It’s almost a cliché of that sort of relationship: once Floozey saw that Herbert too was less than lily-white, her behavior toward him, particularly in the area of erotic relationship which had played such an important part in their affair, developed into a new phase which Herbert found highly gratifying, not to say exhausting.
However, his depredations upon his employer did bother his conscience, and he told Floozey it was now time for them both to scrimp and save so he could begin to return the money. But she, she said, had a better idea.
It’s almost a cliché of course, but her better idea was to place wagers on horse races. “We’ll win a bundle,” she promised Herbert. “Then we’ll pay off your bosses and hit out for Acapulco, whadaya say?”
And so Herbert was sucked deeper into the maelstrom, and in less than a lustrum he was not only much deeper into his boss’s pocket, but he was also deeply in debt to a certain bookmaker known as One-Eye Fishface.
Troubles, as the old cliché would have it, tend to come in bunches. And so they did for Herbert. On the very same day — yesterday it was, to be exact — that he received word at the office that a special audit was going to be made of the books, some glimmering of his malefactions having finally been noticed (though of course no one yet suspected good old Herbert Q. Luminous), on that very same day One-Eye Fishface phoned him at the office and gave him forty-eight hours to pay off the twenty grand he owed. Or else.
Herbert at once phoned Floozey. “The jig’s up!” she cried, when he explained the situation. Then, “I tell you whatcha do,” she went on. “You don’t come to see me tonight, too dangerous, One-Eye will be watching us both to make sure we don’t take a powder outa town.”
“How can One-Eye watch us both?”
“Never mind. He can. Here’s what you do. Today, before you leave the office, you hit your boss for every dime you can wangle. You got me?”
“What good will that do?” Herbert protested. “I’ll pay off One-Eye, but the firm will surely have me arrested.”
“You don’t pay off nobody,” Floozey told him, with the quaintness of language that he found so endearing. “You get cash, in a satchel, all you can get. You take it home with you tonight. You take it to the office with you tomorrow. But you don’t go to the office.”
“I don’t?”
“You don’t. You make sure you aren’t followed, and if you ain’t, what you do is, you go to the men’s room behind the public library on Forty-second Street. You know the place I mean?”
“I think I do, yes.”
“You go there tomorrow morning, and you wait till I get word to you.”
“Then what?” he asked.
“Then the two of us hit out for Acapulco,” she told him.
“Floozey,” he said, emotion welling up within him, “I know it’s a cliché thing to say, but I love you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, in her modest way, and hung up.
So here he was. In the satchel he was clutching tightly in his other hand was thirty-seven thousand nine hundred forty-two dollars and twenty-five cents, the absolute maximum amount he could embezzle in one day from his employer.
And in front of him, gray and grim in the pouring rain drenching an already-drenched city, was the Bryant Park Comfort Station.
“It’s almost a cliché to think it,” Herbert muttered to himself. “But here I am, a man on the run.”
He walked slowly into the Comfort Station.
10:00 A.M
Carolina weiss, onetime russian countess now A & E mechanic, boarded the 42nd Street Crosstown bus, westbound, at Second Avenue, the southern threshold of the fashionable Upper East Side, where every terrace is haunted by reminders of the past. Nervously she extended a one-dollar bill toward the driver, who by sheerest coincidence just happened to be Fred Dingbat, who not very long before had turned the face of his giant GM city bus from eastward to westward, and who, having left the mighty United Nations Building, where men from one hundred twenty-six nations pace the corridors and worry about their own personal problems, had set out upon the crosstown trek across mighty 42nd Street, where (/• backwards from 6:00 A.M. chapter).
Fred gazed upon the bill which had just been extended toward his right ear by Carolina Weiss, onetime Russian countess now A & E mechanic. Six and one-eighth inches long by two and five-eighths inches wide, the bill in question was a medium green in color on the back and a much darker green on the face. The face, dominated by the face of George Washington, also contained across the top the legend FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE, and beneath that THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. With a numeral “1” in each corner, the bill was clearly a one-dollar bill, or in common parlance a “single.” Beneath the wording THE UNITED appeared the warning “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” and beneath the word AMERICA appeared, in bright green, the serial number: D70570627C. The serial number also appeared on the lower left, along with an indecipherable signature, that of the Treasurer of the United States. On the lower right was the information “Series 1963 A” and the perfectly legible signature “Henry H. Fowler,” that being the name of the far-seeing then-Secretary of the Treasury. The numeral “4” appeared for no apparent reason four times on the face of the bill, possibly a further hint that Paul McCartney of the Beatles died in 1966 and was quietly replaced by the winner of a look-alike contest.
Fortunately, Fred Dingbat didn’t see the back of the bill, which is much more complicated even than the front and would take much longer to describe. But if he had ...
No. Carolina Weiss, nervously, extended the bill face-side facing Fred’s face only.
To which Fred replied, “Lady, we don’t give change, lady. Don’t you read the outside of the bus?”
Disconcerted, but nevertheless pleased that the driver had somehow been aware of her former noble status — else why call her “lady”? — Carolina said, in pretty confusion, “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t usually travel by this means of conveyance.”