“Prison?”
“He stole money from a bank. A lot of money. Oh, he didn’t hold them up with a gun or anything like that. He worked there — he just stole some bonds.”
“Like embezzlement, you mean.”
“I don’t know. He just stole them, you know? Anyway he’s served his sentence and he’s free now, and I don’t imagine I’ll ever have to see him again.”
“Sounds as if it’s just as well. You’ve got your own life to lead anyway. Oh, by the way, we’re invited to dinner at the Ibbetsons’ Friday night — Andy’s just finished a survey for one of the supermarket chains and I guess the bonus is burning a hole in his pocket. Anyway Andy and Phyl want to take us to El Padrino Friday. I said I’d have to check with you first.”
“I’d love to.” And she loved, too, the way he’d changed the subject so gently. She looked at the clock. “I’d better put the schnitzel on. It’s a peace offering — for standing you up last night.”
But he wouldn’t let go of her hand, wouldn’t let her rise. “The crazy thing is, Marie, I missed you.”
“I don’t honestly know why on earth you should. I ‘m nobody’s vision of a heartthrob.”
“Well, I’m hardly the most scintillating character in the world myself. But we care about each other. That means a lot.”
“Don’t be soppy.” She went into the kitchen, calling back over her shoulder, “Two cutlets or three? They’re pretty small.”
They probably had a make on the license plates of the car he was driving; that tall cop in the airport parking lot had a got a good look at it. So Ned didn’t use it Monday morning. He left it parked in a slot behind the motel and took a cab into Studio City. He carried his suitcase through a building and out across Ventura to a bus stop, waited fifteen minutes — the service sure wasn’t getting any better around here — and finally boarded a bus, still watching everything at once. If he’d seen anything suspicious he’d have aborted and tried another way, but nobody was watching him that he could see; there hadn’t been anyone sitting in arty of the parked cars near the bus stop and no one got on the bus with him.
He rode twenty minutes to Van Nuys Boulevard, phoned another taxi from there, and got off several blocks from his destination. He walked the rest of the way, into a small branch bank just west of the San Diego Freeway on Wilshire Boulevard.
He wondered if she’d ever looked inside the envelope. There was no sign it had been unsealed. Probably it had never occurred to her to snoop. She was a naive simp.
It had taken him months to prepare it all. Before he’d stolen the bonds. The false passport had been the hardest part. He’d known a guy from the army who’d put him in touch with another guy — he suspected they had some kind of narcotics deal but he didn’t ask and didn’t want to know — and finally he’d got the passport from a thin little guy in Tijuana.
He’d spent all those months establishing the Arnold Creber identity, right down to the Social Security number and the credit cards and the New Mexico driver’s license, and the little savings account in this nondescript Santa Monica bank.
And the safe-deposit box. Arnold Creber’s safe-deposit box. Containing $700,000 in negotiable, highly portable bearer bonds.
They didn’t even half fill the suitcase. Hardly any weight at all when he carried it back out to the waiting taxi he’d phoned for, got in, and said, “Burbank. I’ll tell you where when we get there.” And turned to watch the road behind.
Nobody followed him.
Ned clasped the suitcase on his lap and smiled, thinking about baccarat tables, haute cuisine, and mademoiselles in bikinis.
He changed taxis near the Burbank Studios — a two-block walk, a phone call, a ten-minute wait for another cab in a fast-food dump — and got off on a side street and walked a while, and was back in the motel room by noon. Plenty of time left.
He redistributed the bonds in his luggage, packed most of the clothes Marie had bought for him, got into a cheap suit — it wasn’t a bad fit, really, but her penuriousness irritated him as usual — put the toy revolver in his belt, and stood before the mirror adjusting the blond wig over his half-bald head.
It didn’t go with his eyebrows, he realized, nor with the dark beard stubble. So he shaved as closely as he’d ever shaved in his life and used the nail scissors from his dop kit to chop his eyebrows down to nearly nothing; then he dusted them with talc. What the hell, they’d grow back in time. Small enough price to pay.
The blond guy in the mirror was a stranger, sure enough. He grinned.
He circled the clunker at a distance. Nobody was watching it. He drove it around the block. Still no surveillance. So he got the suitcases out of the motel room, stowed them in the car, and drove away.
An hour later he was boarding a PSA flight at Burbank Airport, San Diego bound.
The security detector hadn’t sniffed out the toy revolver because it was made of plastic, like all the cheap junk they sold these days. When Ned was a kid even a toy gun used to be made out of real metal, but no more.
Well, never mind. After today he’d be able to buy a platinum gun if he wanted one. But at least the toy looked real. Remember how John Dillinger broke out of prison with a gun he’d carved out of a bar of soap and blackened with soot and ashes.
At San Diego he went along to the Aeronaves counter and got out his ticket, from Marie’s envelope, and the passport. Arnold Creber, citizen of the world. He flashed a confident smile at the dark girl and she smiled right back, but that was when he caught a sidewise glimpse of somebody coming up fast, and he turned to see the two men striding toward him: a uniformed cop and the tall guy with all the brown hair.
The uniformed cop said, “Excuse me. Edward Marks? Like to see you a minute.” The paper in his hand had to be a warrant.
“My name’s not Marks. You got me confused with somebody. My name’s Creber.”
“Sure. Arnold Creber,” said the tall guy with the brown hair. “Just come along, all right’ It won’t take but a minute.” And the tall guy smiled slowly.
Nobody ever said Ned Marks doesn’t think fast. So fast it took the uniformed cop completely by surprise when Ned whipped out the revolver, leveled it at the tall guy, and darted his left hand against the uniformed cop’s throat. He whipped around behind the cop and jammed the revolver against his collar.
“Back off,” he snarled at the tall guy. “Now!”
He heard a quick intake of breath — the airline girl.
But the tall guy only kept smiling that slow infuriating smile. He calmly stepped forward and plucked the gun from his hand.
“You shouldn’t play with toys, Ned.”
“How... how the hell did you know?”
“We’ve got a warrant to search you and your luggage for stolen bonds.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Just a private cop, name of Thurston. My company works for the insurance company you hooked for seven hundred thousand dollars.”
“Nobody followed me here,” Ned said. “Nobody. How could you’ve found me?”
Thurston only answered that one with his slow smile.
Thurston brought the receipt into the office and dropped it on Andy Ibbetson’s desk. “The San Diego police will keep the evidence until they’ve sent Marks to Chino for transporting stolen property. Then we get it back.”
“About time.” Andy pushed the receipt toward his In pile. “Nice job. You can buy a round-the-world vacation on the bonus for this one.”
“For two?”
“You that serious about her?”
“I am. But she may not feel the same way about me when she finds out I read the shopping list in her handbag.”