Not a husband, he told himself. Not a father.
Just a man with a task.
6:59.
He closed his eyes.
That’s when he heard the scream.
Bob gasped breathlessly, a giant plastic bucket of quarters slipping from his hand and exploding onto the carpet, sending out a jangly spout of coins. His face taut and red, he grabbed his left arm and pinwheeled off a Hold ’Em table, staggering forward, dragging the red velvet rope and the shocked dealer with him. A creak issuing from his mouth, he collapsed onto the pit table, which toppled, spilling tray after tray loaded with casino chips.
Molly clutched at her yellow curls and let out another piercing scream. ‘My husband! Oh, my God, his heart, his heart! Someone help!’
Everyone in the vicinity had frozen at once, as if by design. The only movement was that of the coins and chips rolling past ankles and chairs and beneath slot machines, forty thousand and change expanding like a swarm of rats across a hypnotically busy carpet pattern. An elderly man in a battered snap-brim hat crouched to pluck up a black-and-green hundred-dollar chip, and his creaky movement broke the spell, the statue garden springing to life, jostling, shoving, grabbing. Filled fists jammed into pockets. Coin buckets bounced cheerily on crooked arms like Easter baskets. Loafers and high heels trampled hands and kicked coins. The dealer was trying to untangle himself from Bob, who flopped and screeched, clutching his left arm as though it were going to fall off. Security swarmed the area, chasing down chips, manhandling patrons, shouting into radios. Molly’s shrieks grew so strident that a few people, jostled along by the undercurrent, covered their ears.
Standing hip-deep in the chaos, the pit boss touched a finger to his earpiece and spoke into his sleeve. ‘Surveillance, you better be getting this.’
The surveillance suite was pure mayhem, monitors flashing, hands toggling joysticks, frenzied pacing. Half the screens were focused on the commotion below, recording it from every slant.
The director was shouting, his voice high and thin, ‘Could be a diversion! Get the software up and start grabbing faces!’
‘Already running!’ one of the supervisors shouted across.
‘What do you got?’
‘Nothing so f—’ An alert chimed from the speakers of the supervisor’s computer. He stood abruptly, one nervous hand mussing his spiky black hair, a deodorant ring staining his shirt beneath the arm. ‘The guy having the heart attack is a twice-convicted con artist.’
The director stormed over. ‘And the woman?’
There she was, listed under the con man’s associates.
‘Who else?’ the director yelled. ‘I want a sweep of the whole goddamned floor – now!’
Another alert sounded. ‘Okay,’ the supervisor said, ‘we hit on another known associate.’ The facial-recognition software pulled a third face from the muddle. Shepherd White, lurking by the bank, eyeing the vault through the crossed bars of the cage. ‘This one’s a safecracker.’
‘Shift cameras ten through sixty to the vault,’ the director said. ‘I want every angle covered. Have security move now and roll up the crew. And get Boss Man on the phone. He’s gonna want to hear this.’
Mike shoved the drop cart hurriedly across the floor, keeping to the perimeter as commotion reigned by the tables. The weighty gym bag resting inside the cart clanked as the wheels bounced from walkway to carpet. To his left, a bartender was standing on a stool for a better vantage, the FIREWATER sign blinking down on his crooked headdress.
Mike reached the door leading back to the offices and unzipped the top of his gym bag. First up, a spray lubricant, the thin red straw already inserted into the nozzle. He blasted the keyhole, then dropped the can into the cart and tugged from the bag a pull-handle pick gun. Slipping the thin tip into the lubed lock, he clicked the device on. The tip whirred, twisting in the metal channel like a snake in a fist, the internal pins clattering as they jumped above the shear line. With a click, the lock yielded and he was in.
He shoved the cart through and closed the door behind him.
Down the hall one door was ajar, a fall of light lying across the carpet.
Mike lost a heartbeat. He breathed in once, deep, then pushed the drop cart down the hall. As he passed the open door, a woman with wire spectacles glanced up from her desk.
