John D. MacDonald
Who’s the Blonde?
It was well after seven when he asked them again if he could call Helen. It had become an almost automatic question on Tom Weldon’s part, and each time he had asked there had been neither permission nor denial — just an infuriating obtuseness, as though he had spoken in Arabic, or had been a silly child asking for the moon.
His throat felt dry as he said again, “Please, could I call my wife? She’ll be worried.”
At the moment, there were three of them in the bank president’s office, three of them looking at him with those coldly amused eyes. There was Durand, from the police; Elvinard, one of the bank examiners; and Vic Reisher, the chief teller.
This time Reisher looked at Durand. Durand nodded and gestured toward the telephone with a thick thumb. “On a night plug, isn’t it? Go ahead, Weldon.”
Tom reached over and pulled the telephone toward him. He heard the dial tone and dialed his home number. It rang twice before a man answered. “Who is this?” Tom said. “Who’s talking?”
“Who are you, friend?”
“This is Weldon. Is this my home? I’m positive I dialed the right number.”
The voice sounded amused. “Hold it, friend. I’ll put your wife on the line.”
He could tell from Helen’s voice that she had been crying. “Tom? Oh, Tom, what’s happened?”
“Who is that man? What’s he doing there?”
“He’s a policeman. A detective. There are two of them. They wouldn’t let me try to phone you. Oh, Tom, I’ve been frantic. What’s it all about?”
“It’s a mistake, dear. Some kind of a... terrible mistake.”
There were often mistakes when it came time to balance up at three o’clock. Sometimes there had been a stupid transposition of figures. There were formulae to apply which would pinpoint the error. Today had been different, very different. The guards had locked the door at three o’clock, standing nearby to let the last few customers out. It hadn’t been a particularly tough day. There had been time, off and on, for Tom, teller number three, to kid around with Jud Fergol in the second cage at his right and Arthur Maldrick in cage four at his left.
On tough days there was the knowledge of being a working team, a fast team operating under the guidance of wry Vic Reisher. Jud Fergol was a thin-faced, quiet man about Tom’s age, who handled money with an almost dazzling manual dexterity. Arthur Maldrick, on the other side of Tom, was younger, but he was one of those big, plodding, ponderous young men who seem to have been born middle-aged. Arthur’s extracurricular passion was tree peonies, and his rather heavy-handed sense of humor did not extend to that topic.
This was one of those days when you knew the balancing up would be routine, and you’d be home earlier than usual. Tom had worked quickly, hoping that neither Jud Fergol nor Arthur Maldrick had made mistakes. Vic Reisher clung to the old tradition of keeping all tellers on hand until the balancing was complete and perfect.
Tom could hear the quick whip-slap of currency in Jud’s agile fingers and the tone-deaf humming of Arthur. His own error was so large that he grinned at it, suspecting a simple arithmetic error. He quickly ran another tape — and another. He began to sweat. Arthur had finished and gone with Vic to the vault to lock up his drawer. Jud had finished and was waiting for Vic.
“Trouble, Tom? Find it fast. I’ve got a lawn to mow.”
Tom nodded, and kept struggling with the figures. Vic and Jud went into the vault to lock up Jud’s drawer. They came back and stood behind the wire door of Tom’s cage, chatting and smoking.
“Can you hurry it up, Tom?” Vic asked.
“You better help me, Vic.”
Vic raised one eyebrow and came through the wire door as Tom unlatched it on the inside. “How big is your error?”
“Uh — four thousand, Vic.”
In the silence of the bank floor the words carried clearly. Tom heard Jud’s gasp, glanced quickly at Arthur’s puzzled face. He felt the tension as he stood aside and watched Vic go through the procedure with the ease of years of practice. Vic ran his tapes, then straightened up slowly. His eyes were cool. “Your cash is short an even four thousand, Tom.”
He had been a part of the team, and now he was standing on the outside and they were all looking at him.
“What have you done, Tom?” Jud asked softly. “Why did you do it?”
“But I... I haven’t—”
“I can’t sit on this, Tom,” Vic said, his voice as emotionless as a comptometer. “There’s a crew of examiners in town. They’ve been checking Federal. I’ll get in touch with them. I’m sorry, Jud, Arthur. You’ll have to stay around. Better phone your homes.”
“Vic, could I phone?”
“I’d rather you stand right where you are, please.”
And that had been the beginning of a nightmare — to find yourself unaccountably on the wrong side of the fence from the rest of the team. Deny it until your mouth was dry and there was a rasp in your throat, but they still kept looking at you in that certain, unmistakable way.
His hand was damp on the telephone. “Don’t worry about it, Helen. Everything will be all right.”
“They... they say you took money.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Of course not!” she said hotly. And she added, in a more uncertain tone, “They have a warrant or something, and I had to let them go through all your things — your desk and bureau and everything.”
“Just don’t worry about it, please, honey. Kids okay?”
“I fed them early and put them to bed. But you know how they are. They sort of sense it when anything is wrong. And these men keep asking me all sorts of questions.”
“Answer everything they ask. I don’t have to tell you that. They’re off on the wrong tangent. I’ll explain when I see you. Don’t worry if they don’t let me come home.”
“I’m... I’m so glad you called.”
“I tried to call before. They wouldn’t let me.”
“I’ll be waiting for you, darling. They’ll have to let you come home.”
Tom hung up and leaned back in the straight chair. “There are men at the house, and they’ve upset my wife. I resent that.” He tried to summon up righteous anger, but the hours of anger and indignation had drained him.
Durand was a stocky, nervous, bright-eyed man with thick white hands that were in constant motion, plucking at his suit, ruffling his hair, pulling at his ear lobes.
“Those men,” said Durand. “Harkness and Lutz. They’re okay. Nothing rough about them. You want to get your wife off the hook, you tell us about the girl friend.”
Tom looked dully down at his hands and said, as he had said so many times before, “I never saw the girl before in my life. Never.”
“Okay,” said Durand. “We take it again. Today’s Wednesday — a slow day. It’s a quarter after two, and the bank closes at three. There you are. Window three. There’s a window vacant, and you got one customer. But she comes right to your window and waits. A dish like that, people notice her. A real blondie. One of those tight-skirt, go-to-hell blondies. Fergol at Window Two hears her call you Tom, and then she talks so quiet he can’t hear her. But he sees you lean forward to listen.”
“I never saw her before in my life. I’ve told you that. I can’t help what she called me. My name is on the window, you know. Thomas D. Weldon. She called me Tom, and it startled me. Then she talked so low I had to lean forward to hear her.”
“Why don’t you tell us what she actually said to you?”
“She said, ‘Tom, if I gave you a fifty, could I get fifty nice crisp new ones?’ She looked and acted funny. I had my foot on the button, ready to let the alarm go. She slid the fifty under the grille. I took a good look at it, just in case. It was okay. I gave her the ones, and she jammed them into her purse and turned and went out fast.”