Mr. Murder

my own authority, sir. I'll have to get permission from the head teller or assistant manager."
        "Of course," he said unconcernedly, as if he made large cash withdrawals every week. "I understand."
        She went to the far end of the long teller's cage to speak to an older woman who was examining documents in one drawer of a large bank of files. Marty recognized hen-Elaine Higgens, assistant manager. Mrs.
        Higgens and Lorraine Arakadian glanced at Marty, then put their heads together to confer again.
        While he waited for them, Marty monitored both the south and east entrances to the lobby, trying to look nonchalant even though he expected The Other to walk through one door or another at any moment, this time armed with an Uzi.
        A writer's imagination. Maybe it wasn't a curse, after all. At least not entirely. Maybe sometimes it was a survival tool. One thing for sure, even the most fanciful writer's imagination had trouble keeping up with reality these days.
        He needs more time than he expected to find plates to swap for those on the stolen Toyota Camry. He slept too late and took far too long to make himself presentable. Now the world is coming awake, and he hasn't the advantage of the dead-of-night privacy that would make the switch easy. Large garden-apartment complexes, with shadowy carports and a plenitude of vehicles, offer the ideal shopping for what he requires, but as he tries one after another of these, he discovers too many residents out and about, on their way to work.
        Eventually his diligent search is rewarded in the parking lot behind a church. A morning service is in progress. He can hear organ music.
        Parishioners have left fourteen cars from which he can select, not a large turnout for the Lord but adequate for his own purposes.
        He leaves the engine of the Camry running while he looks for a car in which the owner has left the keys. In the third one, a green Pontiac, a full set dangles from the ignition.
        He unlocks the trunk of the Pontiac, hoping it will contain at least an emergency tool kit with a screwdriver. Because he hot-wired the Camry, he doesn't have keys to its trunk. Again, he is in luck, a complete road-emergency kit with flares, first-aid items, and a tool packet that includes four screwdrivers of different types.
        God is with him.
        In a few minutes he exchanges the Camry's plates for those on the Pontiac. He returns the tool kit to the trunk of the Pontiac and the keys to the ignition.
        As he's walking to the Camry, the church organ launches into a hymn with which he is not familiar. That he doesn't know the name of the hymn is not surprising, since he has only been to church three times that he can recall. In two instances, he had gone to church to kill time until movie theaters opened. On the third occasion he had been following a woman he'd seen on the street and with whom he would have liked to share sex and the special intimacy of death.
        The music stirs him. He stands in the mild morning breeze, swaying dreamily, eyes closed. He is moved by the hymn. Perhaps he has musical talent. He should find out. Maybe playing an instrument of some kind and composing songs would be easier than writing novels.
        When the song ends, he gets in the Camry and leaves.
        Marty exchanged pleasantries with Mrs. Higgens when she returned with the teller. Evidently no one at the bank had seen the news about him, as neither woman mentioned the assault. His crew-neck sweater and button-down shirt concealed livid bruises around his neck. His voice was mildly hoarse but not sufficiently so to cause comment.
        Mrs. Higgens observed that the cash withdrawal he wished to make was unusually large, phrasing her comment to induce him to explain why he would risk carrying so much money around. He merely agreed it was, indeed, unusually large and expressed the hope that he wasn't putting them to much trouble. Unflagging affability was probably essential to completing the transaction as swiftly as possible.
        "I'm not sure we can pay it entirely in hundreds," Mrs. Higgens said.
        She spoke softly, discreetly, though there were only two other customers in the bank and neither of them nearby. "I'll have to check our supply of bills in that denomination."
        "Some twenties, fifties are okay," Marty assured her. "I'm just trying to prevent it from getting too