Page 52 of The Devil's Advocate

Bloch didn’t like titles. She was Bloch. Not Miss Bloch. Not Ms. Bloch. Just Bloch. Harry knew it too, but he was more concerned with keeping Agatha under his spell. Harry mouthedsorryto Bloch, and in return she gave Harry a quick, sour look before turning it into a full smile for Agatha.

Agatha pointed at the bag handcuffed to Bloch’s wrist and said, ‘Is that the bail money?’

‘Sure is,’ I said. ‘Five hundred thousand. Cash.’

‘Then come on into the office, sweetie, I’ll need to count it. Set it over here, if you wouldn’t mind,’ said Agatha.

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘But Bloch here will be with the cash until we’ve handed it over. Security procedures, you understand.’

‘Of course,’ she said.

Harry leaned over, whispered something in her ear and Agatha let out a peel of wicked laughter.

Bloch set the bag on the desk. Opened it. Took out a stack of bills held together with a rubber band and placed it to the right of the bag, on the desk, in front of Agatha. I stood on Agatha’s right. Harry walked around behind us.

Undoing the rubber bands, Agatha began to peel at the corner of the stack of bills, her lips moving in a low whisper as she counted. The stack was made up of five hundred one-hundred-dollar bills. Agatha’s fingers worked quickly as she moved through the roll of cash in under two minutes.

‘Fifty thousand,’ she said. Putting the rubber bands around the stack, and placing it to her right, in front of me, as Bloch handed her another stack.

Harry began whistling.

‘I know that tune,’ said Agatha, as she counted. ‘“Sweet Georgia Brown”. Wasn’t that what that basketball team used to play to?’

‘The Harlem Globetrotters?’ said Harry.

‘That’s it. I love that song,’ she said.

Agatha counted like an experienced cash handler. She was accurate and fast. One time, her fingers peeled two notes at once, and she licked her thumb, and went straight back to the start of the pile.

By the time she finished there were ten stacks of bills on the counter. Each stack was just over two inches high.

‘Five hundred thousand, on the nose,’ said Agatha.

‘Can I get a receipt?’ I asked.

‘Why sure,’ she said.

Bloch undid the handcuffs on the bag, dropped them inside and resealed it with the zip.

Agatha made a call, asking for Dubois to be brought up to the bail office. She prepared a receipt for half a million dollars, signed it, stamped it from the office of the Sunville County Court, and gave it to me.

‘Thank you,’ I said, putting the receipt in my wallet.

Agatha had counted the money correctly. And she had counted out five hundred thousand dollars. Ten stacks of fifty thousand. Five hundred one-hundred-dollar bills in every stack she counted.

Yet I knew there was only one hundred and ten thousand on the table.

The problem for Agatha was that she had been counting the same stacks.

Every dollar bill, of every denomination, weighs exactly one gram. A C-note and a buck weigh the same. Every bill issued in the United States is the same size – 6.14 inches long by 2.61 inches wide. With a few fifties on the top and bottom of each stack of one-dollar bills, the stacks could not be told apart.

When Agatha had finished counting the first stack of fifty thousand, Bloch handed her the second stack, again with fifty thousand dollars in it, precisely. While Agatha put her nose and her rubber thimble to work, leaning over the desk, Bloch took a stack of ones and tens with fifties on top from the bag, reached behind her back, and gave it to me, behind Agatha’s back. I retrieved it with my right hand, behind my back, and switched it with the real stack. The real bundle of fifty grand went behind my back, and behind Agatha’s back, straight back to Bloch. She put it in the bag with her left hand so she could take it out and give it to Agatha when she was ready for a fresh bundle to count, not knowing she’d already counted this bundle. If Harry stopped whistling, it meant Agatha had stopped counting and might notice me switching the stacks. As long as he was whistling, we were good. Bloch and I passed those stacks behind our backs, between Agatha, like Hallie Bryant and Willie Gardner of the Globetrotters, while Harry played their song. Agatha placed the ten stacks in the safe, closed it and locked it.

‘We’re all set. Good luck, Harry. Maybe I’ll see you around?’ asked Agatha.

‘Of course, I’ll see you for that dinner when all this is taken care of,’ said Harry.

We left Agatha in her office and went downstairs with the bail order.