Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 63, No. 11 & 12, November/December 2018

A Bad Day for Algebra Tests by Robert Lopresti

“Petey! Wake up! It snowed.”

Peter Saverlet wanted to turn over and go back to sleep. He had nowhere to go, so who cared about the weather? He wasn’t a schoolkid looking forward to a day off. That was the worst part of being unemployed, you never got a day off. Someday he’d—

He sat up, eyes wide. Maybe someday was today.

He ran into the main room of the mobile home. His brother Paul was looking out the window, skinny frame bouncing with excitement.

“Look at it, Petey! Isn’t it beautiful?”

Peter grinned. “It sure is.” The fresh white stuff had covered all the beer cans and old tires in their yard. It had to be a foot deep. “What time is it?”

“Seven in the A.M. I woke up to take a leak and saw what it was doing, so I woke ya right away. Is this the day, Petey?”

The big brother nodded judiciously. “I think so, Pauly. Get dressed. We’re gonna get rich.”

“What the hell is wrong with kids today?” asked Sonny Fonk.

David didn’t answer. He knew what a rhetorical question was, even though Sonny probably didn’t.

“When I was a kid—” Sonny jammed the old truck into gear. It would need a new transmission soon. “We were thrilled when school was closed. Now, all you do is whine, whine, whine. You oughta be out playing in the snow.”

David thought about pointing out that he couldn’t play in the snow because his mother’s boyfriend — “Uncle Sonny,” he was supposed to call him, which was stupid enough to be appropriate — had corralled him to help plow driveways.

That was the sort of work Sonny liked. Occasional, haphazard, and, since he didn’t have a business license, slightly illegal.

“I was supposed to have an algebra test today,” David said.

“Typical! You’re all brokenhearted ’cause of that? What kind of kid wants to take a test? And in math yet!” Sonny shook his crew cut in disgust.

“I studied for hours last night. Now I’ll have to do it all over again.”

“You don’t have to do it at all. What the hell did algebra ever do for anybody? I didn’t take it and look at me.” He strained again to get the protesting stick shift into gear. “Damned snow.”

“We could move faster,” David said, “if you would plow the road in front of us.”

“Nobody’s paying me to do that. I’m not gonna wear out my plow on a public road. That’s what I pay my taxes for.”

As far as David knew, Sonny never paid any such thing, except for the unavoidable sales tax, but saying so would not improve things. He also didn’t mention that the reason he wanted to do well in math was to get into a good college, as far away from Sonny and his love-blind mother as possible.

So they slogged up the road, crunching slowly over snow they could have brushed aside easily.

Metaphor, David reflected, was something else Sonny didn’t understand.

The brainstorm had come to Peter last spring. It was a cold day and he and Pauly were hustling from their car to the unemployment office when he happened to see their faces reflected in the glass door. We look like a couple of bandits.

And it was true. They had ski masks over their faces and big scarves covering everything from the chin down.

Funny if we went into Mary’s bank like this, he thought. There was a big sign on the door: FOR YOUR SAFETY AND OURS PLEASE REMOVE HATS OR ANY COVERINGS.

So after another battle with the unemployment drones, who failed to understand the narrowness of the market for the two brothers’ unique skill sets, Peter took Paul down to Brune County First National.

“Why are we stopping here, Petey? We gonna visit Mary?”

“Not today, Pauly. In fact, we better not go in there anymore.”

“Why not? She mad at us?”

“No. No more than usual, I mean.” He watched customers hustling easily into the building, their faces completely covered to block off the cold. “But I don’t want anybody in there to remember what we look like.”

Paul frowned. “Why not?”

“’Cause next time there’s a deep snow, we’re gonna make a big withdrawal.”

Officer Kite was having a bad day. Nothing odd about that; most weeks he scored seven of them. This one was just a lot chillier than the average.

Waking up to a foot of snow and knowing his subcompact car was not up to the challenge, he had had what seemed like a great idea, snagging a ride from a neighbor with four-wheel drive. Unfortunately, the neighbor had to drop his wife off at her job and take his kids to a friend’s house, so Kite was still late to work.

