Breaking the Bank Read online

  Mia just smiled and said, “Uh-huh.”

  There was a line at the bank. Mia was actually grateful for this, because it gave her time to compose herself. Three people waited ahead of her; all of them looked irritated. Mia, however, was too freaked out to be irritated. Inhale, she instructed herself silently. Now exhale. There. Better.

  Mia knew she could use one of the automated tellers, even the automated teller, but she was too scared. A machine that made money appear miraculously might be a machine that made it disappear, too. She was not taking any chances. So she reached up to give the backpack a little goodwill tap, trying to arrange her face in an expression of bored yet patient detachment.

  The teller was a young man with a slim-fitting jacket and a major attitude. But she saw him snap to attention when he saw the bills. She felt like her breath was being vacuumed out of her as she watched him call over his supervisor, a matronly black woman wearing a fuzzy sweater and a pin in the shape of a Christmas wreath. After a careful inspection and some muted discussion, the bills were deemed acceptable and deposited to Mia’s account.

  The paper receipt she was handed felt dangerous; she had an impulse to pop it into her mouth, chew, and swallow. Instead, she managed to walk through the double doors, out into the street, without totally losing it. Now she just had to do this, oh, maybe ten or fifteen more times. Christ. She would have to find other branches of the bank, make some deposits in the Bronx. Or Queens. Otherwise, she didn’t think she could pull this off again, at least not here.

  The next day, Mia checked her bank balance at a Midtown branch of the bank. The deposit, all three thousand dollars of it, was there. This emboldened her to make another cash deposit on Twenty-third Street, as she was on her way into the office, and still another, at a branch on the Upper East Side. Each time, the bills were inspected, discussed, and ultimately accepted. Fred even offered to make a couple of the deposits for her, which she was just desperate—or crazy— enough to let him do. Within a week, forty-nine thousand dollars— almost the entire amount she scored from Weed—was safely socked away in her account. Forty-nine thousand was not the sum she had hoped for; it was most certainly not enough for a down payment on a piece of property in a place where she might actually want to live. But it could help pay the rent in a different and better apartment, an apartment that might convince her brother that she was on an incline, not skidding toward the bottom without any brakes. She started looking at the classifieds, checking out the options. Bay Ridge might have been an option, even though it was a long distance from Manhattan and any visible source of income she might generate. Bed Stuy would have been cheaper, but it was hardly an improvement in terms of neighborhood. Maybe she needed to think about leaving Brooklyn altogether, and striking out for the unfamiliar wilds of Queens or even Staten Island.

  Yet there was one last thousand-dollar bill she didn’t deposit. Fred didn’t have to know about that one. No one did, except Mia and the person—or people—to whom she planned on giving it. She hadn’t made up her mind about that part of the equation yet, but in some sense it didn’t matter. The important thing was that a part of this gift, this windfall, passed from her hands to someone else’s. The words

  Use it well were her mantra, her guide, her directive. When she remembered them, the decision suddenly became easy. She made another trip to the bank to break the bill, and then, late one night, slipped the hundreds—four for Mr. Ortiz, six for Inez and her family—under their respective apartment doors. She was just sorry she couldn’t be there to witness the reactions.

  The glow stayed with her all the next day. She woke early and prepared whole-grain waffles with syrup—okay, they were frozen, but still—for Eden’s breakfast. At work, she was exceedingly cheerful, zipping through the text of Power Pastry—the newest addition to the series—as if her pencil were a newly honed knife slicing a ripe melon. Inspired by the glossy pictures of sugar-and-fat-laden desserts, she Xeroxed the recipe for apple pie, stopped in the store on her way home to buy the ingredients, and spent the better part of the evening with her forearms coated in flour, showing Eden how to roll out dough for a crust. She had forgotten that she didn’t own a rolling pin, but an empty wine bottle was a handy substitute, and the pie, though a bit lopsided, was delicious. Eden ate two pieces, accompanied by a big glass of milk, before going off to bed, sated and happy.

