I come along out when I had my pants back on. She was counting it slow and careful. My stake and a five-hundred-dollar bill was already laid to one side for me. I took it.
“I might mention,” I says, “that this party’s cost me about three hundred dollars in travel expenses. Never mind the time out of my vacation.”
She didn’t even look up from counting.
“On your way,” she says. “I got no time for childhood friends that know I was married to a gambler. And don’t forget the friends I got around here wear police uniforms.”
So I skipped warning her about how the bank might get inquisitive about that stack of old-time money.
I just put on my hat and was on my way.
Two days later I was driving to Racine, up U.S. 41, with the radio on, and the noon news says: “Mrs. Velma Brinton, of rural Lansing, Michigan, has been held for questioning because ten thousand dollars in old-time currency that she brought her bank for deposit proved to carry serial numbers showing the bills are part of the loot that an unidentified mob took from the Briggs National Bank of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in March, 1920. Mrs. Brinton’s fiancé, Police Sergeant Herman Mickle, says their engagement is off unless she can think of a better story than she has so far managed to give authorities. Previously known as an active committeewoman in local politics and a successful businesswoman, Mrs. Brinton may not be extradited on account of the statute of limitations, but she had already stated she plans to leave town when released. The money will be turned over to the insurance company which reimbursed the Briggs National—”
And right away I picked up a rattle somewhere down below the dashboard and it turned into Puggy, like I more than half expected. “Well, Tom,” he says “that does it. We sure fixed her wagon, didn’t we?”
I didn’t say anything. I was still trying to take the thing in.
“Did I know that was hot money?” Puggy sends, kind of singing it. You can put a lot of expression in Morse if you try. “I sure did. I won it shooting crap with Big John and he was lookout man for the mob that knocked over the Briggs National and I done it with honest dice because I was scared to try anything. Did I know she was going to marry a John Law? I sure did, boyhood pal, I sure did.”
I answered back on the steering column.
“Nice guy you are, planting that kind of trouble on your widow just because she’s getting married again.”
“My widow!” he says. “My poor, bereaved widow. I’d never of been in that kind of crap game except for her. I’d just been home to the little flat in Detroit, Tom. And the furniture was still there, what was too big to carry away convenient. But she wasn’t — and neither was the seventeen thousand dollars I’d left with her to keep for us against a rainy day. I was down to my last hundred when I went up against Big John. And I was mad. I been mad ever since. But now I got my own back.”
“That kind of makes a cat’s-paw out of me,” I says.
“It sure does,” says Puggy. “You were just made for the job, Tom, always were. Thanks, boyhood pal. I’m loose now. I can be on my way. Don’t ask me where, but I reckon it’s a good thing I always liked warm climates.” And he signed off.
Which is why I lit a cigarette with a five-hundred-dollar bill there on the shoulder of U.S. 41.
The Eye of Jehovah
by Ruth Melcher
This is the 223rd “first story” published by EQMM... “The Eye of Jehovah” has a driving sincerity that achieves credibility — you can see the bedridden, nearly paralyzed old lady, almost hear her think...
Mrs. Melcher is in her early forties. She has two children — a teenage daughter who plans to be a nurse and a son who entered college in the fall of 1960 and plans to be a physics major.
The author’s first job was that of Desk Assistant in a Public Library, but after two years of trying to support two children and herself on $90 per month, she took a State Examination and is now a file clerk in the Vermont State Income Tax Department.
Her “first story” stems from real life — she once knew similar characters and they made a strong impression on her; but, Mrs. Melcher tells us, “they are dead now, so perhaps I shan’t be haunted by them any more.”
Something is going to happen. I wish Nurse Barnes was here. Not but what she doesn’t deserve her afternoon off — the trouble she has, taking care of a cantankerous old hulk like me, helpless as a great fat baby. Wonder what she’d do if she knew that every time she goes off, my dear little sister, Ellie, and her criminal son, George, come sneaking in to paw through my things.
She-devil and her whelp! They don’t get past Miss Barnes — not after my first stroke.
Wonder how they get by Miss Trask downstairs — silly little flibberty-gibbet. Probably swallows all George’s sweet-talk. Pretty good at it, George is. Got by with a suspended sentence even when they caught him red-handed. Talk himself out of anything.
Wish I knew what they want this time. Ellie’s already taken everything worth any money, times she’s pussy-footed around while Miss Barnes was gone.
Nothing I can do to stop them — can’t hear, can’t talk, can’t move. Only my eyes and one finger, though Doctor Cushman told Miss Barnes the paralysis could get better gradually, if I don’t have another stroke. Funny, almost wish I hadn’t seen him tell her — hard to know when your toes really tingle or when you just think yourself into it. If he’d been facing the other way, I wouldn’t have been able to read his lips. And then I wouldn’t be wondering.
Maybe Ellie and her precious son don’t know Miss Barnes was supposed to take my will to the bank this afternoon. Can’t be that they want, though. Ellie knows all the money I’ve got left goes to this Home. My books and the embroidered mottoes and the pictures are the only things I can leave anybody.
I hope Miss Barnes did take my will instead of leaving it in the safe downstairs. Ellie’d be mean enough to burn it in front of me just for spite. And the lock on that safe wouldn’t stop George.
Wonder what they really want. I’ve got this funny feeling. Guess I’ll know soon.
Door’s opening.
So there you are, Ellie — and your darling George. Radio said what, George? — turn around, drat you, so’s Lean see your lips! What deed? To the Little Princess Mine? What in tunket would anybody want that for? Even Papa finally admitted he’d been swindled. Apologized for calling it the name he used to call me. Never was any gold there.
Government wants it? Willing to pay the owner how much, George? You don’t say. And the owner has only three days to bring proof of ownership before the mine reverts to government property? Well, well. What was it they found there, I wonder. Never mind. I’m the owner. You won’t get it, Ellie.
Yes, I could point to the deed. But I won’t. Haven’t even thought about it for years. Funny, I’d have thrown it away, except it reminded me of Papa — and it was just the right size to use as backing when I framed my embroidered motto. Right in front of me now. THE EYE OF JEHOVAH IS UPON YOU. You’re looking right at it, Ellie, but you’ll never think to take the frame apart.
So it’s the deed you’ve been hunting for all this time. No wonder you didn’t find it. You always slide right over that motto. THE EYE OF JEHOVAH... Makes you uneasy, Ellie, don’t it?
My will? Lucky I got it tended to before I had the stroke. You’re wasting your time, Ellie. You won’t get a thing. All my pictures and books — and the mottoes — are for Miss Barnes.