Larry said to her, “Zusanette, I think you had better tell us where you got all this money.”
“I found it,” she said defiantly. “You can’t do anything to me if I simply found it. Anybody can find money. Finders keepers and losers…”
“But if it’s counterfeit,” Steve interrupted dryly, “it might also be, finders weepers.”
“Where did you find it, Zusanette?” Larry said gently.
She tightened her lips and the trembling of her chin disappeared. “I… I can’t tell you that. But it’s not counterfeit. Daddy… my father, said it was as good as any money the government prints.”
“That it is.” Steve’s voice was sour. “But it’s still counterfeit, which makes it very illegal indeed to spend, Miss Self.”
She looked from one of them to the other, not clear about her position. She said to Larry, “You mean it’s not real money?”
He kept his tone disarming, but shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Zusanette. Now, tell us, where did you find it?”
“I can’t. I promised.”
“I see. Then you don’t know to whom it originally belonged?”
“It didn’t belong to anybody.”
Steve Hackett made with a disbelieving whistle. He was taking the part of the tough, suspicious cop; Larry the part of the understanding, sympathetic officer, trying to give the suspect a break.
Susan Self turned quickly on Steve. “Well, it didn’t. You don’t even know.”
Larry said, “I think she’s telling the truth, Steve. Give her a chance. She’s playing fair.” He looked back at the girl and frowned his puzzlement. “But all money belongs to somebody, doesn’t it?”
She had them now. She said superiorly, “Not necessarily to somebody. It can belong to, like, an organization.”
Steve grunted scepticism. “I think we ought to arrest her,” he said.
Larry held up a hand, his face registering opposition. “I’ll handle this,” he said sharply. “Zusanette is doing everything she can to cooperate.” He turned back to the girl. “Now, the question is, what organization did this money belong to?”
She looked triumphantly at Steve Hackett. “It belonged to the Movement.”
They both looked at her.
Steve said finally, “What movement?”
She pouted in thought. “That’s the only name they call it.”
“Who’s they?” Steve snapped nastily.
“I… I don’t know.”
Larry said, “Well, you already told us your father was a member, Zusanette.”
Her eyes went wide. “I did? I shouldn’t have said that.” But she evidently took him at his word.
Larry said encouragingly, “We might as well go on. Who else is a member of this Movement besides your father?”
She shifted in her chair uncomfortably. “I don’t know any of their names.”
Steve looked down at the school pass he still held in his hands. He said to Larry, “I’d better make a phone call.”
“Yeah, obviously,” Larry said.
Steve left.
Larry said to the girl, “Don’t worry about him, Zusanette. Now then, this Movement. That’s kind of a funny name, isn’t it? What does it mean?”
She was evidently glad that the less than handsome Steve Hackett had left the office. Her words flowed more freely. “Well, Daddy says they call it the Movement rather than a revolution.”
An ice cube manifested itself in the stomach of Lawrence Woolford.
V
She was saying, “Because people get conditioned, like, to words. Like revolution. Everybody is against the word because they all think of killing and everything, and Daddy says that there doesn’t have to be any shooting or killing or anything like that at all. It just means a fundamental change in society. And, Daddy says, take the word propaganda. Everybody’s got to thinking that it automatically means lies, but it doesn’t at all. It just means, like, the arguments you use to convince people that what you stand for is right and it might be lies or not. And, Daddy says, take the word socialism. So many people have the wrong idea of what it means that the socialists ought to scrap the word and start using something else to mean what they stand for.”
Larry said gently, “Your father is a socialist?”
“Oh, no.”
He nodded in understanding. “Oh, a Communist, eh?”
Susan Self was indignant. “Daddy thinks the Communists are strictly awful, really weird.”
Steve Hackett came back into the office, obviously less than happy. He said to Larry, “I sent a couple of the boys out to pick him up in a jet-helio.”
Susan was on her feet, a hand to mouth. “You mean my father! You’re going to arrest him!”
Larry said soothingly. “Sit down, Zusanette. There’s a lot of things about this that I’m sure your father can explain.” He said to Steve, “She tells me that the money belonged to a Movement. A revolutionary Movement which doesn’t use the term revolutionary because people react unfavorably to that word. It’s not Commie.”
Susan said indignantly, “It’s American, not anything foreign!”
Steve growled. “Let’s get back to the money. What’s this movement doing with a lot of counterfeit bills and where did you find them?”
She evidently figured she’d gone too far now to make a stand. “It’s not Daddy’s fault,” she told them. “He took me to headquarters twice.”
“Where’s headquarters?” Larry said, trying to keep his voice soothing. They were going to wind this up and he could get back to his vacation before the day was out.
She frowned. “Well, I don’t know, really. Daddy was awfully silly about it. He tied his handkerchief around my eyes near the end. But the others complained about me anyway, and Daddy got awfully mad and said something about the young people of the country participating in their emancipation and all, but the others got mad too and said there wasn’t any kind of help I could do around headquarters anyway, and I’d be better off in school. Everybody got awfully mad, but after the second time Daddy promised not to take me to headquarters any more.”
“And where did you find the money, Zusanette?” Larry said.
“At headquarters. There’s tons and tons of it there.”
Larry cleared his throat and said, “When you say tons and tons, you mean a great deal of it, eh?”
She was proudly defiant. “I mean tons and tons. A ton is two thousand pounds.”
“Now look, Zusanette,” Larry said reasonably. “I don’t know exactly how much money weighs, not exactly, but let’s say a pound would be, say, a thousand bills.” He took a pencil up from the desk and scribbled on a pad before him. “A pound of fifties would be $50,000. Then if you multiplied that by 2,000 pounds to make a ton, you’d have $100,000,000. And you say there’s tons and tons?”
“And that’s just the fifties,” Susan said triumphantly. “So you can see the two little packages I picked up aren’t really important at all. It’s just like I found them.”
“I don’t think there’d be anything like a thousand bills in a pound,” Steve said weakly.
Larry said, “How much other money is there? I mean besides the fifties?”
“Oh, piles. Whole rooms. Rooms after rooms. And hundred dollar bills, and twenties, and fives and tens.”
Larry said, “Look Zusanette, everything makes it obvious that you are in no position to be telling us whoppers. This whole story doesn’t make sense, does it?”
Her mouth tightened. “I’m not going to say anything more until Daddy gets here anyway,” she said.
Which was when the phone rang.
The screen lit up and LaVerne Polk said, “There’s a call for Steve Hackett, Larry.”
Larry pushed the phone screen around so that Steve could look into it. LaVerne was faded off and was replaced by a stranger in uniform. Steve said, “Yeah?”