A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Money Talks

The detective caught Al after about a three-block run. That is, it would have been a three-block run if it had been properly sectioned off into blocks. In that case he wouldn’t have caught him at all, for the detective was a good deal heavier, had a sizable paunch to push ahead of him, and Al was running for his life. Or at least his freedom, a possible ten-to-twenty years of it, and that can make a man really run.

But there were no separate blocks — it was a straightaway, an ocean pier, as a matter of fact. Al was sealed in, couldn’t get off on either side. Along the first stretch, if he jumped over the rail to the sand below he’d stand out like a black dot on a white die-cube — the beach was that bright under a seven-eighths moon. And with Al down there, the detective could have used a gun on him — there were no bathers around any more. Farther out, if he jumped over the rail, he had a choice between getting away dead-drowned or being rescued with a handcuff. He couldn’t swim a splash.

It was a cul-de-sac, and a beauty. The detective couldn’t have done better if he’d blueprinted the whole thing ahead of time.

So he caught him.

His hand came down on Al like a ton of bricks and they both staggered to a stop. For a minute they were both too winded to say anything. They just stood there breathing a gale between them. But the detective wasn’t too bushed to shift his hold from Al’s shoulder, which wasn’t too secure a place, to a double lock at the hack of the coat collar and the cuff of one sleeve.

By this time people had formed a ring around them, the two of them posing in a tableau, in what was obviously a still life of a just-enacted arrest. Neither one of them cared about that — the detective because it was part of his profession to make arrests in public, AI because he was caught now, stuck, on the wrong side of the law, and these people couldn’t help him. He knew they couldn’t, and also he knew they wouldn’t even if they could.

Al managed to speak first. “What’s it for, copper? I’m not out of bounds down here.”

“You’re out of bounds any place you lift a bundle of dough.”

Al’s voice shrilled to a squeak. “For Pete’s sake, I didn’t do no such thing!”

“Then wha’d you run for?”

“I have a record, and you know it. I don’t stand a prayer.”

“You gave yourself away by running this time. D’you bust out running every time a patrolman starts over to check on you?”

“Not when I see them just walking towards me. But you were already running after me when I turned and looked. I just lost my head, is all.”

“You lost your immunity, is all,” the detective told him. “C’mon back and we’ll take it up with her.”

They started back along the pier, trailing a cloud of buzzing spectators like a wedge-shaped swarm of bees coming to a point behind a pair of leaders. Al was too experienced an arrestee to waste his breath making any further pleas. If they were going to listen at all, they’d listen from the original stopping position. Once they started moving you off with them, the time for listening was over. Al knew that as well as he knew his own name.

The concessionaire was a very large woman. Large-size women seem to make better concessionaires — they stand out more against their usually garish backgrounds. She was blonde to the point of silveriness, shrewdly made up to take a few years off at the top, and tough as a 25-cent steak. Her pitch was a refreshment stand — hamburgers, frozen custard, soft drinks, hot dogs — So fresh they bite you, one little sign said.

She scowled angrily at Al as the detective brought him to a halt up against her counter.

“Got him, did you?” she said.

“Got me for what?” Al rasped. “What’re you talking about, lady?”

“I’m talking about the day’s receipts, wise guy. Is it on him?” she demanded of the detective.

“That’s what we’re coming to right now. Wait’ll I get a little help here.”

A boardwalk patrolman joined them and took over Al’s bodily custody, freeing the detective for the search. A second policeman came up and moved the close-packed crowd back. It required a stiff-arming of chests and a shoving between shoulder blades to get them to budge at all. It was like kneading dough, because as the policeman pushed them away in one place, they closed in again in another. Many climbed up on the boardwalk railing to get a better look.

The detective went through Al’s pockets as though his hands were a pair of miniature vacuum cleaners. He deposited everything on the concession counter. Al’s worldly goods did not amount to much. Monetarily they consisted of seven quarters, four dimes, three nickels, four pennies, and two subway tokens, all from the right-hand trouser pocket. He carried no billfold.

The detective then searched Al in places where there were no pockets. He ran probing fingers along the hem of his coat, up and down the linings of his sleeves (from the outside), felt along his ribs, and across the chest below his undershirt. He even made Al unlace his shoes and step out of them briefly, then get back into them again.

