I smiled and said, “You mean, let the aunt pay for having her boy friend shadowed?”
Bertha said, “I don’t give a damn what you have to do, we want that cheque made good. Two hundred dollars. We can’t let that slip through our fingers!”
I said, “I’ve got to do some looking around before I can help us much on this. You tell everyone that I’m working on a routine job and expect to be back any minute.”
“What are you so fidgety about this morning?”
“I’m not fidgety,” I said, “I’m trying to get this thing lined up before…”
“Before what?” Bertha asked.
“Before the police start tracing the course of that bullet through the suitcase.”
She said, “You’re nuts. That other thing is all washed up except in so far as that one question of insurance is concerned. Don’t fall down on that job, Donald. Eighty grand!”
I said, “Keep your mind fixed on that eighty grand. Bertha, it may help. Remember that’s the main thing, that insurance.”
“Well, don’t let it obscure your mind on this two-hundred dollar cheque,” she said. “We don’t want to let these banks start slipping stuff like that over on us, lover. I’m so mad I could put milk and sugar on tenpenny nails and chew ’em up for breakfast food. You handle, lover, but don’t let that bitch use sex on you.”