The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

“Monday!” Duffy roared. He shoved his face close to Charlie’s, his eyes glittering and hard. “Now, you listen here, Dickens. Today is Wednesday. I want that money ready to meet payrolls on Friday, do you hear? If it isn’t, you will be the sorriest son of a—”

“I can’t do anything more than my best,” Charlie said defensively. “You go on back to your bank. I’ll take it from here.”

Muttering to himself and casting glaring glances over his shoulder, Duffy stomped out of the Dispatch office and Charlie began searching for the satchel in earnest. It had to be here somewhere.

But a half hour later, he was ready to admit defeat. There were only so many shelves and corners and stacks of boxes and paper and other clutter behind or under or in which he could have stashed the satchel while he was soused the previous evening. He stopped, frowning, wondering whether he might have put it outside the back door with the intention of taking it home with him to Mrs. Beedle’s. In fact, the longer he thought about it, the more he thought he remembered intending something of the sort.

Then it came clear, a flickering memory of standing at the back door around seven the previous evening, singing the other words he had learned to “Tipperary.” “That’s the wrong way to tickle Mary, that’s the wrong way to kiss. Don’t you know that over here, lad, they like it best like this.”

And then he had put the satchel outside the door, thinking that he would pick it up on his way home, after he had locked the front door and enjoyed one last drink.

Hurrying now, he went to the back door to look, with “the wrong way to tickle Mary” running through his head. He fully expected to look down and see the decal-studded satchel at his feet, but to his dismay there was nothing in the alley except the straggly black cat that lived under Hancock’s grocery store steps and was always looking for a handout. The satchel wasn’t outside the back door, and he didn’t have the foggiest idea where it was. If he had indeed put it out there, somebody must have come along and picked it up. But who? The alley wasn’t used, except sometimes by Old Zeke, when he was carting grocery orders for Mrs. Hancock’s customers in his little red wagon.

Closing the door, Charlie decided he’d better call Mobile and see about ordering the colored paper—what was it? Yellow, red, purple, green? He frowned. The thing was, he couldn’t quite remember what colors he had assigned to the different denominations. Was it red ones, yellow fives, green tens, and purple twenties? Or—

Nota bene, he muttered, as he reached for the telephone. It was what one of his commanding officers used to say—the guy with the Harvard law degree. Always make notes. He should have written down which colors he’d used for which of the damn Darling Dollars. He rang the switchboard, got Myra May, and was eventually put through to the paper supply house in Mobile. He ordered the paper, telling the bookkeeper there to bill the Darling Savings and Trust. Doing it that way, he wouldn’t have to ask Duffy to reimburse him. And he got a lucky break, for the paper was in stock. If all went well, he would have it tomorrow afternoon, assuming that the Greyhound bus didn’t break down, which had been happening with greater frequency in the past few months.

Charlie hung up the phone and sat down in his chair, rubbing his face. His headache was back—or maybe it had never left, had just been drowned out by Duffy’s annoying insistence and the need to find that satchel. He opened his desk drawer and was hunting for an aspirin when the bell over the front door tinkled and a man put his head in.

“Yo, Dickens,” he called. “You here?”

Charlie stood and raised his voice. “At the desk. Come on back, Moseley.”

Benton Moseley, wearing his usual courthouse suit and tie and a gray fedora, came around the counter. “You got a few minutes?”