“What ’dje do with it?” he demanded finally.

“I never took it to begin with,” Al insisted.

The detective turned to the woman. “Did you see him grab it?”

“I didn’t really catch him in the act, no—”

“Then wadaya accusing me for?” Al protested hotly before she could even finish.

“Because who else could it have been? You were at my stand just the minute before.”

“Any other customers besides him?”

“Only a man and his two kids. But they had already left.”

“A man taking his youngsters on an outing doesn’t go in for lifting,” said the detective with good psychological insight, “if only because he can’t make a getaway. How much did it come to?”

“Two seventy-five.”

“You mean two hundred and seventy-five dollars?”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she said crisply. “Y’don’t think I’d blow my stack like this over two bucks, do you?”

One of the boardwalk patrolman whistled. “You make that much in one day? I’d better change jobs with you, lady.”

“Don’t forget this is a three-day take — it’s a holiday weekend.”

What I can’t figure,” said the second beach cop, “is how could he take it out of the till without your spotting him, when the cash registers over there on the opposite side, over by you.”

He didn’t take it out of the till, I did,” said the woman testily, as though angry at her own carelessness. “I’ve been in this business twenty years and I never pulled a boner like that before in my life. But there’s a first time for everything, they say. See, I just finished stacking it to take home. I was due to go off, and my husband was coming on in another quarter hour or so. I don’t like to leave so much money in the drawer until we close down — we stay open until one in the morning, and it gets kind of lonely along here at that hour. So I snapped a rubber band around the bills. I had the drawer out, and I put the dough down for just a second, like this. I had a batch of franks on and they started to smoke up. So I took a step over to flip them, then took a step back. It was gone, and he was gone. Add it up for yourself.”

“Well, it’s not on him now,” the detective had to admit. “I’ve been all over him with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Look,” said the woman sharply, giving the cash drawer a quick ride out, then in again. “There’s my proof. You never yet saw a cash register drawer with only a few singles and some silver in it, did you? Where’s all my fives and tens? You know we break plenty of them during the day.”

“I’m not doubting you, lady. I’m only saying—”

“Well, he ditched it on the run, then.”

“Did you see him throw anything away?” one of the boardwalk police asked Al’s original captor.

“No, I was watching for that. I kept my eyes on his hands the whole time. He never moved them. All he moved was his feet.”

The two of them retraced the course of the flight, searching for the bundle every step of the way, while the third one remained at the stand, holding onto Al. They were still empty-handed when they came back.

“Of course it’s gone,” assented the woman, annoyed. “Somebody picked it up by now. How long do you think it’s going to lie there, anyway?”

“Nope, he never threw it,” the detective insisted. He gave Al a vicious shaking up. “Wha’d you do with it?”

“To do something with anything, you got to have it first,” Al protested, through teeth that would have rattled if they hadn’t been his own.

“That’s great,” said the woman bitterly. “George all the way. So whether you pull him in or not, I’m still out the dough. I stand here all day on my feet, and all I’ve got to show for it is a lot of salt air.”

“You’re covered, ain’t you, lady?” said one of the patrolmen knowingly.

“My insurance ain’t paying me back dollar for dollar,” she snapped at him.

“Well, in you come,” the detective told Al grimly, “whether we’ve found it or not.”

Al trotted along beside him but with his head slightly bowed, as if to say, This is my kind of luck.

Al’s wife’s sister was married to Joe Timmons, a doctor more or less. Al had never been able to figure out whether this made them brother-in-law or not. But anyway Joe was Rose’s brother-in-law. There could be no argument about that, and since the two of them, he and Al, got along fairly well, Al was willing to let it go at that.

Actually, Joe was a genuine enough doctor. He had attended Medical School and received his degree, but too much tinkering with bottles, of the kind that did not contain medicine, had given his status an aspect that was cloudy if not downright shady.

He was the sort of doctor who, at an earlier stage of medical progress, would have had a dingy office two flights up in some old tenement; in today’s world Joe had a dingy office just one flight up in a remodeled tenement, and kept three small ads of questionable ethics running in the far-back reaches of a number of spongy-papered magazines.

Joe Timmons came to see Al in his place of detention, and Al was so downcast, so preoccupied with his own troubles, that he didn’t even realize the visit was purely voluntary.

