Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 13, Mid-December 1994

Night Deposit by Jas. R. Petrin

What happened, they had to take Ma along in the end because there was just no way two guys could handle it by themselves. Zeke griping at George about it, going, “You sure there’s no other way, bro? I mean, are you absolutely sure about that?”

George was sure about it.

It was Zeke’s plan, but George had gone over the angles a hundred times, working them all different ways. And two guys just wasn’t enough.

The reason, what it was, you had to have somebody on the door. That was a fact. No getting away from it. Like, even with the door locked, anybody with a passkey could just suddenly walk in on you, and there you’d be, elbow-deep in cookies and bad things starting to happen. Very bad things.

So they had to have Ma to take care of that angle, George was thinking. Keep an eye on the door. And what Zeke was thinking, they’d used Ma for that sort of a job before and the results had been complete and total screwups.

“What if she screws up?” Zeke groused.

“She’s not going to screw up. How can she screw up? She watches the door and that’s it. A moron could do it.”

“Let’s get a moron, then, it’s a safer bet, pal.”

George fixed his intellectually challenged brother with a cool, sobering gaze. “We already got one moron. We don’t want to exceed our limit, do we?”

In the end Zeke had to cave in. He said, All right, they would take Ma along to look after the door, but by God he was going to hold George personally responsible for her. Whatever happened, Zeke said, he was going to hold George personally responsible. Yeah, well, what else is new, George said.

So Ma was in.

And this is the way they would work it. Pull up outside the club a couple of minutes to closing, then the three of them walk in off the street. The idea, the way Zeke was figuring it, get inside just before they closed the place. That way it wouldn’t be long before the staff went home, and Ma could put Zeke’s “big idea” into effect — double-locking the door and making sure the staff had hung the closed sign in the window; if they hadn’t, hang the damn thing there herself. And then plunk herself down in one of the humongous leather bucket chairs they had there, to watch the situation and keep her eye on things.

If it wasn’t for Ma, the plan would be fine, Zeke believed.

Wait and see was George’s opinion.

The way the place was laid out, you walked in and you were in a sort of lobby, a dark-timbered anteroom where they lined the customers up butt to bumper on busy nights, the room crazy with road signs and battered antique gas pumps, and dozens of license plates nailed to the walls. This scrap metal placed strategically around to set the mood of the dump, which the owner — Zeke referred to him as “the Big Guy” — called the Gas Station. It was a gas station, all right, George thought. To the left as you came in, double doors led to the club proper, where Station customers could eat a steak, play the VLT machines, and get gassed up. And maybe if they were lucky they could arrange to have their oil changed. On the right a single open archway, with a chain stretched across it to keep the lowlife out, protected a staircase that led to the second floor, which was where the manager’s office was located.

Which was the room Zeke was trying to get to. The room where they counted the money.

Heading out that night, at the wheel of Ma’s Dodge, Zeke laid on a pep talk, the guy really strung out, twitchy after arguing with George about Ma all day, and out of cigarettes, which was why he was chewing plug tobacco and telling them he felt like a major league pitcher with the bases loaded. Major league. Man. You had to laugh. Every few minutes down went his window and a jet of brown saliva shot out into the night. Zeke the major leaguer with a dribble down his chin, going:

“No point in us feelin’ guilty about this. The way to look at it is we’ll be teachin’ this guy a lesson. The guy we’re gonna hit, the Big Guy, the guy owns the place, I heard he’s one a the worst creeps ever sleazed out of a sewer, know that I’m sayin’? A bum, know what I mean? A scumbag. A real—”

“You sound like you’re talkin’ about yourself,” Ma said.

Down went Zeke’s window, and a brown jet shot out.

“Ma, don’t start, okay? All I’m tryin’ to do—”

“Sounds just like you. You an’ your brother George, here. Creep, bum, weasel...”

“Ma, listen—”

“No. You listen. You go ahead and set this whole thing up, nobody comes to me an’ asks for my opinion, do they? No. An’ I got more brain power in my left leg than the both of you got in your two skulls put together. I’m sittin’ on more.”

“We hadda hurry an’ work out the details, Ma.”

“Tell me about it. You couldn’t even pick a decent time of day, for the love of Pete. The right night, for cryin’ in the sink. It’s my anniversary, for the love of all that’s holy, can’t you weasels remember nothing? You know I always celebrate the fourteenth of the month, the one an’ only high point in my entire life, the day your dad ran off.” She settled back in the seat with a sigh, carried away with it now. “How it happened, we’d just ordered our deep-fried onion loaf in the lunchroom back of the Brooks Hotel, an’ he said, ‘ ’Scuse me, I gotta go take a whiz,’ he said — he was polite that way — an’ he went, an’ he never came back. I never seen him again. I hadda eat the whole onion loaf all by myself. And I got stuck with the bill...”

She could go on for hours. Thank God for Zeke. He shoved a stick in her spokes.

“It hadda be tonight, Ma, tonight’s when the loaners bring in their accounts. See, they slip in an’ out all evening, droppin’ off money, takin’ back their floats, an’ headin’ on out for another go round. An’ the reason we’re goin’ in late, just before the club downstairs closes up, is because by then all the loaners have come an’ gone, an’ their money’ll be all counted an’ collected in a night deposit bag up there in the office. That’s how they do it. A guy used to work there told me. What the Big Guy does, he slips the loansharking dough in with the nightclub receipts, an’ then he’s covered. Nobody suspects nothing.”

“You must be kidding,” Ma sneered. “If you two dopes could figure it out, the whole damn city must know what the big goon does up there.”

“You know, an’ we know, a few other people, that’s not the whole city.”

“The whole city,” Ma said. “The nuts in the booby hatch know. The stiffs in the morgue. You’d be the last to find out.”

“Ma—”

“Think you’re so smart.”

“Ma, listen—”

“Coupla goddamn Frankensteins.”

“You mean Einsteins, Ma,” George put in.

“Look, I guess I know a Einstein from a Frankenstein, you weasel. When I look at you.”

Ma rambled on. In addition to her annoying monologue, George had to listen to Zeke’s angry mutterings in the dark of the car, but he felt no pity for his brother. Zeke ought to know better. Getting into this with Ma was plain crazy. Psychology 101. Argue with Ma, then book yourself in for a bleeding ulcer treatment.

