“All banks do have some,” Wolf said. “They have enough for the immediate needs of their customers. A giant bank in New York won’t need a lot of cash most days—just enough to stock the cash registers of the stores and restaurants for a few blocks around. They don’t need enough for all of Manhattan, because there are four or five other banks in the next couple of blocks. They don’t use much cash. They don’t do lending, investing, transferring, or anything in cash. In big cities even the prostitutes take credit cards. Nobody needs cash, so they don’t keep much around.”

“So you’re saying—”

“I’m saying a bank in Monroe or West Monroe, Louisiana, probably needs to keep around about as much cash as a bank in Manhattan. There are still construction companies in these little towns that buy wood from some guy’s land, where he runs a sawmill to cut and plane it. He probably makes his payroll in cash too, so he doesn’t have to fill out forty pages of forms when he hires an extra man for a week’s work. If he’s rich enough to have help at home, he pays them in cash. This is a land of truck farmers, shopkeepers, owners of small restaurants and repair shops, and tradesmen. If you buy a car secondhand, it’s probably from the guy who drove it first, and he’s not going to take a check unless he knows you. Maybe not even then.”

Bob Carpenter smiled. “You’re saying these small banks in small towns are as good as anywhere.”

“For what we want they are,” Wolf said. “What we want is four bags of cash money, and it doesn’t have to be hundreds. Small bills are less money, but they’re safer for people like us to spend. And besides that, if we steal it here, what we’re up against isn’t the police department of the city of New Orleans. We’re up against whoever drew patrol duty in West Monroe today.”

At 5:45 p.m. two men entered the Monroe Manufacturers’ Bank. The clerks and assistants from the small businesses nearby had come in and deposited most of the money from the day’s sales for the night. Many stores in Monroe weren’t usually open after six, except the month before Christmas, and it was still summer. The two men went to the stand-up desks on the sides of the foyer and used the pens with chains on them to fill out deposit slips and withdrawal slips and do simple arithmetic on the backs.