The Cocktail Waitress

17

We got to my house, and I asked him in, of course. He dropped into the chair I usually sat in, staring out the window, the way I so often did. “… Something wrong?” I asked, after a while.

“No, not a thing.”

But then, five minutes later: “I think.”

And then: “Joan, I’m worried, and don’t even know about what. But suddenly, it’s all become too damned easy.”

“… Well?” I asked after a moment or two. “The whole trouble was, they didn’t know where to find him. Now they do. It takes care of everything.”

After a long time, he said: “Jim Lacey’s nobody’s saint, but he’s nobody’s fool either. Being crooked does not also mean being stupid. So Jim Lacey knows his wife saw the tickets and knows what he’s up to. So he knows she could do her best to louse him. So what does he do about it?”

“… You asking me?”

“Myself. I just don’t happen to know.”

But pretty soon he began snapping his fingers. “What I would do about it would be to go out to that airport, bringing the girlfriend along, and then separate from her, so as not to be spotted as a couple. Then I’d put myself somewhere, maybe topside in the lunchroom, where I could keep an eye on that waiting room, to see everyone that comes in. So here come the Maryland officers-in uniform, perhaps, but even if not, I know them personally from when I built the station.”

“… O.K.? What then?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“No, but I don’t feel relieved anymore.”

“Well, I certainly don’t. O.K., I see them come in, and right away, I slip out. I slip out into a cab, and beat it to the bus station. There I wait for the girl-who may have slipped out too, and be waiting at the cab stand. So we go by bus to Miami, where I take the same flight the next day. So I forfeit the price of two tickets. So? It’s better than going to prison.”

“I don’t feel relieved at all.”

“I’m sorry if I upset you.”

“But what do we do?”

“You say we in that tone of voice, I have to think of something.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean. Don’t you?”

I felt weak and queer and smothered, and am not at all sure that I answered.

By now he was tramping around, showing every sign of excitement, and then suddenly snapped his fingers again, telling me very excitedly: “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” I waited, and he went on, kneeling beside my chair: “We need a hand, from someone else with the power to arrest and an interest in doing so, someone he won’t recognize. We can’t use the Airport Police, on account that they’re Federal and take no part in local bail jumps. However, I think we have an alternative. He’s skipping with fifty grand, and it’s fairly certain he hasn’t paid any tax on the money, which means IRS will move in, if we just give them the tip. They can claim help from the Airport Police, as they’re Federal too. Come on, we’re going to Wheaton.”

We used his car again, and once more were in one of those offices with counters in front, desks in back, and girls in short skirts chewing gum. I pictured all three being ordered in bulk from something like the Sears Catalog. At one of the desks was a man, who came and asked what we wanted. Tom let me talk and I did, being as brief as I could, yet at the same time explaining myself, who I was, and how I’d gone Lacey’s bond. Then I said: “Where you come in is: He’s skipping with fifty grand, fifty thousand dollars, or so I’m reliably informed, and if he’s skipping to Nassau, we can bet he hasn’t paid any tax, and could be he doesn’t intend to. Sir, does that possibility interest the IRS?”

“Lady, are you being funny?”

“You mean IRS doesn’t care?”

“I mean it does-and how.”

“Then what does it do about it? And what do I do about it?”

“Hold everything-got to consult.”

He went to his desk, picked up the phone and pressed buttons. Pretty soon another man was there. They whispered a minute, then spoke to a girl, who got up and went through a door. In a bit she came out with a card, which the men took from her and studied. Then they both came to the counter. “O.K.,” the first man said. “This is Mr. Schwartz, who will act with me in this matter. My name is Christopher, and we’ve looked Mr. Lacey up-he filed a return last year, but paid so small a tax we checked him out. We didn’t turn up a great deal-there’s nothing now pending against him. But skipping to Nassau, with fifty grand in his pocket, sets up a risk for us that we simply can’t ignore.”

“Yes, Mr. Christopher, but what-?”

“I’m coming to it, Mrs. Medford. We collar him at the airport, count the cash he has on him, figure his tax from the tables, and impound it.”

“In the waiting room, or where?”

“In the Airport Police office. It’s downstairs from the main waiting room.”

“And after you’ve taken the money?”

“That’s all, we’re done. We give a receipt, of course. If he doesn’t like it he sues us in court.”

“You mean he’s free to go?”

“We have no objection, none at all.”

“But what I’m interested in is the Maryland Police-having him held long enough for them to come in and get him.”

