The Complete Crime Stories (32 page)

I didn't make any passes, she didn't tell me I was different from other guys she'd known, there was nothing like that. We talked about her kids, and the books we'd read, and sometimes she'd remember about my old football days, and some of the things she'd seen me do out there. But mostly we'd just ride along and say nothing, and I couldn't help feeling glad when she'd say the doctors wanted Brent to stay there until he was all healed up. He could have stayed there till Christmas, and I wouldn't have been sore.

The Anita Avenue branch, I think I told you, is the smallest one we've got, just a little bank building on a corner, with an alley running alongside and a drugstore across the street. It employs six people, the cashier, the head teller, two other tellers, a girl bookkeeper, and a guard. George Mason had been cashier, but they transferred him and sent me out there, so I was acting cashier. Sheila was taking Brent's place as head teller. Snelling and Helm were the other two tellers, Miss Church was the bookkeeper, and Adler the guard. Miss Church went in for a lot of apple-polishing with me, or anyway what I took to be apple-polishing. They had to stagger their lunch hours, and she was always insisting that I go out for a full hour at lunch, that she could relieve at any of the windows, that there was no need to hurry back, and more of the same. But I wanted to pull my oar with the rest, so I took a half hour like the rest of them took, and relieved at whatever window needed me, and for a couple of hours I wasn't at my desk at all.

One day Sheila was out, and the others got back a little early, so I went out. They all ate in a little cafe down the street, so I ate there too, and when I got there she was alone at a table. I would have sat down with her, but she didn't look up, and I took a seat a couple of tables away. She was looking out the window, smoking, and pretty soon she doused her cigarette and came over where I was. “You're a little standoffish today, Mrs. Brent.”

“I've been doing a little quiet listening.”

“Oh—the two guys in the corner?”

“Do you know who the fat one is?”

“No, I don't.”

“That's Bunny Kaiser, the leading furniture man of Glendale. ‘She Buys 'Er Stuff from Kaiser.'”

“Isn't he putting up a building or something? Seems to me we had a deal on, to handle his bonds.”

“He wouldn't sell bonds. It's his building, with his own name chiseled over the door, and he wanted to swing the whole thing himself. But he can't quite make it. The building is up to the first floor now, and he has to make a payment to the contractor. He needs a hundred thousand bucks. Suppose a bright girl got that business for you, would she get a raise?”

“And how would
she
get that business?”

“Sex appeal! Do you think I haven't got it?”

“I didn't say you haven't got it.”

“You'd better not.”

“Then that's settled.”

“And—?”

“When's this payment on the first floor due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Ouch! That doesn't give us much time to work.”

“You let
me
work it, and
I'll
put it over.”

“All right, you land that loan, it's a two-dollar raise.”

“Two-fifty.”

“O.K.—two-fifty.”

“I'll be late. At the bank, I mean.”

“I'll take your window.”

So I went back and took her window. About two o'clock a truck driver came in, cashed a pay check with Helm, then came over to me to make a $10 deposit on savings. I took his book, entered the amount, set the $10 so she could put it with her cash when she came in. You understand: They all have cash boxes, and lock them when they go out, and that cash is checked once a month. But when I took out the card in our own file, the total it showed was $150 less than the amount showing in the passbook.

In a bank, you never let the depositor notice anything. You've got that smile on your face, and everything's jake, and that's fair enough, from his end of it, because the bank is responsible, and what his book shows is what he's got, so he can't lose no matter how you play it. Just the same, under that pasted grin, my lips felt a little cold. I picked up his book again, like there was something else I had to do to it, and blobbed a big smear of ink over it. “Well, that's nice, isn't it.”

“You sure decorated it.”

“I tell you what, I'm a little busy just now—will you leave that with me? Next time you come in, I'll have a new one ready for you.”

“Anything you say, Cap.”

“This one's kind of shopworn, anyway.”

“Yeah, getting greasy.”