The result was that Sergeant Shiffey had given him the worst, most beat-up patrol car in the lot, and told him to put the snow chains on himself. He managed that, barely, just in time to be sent up to Farrow’s Hill where an old busybody named Mrs. Casey had reported a gang of kids sneaking through her fields. What harm could they do, build a snowman? She had no animals out in the blizzard, fortunately, and it wasn’t like they were treading on the corn, or parsley, or whatever she grew when the weather was less arctic.

But there was something else to consider. As the dispatcher had reminded him, Mrs. Casey’s property bordered the Largans’ estate. Ms. Largan was a software billionaire who had moved to Brune County to get away from it all and, having seen what the place had to offer, now spent most of her time getting away from that. But when she and her husband next chose to grace the vicinity with their presence they were sure to file complaints about any damage the estate had suffered in their absence.

All of which explained why Officer Kite was nursing his beat-up patrol jalopy — whose heater had just given up the ghost — up the snowbanks on Farrow’s Hill. Mrs. Casey chewed him out for being late, then for dripping snow in her hallway, and finally offered him cookies. When he graciously accepted them she snapped at him for spilling crumbs. He figured she was a lonely old woman, grateful for someone to criticize.

“They’ve probably escaped by now,” she complained. “All the little hoodlums. Gang members, probably.”

Officer Kite had been to enough training sessions to know that the word related to gangs in Brune County was prevention, as in, there weren’t any yet. But he nodded and grabbed another cookie. “How many of them were there, ma’am?”

“I didn’t stop to count! Besides, I didn’t want them to see me watching. God knows what they would have done. I called you immediately.” She frowned. “Aren’t you going to do something?”

“Which way were they going?”

“Right toward the Largans’ house.” Mrs. Casey broke into a smile. “Have you met them? Such sweet people! They ask me to keep an eye on their property and they always bring me back a gift.”

What does a watchdog get paid these days, Officer Kite wondered? He thanked her politely for the cookies and went out to fight crime.

“How much did those people pay you to clear their driveway?” David asked.

Sonny Fonk slammed the door of the truck. “You ain’t my banker. Neither is your mother, so don’t start telling her your guesses about how much I’ve got in my wallet.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t get snotty either.”

“If I call you Sonny, you don’t like it. If I call you sir you don’t—”

“What’s the next house on our list?”

“The Pipers on Ellis Lane. Then the Gerzoffs up on Farrow’s Hill.”

Sonny grinned, showing some yellow teeth. “Farrow’s Hill? Those people got money. We can charge ’em a lot more.”

“I thought you already told them the price.”

“That was before I knew how hard it would be to push through this snow, and to get up to their house.”

“If you put down the plow—”

“Shut up.”

Officer Kite was no great tracker but even he could tell that Mrs. Casey’s gang had consisted of two people. Their footprints had come out of the woods on the east side of her property and slogged through the snow to the fence on the other side. One of them had stopped to make a snow angel, which didn’t exactly suggest desperate criminals.

Kids on a snow day, more likely.

Still, he was here, and Mrs. Casey was no doubt watching his every move from her bay window, so he followed the footprints to the Largans’ property. He climbed over the fence, landing face-first in the snow — he hoped Mrs. Casey missed that precious moment — and found that the interlopers had gone in a straight line to one of the outbuildings. Apparently they knew exactly where they were headed.

The building was Quonset hut style, corrugated metal, the type you might use for storing gardening equipment, although this one could hold enough to stock a plantation.

Officer Kite turned the corner and then jerked back. He reached for his gun, but couldn’t wrap his gloved hand around it. He used his teeth to pull off the glove, dropping it in the snow, and yanked out his service revolver. The stroll through the foot-high snow had his heart pounding but now it was playing a drum solo.

The door of the hut was open wide and tracks showed that someone had taken something heavy out of it. After a cautious examination he put his gun away. Clearly the bad guys had not hung around. He was going to have to go back to his car.

