He was picked up that night on a dark corner ten blocks from the hotel. He sat in the back seat of a sedan between two men who had no desire to talk. The driver wore a baseball cap and his ears stuck out, silhouetted against oncoming lights as they left the city and drove very fast for a long time. They stopped and the driver got out and opened a cattle gate and drove in and closed the gate and drove another quarter mile to a house. They shut him in a small bare room with the money. It was tightly packed into a cheap dark blue suitcase with a single wide gray stripe. He checked the serial numbers against the clipping Dixon had given him. The money looked good, looked authentic. He made a halfhearted attempt to count it, and estimated it was all there. He knocked and they let him out and he talked in a dark hallway to a stocky man whose face he never saw.
“Satisfied?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your end?”
“I can’t get it until after nine tomorrow.”
“You stay here tonight and I’ll send you in and you get it and you’ll be brought back out.”
“No.”
There was an understanding silence. “How do you want to do it?”
“I’ll take this in with me. Your people can stay close to me. I’ll turn over my money.”
“I don’t like that.”
Verney suddenly had a better idea. “Take me back to the city now. I’ll meet you, alone, tomorrow, at ten in the morning, at any busy public place you want to name. We will meet and decide where to make the exchange.”
They met in front of a large department store. Verney recognized the suitcase. The stocky man had a broad impassive face, a slightly Indian look. He said, “If you say where, you can have a setup working. Same with me. So where do we go?”
“Let’s get a cab.”
“No cab stands. The first cruiser. It better come quick. This is making me sweat.”
A taxi came by moments later. Verney hailed it and it swung in to the curb. Verney said to the driver, “Where did you take your last fare?”
“Way out on Fernandez. What’s the scoop?”
“What’s the last public place, big place, you took a fare to?”
“What kinda gag is this? Lessee... railroad station.”
Verney looked at the stocky man and he nodded. “Take us there, please.”
They went to the men’s room, rented dim stalls. Verney sat with the suitcase across his knees and opened it. He dug down to be certain it wasn’t a thin layer of money. He snapped it shut and walked out, and the voice from the neighboring stall said sharply, “Watch it! Stay right there where I can watch your feet.” Verney heard the rustle of paper. He waited a full five minutes, cold sweat trickling out of his armpits. The door opened and the stocky man came out, the two cigar boxes under his arm, clamped tightly against him. Verney expected some comment. The man gave a single abrupt nod and left. Verney followed him quickly, but stayed fifty feet behind. When he saw the man shut himself into a phone booth on the far side of the station, he walked quickly out and found a cab and directed him to take him to the hotel garage. He locked the suitcase in the back of the Dodge and drove the car around and parked it in the front. Ten minutes later he was on his way out of town. He was unable to take a really deep breath until he was through Bartlesville on Route 75 north. He felt as though he had handled himself very well indeed. There was three hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars in the trunk of the car. Catton, despite the fact he had put up forty of the sixty-five, had agreed to an even split.
They took the calculated risk of putting the money in safety deposit boxes. Once again Catton was driven down to the Hancock Bank and Trust. They shut themselves into one of the larger cubicles and made a careful count of the money. Catton wanted an even division, each man holding onto his share.
“You had better let me hold it all, Burt.”
“No thank you.”
“Use your head, will you? You are coming along fine. But you have had a coronary. It’s possible you could have another. Then the court opens your boxes. Where will that leave me?”
“If we do it your way and if I should... have bad luck, Paul, it will be your good luck, won’t it?”
“That is an unkind thing to say.”
“We’ll do it my way, Paul. That will give you a good reason to move as fast as you can on this matter.”
And Verney was not able to change his mind. It was agreed that Paul would take an extended trip in November and December, taking fifty thousand from each share and handling the conversion and reconversion of funds in five South American countries. The monies so obtained would be used as partial payments on the tax indebtedness in January. Paul would set up a dummy transfer of real estate holdings to account for the cash in hand. By that time Catton would be able to travel, and would convert an equal amount. The following summer Paul would convert the balance. By fall all tax claims would be satisfied and there would be a small but comfortable surplus for each of them. Too careful an investigation of the dummy real estate transfers would cause embarrassing questions about where the funds had come from, but it was a chance they felt worth taking. With Paul hitting South America, then Catton hitting Central America, then Paul disposing of the balance on the continent, it was likely that they would stay a long jump ahead of any investigation once the identity of the money was discovered. With both boldness and careful planning, it could be done.
Verney parked his car in the shed garage behind the Center Club, went in the back way, and took the front elevator up to the third floor to his room. All the way back from the camp he had been disturbed because he could not think with the clarity and purpose and method that was so much a part of his nature. He knew that apprehension had given an emotional coloring to his mental processes. Bronson’s tough, knowing face kept intruding.
He prepared himself for thought, for the cold evaluations he depended upon. He put on a worn flannel smoking jacket and sat in the deep leather chair half turned toward the double window. The sky over the city was overcast; the light that came into the room was gray.
The loose mouth of a sick man. The unfortunate choice the sick man’s wife had made in a partner in her sexual adventures. The career and reputation of Bronson. Catton’s precarious health. Seven years Bronson owed the state. The written report that was Bronson’s insurance. These were factors. He examined each one, holding each factor up in turn to examine its texture and its curious shape. There would be a way one would fit against another, and a way to slide a third in place. And in the end there would be a picture, one that he could accept.
Primary assumption: The danger of the situation might very well kill Catton. Any logical development of the situation might kill him. First step: Get the money out of Catton’s safety deposit boxes. But Catton would have to be given a milder reason. Yet a logical one.
Tell Catton there was too much chance the boxes might be opened by court order. Explain constant worry about that eventuality. Say it would be far better to remove the money to a place not only safer but more accessible. Such as the office of Paul Verney.
He decided that could be done, and should be done tomorrow.
Then, with all funds accessible to him, he could pay Bronson the two hundred thousand. If there was no other answer.
If there was an answer, it would depend on an unknown third person, the one who held the written statement Bronson had prepared. What sort of person? Considering Bronson’s background and record, it was unlikely it was a bank or attorney. A close contact. A trusted individual. Bronson would have to be reasonably certain that the one he trusted would not open the envelope, would not learn the actual dimensions of blackmail. He would be unlikely to trust any criminal. And an honest man would not be likely to trust Bronson to the extent that, by holding the envelope, he might become involved in one of Bronson’s schemes. It was logical there would be some other hold. A relative? A woman?