Mr. Pinkson let out a controlled chuckle, a suitable reply when he wasn’t sure whether or not the customer was trying to be funny. Then he revolved again; his chubby cue-ball head bobbed down, and he was back at his figures.
Logan put he bonds on the clean desk blotter and looked over at Tritt’s cage. It was at the near end of the row of cages, with a door opening directly into the manager’s area. Tritt was talking on the telephone inside, and for a long, unpleasant minute Logan watched the fat, self-assured face through the greenish glass. I’ll get him yet, Logan thought. But he didn’t see how. Tritt had been standing firmly shielded behind his lie for nearly a year now, and Norman Logan didn’t seem to know enough about vengeance to get him.
Restive, Logan sat back and tipped the chair onto its hind legs. He picked ineffectually at a gravy stain on his coat; then his eye was attracted to a drawer, hidden under the overhang of the tabletop. It was a difficult thing to see, for it had no handle, and its face was outlined by only a thin black crack in the dark-stained wood. Logan could see faintly the two putty-filled holes that marked the place where the handle had once been. Curious, he rocked forward a little and slipped his fingernails into the crack along the bottom of the drawer. He pulled gently, and the drawer slid smoothly and silently from the table.
The inside was a dirty, cluttered mess. Little mounds of grayish mold had formed on the furniture glue along the joints. A film of dust on the bottom covered the bits of faded yellow paper and rusted paper clips that were scattered about. Logan rocked the chair back farther, and the drawer came farther out to reveal a delicate spider web. The spider was dead and flaky, resting on an old page from a desk calendar. The single calendar sheet read October 2, 1936. Logan pushed the drawer softly back into the table, wondering if it had actually remained closed since Alf Landon was running against Roosevelt.
The door of Tritt’s cage clicked open, and he came out, carrying a large yellow form. William Tritt moved smoothly across the carpet, holding his fat young body erect, and making a clear effort to keep his stomach in.
“Why, hello, Mr. Logan,” he said. “I’m sorry for the delay. The main office called me. I can’t hang up on them, you know.”
“I know,” Logan said.
The teller smiled as he lowered himself into the chair opposite Logan. Logan slid the bonds across the table.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Tritt said pleasantly as he opened his fountain pen. “Preparing for the new semester, I suppose?” There was no indication of their meeting across the street. Logan said nothing in reply, so Tritt went to work, referring rapidly to the form for the amount to be paid on each bond. “Well, that comes to sixty-seven dollars and twenty-five cents,” he said, finishing the addition quickly.
Logan filled out a deposit slip. “Will you put it in my checking account, please?” He handed his passbook across the table. “And will you please enter the right amount?”
“Certainly, Mr. Logan,” Tritt said, smiling indulgently. Logan watched carefully as Tritt made the entry. Then the teller walked rapidly back to his cage, while Logan, feeling somehow compelled to do so, took another glance into the dusty drawer.
He kept thinking about the drawer as he got on a bus and rode up to the university. It had surprised him to stumble upon a dirty, forgotten place like that in a bank that was always so tidy.
Back in the biology department, Logan sat down at his desk, planning to prepare some roll sheets for his new classes. He stayed there for a long time without moving. The September sun went low behind the New Jersey Palisades, but he did not prepare the sheets, for the unused drawer stayed unaccountably in his mind.
Suddenly he sat forward in his chair. In a surprising flash of creative thought, he had seen how he could make use of the drawer. He wasn’t conscious of having tried to develop a plan. The entire plan simply burst upon him all at once, and with such clarity and precision that he hardly felt any responsibility for it. He would rob the bank and pin the robbery on Tritt. That would take care of Tritt.
In the weeks that followed, Norman Logan remained surprisingly calm about his plan. Each time he went step by step over the mechanics of the robbery, it seemed more gemlike and more workable. He made his first move the day he got his November pay check.
Down on Fifty-first Street, Logan went into a novelty-and-trick store and bought a cigarette case. It was made of a dark, steel-blue plastic, and it looked like a trim .38 automatic. When the trigger was pressed, a section of the top of the gun flipped up on a hinge, revealing the cigarettes inside the handle.
With this in his pocket, Logan took a bus way down to the lower part of Second Avenue and entered a grimy little shop displaying pistols and rifles in the window. The small shopkeeper shuffled forward, and Logan asked to see a .38.
“Can’t sell you a thing until I see your permit. The Sullivan Law.”
“Oh, I don’t want to buy a weapon,” Logan explained. He took out his plastic gun. “I just want to see if the real thing looks like mine here.”
The little man laughed a cackle laugh and brought up a .38 from beneath the counter, placing it next to Logan’s. “So you’ll just be fooling around, eh?”
“That’s right,” said Logan, looking at the guns. They were almost identical.
“Oh, they look enough alike,” said the man. “But lemme give you a little tip. Put some scotch tape over that lid to keep it down. Friend of mine was using one of those things, mister. He’d just polished off a stick-up when he pulled the trigger and the lid flopped open. Well, he tried to offer the victim a cigarette, but the victim hauled off and beat the hell out of him.”
“Thanks,” Logan said with a smile. “I’ll remember that.”
“Here, you can put some Scotch tape on right now.”
Logan walked over to the Lexington Avenue line and rode uptown on the subway. It was five minutes to 3 when he got to the bank. The old, gray-uniformed guard touched his cap as Logan came through the door. The stand-up desks were crowded, so it was natural enough for Logan to go through the little iron gate and cross to the table with the drawer. Mr. Pinkson and the new assistant manager had already left; their desks were clear.
As Logan sat down, Tritt stuck his head out the door of his cage.
“More bonds, Mr. Logan?” he asked.
“No,” said Logan. “Just a deposit.”
Tritt closed the door and bent over his work. Logan took out his wallet, removed the pay check, then looked carefully the length of the bank. No one was looking in his direction. As he put the wallet back into his inside coat pocket, he withdrew the slim plastic gun and eased open the drawer. He dropped the gun in, shut the drawer, deposited the check, and went home to his apartment. In spite of the Sullivan Law, he was on his way.
Twice during November he used the table with the drawer. Each time he checked on the gun. It had not been moved. By the time he deposited his December check, Logan was completely certain that nobody ever looked in there. On the nineteenth of the month, he decided to take the big step...
Next morning, after his ten o’clock class, Logan walked six blocks through the snow down the hill to the bank. He took four bonds out of his safe-deposit box and filled them for cashing. The soothing sound of recorded Christmas carols floated down from the main floor.
Upstairs, he seated himself at the heavy table to wait for Tritt. Pinkson had nodded and returned to his figuring; the nervous assistant manager was not around. The carols were quite loud here, and Logan smiled at this unexpected advantage. He placed the bonds squarely on the blotter. Then he slipped open the drawer, took out the gun with his left hand, and held it below the table.
Tritt was coming toward him, carrying his bond chart. They said hello, and Tritt sat down and went to work. He totaled the sum twice and said carefully, still looking at the figures, “Well, Mr. Logan, that comes to eighty-three fifty.”