“Hullo, Joe, they get you too?” Al said dolefully without even looking up.

“What’s the matter with you?” said Joe impatiently.

“What’re you crying for?” Al had glanced up and seen Joe’s tear-smogged eyes. “I’ve took it before, I’ll have to take it again, that’s all.”

“Stop it, will you?” said Joe, more irritable than ever. “You know this is the ragweed season for me.”

“Oh,” said Al, remembering.

“Something’s got to be done about you,” Joe pronounced without further ado. “We were talking it over last night around the table, the three of us, over some cans of beer. Now if you go away this time you’re going to be away a long time, and you know it, Al. Rose is going to just naturally pine away — she’s really gone on you and no fooling. If Rose is unhappy, then Flo gets depressed. And if Flo gets depressed, then I have a miserable home life myself. So it’s a losing game all around. Anyway, I promised the two girls I’d see what I could do for you.”

“Since when are you a lawyer?” asked Al dejectedly. “A lawyer ain’t going to do you any good, Al. This is going to be three times and out for you. You’re on parole and it’s mandatory, it’s on the books.”

“But if they never found the money on me to this day, how can they make it stick?”

“That don’t help much, it’s still open and shut. The woman claims the money was taken. It’s her word against yours. You’ve got a record, she hasn’t. You were standing right there a minute before the money disappeared. You ran like hell. It’s all stacked against you, Al. The natural supposition is going to be that you threw it away, even if the copper admits he didn’t see you. They can’t prove that you took it, but that ain’t good enough for you. It’s got to be proved that you couldn’t have taken it.”

He thought for a while.

“How much was on you when they nabbed you?”

“About seven or eight quarters, and a few nickels and pennies.”

“How come no paper money?”

“I busted my last couple of bucks just before that at a shooting gallery. Then I remembered it wouldn’t look too good if I was spotted practicing at a place like that, even though I’ve never carried a live weapon in my life. So I drifted on my way with all this unused change still in my pocket.”

Joe cogitated. “Something could be made out of that. We can’t afford to throw anything away, no matter how little it is.

“So what can you make out of it?” said the realistic Al. “Only that I was low in cash. And they’ll say that’s all the more reason why I took the money.”

Joe sneezed stingingly at this point.

“Somebody been sending roses to somebody in here?” he demanded indignantly. He raised his handkerchief toward his nose. “You may go up for ten, twenty years but at least you ain’t got my allergy,” he remarked wistfully.

“Thanks,” said Al morosely.

Joe’s handkerchief was still upended, without having reached his nose. It stayed there.

“I’ve got it!” he said. “I’ve got your out!”

He never did blow his nose.

“Now we’ll make a deal, first of all. How much was it and where’d you put it?”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” said Al firmly. “That’s what they’ve been trying to get out of me the whole time. Wouldn’t that be great, if I turned around now and—”

“But Al, I’m family,” protested Joe, shocked. “I’m not a cop or a stoolie. Look, I’m sticking my neck out for you. You can’t expect a favor even from a relative without making it worth his while. That’s the way the world is. He waited a moment; while Al remained stubbornly silent. Then Joe said, “All right, then. Let’s put it this way. How much do they claim you took?”

“The jane tabbed it at two seventy-five. I had no time to count it myself,” said Al incautiously.

“Then here’s how it goes,” expounded Joe, “Two hundred to me, for getting you off, and you keep the seventy-five.”

Al gouged the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Splitting it right down the middle, is what I call it,” he intoned somberly.

Joe stood up, affronted, and made as if to leave. Then he turned his head and addressed Al over one shoulder. “Which is better,” he said, “to have seventy-five smackers you can call your own, free and clear, out in the fresh air and sunshine, or to know where there’s two hundred and seventy-five waiting — with a six-foot-thick concrete wall in between? You figure it out.”

Al did, and finally gave in, with a resigned, upward flip of the hand. “It’s the best I can do,” he admitted glumly. “I haven’t had any other offers today.”

Joe reseated himself and leaned forward confidentially. “All right, where is it?” he said. “And keep it low.”

Al dropped his voice. Now that the deal was made, he seemed relieved to get it off his chest. “It’s still right there on the counter—” he began.

