Loot for the Unlucky Lady

The crowd was slim at first, but by eleven o’clock the sidewalks were thick with people. She was rudely jostled in the crowd, and something was thrust under her arm. She recognized him as he passed her, and her cry was stifled on her lips. The parcel under her arm was a shoe box, neatly wrapped, and quite heavy.

The thud of her heart was rapid. She angled out of the crowd, crossed over to the island in the middle and went down the stairs into the chill dampness of the subway.

She sat very straight on the worn fiber seat and the shoe box, neatly tied up in brown wrapping paper rested on her lap, her hands in the worn black gloves holding it tightly.

Back at the rooming house, she walked slowly up the stairs, locked herself in her small room, curbed her impatience as she took off her coat and hat, carefully hung up the coat in the shallow closet.

Only then did she sit on the bed and untie the string, unwrap the paper and lift the lid.

It was as though she had stopped breathing and her heart had stopped beating. The shoe box was packed neatly and solidly with currency. Worn, darkened bills, fastened in inch thick wads with rubber bands.

With trembling hands she unfolded the white note on top.

Glory, baby:

I trust you. You’re the only one in the world I do trust. Here is about ninety thousand bucks. It was the Candor Club job on Long Island. The bills aren’t marked, but don’t try to pass the big ones. Now do this for me. Buy yourself some clothes and hop a plane to Florida. Get a place there in Daytona and hide out. Get the Daytona Times every day. When I get there, I’ll put an ad in the paper. ‘Help Wanted — Competent file clerk, knowledge Spanish and Portuguese. Write box—’ Get it? And be careful, baby. Write to the box number and tell me where you are. Pick a new name, baby. Hide the dough real good. Use all you need, and then some. There’s a lot of it. When I show up we’ll figure a way to go someplace where they can’t extradite me. I know a good country. Don’t be scared and remember that I love you, baby.

Yours, Al

The box slipped off her lap, fell to the floor and spilled the packets of currency across the cheap, rose-colored rug.

She sat very still and looked at the far wall. The Candor Club job! There must be a mistake. Al wouldn’t...

Yet all the little half-understood things during the past year became clear in the light of his note. She suddenly knew that she would have to find out about the Candor Club and what had happened.

She knelt on the floor and picked up the currency and put it back in the box. Then she stood in indecision, the box in her hands, staring around at the four walls of her room. The money — an incredible amount to her — was an overpowering responsibility.

She bit hard on her underlip as she considered various hiding places. She kept her own room clean and so there was no reason for anyone to enter her room. Yet the door was frail and the lock was cheap.

In the back of her closet was a pile of newspapers a good ten inches high. She took off the top inch or so of newspapers and, with a razor blade, clumsily hacked a hole deep enough for the shoebox. From the box she extracted ten five-dollar bills.

She replaced the top layer of newspapers. The pile seemed to be intact. She felt a bit more confident. Using the brown paper, she wrapped up the wad of newspaper she had cut from the middle of the pile.

At the corner, she dropped the paper into a refuse barrel. She went immediately to the Public Library to see what the papers of the past week had to say about the Candor Club. She was particularly interested in the Monday papers. Since Al had called on Monday morning, it would seem likely that whatever had happened had happened on Sunday.

Had she not been so thorough, she would have missed the item. It was not a news story. It was a sly remark by one of the evening columnists.