19 Purchase Street Read Free

of similar brown cardboard cut to size and dropped in. He removed it.
    Hundred dollar bills.
    Bound by wide rubber bands into packets, about two inches thick.
    Twenty such packets layered the entire bottom of the carton.
    Connie had hardly touched the money, only enough to prove her eyes weren’t lying.
    McCatty didn’t react to it. He removed one of the packets, sort of weighed it in his hand and riffled through it.
    Connie asked how much.
    A million was his estimate.
    â€œIt’s ours,” Connie said
    McCatty put the packet of hundreds back into place in the carton.
    â€œIt’s ours,” Connie repeated emphatically.
    McCatty looked away as though to get her out of mind. After a long, thoughtful moment, he covered the money with the piece of cardboard and began repacking the groceries neatly.
    â€œWhat are you going to do?”
    McCatty didn’t reply. He picked up the carton and went out to the car. Connie followed. She called him an asshole, a straight stupid cop asshole and she made a couple of tries for the carton.
    He drove away with it, left Connie standing there yelling.
    It wasn’t far to Lyle’s place. McCatty figured he had time, Lyle would still be at headquarters making out the report. There was no one else to be concerned about because Lyle lived alone.
    McCatty broke in. Wrapped his fist in a rag and put it through a pane of Lyle’s back door. The other carton of groceries was just inside. McCatty nearly stumbled over it. Rather than unpack it, he ran his hand flat down the inner side of the carton, felt it too had a false bottom. In under that layer of cardboard he fingered the unmistakable texture of paper that was money. He took the carton with him, placed it in the rear seat next to the first.
    For a long while he just drove anywhere with the two million dollars. Killing time until night. Then he was on Purchase Street. Twice he went by the place, checking it out. He slowed to let two cars pass. When there were no cars coming in either direction he pulled into the drive of Number 19 and stopped before its huge outer gate.
    He placed the two cartons in the shrubs to the left of the gate, where, from the gatehouse, they’d surely be noticed and taken in.

CHAPTER TWO
    N ORMA Gainer was also in Harrison on that last of July.
    She came down the drive of Number 19 and the heavy iron gates anticipated her, opened automatically one after another. Norma took it as a minor but important demonstration of acceptance that usually she could leave the place without even having to hesitate at the gates. It wasn’t known, of course, that she was affected by such reassurances.
    This time the man on gate duty signaled her to a stop. He informed her there was an accident down the way on Purchase Street.
    â€œBad?” Norma asked.
    â€œFrom what I hear.”
    Norma didn’t realize, of course, that she was circumstantially linked to the accident, that she and one of the victims, the dead grocery boy, had so much in common. Norma had never met another carrier. At least not that she knew of. And as far as the way Number 19 worked such things, she’d taken her brother Drew’s advice and stifled her curiosity long ago.
    She continued on out through the gates to Purchase Street, turned right. After a quarter mile she got onto Route 684 and its wide lanes that were like an undeniable chute to the Hutchinson River Parkway city bound. She had the top down on the Fiat 2000 Spyder, creating her own breeze. Strands of her hair, like tiny whips, snapped her cheeks and forehead.
    There was hardly any traffic, however she kept to the far right lane with the speedometer at fifty-five, exactly the posted limit. Westchester County police patrolled in unmarked cars and used radar guns. Norma didn’t want to get stopped. The piece of luggage was right there on the seat beside her.
    She wouldn’t think about it, passed the time with trying to put out of her mind all else