By that time I had a receipt ready for the book, and copied the amount down in his presence, and passed it out to him. He went and I set the book aside. It had taken a little time, and three more depositors were in line behind him. The first two books corresponded with the cards, but the last one showed a $200 difference, more on his book than we had on our card. I hated to do what he had seen me do with the other guy, but I had to have that book. I started to enter the deposit, and once more a big blob of ink went on that page.

“Say, what you need is a new pen.”

“What they need is a new teller. To tell you the truth, I'm a little green on this job, just filling in till Mrs. Brent gets back, and I'm hurrying it. If you'll just leave me this book, now—”

“Sure, that's all right.”

I wrote the receipt, and signed it, and he went, and I put that book aside. By that time I had a little breathing spell, with nobody at the window, and I checked those books against the cards. Both accounts, on our records, showed withdrawals, running from $25 to $50, that didn't show on the passbooks. Well, brother, it had to show on the passbooks. If a depositor wants to withdraw, he can't do it without his book, because that book's his contract, and we're bound by it, and he can't draw any dough unless we write it right down there, what he took out. I began to feel a little sick at my stomach. I began to think of the shifty way Brent had talked when he explained about working the departments up on a personal basis. I began to think about how he refused to go to the hospital, when any sane man would have been begging for the chance. I began to think of that night call Sheila made on me, and all that talk about Brent's taking things so seriously, and that application she made, to take things over while he was gone.

All that went through my head, but I was still thumbing the cards. My head must have been swimming a little when I first checked them over, but the second time I ran my eye over those two cards I noticed little light pencil checks beside each one of those withdrawals. It flashed through my mind that maybe that was his code. He had to have a code, if he was trying to get away with anything. If a depositor didn't have his book, and asked for his balance, he had to be able to tell him. I flipped all the cards over. There were light pencil checks on at least half of them, every one against a withdrawal, none of them against a deposit. I wanted to run those checked amounts off on the adding machine, but I didn't. I was afraid Miss Church would start her apple-polishing again, and offer to do it for me. I flipped the cards over one at a time, slow, and added the amounts in my head. If I was accurate I didn't know. I've got an adding machine mind, and I can do some of those vaudeville stunts without much trouble, but I was too excited to be sure. That didn't matter, that day. I wouldn't be far off. And those little pencil checks, by the time I had turned every card, added up to a little more than $8,500.

Just before closing time, around three o'clock, Sheila came in with the fat guy, Bunny Kaiser. I found out why sex appeal had worked, where all our contact men, trying to make a deal for bonds a few months before, had flopped. It was the first time he had ever borrowed a dollar in his life, and he not only hated it, he was so ashamed of it he couldn't even look at me. Her way of making him feel better was not to argue about it at all, but to pat him on the hand, and it was pathetic the way he ate it up. After a while she gave me the sign to beat it, so I went back and got the vault closed, and chased the rest of them out of there as fast as I could. Then we fixed the thing up, I called the main office for O.K.'s, and around four-thirty he left. She stuck out her hand, pretty excited, and I took it. She began trucking around the floor, snapping her fingers and singing some tune while she danced. All of a sudden she stopped, and made motions like she was brushing herself off.

“Well—is there something
on
me?”

“… No. Why?”

“You've been
looking
at me—for an
hour!”

“I was—looking at the dress.”

“Is there anything the
matter
with it?”

“It's different from what girls generally wear around a bank. It—doesn't look like an office dress.”

“I made it myself.”

“Then that accounts for it.”

III

Brother, if you want to find out how much you think of a woman, just get the idea she's been playing you for a sucker. I was trembling when I got home, and still trembling when I went up to my room and lay down. I had a mess on my hands, and I knew I had to do something about it. But all I could think of was the way she had taken me for a ride, or I thought she had anyway, and how I had fallen for it, and what a sap I was. My face would feel hot when I thought of those automobile rides, and how I had been too gentlemanly to start anything. Then I would think how she must be laughing at me, and dig my face into the pillow. After a while I got to thinking about tonight. I had a date to take her to the hospital, like I had for the past week, and wondered what I was going to do about that. What I wanted to do was give her a stand-up and never set eyes on her again, but I couldn't. After what she had said at the bank, about me looking at her, she might tumble I was wise if I didn't show up. I wasn't ready for that yet. Whatever I had to do, I wanted my hands free till I had time to think.

