"The bank log logs it," I answered, leaning my hip against the counter edge. My lower back was stiffening where the cruiser hood had taken my weight. "I signed the cash drawer slip at four-fifteen. That withdrawal has an electronic serial attached to the vault bundle. Vance didn’t take it under an impound sheet. He didn’t call dispatch. He didn’t read me a summons."
"He doesn't have to call dispatch if he claims it was abandoned roadside," Roy said softly. He reached under the counter, pulled out a cold bottle of root beer, and slid it across the linoleum toward me. "Look out that front window."
I turned. Through the dust-streaked plate glass, past the rows of parked tractor forks, the blue-and-white county utility truck was idling near the entrance to the south spur. Its cab lights were out, but the amber running beacons on the roof were spinning slow, throwing yellow circles across the corrugated fence.
"That's Pete Willis," I said.
"Pete’s been sitting there since ten after four," Roy said. "He came by to ask if you’d picked up the cedar check yet. Said Marcus Vance told him you might be running behind on your county yard tax, and if you couldn't cover the scale fee this afternoon, the county inspector was going to padlock the loading ramp at sunrise."
The trap had teeth on both ends. If I couldn't deliver the cash to the yard by five, the lumber stayed on the ground. If the lumber stayed on the ground, the perimeter fence contract for the new county substation defaulted, and the bond company would pull my business license before noon tomorrow. Vance hadn't just pocketed two thousand dollars for his weekend pocket; he had pulled the pin on the only job keeping my crew working through the fall.
"Give me the telephone," I said.
Roy pushed the heavy black rotary phone across the desk. "Who you calling? Sheriff won't take your call at home, and the night desk clerk is Marcus Vance's brother-in-law."
"I'm calling the branch manager at the main office in town," I said, lifting the receiver. "Mr. Albright still keeps the Saturday ledger in the vault room. He was in the Guard with me in seventy-one. He knows what a purple ink stamp looks like on a federal band."
I dialed the seven digits from memory, listening to the hollow mechanical clicks as the switchboard connected the call across the creek line. The line rang four times, five times, until the heavy click of an answering machine engaged, followed by the crisp, recorded voice of the branch secretary stating the lobby was closed until Monday morning at eight.
I set the receiver back down into its cradle. The silence in the small office was thick, broken only by the hum of the small refrigerator behind the door and the rhythmic thumping of the blue-and-white utility truck's exhaust through the open yard.
"He won't answer on a Friday night, Art," Roy muttered, staring down at his yellow pad. "By Monday morning, those bills are broken into twenties at the riverboat or sitting in Marcus Vance's tackle box. The envelope will be in the incinerator behind the substation."
I walked over to the washbasin, rinsed my face with the cold well water, and dried it on a fresh brown towel. My reflection in the small mirror above the sink looked tired, the gray hair at my temples flattened by sweat and the road dirt caked into the lines around my eyes. But underneath the exhaustion was the cold, steady anger that had kept me alive forty years ago when people with more rank than sense tried to write off my squad on a muddy hillside.
"Get the tape recorder running again, Roy," I said, turning around.
Roy frowned at me, his fingers hovering over the yellow pad. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going down to the substation on Mill Street," I said, fastening the top button of my denim shirt to hide the bruised hollow of my collarbone. "I'm going to ask Marcus Vance for my property receipt."