Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

11

THE DAMN BAG didn’t want to open. I stood in the Vasacapa corridor in the Dombey basement, wrestling with the gray canvas bag full of money, and gradually my new self-image as a master criminal crumbled into ashes at my feet. Some crook; I couldn’t steal my way into a canvas bag.

In my defense, I must say it was a tough bag to crack. Made of heavy canvas, it had a reinforced mouth that closed with a zipper, which in turn was attached by a small gleaming metal lock that would only open with a key. I fussed and fidgeted with the damn thing, listening to the coins clinking and the paper rustling in there, until finally I noticed a nail tip jutting through the side wall of the corridor, where Vasacapa had put up his paneling. Since this side of the wall hadn’t been finished, it was the back of the paneling I was looking at. Something had been fastened to the wall over there, with a nail that poked all the way through, extending a full inch into the corridor.

So I gashed the bag to death. I kept scraping it against the nail until I’d gnawed a hole in it, and then forced and pried and gouged until the hole was big enough for me to shake the contents out onto the carpet.

Coins came tumbling out first, quarters and dimes and nickels bounding around like playful fish on the silent carpet, and then a thick wad of paper held together with a red rubber band.

The paper was money: bills, half a dozen checks, and a deposit slip. The checks were made out to Turk’s Bar & Grill, and it was likely that Turk, or his representative, had been treating himself to a few on the house tonight, which was why he’d fallen for my sign-and-milk box routine. Although as I remembered it, that fellow I’d read about in the paper several years ago had caught all sorts of citizens when he’d done the same thing. A businessman late at night, tired, impatient to be home, distracted by the events of his day, sees a note and something that looks vaguely like a strongbox, and just drops in the day’s receipts. In fact, the only reason that former practitioner of this dodge had gotten himself arrested was because he’d kept doing it too often. A mistake I wouldn’t repeat; this had been my first felony, and would be my last.

It is bad companions, by God; our mothers were right.

The deposit slip told me how much I’d collected in cash. One hundred thirty-two dollars in bills, eighteen dollars and forty cents in change. One hundred fifty dollars and forty cents.

Yes, sir.

The cash all went into my pockets, except for a dime that Max Nolan found in the carpet two weeks later. The checks and deposit slip went back into the canvas bag, and I went back into the cold to unload them.

I walked a block, found a garbage can next to somebody’s house, and stuffed the bag in amid the corn flakes boxes. Then, jingling pleasantly, warm despite the cold, I marched back to prison.