Penelope Read online

  “Yes, now I understand.”

  The three detectives were alone, and Lieutenant Rothschild said to Captain Bixbee, “You know, Captain, when I was a kid, it was different. Everything was different.”

  “You’re telling me?” Captain Bixbee asked bitterly.

  “Everything. Everything. You could walk in Central Park—all night. Nobody gave a damn. Nobody slugged you. Nobody mugged you. You could walk down a street uptown, and nobody threw bricks on you from the roof. And bank robbing was like banking. It was a profession. It was top drawer in the hoodlum set. Every cheap crook dreamed of some day when he would have enough class and skill and nerve to rob a bank. But not today.”

  “You can say that again,” Captain Bixbee nodded.

  “Today old ladies rob banks.”

  “She seems to be a young lady,” Sergeant Adrian Kelly put in, speaking up in the interest of truth.

  “Young lady, old lady—what in hell’s the difference?” Rothschild asked. “The technique’s the same. No nitro-glycerin, no cold steel drills, no sandpapered fingers. You remember Jimmy Valentine?” he asked Bixbee sadly.

  Bixbee nodded, and Sergeant Kelly said, “Who was he?”

  “The point is,” Rothschild, said, “that all you need today is a paper bag. Wait till the kids start. Wait until the twelve-year-old kids fall into the routine. You just take the bag up to a teller’s window and hold it open, and the teller starts to shovel money into it—”

  “Well, things change,” Sergeant Kelly began, “and you old-timers just won’t accept—”

  “I swear to God,” Bixbee said, ignoring Kelly, “it’s crumbling. Everything’s crumbling.”

  “Crumbling,” Rothschild agreed.

  “And this kind never gets solved. The lousy afternoon papers are going to have a field day.”

  “A regular field day—”

  “But wait a minute,” Kelly said. “There were four armed guards right here on the scene—”

  “Kelly!” Rothschild shouted.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Goddamnit, how many times have I told you not to console me?”

  “A number of times, sir.”

  “Just remember it. I enjoy my misery. Now take the wig and the purse and the rest of the garbage over to the lab and see what they can make of it. Also, when did that manager—Shepson, or whatever the hell is his name—when did he say the film will be developed?”

  “There you are, sir. We got her on film.”

  “Did I say don’t console me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When will the film be developed?”

  “By six.”

  Rothschild turned to Bixbee. “Shall we take it downtown?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “All right. Pick it up, Kelly, and bring it downtown tonight. Well look at it after dinner. And Kelly—”

  “Yes, sir?” Kelly was straight in his stance, broad-shouldered, a graduate of Fordham University, and intelligent as well. He was also optimistic.

  “How do you feel about the way things are today?”

  “Good, sir.”

  “What do you mean, good?”

  “I feel good about it, sir.”

  “The hell with him,” Bixbee told Rothschild. “As Mark Twain once said, youth is wasted on the young.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Late that afternoon, Mr. James R. Hastings called his home and spoke to Martha, the cook. His large and elegant Park Avenue apartment gave a living to two people, a butler-houseman and a cook. Martha, the cook, had been the housekeeper for Mrs. Hastings’ parents before Mrs. Hastings was married. By now, she had been with Mrs. Hastings for twenty-two years, was nearing sixty, and had improved from a good cook to an excellent one. The butler was Japanese and his name was Klie—or something that sounded like that, but not totally pronounceable to the Hastings—and they had renamed him Clyde. His English, however, left something to be desired, and whenever possible Martha answered the phone. That is, when the children were not at home. Both children were at college—Doris, who was eighteen, at Vassar, and Norman, twenty, at Brown, his father’s alma mater.

  Now Mr. Hastings asked Martha whether Mrs. Hastings was there at home.

  “This is her hour with Dr. Mannix,” Martha reminded Mr. Hastings, her voice gentle and a little sad. Five times a week, Mrs. Hastings went to Dr. Mannix, a psychoanalyst—a fact that puzzled and saddened Martha. It had always seemed to her that Mrs. Hastings was as sane as anyone in Martha’s world, and perhaps saner than most.