But first he got on the radio and reported that two snowmobiles had been stolen.

So this is how it feels to be a criminal mastermind, Peter thought, as they cruised down the hills. Hannibal Lecter, Professor Moriarty, you got nothing on me!

Well, they did have one advantage. Neither had a brother who insisted on screaming “Yah-hoo!” on the way to a bank robbery.

“Shut up, Pauly!”

Paul was having too much fun. Ever since last summer when they spotted the snowmobiles while prowling around the shed of the rich computer geeks he had been wanting to try them out in the first flurry, but Peter had insisted they didn’t touch a thing until there was enough snow to make the plan work.

And what a plan. They had the perfect getaway vehicles, the perfect disguises. They had traveled to a secondhand shop in another town to buy coats, gloves, hats, and scarves, and then stored them away so no one would be able to say “I know those outfits! Those are the Saverlet brothers!”

It was going to be the perfect crime. Wasn’t Mary gonna be surprised? She didn’t think her big brothers could do anything right.

It was a quiet day at the branch of the Brune County National Bank. Most days were. Mary Saverlet wasn’t sure why Orville Gainey wanted three tellers on duty when most customers seemed happy to use the ATM. But since Mary was the last hired she wasn’t about to complain.

“This place is dead as the morgue,” said Velma. She had more seniority and wasn’t afraid to express her opinion. She even called the branch manager Orville, which always made him grumpy.

“Maybe it’ll pick up when they plow the streets,” said Mary.

“Which could be tomorrow. The city administration couldn’t find their keisters with both hands in a hall of mirrors.”

Tyler, down at the end of the counter, snorted. He was the senior teller in every sense of the word and often declared that he should be retired by now, and would have been if certain stocks hadn’t gone cliff diving a few years ago. He was also not shy about telling people that he blamed the Great Recession on irresponsible bankers. When he said that he would glare at Orville Gainey, back in his glass-walled office, as if the plump little branch manager was personally responsible for the crazy mortgages that had blown up the economy.

“I should have taken the day off,” he grumbled. “Called in sick. But he would have come over to check on me. He’s done it before.”

“Well, you live just across the street,” said Velma. “An easy stroll, even for Tubby.”

“He wasn’t checking that you were really sick,” said Mary. “He was concerned about your health. A man of your age—” She bit it off, but too late.

Tyler glared at her. “My age? What has that insufferable plutocrat been saying about my age?”

“Take it easy,” said Velma. “He’ll hear you. Or worse, you’ll have a heart attack.”

The old man’s face was red as a ripe tomato. “I have the heart of a teenager!”

“Yeah? Where do you keep it?” said Velma, smirking. “Now we know why you don’t want people visiting you.”

“Listen, you—”

The door opened and two customers came in, bundled up from head to toe and shaking snow off their ski masks.

Mary frowned. She had never seen those clothes, but there was something very familiar about those two.

Oh, no.

Mary had two big problems in her life.

Please no.

And here they were.

“This is a stickup! Nobody move!”

Orville Gainey had often pondered what he would do if his bank branch were ever robbed. He knew the official policy, and as a loyal company man, he realized that it was right and proper. Let the fools take their money and get out. It was insured, and replacing it was a lot less expensive than paying off lawsuits if someone got hurt.

That was sensible, and he was a sensible man.

But there was Mary Saverlet to consider.

Being a sensible man Gainey had placed her in the station farthest from his office because otherwise seeing her perfectly straight back, watching her turn, noticing her bending forward... well. It would have been a distraction.

Gainey was a short, overweight man a few years older than Mary. He knew she was well out of his league.

But even a sensible man can fantasize, and Gainey’s daydreams involved being a hero, rescuing everyone from bank robbers. Especially rescuing Mary.

Strictly against company policy, but a man who spent his evenings listening to grand opera was doomed to think heroic thoughts occasionally.

And suddenly reality was skidding toward his fantasy, like a school bus on black ice.

Paul couldn’t remember when he had had so much fun.

