Was it at last four-thirty? Thank God.
The same cab was there again, but this time as I entered it, carrying the empty attaché case, I discovered another passenger already occupying the far side of the rear seat. As I hesitated, he said, “Not to worry, Mr. Stilmont. I am merely to accompany you.”
He didn’t look dangerous. Quite the reverse, he was a pale and slender lad, the kind brought to mind by the word ‘effete.’ I slid in beside him and said, “Where’s the money?”
“On the seat beside our driver,” he said. “You can put that case on the floor there.”
I put the case on the floor, leaned forward, and saw an identical case on the front seat. I said, “I assume I can look at it now.”
“If I might have the camera,” he said.
“I’m glad to get rid of it.” I took it from my pocket and handed it to him. Then — we were in motion by now, darting through Washington traffic — I took the new case onto my lap, and determined that it contained twenty thousand dollars in genuine, old, small bills.
Wonderful, wonderful.
We stopped in front of an elderly boarding house on 8th Street NE. “Wait here,” said the young man, and left the cab, and went into the building.
In a way, I wanted to make conversation with the woman driver, merely to have the reassurance of the sound of voices, but in another way I felt as though I didn’t want to talk to anyone again.
I’d been over it and over it, rationalized it to the last detail. This information I was selling, this would help the opponents, the enemy, the other side — whoever and whatever they were — but only to a small extent, and surely to a degree easily counterbalanced by similar spy networks in their camp. What I had sold was not decisive. I would feel guilty about it the rest of my life, no doubt, but it would be a guilt of manageable size.
The woman, for her part, sat stolid and unmoving, gazing straight ahead through the windshield, her hands resting easily on the steering wheel.
After ten minutes or so, the young man appeared in the doorway, came trotting down the stairs, smiled at me, said to the woman, “Fine,” and went walking away.
The woman said, “Where to?”
“Universal Parking Garage,” I said.
That night I filled the rest of my coffee cans. On Saturday I purchased a new set of tires for my car, paying cash, and also bought a power saw. On Sunday, I took the family to a drive-in. Monday morning I phoned into the office that I was sick, and went shopping. I bought two suits, some other clothing, a decent fishing rod, a pair of sunglasses, and a case of good scotch. I deposited three hundred dollars in our checking account, went home, and explained to my wife I’d won a boxing pool in the office. This was to be my only splurge. From now on, my extra money would be inserted into my income ten, twenty, thirty dollars at a time. It would make the difference, all the difference, give us just that little extra to get us over the hump of our economic bind.
I was beginning to feel better than I had in years.
Tuesday evening they came and arrested me. State police, not Federal. They wouldn’t say a word to me, wouldn’t explain a thing, until they had me in an office surrounded by serious looking men in plain clothes. Then one of the — gray-haired, trim, a pipe smoker — said, “You seem to have come into bit of money all of a sudden, Mr. Stilmont.”
“Money?” I said.
He picked up some bills from the desk; old, small denominations. “You passed these bills Saturday,” he said, “at Ben Franklin Shopping Center. And these you deposited in your personal checking account just yesterday.”
“Counterfeit,” I said.
He said, “I beg your pardon?”
“They did it to me anyway,” I said. “That’s what I was afraid of all the time, counterfeit bills. But I thought, old bills, used bills, how could they be counterfeit? Did you get them, too? Just so you got them, too.”
He said, “I’m not entirely sure I understand, Mr. Stilmont.”
I said, “Those bills. They’re counterfeit, right? Just as I thought they would. That’s how you got onto me.”
“These bills,” he said, holding them up so I could see them, “are perfectly valid. Excellent bills.”
I said, “But—”
“These bills,” he said, “were part of the two hundred thousand dollar haul in the armored car robbery in Baltimore last Wednesday. The numbers of those bills were known, Mr. Stilmont.” He leaned toward me. “Now,” he said, “let’s talk about the rest of the money, Mr. Stilmont.”
The Spoils System
The “supine credulity” of man is said to be his most charming chracteristic; certainly the proponent of the “fast sell” must find it so.
It was in the catacombish club car of the Phoebe Snow, that crack passenger express that roars across the Southern Tier of the Empire State with the speed of an income tax refund, that I most recently met Judd Dooley, a man with a strong sense of family. He is named for his infamous grandfather, the Judd Dooley celebrated in song and wanted poster, the man who, with the aid of patent medicine, gold watch, and lost silver mine stock, opened the great Midwest to the rapid patter, the fast shuffle, and the quick getaway back around the tum of the century, a man sadly neglected by the television industry, which owes him a great deal.
The contemporary Judd Dooley is continuing the family tradition in a ceaseless barrage of non-violent outrages from Kennebunkport to Mexicali, and is usually good for a reminiscence or two on his latest depredations against a public which has grown no less puerile since Grandpa’s time.
Of course, there have been subtle differences in both the customer and the approach since Grandpa Dooley last foisted a genuine gold brick on a fatuous farmer in the bunco belt of the great Midwest. Judd tells me that today’s farmer is a much different cookie from the bucolic boob who supported his grandfather, and a much tougher cookie to crumble. But, says Judd, with a light of reverence in his eye, Grandpa would have felt right at home in today’s suburbia, where the modern housewife controls the income and the modern con man controls the outgo.
“I have just come from Cleveland,” Judd told me, as we sat over Scotch on the rocks while the Phoebe Snow struggled out of Binghamton, “a town with suburbs that would have made Grandpa cry with delight. I was plying the Free Home Demonstration gizmo through a split-level development when—”
“Free Home Demonstration gizmo? I don’t think I know it.”
“You don’t? It’s a little gem — the quickest fast-fin dodge since the invention of Something For Nothing. All it requires is a pocketful of forms, an identification card, an ingratiating smile and ten minutes of rapid chatter. The brand name involved is Electro-Tex Limited, and if the name sounds familiar, you’re half hooked already. The merchandise is a combination washer-dryer-television-radio-popup toaster-oven that retails for a stratospheric sum I won’t even mention. But the company is about to commence an intensive advertising campaign, built around the inane concept of the satisfied customer. Therefore, I have been sent around by the company to selected housewives to offer them a Free Home Demonstration, for a trial six week period, during which time they may have the Electro-Tex Push-Button Dew-It-Awl Wonder Whiz in their home, absolutely free, on the condition that we may use their name and a statement of satisfaction from them in our advertising.”
“I imagine Mrs. America is normally interested by this time,” I said.