“Gettin’ back to it,” Zeke said finally, “right after we get in the door, me and George gotta start up the stairs — an’ we gotta be ready with the stockings, to pull them over our heads. Upstairs is off limits except to staff, so anybody spots us up there, they’re gonna know we ain’t come to read the meter, an’ we sure as hell don’t wanna be recognized.”

“Hoo, boy,” Ma said, “listen to it. Couple of bigshots. As if anybody’d recognize you. Except maybe the city zookeeper. He might think the weasel cage sprung a leak.”

“What I mean to say, Ma, these guys are dangerous.”

“Oh, so now they’re dangerous, are they? Something else you forgot to tell me. What am I supposed to do then, something starts to go wrong? Stagger around collecting open wounds? The hell with that. I want a stocking over my face, too.”

“How will a stocking protect you from wounds?”

“It’s better than nothing.”

“Not really.”

“Better than a kick with a frozen boot.”

“Ma, you’re downstairs, you’re one of the customers, for all they know. No way they’re gonna connect you with me and George, are they?”

“If you mean will they know you’re my sons, I should hope not. You’re too big, dumb, an’ ugly to be sons of mine, any fool can see that.”

“Right, Ma, we’re too dumb an’ ugly, so I guess you got nothing to worry about.” That sour note twisting Zeke’s voice, like he wished he could toss her out of the car right there in the middle of the Midtown Bridge and save them all a lot of grief later on. “You sit downstairs long as you can, till, say, maybe a quarter past, when the waiters start putting the run to everybody, then you hide out in the ladies’ washroom while they chase the customers out.”

“Great. Somethin’ else I didn’t know. I gotta go hide in the can.”

“We forgot to mention it, that’s all.”

“What else did you forget to mention? Armed guards? How about Rottweiler dogs? What if they send Rottweiler dogs into the can after me, eh? Did you think about that, Mr. Frankenstein? Rottweiler dogs?”

“Ma. There ain’t gonna be no dogs, not even chihuahuas. An’ they never check the can out properly, it’s too much like work. Maybe they open the door an’ glance in, but you’re in a cubicle, ain’t you? All they see is your feet, so you only gotta stand on the toilet seat.”

“I see. You know all about it, don’t you? I guess you spend a lotta time in the ladies’ can. An’ what if a security guard, the one with the Rottweiler dogs, gets a nature urge an’ decides to come into the cubicle? You expect I’m gonna climb the goddamn wall, or just what?”

“Oh, man.” Zeke turned to George. “You wanna talk to her, bro?”

“That’s not going to happen, Ma,” George said.

“But what if it does?”

Ma could go on like this all night. George said to her:

“Let’s get back to the main point, Ma. The place quiets down, you go back out to the lobby and sit down in one of the big chairs in the shadows behind a gas pump. From there, if you have to, you can deke back into the washroom. And all you got to do if anybody comes in the street door, or if anybody still left in the club suddenly appears and starts upstairs, is go outside to the car and hit the horn a couple of times. The office window’s right above, so we’re bound to hear you, and we’ll know what’s going on and get out fast.”

“Say again?” Ma laughed. “You dopes wouldn’t know what was going on if Larry King was up there, live, to yell it in your ear.”

She kept laughing like that, bitterly, all the rest of the way to the club.

It was a couple of minutes to closing. Still some cars parked in the side lot next to the Gas Station, but Zeke said that was okay because a few customers in there would take some of the heat off of them. Ma laughed at that, but at least she didn’t say anything. They left the car in the street, just under the second floor windows, and then they went into the club.

The reception area was empty. Completely deserted. No hostess there to greet them at this late hour, just as Zeke had said.

Good old Zeke, standing there with his Quasimodo face hanging out.

“What’s the matter?” George asked.

Zeke was looking down at the door, thick fingers scraping in the beard stubble of his chin. “Hey, bro, lookit. No way we can doublelock this thing ourselves. You got to have a key.”

It was true. There was no simple latch mechanism, no button, no chain, nothing like that; the secondary lock installed on the door was a key-operated deadbolt. George wanted to turn around right there that minute and walk back out to the car and drive home. Like, jeez, not that it was any big deal, but the guy was supposed to have cased the joint, right? And doublelocking had been his own idea, and he hadn’t even had the presence of mind to check the hardware out. Man.

And there was no “closed” sign, either.

“I was positive there’d be a ‘closed’ sign,” Zeke said stupidly, “every kinda business has a ‘closed’ sign to hang out.”

“Every business except this one,” George muttered.

Then Ma chimed in, of course.

“An’ there ain’t no chair.”

This was also a fact. The big leather buckets were gone. So was the long leather bench that had sprawled along the wall. All that remained in the deserted room were the weatherbeaten gas pumps, the road signs, and license plates. Ma was getting really teed off now, screwing her face up into tight little wrinkled lines and cranking up her volume a couple of notches.

“You weasels said there’d be a chair for me to sit in! I’m lookin’ all around this place, an’ I don’t see no damn chair. I don’t see nothin’ even resembling a chair. I guess it’s an invisible chair, is that what it is? Do you weasels see any kind of a chair around here for me to sit in?”

Zeke spun around then and hissed at Ma like a steam valve, his face blue with anger and one big blunt finger pressed to his lips. Zeke worried someone in the next room would notice them, that Ma was going to pull one of her usual stunts and create a scene.

George was still working out the furniture thing — were they in the midst of redecorating the place, he wondered. Or maybe, what it was, had they sent the stuff in for recovering?

Ma was defiant.

“Chairs! You were jerking me around, weren’t you!”

George said gently: “Ma. Listen.” He pointed through the door that led into the club. “See the little table there by the wall, it’s not occupied? Look, it’s got flowers. You love flowers. Change of plan, Ma. You sit down at that table, you can see all the way out of the club and into this room, and keep an eye on the door from there. It’s just three, four yards farther away, that’s all.”

“Yeah? Thanks for figuring it out for me, Frankenstein. I could also grab a chair from that table, drag it out here and sit down on it right where I’m s’posed to, couldn’t I?”