Riding the snowmobiles through the center of town had been great. And now a bank robbery — a real bank robbery! Just like Bonnie and Clyde!

His only disappointment was that there were no customers to appreciate it. Just the tellers, but at least one of them was Mary. Petey had drummed into his head that he mustn’t let on that they knew her. Couldn’t get their little sister in trouble.

She was white as the snow outside. Scared, he guessed. Probably thought these two guys were strangers, vicious robbers.

Paul winked at her, but she didn’t seem to notice.

And that’s when the old guy behind the counter grabbed at his chest and groaned. Then he fell to the floor.

Paul tried to remember his first-aid lessons from his Boy Scout days. He was pretty sure he had never finished that merit badge.

“Tyler!” Mary screamed. She was already on her feet, rushing to the far station where Tyler lay facedown, half under the counter.

“Everybody stay where you are!” yelled Peter.

“Go to hell,” Mary said. She gently turned the old man over. He had landed on top of the big cloth satchel he carried his lunch in, so at least he hadn’t hurt his head.

Orville Gainey had come out of his office. “Is he all right?”

“He’s breathing.”

“So am I!” yelled Peter. “And I got a gun. You, Grandma. Empty the drawers into this bag.” He handed her a pillowcase.

“I’m not old enough to be your grandmother,” said Velma. “And if you were my grandson, I’d disown your parents.”

But she grabbed the bag and began emptying the drawers.

Gainey started to bend down.

“Where do you think you’re going?” snarled Peter.

“I’m helping Ms. Saverlet take care of this man. You don’t want a felony murder on your hands, do you?”

Paul was snickering. He wasn’t used to hearing Mary called by their last name.

Tyler’s eyes fluttered. “Where am I?”

“What a ham,” muttered Velma.

“Take me to the safe, fatso,” said Peter.

Gainey couldn’t help it. He sucked in his gut. This was not going the way it had in his fantasies, but Tyler’s collapse made it all too obvious that people could get hurt. Better follow the rules.

“It’s back here.”

They passed his office and approached the sanctum sanctorum. Gainey sensed the robber stiffen.

“That’s it?” He’d no doubt been expecting the kind of vault they show in the movies, big enough to hold a dinner party in. This one was a steel closet.

“We’re a small branch.” It was ridiculous to feel defensive. The man was a robber, for heaven’s sake.

“Where are the safe-deposit boxes?”

“In the next room. I can’t open them without the customers’ keys.”

A sigh. “You’re a great disappointment to me, fatso.”

Gainey thought about saying you’re no big thrill either, but he stuck to the rule book.

The robber handed him a second pillowcase. “Fill ’er up.”

“You ripped her off,” said David as they got back in the truck.

Sonny frowned. “’Scuse me?”

“You charged Mrs. Gerzoff twice as much as you charged Mr. Bodell, and her driveway’s half as long.”

“She’s got a lot more money than Billy Bodell.”

“So you’re a Marxist? From each according to their ability?”

“What kinda trash they teach you in that school?”

“They don’t teach me to charge one customer four hundred percent more than another.”

“Four hundred percent, hah?” Sonny smirked. “You figure that out with your algebra?”

“You don’t need higher math for that.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you, kid, you don’t need it for anything.”

“They use it at the bank when they figure out how much interest to charge you for the loan on this truck.”

Sonny scowled. “Don’t get me started on bankers. They’re all thieves. I wish somebody would shoot ’em all.”

“So, kid,” said Velma. “How do you feel about showering with a bunch of men?”

Paul just stared at her. His mouth was gaping, but the ski mask made him look like a tough guy. A tall skinny one, but still sort of tough.

“What are you talking about?”

“Bank robbers always end up in prison, so I wondered if you thought that far ahead.” Velma was perched on her chair, elbows on the counter, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to chat with a man who was pointing a gun at her.

“I ain’t going to prison,” said Paul.

“Well, maybe not. Only about eighty percent of bank robbers go to jail.”

Paul stood silently.

