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.”

“She went out fast because you gave her four thousand bucks, Weldon. And she was in a big hurry to get away. What does she have on you, boy?”

“I never saw her before in my life. It’s the truth. I swear it.”

Vic Reisher said, “Tom, damn it, this isn’t going to do any good.”

Tom stared at his friend. “You believe I gave her that money, don’t you?”

Vic was a gaunt man with shaggy hair, deep-set eyes and a wry smile. He shrugged helplessly, “What else can—”

“Let me try again, Mr. Reisher,” Elvinard, the examiner, said. He had a face like a small, neat grave marker. His voice was metallic. “Now look, Weldon. Listen carefully. You got your drawer out of the vault this morning and you were checked out by Mr. Reisher, everything in order. You worked from ten until twelve thirty and then took an hour for lunch. When you went to lunch, you and Mr. Reisher locked your drawer with the two keys necessary. When you came back, you both unlocked it. No one had a chance to tamper with your cash on hand. At all times when the cash was — shall we say — available, you were there in your cage. Yet, when the doors closed at three o’clock you seemed to be having trouble balancing out. Mr. Reisher came over to you, and you said you seemed to be making some mistake. He helped you check. And you were four thousand dollars short.

“Now, let us suppose for a moment that you are telling the truth about that young lady who spoke to you by name. We will assume that she was a stranger, and that you gave her fifty ones. All right, then. If she didn’t get the money, Mr. Weldon, exactly how did it disappear and where did it go?”

Tom braced his elbows on his knees, the heels of his hands hard against his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said hopelessly.

Durand said, “We’re going to find out. The more work it makes for us, the more trouble it means for you. Open up, and we’ll try to give you every break in the book. Maybe we can get a recovery on the funds. Maybe you can draw a suspended sentence. Who knows? But the starting place is for you to come clean, boy.” His voice turned wheedling, confidential. “A lot of nice guys get taken over the jumps by a blondie. Come on, boy. What’s she got on you? Hell, we know you’ve been playing around.”

Tom felt the return of dull anger. He straightened up. “I explained all that to you. I was doing you a favor by being frank with you. I told you that I’ve been sort of restless lately, the last six months. I guess. Vic told you about me telling him that Helen and I were scrapping. I guess every married couple goes through times like that. It’s — hard to live on the pay. It makes a strain. You know what I mean. So it gets on your nerves, with prices going up all the time, and a couple of kids. I walked out a couple of times and went to a neighborhood beer joint. Tige’s Grill. Just a few beers. Ask Al, the bartender. No women. No blondes. Just a few beers to take the strain off.”

Durand had been out of the room several times in the past three hours. He grinned in an unpleasant way and took a notebook out of his pocket. “The bartender is Albert Kelling, and he knows you by name. He states that to the best of his recollection you were in there on a Friday night three weeks ago and that you went over to one of the booths and engaged in conversation with a woman about thirty years of age, dark hair, and a younger woman who was a blonde. Albert Kelling stated that he had never seen either of the women before, and they have not been in since. He is willing to make a formal statement to that effect, and to the effect that you left said Tige’s Grill accompanied by the two women.”

Tom tried to smile in a confident way. He was aware of the trembling of his hands. “That’s plain silly! I knew that dark-haired girl in high school. She remembered my name, but I couldn’t remember hers. Sure, I spoke to them. Who wouldn’t? Her friend was younger and blonde, but she didn’t look anything like the girl who came into the bank. And I walked out the door with them, yes. We talked for a couple of minutes on the sidewalk; then they went one way and I went the other way.”

“What was this woman’s name?”

“I tell you I can’t remember. I’m no good about names. I never have been.”

“Where does she live?”

“She didn’t say.”

“And she didn’t refresh your memory and give you her name?”

“You know how it is when you can’t remember a name. You try to cover up. She introduced her friend. I think it was Mary something. Or Marie, maybe.”

“Can you describe the blonde friend? This Marie?”

“Well, about twenty-five. Medium height. Sort of thin, I think.”

