John Sandford - Wicked Prey

The safe-deposit room was a six-by-eight-foot rectangle, with sixty steel-door boxes set into a concrete wall.

"What worries me is that whole "one minute" business," Lane said. "Sixty boxes, sixty minutes. But if it's a minute and a half, then we're in for an hour and a half. If it's two minutes…"

"We get the point," Cohn said. "If we get pushed, we drop the tools and walk. But Don Walker said that he knows those boxes, and it won't take a minute. He says it'll take more like thirty to forty-five seconds ' So now we're in for less than an hour."

"I would have liked to have drilled one myself," Lane said. "Just to know."

"I'm thinking, if we get in clean, I might want to talk to the desk clerk for a couple of minutes," Cohn said. "I'll take a rope along and strangle her a little, if I need to. Tell her we need the names of the boxes she put stuff in. The ones with the most jewelry, the most cash ' She'll have an idea."

"That could work, if you're not herding other people around," Cruz said, nodding. "If we get in clean, we move the manager and the clerk onto the floor in the safe-deposit room, put on the restraints. If they won't talk, maybe get rough with one of them…"

"That would cut the time down," Lane said. "If we knew which boxes to do first-or which ones were empty."

"We'll know which ones are empty, if there are any, because the desk will have both keys for them. For the ones being used, they'll only have one key. They keep their keys in a cupboard behind the front desk," Cruz said.

Cohn said, "The other thing is, I could take a look at what we're taking out. If we hit some certain point, we quit. Or, if nothing much is happening, if we're getting junk, if there's no cash, we wrap it up and take off."

Lindy asked, "Are you going to kill the clerk and the manager?"

Cohn said, "See when we get there. It's bad business, killing somebody when you don't have to. Tends to attract the eye." He didn't want her to know ahead of time.

Lindy was looking at the photograph of the safe-deposit room, and said, "Look at the wall plug-in. It looks like it's burnt."

They all looked and Cruz said, "Picture's not clear enough."

"I wonder if they had to drill a box, and it sucked down too many amps," Lane said. "If that outlet is burned out, we'd be fucked."

"That's a good catch, Lindy," Cruz said. "I didn't see that. There's another outlet on the wall behind me, behind where the camera is, but if there's a circuit problem ' You know what, Jesse? You should stop at a hardware store and pick up one of those long heavy-duty extension cords. It's ninety-nine percent that we won't need one, but if we need one and don't have it'"

"I'll get one," Lane said.

When they finished working through it, they ordered out for pizza. Lindy met the pizza man at the door, overtipped him, and brought the pizza back into the living room and said, "What we need to do is ask, "What if we didn't do this?"' We know there are a bunch of cops on our asses. They know what Brute looks like, and Rosie. What if we walked away from it, and started planning another job somewhere else? We could get in the cars and be in Missouri by midnight. Jesse could be home by tomorrow morning…"

"Maybe not," Jesse said. "That's a long haul, south of St. Louis."

They all sat and chewed on the meat-eater's specials, with olives and mushrooms, and Cohn sighed and said, "The big money keeps getting harder. The trucks get better, the guards get better, there are more cops all the time. They got DNA now, and instant fingerprints ' This money is right there. And Rosie and I gotta go deep, this time. We've got to stay gone for years, maybe. If we pull this off tonight, we won't ever have to come back. I can move to India or New Zealand or South Africa and stay lost forever. If we have to come back for another job ' I mean, the way fingerprints work now, if I get stopped coming across the border, and they print me, I could get busted right there."

"It'd still be safer," Lindy said. "I got a really bad feeling about this one, Brute. Really, really bad. We don't even know how the cops got onto this Shafer guy, we don't even know what they're doing."

Cohn sat chewing for a minute, then said, to Lane, "We can't do it without you. You in, or out?"

"If you make the call, I'm in," Lane said. "But Lindy has some points."

Cohn bobbed his head, smiled at Lindy. "You do have some points. You're smarter than I thought. Saw that thing on the outlet, too." He shook his head. "But fuck it: we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it, so let's get ready."

They finished eating and watched TV for a while, Oprah, and then Lane said, "I'm gonna go get that extension cord. Anybody want to come?"

Nobody did. Lindy was scared. "I'm afraid to go outside. This convention, I bet they got cameras everywhere. If they see me with you guys, I'm as bad off as you are, and I haven't even done anything."

Cohn nodded, stood up and stretched. "So you keep your head down," he said. "Once it gets dark, the cameras won't work so well." To Cruz: "Let's go walk to the hotel."

The St. Andrews was the modern counterpart to the aging St. Paul Hotel, as they stood side by side facing the CNBC TV platform set up in Rice Park, and conveniently outside the main security lines. The St. Paul was once the classiest place in town; now it was the second classiest, to the St. Andrews. Because they were only two blocks from the convention center, the richest Republican donors were stuffed in the two hotels, and the richest Republican nomination ball was set for that night in the St. Andrews ballroom, with John McCain himself scheduled to make a handshake tour and maybe dance with a couple of dowagers.

The main door of the St. Andrews faced Rice Park, but there were other entrances from the second-floor skyway, and out the back door onto St. Peter Street. Cohn and Cruz took their time, walking off the skyway escape route, with Cohn counting the steps: Cruz had already measured the distance, and, one afternoon in June, had put on jogging shorts and a T-shirt and jogged the route, timing herself, but she didn't disturb the count.

When they dropped down the stairs into the lobby, Cohn nodded at Cruz; he bought her timeline. Of course he did, because she wouldn't mess up anything that basic. At the same time, she appreciated the check. If anything went wrong, they needed to know their escape moves, and know them exactly.

Inside the hotel, they walked from the front desk to the bar, which was jammed with politicos and media, pouring it down as fast as it could be served. At the front desk, Cohn got a map from the desk clerk, consulting with her about the best route to the interstate entrance. And about the safe-deposit boxes: "I have a friend staying with me tonight, after the ball. If she needs one, would you have one available?"

The clerk shook her head. "As of now, we're all full. First time that's happened. Have you looked at your room safe?"

"She'll be wearing some fairly, mmm, important jewelry," Cohn said. "We thought that a real safe-deposit box might be more appropriate."

"If you can leave your name and room number, we can let you know about any availabilities," the woman offered.

Cohn shook his head: "Ah, it's six to eight hours. I guess we can do with the room safe. I thought I'd ask."

Back down the hall to Cruz: "They have no boxes available. They're all taken. I tried to impress her by telling her that we had some important jewelry coming in. She wasn't impressed. They must have goddamn Tiffany's in those boxes."

"Told you," Cruz said.

A guy went by with a broom and a dustpan, hurrying to clean up a mess somewhere. He was wearing a neat gray uniform, with his name in red script in a white oval. Cohn looked after him and asked, "How many janitors working overnight?"