Velma smirked. “You’re trying to figure out if eighty percent is a lot, aren’t you?”

“Me and— We ain’t going to jail. We’re part of the other percent.”

“Is that right?” Velma shrugged. “The rest die in shoot-outs with the cops. So if you have claustrophobia, you can choose that route.”

“Hush!” said Mary. She was still on the floor next to Tyler. “You’re just making things worse.”

She looked around. Where was Peter? He had led Gainey back to the manager’s office, checking the desk for gum to swipe, probably.

“I just thought our new friend here could use a little career counseling. He obviously never got any.” She frowned at him. “Which high school did you go to, by the way?”

For one horrible moment — and let’s face it, none of these moments were headed for the scrapbook — Mary thought her younger brother was going to proudly announce that he had gone to East Brune Regional, and graduated the year the Fighting Ferrets almost reached the state playoffs.

But here was Gainey, with Pete right behind. “You got the bags, Butch?”

“All set, Sundance,” said Paul, and spoiled it with a giggle.

“Good.” Petey turned to face them, waving the gun casually. “Well, folks. It’s been a pleasure. Don’t step outside or call the cops for ten minutes. Careful getting home. It’s slippery out there.”

Paul guffawed. And then they were gone.

“Call the cops,” said Velma.

“I hit the alarm as soon as they came in,” said Gainey. “How’s Tyler?”

Mary felt sick. She expected to hear a barrage of gunfire outside, as her idiot brothers went down, exactly like Butch and Sundance.

But the only sound was a couple of whining engines, like lawnmowers.

“I think he’s gonna be okay,” she said.

Tyler opened one eye. “Yeah? Where’d you get your medical degree, missy?”

“Where the hell are those cops?” asked Velma.

Officer Kite was cursing his luck, a task with which he had considerable experience. Somehow the snow chain had come off his front left tire. Worse, the chain had broken.

He was halfway down Farrow’s Hill and the road had not been plowed yet. He was leery about accidents, having once broken a leg under his own patrol car. (It could have happened to anyone. Really.) No need for a repeat performance.

Was he going to have to call up and ask for help? Captain Winters would love an excuse to kick him off the force.

He walked back toward the driver’s door. The radio was prattling away. Apparently he had missed some excitement downtown. Just his luck.

“Yee-hah!” yelled Pauly, taking a snowbank at full speed.

Peter didn’t have the heart to yell at him to slow down, something he’d been doing his whole life.

It was a hell of a responsibility being the smart one in the family. Okay, Mary wasn’t dumb, but she had no ambition. Imagine, wanting to slave in a bank when there were so many ways to get money without working for it.

Like today, for instance. This had been his masterpiece, and except for the old guy keeling over, everything went perfectly. Now they had two pillowcases full of money and they would be off-road before the fuzz managed to get a chopper in the air or find a snowmobile to chase them.

And Mary, who thought she was so smart, hadn’t even recognized them! Who could blame Pauly for being excited?

The most beautiful part of his plan was the impossibility of tracking them. The plows had not hit this hill yet. They just had to stick to the road until they got to the woods. By the time anyone came after them the plow would have erased their path entirely. It was foolproof, the best—

“Cops!” screamed Pauly.

A roadblock! Peter couldn’t believe it. How in the world had they gotten a prowl car up Farrow’s Hill? It must have come over the other side and there it was, spread across the road, blocking their path completely.

All of a sudden he couldn’t feel his hands.

“Go left!” he yelled. “Follow me.”

He veered off the road, and Pauly mimicked him perfectly, as if they had rehearsed it a thousand times. It was beautiful!

They slammed into the ditch in perfect unison.

It was the damnedest thing Officer Kite had ever seen, and he had witnessed a few doozies. He had been all prepared to ask the two snowmobilers if they could help him with the snow chains — he assumed just about anyone was better with mechanical stuff than he was.

But instead the travelers, apparently afraid they couldn’t stop in time, had gone off the road and crashed into a ditch. Officer Kite just knew that somehow this was going to get blamed on him.