“So you picked up a blonde in a bar and got more than you bargained for.”

“I... I know how it sounds to you. When I tell you, everything sounds so weak. But believe me. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. I’ve got a good record. Ask Vic.”

Durand said heavily, “You had a good record, young man.” He looked at his watch. “Go on home, Weldon. I advise you to talk it over with your wife. Harkness told me over the phone she seems like a good, sound person. Come clean with her, Weldon. I advise it. Tell her everything, and I’m sure she’ll tell you to do the right thing.”

Tom was startled. “I can go home?”

“Go ahead. Will you let him out, please. Mr. Reisher? Don’t try to leave town. Weldon. We’ll pick you up when we’ve got everything we need.”

They went down the dark staircase to the side entrance. Vic started to unlock the door and then turned. “How could you do it, Tom? You knew that if you were in a jam, all you had to do was come to me and tell me the story.”

“If you don’t believe me, who else is going to? Just unlock the damn’ door.”

Vic stood still for a few moments, then unlocked the door. He didn’t speak. Tom heard it close crisply behind him. He went back to the parking lot behind the bank and started the six-year-old sedan and drove slowly home. Twice he stopped for red lights and then didn’t start up again until the cars behind him honked indignantly. He lived in the top half of a two-family house. As he turned into the narrow driveway between the house and the one next door, his headlights swept across the police cruiser parked at the curb. Oh, fine! Nice questions for the kids. “Tommy, what were the police at your house for? What’s your daddy done?”

It gave him a feeling of acute helplessness. You went along thinking that if somebody ever tried to persecute you, mess up your life, kick you around, you were a citizen and you could call the cops. Get a lawyer. Get an injunction or something. But who did you yell to when it was the forces of law and order sitting on your chest, making your wife cry, ruining your hopes and your chances and your future?

None of it made sense. He had the crazy feeling that maybe he had been hypnotized somehow into thinking four thousand dollars were fifty ones. He could see the blonde, teetering hastily away from his teller’s cage, hurrying out of the bank, holding that shiny blue pocketbook. She was the kind men looked at, the kind they would remember. So all you remembered was the ripe figure and the wide, damp mouth and nothing else.

He went slowly up the stairs, and the door opened off the living room, and a tough-faced young man in a pale suit looked at him and said. “Weldon. Know you from your picture on the bureau. Welcome home.”

Tom ignored him and went on down the hall. Helen had heard the man and she came, half running. He held her close and felt the trembling of her body. Her eyes were red and puffed, but she wasn’t crying.

He kissed her. “It’s okay. It’s a mistake.”

Over her shoulder, he saw a paunchy young man come out of the kitchen with a glass of milk in his hand. His look of relaxation, of being at home, infuriated Tom. He said, “Why don’t you two get the hell out of here?”

The paunchy young man drained the glass and set it on the bookcase. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “On our way, Weldon. This very minute.” He came over and held his hand out to Helen. She took it shyly. He said, “Sorry we had to bother you this way, Mrs. Weldon, but you know how those things are.” He gave Tom a bleak look. “You got you a good lady here, friend. Come on, Willy.”

They clumped heavily down the stairs. Tom heard one of them chuckle at something the other one said as they went out the front door. He walked to the front windows and watched the car move slowly down the street.

“They’ve got no right,” Tom said in a thick voice.

“It’s something they had to do. They explained that. Darling, have you had anything at all to eat?”

“No, but I couldn’t eat anything.”

“You must. You look so dreadful, so tired. Scrambled eggs, maybe. Bacon?”

“I... guess so.”

“Come out to the kitchen and tell me about all this while I fix it, honey. What makes them think you could do anything — crooked?”

“My furtive expression, I guess.” He sat at the kitchen table and lighted a cigarette. He said, “I’ll tell you the facts. It’s what they’re going by. In a crazy way, I don’t blame them.”

It didn’t take long to tell her. The eggs were done and she was putting them on the plate when he finished. Frowning, she walked to the table and sat down.

“And Vic doesn’t believe you?”

“No.”

