The Dark Side (19 page)

Inevitably some would be lost, burned by fire or drowned by water, or maybe even buried in unknown pits by anonymous miners to rot in useless solitude. A billion dollars in crisp green currency would issue from the Mint, to return worn and foreshortened by thousands of missing dollars. Would it be wrong to replace some of those lost units? The Government would still have to replace no more than they had originally printed; the people that spent the money would suffer no inflationary loss of their savings, industry would get full value and possibly even increased sales.

That’s the way I had figured—no one would lose, and one family would benefit—mine. But now I had been proved wrong by some bank teller, by some sharp-eyed comparison of similar numbers. The innocents had lost when they had taken my duplicates, lost because all counterfeit money is automatically confiscated. Uncle Sam brooks no false images. Perhaps even some of my friends, some of my acquaintances, had lost because of me, and all because I had been stupid enough to use the same bill for all my duplicates.

The disgusted ceiling stared down at me and I made a mental note never to tell my wife. I’d solve this my own way, without getting her into it, and I went to sleep long after I had given up trying to find a way out.

When I got up the next morning, I duplicated a five-dollar bill.

It worked all right. There really wasn’t any reason why I shouldn’t be able to duplicate anyone I wanted; it was just that the ten had been the first one I tried, and that only because it was the only one in the house. And it felt better to me to have a pocket full of tens than a pocket full of fives. I guess it would to most people.

When I made the first five, I looked through my billfold and took out all the fives I had, and made one more of each one.

Then I went through Jean’s purse and did the same. When I was finished, I had about a dozen copies, and about a dozen originals, and I felt rather proud of myself. I leaned back in my chair and began to figure the probability of some bank teller’s noticing that the numbers of two five-dollar bills were identical, if the bills came into the bank two days or two weeks apart.

Then the handful of bills and I went out to do my shopping.

I think the best thing to do would be to tell what I did for the next few months. The first bunch of fives I got rid of in different stores, one or two in each one. Every once in a while I would be able to convert four five-dollar bills into a twenty, or into a pair of tens. Then I would duplicate the bigger bill, and spend the original and the copy in two widely separated stores.

In two or three months I was in more business places, more bars, and more odd shops than I’d been in the past ten years. But I did have one bit of trouble; it got so that the clerks would good-naturedly wail when I went into a store, and complain that I must be a millionaire, because I never seemed to have less than a five or a ten or a twenty. I didn’t like the idea of having attention called to me in such a way, even though nothing but pleasant conversation came out of it. So the only thing I could do was to spend a lot of time and traveling so that I hit the same store as seldom as possible. I had a little black book with all the addresses I’d visited, with a note in my own private code telling what I’d bought.

Every week or so I’d drop down to the bank and deposit what seemed to be a reasonable figure. And what a pleasant feeling it was to be able to walk into a bank with a bankbook and a fistful of money to put in! It was really the first time in my life that I had ever used a bank for anything else but a place to get money orders, or to cash in a savings bond that my boss had insisted I pay for with the payroll deduction plan.

It even got so the clerks in the bank would give me a big smile and say, “Business must be doing all right, Mr. McNally.” I’d give them a pontifical frown and complain that the country was going to the dogs with high taxes. I knew that was what I was expected to say. Anyone who deposits every week, just as regular as clockwork, better than a hundred dollars is bound to complain about taxes. The more deposit, the louder the bellow.

And we bought a new car. Well, not exactly new, but it was only a year old. These big cars depreciate a lot the first year. The salesman who sold it to me must have thought he was pulling a fast one when he got rid of that gas-eater, but that didn’t worry me any. The more gas it used, the more chances I got to get into a gas station where I could get rid of another bill. I always had wanted a big car anyway. My old car I sold to the junkman, with a twinge of regret when he hauled it away with the fenders throbbing gently in the wind.

My wife, who all this time never did find out about the mess I had almost gotten into with the original setup, had for the first time in her life all the clothes, all the household appliances, all the little luxuries she wanted. But she wanted to buy a house.