He stomped back to his car and grabbed the radio.

What the hell was going on downtown? Selena, the switchboard operator, sounded like she was trying to direct D-Day with two tin cans and a string, shouting out commands and code numbers. He couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Maybe he should try 911? That was also Selena, but it might get her attention.

Maybe he should find out whether the two snowmobilers needed an ambulance. He slowly worked his way down the hill.

Well, what do you know? They were gone. They had just abandoned their snowmobiles and fled west into the woods. Why in the world would they—

Oh. In the misery of being stuck he had forgotten that he had come out here looking for stolen snowmobiles. Both of which, he deduced, were now sitting in a ditch, in pretty bad shape. The software billionaire was not going to be happy. Officer Kite had discovered through bitter experience that the more money people had the more they seemed to resent losing any of it.

Maybe that was why they had it in the first place.

He finally got through to Selena. “I’m on Farrow’s Hill, the site of an accident, in pursuit of two drivers—”

“Don’t fill up the air with a fender bender!” Selena snapped. “There’s been a bank robbery!”

A bank robbery? In Brune County?

Man, he missed everything.

Orville Gainey was sitting in his office, brooding. This was the worst day of his life. His bank had been robbed. One of his employees had been hauled off in an ambulance. (He’d be filling out forms for the rest of his life, he was certain of that.)

Worst of all, he’d looked like an idiot in front of Mary. How could she ever respect him, after he let that guy with a gun order him around?

And now cops wandered around his bank like they owned the place.

He transferred his frown to his computer, where he was trying to summarize what had happened. Main office asked him to have his report ready before their security men arrived. Best to have it down fresh and in detail so the Rambos and Dirty Harrys could have even more fun telling him what he did wrong.

He was at the point where the leader of the two had yanked open his desk drawer — as if Gainey would store a wad of extra cash in with the stapler and paper clips — he blinked.

Could that be right? Could he possibly be that lucky?

Mary chose that moment to walk in. “Excuse me, Mr. Gainey, the police are done with Velma. They want to know—”

“Come in! Come in!” Gainey stood up, almost shaking with excitement. “Shut the door!”

Look at the fear on the poor girl’s face. He supposed she was still terrified over her ordeal. Those rats!

“Mary, I just remembered something. That bank robber, when he came into my office, he opened the drawer in my desk.”

She frowned. “Okay.”

“He had taken his mitten off to hold his gun. You understand?” Orville pointed a pudgy finger at the drawer in question. “His prints must be on that drawer! The police are going to catch them!”

And to his astonishment, she began to cry.

“Omigod, omigod!” said Pauly. “Is he after us?”

Peter looked cautiously out from behind a tree, half expecting bullets to start flying.

“I think so. I can see his trail in the snow, but I can’t see him. Ha! Looks like he fell on his face.”

Pauly shook his head. “Cops don’t fall. He’s probably crawling so we can’t see where he is.”

“That’s stupid.” Peter bit his lip. Or was it?

Any cop smart enough to set up a roadblock for them, miles from town, was too shrewd to take chances on.

“Come on. I don’t care if he’s the Lone Ranger, he can’t track us through these woods. The snow’s mixed up with all these branches and stuff.”

They started hustling.

“But it was great, wasn’t it?” said Pauly, trying to rev up their enthusiasm. “Did you see the look on Mary’s face?”

“I sure did. Won’t she be surprised when she finds out it was us?”

“Heck, yeah. And when we show her those big bags of money she’s—”

Peter stopped. “You’ve got the money, right?”

“What in Christmas happened here?” asked Sonny Fonk. “Who leaves a police car blocking the friggin’ road?”

“Maybe the policeman went to help the snowmobilers.”

Sonny frowned. “What snowmobilers?”

David pointed. “See those tracks? They went off the side of the road, and since there’s no tracks farther up, I guess they crashed.”

Sonny opened the door of his cab. “Oh, you’re a regular Alfred Einstein you are. Maybe they need to be pulled out of a ditch.” He grinned. “Those guys, they’re always rich.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Orville Gainey. “You knew your brothers were going to rob us?”