Barely slowing, Mike said, ‘We got a security mess on the floor. McAvoy called – he wants all nonessential workers to clear out before it escalates.’ His voice was slightly distorted from the chewing gum, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘Everyone all right?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I heard that a few guys flashed guns.’
She grabbed her purse and bolted. He kept on down the hall. The end office had McAvoy’s name etched across a brass placard. The lock was a fat Medeco – way too complex for the pick gun. But fortunately Shep had planned for this contingency as well. Mike reached into the gym bag and came up with an electric hand drill, already fitted with a hard carbide bit. He jammed the point into the cylinder core right above the keyway, tightened his finger, and shoved. The drill chuck screeched and sparks showered his forearms, but he made steady progress, decimating the lock pins, the tumblers and springs falling down out of place. The cored lock yielded, the door rotating inward before he even had to shove.
Wheeling the cart before him, he crossed the corner office. The furnishings were top-notch – walnut desk, Baccarat horse sculpture, gold-framed portrait of McAvoy with a fetching younger wife and twin boys.
And there was the painting, just as Graham had described. An Indian healer, rendered in oil, staring Mike down from across the room. The man’s gaze was timeless and his hands raised to show his palms, a gesture that seemed at once passive and empowered. Mike grabbed the wooden frame, said a silent prayer, and ripped it from the wall.
An exhale hissed through his gritted teeth. Graham hadn’t lied. Mike flattened a palm against the wall safe, feeling the cool of the impenetrable blue-steel facade.
Withdrawing a hammer from the gym bag, he punched holes in the drywall around the safe, then he tore it away, the leather gloves protecting his hands. The last item in the gym bag was a cordless reciprocating saw, the straight blade about six inches long. He clipped in the battery pack and revved it up. Rather than attacking the safe, he dug into the two-by-fours that the safe was mounted to, avoiding the thick bolts. The wood gave readily under the jagged teeth. Sweat ran into his eyes. At any moment Dodge could stroll through the office door with its destroyed lock. Mike forced himself to stop checking his watch. It would take however long it took.
He left the bottom two-by-four for last. Positioning the cart flat against the wall beneath the safe, he flicked the saw blade at the supporting beam until it splintered under the weight of the safe. The metal unit tumbled from the wall into the drop cart with a crash, denting the bed.
Too much of the last two-by-four had torn free with the safe, so he severed the protruding end, trimming it as close to the blue steel as he could. Opening the empty gym bag, he laid it over the safe, hiding it. Leaving the tools scattered on McAvoy’s fine Persian rug, he shouldered into the drop cart. With a faint complaint from the wheels, it started moving for the door.
Everyone’s attention, it seemed, was directed at the aftermath by the poker tables. A fresh outburst of excitement rippled across the casino floor, and Mike glanced up in time to see Shep on the run, sprinting between the craps tables, four or five security guards on his heels. He slid beneath a Wheel of Fortune table, popped up, knocking over a cocktail waitress in an Indian-print shift, and bolted into the keno lounge. Reinforcements followed. He didn’t have long.
Wielding the drop cart before him, Mike wanted to sprint to the bathroom but forced himself to hold to a hurried walk. When he finally arrived, he used the end of the cart to bang open the door. He practically rode the thing across the tile, smashing into the far wall by the handicap stall. The place was empty, no one bothering with a bath
room break given the three-ring security circus raging on the floor.
Mike slid under the stall door, unlocked it, and drew the cart in beside the mobility scooter, still parked where he’d left it. Lifting with his legs and groaning under the weight, he transferred the wall safe from the drop cart onto the scooter’s footrest platform. Donning his sunglasses and hat, he mounted the scooter, throwing the eagle lap robe over his legs and the safe. The safe was wider than he’d hoped, so his feet stuck out a little on either side, but he prayed that no one would notice.
He motored out of the bathroom and through the heart of the casino, heading for the nearest entrance. The jagged ends of the two-by-fours shoved splinters into his legs.
