As Jeffries sat back down at the desk and fiddled with the paperwork, the blond man stood behind him looking over his shoulder. Jeffries took out an envelope and extracted a thick wad of bills, hundred-dollar bills. Slowly he began to count.

“I didn’t know cashing a check was such a production,” I said.

The blond man lifted his head and smiled at me. It was a warm, generous smile and completely ungenuine. “We’ll have this for you in just a moment, Mr. Carl,” he said. “By the way, what kind of business are you in?”

“This and that,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“Our loan department is always on the lookout for clients. We handle the accounts for many lawyers. I was just hoping our business loan department could be of help to your firm.”

So that was why they spent so much time in the back, they were checking me out, and he wanted me to know it, too. “I believe our line of credit is presently sufficient,” I said. “Miss Derringer is the partner in charge of finances. How are we doing with our loans, Beth?”

“I’m still under my MasterCard limit,” said Beth.

“Now you’re bragging,” I said.

“It helps if you pay more than the minimum each month, Victor.”

“Well then, with Beth under her limit, we’re sitting pretty for the next month at least.”

“How good for you,” said the blond man.

Jeffries finished counting the bills. He neatened the pile, tapping it gently first on one side, then another, and proceeded to count it again. There was about Jeffries, as he counted the bills with the blond man behind him, the tense air of a blackjack dealer with the pit boss looking over his shoulder. They were taking quite a bit of care, the two of them, for ten thousand dollars, a pittance to a bank that considered anything under a million small change.

“What type of law is it that you two practice?” asked the blond man.

“Oh this and that,” I said.

“No specialty?”

“Not really. We take pretty much whatever comes in the door.”

“Do you do any banking work? Sometimes we have work our primary counsel can’t handle due to conflicts.”

“Is that a fact? And who exactly is your primary counsel?”

“Talbott, Kittredge & Chase.”

“Of course it is,” I said. Talbott, Kittredge & Chase was the richest, most prestigious, most powerful firm in the city.

“Oh, so they would know of you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very well.”

“Then maybe we can do some business after all.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. They had checked me out all right, and it was interesting as hell that they were so interested, but their scouting report was old. I might have gone for the bait one time or another, given much to garner the business of an old and revered client like the First Mercantile Bank of the Main Line, but not anymore. “You see, we once sued Talbott, Kittredge & Chase and won a large settlement. They hate me there, in fact a memo has been circulated to have their lawyers harass me at every turn, so I don’t think they’d agree to your giving me any work.”

“Well of course,” said the blond man, “it’s our choice really.”

“Thank you for the offer,” I said, “but no. We don’t really represent banks.”

“It’s sort of a moral quirk of ours,” said Beth. “They’re so big and rich and unkind.”

“We sue them, of course,” I said. “That’s always good for a laugh or two, but we don’t represent them. We sometimes represent murderers and tax cheats and crack mothers who have deserted their babies, but we will only sink so low. Are you finished counting, Jeffries, or do you think Ben Franklin will start to smile if you keep tickling him like that?”

“Give Mr. Carl his money,” said the blond man.

Jeffries put the bills back in the envelope and handed it to me. “Thank you for banking with us, sir.”

“My pleasure,” I said as I tapped the envelope to my forehead in a salute. “I’m a little surprised though at how much interest you both seem to take in Miss Shaw’s affairs. She must be someone very special.”

“We take a keen interest in all of our clients’ affairs,” said the blond man.

“How wonderfully Orwellian. Is there anything about Miss Shaw’s situation we should know?”

The blond man stared at me for a moment. “No. Nothing at all. I hope we can be of further service sometime, Mr. Carl.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said, certain he never wanted to hear from me again.

James, the young concierge, was waiting at the door for us after we left the desk. As soon as we came near he swung the glass door open. “Good day,” he said with a nod and a smile.

Beth was already through when I stopped in the door frame. Without turning around, I said, “Thank you, James. By the way, that man standing behind Mr. Jeffries, staring at me with a peculiar distaste right now. Who is he?”

“Oh, that’s Mr. Harrington. He is in the trust and estates department,” said James.

“With a face like that I bet he’s got a load of old lady clients.”

“No sir, just the one keeps him busy enough.”

“One?” I turned around in surprise. As I had expected, Harrington was still staring bullets at me.

“The Reddmans, sir. He manages the entire Reddman estate.”

“Of the Reddman Pickle Reddmans?”

“Exactly, sir,” said James as he urged me out the entranceway.

“The Reddmans,” I said. “Imagine that.”

“Thank you for banking at First Mercantile,” said James, just before I heard the click of the glass door’s lock behind me.

DRIVING BACK INTO TOWN on the Schuylkill Expressway I wasn’t fighting my way through the left lanes. I stayed, instead, in the safe slow right and let the buzz of the aggressive traffic slide by. When a white convertible elbowed into my lane, inches from my bumper, as it sped to pass a truck in the center, I didn’t so much as tap my horn. I was too busy thinking. One woman was dead, from suicide or murder, I wasn’t sure yet which, another was paying me ten thousand dollars to find out, and now, most surprisingly, they both seemed to be Reddmans.

We all know Reddman Foods, we’ve been consuming its pressure-flavored pickles since we were kids – sweet pickles, sour pickles, kosher dill pickles, fine pickled gherkins. The green and red pickle jar with the founder’s stern picture above the name is an icon and the Reddman Pickle has taken its place in the pantheon of American products, alongside Heinz Ketchup and Kellogg’s cereal and the Ford motor car and Campbell ’s soup. The brand names become trademarks, so we forget that there are families behind the names, families whose wealth grows ever more obscene whenever we throw ketchup on the burger, shake out a bowl of cereal, buy ourselves a fragrant new automobile. Or snap a garlic pickle between our teeth. And like Henry Ford and Henry John Heinz and Andrew Carnegie, Claudius Reddman was one of the great men of America ’s industrial past, earning his fortune in business and his reputation in philanthropy. The Reddman Library at the University of Pennsylvania. The Reddman Wing of the Philadelphia Art Museum. The Reddman Foundation with its prestigious and lucrative Claudius Reddman grants for the most accomplished artists and writers and scholars.

So, it was a Reddman who had pointed a gun at me and then begged me for help, an heir to the great pickle fortune. Why hadn’t she told me? Why had she wanted me to think her only a poverty-struck little liar? Well, maybe she was a little liar, but a liar with money was something else again. And I did like that smile.

“What would you do if you were suddenly stinkingly rich?” I asked Beth.

“I don’t know, it never crossed my mind.”

“Liar,” I said. “Of course it crossed your mind. It crosses every American mind. It is our joint national fantasy, the communal American wishing for a fortune that is the very engine of our economic growth.”

“Well, when the lottery was at sixty-six million I admit I bought a ticket.”