didn’t seem to be any TV cameras in the vault, and I couldn’t see any little boxes on the wall that looked like any of the heat sensors I’d read about that afternoon. No gas flooded from vents. No booby traps sprang into action.
I turned off the flashlight and went to work.
The first cart I came to was obviously from the previous day’s deposits. The money was definitely used, though bundled neatly. I picked up a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills. The paper band wrapped around the middle said “$5,000” and was stamped with the Chemical Bank’s name. There was a cardboard box on another cart. It was filled with packets of one-dollar bills, each packet holding fifty bills. I tried to estimate how deep the stack went, then shook my head. Count later, Davy.
I picked up the box and jumped to the hotel room. I dumped it on the bed, then jumped back.
I started at one end and moved to the other. If the packets looked new, I checked to see if the bills were in serial-number order. If they were I left them. If they weren’t I put them in the box. When the box was full, I jumped to the hotel room, dumped the contents on the bed, and jumped back.
When I was done with the loose money on the carts, I checked the bags. They seemed to be transfer deposits from subbranches, all in used bills. I took all the bags, without checking the contents of the others. Money was already spilling off the edges of the bed so I put the bags on the floor, under the bed.
The shelves held new bills, the range of their serial numbers neatly written on their paper bands. I left them and took a last look around. Still no ringing alarms. The door was solidly shut.
It didn’t matter. If what I had read about time clocks was true, it would take a very special set of circumstances to open the door before the next morning, even if alarms were ringing.
For one brief second I considered leaving a thank-you note, perhaps even some spray-painted graffiti, but decided against it.
I imagined there would be enough excitement the next morning without that.
I jumped.
On Times Square the big electronic billboard said it was eleven o’clock. I blinked. I’d done the whole thing in under forty minutes, and that included getting the gloves and the flashlight.
People still swarmed the square, young adults mostly, in pairs and groups. Some of them lined up at movie theaters, others just walked along Broadway looking into the stores that were still open. There was a festival atmosphere like the midway of carnival.
I walked into a shop filled with T-shirts, most of them extolling the virtues of New York City. “Welcome to New York City—Now Leave,” said one. I smiled, even though I was trembling and reaction was making me nauseated.
In my pocket was a packet of twenty-dollar bills, fifty of them. I’d taken off the paper wrapper and made sure I could pull them out one at a time, but I was still nervous. The back of my head, where the muggers had hit me, was aching and I kept looking over my shoulder in almost involuntary twitches.
Christ, Davy, you’re broadcasting victim like crazy. Calm down!
The T-shirt store also sold luggage—cheap nylon bags, duffles, overnighters, sports bags, and backpacks. That’s what I really wanted. I picked up one of each kind and color.
The clerk stared at me, then said, “Hey, kid, unless you’re going to buy all of those, look at one at a time, okay?”
I kept on picking up bags and he came around the end of the counter, an angry expression on his face. “Didn’t you hear me? I said—”
“I heard what you said!” My voice was shrill and loud. The clerk took a step back and blinked. I took a deep breath, then said in a quieter voice, “I’ve got twenty bags here. Ring them up.” I walked over to the counter and put the bags on it.
The clerk still hesitated, so I took some of the twenties out of my jacket pocket—more than I meant to, in fact. Probably half, around five hundred dollars.
“Uh, sure. Sorry I yelled. You know we get some kids in here who shoplift. I’ve got to be careful. Didn’t mean nothing by it. I—”
“Fine. Don’t worry about it. Just ring it up, please.”
As he rang up each bag, I stuffed them into the largest one, a duffel with a shoulder strap.
He must have felt bad about misreading me, because he gave me a ten-percent discount for quantity. “So that comes to two twenty-two fifty with tax.”
I counted off twelve twenty-dollar bills, then said something I’ve always wanted to say. “Keep the change.”
He blinked, then said, “Thanks. Thanks very much.”
I walked out the front of the store, turned right, and jumped.
I sorted the money by denomination first, piling the packets against the wall opposite the bed. I had to move the cheap dresser across the door to give me room, but I didn’t mind. I was feeling pretty paranoid by now, so I hung the quilt over the window shade, completely blocking the window.
By the time I cleared the bed and had reached the bagged money, I had two piles of ones over two feet high, twenty-five packets to a layer. I didn’t stop to figure amounts yet. I continued my sorting, throwing the empty bank bags on the bed. Once, I jumped to the Stanville Library to check the time.
Finally, I finished sorting and stacking. I hadn’t figured amounts yet. That would come later.
I gathered the empty bank bags, then, and put my ski mask and gloves back on. It was 2 A.M.
I took several deep breaths and tried to keep calm. Nervous exhaustion was setting in, though I wasn’t in the least sleepy. I concentrated on the interior of the vault and jumped, trying at the same time to keep the Stanville Library in my mind in case they’d opened the vault.
They hadn’t.
Jeez, I left the light on. I dropped the bank bags on one of the empty carts and turned to turn off the light. Light? Christ! Where’s the flashlight? My heartbeat increased and I felt panic in my throat Oh, God. I don’t need this. I sagged against the wall when I saw the flashlight on the first cart I’d emptied. I knew it didn’t have my fingerprints but it might have Dad’s. And where were you, Mr. Rice, last Friday night?
Right here in Ohio, of course. But I don’t know where my son is ….
I picked the flashlight up, turned off the vault’s lights, and jumped back to the hotel room.
I’d been hurrying, stacking the money so I could take the bags back before morning. I didn’t want them in my possession. I realized that I could get rid of them anywhere. I could even put bricks in them and drop them into the East River, but I thought that there’d be more confusion if I left them in the vault.
As if there isn’t going to be enough confusion as it is.
Still, I’d been in a hurry, so I hadn’t really looked at how much money I’d stolen. I sat back on the bed and stared.
Each layer of the piles was five packets by five. Call it a little over a foot along the wall by two and a half feet out from the wall. There were more ones than any other denomination, three stacks each over four feet high. There was one stack of fives just under two feet high, one stack of tens about a foot and a half high, one stack of twenties about nine inches high, almost one layer of fifty-dollar bills, and seventeen packets of hundred-dollar bills.
I jumped to the Stanville Library and borrowed a calculator from behind the circulation desk. I counted the layers and did all my calculations twice. I did them more than twice if the first two times didn’t match.
There were twenty-five packets per layer. That meant there were, for instance, twelve