I had one hundred and ninety-one thousand and four hundred dollars in one-dollar bills. When all the calculations were done and redone, I had a nine hundred fifty-three thousand and fifty dollars, not counting the seven hundred and sixty dollars in my jacket pocket.
Nearly a million dollars.
Since there were seventeen packets of hundred-dollar bills, I divided the five-through-hundred-denomination packets into seventeen of the nylon bags. This gave me almost fifty thousand per bag, give or take a year’s salary. Then I stuffed enough one-dollar packets in each one to fill it the rest of the way up. In some bags this added as little as seven hundred dollars. In some of the bigger bags it added as much as thirty-two hundred dollars. Then I stuffed the last three bags, the larger duffels, with one-dollar packets, until they were almost too heavy to pick up. There was still a pile of ones two feet high. I counted the layers and put it at thirty thousand dollars. Even when I refilled the cardboard box from the vault there was twenty-five hundred dollars left.
Jesus! Where am I going to put this stuff?
From the street outside there was the sound of a siren, an almost continual noise in New York, but this one was closer than most. I stopped breathing. When the sound continued past, I drew in a shuddering breath and cold sweat beaded my forehead. It reminded me how dangerous this neighborhood was. It reminded me of the bathroom incident just down the hall and of my mugging.
Here I was, a rich man for only an hour, and I was paranoid already. Money doesn’t solve all problems, I thought. It just makes new ones.
I wondered what time it was. I’ve got to get a watch! I jumped to the Stanville Library and saw that it was 3:30 A.M. I put the calculator back behind Circulation and was about to jump back when I glanced up.
The Stanville Library was built in 1910, a large granite building with fourteen-foot-high ceilings. I knew this because Ms. Tonovire, the librarian, used to practice her tour on me. When they added air-conditioning to the library, in 1973, they put in a suspended ceiling to cover the ductwork. This was about ten feet high.
I climbed the magazine shelves back in Periodicals and pushed on one of the foot-and-a-half-by-three-foot panels. It lifted up and slid to one side. It was dark above.
I jumped back to the hotel room and moved ten of the bags to the top of that duct, spacing them out to distribute the weight. I also put the box of ones there.
The hotel room seemed empty without the piles of money or the jumble of filled nylon bags. The one bag that was left I zipped shut and slid under the bed. Then I took off my shoes, turned off the light, and lay down.
My body was tired but my brain raced, nervous, excited, exalted, guilty. I don’t want to get caught. Don’t let me get caught! I shifted, trying to make my body comfortable. My mind wouldn’t stop. I kept hearing noises in the street and couldn’t sleep. I tried to reassure myself. How would they catch you? If you spend the money carefully, you’re home free. Besides, they couldn’t keep you, even if they had a clue that you’d done it.
I rolled over on my side.
The library? What if they decide to clean the tops of shelves? Won’t they be suspicious when they find my foot prints in the dust? I shook my head and tried to burrow deeper into the pillow.
I tried deep breathing. It didn’t work. I tried counting backward from a thousand but that brought up images of the money-stacks and stacks of money. The fifty or so thousand dollars under the bed seemed to push at me through the bed, seemed to have a presence that was almost animate. Dammit, it’s just a bag of paper! I pounded the pillow, pushing and rearranging it, then firmly closed my eyes.
An interminable amount of time later, I sighed, sat up, put my shoes back on, and jumped to the library.
Only when I’d dusted the top of every shelf in the building and dawn sunlight was coming in the windows of the library could I put the duster away, jump back to Brooklyn, and fall asleep.
“Well, what kind of watch are you looking for?”
“I want one that lets you see what time it is in several different time zones. It should also have an alarm of some kind, be waterproof, and look classy without being pretentious. I want it to look nice in dressy situations, but I don’t want to be hit over the head every time I walk through a questionable neighborhood, just because I’m wearing it.”
The clerk laughed. He was wearing a closely trimmed beard and a yarmulke, the little circular hat some Jews wear. It was new to me—I’d only seen them before on TV. He spoke. “Given it some thought, I see. What was the price range you wanted?”
“Doesn’t matter. I just want those features.”
The store was on Forty-seventh Street, a jewelry/electronics “boutique.” I’d come here first thing, jumping to the subway at Grand Central Station, then walking the remaining six blocks.
The clerk pulled three different watches out of the case.
“All three of these do what you want—the time zone thing and alarms. This is the cheapest—it’s fifty-five ninety-five.”
I looked at it. “Not very dressy.”
He nodded, very agreeable. “Yeah. These other two are much classier. This one“—he pointed at a watch in gold metal with a gold and silver metal strap—“lists for three hundred and seventy. I think we have it on special for two ninety-five.” He pointed at the other one, a slim watch with a lizard-skin strap. “This one doesn’t look as flashy as the other one, but it’s gold-clad silver where this guy”—he held up the gold-metal-banded watch,— “is anodized stainless steel.”
I prodded the slim watch. “How much?”
He grinned. “Thirteen ninety-six and thirty-five cents.”
I blinked. He started to put the expensive watch away. “I love to watch a customer’s eyes when I tell them that. It’s not as if we’re up on Fifth Avenue. I don’t know why it’s even in the inventory.”
I held up my hand. “I’ll take it.”
“Huh. This one?” He reached for the flashy gold watch with his other hand.
“No. That one, the fourteen-hundred-dollar job. What’s that with tax?” I thought for a moment, then reached into my right front pocket—that’s where I’d put twenty hundred-dollar bills. When I started counting them out onto the counter, he grabbed his calculator quickly.
Behind him a row of televisions of varying size and shape all showed the same program, an afternoon soap opera. It ended and a “News Before the Hour” logo came on, then showed the outside of the Chemical Bank of New York. I stared. Reporters poked microphones at a grim-faced man who was reading from a sheet of paper. None of the sets had the volume on.
The clerk noticed and looked over my shoulder. “Oh, the bank robbery. Won’t be long before they get them.”
My stomach was hurting and I felt like my knees would collapse. I managed to say one word: “Oh?”
“A million dollars gone from the vault from the time they closed it to the time they opened it again? It had to be an inside job. If that money wasn’t there when they opened the safe then it wasn’t there when they closed it.”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“The news broke at eleven-thirty,” he said, counting my change out on the counter. “Apparently a teller tipped the press. There, fifteen hundred and eleven fifty-five out of fifteen twenty leaves eight forty-five.” He looked back at the TV. “Whoever did it is going to have to hold that money for a long time.”
I carefully stowed the change. “Why’s that?”
“Well, all the employees with access are probably going to be watched like