  Mia was in the kitchen cleaning up when she heard the buzzer sound. The intercom was only intermittently operational, and there were plenty of times when the front door to the building was not locked. Mia was well aware of the safety hazard this posed, but her complaints, like those about the elevator, were ignored. Going to the door, she expected to find one of Manny’s clients, unaware of his present whereabouts. Well, she was not going to be the one to fill them in. Let them get that particular bit of information somewhere else.

  But when she opened the door, she saw two police officers flanking a woman dressed in an overcoat and a plaid scarf. She was a bulky thing of about forty; her cropped gray-and-black coif was subdued into submission by a third of a can’s worth of hair spray, and her shoulders were as wide as a linebacker’s. Mia couldn’t read her opaque expression, so she turned to the pair of officers. Their hats were perched on their heads with a kind of military authority, and their badges glinted, brittle and fake-looking as kids’ plastic toys. Their names, Roy and Choi, were written below those badges. Roy and Choi? A joke? Not likely—they all looked dead serious. Roy was a baby-faced guy whose pink skin had the quality of something that had recently been boiled. His sidekick, Choi, was buff as a bodybuilder, with a neat scar just over the bridge of his nose.

  Mia’s first thought was to tell them that, hey, your work here is done. Someone had already come for Manny; hadn’t they heard? But being snotty with police officers hardly seemed like a good idea. Especially not when the woman with them said, “Mia Saul?”

  “Yes?” Mia said nervously. So they weren’t looking for Manny. They were looking for her, and she could guess the reason why. She felt the trembling start, somewhere at the top of her spine and radiating out to encompass her whole upper body. This was what she had been dreading ever since that first encounter with the rogue machine: detection, inquisition, punishment.

  “I’m Detective Costello. These”—she inclined her shellacked head—”are Officers Roy and Choi. Seventy-eighth Precinct.”

  Mia just stood there. “Can we come in?” Costello continued. “We need to ask you a few questions. We’ve got a warrant to search the premises.” The timbre of her voice was so deep that Mia had to wonder if she was not really a guy in drag. Now that would be something, wouldn’t it? A cross-dressing police detective? Mia felt unhinged, slightly hysterical.

  “Okay,” she managed to croak out. She should have asked to see the warrant. But how could she even tell if it was the real thing? Better to seem cooperative. Like she had nothing to hide. “If you don’t mind, though, can we keep it down? My daughter is asleep in the other room.” Eden was a heavy sleeper, thank God. But still. She stepped back, and they followed her quietly into the apartment.

  “Would you like to sit down?” Was this the right thing to say? Should she be offering them watercress sandwiches and lemonade, like they were guests at a garden party? Her social skills were not equal to this situation; she was completely, totally, at a loss.

  “That’s all right,” Costello said. “We’ll stand.” She looked around, quickly checking out the books in their shelves, the mismatched pillows on the love seat, the small heap of clothing—Eden’s, no doubt—on the floor, in front of the television. They hadn’t even started their official search yet, and already Mia felt as if her panties had been yanked down in the middle of the school yard at recess and all her classmates had gathered around to jeer.

  “We want to talk to you about the ten-thousand-dollar bill that was until recently in your possession,” Costello said in that deep voice of hers.

  “Right,” said Mia. “The bill.” Her ow
n voice started doing that squeaky thing it did whenever she was nervous or uncomfortable, and she willed her vocal cords, her throat, to just stop it, right now.

  “That’s a very rare bill,” said Roy. “Hardly ever seen in circulation anymore.”

  “But hardly ever is not the same as never.” Mia was desperate, but began to see a way she could play this.

  “No,” conceded Roy. “It isn’t.”

  “Is there something illegal about the bill?” Mia asked. She noticed that Costello’s overcoat actually had shoulder pads, a truly regrettable sartorial choice for someone with her body type. This observation gave Mia strength somehow, and she went on, “Aren’t people allowed to own—and sell—them?”

  “They are,” said Roy. “So then, what’s the problem?” Was it really Mia who just said this, daring to challenge a police officer who had come into her home with a search warrant?

