the advantage of the dead-of-night privacy that would make the switch
easy. Large garden-apartment complexes, with shadowy carports and a
plenitude of vehicles, offer the ideal shopping for what he requires,
but as he tries one after another of these, he discovers too many
residents out and about, on their way to work.
Eventually his diligent search is rewarded in the parking lot behind a
church. A morning service is in progress. He can hear organ music.
Parishioners have left fourteen cars from which he can select, not a
large turnout for the Lord but adequate for his own purposes.
He leaves the engine of the Camry running while he looks for a car in
which the owner has left the keys. In the third one, a green Pontiac, a
full set dangles from the ignition.
He unlocks the trunk of the Pontiac, hoping it will contain at least an
emergency tool kit with a screwdriver. Because he hot-wired the Camry,
he doesn’t have keys to its trunk. Again, he is in luck, a complete
road-emergency kit with flares, first-aid items, and a tool packet that
includes four screwdrivers of different types.
God is with him.
In a few minutes he exchanges the Camry’s plates for those on the
Pontiac. He returns the tool kit to the trunk of the Pontiac and the
keys to the ignition.
As he’s walking to the Camry, the church organ launches into a hymn with
which he is not familiar. That he doesn’t know the name of the hymn is
not surprising, since he has only been to church three times that he can
recall. In two instances, he had gone to church to kill time until
movie theaters opened. On the third occasion he had been following a
woman he’d seen on the street and with whom he would have liked to share
sex and the special intimacy of death.
The music stirs him. He stands in the mild morning breeze, swaying
dreamily, eyes closed. He is moved by the hymn. Perhaps he has musical
talent. He should find out. Maybe playing an instrument of some kind
and composing songs would be easier than writing novels.
When the song ends, he gets in the Camry and leaves.
Marty exchanged pleasantries with Mrs. Higgens when she returned with
the teller. Evidently no one at the bank had seen the news about him,
as neither woman mentioned the assault. His crew-neck sweater and
button-down shirt concealed livid bruises around his neck. His voice
was mildly hoarse but not sufficiently so to cause comment.
Mrs. Higgens observed that the cash withdrawal he wished to make was
unusually large, phrasing her comment to induce him to explain why he
would risk carrying so much money around. He merely agreed it was,
indeed, unusually large and expressed the hope that he wasn’t putting
them to much trouble. Unflagging affability was probably essential to
completing the transaction as swiftly as possible.
“I’m not sure we can pay it entirely in hundreds,” Mrs. Higgens said.
She spoke softly, discreetly, though there were only two other customers
in the bank and neither of them nearby. “I’ll have to check our supply
of bills in that denomination.”
“Some twenties, fifties are okay,” Marty assured her. “I’m just trying
to prevent it from getting too bulky.”
Though both the assistant manager and the teller were smiling and
polite, Marty was aware of their curiosity and concern. They were in
the money business, after all, and they knew there weren’t many
legitimate–and fewer sensible–reasons for anyone to carry seventy
thousand in cash.
Even if he had felt comfortable leaving Paige and the kids in the car,
Marty would not have done so. The first suspicion to cross a banker’s
mind would be that the cash was needed to meet a ransom payment, and
prudence would require a call to the police. With the entire family
present, kidnapping could be ruled out.
Marty’s teller began to consult with other tellers, tabulating the
number of hundreds contained in all their drawers, while Mrs. Higgens
disappeared through the open door of the vault at the back of the cage.
He glanced at Paige and the girls. East entrance. South. His watch.