“What the hell do I want with a bank, I don’t trust banks. Why is it your business where I keep my money?”
“It’s my business because you’re on parole. You can keep out a little for spending money but make sure you account for it.”
Lee said no more, he swallowed back what he’d like to say. Silently he took off his boot, removed and unfolded the brown paper fitted along the inside, removed his prison-earned money and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. He didn’t reveal to Raygor the seven hundred dollars he’d had when he entered McNeil, it was in his other boot.
Raygor stared at Lee’s makeshift safe. “That’ll be a nice start on a savings account, with your wages to build it up. I talked with your boss. Mr. Ellson’s going into town later, on business. He’ll pick you up, bring you back to the ranch. You can have a look around Blythe, Fontana, but stay out of trouble. You were inside for ten years, this is your first time on your own except for the train trip down here. Take it easy, watch your step, you don’t want to end up behind bars, locked up on the island again.”
Lee stared at him coldly.“What the hell do you think I’m going to do in Blythe, hold up some mom-and-pop candy store in the middle of the day, rip off some old couple for forty, fifty bucks?”
Raygor looked back at him, and said nothing, his lean tanned face drawn into long, sour lines. Lee knew he was being unreasonable. The guy was just doing his job, doing what the authorities told him to do—but did he have to be so officious about it? His urge to pound Raygor didn’t cool down until they were on the road, until he had slipped into the hot seat of Raygor’s dusty Plymouth and they were headed away from the ranch, up the dirt road toward Blythe, bumping along between fanning rows of melons and string beans. Looking away over the rich green carpets of crops to the dry desert beyond where the sand stretched pale and virgin, Lee told himself that his anger at Raygor was a stupid waste of time, but he knew that what he’d felt back there wasn’t all his own rage, that some of it came from the dark haunt like a residue of grease rubbed off on his hands and staining deep.
The cat, sitting on the paddock fence, had watched Lee and Raygor leave the ranch in the officer’s tan Plymouth, the four-door vehicle so thick with dirt it could have just been dug out of a nearby sand hill. As they drove away, and Misto felt Lee’s anger at Raygor, he knew it was magnified by the heavy spirit that still sought to manipulate Lee; but the cat had to smile, too. Lee’s eagerness to look Blythe over, with thoughts to an alternate plan, greatly pleased the tomcat; and as the Plymouth disappeared in a rising cloud of dust, as Misto watched it turn onto the highway heading for Blythe, he lashed his tail once, disappeared from the fencepost, and joined the two men, stretching out unseen on the mohair seat between them.
Lee glanced down, aware of the faintest breeze and then of the cat’s warmth, and he smiled just a little. The cat, settling in for the ride, pressed his head against Lee’s leg. Lee’s Levi’s smelled of cantaloupes and mud. But it was Lee’s thoughts that held the tomcat, the various businesses he wanted to look over as he sought a plan that would not touch Jake, that would direct Lee’s thieving onto a new path not so severely damning to Lee, as well. In this world of men, certain crimes stink of evil. Other crimes, though not strictly moral, do not burn so caustically into the fabric of the human soul.
Have to make your savings deposit at the post office,” Raygor said. “Bank had a fire just a few weeks back. Moved their operation next door until they can rebuild.”
“In thepost office? You’re asking me to give all my money, all I have in the world to some post office clerk for safekeeping?”
Raygor gave him a patronizing smile.“They have the biggest safe in town, big old walk-in number, walls a foot thick. No one’s going to pry your few hundred dollars out of there, Fontana.”
As Raygor pulled up in front of the post office, Lee eyed the burned-out bank building next door, its windows shattered, smoke-blackened glass swept into a heap on the sidewalk mixed with dead crickets. Two of the burned walls had already been torn away, and a tractor and bucket sat beside the gaping hole. Big Dumpster was parked behind that, half full of blackened wood and debris. The stink of burned, water-soaked wood rivaled the smell of white poison and dead crickets.“How’d the fire start?”
“Electrical,” Raygor said. “Fire marshal said it was a short in the lighting, sparks started a box of papers burning.” Lee could see blackened file cabinets inside, their drawers pulled open, nothing but ashes within.
“Burned a lot of their paperwork,” Raygor said, “and some hundred thousand in cash.”
Lee stared at the man.“And now they’re camping out in the back room of a post office. They can’t keep their papers or money from burning, and you want me to put everything I own in there.”
“All the deposits and remaining records are in the safe. Bank is negotiating with the post office to buy the building and the safe, underwrite new quarters for them.”
Sounded dicey to Lee. What made those bank people think they could do business timely with the federal government? That transaction would probably take a decade to complete. How could you depend on bankers who were that gullible and trusting, themselves? Getting out of the car, he moved inside the one-story adobe building beside Raygor. A half-dozen wanted posters hung on the wall to his left, surly, vicious-looking men, and Lee stopped to study them; he always took a good look to see who was roaming loose out there, you never knew when a heads-up might be useful.
Knowing none of them, he committed their faces to memory, then took a good look at the layout of the post office. The activity at the postal counter made his pulse quicken. As a pudgy bank officer met them and led them past the counter, Lee saw that the clerks were not only selling stamps, they were counting out stacks of money, big money.
The clerk, broad of girth in his dark suit, his hair thinning on top and combed to the side above his protruding ears, ushered them into a back room, a combination storeroom and office. Raygor made sure to come in with Lee, to see that he opened the account all proper, that he filled out all the papers. The two of them sat crowded at a small desk beside the pudgy banker, jammed in among rows of metal file cabinets, bookshelves stacked with black binders, and a narrow cot pushed in between with a pillow and rumpled blankets.
“Night man,” the banker said, seeing Lee’s interest. “Because of maybe another fire, you know,” he said, gesturing vaguely, “because, it’s just a post office building and all.” Lee looked at the man as if bored, his heart lifting with another surge of interest. Beyond the bunk and bookshelves, a safe occupied the rest of the wall, a big iron walk-in door that must lead into an iron-clad room nearly as big as the office itself. Big old combination lock that, Lee thought, would take a skilled craftsman to finesse open, if you didn’t have the combination handy.
Behind the desk was a back door maybe to the alley, set between two barred windows. It had a simple spring lock, but below that a heavy hasp with a big padlock that hung open now, during business hours. The inner door through which they’d entered was solid-looking, too. It stood open, and he could see the counter and the line of waiting customers; his interest settled on two men standing just outside, each carrying a zippered canvas cash bag, both bags bulging invitingly. Glancing in at Lee and Raygor, they seemed to be waitingfor their turn with the lone banker.
Lee, focused on them, hardly heard Raygor ramble on about how much interest Lee would earn on his prison-earned money. Some piddly sum that would make a goat laugh. In the end, all he got for his cash was a dinky little savings book filled out by the flabby-faced clerk—Lee’s prison money and ranch wages gone as completely as if sucked up by the desert wind, commingled with everyone else’s cash, sucked into a mass of bookkeeping that, with a few strokes of the pen, could be lost forever. As they left the office, moving out through the post office lobby, thetwo waiting men had been joined by five more, each in possession of a fat canvas money bag. Lee looked them over good, then glanced at Raygor, scowled, and pretended to study his new bank book.