" Bern?"
"What?"
"Is something wrong?"
"No. Why?"
"You're not talking."
"Oh," I said. "You're right, I guess I'm not."
"So I thought maybe something was wrong."
"No," I said. "Everything's fine."
"Oh."
"There was a whole lot of money," I said. "I guess he got paid in cash fairly often, and the trouble with cash is you have to launder it. Either that or declare it, and then you have to pay taxes on it, and then what's the point? But until you figure out how to launder it, without paying as much in laundry bills as you'd have had to pay in taxes, well, you can just stow it somewhere."
"And that's what he did?"
"He stowed it in his safe, and that's the wrong word for it, because it wasn't. I thought I might have to pull it out and take it home where I could work on it in private, and that would have been fine, but once I took the seascape down from the wall and went to work on it, it was about as hard to open as the milk chute."
"And you didn't have to crawl through it, either."
"Aside from the cash," I said, "he had the usual things you keep in a safe. Stock certificates, the deed to the house, a couple of insurance policies, other important papers. And some of her jewelry. She had a little rosewood chest on top of her dresser, and it was full of jewelry, but she kept some of her better pieces in the safe."
"I'll bet they're not there anymore."
"You'd lose. I left the papers, and I left all the jewelry."
"That's not like you, Bern."
"All things considered," I said, "I'd just as soon the police never hear about what we just did. Not that they're likely to figure out who did it, let alone prove it, but they can't begin to investigate it if they don't even know it happened. If I took the jewelry, Mapes would have a reason to report it. It's probably insured, and they can't make a claim unless they file a report. But if all I take is cash, and it's cash he never declared, what sense does it make for him to bring the police into it? He's not insured for the loss, he can't logically expect them to recover any of it, and all of a sudden he's got people from the IRS wondering where the cash came from."
"So you think he'll just bite the bullet and keep smiling?"
"He'll probably piss and moan," I said, "but he'll do it in private. He probably thought of the cash as easy come, and now he can think of it as easy go."
"That's great," she said.
"Yeah."
"It really is. The shitheel's out a bundle, and he can't do a thing about it. How much is it going to come to, do you have any idea?"
I shook my head. It was a mix of bills, I told her, from hundreds all the way down to singles, some in rubber-banded stacks, some crammed into envelopes, some loose. I figured it was more than a hundred thousand and less than a million, but I was just guessing.
"Enough so that you can give Marty his finder's fee and still have a lot for yourself."
"Don't forget your cut," I said.
"It shouldn't be much. All I did was keep you company."
"All you did," I said, "was save my life. If it wasn't for you I'd still be half in and half out of the closet."
"I had a girlfriend like that once, Bern. It's no fun. Okay, I was helpful, but I didn't take any risks."
"If you'd been caught, what would you tell them? That you were only keeping me company?"
"No, but-"
"Marty gets fifteen percent off the top. You get a third of what's left after his fifteen percent comes off."
She was silent while she did the math. "I don't have pencil and paper," she said, "so maybe I got this wrong, but the way I figure it I'm getting something like thirty thousand dollars."
"It'll probably come to more than that."
"Gosh. You know how many dogs I have to wash to make that kind of money?"
"Quite a few."
"You said it. Bern? What'll I do with all that cash?"
"Whatever you want. It's your money."
"I mean do I have to, you know, launder it?"
I shook my head. "It's not that much. I know, it's a fortune, but you're not looking to buy stocks with it. You just want to be able to live a little better, without worrying whether you can afford an extra blue blazer, or tickets forThe Producers. So you'll stick it in a safe-deposit box and draw out what you need when you need it. Believe me, if you're anything like me, it'll be gone before you know it."
"That's a comfort."
We stayed on Broadway all the way to my neighborhood, where we picked up Columbus Avenue and cruised past Lincoln Center. The plaza was crowded with people on their way out, and for a moment I thoughtDon Giovanni was over, but it was too early for that. There was a concert in Avery Fisher Hall tonight, too, and it had just let out, and if I'd stolen a cab instead of the Sable I could have had my pick of fares. I passed them all by and headed for the Village.
" Bern? If I'm in for a minimum of thirty thousand, you're going to get upwards of sixty. Right?"
"Right. I figured two-to-one was fair, but if you think-"
"No no no," she said. "It's more than fair. But that's not where I was going. The thing is, if you're getting all that money, and you don't have to deal with a fence, you don't have to worry about the cops-"
"So?"
"So how come you're not happy?"
"I'm happy."
"Yeah? You don't seem happy to me. You seem…"
"What?"
"Preoccupied, Bern."
"Preoccupied," I said. "Well, I guess maybe I am."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Eventually," I said. "But here's what I'm going to do right now. First I'll drop you and the money at your place. I've been getting too many visitors lately and I don't want to have piles of cash around the apartment, not until the traffic thins out and I have a new cupboard built to hide stuff in. I'll drop everything, and then I'll take the car back, and do something about the phone. And then I'll come down to Arbor Court again. And there'll be coffee made, and maybe something from the deli, and I'll sit down with a cup of coffee and put my feet up. And then we can talk about what's preoccupying me."
Twenty-Three
When I got back to Arbor Court, there was a whole buffet arranged on the plywood slab that topped the tub. Beef with orange flavor from Hunan Pan, pumpkin kibbee from the little Syrian joint, cold cuts from the Korean deli. "It occurred to me that neither of us had dinner tonight," Carolyn said, "and that I was hungry enough to gnaw wood, and you probably were, too. But I didn't know what you wanted, so I just walked along Hudson Street and bought some of everything."
We filled plates and emptied them, while her two cats, Archie and Ubi, gazed at us as plaintively as the kids in those Foster Parents Plan ads. It didn't work. Archie's a Burmese and Ubi's a Russian Blue, and neither one looks as though he's missed a meal since his first victory over a ball of yarn.
We had, however, and ate as if determined to make up for it. There was food left when we'd finished-she'd bought a ton, as one does when one shops while hungry-and some of the leftovers went in the fridge, and the rest went to the cats.
"Look at those drama queens," she said. "Now that the food's in their bowls, they stroll over to it as if it's the last thing on their minds. 'Oh, what have we here? Food, is it? Well, I'm not terribly hungry, but I'll just force myself so her feelings aren't hurt.' "
"That's what I did," I said. "I forced myself. Now I think I'll force myself to have a cup of coffee."