Ma was still hollering. George tried to quiet her, whispering, “No, Ma. No, you couldn’t. See, rearranging the furniture, that’d attract attention, Ma. We don’t want to attract attention. Some waiter’d come along and put the arm on you.”

“Some waiter better not if he don’t wanna wait tables the rest of his life with a twelve pound brace from his prong to his prat.”

“Will you tone it down?” Zeke said, exasperated.

“It’s just we don’t want no one getting suspicious,” George told her.

“Suspicious? Hah! That’s a laugh.” Ma tossed her large head. “Couple of deadheads like you lurching around the place, you think nobody’ll get suspicious? Hah! Hah-hah!” Zeke towered over her, breathing.

“Ma! That’s it! Are you gonna shut up? Are you gonna — ahh!” He hobbled away. “Jesus, she kicked me, bro. My leg... oh, man... oh, Jesus...”

George got Ma to cooperate and to go in and sit down at the table in the restaurant after he dipped into his wallet and gave her the last twenty dollars he had so she could order a gin and an appetizer if the place was still serving, telling her no, he didn’t know if they served deep-fried onion loaf or not, she’d just have to find out for herself; and telling her, Don’t forget to go hide in the can later, Ma; and then leaving her there frowning around the room looking for a waiter to snarl at.

Bodan Tom — real name, Tomski — tried taking some of the weight off his feet by pressing his buttocks against the back wall of the closet. But this meant he had to shift back a pace and rise up an inch or two on his toes, and he could only hold that position less than a minute before the leg cramps came back and he had to sag forward and feel the necktie cut into his throat again. Funk, that bum, trying to kill him, trussing him up like this. Trying to strangle him. Hands tied behind him and his necktie turned back to front and knotted to the steel clothes bar at the top of the closet.

Bodan Tom got his legs under him and relieved the pressure on his neck again. Man, his thighs hurt. Every time he moved, wire coat hangers jangled in his ears.

He was wondering if his kid brother Joseph was going to show up tonight. Sometimes he did, and they’d go out together for some cabbage rolls, a little borscht, at an all-nighter they liked. And sometimes he didn’t...

This was a hell of a thing to happen. You didn’t expect this kind of treatment from somebody you’d been doing business with for — what was it? — nearly two years? So what had gone wrong?

It had to be the result of Bodan Tom’s being too nice a guy. When you were too nice a guy, there was always somebody jockeying to take advantage of your better nature. Like Funk in the middle of the room tonight, waving his arms around...

The last of the loaners had been and gone — some putz named Yocum, or Yokum, who didn’t remind Bodan Tom of the country singer but of the cartoon character, the guy always screwing up, this time beating a bad debt so bad they’d had to take the guy away from the pet shop he ran, sirens wailing, in an ambulance, the animals back in the shop going nuts, the dogs yap-yapping, the birds squawk-squawking, the goldfish going glub, glub, glub like they were gonna break out of their tanks and flop after Yokum and tear the butt out of his pants. And even then Yokum hadn’t got the vig. He’d had the nerve to show up at the office almost a hundred and fifty down.

Man, it was hard doing business in these times.

And then Funk.

This guy definitely a piece of work.

Funk at the door putting his head in and grinning like he was there to collect for the Policeman’s Benevolent Fund or something, this guy who truly did believe in the spirit of giving — to him. Always on the squeeze. The thing about Funk, he was like a pain you don’t talk about, right there where it gets you the worst, and no ointment for it. But what could a businessman do? It was the same everywhere. You tried to get ahead, and you were always getting stiffed by the man. Call it grease, call it taxes, there it was.

Bodan already in a nasty mood, and Funk going:

“So how’d you make out tonight, good buddy? Business booming?”

“All the time,” Bodan Tom said, wondering what kind of a crunching sound you’d get if you suddenly kicked the door shut with Funk’s smirking head poking through like that.

“Glad to hear it, good buddy, glad to hear it,” Funk said, coming uninvited into the room and dropping his coat over a chair. “Like, with all this recession, depression, whatever the hell it is, a guy don’t hardly know where he stands any more, does he?”

“Recession is good for my business,” Bodan said; then immediately regretted saying that, steering away from it, saying, “My street business, I’m talking about. A bar isn’t really worth running any more, the liquor taxes so high, the drunk-driving laws so tight a man’s got to oil the fenders of his car to slip home at night. I had to lay two people off. The government’s killing my trade.”

“Gover’ment looks out for itself,” Funk agreed.

“You think so? I’m not so sure. The government, the only way it stays healthy is to let money move and change hands. When it slows money down, it hurts its own self. But it’s lost track. It don’t even know where the money comes from no more. From working people like me. It lost track of that.”

“Speaking of money changing hands—” Funk began.

Now we get to it, Bodan Tom thought.

“—what I was wondering, isn’t it about time for a raise, good buddy? Hey, listen, I’m working my heinie off for you out there, you know? Making sure your operation don’t hit any snags, know what I mean? New rules and regulations every day you need help with. And, hey, I haven’t had a cost of living adjustment in six or seven months.”

Three months, Bodan thought. And he thought, Cost of living adjustment, like you’re an employee or something, huh? He said to Funk, “How much you want this time?”

Funk grew a face. “Come on, good buddy, don’t take it like that. It’s business, that’s all. Hey, wouldn’t you turn up the heat on me a bit if our places were reversed?”

I would turn up the heat on you so high you would explode like a fat garlic sausage, Bodan thought, liking the image, Funk on a gigantic barbecue with a skewer through his duff and the superheated juices jetting out of him.

Funk ambled over to the desk. The way this guy made himself at home. Man, it got to you. Now poking at the canvas night deposit bag Bodan Tom hadn’t had time to hide.

“This the take tonight, buddy?” Funk hefted the bag, grinning. “I’d hafta say you’re right, this darn recession ain’t touched you.”

It was too much.

“Put the bag down,” Bodan Tom said.

“Take it easy, buddy.” Funk grinning and grinning, the bum always grinning, you wanted to do something about that grinning, reach out and take some teeth out of the picture. Funk squeezing the bag now, going, “Yes, buddy, this has been a very good night for you, I think. Now what’re these lumps right here? Lemme guess. Bundles of twennies? Fifties? Or maybe even—”

“I told you to put the bag down,” Bodan Tom said with a steel edge to his voice, and he was surprised to find that somehow the little Iver Johnson.22 Pony had jumped into his hand, didn’t remember deciding to draw it, but here it was, like magic, pointed straight at Funk’s smirking horse-jawed face.

