I won’t blame my wife, I won’t blame my children, and I won’t even blame myself. I am the victim, perhaps, of nothing more willful or malicious than a natural law, as though I’d been struck down by a slow lightning bolt.
Be that as it may, the end result of these inexorable economics was my presence here for the third time in a grimy neighborhood tavern with the stout man who called himself Sylvan Kelso, whose assurances rang with such a tinny click, that I was constantly on the verge of throwing over the whole thing, rushing home, and struggling along without the forty thousand dollars.
Well. I went over the points once more in my mind: Old bills. Small denominations. “Oh, yes,” I said. “One thing more. The most important of all.”
Kelso smiled like drawings of the moon. “Merely state it, Mr. Stilmont,” he murmured.
“No counterfeits,” I said. “I’ve heard of that stunt, don’t think I haven’t, people being paid off in counterfeit money smuggled into the country. I worked in the Treasury Department three years and believe me you can’t pass any phony money on me.” My having worked in the Treasury Department was true, but it hardly made me an expert on counterfeit bills; I’d been a file clerk, nothing more. So far as I know, I’ve never so much as seen a counterfeit bill in all my life.
But I was relying on Kelso’s not knowing these details, and apparently he did not, for he smiled more moonlike than ever and said, “Not a chance of it, my dear Stilmont, not the slightest chance. That was a German trick anyway, we wouldn’t do anything of that sort.”
“I just want you to know,” I said, “that I’m keeping my eyes open.”
“As you certainly should,” he declared, thumping his fat palm on the table. “A cautious man is a delight to do business with.”
“All right, then,” I said. “Now, what about payment?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said, lowering his voice, leaning toward me, “when you leave work, walk to the south-east corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street. Near the corner, on the 12th Street side, there will be parked a black taxicab with red lettering. The numeral seven will appear directly beneath the handle of the right front door. The taxi will be driven by a woman wearing an unusual hat.”
“All taxis in Washington,” I said, overstating it slightly, “are driven by women wearing unusual hats.”
“Then concentrate on the numeral seven,” he said. “You will enter this taxi, you will say ‘Dumbarton House, please,’ and the taxi will start off, with you in it.”
I said, “Dumbarton House? Where’s Dumbarton House?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You won’t be going there. On the floor in back you will find an attaché case containing the first half-payment and the camera, plus a typewritten sheet of directions for the camera’s use. You will, taking care not to be seen by passersby, assure yourself of the genuineness of the money, and that it appears in the proper amount, and then you will read the camera instructions until you are certain you can operate the camera correctly. You will then hand the instruction sheet to the driver, and tell her where you wish to be driven.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all for tomorrow,” he said. “The next day, Friday, you will photograph the proper documents as agreed. Once again, after you leave work for the day, you will find the same taxicab waiting in the same place as before. You will enter it, bringing both the camera and the attaché case in which you received your first payment. Now empty, of course. You will be driven to a place where the film may be verified, and then you will take your second payment and go on with your life as though nothing at all had occurred.”
“I want more detail about that last part,” I said. “Where I turn over the camera and get my second payment.”
“Certainly,” he said. “As soon as we order another round of drinks. Barkeep! Two more vodka martinis.”
Well. We got our fresh drinks, and we went over the details of the transaction until I was satisfied, or at least prepared to settle for what I had. Then, understandably nervous and tense, I made my way to my home in Bethesda, downed some straight bourbon in the kitchen, and got into bed beside my sleeping wife. Since I had, in the last few years, developed the habit of spending an occasional evening at a local tavern, there was no excuse necessary; had my wife awakened, my breath would have been sufficient indication of my recent whereabouts.
I slept badly, awaking time after time from terrible dreams in which monsters chased me while I ran through walls of molasses, and at the breakfast table had to listen to a recital of unpaid bills. I drove to work as usual, left my car in its usual slot at the parking garage on E Street, and arrived at work with trembling hands and a splitting headache. All the gins of a hangover, one might say, except that I hadn’t drunk enough the night before to justify such strong symptoms. No, it wasn’t alcohol, it was worry and fear and doubt and shame and shaky determination.
A man does what he can with what he has. All I had of any value was one fairly unimportant national secret. That it was important enough to someone to earn me forty thousand dollars was my very good fortune, and I told myself again and again I’d be a fool to pass this by. Just once, in my lifetime, just once.
An apparently chance encounter had led me into all this in the first place, and of course it was not by chance, but a recital of its appearance and subsequent reality seems unnecessary here. Kelso contacted me, that is sufficient, and found in me someone willing to listen.
That day stretched like a taut rubber band, along which I crawled toward four-thirty an eternity away. Three times my duties took me near the cabinet in which the documents were filed. Harry, the archive guard, told me an unfunny joke about a bellydancer and an eel. We had known one another’s faces for years.
Four-thirty, at long last. I walked to Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street, found the cab, boarded it, was driven aimlessly around Washington while I checked and counted the money — all here, all old bills, all so beautiful to the eye and the hand — and while I familiarized myself with the camera. This camera gave the appearance of a cigarette lighter. It had to be held directly above the flat document, on which a strong light was to shine. The camera should be ten to twelve inches above the document. And so on.
“I’m done,” I said at last to the woman cabdriver in her unusual hat; berries and leaves, on black straw. “Take me to Universal Parking Garage at E Street.”
“The instruction sheet,” she said.
“Oh. Sorry.” I handed it to her, and she drove me to my car.
By the time I got home, the attaché case was safely stashed in the trunk. Late that night, after my wife had gone to sleep, I went out to the garage and transferred the cash to my coffee cans. For several years I have saved Maxwell House coffee cans, piling them up on a shelf above my workbench, using a few of them to store nails and washers and whatnot, vaguely convinced I’ll be using the others for something eventually. Well, now was that eventually. Into the coffee cans went the twenty thousand dollars, and back into the trunk went the empty attaché case.
The actual photographing of the documents was simplicity itself. I took the documents away to my office — Harry told me a racial joke — switched my desk lamp on, and took the pictures in quick succession, five of them. The documents were merely pages of figures, tabulations, specifications, dry as dirt and no doubt meaningless to most people. Essentially meaningless to me as well, although necessary to me from time to time in connection with my administrative duties.
The tiny camera, full of treasonous film, seemed hot in my trouser pocket, branding my thigh. All afternoon I kept holding my watch to my ear, unable to believe it hadn’t stopped. Was it only, was it only, was it only…?