Read The Procane Chronicle for Free Online Page B

distorter all right and the first thing he wanted to know was whether I had the money,
    “I can get it,” I said.
    “Okay, now listen good, because this is gonna be a little complicated. In fact, you may want to write it down.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “There’s an all-night laundromat, the coin-operated kind that almost never has an attendant, over on Ninth Avenue between Twentieth and Twenty-first. It’s called the Neverclose. You got it?”
    “I’ve got it.”
    “Okay, now here’s whatcha do. You get one of those airline bags and put the money in it.”
    “Ninety thousand,” I said.
    “Yeah, ninety thousand. I’m letting you take your ten percent off the top so that means you’re kinda working for me, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Well, put the money in the bag,” he said and then paused as if giving me time to write that down.
    “How do you want it?” I said. “Fifties, twenties, tens, or what?”
    “Fifties and hundreds will be okay,” he said, “just so they’re old. Hell, a hundred-dollar bill’s nothing anymore.”
    “Okay,” I said, doing some rapid calculation. “It’s going to weigh about three and one-fourth pounds.”
    “Is that all?” He sounded a little disappointed.
    “That’s what sixty thousand dollars in fifties and thirty thousand in hundreds will weigh.”
    “If that’s all it’s gonna weigh, then throw in some tens. Say ten thousand in tens.”
    “That’ll be another two pounds,” I said.
    “Okay. Now at three A.M. sharp tomorrow, Sunday morning, you walk into the Neverclose laundromat. You got that? Three A.M. ”
    “I’ve got it.”
    “At five minutes past three put the airline bag in a dryer. I don’t care which one. They got six of them and they’re the spin kind. They also got a heat control on them so make sure the heat’s turned down low. You with me?”
    “All the way.”
    “Okay. Now after you got the airline bag inside the dryer, close the door, and put a dime in at exactly six minutes past three A.M. Sharp. Now at exactly seven minutes past three A.M. one of the other dryers is gonna end its twelve-minute cycle. I don’t know which one yet, but one of them will. Okay. So you open it up and take out what looks like a blanket, only the blanket’s gonna be wrapped around the five ledger things I’ve got. You still with me?”
    “Sure,” I said.
    “Okay. Now you got four minutes to look at the ledgers to make sure they’re for real. Then you got one minute to leave. I’m gonna be watching. But if I try a double cross all you gotta do is wait for the dryer that you put a dime in to finish its twelve-minute cycle and then you can take your money back. How do you like it?”
    “Wonderful,” I said. “Real clever.”
    “I spent a lot of time thinking it up. It protects you and it protects me. You want I should run through it again?”
    “No,” I said. “I’ve got it.”
    “Okay,” the tinny voice said. “I’ll be watching just like I said so if you got any funny notions about putting cut-up paper in that bag, forget about it.”
    “I don’t work that way.”
    “Yeah, I know,” the voice said. “That’s why I asked for you. But maybe I should mention that I got some Xeroxed copies of the stuff and it makes real good reading.”
    “What are you going to do with the copies?”
    “Nothing, if everything goes off like it should. If it don’t, I’ll mail ’em to the cops.”
    “How do I know you won’t anyhow?”
    “You gotta learn to trust somebody someday, St. Ives,” he said and hung up.
    After I put the phone down I told Procane what the thief wanted me to do. He nodded a couple of times while I spoke and when I was through he said, “What do you think?”
    “It’s not bad, just a little overly elaborate with the dryers and the split-second timing. But it’ll let him observe me and keep us from bumping into each other. What about the money? It’s Saturday.”
    “Yes,” Procane said, “that does present a problem. It’s