Funk glanced up, saw the gun, and lowered the bag slowly and gently to his side with the good humor bleeding out of his eyes. Steel-edged hostility there now. But holding onto the grin, though, like his face came that way.

“Good buddy,” he said. “Here now, good buddy. What’s this? What’re you aiming that little rat-poker at me for? I thought we were partners, good buddy. Hey?”

“Not any more,” Bodan said.

Funk stepped around the table.

“Holy doodle. Lemme unnerstand this. You saying our partnership is all washed up?”

“You’re saying it.”

Funk shrugged. “Well, if I’m saying it... then I guess it must be true.”

He feinted left by tossing the bag at the couch, at the same time making a sudden lunge for Bodan’s gun with his big right hand, Bodan backpedaling and barely managing to get off one, two, crisp shots at the other man, thinking the slugs went home but not completely sure about it, Funk not even pausing but closing with Bodan and knocking the Pony to the floor.

Funk’s left hand swept up then and pinned Bodan Tom to the wall by the throat.

“You little garlic sucker, you tried to kill me. I don’t believe it. I oughtta break your neck for that.” There was blood oozing from a wound under Funk’s ear, and he pawed at it like a bear, glancing down and seeing the smudge of blood on his thumb and index finger. “You come close, good buddy, but I think you’re gonna hafta get yourself a bigger gun. What do you think?”

Funk had all the moves. Like neutralizing people was second nature for him, which it was, the dumb cop. He spun Bodan Tom around face to the wall, stepped on the back of Bodan’s shoe, and drove a knee into his leg, Bodan’s foot coming up with the pain real fast and leaving the shoe behind. Seconds later Bodan had a shoelace twisted around his wrists, holding them tight, tight, very tight.

“ ’Course, I could cuff you, you little bohunk, but that’d mean leaving a clue behind, wouldn’t it?”

He shoved Bodan into the closet.

“An’ if I shot you, same thing. That crap gun of yours’d leave your powder burns on me, or mine’d leave my bullets in you. So I got another idea, good buddy...”

“Let me go,” Bodan pleaded, “you’re hurt. I can help you.”

“Buddy, I been bit worse by mosquitoes. Like I said, you oughtta get yourself a gun.” With a jerk Funk twisted Bodan’s tie up under his ear and passed it around the steel closet bar, heaving Bodan up onto his toes. He knotted the tie, then picked up the Iver Johnson, pumping the cartridges out and holding the gun gingerly to avoid leaving fingerprints, then tucked it back into Bodan’s belt. He stood back, pale now and swaying slightly on his feet. “Goddamn, I must be getting old, good buddy. This exercise is... pooping me out. Anyways... you... may be here a while. Have a good one!”

Funk slammed the closet door on Bodan Tom.

Downstairs George took a last regretful glance at the door lock, wishing that Ma were able to doublelock it but accepting that there was nothing they could do about that now. Zeke, for all his grousing, making them even more dependent on Ma. George unhooked the chain that was stretched across the archway, let Zeke squeeze by, then passed through himself and did the chain back up. They climbed the stairs together, Zeke one step ahead and favoring the leg Ma had bruised. He wasn’t happy either.

“I told you not to bring her. I told you that, didn’t I?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“She’ll slap me up the head or whack me one of these days, an’ that’s gonna be it. I’m gonna turn around an’ do some thing to that woman, pal. Kicking me like that. Jesus.”

“If you do anything,” George advised, “you better do it right, or what’s left of you will be rattling around loose in a shoebox.” One of the steps creaked just then, and he cringed. “I want to tell you, big brother, I can’t believe this guy doesn’t post himself a guard.”

“He used to, but he got sloppy.”

“He’s not mobbed up or anything, is he?”

“You kidding? In this town? Only mob here is the mob at City Hall.”

There was a dark corridor at the top of the stairs, you could hardly see your hand in front of your face.

“Be nice if they put some lights on,” Zeke complained.

“We don’t want lights,” George reminded him, and gave his head a shake. Man. This guy. Put a brain in his head and see what improvement you got. Upgrade to a half-witted klunge. An ape with an attitude. Scary.

Zeke’s big hand beckoned. There was a door at the end of the hall. Zeke looked at George and George nodded — sure, you open it — and Zeke turned the handle carefully and peered inside.

“What the hell,” he said hoarsely. “Nobody here.” Then he hesitated, reconsidering. “Wait a sec. Could be I’m wrong about that.” He eased farther into the room.

By looking over Zeke’s shoulder, George could see that the room was an office, all right, and a large one, fitted out like some sort of working bachelor apartment. There was a wide mahogany desk at one end, some fancy chairs and lamps, and a full-sized couch, this last piece of furniture situated with its back towards them and having a pair of large black tassled men’s loafers sticking out over one end of it, with the toes pointing up. He watched Zeke creep silently forward and peer down.

“Ask him about the money,” George whispered.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead? Get out.”

“I’m tellin’ you, this guy’s dead. Come here an’ look at him, you don’t believe me. Is this a dead guy or isn’t it?”

George followed Zeke into the room, not liking this development, not liking it at all. He stopped by the couch where he could see over the back of it and took a careful long look for himself, discovering that the guy on the couch was a big-boned, heavy-jowled man in a rumpled sports coat and wrinkled grey slacks, stretched out on his back with one hand trailing on the floor like he was asleep. Only he wasn’t asleep. People didn’t fall asleep with their eyes and mouth wide open — except Zeke maybe on the kitchen floor sometimes, after a hoot. But the real giveaway was — look at it! — a patch of dark, caked blood on the side of the big guy’s head.

“He’s dead, all right.”

“I already told you that.”

“Who is he?”

“How the hell do I know?”

“He’s pretty tall, sticking out over the arm of the couch like that. You think it’s the Big Guy?”

“I just told you I don’t know. I never actually seen the Big Guy before.” Zeke straightened up, giving the room a quick sweep with his eyes. “So, little brother, whaddya think?”