“I see your point, but we can’t help you directly. However, if the Maryland Police got there while we’re working him over, if they knew where to come, to the Airport Police office-”

“You mean I should call them about it?”

“If we’re all in sync, we don’t actually work together, but the result will be the same.”

“I see. I see. Then-thank you.”

“Wait a minute, not so fast.”

He and Mr. Schwartz whispered, and then Mr. Schwartz asked: “You know this man, Mrs. Medford?”

“I met him once, yes.”

“You know his lady friend?”

“Not even by name, no. But Tom here, he’s seen her. And he knows Lacey as well, much better than I do.”

“All right, then.” To Tom: “You can finger him for us, and her. She’s important, because the possibility that we would be there must have occurred to him, and letting her handle the briefcase would be a simple way out-if we get him, she can slip away.”

“He’d have to trust her for that,” Tom said.

“Not at all,” said Mr. Schwartz, grinning, but the way a cat grins at a mouse. “He just has to hand her the bag and tell her to take it onto the plane for him. He doesn’t have to say what’s in it.”

“That’s why we need you there,” Mr. Christopher insisted. “If he doesn’t have the case we can grab her, and impound the tax that way.”

I said: “But then you’ll let the girl go? I made a promise to the person who told us where to find him, that we’d keep the girl out of it.”

“Why not? All we want is the money.”

Then, we began “setting it up,” as Mr. Christopher called it, how we would do the next day. They were concerned that if he saw Tom, Jim Lacey I’m talking about, he’d do what Tom had said, blow, but fast, and take the girl and the money with him. I was for Tom’s wearing dark glasses, but he smacked it out at once. “You’re practically advertising you don’t want to be recognized, if you dress like that indoors. It’s all Jim would need to take a second look.” It was Christopher who came up with the idea of making Tom older, by having him put on a gray wig and darken the lines on his face with pencil and wear a jacket one size larger than he normally took. We had a look in the yellow book, and found a wig place right there in Wheaton that served men as well as women. Then he and I drove over there, though Mr. Schwartz cautioned us: “Be sure and check in again, so I know, so the both of us know, what you’re going to look like.”

The wig place was called Helga of Sweden, and the salesman was awfully nice. I was jolted the least little bit that a simple gray wig that looked as we wanted it to would cost thirty dollars, but Tom insisted he couldn’t pull off what he was supposed to without it, and I put up the money. I had eye-liner in my bag, and I used it to put some wrinkles across Tom’s forehead and deepen the creases on either side of his mouth. Suddenly he was sixty years old-“except for your walk,” said the salesman, laughing. “You still walk like a young man.”

“He means put some lead in your tail,” I said.

“This way?” he asked, making a stab at middle-age sag.

“That’s it.”

Passing me close, he whispered, “Maybe I should have done this sooner, it seems to be the age of man you prefer,” and I pretended not to have heard. It was the only word he’d spoken all day that hailed back to our standoff the night before, but it showed his feelings were still on a boil, even if he’d put a lid over the pot.

On the way back to the IRS office, I shelled out another twenty dollars for a loose-fitting jacket and five more for a pair of eyeglasses with plain glass in the frames. I let Tom go in first, alone, and at least from across the room Mr. Christopher didn’t know him. “Yes, sir?” he asked, very polite, coming to the counter. “What can we do for you?”

“All we want is the money,” Tom told him, and Mr. Christopher’s eyes opened wide. Then he called Mr. Schwartz over, and though Schwartz saw through it, he nodded seriously and pronounced the disguise “good enough.” We lined it out then, what we would do the next morning at the airport-how Tom would take a seat in front of United Airlines, open a magazine, start to read, and peep over the top. They would take positions at either side of the room, and the moment Tom saw either Mr. Lacey or the girl, he’d get up, walk past, and close the magazine as he went by. If Lacey was with the woman it would all be very simple. If not, it might get complicated. I, meanwhile, would be in the back of the room watching from a distance, dark glasses having been deemed sufficient cover for me, as first of all they are less unusual on women indoors than men and second of all, as Tom put it, “he only saw you once, for half an hour, at midnight in a bar after being let out of jail, and he spent most of the time looking at the gap in your blouse anyway, not your face.” And the girl, of course, had never seen me at all.

With this all set, Tom and I started to go, but Mr. Schwartz reminded me I’d better call Marlboro and let Deputy Harrison know how things stood, so he could come to the Airport Police office at once when he arrived, and not search the waiting room with his men and possibly get spotted by “the quarry,” as they termed Lacey.