She said fiercely, “When they find out you didn’t do it, Tom, neither one of us will ever speak to him again.”

He felt the sting in his eyes. “I half expected you to wonder whether I—”

“Tom!”

“Well, I have been kind of lousy lately — yammering at you, going off in my little private huff.”

“But I know you. I know you couldn’t steal.”

“And I know I didn’t. So where did the money go? Evaporation? Hundreds and fifties. Wrapped. A little pack. Easy to hide. They had me strip, you know. And went through my locker.” His voice had gone shrill, harsh.

“Please, Tom. Please. Don’t do that to yourself. You have to think, you know. You didn’t take the money. You didn’t give it to that girl. Somebody took it. It didn’t walk away.”

“We went over that during my — interview. There are a lot of slick tricks. Every teller knows that. Bent pins and adhesive tape and chewing gum on the end of a cane. It gets to be second nature to be conscious of the money, to make sure it’s well back from the cage opening. There’s always a slicker who’s willing to try it.”

“Can you remember any other strangers who came to your window?”

“We had the usual last-minute rush, from quarter of three until closing. There were several strangers. Nothing special about them. One with a traveler’s check. One at the wrong window. Others, probably. I can’t remember. You see, I didn’t know then that it was going to be important to remember.”

“And you didn’t notice that the stack of bills was gone until you started to balance out for the day?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“When was the last time you did any housekeeping behind your window?”

“Around two thirty, I think. If the money had been gone then, I think I would have noticed it. Just noticed the physical lack of it.”

“Was the whole stack gone?”

“One whole stack.”

Helen and Tom sat up and went over it again and again. He was sick with emotional fatigue. Finally Helen said, “We’re not making sense any more. We’ve got to sleep, darling.”

He thought he would be unable to sleep. But sleep came over him like a black tide in flood. When he woke up, it was morning, and Helen was up. He heard the kids chattering in the kitchen. He knew he should go out and speak to them, go out with a morning smile and a confident manner. But somehow he couldn’t quite manage it. He waited until he heard Helen at the door with them, giving Tommy the usual morning admonition not to let his sister cross the streets without holding her hand. He heard the staccato sound of their feet on the wooden stairs, heard the front door slam lustily.

When he went out to breakfast, his high-school yearbook was beside his glass of orange juice. He frowned at it and then suddenly grinned at Helen. “You’re a smart kid.”

“I thought if you could find her you could tell them her name, and then they could find out you didn’t lie.”

He sat there at the breakfast table and went through all the pictures. He could not find her among the graduates. Concealing his sense of dismay, acting confident for Helen’s sake, he turned to the group pictures in the back, pictures that had been taken during the school year.

“Come here,” he said. “This one. Right here.”

“Are you absolutely certain, dear?”

“Let me see. The names are down here. Second row. Third from the left. One, two, here it is. Martha Dolvac.”

He phoned police headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Durand. There was a long wait after he gave his name. “Lieutenant? This is Tom Weldon.”

“Did your wife give you the right steer? Ready to talk?”

“I haven’t got any confession, if that’s what you mean. I want to give you a name. The dark-haired woman in the bar. Martha Dolvac. Maybe you could trace her from the Briggs High School records.”

“If you didn’t make up the name.”

“I’ve got a picture of her here. Out of my yearbook. I think I remember that she was a junior when I was a senior. Will you check it?”

“Sure. And suppose it nails it a little tighter, Weldon?”

“It won’t,” Tom said, trying to make his voice sound confident. He hoped that it did. “Will you let me know?”

“You want to come in this morning and give us the straight story?”

“You’ve had the straight story, Lieutenant.”

Tom hung up quickly, the palms of his hands sweaty. Even if he straightened out the distorted version of that conversation at Tige’s Grill, it didn’t solve how the money disappeared.