“What do I think? I think we better get our buns out of here while we still got the option, big brother. I mean, here we are, we’re in a room that’s off limits and the first thing we find, we almost trip over it, is a body? I think we better get our buns out of here fast.”

“What about our dough?”

“Our dough? It never was our dough, pal. We were going to take it, remember, from somebody else. To teach the Big Guy a lesson is the reason you gave. Well, I’d say somebody’s already taken care of that for us and gave the Big Guy a lesson he’ll never forget.”

“Shows how dumb you are,” Zeke snorted. “He already forgot it. He’s dead.” Zeke’s face turned hard and stubborn then, not giving anything. “But I’ll just tell you somethin’, bro. I come here for that dough, an’ if it’s here in this room I’m gonna find it, unnerstand?”

“You’re gonna get us arrested for murder, that’s what you’re gonna do.”

“We didn’t kill nobody. And if the dough’s here, I want it. We’re gonna find it, pal.”

George felt a sick feeling creep through his gut. Oh, man, why did he keep letting this dope talk him into things?

But he wasn’t going to stand there and argue. No percentage in that. Instead he began pulling drawers open, rummaging, looking for anything resembling a night deposit bag, thinking if they were actually going to have to search the place to satisfy Zeke, then the best thing was to get it over and done with in a hell of a hurry.

Zeke’s big hand suddenly flagged him again.

“Shut up. You hear that?”

They stood stock still. After a moment, George could hear what Zeke was referring to, what sounded like a baritone voice droning in the woodwork somewhere. Turning his head to get a fix, he decided the sound was associated with a narrow closet door at one end of the room, the actual words being indistinguishable and coming at them in murmurs with long stretches of silence in between. Zeke went over and pressed a hairy ear to the door.

“Hey, bro, there’s some goon in here talkin’ to hisself.”

“Great, let him talk,” George said, with a glance at the body on the couch. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hang on. There’s the dough, remember? Maybe Closet Man knows where we can find it.” Frowning, he cautiously eased the door open.

It was a closet, all right. There were men’s clothes hanging in it. Three or four suits hanging there, a raincoat, lots of empty hangers. Also a short fat man, the fat man more or less hanging in the closet with his necktie turned back to front and knotted behind his head to the steel clothes bar. There was a small handgun stuffed under the bulge of his midriff, in his belt. He suddenly stopped muttering to himself, opened his eyes wider, and said in surprise, “Who the hell are you?”

Zeke reached out to take the gun away from him, then hesitated, the dope just in time remembering the dead guy on the couch. He took it with the tips of his fingers and dropped it on the floor.

“Us?” Zeke was surprised at the question. “We, uh...”

“We’re cops,” George announced.

“Yeah,” Zeke agreed, “yeah, that’s it. Cops.” Then he scratched his neck, obviously wondering what to say next, wondering what an actual cop might say, as if he didn’t know, as if he hadn’t heard his share of them in his time, the dumb arse, and then finally, “So I guess you’re under arrest.” He made a motion at George. “Hook him up, pal.”

George stood there shaking his head.

The little fat man glared back at them. His eyes, which had flown open when Zeke opened the door, now seemed to withdraw cautiously into his face. Or maybe what it was his head was swelling up from being tied to the bar. One or the other.

The fat man said, “What is this? You two ain’t cops. I can smell a cop. You couldn’t hook me up if you wanted to, you don’t even have any cuffs.”

“You... uh... didn’t bring cuffs?” Zeke asked George. George shook his head. “Well,” Zeke said, “that isn’t really a problem. We don’t need cuffs the way they got you hog-tied to that bar there, pal...”

Zeke was about to say more, but George figured he’d said enough. He reached past Zeke and gently closed the closet door on the guy.

“What’s going on here tonight?” he asked Zeke.

Zeke looked at him.

“I dunno what’s going on here tonight, bro. It was supposed to be a ordinary drop night for the loaners, just like I told you, the loaners coming in, the money bagged up. I don’t unnerstand it any more than you do.”

Suddenly there was one hell of a thumping. A racket they could hear out in the street. The guy in the closet kicking the door. Zeke pulled the door open and stepped on the guy’s foot, saying in a reasonable tone, “Don’t do that, okay?” the fat guy howling as Zeke closed the door on him again.

George stood thinking.

“Something just occurred to me. Maybe Ma was right. Maybe we’re not the only ones who knew what the Big Guy was up to in here, and maybe we’re not the only ones who planned a hit on him tonight.” He frowned. “That guy on the couch—” George nodded at the corpse “—what I’d like to know, is there any chance at all he could be the Big Guy, you think?”

“I dunno, bro.”

“You don’t have any idea what he looks like?”

Zeke looked doubtful. “Well. Like I told you. I never really seen him before, I only heard about him. But I guess it’s possible. I mean, I suppose he could be. I mean, if you’re expecting to find — you know — a big guy, well then...”

“You know what?” George said, suddenly realizing something. “We forgot to put the stockings over our heads.”

Zeke looked at him.

“Hell,” he said.

He opened the closet.

“Who are you, pal?”

The little fat guy was hopping up and down and making the coat hangers ring. “You busted my foot, you didn’t have to go an’ do that, you—”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a cop!” the fat guy snapped.

“You sure?”

“Why not? If you can be a cop, I can be a cop!”

“And the big stiff on the couch? Where does he fit in? Is he a cop, too? Or is he the owner of this place or just what?”

The fat guy didn’t seem to comprehend. He blinked his eyes a few times.

“Look. Whoever you guys are, untie me. Let me out of here, and then maybe I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Oh yeah?” Zeke said. “Hang on a second.”

He closed the door.

“Tell you what,” he said to George, “could be the closet man here really is a cop.” As George began raising his eyebrows at the suggestion, Zeke said quickly, “No, listen. I know what you’re gonna say. Cops always travel in twos, like nuns, but I dunno, I just kinda got this feelin’ about him.”

“What are you talking about?” George breathed. “If the guy is a cop—” he jerked his head at the closet door “—then why isn’t he telling us cop-type things? You know, hollering, reading us the riot act, and coming on really officiallike?”

