I’m the one that doesn’t save.”
“Well, Mr. Thorpe,” he said,
“it seems to me you should have listened to your father.” And,
turning away, he crossed the room toward the front door.
I should have killed him,
that would have been the most sensible thing to do. Picked up something
heavy—that can containing North By Northwest , for
instance—and brained him with it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sufficiently used to
being a killer, so what I did was grit my teeth and get to my feet and say, “Wait.”
He waited, turning to look at me again, the
same patient smile on his face, letting me know I could have all the time I
needed. But that’s all I could have.
I said, “I’m not sure I can do it. I’ll
have to borrow, I’ll have to—I don’t know what I’ll have to do.”
“Well, sir,” he said, coming back to
me, “I don’t want to make things difficult for you if I can possibly avoid
it. Here’s my card.”
His card. I took it.
He said, “You call me at that number before
eleven-thirty if you decide to pay.”
“You mean, if I can pay.”
“Any way you want,” he said.
“I’d mostly like a cashier’s check, made out to bearer.”
“Yes, I suppose you would.” I looked
at the card he’d given me. Blue lettering read Tobin-Global Investigations
Service—Matrimonial Specialists . In the lower left was a phone number, and in
the lower right a name: John Edgarson.
“If you do call,” John Edgarson told
me, “ask for Ed.”
“I’ll do that.”
“And Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “do try to look on the bright side.”
I stared at him. “The
bright side?”
“You’ve had an early warning,” he
told me. “If you decide not to pay, you’ve got almost three hours’ head
start.”
*
It’s amazing what you can do in an hour when
your life depends on it. By eleven o’clock, I’d converted into cash the following:
Savings account
$2,763.80
Checking account
275.14
To pawnshops: (Projector 120.; Leica camera
100.; 8mm camera 70.; portable tape unit 160.; 8mm projector 50.; stereo system
180.; typewriter 50.; watch 40.; wedding ring & jewelry 90.)
860.00
Films, posters, stills, etc.
450.00
Loan from publisher against
future earnings
1,500.00
$100. bad checks to
liquor store, florist, grocer, dry cleaner, barber & hardware store
600.00
GRAND TOTAL
6,448.94
Needed
10,000.00
Shortage
3,551.06
Eleven o’clock. Five after eleven. I was back in my apartment, my pockets
full of cash. But where was I going to get three thousand five hundred
fifty-one dollars and six cents?
My grandmother’s trust fund?
Not a chance. I’d cried wolf with the people at the bank two or three times
already, and they’d made it perfectly clear my well-being didn’t matter to them
one one-hundredth as much as the fund’s well-being.
My father? Another blank. He had the money, all right, and plenty to
spare, but even if he was willing to help—which he wouldn’t be—the cash would
never get here from Boston in the next twenty-four minutes. Besides, if I did ask him the first
thing he’d say—even before no —would be why .
Would Edgarson take less? Six thousand dollars
in the hand was surely better than ten thousand dollars in the bush. I dialed
the number on the card he’d given me, and when a harsh female voice answered
with the company’s name I asked for Ed. “Minute,” she said, and
clicked away.
It was a long minute, but it finally ended
with a too-familar voice: “Hello?”
“Edgarson?”
“Is that Mr. Thorpe? You’re a few minutes
early.”
“All I can raise is, uh, six thousand,
uh, dollars. And four hundred. Six
thousand four hundred dollars.”
“Well, that’s fine,” he said.
“And you’ve still got twenty minutes to get the rest.”
“I can’t. I’ve done everything I
could.”
“Mr. Thorpe,” he said, “I
thought we had an understanding, you and I.”
“But I can’t raise any more!”
“Then if I were you, Mr. Thorpe, I’d take
that