“Mike,” she said, “there’s a lot of houses around Twelve Mile Road. Let’s get some place where the kids can play.”

I told her no dice, and managed to make it stick. After all, I had just a little bit better than a down payment in the bank, and I didn’t want to take any chances until I had the ability to take care of all the expenses that would be bound to arise with the purchase of a new home.

So we just stayed where we were, with the landlady’s eyes popping every time we came home with something new. She tried to pump, but we don’t pump very well with people we don’t like.

There was one place where I had trouble, and it was the one place I didn’t want it. Naturally, I couldn’t stop going to Art’s Bar. I had been going in there for years, and the last thing I wanted was to have someone think I was going high hat. On top of that, I enjoy playing cards, and I like to drink beer. So I dropped in there just as often as I always did, and tried to think of answers for all the questions that were shot at me. When someone who’s always been on the verge of bankruptcy—and most of Art’s customers are that way; it was a family bar—suddenly shows up with good clothes and a new car and the ability to buy a friend a beer once in a while, then questions are bound to arise. I told them I was doing this and doing that, and still didn’t satisfy their curiosity.

Finally I called the man who’d been trying to sell me some more insurance for years. He came out to the house and gave me one of his high-pressure sales talks. I pretended to be taking notes of his figures, but I wasn’t. I was checking his sales pitch.

I bought some more insurance and memorised a lot of the words and phrases he used. The next time at Art’s when someone asked me what I was doing for a living I told them I was selling insurance, and went into the sales talk I’d memorised. They let me alone after that, apparently convinced.

Late in 1951 we bought our house. (We still live there, if you’re curious. Drop in and see us some time, if you’re ever around the Utica Road, neat Rochester. It’s the big one on the fat corner, neat the golf course.) We paid spot cash for the whole thing, on a seventy-by-two-hundred-foot lot. The kids fell in love with it at first sight, naturally, and I think it was the slide and the swings in the back yard that did it. It didn’t take long before they were just as brown as Polynesians, and it didn’t take long before Jean was the same. She spent—and spends—more time digging in the yard planting flowers than I do sleeping.

It was really a wonderful life. We’d get up when we felt like it—in the summer, when the kids weren’t in school—and sit around until we felt like doing something. When we found something to do we did it without counting out in advance what we could afford to spend. If we wanted to stay overnight in town we did it, and we stayed at whatever hotel we wanted to. And when we registered at the hotel we didn’t have to ask first how much the room was, and Jean could go right into the lobby with me without feeling self-conscious about the clothes she happened to be wearing. It amused me a little when I figured that out; before we’d had enough money we used to feel self-conscious no matter what we were wearing, no matter how well we were dressed. Now we didn’t care how we looked.

Once we registered at the Statler when we came back from a little ride to Tilbury, Ontario, and Jean and I and the kids were wearing shorts. We just went to our room, had a good night’s sleep, had breakfast, and were home before we even thought of how many states we’d collected in the glittering lobby. We thought that over, analyzed it, and began to laugh.

When the kids got out of school in the summer of 1953, we went for a long trip, this time to Wisconsin Dells, and then to the Black Hills. When we got back, in the middle of August, the mailbox was full of the usual advertising, and after a cursory glance at the collection, I threw it all into the incinerator, which was a mistake. That was in August. In September we had a caller.

It was one of these Indian summer days, with the breeze and the warm sun, and the overtones of the children playing in the yard.

“My name,” he said, “is Morton. Frank Morton. I’m with the Bureau of Internal Revenue.”

Jean almost collapsed.

“Nice place you have here, Mr. McNally,” he said. “I’ve always admired it.”

I thanked him for that. “We like it, Mr. Morton. The kids like it here away from the traffic.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

He agreed. “As a matter of fact, my boy comes over to play here quite often.”

I was surprised at that.

“You must have seen him,” Morton went on. “Fat little fellow!”