“Of course not!” said Mary. “If I had thought they were going to do anything so stupid I would have told you and then told them. That would have stopped them, I hope.”

“But why didn’t you identify them when they came in?”

“They had guns, remember? For all I knew, they might have shot us.”

Orville nodded. “All right, Mary. I believe you.”

She wiped tears away. “Thank you. But nobody else will. Once they’re caught I’ll go to jail too.”

“Oh, I doubt that.”

“Well, I’ll certainly be fired.”

“That’s not—” Gainey stopped. She was right.

He felt sick. Not so much because of the injustice of it all, but from picturing the long days ahead without Mary to make the bank bearable. He hadn’t realized until that moment just how much he looked forward to seeing her every day.

Orville Gainey took a deep breath. “Mary, watch this.”

He took his impeccable handkerchief out of his breast pocket. Bending down he gave the front of the desk drawer a thorough wiping. “There. You see? No one will ever—”

She astonished him again, this time by throwing her arms around him and weeping more than ever. “I can’t believe you’d do that for me! I can’t—”

There was a cough. The officer in charge, Captain Winters, was standing in the doorway. “Mr. Gainey. You can send your staff home if you want. I can see they’re upset.”

“Oh, thank you, Captain. I’ll stick around, though.”

“Good.”

Gainey looked down at Mary, who was still pressed up against him, sobbing. He waved his arms ineffectually, trying to find a place to put them that wouldn’t violate the bank’s sexual harassment policy.

He cleared his throat. “Urn, Mary?”

She sniffed. “Yes, Mr. Gainey?”

“By any chance, do you like opera?”

“Listen,” said Sonny. His voice came out a squeak and he cleared his throat. “We’re not gonna tell your mom about this, okay?”

David had never seen a man sweat in such cold weather before. Sonny was sitting behind the wheel of his truck but he seemed uncomfortable, as if the space had shrunk.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m gonna buy her a big present.”

He held the pillowcase like he was afraid it would jump out of the truck and fly away.

“Great,” said David. “Whatcha gonna buy her?”

“I don’t know yet. Lemme think.”

“Maybe a car?”

“Yeah, that would be good.”

“Or a big TV. She’s been wanting one.”

“Sure.”

David could see that Sonny’s thoughts were miles away. If he and his mother were very lucky, maybe Sonny’s body would soon follow. Give the guy a bundle of cash and sharing would not be his first thought.

“I can tell you one thing, Sonny. Here’s the most important thing about whatever present you buy her.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“It better be something the store will take back when the cops catch you. This is stolen money, and you know it. Those guys robbed a bank or something.”

Sonny glared out the windshield. “I don’t know any such thing. It’s found money, that’s all.”

“Found in somebody’s snowmobile. When Jimmy Kerlew found a six-pack of beer in the back of your truck you broke his nose.”

“That’s different.” He cast a quick glance at the boy. “We could get in trouble if they find out we’ve got the money, you know. You want to go to jail?”

“That’s another reason to turn it in.”

“Yeah, but if you’re right and this comes from bank robbers they’ll get mad if we do. They might come hurt your mother.”

David shook his head. “These guys wrecked their snowmobiles and left the loot behind. I’m not too worried about them.”

Sonny threw the sack of money behind the seat and put the truck in gear. “Maybe you should worry about me, Shorty. You ever think about that?”

All the time, thought David.

Sonny put down the plow and started cleaning up the street. No doubt wanting to make a faster getaway.

David thought about pointing out that he was leaving a big clue as to who took the money.

He decided to shut up.

Officer Kite had twisted his ankle trying to follow the snowmobilers through the snow. When he got to the woods their trail disappeared. Hopeless.

He limped back through the snowy field, his boots leaking cold water, which somehow failed to dull the pain in his ankle.

When he reached the cruiser, he was amazed to find that some good Samaritan had plowed the road between him and town. He struggled into the car and grabbed the radio.