  “There isn’t a problem, per se,” said Costello. She balled her fists and inserted them into her pockets; Mia could see them moving around in there, like a pair of agitated mice. “But when we picked up Phil Wedeen on a drug charge, he had this bill—a very large, very unusual, very suspicious bill—in his possession. And he said he’d gotten it from you.”

  “Phil Wedeen?” Mia didn’t get it, and then she did. Weed. “How long have you known him?” Roy asked. “I don’t know him actually,” Mia said. “We spoke on the phone a couple of times. I met him only once—the night I sold him the bill.” She prayed they wouldn’t ask who introduced her, or where the transaction had taken place, because she didn’t want Fred dragged into all of this.

  “Uh-huh,” said Roy. He touched his hand to his gun, wedged tightly in its black leather holster. His gun. The very fact of it was jarring, painful even, like a poke in the eye. There were three strangers standing in her kitchen, and two of them had guns hanging off their belts. They had a lot of other things, too: walkie-talkies, escape hooks, flash-lights, summons books jammed into the pockets on the sides of their regulation-blue pants. But the guns seemed bigger and weightier than everything else, hyper-real, in the way things could seem when you’re stoned on pot, not that she had been stoned for at least a decade.

  “So you’d never met him before?” Costello asked. “Never,” said Mia. “And you haven’t seen him since?”

  “No. I haven’t even spoken to him.”

  “Uh-huh,” Roy said again. Was this a tic with him? Even through her terror, Mia found it massively annoying. Choi, on the other hand, had not said a word. Maybe he was mute.

  “The bill,” said Costello. “Where did you get it? And why did you sell it to him? Were you conducting other business with him as well?”

  “I can’t tell you where I got it.”

  “Are you kidding?” Costello said, her opacity giving way to irritation. “You have to tell us. Otherwise you can go to jail. For obstructing justice.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me anyway,” Mia said. “It sounds too crazy.” But the word jail, even more than the word search, set up every pulsating, screaming alarm she had in her neural system. Jail was too terrible to contemplate. Though even through her fear, Mia realized that it might not have been true. Costello might have been trying to intimidate her.

  “We’ve heard our share of crazy stories,” Roy added. “Nothing surprises us.”

  “I’ll tell you,” Mia said, boldly, on a hunch. “But not here. Not now. I want a lawyer present. I’m entitled to have a lawyer, aren’t I?”

  Costello and Roy exchanged looks, and Mia knew she was right. Thank Christ. Finally, she was reaping some benefit from all those hours she and Stuart spent glued to the TV, glutting themselves on true-crime shows and courtroom dramas.

  “You can have your lawyer,” Costello said. “But we still have a warrant to search the place. It’s just a question of where we’ll start. Jim”— she turned to Roy—”what do you think?”

  “Bedroom. Bedroom’s good.”

  “No,” said Costello, with what to Mia seemed like a sadistic kind of languor. “I think we should begin in the bathroom.”

  The bathroom was too small for all of them to fit in, so Mia stood outside the door, where she was only marginally removed from the indignity of having the contents of her medicine chest pawed and examined by strangers. Strangers who had threatened her with jail. She watched, silent with mortification, as Costello inspected her unopened package of Monistat cream, purchased in anticipation of the next wickedly persistent yeast infection, her tin of antifungal foot powder, her bottles of mouthwash, sad little trays of crumbling Maybelline eye shadow, and nearly spent pots of blush. Dandruff-fighting shampoo, volumizing cream rinse, extra-strength deodorant, boxes of CVS tampons and L’Oreal hair dye—every single thing was taken out or down, dutifully inspected, and put back again. The final indignity was when Choi lifted up the cover of the toilet seat to reveal a little bloom of paper bobbing in a pale yellow sea. Eden, of course. She believed it was a waste of water to flush every single time. Mia cringed as he peered into the bowl and, ever so slightly, drew his upper lip back in distaste.