  “Of course. I can never remember her schedule. Well, Martha, I won’t be home for dinner tonight.”

  “Again?”

  There was such pathos in the single word that Mr. Hastings went into specifics. “You can’t blame me, Martha. It’s one of those things. Our new branch at Seventy-fifth Street was robbed this afternoon.”

  Martha clucked with her tongue and told Mr. Hastings how sorry she was.

  “Well, we’re insured. It’s more of a blow to our pride than our pocketbooks. The point is that our automatic cameras photographed the thief, and I have to stay downtown and look at the films after dinner. Are there guests tonight? I’ve been trying to remember.”

  “Just you and Mrs. Hastings, and nothing special either—just some chops.”

  Mr. Hastings had missed too many dinners at home recently, and it occurred to him that it would make a pleasant change for Mrs. Hastings if the two of them dined out. He even thought of taking her along to view the photographs of the robbery. It was not the kind of thing he would ordinarily do, but right now it salved his conscience. He gave the information to Martha and told her that he would reserve a table for half past seven at Whitman’s on Nassau Street. Clyde could pick up the car and drive Mrs. Hastings down there.

  After that, Mr. Hastings felt pleased with himself, and quite virtuous. He was a tall, good-looking man who had just turned fifty—gray temples, a good head of hair, and earnest gray eyes, and he had good reason to be complacent, if not downright proud. His health was good. He had two handsome children in two good colleges. He had an attractive wife who was never too much of a nuisance, an apartment on Park Avenue, a summer home at Sag Harbor, and he was an Episcopalian. In addition to all this, he was the president of the City Federal Bank, established in 1807 and with thirty branches in the five boroughs of New York City.

  All in all, the world was very much with him. Indeed, his riches were so many that it was almost redundant to remark upon the fact that he was very rich in such mundane things as dollars and cents and stocks and bonds and real property.

  Somewhat earlier on that same afternoon, Mr. Hastings’ wife, whose name was Penelope, found herself rushing to be on time for her daily appointment with Dr. Gregory Mannix. If she were to be late again, it would be for the third day in a row, and that would trouble her far more than it would trouble Dr. Mannix. In fact, what would trouble Dr. Mannix would be why it troubled her, and he would unquestionably ask, as he had on various occasions in the past, “Why does it disturb you so to be late? All people are late at one time or another.” “I just can’t bear it.” “Well, you must understand why you can’t bear it. It’s a key part of your whole personality structure and of the problems in that structure.” “You mean my migraine headaches?” “I mean all of your neurotic problems. They are hardly divisible.”

  That was exactly how the conversation would have gone if she had been late, and this was one time she had no desire to discuss her particular anxieties over tardiness. There were other far more important and pleasant things to discuss—even though she was guiltily aware of the fact that pleasure was hardly a part of this treatment.

  Penelope Hastings was forty-four years old and appeared at least seven or eight years younger. She was one of those well-kept, tight-skinned, extraordinarily neat women who seem to defy the laws of chronology. Some people, after a casual glance at Penelope, would catalog her as petite—which she was not. She was five feet and four inches and she wei
ghed a solid one hundred and twenty pounds and her figure was still good. Her face was round and open, her nose short and straight, her eyes bright blue; her blond hair was arranged in small, precise, and neat clusters of curls, a sort of halo effect that was timeless and which she clung to through an endless shifting of hair styles. She gave the impression of being a neat, tight, self-disciplined and somewhat timid person; and to some degree this was not an inexact description of her. Some might have said that she was unduly conservative and unadventurous, and she made no effort to dispel this notion. She had come from a comfortable, upper middle-class family, had gone to a good private school, a good college, had married James R. Hastings, and had dutifully borne him two children, one boy and one girl. And nothing in her appearance contradicted the facts of her biography.

  Dr. Mannix’s office was on Seventy-eighth Street, between Park and Madison avenues—a most expensive location that custom and necessity had imposed upon him; and a breathless Penelope Hastings reached it with only moments to spare. Dr. Mannix’s nurse, receptionist, and secretary, Miss Gilmore, frowned on Penelope’s breathlessness. Her disapproval was constant, unvarying.

