Page 42 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Thrown for a Loss

“Okay, okay, yes, I got a few. If somebody claims them, I’ll give
them back. Honest.”
“Let me have them.” The policewoman took a step toward the
boy.
He pulled both hands out of his jeans pockets and opened them,
sweaty palms up. Now he knows what hot money feels like. That’s
when I saw my error. No nickels and dimes, only quarters. About
half a dozen. Maybe he had not been quite as distracted by the
emergency bell as he had said.
“Did you see who dropped them?” Labelle asked, holding her
shoe bag open for Nolan to dump his loot into. His grubby fingers
would have wiped out anyone else’s fingerprints, if that mattered.
Something about the coins mattered to her. She didn’t appear
inclined to give him a receipt for them, and he didn’t know, care or
dare enough to ask for one.
He shook his head.
“In what direction were they rolling?”
“All over the place, like it was raining money.” This kid was not
going to swear to anything he couldn’t back up. He’d seen enough
TV shows about crooked police, prosecutors and judges to know
that.
Labelle was not bothered by his snotty tone of voice. “Okay, then:
where exactly did you pick them up?”
Nolan Voyd considered the question and seemed to decide it
wasn’t loaded.
“Let me think.” Now he was enjoying the attention, milking it.
“Two or three over there by Well on Heels. Another one right in the
middle of the floor—I almost got my hand stepped on by some crazy
woman in a raincoat wearing a wig. The rest on the other side by that
shop with the silly clothes—” he peered around at the north side of
the hallway, “—Safari to Go.”
“Did you see any coins other than quarters?”
The implication to me was that maybe the kid was calculating
enough only to go for the bigger coins. He didn’t get it, or wouldn’t
admit to feeling insulted.
“No, ma’am. That’s all I saw.”
The lieutenant, I noticed, was rubbing her right thumb and
forefinger together while this conversation was taking place. It had to

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