  From the bathroom, they moved into the living room and then the kitchen, their heavy black shoes—thick-soled, blunt-toed—making little squishy sounds as they walked. Costello’s must have been a size eleven. No, make that a twelve. Mia wondered whether she had to have them special-ordered. She trailed behind as they made their way through the apartment, methodical, detached, impervious. Even the discovery of the glow-in-the-dark vibrator—a gag gift from Julie on her last birthday—failed to elicit the merest of smiles. When they had finally finished looking at the damn thing and put it back into its blue velvet case, Mia thought the worst might, just might, be over. But that was before Roy decided to tackle the closet, where he of course found the shoe box and its little stash of bills. Mia’s small intestine coiled into a burning, merciless knot.

  “Check this out,” he said to Costello, handing her the box. “How much is in here?” Costello wanted to know. “I’m not sure,” Mia said. “I’ll count it now,” said Costello, thumbing through the stack. “Nineteen hundred and forty-five,” she told Choi. “Make a note of that.”

  “Right,” said Choi, scribbling down the figure on a small pad he produced from his breast pocket.

  “So why is this money here?” Costello said. “I just like to have a little around. For emergencies.”

  “Uh-huh,” Roy said, and, scared as she was, Mia wanted to smack him. “And where did you get it?”

  “I have a job,” said Mia defensively. “I earn a living.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I’d rather not answer that until my lawyer is present,” said Mia. She most emphatically did not want Costello and her cohorts calling her present place of employment. She could just imagine how that would go down with her boss, the editorial director.

  “All right.” Costello handed the box back to Choi, who returned it to the shelf in the closet.

  “What’s in there?” Costello asked, thrusting her chin in the direction of Eden’s room.

  “That’s my daughter’s bedroom. But she’s asleep.” Mia was panicky; she would do anything, anything at all, to keep them from waking Eden and drawing her into this sordid little drama. In fact, it was a minor miracle that Eden had remained asleep all this time.

  “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to go in.”

  “You are?” Mia appealed to Roy. “Really?”

  “Really,” said Roy, and Mia took some small consolation in the fact that for the first time since he had walked in here, he looked uncomfortable. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “But you can go in first if you want.”

  “Yes. I want. I mean, thank you.” Mia hurried into the room and sat down on her daughter’s bed. “Eden,” she said, trying to be both gentle and forceful. “Eden, get up.” Eden stirred, flung an arm over her face, and resettled into her pillow. Her breathing was deep and even. “Honey, you have to get up.” Mia’s tone assumed
a hateful urgency.

  “Not now, Mom,” Eden said in the sleep-thick voice of the reluctantly roused. “It’s still dark.”

  “I know, but you have to get up anyway. We have visitors.” Visitors? She was back at that lawn party again, passing out the petit fours.

  “I’m tired,” Eden whined. “I know . . .” said Mia. She looked up to see Costello and Choi standing there. She hadn’t even heard them clomp over. “Come on,” she said to Eden. “I’ll carry you.” She hoisted Eden into her arms—God, but she was heavy—and staggered across the room.

  “Can I give you a hand?” asked Choi, who was right behind Costello.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Who’s that?” Eden asked, fully awake now. Awake and alarmed. “We have company,” Mia said. “They’re not company,” Eden aptly pointed out. “They’re the police.” Her eyes got wider and rounder as her mouth got smaller and tighter. “Mom.” She turned to Mia. “Why are the police here?” Mia couldn’t meet her gaze and instead looked toward the open doorway, where Choi and Roy were busy opening and shutting, lifting and inspecting.

  “Hey!” Eden cried. All at once she was off Mia’s lap and streaking across the floor. “Don’t touch Petunia!”

  Roy ignored this and kept on at what he was doing, but Choi had the grace to stop and look slightly abashed, though he clearly had no idea of who or what Petunia might be. With great dignity, Eden took her balding stuffed cow from the bed and tenderly carried her back into the living room. Then she settled, cross-legged on the floor, to watch as the two in blue finished their job.

  Mia could not bring herself to say a word about what was happening, and for once in her life, Eden seemed to have no more questions. They sat quietly for another few minutes, until Eden’s eyelids began to flutter. Using Petunia as a pillow, she put her head down on the floor and was almost instantly asleep. Mia took the blanket from her own bed to cover her and then returned to Eden’s room, where Choi and Roy finally seemed to be finished with their odious job.