The money in there was hundred-dollar bills.
HE DIDN’T STOP TO COUNT THEM till he was safe at home again in his apartment on South Twelfth Street, just off Stemmler Avenue. This was now close to twelve noon, and it had begun snowing outside. He sat in an easy chair under a lamp with a lamp shade that somehow had ketchup stains on it, and took the white envelope out of his jacket pocket, and then took the rubber band off the envelope again, and took out the bills and began counting them.
What it turned out to be was $8,500 in hundred-dollar bills.
Will hadn’t expected such a big haul, and the very idea of sitting alone here four days before Christmas, in an apartment even he admitted was dingy, seemed illogical for a suddenly wealthy individual. He took $500 from the stack of hundreds, put on his coat, and went out whistling.
IT WAS SNOWING QUITE HEAVILY by the time Cass got back to the apartment at two-thirty that afternoon. She went into the living room, tossed the red fox jacket over the arm of the sofa, turned on the Christmas tree lights, and then poured herself a Courvoisier on the rocks. Sitting alone in a chair by the window, she sipped the cognac and basked in the winking glow of the Christmas tree, thinking how lucky she was to have a nice apartment like this one in this wonderful city at this very special time of the year. She wondered what she might like to buy next. Or should she wait till after Christmas, when she could get everything on sale? Today was the twenty-first. Christmas wasn’t too far off.
She eased out of her pumps, $400 at Bruno Magli, stretched her legs, and suddenly realized just how tired she was. Rising, carrying the shoes in one hand and the brandy snifter in the other, she walked into the bedroom, snapped on the light switch, and almost spilled cognac all over her brand-new dress, $2,100 at Romeo Gigli. The closet door was open. She saw in a single eye swipe that the sable and the mink were gone. All the dresser drawers were open, too. Her envelope with what was left of the Mexican tip money was gone. She felt an immediate sense of violation, someone had been in here, someone had taken her things, gone through her private possessions, taken her goddamnthings! She felt as angry as she had when some twerps in Basic pissed in her footlocker, felt like rushing to the still-open window and screaming at the top of her lungs, “You goddamnthief!,”a lot of good that would do. Calming herself slightly, but only slightly, she checked the closet and the dresser more closely, trying to ascertain if he’d taken anything more than the obvious. It seemed that was it. Hadn’t bothered with the Angela Cummings bracelet she’d bought last week, all shiny and bright in its aqua blue box. Hadn’t been lured by the Hermès scarf, or the cashmere sweater, or the pre-Hellenic winged Eros pendant from an antiques shop on Jefferson, had satisfied himself merely—merely!—with the sable and the mink and what was $8,500 in cash the last time she’d counted it, the son of a bitch!
She actually pounded the dresser top in anger, pounded it again and again with her closed fist, screaming, “You mother-fucking son of a bitch bastard!,” obscenities she hadn’t used since the war, and then calmed down just a little bit and went to the phone and dialed 911.
WILL WAS TELLING THE BLONDE that he’d been born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, but that he hadn’t been back there in quite a while.
“What’s the Will for?” she asked. “William?”
“No, Wilbur,” he said.
“Wilbur Struthers?”
“Wilbur Struthers is what it is, ma’am.”
She almost burst out laughing. She didn’t. She even managed to keep herself from smiling, which he certainly appreciated. They were sitting in a booth in a bar called Flanagan’s, on Twenty-first and Culver. Will had first ordered a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, which the waiter didn’t know what it was, or care to know, it was that kind of bar. So he had asked Jasmine—that was her name—what she might prefer instead, and she had ordered a Harvey Wallbanger, and he had ordered a bourbon and water for himself, and they were now on their third drink each, with their knees touching under the table, and their heads very close together above the table. He figured if he played this one correctly, she would soon be in his bed back at the apartment.
He told her how he’d booked onto a tramp steamer after he quit college, headed for the Pacific Rim, found himself in Cambodia just about when the Khmer Rouge were rampaging there, got himself taken prisoner, and spent two years waiting for them to blow his brains out before he attempted a daring escape that landed him first in Manila and next in Singapore. Jasmine figured he was full of shit, but he had the tall rugged look of a cowboy, wearing a dark blue turtleneck that complemented the lighter blue of his eyes. Gray sports jacket, darker gray slacks. His hair a sort of sunwashed brown, rather than truly blond. Good strong face, good strong hands. Southern accent—or whatever it was—that didn’t hurt the Home-on-the-Range image. Too bad he’s a trick, she thought, although he hadn’t yet asked her how much this would cost him, or anything so crass as that, which she considered the sign of a true gent. She figured he’d get around to it sooner or later, but meanwhile she enjoyed listening to him tell her about the time a Khmer Rouge soldier put the barrel of a pistol in his mouth, which only happened to her every night of the week, more or less.
When it got time to pay for the drinks, Will handed the waiter a hundred-dollar bill, and then asked her if she’d made any other plans for the night. If she hadn’t, did she think she might enjoy accompanying him back to his place? Perhaps they could find a liquor store that sold Veuve Cliquot, a truly astonishing champagne, he told her, which they could drink while watching a movie on HBO. She still figured he was full of shit, but she thought this might be a good time to mention that she got five bills for the night, Around-the-World understood, of course.
Will blinked.
“I’m a working girl,” she said. “I thought you knew.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I surely didn’t.”
“So what do you think?”
“I never paid for a lady’s favors in my life,” Will said.
“Always a first time, cowboy. Teach you things you never dreamt of.”
“I dreamt most everything,” he said.
“Does that mean yes or no?”
“I guess it means no,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No sorrier’n I am,” Jasmine said, and picked up her handbag and said, “Have a nice Christmas,” and threw her coat over her shoulders and went swiveling toward the front door, passing within a few feet of where the waiter was handing Will’s hundred-dollar bill to the cashier.
The cashier, a woman named Savina Girasole, held up the bill to the light to check the otherwise invisible polyester strip. The embedded security tape revealed itself at once, the upside downUSA 100 USA 100 USA 100 repeating itself over and over again down the left hand side of the bill. So it’s genuine, Savina thought. But there was something about the feel of it—well, not exactly thefeel, the paper certainlyfelt as reliable as any other U.S. bill. But …