In spite of his recent injunction, Joe’s own voice rose almost to a yelp of outrage. “Come on. who’re you trying to kid?”

“Will you listen to me, or don’t you want to hear?” Joe wanted to hear.

“She has three big glass tanks there. One’s a pale color — that’s the pineapple. One’s medium color — that’s the orange. One is almost black — that’s the grape. It’s in that — the grape. The lids are chromium, but they’re liftable. I tipped it up and shot it in there.” Joe squeezed his eyes tight. “And you expect it to still be in there?” he groaned.

“Sure, it’s still in there. Not only that, I bet it’ll be in there ail the rest of the week. I cased the stand for nearly an hour, from a boardwalk bench opposite. I kept score. For every five customers for orange, there’s only three for pineapple and only one for grape. It moves slow. I don’t know why she stocks the stuff. Those tanks last. The next two days were slow days — Tuesday and Wednesday after the holiday weekend. And it was raining, to top it off. You know what that does to business on a boardwalk.”

“It’s paper, it’ll be floating at the top.”

“So what.” She draws the stuff off from a spigot at the bottom. Something makes them bubble, I couldn’t figure what. That alone would keep it from settling to the bottom.”

Joe digested all this for a while. “I’ve got it,” he said at last, giving a fingersnap. “A fishhook. Or better still, a bent safety pin.”

“Sure,” said Al. “Make like you’re lighting a cigarette, set fire to the whole book of matches at once.

She can’t prove it wasn’t an accident. Throw it away from you, like anyone would — but so it lands on the floor inside the stand, over the other way to distract her attention. She’ll be busy bending over and stamping it out. Then just tip the lid like I did.”

“As soon as I have it, I’ll go to work on you,” Joe promised. He got up to leave. “I’ll let you know,” he said.

He came back to see Al only once more after that.

He didn’t stay long and he didn’t say much — just three words.

“I got it.”

Al saluted with two fingers from the edge of his eyebrow, and Joe gave him a knowing bat of the eyelashes as he turned and went out again.

Al’s hearing was held in the judge’s chambers. There was no jury trial since Al’s previous and uncompleted sentence still hung over him like an axe, ready to fall and hit him in the back of the neck if the judge so decided. If Al was found guilty, X number of years resumed right where they had left off, plus; if found not guilty, Al was out on parole again.

The judge was a benevolent-looking man, the clerk was unbiased, but the arresting officer was neither. Also present were the concessionaires, Al’s wife Rose, and a physician who had treated the accused and wished to give expert testimony bearing on the matter at hand.

The concessionaire having restated her complaint, the arresting officer having given an account of the accused’s flight from the scene before he even knew what he was charged with, the physician now stepped forward and asked the judge’s permission to submit certain medical facts which he felt to be of great importance to the case. The judge granted permission.

The expert witness identified himself as Dr. Joseph Randolph Timmons, and he presented a figure of such impeccable distinction, with his scholarly eyeglasses, dignified bearing, and air of professional erudition, that alongside him both the clerk of the court and the arresting officer appeared shoddy, rundown, and of little account.

Dr. Timmons asked only a single preliminary question of the arresting officer.

“When you caught up with the accused man, did he stand quietly, or did he fidget and wriggle around a good deal while you were holding him?”

“He stood perfectly still, never moved a hair,” said the detective after a moment’s thought.

Dr. Timmons then proceeded: “I am not here to vouch for my patient’s character or honesty. I know nothing whatever about that. If I’d heard he was being accused of taking jewelry, silverware, furs, anything of that sort, I would not have come forward. But hearing what the charge was in this case, I felt it was my duty as a physician to bring certain facts to light.

“The patient first came to me in May of this year, complaining of an intermittent rash and itching. It would come and go, but it was causing him great trouble. At nights, for instance, when he was at home in bed, it never seemed to bother him. It was only at certain times during the day that it would suddenly show up, then gradually die down again. Sometimes it came on three or four times during the course of a single day, then again only once or twice.

“He told me that whenever he left a barber shop he had it, and whenever he went to a motion-picture show. But when he went into a bar to have a glass of beer, he didn’t have it. Yet when he went into the same bar and had a couple of ryes, he did have it.

