John Sandford - The Devil's Code

"Must be younger than us," I whispered to LuEllen.

"Younger than you," she whispered back. "Unless, maybe, you're entertaining Lane during the day, when I'm playing golf."

"How could you possibly be that full of shit?" I asked. "What the fuck do you mean."

Like that.

At nine o'clock, a white limo pulled up outside the apartment house, and a young woman got out. A very nice-looking young blond woman, with a long neck like the woman in Emma. She didn't dress like Emma, though; she dressed like a supermodel. Her short black frock probably cost as much as the average condo and if there'd been any less of it, she couldn't have crossed a state line without committing a felony.

Eight minutes later, a few lights went off in Corbeil's apartment, and two minutes after that, as the improbable couple to our left grunted and squeaked toward orgasm, she reappeared, two steps in front of St. John Corbeil. Corbeil moved in that stiff, upright military-academy way, as though he were holding a golf ball in his crotch as he walked. Not an especially tall guy, but one of those small-headed, wide-shouldered types who probably wrestled in high school.

LuEllen, who had the binoculars, focused on them with that kind of silent intensity that an attractive women gets when she feels she might have become a satellite, rather than the planet. That's what I thought at the time, anyway.

When Corbeil and his date had gone, we lapsed back into the waiting mode, until the adulterers decided they'd had enough. They split up after a last hasty kiss and grope, and as soon as they were gone, we headed across the golf course ourselves. Halfway across, in the dark, LuEllen said, "I'm gonna have to go away for a while."

We signed off with Green and Lane, and back at the hotel, LuEllen started making phone calls to numbers she'd memorized. She was looking for some specific gear, and she needed a nearby supplier. She got the right guy just before midnight, talked to him for five minutes, and dropped the phone back on the hook.

"Find it?" I asked.

"Yeah. We have a slight change of plans. We're not going in quietly; we're gonna go in superhard. We're gonna go after his safe."

"He'd probably suspect something."

"Maybe. But maybe not."

She told me about it as she changed clothes, into black jeans and a black jacket. "I gotta have that piece-of-shit car."

"Where're you going?"

"Out of town," she said. "One of my friends."

"When'll you be back?"

"Really late, or early tomorrow morning," she said. "Actually, there's no reason for you not to know. I'm driving to Shreveport."

"I could take you."

"Nah. Better if I go alone. This guy is okay, most of the time, but he's nervous."

"Most of the time?"

"You know. As long as he's on his meds."

That night I stayed in LuEllen's room, and spent twenty-seven bucks on pay TV, waiting, unable to sleep before LuEllen returned. She knows lots of people who do bad business, and not all of them are her friends, and not all of the places she goes to are good places for women to be after dark. That's not sexism: it's the simple reality of the redneck ghettos where she buys her tools.

When I wasn't watching movies, I worked over the architect's drawings, following every wire and line though the building, and everything that went outside. Two of the lines were particularly troublesome: one may have beenprobably wasa camera that scanned the inside of the parking garage. No way to tell where it pointed, or whether it was live video only, or if it spooled onto a continuous tape. Another line ended in several vertically stacked switches in the service-elevator shaft, and I thought they almost surely were floor indicators going out to the elevator. If they were something else, like infrared motion detectors, we would have an even bigger problem. LuEllen had night glasses in her scouting bag, along with her cameras, and once we were inside the elevator shaft, could use the glasses to check for security devices.

And we would be in the shaft, going up the cables with climbing gear. It's easier than it sounds, with good gear. The only alternative, with a keyed elevator, was to steal a key, or wreck the elevator getting to the wiring behind the key. That would take time, make noise, and tip anyone who decided to use the elevator after we did. Climbing was easy, and out of sight.

LuEllen was gone for a bit over seven hours; I was at the door when she came in. She was carrying a hand duffel, the same kind I packed for an extended fishing trip. She dumped it on the floor and it clanked.

"Sounds like construction equipment," I said.

"Deconstruction equipment," she said. "There better be something in that safe. This stuff isn't cheap." She was very sharp, each word clearly defined, coming out rapid fire. She was eager, hot, ready-to-go, bright-eyed and.

"Ah, man. You got your nose in it, didn't you?"

"Just a little bit. And a little bit for tomorrow. Today."

"Goddamn it." I turned away.

"Hey."

All right; I let it go, like I always did. LuEllen did a little cocaine from time to timeand, from time to time, more than a little. I hated the shit. I might smoke some weed after a long day on the water. I might even do a tab of amphetamine if there were enough reason. But cocaine, heroin, crystal meth. that crap will kill you. And if the dope doesn't, the dealers will.

We stayed in bed well past noon. LuEllen had been bouncing around all night, the residuals from the cocaine. Later in the day, she'd be sleepy. At two in the afternoon, I was up, feeling groggy, looked out the window. Another great blue-sky day. I cleaned up, and as I got out of the shower, LuEllen was finally crawling out of bed.

"You okay?" I asked.

"No." Still coming down.

"Go stand in the shower."

"Yeah."

When she got out, still a little groggy, I put her in the car, along with the equipment, and we went out for food. She began to revive, and we drove to Corbeil's place and sat across the street watching the reception area. The reception area, as shown on LuEllen's movies, had a single guard monitor.

"Look at this," she said. "You see where the guy is standing?" We were two hundred yards away, but I could see him through the glass of the reception center.

"Yeah?"

"The monitor is just to his left. Now watch." She took a cell phone from her pocket and dialed a number. The guard straightened, took a couple of steps to his right, picked up the phone.

LuEllen said into the phone, "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?" And clicked off.

The guy behind the glass shook his head, put the phone down, and went back to where he'd been standing before. He might've been reading something.

"So."

"So when he's answering the phone, he can't see the monitor," she said. "If the monitor is rotating between sites, there's a good chance that we wouldn't be on it, anyway."

"Take us ten seconds to walk inside and get to the freight elevator," I said.

"Mmm."

"But we won't know whether they've seen us or not."

"That's the fun part," she said. "The waiting."

When we left Corbeil's, we drove up to the Radisson, and LuEllen and Green spent time hitting golf balls on the driving range, while I went over the drawings again. Lane, looking over my shoulder, chewing on a raw carrot, suggested that one particular group of rooms in the Corbeil apartment could be for a live-in maid. It was labeled "guest suite," but it could have been either. We debated it for a while, and I finally pulled up the wiring diagrams. We decided that the questionable area had no wiring for a stove or for an electric clothes dryer, so it was probably a guest room.

"We'll have to call," I said. "Every fifteen minutes."

We started calling right after dark. The phone would ring four times and we'd get Corbeil's answering service. I was getting cranked on adrenaline, and LuEllen took a walk around the closed-down driving range and did a little cocaine. At ten o'clock, we left, LuEllen and me in one car, Green and Lane in the other.