He took a sheet of white paper and a ruler and made a scale drawing of his cage, looking down at it from above. After the years he had spent in the cage, he could remember every detail of it. It was roughly six feet by five feet. On the window side, where he faced the public, it was five feet across. The wall was eight feet high, with the bronze grille set into it. There was a three-and-a-half-inch gap between the bottom of the window and the counter, but the grille could be unlatched from the inside and swung outward to permit the passage of bulky items. Inside his cubicle there was a counter on each side of him, with his cash drawer under the counter on his right. He usually stacked the bills on the counter above the cash drawer. The change machine was between the stacked currency and the barred window. The sides of his cubicle, of wire mesh in a three-quarter-inch diamond pattern, were about six feet high.

At the rear of his cage was a wire door which could only be opened from the inside. He remembered the days when the front wall, between the windows, had been of wood. It had given the tellers too much of a closed-in feeling, so it had been changed to heavy, shatterproof plate glass.

On his detailed sketch he marked the location of the stack of bills which had disappeared. It had been, he remembered, a stack of wrapped packets, with a rubber band encircling the stack.

Helen stood beside him and examined the drawing. “We’ll say the money was there at two thirty?”

“I can’t be sure of that. I just think it was. It could have been gone.”

“Could it have been gone before the girl came in?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Was anybody in your cage between the time she was in and when the bank closed?”

“No, Helen. I’m positive of that.”

“Jud Fergol is here, at window two. And Arthur Maldrick on the other side of you. They didn’t see anything?”

“Nothing. Jud heard that girl call me Tom, but then she talked too low for him to hear what she said.”

“Did she seem nervous?”

“Just kind of — odd. I thought she was maybe a little crazy.”

“I... I just can’t understand it, Tom.” “Neither can anyone else.”

“They can’t send you to prison, can they?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I think they let me go so they could follow me and see if I got in touch with that blonde, or she with me. I know that money didn’t go through the window. I know that.”

“And your door was not opened. There’s only one other place. Over the walls. They say women aren’t logical. That’s the only other place it could go!”

“That isn’t being logical. That’s being simple-minded. Somebody twelve feet tall reached over and picked it up.” He flushed. “Damn it, Helen, you know better than to try to tell me that.”

The doorbell rang. It was Harkness and Lutz. It was two in the afternoon. They took him to Durand’s office. Elvinard was there.

“I’ll give you this,” Durand said. “It checked out. She got married, and she lives on West Pershing. Her name is Mrs. Henry Votronic. She remembers the evening very well. She backs you up. Her friend is named Marie Gold-fine. We questioned Marie separately. She told the same story. The guards took a look at Marie. Too thin, they say, to be our friend. Or should I say your friend?”

“If I wasn’t lying about that—”

“It doesn’t mean you couldn’t have been lying about everything else. You just had a break. Who’s the blonde?”

“I didn’t give her the money. I didn’t take it myself.”

Durand gave him a look of disgust. He leaned back in the chair and cracked his knuckles. “You got any theories?”

Tom flushed. “My wife says if it didn’t go through the window or through the door, it had to go over the wall.”

“Nonsense!” Elvinard said in his sharp, metallic voice. “I’ve seen a lot of slickers in action. They haven’t developed any methods of hoisting money over an eight-foot wall between your cage and the bank floor. You’re wasting our time, Weldon.”

“Maybe,” said Durand slowly, “if everybody’s attention was attracted some other place— I read up on one deal where an accomplice sets a sort of accidental fire in one of the wastebaskets out on the floor, and then his buddy with one of those collapsible fishing gaffs lifts a package out of a teller’s window while the guy is watching the fire.”

“We’ve been over that,” Elvinard explained impatiently. “There was no incident of that sort. The only odd thing noticed in the bank yesterday afternoon was the blonde young lady. There was no... ah... diversionary attempt.” He coughed in a dry way. “Weldon, this isn’t a big theft. We’re more interested in the money than in a successful prosecution. Produce the four thousand, or tell us where we can get it, and I can almost guarantee you a suspended sentence.”

“And if I can’t?”

Elvinard leaned forward. “I’ll see that you get a prison sentence. And once you get out, we’ll still be looking for that money, and for the blonde.”

Something was nibbling at the back of Tom’s mind. Some memory. Something ludicrous. He didn’t answer.

