before she could hang up, “Miss Rudolph, I have some information you might be interested in. Will you be free right after work tomorrow?”
“Yes, but …”
“This is just an apartment I thought you might like.”
Mrs. Katherine A. Marsh spoke in a terrible voice. “Young man, this figure is incorrect. It is twelve dollars and twenty cents too low.”
“Miss Rudolph. Mrs. Marsh questions the balance. Could you please bring down the card and the check file?”
I hung up. Mrs. Marsh tried to stab me through the grille with the feather on her hat. “I have been bankinghere for sixteen years and you people consistently–”
“I’m certain we can find the discrepancy when we check your stubs against the card, Mrs. Marsh. The girl will be right down with it.”
Emily Rudolph pulled open the wire door at the back of my cage. Her face was expressionless. Her spicy scent seemed to fill the cage. Today her dress was dark green, fitted tightly at the waist, full across the bodice, with flaring skirt.
“Thank you,” I said. “Please wait. This will only take a moment.”
I checked the stubs against the card. I found a check for eleven-eighty for which there was no corresponding stub. I leafed through the cancelled checks and found it. It was a counter check.
“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Marsh said, blushing. “So stupid of me. I forgot that …”
“Happens to everybody. And the forty cents is the charge against your account this month.”
Mrs. Marsh scurried away, still blushing. I handed the card and checks back to Emily.
“Side door tomorrow?” I asked.
Mockery was something that moved darkly behind her eyes. “You’re very kind.”
“It’s a date, then.”
“To look at an apartment.”
I was watching her walk away when a customer started clacking a coin against the counter in front of my window.
“Nice going,” Sam Grinter said, as I turned to take care of the customer.
The next morning the alarm got me up an hour earlier than usual. I spent the extra hour making the place look as decent as possible. The newly purchased bottles of gin and vermouth were on the shelf of the tiny kitchenette. I put them out of sight. I had separated what seemed to be the right sort of music. The place still looked dark, faintly squalid. Daylight never came directly into it. The windows faced the opposite wall of anarrow air well. The big advantage was that the rental came well within the means of a single girl on the sort of money banks pay.
At four o’clock, after an hour of work, I found, to my dismay, that I had a foul-up. Unless I could find it fast, Emily was going to come out at five, stand around a few minutes, and then go home. Sam saw me sweating. He said, “Get it fixed for tonight?”
“Yes, and now I can’t find …”
“Wait until I ditch my drawer, and I’ll see if I can help.”
He came back and we started applying the standard error-finding formulas to the differential between cash and paper total. It turned out to be a transposition. Sam located it. I’d written $981.30 on a cash deposit of $918.30. So I was able to lock the drawer at quarter of five, just five minutes after Paul Raddmann.
Sam gave me a lewd grin. “I helped you, so I get a play-by-play description, Kyle. Even vicarious pleasures are not beneath me these days.”
One thing I hadn’t planned on was just how conspicuous this meeting was going to be. When you spend your whole life, except for the war years, in a city of two hundred thousand, you get to know a lot of people. And though the First Citizens’ National Bank is a big place, it is sort of like a club. Everybody knows everybody. For example, I knew that there would be a collection taken up for a wedding present for me and Jo Anne, and maybe a little raise in pay to go along with it.
So at five o’clock, as I stood outside the side entrance of the bank, I knew some of the fellows who were also waiting for girls to come out. When the girls started to come out
“Yes, but …”
“This is just an apartment I thought you might like.”
Mrs. Katherine A. Marsh spoke in a terrible voice. “Young man, this figure is incorrect. It is twelve dollars and twenty cents too low.”
“Miss Rudolph. Mrs. Marsh questions the balance. Could you please bring down the card and the check file?”
I hung up. Mrs. Marsh tried to stab me through the grille with the feather on her hat. “I have been bankinghere for sixteen years and you people consistently–”
“I’m certain we can find the discrepancy when we check your stubs against the card, Mrs. Marsh. The girl will be right down with it.”
Emily Rudolph pulled open the wire door at the back of my cage. Her face was expressionless. Her spicy scent seemed to fill the cage. Today her dress was dark green, fitted tightly at the waist, full across the bodice, with flaring skirt.
“Thank you,” I said. “Please wait. This will only take a moment.”
I checked the stubs against the card. I found a check for eleven-eighty for which there was no corresponding stub. I leafed through the cancelled checks and found it. It was a counter check.
“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Marsh said, blushing. “So stupid of me. I forgot that …”
“Happens to everybody. And the forty cents is the charge against your account this month.”
Mrs. Marsh scurried away, still blushing. I handed the card and checks back to Emily.
“Side door tomorrow?” I asked.
Mockery was something that moved darkly behind her eyes. “You’re very kind.”
“It’s a date, then.”
“To look at an apartment.”
I was watching her walk away when a customer started clacking a coin against the counter in front of my window.
“Nice going,” Sam Grinter said, as I turned to take care of the customer.
The next morning the alarm got me up an hour earlier than usual. I spent the extra hour making the place look as decent as possible. The newly purchased bottles of gin and vermouth were on the shelf of the tiny kitchenette. I put them out of sight. I had separated what seemed to be the right sort of music. The place still looked dark, faintly squalid. Daylight never came directly into it. The windows faced the opposite wall of anarrow air well. The big advantage was that the rental came well within the means of a single girl on the sort of money banks pay.
At four o’clock, after an hour of work, I found, to my dismay, that I had a foul-up. Unless I could find it fast, Emily was going to come out at five, stand around a few minutes, and then go home. Sam saw me sweating. He said, “Get it fixed for tonight?”
“Yes, and now I can’t find …”
“Wait until I ditch my drawer, and I’ll see if I can help.”
He came back and we started applying the standard error-finding formulas to the differential between cash and paper total. It turned out to be a transposition. Sam located it. I’d written $981.30 on a cash deposit of $918.30. So I was able to lock the drawer at quarter of five, just five minutes after Paul Raddmann.
Sam gave me a lewd grin. “I helped you, so I get a play-by-play description, Kyle. Even vicarious pleasures are not beneath me these days.”
One thing I hadn’t planned on was just how conspicuous this meeting was going to be. When you spend your whole life, except for the war years, in a city of two hundred thousand, you get to know a lot of people. And though the First Citizens’ National Bank is a big place, it is sort of like a club. Everybody knows everybody. For example, I knew that there would be a collection taken up for a wedding present for me and Jo Anne, and maybe a little raise in pay to go along with it.
So at five o’clock, as I stood outside the side entrance of the bank, I knew some of the fellows who were also waiting for girls to come out. When the girls started to come out
Similar Books
Project X-Calibur
Greg Pace
House of Wings
Betsy Byars
Shielding Lily
Alexa Riley
Ambassador
William Alexander
We That Are Left
Clare Clark
Primary Colors
Joe Klein
Finn's Shot (Eden's Odyssey Book 1)
Tiffani Lynn
Arjun
Fionn Jameson
Cool Like That
Nikki Carter
When All Hell Breaks Loose
Cody Lundin