osers, Weepers (July 1966)

One hundred thousand dollar misunderstanding. Some men retire one a hundred grand - or buy their wives mink coats with days of the week sewn in the lining... or fly to Rio for a good cup of coffee - but not Jim Morgan. Jim had a hundred thousand all right - neatly packed in stacks of fifties - only someone had made an expensive mistake. A mistake that put him on the run for his money - as well as his life...

"It's my money now," Morgan said quietly, trying to ignore the snub-nosed .38 at his head.
A smile formed on the thug's lips. "You got an awful pretty wife."
Morgan felt a chill move down his spine. "Leave my wife out of this."
"She ain't more than twenty-five, I saw her. Now if I had a chick as sharp as that I'd be real upset if anything was to happen to her - and there are lots of things that could happen..."
It was his money of his wife. Anita was a lot of woman-but a hundred thousand dollars was a hundred thousand dollars...

Ghost-written by Richard Deming.

A young Los Angeles draftsman, plagued by mounting debts and a money-mad wife, accidentally winds up with $100,000 in payoff money from a gangster and is beset on three fronts at once: by the thugs who want the money back, some independent operators looking for a share of it, and his wife who’s determined to keep all of it.

Nevins found that a few bits of police procedure help raise this mediocre item barely above dead-level competence.

 “The story,” said Anthony Boucher (August 7, 1966), “. . . is not unfamiliar; but the narrative is reasonably bright and moves at a fine, fast pace.”