“He never had it on buses, but once getting out of a taxi he had it. If he bought a single package of cigarettes he didn’t have it, but if he bought a whole carton at a time he did have it, before he even began to smoke them. A mysterious and interesting case, you will admit.

“I have here a record of his visits, taken from my office-appointment book. If your Honor would care to examine it.”

“ ‘A. Bunker, Monday, ten a.m. — ’ ” read the judge aloud, rapidly shuffling through a number of loose-leaf pages the doctor had handed him. “ ‘A. Bunker, Friday, three p.m. — ’ He seems to have visited you at the rate of twice a week.”

“He did, your Honor, all through June, July, and the greater part of August. He told me right at the start he couldn’t afford to come to see me that often, but since the case fascinated me, and the poor fellow was badly in need of help, I told him not to worry about it — to pay me whatever he could as we went along.”

The judge cast an admiring glance at the man before him. “There should be more practitioners like you, Dr. Timmons.”

“Not all of us are money grabbers,” said the doctor modestly. “Well, to go on with this man’s case history. A quick test showed that the condition was not dermatological. In lay language that means that it was not a skin infection. I hadn’t thought it was because it came and went, instead of being constant. Therefore there was only one other thing it could be. It had to be an allergy.

But just knowing it was an allergy wasn’t enough. It had to be identified, isolated, its cause discovered, or the patient couldn’t be helped. I tested him on a number of foods first, and got negative results. Then I tested him on fabrics, such as are worn on the body — wool, cotton, dacron. Again negative. I even tested him on lint, such as is commonly found in the linings of most pockets. Nothing there either.”

He broke off to ask, “I’m not being too technical for your Honor, am I?”

The judge was sitting engrossed, his hands supporting the sides of his face. He said, “I don’t know when I’ve heard a more interesting exposition than the one you’ve been giving, Doctor. Go on, by all means. This is almost like a medical detective story!”

“These exhaustive tests,” resumed the magnetic medic, “might have continued indefinitely, might still be going on today and for many months to come, if it hadn’t been for one of those little accidental breaks which pop up when least expected and give an investigator a short cut to the answer. As I’ve said, I was lenient in collecting payment for the treatments. After several visits for which he’d paid me nothing, the patient one day said he’d like to make a small payment on account. I agreed, of course, and he handed me a five-dollar bill. I’d already noticed he was somewhat improved on that particular day. The ailment had not disappeared by any means, but it was in one of its occasional periods of remission.

“I thought it only fair to dash off a receipt for the fee. When I happened to look up a moment later, I was amazed to see what had occurred.”

Like the good showman he was, the doctor paused artfully.

“But rather than describe it in dry words, I’m going to let you see for yourselves just what happened.”

He turned to Al. “Please remove your jacket, Mr. Bunker.”

Al complied, but with a somewhat apprehensive look on his face. He handed the jacket over to the doctor, who in turn handed it to the clerk, who draped it neatly over the edge of his table-top desk.

“Now, roll up the sleeves of your shirt,” was the doctor’s next instruction. “As high as they’ll go — all (he way up to your shoulders.”

Al again obeyed, but with more and more of a troubled expression, like someone who knows he is in for in uncomfortable experience. In this instance the doctor speeded up the process by helping him, in the course of which his own hands, unavoidably, glanced lightly upward along Al’s forearms.

The doctor turned to the others.

“I want you to look at his hands and arms before we go any further. Hold out your arms, Mr. Bunker.”

Al stiffly extended his arms straight out before him at chest level, in grotesque resemblance to a high-diver about to launch off into space. His arms were no different from other arms of the male variety — hairy on one side, smooth and heavily veined on the other, but otherwise unblemished.

“Now I’d like a piece of paper currency from one of you, if I may. An ordinary banknote. I’m asking you to furnish it, instead of using one of my own, so there can be no question of the genuineness of this test.”

Like three men at a table when the waiter brings the check, each reacted according to his personal characteristics. The arresting officer made no move toward his pockets at all. The clerk, who was on small salary, managed to outfumble the judge, even in spite of the latter s encumbering robes. The majesty of the law produced a wallet that seemed to contain nothing less than bills in double digits.

Hill a ten be all right?” asked the judge.

“Quite all right.” assured the doctor. “It isn’t the denomination that’s the chief factor.”

He turned back to Al with the ten dollars.

