Nightwork

I got my passport the next day. Mr. Hale was not in his office, but he had left all the necessary instructions. Miss Schwartz aid. I was fairly certain that Mr. Hale was not in his office because by the end of the weekend he had come to the conclusion that he wouldn't be comfortable seeing me again. Not in the presence of Miss Schwartz. It was not the first time that a man had regretted in daylight the dark confidences of midnight.

Miss Schwartz was as beautiful and melodious as ever, but I didn't envy Jeremy Hale.

I cashed the checks from the poker game, and with the bills in my pocket went to a department store and bought two strong, but lightweight suitcases. They were handsome pieces of luggage, dark blue with red piping, one large, the other an overnight bag. They were expensive, but I was looking for security, not bargains, at the moment. I also bought a roomy leather attaché case, with a sturdy lock. The case fitted snugly into the larger of the two bags. I was now armed for travel, Ulysses with the black ships caulked and a fair wind behind him, unknown perils beyond the next promontory.

The salesman asked what numbers I wanted to put into the combination. 'It's advisable,' he said, 'to use a number that means something to you, that you won't forget.'

'Six-O-Two,' I said. It was a number that meant quite a bit to me and I doubted that I ever would forget it.

With the new bags in the trunk of the rented car, I was on my way toward New York by three o'clock in the afternoon. I had called my brother and told him to meet me outside my bank at ten o'clock the next morning.

I stopped at a motel on the outskirts of Trenton for the night. I wasn't going to stay in New York any longer than I had to.

Knowing that I was doing the wrong thing, accumulating regrets for the future, I called Evelyn's number in Washington. I didn't know what I could say to her, but I wanted to hear the sound of her voice. I let the phone ring a dozen times. Luckily, there was no one home.

* * *

When I drove through the New York City traffic up Park Avenue, toward the bank, I was stopped at a light at the corner of the cross street on which the St Augustine was located. On an impulse, when the light turned green, I turned down the street. I could feel the skin on the back of my neck prickling as I drove slowly past the falsely impressive canopied entrance, and I even played with the idea of going in and asking for Drusack. It was not a case of nostalgia. There were some questions that he might be able to answer by now. And his predictable rage would have brightened my morning. If there had been a place to park, I think I would have been foolish enough to go in. But the whole street was solidly blocked and I drove on.

Hank was huddled down into his overcoat, with the collar turned up, looking cold and miserable in the biting wind, when I walked up to the bank. If I were a policeman, I thought, I would suspect him of something, a small, mean crime, petty forgery, abuse of widow's confidence, peddling fraudulent jewelry.

His face lit up when he saw me, as though he had doubted that I would ever arrive, and he took a step toward me, but I didn't stop. 'Meet me at the next comer uptown,' I said as I passed him. 'I'll only be a minute.' Unless someone had been, standing near and watching closely, it couldn't have seemed that there was any connection between us. I had the uncomfortable feeling that the city was one giant eye, focused on me.

In the vault, the same old man, paler than ever, took my key and, using his own along with it, opened my safe and handed me the steel box. He led me back to the curtained cubicle and left me there. I counted out the two hundred and fifty hundred-dollar bills and put them in a manila envelope that I had bought in Washington. I was becoming an important consumer of manila envelopes and was no doubt giving a lift to the entire industry.

* * *

Hank was waiting for me at the comer, in front of a coffee shop, looking colder than ever. He eyed the manila envelope under my arm fearfully, as though it might explode at any instant. The plate-glass window of the shop was steamed over, but I could see that the place was almost empty. I motioned for Hank to follow me and we went in. I chose a table in the rear and put the manila envelope down and took off my coat. It was suffocatingly hot in the restaurant, but Hank sat down opposite me without taking off his coat or the old, sweat-stained gray slouch hat he was wearing, set squarely and unfashionably on his head. His eyes behind the glasses that dug into the sides of his nose were leaking tears from the cold. He had an old commuter's face, I thought, the kind of face, weathered by years of anxiety and stale indoor air, that you see on men standing on windy station platforms on dark winter mornings, patient as donkeys, weary long before the day's work ever begins. I pitied him and could hardly wait to get rid of him.