I knew who he meant. “Little Frankie? Why, sure! He likes my wife’s cookies. Doesn’t he, Jean?”

Jean said that reminded her of what she had in the oven, and excused herself to let me face the music alone. I didn’t mind; I’d always told her that all this was my idea, and I’d take care of whatever happened. I knew she’d be right out in the kitchen with her ear right up against the door.

“That isn’t what I was after, Mr. McNally. This is just what you might call a friendly call, in a way.”

I liked that. “Always glad to have you, Mr. Morton. You must live in that house across from the grocery store.”

Yes, he did. “I say a ‘friendly call,’ but it’s partly business. As I told you. I’m with Internal Revenue.”

Into my throat again with my heart. “Internal Revenue. Oh, yes.”

“You see, Mr. McNally, little Frankie has had so much fun playing with your children I thought I’d save you a little trouble. Since I live right down the street, I think the least I could do is to be a good neighbor.”

I couldn’t make out what he was driving at. All I could do was be polite, and ask him to keep talking. And he did.

“You see, since I work in the Bureau, a lot of forms and things pass over my desk. The other day the name and address on one looked familiar. I took a second look and knew it must be you. You’re the only McNally on the street that I know of, so I thought I’d stop by on the way home from work and tip you off.”

Tip me off to what?

“Well,” he said, “this was one of the regular forms the Bureau sends out. Apparently someone who has charge of your file sent you a letter asking you to come down and talk about a discrepancy in your tax return. And you apparently ignored the letter.”

I opened my mouth to say something and thought better of it. Morton hurriedly went on.

“Now, Mr. McNally, I know you were gone most of the summer, and, since this is my department, and since we’re neighbors, I know that things get lost in the mail, and I thought I should drop by and tell you you must have never gotten any notice to appear. It might be a good idea for you to call in person, and explain what must have happened. It’d save you a lot of trouble, in the long run. Just tell them I stopped by on a friendly call.”

He had more to say about that, but I think the situation really was that he didn’t like the man who was in charge of my file, and wanted to warn me to get out from under before this someone really dropped the boom.

We talked for a little longer about his boy and mine and the things people talk about when they’ve met for the first time, and he left with an apologetic smile. He already felt he’d gone out of his way to mind someone else’s business, and he felt guilty. I did my best to ease things, and Jean came out of the kitchen just before he left with a plate of cookies for Morton’s wife.

We watched him go down the curving flagstone walk that had cost me two hundred duplicate dollars; we watched him walk briskly to his own house half a block away. I asked Jean if she wanted a cigarette. She shook her head.

“No. Not right now.” She sat limply in the nearest chair.

“Now what’s going to happen to us?”

I told her I didn’t know. But I’d take care of it.

She gave that short sarcastic laugh she saves for special occasions. “Yes, you’ll take care of it. Like you take care of a lot of things. I knew you’d get in trouble sooner or later.” I didn’t know whether to get mad or to act sympathetic. When a woman cries, I don’t think either one works. After I tossed a few words around I realised nothing was going to do much good, so I picked up my hat and went for a ride. I got into a card game at Art’S, twenty miles away, where I hadn’t been for some time. Art was so glad to see me he bought the house and me a beer, which, for Art, is exceptional. When I got home Jean was in bed pretending to be asleep. I let her keep up the pretense, und went to sleep myself.

The next morning, bright and early, with my heart in my mouth. and lead in my shoes, I was standing in line at the counter in Federal Building. I told them what I was there for, and they passed me through three different hands and two different desks until I got to the man with my file.

The man had big ears and a bad disposition. His name was Johnson, and he made it quite clear that to me it was
Mr
. Johnson. He got right down to cases.

“You’re lucky, McNally, that Frank Morton went out of his way to be neighborly, as he calls it. But that’s neither here nor there. You haven’t filed any income tax return for 1951, 1952,
and
for 1950. Why?”

I wasn’t going to let him get me mad, but I knew I could make him blow his top. I detest public servants with an inferiority complex.