“Now take this in your hands, Mr. Bunker.”

Al drew back, like a child who is about to be given castor oil.

“Now come on,” said the doctor with a touch of impatience. “I’m trying to help you, not harm you.”

Al pinched one corner of the bill between his thumb and forefinger, as though he were holding onto a fluttering moth by one wing.

“Don’t just hold it between two fingers — put all your fingers on it at once,” insisted the doctor. Then when Al had done so, the doctor urged, “Now pass it over into your other hand.”

A few portentous seconds ticked by, as though the doctor were taking a pulse count.

“That’ll do. You’ve held it long enough.”

Al released it with a long-drawn sigh that could be heard throughout the judge’s chamber.

There was a breathless wait.

For several moments nothing happened. Then Al dug his fingernails into the back of one hand and raked it. Then the other. Then the back of one arm. Then the inside. Angry red blotches, almost the size of strawberries, began to appear.

By now Al was almost like a sufferer from St. Vitus’s Dance. His feet stood still, but up above he writhed as though he’d been bitten by five hundred mosquitoes. He couldn’t get at all the places that needed scratching. He didn’t have enough fingernails.

“This poor devil,” said the doctor with dramatic effect, “is allergic to paper money. Whether it is something in the paper itself, or some dye in the ink used in the engraving, I can’t say. But I can say this: he can no more touch paper money, his own or somebody else’s, without having this happen to him, than I can fly out of that window.

“You will remember from the detective’s own testimony that this man had only coins on him at the time he was arrested. That was the result of instructions I myself gave him — a prescription, as a matter of fact, as much as if I had given him pills or capsules. His wife breaks a dollar or two every day — bills, you understand — and hands him the change when he leaves the house. That way he can make whatever small purchases are required without falling into the lamentable condition you see him in now.”

Al’s forehead was a ripple of parallel ridges. He wasn’t making believe either. No actor could have simulated the wish, the yearning, the compulsion to scratch that so obviously possessed Al. “And finally,” concluded the doctor, “I only wish to point out that had my patient actually taken the money he is accused of stealing, he could not have run as he did and then later stood perfectly still while being searched. He would have been squirming uncontrollably, scratching himself all over, as you see him doing right now. The arresting officer admitted nothing of the sort took place.”

The judge cleared his throat.

“It seems fair enough to assume, in view of what we have all witnessed with our own eyes, that the money could not possibly have been taken by the accused. It must have been taken by some other, unknown person, who somehow made good his escape in the crowd.” He addressed Al in an almost fatherly manner.

“You can thank Dr. Timmons for getting you out of what might have been very serious trouble. But you brought all this on yourself, Albert. Next time, don’t run from a parole officer when you see him coming towards you. These men are your friends, not your enemies. They are only trying to help you.”

“Yes, sir,” said Al meekly. He looked at his friend the detective, and his friend the detective looked at him. It was a most undecipherable look — as a cat looks at its friend, the mouse, and a mouse looks at its friend, the cat.

“Charges dismissed,” said the judge, with self-satisfaction.

Outside Joe walked a few steps with Al, toward where Rose was waiting. Joe had one arm slung over Al’s shoulder, giving him sound medical advice. “And from now on, see that you keep your hot little mitts off any stray money that happens to be floating around. I his is a trick that will work only once.”

“For Pete’s sake, what’d you do to me?” Al demanded.

Joe murmured, “A solution of itching powder, mixed with something to delay the action a few minutes, so I’d have time for my spiel.”

“How come it didn’t get you?”

“Skin-colored plastic gloves. I soaked them in it. You can’t tell unless you look close — they have the nails painted on, and I wore my ring on the outside. Dunk yourself in a hot tub when you get home,” he added. “It ought to wear off in about half an hour.” Al and Rose went walking off arm in arm, like the devoted man and wife they were.

“Mr. Bunker!” an urgent voice suddenly called out behind them.

Rose nudged Al sharply. “Better tum around and see what he wants. It’ll look funny if you don’t.”

“Ung-ung,” said Al in a calamitous undertone. He turned slowly.

It was the clerk of the court, panting with an inscrutable look on his face — a look impossible to describe unless you actually saw it.

“Would you mind — his Honor — I’m glad I caught up with you — you forgot to return his Honor’s ten dollars.”