“Maybe — I dunno — because he don’t want us to take him too seriously?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because he’s undercover. Or no, here’s what it is, he’s on the take. Listen. I think I know. What could of happened, he came here tonight to get his cut and walked into the middle of a hit. Or maybe,” Zeke suggested, getting into it now, “after the loaners left, he decided to lean on the Big Guy for more grease. And the Big Guy, which we see now lyin’ here with his toes up, he don’t like the idea, so Closet Man pops him.”

“You’ve got an overactive imagination,” George said.

“At least I got an imagination.”

“It doesn’t tell me how he got in the closet, though, does it?”

“Well, there coulda been other guys here, too, only they left.”

Zeke opened the closet door and they both took a good long look this time at the little fat man in the blue suit. They took a real good long look.

“If you really are a cop,” Zeke said, shaking his grizzled head at the fat man, “and if you’re really on the take, then I got to tell you, I’m disappointed. It kinda shakes a guy’s faith in law an’ order, pal. Faith in the good guys.”

“Are you gonna let me out of here?” the fat guy asked.

“Depends. You know what happened to the money, pal?”

“What money?”

“The money the loaners brought in tonight.”

“You know about that?”

“Sure, I know about that. I’m askin’ you, ain’t I?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know anything about it.”

“Now why did I think you were going to say that?”

“And why do I think you should mind your own business?”

Zeke took a patient, deep breath and looked at him. “Ain’t that necktie a little tight?” Peering closer at the knot. “I’d bet, I mean it looks to me that thing could tighten up even more when your legs start to give out in — say — five or six more hours.”

“Five or six hours! What’re you talking about?”

Zeke said to George, “He don’t know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“That’s too bad,” George said. “Yeah, that too bad.”

“What are you talking about?” George asked.

“What I’m talkin’ about, bro, is what’ll happen when we close this closet door on this guy, back the way we found it, an’ walk outa here an’ mind our own business like he told us to. He could be stuck in there — I don’t know — weeks.”

For the first time it looked as though the little fat man was going to break out in a sweat. He’d been remarkably contained up to this time, all things considered. But now his forehead wrinkled, his face got redder, and he shifted on his feet, making the coat hangers ring some more.

“Wait a minute! Fellas! Listen! Let’s not get in too big a hurry here—”

“Why would we get in a hurry,” Zeke said, “standin’ around here in a private office with a dead guy beside us on the couch. I dunno why that should make us wanna get in a hurry, do you?”

“Dead guy?” The fat man seemed puzzled. “You mean...”

“The Big Guy,” Zeke said, “is who I’m talkin’ about. Lying right here on the couch where somebody plugged him.” He hooded his eyes at the fat man. “I can see why you’d wanna be in a hurry, pal, this bein’ a messy situation for a cop on the take to be in, somebody gettin’ the drop on you an’ that stiff left lyin’ around.” Zeke lowered his voice. “Hey, you can tell me. How long you been on the take, anyway?”

“Me? Me on the take?” The little guy looked as if he was going to swell up even more and float right off the floor when Zeke said that. He danced around. “Me on the take?” he said. “Me?”

There was a lot going around in Bodan Tom’s head all of a sudden. Trying to cobble it all together. These two yo-yos — the younger one more reasonable, a not too bad-looking a guy, but the older one sloppy, unshaven, with boots on his feet that looked like they were worn down to forty-five degree angles at the sides, one of which he had stomped on Bodan Tom’s poor aching toes with — who were these men? Where had they come from? And what were they trying to tell him? That Funk, the big dope, was still here? That he’d staggered away and croaked out there on Bodan’s couch? Why did the big dumb cop have to go and do that for? And if he ever managed to get out of this closet, what the hell was Bodan going to do with him?

One thing he knew, he couldn’t depend on his kid brother bailing him out. No telling where that Romeo was. Bodan had to get unhitched from this goddamn clothes bar before some real cops showed up or he strangled to death.

“Okay,” he said, “whatever you say. You’re right, I’m a cop. And yeah, I’m on the take. That what you wanna hear? Now are you gonna cut me loose from this bar?”

“Whaddya think?” the sloppy one said, consulting his pal. “Should we cut him loose?” Then he said to Bodan, “One thing, though — you’re gonna hafta show us where the dough is stashed.”

“Deal,” Bodan said, wondering himself where in the hell the night deposit bag had got to. “Now you guys cut me down from here, okay?”

They undid the knot.

When the necktie went loose, Bodan’s legs began to tremble, and then shake, and then they gave out on him altogether, letting his pudgy body slump to the floor.

“We’re waitin’,” said the sloppy one.

They kept their eyes on Bodan as he dragged himself painfully across the floor to the desk. They didn’t escort Bodan. They didn’t move to see what he was reaching for. They really were amateurs. Bodan pulled open a bottom drawer and took out the Smith and Wesson .38 revolver, rolled away from the desk, and aimed it at them, thinking, that Funk — telling Bodan Tom he ought to get a bigger gun. What? Did he think a guy wearing a beautiful handmade suit like this was going to carry a weapon the size of a hair dryer under his arm?

“Oh, man,” the sloppy one said, looking at the gun, “didn’t you know he’d try something like this on us, bro? I mean, don’t you think you should of gone over there with him and helped him open that desk? Jeez!”

“That’s right. It’s my fault,” the younger one said. “You were standing right there closer, you could of gone with him, but it’s my fault.”

These two guys arguing. Couple of idiots.

“I don’t know what you guys should of done,” Bodan told them — boy, his legs ached — “but I know what you’re gonna do now. You’re gonna stand right there while I make a phone call. Then you’re gonna wait till a friend of mine gets here. Then you’re gonna go for a ride with that dummy lying there on the couch — just like in the movies — and when they find the three of you, it’s going to look like you got into one terrific argument and—”

Bodan caught only a glimpse of the squat shape stepping through the door into his peripheral vision, a shape that was blurred, its features distorted, before something collided with the side of his head, and it was funny, he couldn’t be certain, but he thought vaguely that the thing that connected with him could have been a purse...

George and Zeke got the little fat guy cinched up to the bar in the closet again, Zeke supporting the guy’s dead weight under the armpits while George took care of the knot. Zeke stood back panting with his pouchy face flushed as George shut the closet door. “Man, but that’s one heavy little goober, I’m tellin’ you that for nothin’.”