“Where have you been?” snapped Selena. “Everyone is supposed to be out looking for the bank robbers.”

“You didn’t catch them yet? How could they get away in this weather?” He closed his eyes. “Oh, dear.”

“Are you comfortable, Mr. Wheets?” asked the paramedic.

It was a reasonable question. The ambulance had been having a tough time, sliding around on the icy road like a pool ball.

“I’m fine, fine,” Tyler grumbled. “There’s no need for me to go to the hospital, you know. The American health system is grossly overburdened.”

“We just need to make sure you’re all right.” The paramedic’s smile was supposed to be reassuring, but he was clearly nervous. “When a man of your age has a shock like — jeepers, Ed! Try to get us there in one piece, okay?”

“My bag,” said Tyler. “What happened to my bag?”

“The woman you work with said she would bring it to your house. Said she had a key.”

“Oh. Yes, she does.” Tyler closed his eyes. He was glad he had given Velma a key to water his plants when he went to New York last year for the protests against Wall Street. He hoped she wouldn’t look in the bag, but there was nothing he could do about that.

Ever since the housing bubble collapsed, when he realized how truly evil all the bankers were, Tyler had practiced what he would do when some enterprising soul with a clear grasp of the economic situation decided to liberate the bank’s ill-gotten assets. In his living room he had practiced tumbling to the floor dozens of times, bruising himself rather badly in the process, until he could grab two handfuls of cash and hide them in his big sack as he hit the floor.

Tyler let out a little sigh of contentment. Now he could retire. Not that he had stolen enough money to live on. It was the principle of the thing.

Officer Kite thought he knew every variation of Captain Winters’s bad tempers. The growls. The whining. The red-faced wrath. Kite had been cause and witness to all of them over the years.

But still, this one, over the police radio, was new. It was stone-cold disbelief.

“You let them get away? Bank robbers?”

“I didn’t know they were bank robbers, sir. I hadn’t heard about the robbery. I thought they were just snowmobile thieves.”

“And why didn’t you chase them? Aren’t mere vehicle thieves worthy of your efforts?”

“The snow chain on my tire broke.” Which was true enough. No need to explain that it broke because he put it on wrong. “I was stuck in the snow—”

“You’ve been stuck in the snow your whole career, Kite. Which I am delighted to say has reached its natural end. Get back to headquarters.”

“Sir, should I stay with the snowmobiles? There might be evidence—”

“Don’t you think I thought of that? There’s a forensic team on the way, assuming the GPS coordinates you gave us are correct. Want to check them a third time?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

Winters sighed loudly enough to make feedback. “Get your butt in here.”

So you can hand it to me, Kite thought. I’d head for the hills if I could reach them.

Was there any way he could redeem himself?

Fortunately, he had managed to pull the shreds of chain from his axle, and since some kind soul had plowed the road he could head back to the chewing-out.

Lucky him.

Sonny Fonk had, David admitted, a certain animal cunning. He realized that the cop on the hillside might put two and two together and realize who took what out of the snowmobile, so he had pulled into the municipal parking lot where his old truck hid, like a leaf on a tree, among other snowplows.

“I gotta see it again,” said Sonny His voice was hoarse with excitement. “Pass me the bag.”

“You want everyone to see it?” asked David.

“No. No.” Sonny looked around feverishly. David remembered the movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The money was affecting Sonny’s brain, just like gold did Bogart’s. “Just hand me one of the bundles.”

As David did so he looked through the back window. “Police car coming. I think it’s the same one we saw on the hill.”

“Damn it!” Sonny stopped fondling the cash and threw it back at him. “Put it in the sack, dummy!”

David did so, but then stopped. The next bundle had something extra in it, something wedged between the bills.

The cop car was almost even with them. “Hey, Uncle Sonny. What’s in this one?”

Sonny couldn’t resist reaching for the neat bundle of fifties. He grabbed it and started to flip through it, just as the police car came abreast of them.

David turned to face the side window. He didn’t want to get paint in his eyes when the dye pack exploded.