“Oh no I’m not. This is the best idea I’ve had since I said ‘No’ the first time you proposed to me. I make you a present of the idea and you have a chance to do a little creative writing — and you’ll get paid for it for a change. Tell ’em that you’re sick, I’m sick, you’re writing that novel, I’m going to have a baby — anything you like. There are five names here,” and she handed him the list. “Allen and Tyler should be good for two thousand, maybe twenty-five hundred. Strike them for twenty-five hundred anyway. Try the others for a thousand; a couple of them might only come across with five hundred, but even so — And if you get more than the five thousand, you can keep the profit — or some of it, anyway.”
Conway’s mind must have been running in terms of fiction: he had half-expected her to name a bank to be robbed, or suggest a dope-smuggling scheme. Her plan was safer. It was also simpler, surer, and more repugnant to him.
He glanced at the list, knowing the names he would find there. His closest friends. His only friends. The men he had gone through the war with. B Company of the 165th Field Artillery had plodded across Africa, climbed through Sicily, slogged the length of the Italian boot, and these six had been together, miraculously, through it all. And they had learned the dependence of each one on all the others.
They would come through, all right. Conway knew them. Although they were scattered now and he had not seen any of them for two years, they kept in frequent touch by mail, and, if anything, the bond between them seemed stronger than ever. They’d come across. Even though all were married and most had children, and they were just beginning to get on their feet, with mortgaged houses, payments on cars, hospital and obstetricians’ and pediatricians’ bills, they wouldn’t let him down. He knew them. And they were scattered around the country; they wouldn’t check with each other, at least until afterward.
Oh, the letters would get results. They’d deprive their wives and children to help a pal out of a jam. All I have to do, Conway reflected, is to steal the money from those women and kids, hand it over to Helen, and be free... free to shoot myself.
Some of his shocked incredulity showed in his face, and Helen was amused.
“Don’t like the idea, h’m? Well, unless you’ve got a better one, that’s what you’re going to do. Or else.”
Her confidence, her good humor, bothered him more than anything else. She was so awfully sure of herself.
“Or else what?”
There was no humor now, but the confidence was even more blatant.