“Something new,” Ma said, “you doin’ somethin’ for nothin’. You never do nothin’ for nothin’. You’d want twenny dollars to show up at a funeral.”

“I’d pay twenny dollars to show up at your funeral,” Zeke growled, but keeping his voice low and muffled so Ma couldn’t quite hear. Talking up, he said, “The Closet Man there, I guess he isn’t a cop. He knew where that gun was. He must be the Big Guy.”

“Who’s the other one, then?” George asked.

Zeke bent over the couch and flipped the dead guy’s sports coat open. “Take a look.” George edged closer. There was a half-open thumb-break paddle holster on the hip of the big man’s thin dress belt, and a SIG P228 nestled in it. “Not police reg issue, that setup,” Zeke said, “but then I guess the guy wasn’t either.” He poked at some cuffs. “Nice set of Smiths.”

Ma stood by the desk, a square, mannish figure with features blurred by the fine mesh of the stocking she had pulled over her face. Her sweater was twisted off center, and her dress was rucked up at the side. She had one ghostly pale ankle showing where she’d pulled off one of her knee-highs so she could snug it down over her head.

“Ma,” George said, “you look terrible.”

“What he’s saying, you should maybe take the stocking off your face,” Zeke told her, “you look like something from Star Trek — I dunno — a Nylonian.”

“You’re the next generation, not me, God help us all,” Ma told him. But she pulled the nylon off. “So what’re we doin’ here?”

“Takin’ a last look around,” Zeke said.

“What’re we lookin’ for?”

“Never mind.”

“Suits me. If you’re gonna be like that, you can go an’ get stuffed.”

You couldn’t haul Zeke out of the place with a winch until he was ready, George knew. You had to stand back and let the guy go for it, there was nothing you could do. Old Zeke desperate to find that money now, looking everywhere. Looking in places he had already looked in, and then coming back and looking there again.

George suddenly noticed Ma was busy, too.

“What you doing there, Ma?”

“Just lookin’.”

On her knees with her big rear end jutting out, patting down the edges of the couch under the dead guy, jamming her hands under the cushions and going in deep, right up to the elbow.

“If Zeke don’t want my help, that’s his business. But the Lord helps those who help themselves, an’ I’ll just tell you somethin’. I found six bits already, in this sofa, which is prob’ly all I’m gonna get outa this deal, time you weasels get through screwin’ it up.” George noticed she’d already pulled a slipcover off one of the cushions and had it stuffed with loot, the green shade of the brass banker’s lamp from the desk sticking out, and some other bulges in there, filling it up.

Zeke turned around and realized it, too.

“Ma, we ain’t gonna take that stuff. You crazy? That’s a dead guy there. You see him? It’s nuts cartin’ all kinds of stuff away that might connect us with this place.”

She glared at him.

“This just in. You call me crazy one more time, I’ll pull your lips off. I notice you’re cartin’ something away — or you’re fixing to — if you ever find it, which I doubt.”

Listening to all this, George brought his hands up to his face and held them there. But only for a minute. There was an outbreak of noise downstairs. Somebody had come into the club. A voice yelling, “Bo! You up there, Bo? It’s Joseph, your favorite brother!”

Closet Man started hammering on the door again.

Moonlight gleamed on the chute of the incinerator, press-braked metal that dropped straight down the wall in a shaft at the rear of the building. Heading out the back way, they now found themselves outside on a structure that was like a long iron porch bolted to the brick like some sort of a fire escape, only it was being used more as a storage area, the main aisle practically choked with junk. Zeke going, “I just can’t figure it out. He must have some kinda secret hiding place for his dough in there. You know, like it could be he stashes it under a floorboard...”

“I’d like to stash you under a floorboard,” Ma said. “Nail you in there good.”

“Can we be quiet?” George was fed up with them. “There’s somebody in the building, for God’s sake. We aren’t out of the woods yet, and—”

There was a clunk from behind, then a gasp of pain. Ma stumbling into something. And then Ma cussing and grunting, and then brief silence followed by a tremendous crash in the alley below them.

“Goddamn barbecue,” Ma said. “You can’t have them things on a balcony, it’s against the fire regulations.”

It was too much. Ma hurling barbecues off balconies while George and Zeke were going out of their way to be quiet. Zeke whirled and tried to go for her. He tried to get past George, but George blocked him, George holding him back, Zeke yelling, “Lemme go! Are you gonna let me go?” And then Zeke stiffened in George’s arms, saying “Hey! Wait! Look! She brought that bag with her after all, damn it!” Turning, George saw it was true. Ma had her loot bag with her, ignoring their warnings. She’d been last to come out of the room, and they hadn’t seen what she was up to. “Gimme that!” Zeke yelled, lunging.

Zeke got a piece of the bag, jerked the whole thing out of Ma’s hands, and blundered away with it, kicking junk out of his path, oblivious to the noise — an old bike, a stack of Pepsi cases — it all went flying, Zeke pressing closer to the wall of the building and the yawning maw of the incinerator chute.

“See this, Ma? See this?” he hollered.

He slung the bag into the chute.

They heard it drop. Muffled thumpings, then far below a bang. And then silence.

They stood there a minute.

“You weasels owe me a lamp,” Ma told them.

“So there I was,” Ma was saying, “trapped in the goddamn can, I coulda been locked in there for weeks, I coulda starved to death for all you weasels cared. First they turned the light off on me! You never told me that! How they’d turn the light off on me? I must of panicked. Grabbed for the latch an’ that tiny little knob what locks the door broke off, an’ I goes, okay. This is it. Those two yahoos have really done it to me this time. If I get outa here alive, I’m gonna go straight to church an’ thank God for sparing me, then go home an’ strangle those nogood weasels—”

They were safe at home now, in Ma’s kitchen.

“So how’d you get out?” George asked, cutting her off right there.

“How’d I get out? How’d I get out? How d’you think I got out, for the love of all that’s holy. I hadda climb out, that’s how I got out! Just like I said might happen. Go over the wall. An’ I’m panicking, right? I got a stocking pulled over my face in case the Rottweiler man shows up, an’ if that ain’t bad enough, it’s so dark in there you can’t see your hand in front of your face—”

“Why would you want to, Ma? See your hand in front of your face?”