  “Rushing again,” Miss Gilmore clucked. “My dear Mrs. Hastings, you must not rush. Doctor’s patient is still with him.”

  Penelope plopped into a chair without replying and immediately buried her nose in a copy of The New Yorker. She was a little afraid of Miss Gilmore—a feeling which, according to Dr. Mannix, stemmed from her own attitudes of hostility. “Hostility breeds hostility,” he had told her. “It’s all in your mind. Miss Gilmore has only the kindest feelings for you.”

  “I just bet she has,” said Penelope.

  “Of course she has,” Dr. Mannix had said gently. “And she has no designs on me—none whatsoever. Not even a simple transference such as you suffer from, my dear.” “Oh, I just bet,” Penelope repeated, but to herself this time. “Simple transference indeed! Gregory, how can you be so dense?”

  Now she sneaked a small glance from behind The New Yorker. Miss Gilmore was watching her—the sane, thick-ankled, bespectacled Miss Gilmore, who with such superiority contemplated the procession of nuts passing through her reception room.

  In the softest of whispers, Penelope said, “A hex on you—the worst.”

  “Doctor is ready for you now,” said Miss Gilmore.

  Dr. Mannix was forty-five years old and three years divorced from his wife. In fact, the final papers had come through just at the time when Penelope Hastings began her treatment with him, so she had never known Dr. Mannix as a married man. She knew him at first as a very upset man, then a lonely man, then a wistful man; and finally, over the past six months, as an emergingly confident man. He had changed far more during the course of her analysis than she had.

  He was quite good-looking if you liked dark men, which Penelope did. His black hair—of which he had a good deal—was impressively streaked with gray. He had heavy, straight brows, a thick but not uncomely nose, a wide mouth and a good chin. His eyes were dark brown and moody, and Penelope felt a motherly—or so she protested to herself—pride in his good looks and his narrow waistline. Once he had begun to put on weight alarmingly, and Penelope had lectured him severely; she had the feeling that it was her attitude as much as anything else that had reversed the weight-gaining procedure. She had reminded him then that overeating was a neurotic compensation for anxiety.

  In three years, Penelope had come to know Dr. Mannix very well—far better than he would ever admit. Now, as she entered, he smiled slightly and nodded; yet she knew that he was pleased to see her and would have smiled far more broadly if he had not felt that such an open display of pleasure would mitigate against the success of her therapy. There were all sorts of things that Dr. Mannix might have done in terms of Penelope, had he not been a severely disciplined person, and also concerned with the progress of his patient.

  “You look lovely today, Penelope,” he allowed himself to observe. They were both on a first name basis now—after two and a half years of formality, of Mrs. Hastings and Dr. Mannix.

  “Why, thank you, Gregory,” she replied. “And it’s still better than two months to spring.”

  “Spring?”

  “‘In the spring, a young man’s fancy,’” she began, sitting down on the couch, making herself comfortable, and then drawing up her feet and reclining with pleasure, even as Dr. Mannix interrupted her firmly.

  “I am not a young man, Penelope, not by a long shot, nor does my fancy turn to thoughts of love.”

  “How nice!” Penelope exclaimed.

  “Nice? Nice? You mean you approve of the fact that I am not a young man?” meanwhile taking a chair behind Penelope and placing his notebook upon his knee.

  “Of course not. You can be very obtuse when you wish to, Gregory. I was referring to your use of slang, or what you refer to as disorderly thought rendered into disorderly language. You said ‘not by a long shot.’”

  “Did I?”

  “You did, indeed, Gregory, and I think it exhibits a delightful degree of relaxation. Would that make me a tranquilizer, I mean symbolically speaking?”

  “Suppose you allow me to analyze you, Penelope.”

  “Of course. Sorry.”

  Penelope stretched and sighed, and then there followed that period of silence that appeared every so often—a time during which Penelope was blocked from any association because her mind seemed to her to be a complete blank. Dr. Mannix cleared his throat finally, and Penelope said:

  “I feel so relaxed, really—for the first time today. I have had a positively hectic day.”