“Well?” said Elvinard.

“Please shut up a minute,” Tom said patiently. No diversionary attempt. Over the wall. What constituted a diversionary attempt? Something that would focus all eyes on one specific object. There had been laughter as the girl reached the door. Something had happened to make both the tellers and the customers laugh. He remembered seeing the irate face of a vice-president who glared at the unseemly sound. And Helen had said the money had to go over the wall.

He said, to Elvinard, “Go away for a while. I want to talk to the lieutenant.”

“I certainly will not go—”

“Humor the guy, humor the guy,” Durand said. Elvinard stalked out and shut the door. “What’s on your mind?” Durand asked Tom.

“Lieutenant, that girl had high heels and a tight skirt, and she set those heels down hard. They made a lot of racket. She was hurrying. And when she was ten feet away from my window, somebody whistled. You know, one of those wolf whistles.”

“So?”

Tom stood up, too nervous to stay sitting down. “It made me think. When that whistle came, everybody looked at her. I guess she was the only woman on the bank floor anyway. And they laughed when she got to the door.”

“Make sense, will you?”

“Don’t you see it? That whistle did it. It made everybody look at her. Just like they’d look at a fire in a wastebasket. I don’t like to say this. I know who whistled. It came from my right. It was Jud Fergol, and I remember now thinking that it wasn’t like him at all. It was a funny thing for him to do.”

Durand laced his fingers at the back of his neck. “Weldon, any bank job puts the heat on the local cops, and it brings in a lot of help. The FBI has been on this, you know. You’ve got an appointment with them a little later on. Judson Fergol, Arthur Maldrick, Victor Reisher — fine-tooth combs on all of them. Okay, so Fergol whistled. Sometimes a blonde will make a sedate-type guy forget where he is. Judson Fergol is a very sober citizen. To bed at ten. No booze. No gambling. No ladies. Does it match?”

“Not exactly. Vic told me three months ago he was worried about Jud. He said Jud always chewed mints after lunch. One day he forgot them. Vic sent him home. He was afraid one of the vice-presidents might smell Jud’s breath.”

Durand closed his eyes for long seconds. He was immobile. For once, the restless white hands didn’t move. He opened his eyes. “You interest me strangely. Your wife said the dough had to go over the wall, eh?”

“Yes, but I don’t see—”

“Maybe she’s a smart girl.”

“What are you going to do?”

Durand smiled in an exceedingly unpleasant way. “Take Mr. Fergol’s life apart, just for the kicks. Like we did yours. Know we vacuumed your car? Checked the ash tray? Went over your clothes? The face powder we got matched your wife’s. The lipstick we got off a dirty shirt was your wife’s brand. Same with lipstick on the butts in the car ash tray. A guy thinks he’s smart, you know, destroying match covers, parking-lot stubs, love notes. He forgets you can identify one blonde hair, vacuum face powder, run a spectroscopic analysis of lipstick. Get the cops looking for the ‘other woman,’ and they’re worse than any wife could think of being. That was the only thing about you that bothered me. Couldn’t find evidence of any outside fun. Go on home. I’m going to cancel your appointment for now.”

Sunday afternoon in the bank: shades drawn on the doors, autumn sun slanting in the high windows. Durand said, “Okay, Mr. Weldon. Go on into your cage and shut the door behind you. You watching this, Mr. Fergol?”

“I’m watching it with interest,” Jud said, his thin face white, “but I’m afraid it doesn’t mean very much to me, Lieutenant.” Harkness and Lutz were there, and Vic Reisher, and several almost dapper young FBI men, and some others Tom wasn’t able to identify.

Durand went into the adjoining cage, Jud Fergol’s cage, teller number two. The men moved to where they could see him. Durand said, “Okay, Weldon, put that package of ones where the big bills were. Fine. Right there. Now make like you’re working. Fine. Now turn back and look at the bills. Look okay?”