“It’s an expression! An expression! Don’t you even know a civilized expression when you hear one?”

“I guess I never understood that particular one, that’s all.” Then George said, “So what you were saying, before you got locked in the can, you had to leave the other room early because they wouldn’t serve you. They said they were closing up. So what happened to my twenty dollars then, Ma?”

Ma looked away.

“What twenny dollars?”

“Ma,” George said, “you know what twenty dollars. The twenty I gave you so you could buy yourself an appetizer.”

“You didn’t give me no twenny, you bum.”

“But, Ma, I did, I—”

Ma raising her voice at him now.

“You sure as hell did not! What’re you tryin’ to pull on me anyway?”

At the time George had been trying to get Ma to cooperate, but he’d known Ma would try something like this, Ma never remembering when you gave her money, only remembering when you didn’t give her money. Her own weird form of selective memory or something.

He looked to Zeke for support, but Zeke wasn’t saying much. The minute they’d walked into the house, the guy making a beeline for the kitchen and Ma’s Beefeater forty-ouncer, helping himself to two strong quick ones which he tossed back right there on the spot, then pouring a taller, settling-in-for-a-period-of-grief sort of drink and dropping down into a chair and letting his head sag forward. He’d been sitting there like that for a while, and now he finally spoke out loud.

“Goddamn, it coulda worked.”

“Only it didn’t,” Ma reminded him.

“It coulda worked perfectly,” Zeke said, ignoring her, “If the Big Guy — and Closet Man — if they hadn’t decided to mix it up. An’ if the money’d been there where it was s’posed to be. An’ if somebody hadn’t of come in the front door that Ma was supposed to be watching. An’ if George hadda listened to me in the first place.”

“And if pigs could fly,” Ma said, “we could get bacon with shotguns.”

“Maybe,” George said, “what the real problem was, you should of scoped the place out properly like you said you were going to do.”

“I did scope it out. I scoped it out plenty. How was I s’posed to know all that other stuff was gonna happen? I don’t have a crystal ball, you know. I don’t have a psychic mind.”

“You don’t have any kind of a mind,” Ma said. “All you got is a soft squishy spot where your brain used to be.”

There was one saving grace from George’s perspective — at least the gin was working. Zeke letting Ma reach in past his guard and take her shots, and not responding or coming on the counterattack right away. But George had to agree with Ma this time. She was right about Zeke’s mind. It was still back at the Gas Station. Part of it, anyway. Which didn’t leave him a whole lot to work with.

“A bit of luck’s all I needed. The money was there. I know it was there. Where else would it be? But I’m not psychic. I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t seem to find that goddamn bag.”

“If you’d looked everywhere,” Ma pointed out to him, “you’d of found it, wouldn’t you?” She squinched up her eyes at him. “What’d the thing look like?”

“Canvas, Ma,” George told her. “Most likely a canvas sack with lettering on the sides and some kind of a lock on the thing.”

“Oh,” Ma said, nodding. “That.”

There was a silence. Zeke slowly lifted his head and fixed his eyes on her.

“Whaddya mean ‘that’?”

“Well,” Ma answered, “there was a bag looked like that. I seen it.”

“What?”

Zeke coming to full attention there in his chair.

“Sure. You’d of seen it, too, if you’d looked. It was after I found that nice lamp, some nice coasters, a clock. Then, when I was feelin’ down the cushions to try an’ pick out the loose change, that’s when I seen it. A canvas bag. It was under the guy on the couch. Partway scrunched. I guess he fell on it.”

Zeke’s mouth opened a few times with a dry clicking sound while he worked out the ramifications of this. Which in his case took a certain amount of time. No hurrying him up. When he got like this, it was like trying to get through to someone in the afterworld, you felt like you had to link hands and bum incense or something to encourage the dope. Finally a tiny inner switch must have toggled because Zeke put down his drink and stood up.

“Bro,” he said heavily, “if Ma ain’t stringin’ us a line, we just gotta take a chance an’ go back there, bro. You wait in the car, that’s all you gotta do, an’ I’ll deke in back in that place through a window for half a sec, an’...”

“But naturally it isn’t there now,” Ma said.

This last bit of intelligence hit Zeke hard. Ma tagging this statement on the end of it all got him up on the tips of his toes with his grizzled jaw clenched and his eyes on fire.

“What’re you talkin’ about, Ma?”

“If you’d shut up for ten seconds maybe you’d find out, wouldn’t you? Are you ready to listen? Fine. I seen the bag there — only of course I didn’t know what it was you were lookin’ for exactly ’cause you wouldn’t tell me nothing, remember? Keepin’ it to yourself, some big hairy secret. One corner of a canvas bag stickin’ outa the couch. So... I took it.”

Zeke looked like the victim of a stun grenade. Dense as he was, even he could tell where this was leading. Not getting ready to holler any more. Only dazed. Almost whispering this time.

“You took the night deposit bag, Ma?”

“That’s right.”

“You took the night deposit out of the room, an’ you...”

“Whatever it was,” Ma said, “some bag, I took it. But I couldn’t open it. Like George says, it was locked. So what I did, I put it in the sack with the rest of the stuff that I’d collected. In that slipcover bag.”

Zeke stood there for a few more seconds, then slowly crumbled. All the fight went out of him. His hopes, his expectations, all of those positive emotions seemed to sink down into him while a heavy glaze spread slowly over his eyes, this guy remembering the way he’d refused to tell Ma what he was looking for, remembering the crash of the barbecue hitting the lane, remembering how he had behaved toward her, finally losing it and tearing the bulging slipcover out of Ma’s hands and whacking it into the chute.

Ma said, “See, nobody would tell me anything. It’s really dumb. When you stop an’ think about it, it was me found the bag you were lookin’ for. An’ it was me saved you from the little fat jahoobie, too.”

Finally Zeke managed to whisper something. Directing his comment at George.

“I’m holdin’ you personally responsible for this.”

“Yeah,” George said, “I thought you might.”

“Personally responsible. I told you from day one. I told you from the word go. I warned you this would happen.”

“At least,” Ma said, “you can’t be mad at me.” Smug, and satisfied, and pleased with herself. “Next time,” she said, “maybe you should have some faith. I’m your ma, after all. You weasels.”