(Jake told you how to get all the cash you want.) (Oh sure—on my signature and his countersignature. Like a cat covering up on linoleum. Eunice my love, I’ll bet you never paid a bribe in your life.) (Well. . . not with money.) (Don’t tell me, let me guess. Hon, what we’re sitting on might be worth a million—but today I need used bills in medium denominations from no recorded source. Come along, little snoopy, and I’ll show you something that even my secretary—a sweetly deceitful girl named Eunice, remember her?—didn’t know about.)
(Do you mean that safe hidden in your bath, Boss?) (Huh? How the hell did you know about that?) (I’m snoopy.) (Do you know the combo?) (I ought to take the Fifth.) (Why bother? You’ll know it in two minutes. Or can you pick it out of my mind?) (Boss darling, you know by now that 1 don’t know anything in your memory until you think about it. . . and you don’t know anything in mine until 1 think about it. But—Well, if I had to open the safe, I think I would start with the numbers that mean your mother’s birthday.)
Joan sighed. (A girl doesn’t have any privacy these days. All right, let’s see if we’ve been robbed.)
She went into her bath, sealed the door, bolted it by hand, removed a stack of towels from a lower cabinet, fiddled with the ceiling of the cabinet; the back panel slid aside, disclosing a safe. (You think my mother’s birth date will open it?) (I’d switch on the sun lamps over the massage table first, then run the cold water in the hand basin.) (No privacy at all! Honey, did you really pay a bribe with your pretty tail once?) (Not exactly. I just improved the situation. Let’s see if we’ve been robbed.)
Joan opened the safe. Inside was money enough to interest a bank auditor. But the packets had not been packaged in a bank; they were not that neatly jogged and the total for each was hand-printed. (Plenty of moola, dear—and either nobody found this safe, or they never figured out the additional bolts. Either way, it settles one thing. We won’t put lake’s sweet note down the hopper.) (Let him think we did, huh?) (If he asks.) (Then cry on him later and admit that we couldn’t bear to part with it.) (Eunice, you have a mind like a pretzel.) (That’s why it fits so well into yours, twin.) (Could be.)
Joan put the letter inside, took out two packets, put them into a purse in the dressing room end—closed the safe, shut off the sun lamps, shut off the water, spun the dial, slid the panel back, replaced the towels, closed the cabinet. Then she stepped to the bath’s intercom, pressed a touchplatc. “Chief O’ Neil.”
“Yes, Miss Smith?”
“I want my car, one driver, and both Shotguns in thirty minutes.”
There was a short silence. “Uh, Miss Smith, Mr. Salomon apparently forgot to mention that you would be leaving the house.”
“For excellent reason. He did not know it. Did he mention that I am no longer a ward of the Court? If not, have you learned it from some other source?”
“Miss, I haven’t learned it from an official source.”
“I see. Then you are learning it from me. Officially.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“You don’t sound happy, O’Neil.. You could check by phoning Judge McCampbell.”
“Why, yes, of course.”
“Are you going to, O’Neil?”
“Perhaps I misunderstood, Miss. Weren’t you telling me to?”
“Are you recording?”
“Certainly, Miss. I always do, with orders.”
“I suggest that you play it back and answer your own question. I’ll hold. But first—how long have you been with me, O’Neil?”
“Seventeen years, Miss. The last nine as your Chief.”
“Seventeen years, two months, and some days. Not enough for maximum retirement but it has been long, faithful, and unquestioning service. You can retire this morning on full pay for life, if you wish, O’Neil; faithful service should be appreciated. Now please play back while
I hold.” She waited.
“Be switched, Miss—I must need a hearing aid. You didn’t tell me to call the Judge. You just said I could.”