Tom looked at the money. “Yes, I can’t see—”

“Fine. Now, Lutz, you be the blonde.” Lutz put his hand on his hip and swayed up to the window. “Don’t clown it!” Durand said sharply. “Weldon, act as though you’re making change. Okay. Now, Lutz, turn around and walk fast toward the main doors. Set your heels down. Keep watching him, Tom.”

Tom watched. There was a prolonged shrill whistle.

“Now,” said Durand, “turn around slow and take another look at the money.”

Tom turned around and gasped. It had completely disappeared. It was gone. He looked at Jud Fergol. He saw the sweat beaded on the man’s upper lip. Funny how you could work beside a man and never... “How did you do that!” Tom demanded.

Durand smiled. “Like your smart little wife said, Weldon. Over the wall. A while ago I stretched, casual-like, and when my hand was over the edge of the wire fence — and it’s only six feet high in here, you know — I let some nylon monofilament fishing line fall down on your side, right where that money is. It’s leader material, and it’s two-pound test, and it’s camouflaged. Hell, you can hardly see it when you know it’s there. On your end was a trout hook. Nothing on my end. I just let it hang down in here.

“When Lutz was standing at your window, I stuck two fingers through the wire grille and hooked the trout hook onto the rubber band. Right after I whistled. I hoisted away. The money dropped on my side. Every man, on that day the blonde was here, was watching that tight skirt and that walk. I shoved the money out of sight, just like Fergol did.”

“It’s crazy!” Jud said much too loudly. “I never did a thing like that.”

“The guy where you bought the leader material identified you from a picture. Your wife showed us where you keep your fishhooks. In fact, this is one of yours. When we told her about powder and lipstick that wasn’t hers, she stopped kidding us and told us about you sneaking out in the middle of the night too often. So where is she, Fergol, and what’s her name?”

Fergol seemed to dwindle as Tom watched him. He looked through them all, looked beyond them to some far, cold, hopeless place. “Her name is Connie Moran. Westlake Hotel Apartments. Brown hair. She used that dye that washes out. She had to have the money. She took all — but five hundred.”

Durand gave him a wise, complacent smile. “You were followed there Friday night. She’s in custody, chum. But she’s a tougher apple than you are. She never would have talked.”

One of the unidentified men said, “Okay to phone it in, Lieutenant?”

“Hold it, Marty. Tell your rewrite boys to give this Weldon a break. Give us the put-out, but give this Weldon an assist on the play. His wife ought to have it, but he needs it more. His kids have to think the old man was working with the cops. Okay?”

“Okay, Lieutenant.”

Vic Reisher walked over to Tom, looking reluctant and miserable. He put his hand out. Tom looked at the man he had considered his friend as well as his boss. He looked at the outstretched hand and knew, suddenly, that to refuse to take it would be a childish gesture.

“Tom — maybe I’ve been here too long. Maybe I’ve run too many columns of figures through the machines, totaled too many tapes. My thinking has gotten too black and white. I forgot that I ought to trust my instincts. Your cash account was short; so I had you accused, convicted and sentenced, all in my mind. It adds up to a man who isn’t — anyone I’d want to work for. I’m deeply ashamed, Tom.”

“Vic, I really don’t know whether I’m going to stay or not.”

Vic’s wry smile was oddly shy. “Wish you would. I guess it won’t be exactly the same, but I wish you would.”

“I’ll talk it over with Helen,” Tom said. He suspected that, when his outrage and anger had faded, when his bitterness was gone, he would probably decide to stay. It was work he liked, work he could do well. There would be a new man in Jud’s cage. Maybe, with care, the four of them — Vic, Arthur, Tom, the unknown newcomer — could once again achieve that sense of unity, of being a quick, clever, functioning unit.

Helen was waiting. He lifted her off the floor when he kissed her. In the mysterious way children have, the kids knew that this was holiday, this was special. They clung to his legs and yelped.

He said, “Look, among other things, honey, I want to tell you there won’t be any more of that storming out of here, acting like—”

She stopped his lips with her finger tips. “Hush up. Just take me along next time.”

Which, he decided later, was another proof that she was probably just as smart as Durand had said she was.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Who’s the Blonde?