Free Weep for Me by John D. MacDonald Page B

eyes.
    “Half an hour,” she murmured as she went up the stairs.
    I showered, changed, filled the shaker, knocked on her door. The room was as before. She wore tailored green shorts with a white stripe down the sides, a high-necked cotton basque sweater of green and white stripes. Her hair was tied with a dark green strand of yarn. That outfit would have made another girl look like a member of the high-school field-hockey team. She looked unchanged. She sat down on the couch and rested her heels on the floor, legs straight, ankles crossed. Generally legs that white have an unpleasant, mealy look. Hers didn’t. They had a hard sheen, like polished wax.
    “Glasses?” I said.
    “Put the shaker in the refrigerator, Kyle. We’ll drink after we talk.”
    I went back to her. “Don’t sit by me. That will come later too. Tell me how. Tell me clearly, Kyle.”
    I pulled a chair close so I could keep my voice low. I lit our cigarettes. “O.K. There’s one way this can be done. It’s going to take a lot of organization and a lot of planning. But if our timing is right, it should give us plenty of time to get lost. We’re going to have to work together on it.”
    “I guessed that much.”
    “You handle all the checking accounts beginning with the letter M. Now, a lot of those accounts maintain a large balance at all times, to cut the cost of maintaining the account.”
    I went on with the plan. I had been over it so many times that I could say it like a grade-school poem.
    As I explained, I watched her face. For a time it would be like wax, like a death mask, then the lips would part and spots of color would come and go on her cheeks. When she breathed fast her breasts lifted hard against the basque sweater. The plan was giving her an excitement closely akin to sexual excitement. I could see that in the way her breasts had sharpened, in the almost imperceptible writhing movements of her hips.
    The plan was simple. And it fitted the operations of our bank. It was merely this: She would bring home checks from the files. We would make forgeries. I would cash the checks as though they had come over the counter. When the forgeries got up to her, she would file them as though they were legitimate.
    At the end of the month, she would make out two sets of statements for the accounts we had tapped. And we’d arrange that the phony statements got mailed out, so that the customers wouldn’t get wise.
    We’d start right after the June statements went out, and operate for six weeks. Send out phony July statements.
    The auditors wouldn’t catch it, because the bank copies of the statements would show the true balance of the accounts, and the phonies in the hands of the depositors would show a higher balance—higher by the amount we had taken out in each case.
    Many other banks have too many people concerned in the preparation of statements. Authority in our bank had been delegated just a shade too much, just enough so that a teller-bookkeeper conspiracy, plus a little brass, plus timing, would put us out in front.
    “Six weeks?” she said moodily.
    “Sure. After the July statement we continue the process for the first two weeks in August. As far as I can see.it’s pretty certain that I, by asking now, can arrange my vacation for the last two weeks in August. You can give two weeks’ notice on August first and—”
    “No. That means they’ll give me another girl to break in, and it means they’ll go over my accounts with too much care. I’ll give that nasty little Limebright a song and dance about having to take a quick trip to Chicago to see my doctor. I could tell him on a Friday, the last Friday before your vacation, and tell him I’ll be back Wednesday morning. That ought to give us enough time.”
    “What do you think of it?” We were sitting with our heads almost touching. We were talking, even then, so that we could barely hear each other.
    “I think I like it. It’s better than grab and run.”
    “You’re