  “One of those days when you’re running away from yourself, Penelope?”

  “You know, people who do know me well call me Penny. It seems so formal to constantly say Penelope. I mean, it is such a ridiculous name—”

  Silence behind her. Dr. Mannix, she realized, had firmed up, and now would refuse to allow himself to be provoked into comment. Comment on his part, he always maintained, was hardly as fruitful as her own free association and only served to inhibit such association.

  “Oh well,” Penelope sighed, “I can see that you’re going to be very remote and properly Freudian. What was I saying? Yes, Penelope. It is a silly name, you know. Oh, I felt that so strongly today. I robbed a bank today, and I kept thinking that this is a total non sequitur, anyone named Penelope robbing a bank …”

  Her voice drifted away, and there was a long moment of silence. “Of course,” Penelope said to herself, “this will be like one of those improbable film double takes.” But nothing happened, and she said aloud, “I never robbed a bank before, and it’s not as simple as you might imagine.… Are you asleep?” she finished rather testily.

  He maintained his silence.

  “My husband’s bank,” she added. “The new branch in that ridiculous green building on Madison Avenue. I don’t want you to think that I have any proprietary interest in Madison Avenue, like so many of those women who live on the Upper East Side who feel that Madison Avenue north of Fifty-ninth is something that belongs entirely to them—you know, they know every shop and gallery on the avenue—but even if I truly disliked Madison Avenue, which is not the case, I would never put up a building like that one, twenty-two stories of green brick. And such a shade of green!”

  “Penelope,” he said severely, “you are not associating, and you know that you are not.” Then he drew in a mouthful of breath, sharply. “No. Oh no, absolutely not!”

  “You know, Gregory,” Penelope said, “I told myself that you would do one of those silly double takes that one sees in films, but you didn’t. ‘Oh no’—that’s all you can say, ‘Oh no!’ You weren’t even listening.”

  “Penelope—are you trying to tell me that you robbed a bank?”

  “I am.”

  “No. I don’t believe it,” Dr. Mannix said firmly, and with some annoyance. “A silly lie—to waste precious time.”

  “I don’t make a habit of lying to you,” Penelope snapp
ed, and then she pressed her lips together and lay there, staring at the ceiling and thinking and wondering how anyone as insensitive as Gregory Mannix could hope to cure. How can you cure without sensitivity? How can you reach anyone without sensitivity?

  “Anyway, I am paying for the time,” she added.

  More silence.

  “I simply will not answer him,” Penelope said to herself. “I don’t care what he says.”

  “Penelope?” His voice was contrite, worried, humble. Yet she managed to remain silent. “Penelope, I am sorry. Did you really rob a bank today?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God!” She noticed that his voice trembled a bit, a fact that for some reason pleased her. “How?”

  “Well, don’t imagine it was easy, Gregory. It took more planning than you could possibly conceive of. You keep saying that I should turn to constructive things, and this was more constructive and intricate than one of those Erector Sets that my kids used to play with.”

  “Penelope, that is hardly what I meant by constructive.”

  “Constructive is constructive.”

  “Poor child—”

  “I am not a child, Gregory,” Penelope answered testily, “nor am I poor. I never was poor, and now I happen to be about fifty-two thousand dollars richer than I was yesterday.”

  “But you just don’t rob a bank, Penelope. How? How?”

  “Oh, Gregory,” she sighed, “you have no sense at all of practical things. One plans something and does it. I bought a wretched black coat and two wigs and a toy pistol and a latex mask, and then I did it. Do you see?”

  “You really mean that you robbed your husband’s bank and got away with fifty-two thousand dollars?”

  “Of course. Not that the money is worth anything. It’s mostly in thousand- and five-hundred-dollar bills and those are too easy to trace—”

  “Penny, why?”

  “Ah! See, I told you. It’s easy and comfortable, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Calling me Penny.”

  “Did I call you Penny?”

  “Indeed you did.”