So I was waiting, down the street from her house, where we'd been meeting on account of what the neighbors might think if I kept coming to the door, and in a few minutes here she came, and I gave the little tap on the horn and she got in. She didn't say anything about me looking at her, or what had been said. She kept talking about Kaiser, and how we had put over a fine deal, and how there was plenty more business of the same kind that could be had if I'd only let her go out after it. I went along with it, and for the first time since I'd known her, she got just the least little bit flirty. Nothing that meant much, just some stuff about what a team we could make if we really put our minds to it. But it brought me back to what my face had been red about in the afternoon, and when she went in the hospital I was trembling again.

I didn't go to the newsreel that night. I sat in the car for the whole hour she was in there, paying her visit to him, and the longer I sat the sorer I got. I hated that woman when she came out of the hospital, and then, while she was climbing in beside me, an idea hit me between the eyes. If that was her game, how far would she go with me? I watched her light a cigarette, and then felt my mouth go dry and hot. I'd soon find out. Instead of heading for the hills, or the ocean, or any of the places we'd been driving, I headed home.

We went in, and I lit the fire without turning on the living-room light. I mumbled something about a drink, and went out in the kitchen. What I really wanted was to see if Sam was in. He wasn't, and that meant he wouldn't be in till one or two o'clock, so that was all right. I fixed the highball tray, and went in the living room with it. She had taken off her hat, and was sitting in front of the fire, or to one side of it. There are two sofas in my living room, both of them half facing the fire, and she was on one of them swinging her foot at the flames. I made two highballs, put them on the low table between the sofas, and sat down beside her. She looked up, took her drink, and began to sip it. I made a crack about how black her eyes looked in the firelight, she said they were blue, but it sounded like she wouldn't mind hearing more. I put my arm around her.

Well, a whole book could be written about how a woman blocks passes when she doesn't mean to play. If she slaps your face, she's just a fool, and you might as well go home. If she hands you a lot of stuff that makes
you
feel like a fool, she doesn't know her stuff yet, and you better leave her alone. But if she plays it so you're stopped, and yet nothing much has happened, and you don't feel like a fool, she knows her stuff, and she's all right, and you can stick around and take it as it comes, and you won't wake up next morning wishing that you hadn't. That was what she did. She didn't pull away, she didn't act surprised, she didn't get off any bum gags. But she didn't come to me either, and in a minute or two she leaned forward to pick up her glass, and when she leaned back she wasn't inside of my arm.

I was too sick in my mind though, and too sure I had her sized up right for a trollop, to pay any attention to that, or even figure out what it meant. It went through my mind, just once, that whatever I had to do, down at the bank, I was putting myself in an awful spot, and playing right into her hands, to start something I couldn't stop. But that only made my mouth feel drier and hotter.

I put my arm around her again, and pulled her to me. She didn't do anything about it at all, one way or the other. I put my cheek against hers, and began to nose around to her mouth. She didn't do anything about that either, but her mouth seemed kind of hard to reach. I put my hand on her cheek, and then deliberately let it slide down to her neck, and unbuttoned the top button of her dress. She took my hand away, buttoned her dress, and reached for her drink again, so when she sat back I didn't have her.

That sip took a long time, and I just sat there, looking at her. When she put the glass down I had my arm around her before she could even lean back. With my other hand I made a swipe, and brushed her dress up clear to where her garters met her girdle. What she did then I don't know, because something happened that I didn't expect. Those legs were so beautiful, and so soft, and warm, that something caught me in the throat, and for about one second I had no idea what was going on. Next thing I knew she was standing in front of the fireplace, looking down at me with a drawn face. “Will you kindly tell me what's got into you tonight?”