Tom looked at the money. “Yes, I can’t see—”
“Fine. Now, Lutz, you be the blonde.” Lutz put his hand on his hip and swayed up to the window. “Don’t clown it!” Durand said sharply. “Weldon, act as though you’re making change. Okay. Now, Lutz, turn around and walk fast toward the main doors. Set your heels down. Keep watching him, Tom.”
Tom watched. There was a prolonged shrill whistle.
“Now,” said Durand, “turn around slow and take another look at the money.”
Tom turned around and gasped. It had completely disappeared. It was gone. He looked at Jud Fergol. He saw the sweat beaded on the man’s upper lip. Funny how you could work beside a man and never... “How did you do that!” Tom demanded.
Durand smiled. “Like your smart little wife said, Weldon. Over the wall. A while ago I stretched, casual-like, and when my hand was over the edge of the wire fence — and it’s only six feet high in here, you know — I let some nylon monofilament fishing line fall down on your side, right where that money is. It’s leader material, and it’s two-pound test, and it’s camouflaged. Hell, you can hardly see it when you know it’s there. On your end was a trout hook. Nothing on my end. I just let it hang down in here.
“When Lutz was standing at your window, I stuck two fingers through the wire grille and hooked the trout hook onto the rubber band. Right after I whistled. I hoisted away. The money dropped on my side. Every man, on that day the blonde was here, was watching that tight skirt and that walk. I shoved the money out of sight, just like Fergol did.”
“It’s crazy!” Jud said much too loudly. “I never did a thing like that.”
“The guy where you bought the leader material identified you from a picture. Your wife showed us where you keep your fishhooks. In fact, this is one of yours. When we told her about powder and lipstick that wasn’t hers, she stopped kidding us and told us about you sneaking out in the middle of the night too often. So where is she, Fergol, and what’s her name?”
Fergol seemed to dwindle as Tom watched him. He looked through them all, looked beyond them to some far, cold, hopeless place. “Her name is Connie Moran. Westlake Hotel Apartments. Brown hair. She used that dye that washes out. She had to have the money. She took all — but five hundred.”
Durand gave him a wise, complacent smile. “You were followed there Friday night. She’s in custody, chum. But she’s a tougher apple than you are. She never would have talked.”
One of the unidentified men said, “Okay to phone it in, Lieutenant?”
“Hold it, Marty. Tell your rewrite boys to give this Weldon a break. Give us the put-out, but give this Weldon an assist on the play. His wife ought to have it, but he needs it more. His kids have to think the old man was working with the cops. Okay?”
“Okay, Lieutenant.”
Vic Reisher walked over to Tom, looking reluctant and miserable. He put his hand out. Tom looked at the man he had considered his friend as well as his boss. He looked at the outstretched hand and knew, suddenly, that to refuse to take it would be a childish gesture.
“Tom — maybe I’ve been here too long. Maybe I’ve run too many columns of figures through the machines, totaled too many tapes. My thinking has gotten too black and white. I forgot that I ought to trust my instincts. Your cash account was short; so I had you accused, convicted and sentenced, all in my mind. It adds up to a man who isn’t — anyone I’d want to work for. I’m deeply ashamed, Tom.”
“Vic, I really don’t know whether I’m going to stay or not.”
Vic’s wry smile was oddly shy. “Wish you would. I guess it won’t be exactly the same, but I wish you would.”
“I’ll talk it over with Helen,” Tom said. He suspected that, when his outrage and anger had faded, when his bitterness was gone, he would probably decide to stay. It was work he liked, work he could do well. There would be a new man in Jud’s cage. Maybe, with care, the four of them — Vic, Arthur, Tom, the unknown newcomer — could once again achieve that sense of unity, of being a quick, clever, functioning unit.
Helen was waiting. He lifted her off the floor when he kissed her. In the mysterious way children have, the kids knew that this was holiday, this was special. They clung to his legs and yelped.
He said, “Look, among other things, honey, I want to tell you there won’t be any more of that storming out of here, acting like—”
She stopped his lips with her finger tips. “Hush up. Just take me along next time.”
Which, he decided later, was another proof that she was probably just as smart as Durand had said she was.