In his peripheral vision, he saw five guards drag Shep from the keno lounge, Shep letting himself go limp to make the job harder for them. ‘I didn’t do nuthin’!’ he bellowed, playing up the impaired blur of his words. ‘Lee’ me alone. You’re hurting me.’
A number of patrons watched with dismay and sympathy.
Mike kept his head forward and his hand on the throttle, but given the peewee motor and the weight of the safe, the scooter seemed to creep at a snail’s pace. He realized with alarm that the cadre of guards surrounding Shep was moving directly at him, putting them on a collision course. His hand ached against the throttle, but he couldn’t make the scooter go faster. For a brief stretch of walkway, their paths converged, Mike veering off onto the carpet to avoid getting knocked over. Shep’s head reared up into sight for an instant, time enough for his and Mike’s eyes to meet before the guards swept him off again.
Mike clanked back onto the walkway and pointed the scooter’s nose at the glass doors twenty yards away. The safe shifted slightly, and he clamped his legs around it, the lap robe starting to slip. Up ahead he saw Dodge and William storming through the entrance, McAvoy between them. They started toward Mike, and for a moment he was terrified that he’d been made. Lowering his head so the brim of his cap blocked his face, he teased a lump of gum from his cheek and worked it anxiously between his teeth. The overtaxed engine gave off a whine. His leg was cramping under the weight of the slipping safe. He prayed his legs weren’t sticking out too far, that the stupid eagle fleece would hold in place, that he hadn’t in fact been spotted.
He didn’t dare risk a peek, but he felt the weight of the wind as they swept past. His breath burst from him with a shudder, the scooter wheezing forward with comedic slowness. At last the automatic doors peeled open and he was out, the night air chilling the sweat on his face.
Near the knocked-over table, numerous guards had corralled Shep, Bob, and Molly, along with the majority of the casino chips. Despite management’s best efforts, onlookers remained, standing a cautious distance back, pointing, and plucking the occasional quarter from underfoot.
Ducati helmet tucked casually under an arm, McAvoy approached the mass, offering Shep a collegial nod. ‘Where’s your friend?’
‘Dunno,’ Shep said. ‘I thought you tribesmen hung together.’
McAvoy’s left eye flickered a little. He turned calmly to one of the guards. ‘Why haven’t you moved him like I asked?’
The head security guard said, ‘We just rounded ’em up.’
Bob waved to a concerned gaggle of older women. ‘I’m feeling much better now, thank goodness.’ He held up an orange bottle. ‘Got my nitrate pill.’
McAvoy pointed at Shep, ‘Take him.’
Dodge stepped into view, and Shep nodded at him. ‘How’s your neck?’
Dodge’s head swiveled slightly, those eyes fastening on Shep but offering neither recognition nor acknowledgment.
‘We can talk about that in a minute,’ William said. ‘In private.’
The guards grabbed Shep by the arms and tugged him forward.
The crowd stirred, and then several uniformed officers shoved through to the front.
McAvoy squared to them. ‘I didn’t authorize you to enter my property.’
A lieutenant flipped open his wallet, let his badge dangle. ‘You’re staring at three felons, Mr McAvoy,’ he said. ‘And they’re wanted in custody.’
A stare-down seemed imminent, but McAvoy didn’t let it get to that. Showing the lieutenant his palms, he stepped aside and smiled cordially. ‘Officers.’
The cops took control of Shep, Bob, and Molly and started hustling them out through the crowd.
William stepped around McAvoy and put a hand on Shep’s chest as he passed, halting the procession. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, ‘Graham’ll have you back to us in no time.’
‘Yeah,’ Shep said, ‘good luck with that.’
Dodge followed them a few paces toward the exit, then stood, blocking the walkway, staring after them with dull, lifeless eyes.
By the time Mike reached Bob and Molly’s van at the far edge of the parking lot, the safe and the scooter were barely holding on. He thumbed a button on the key chain, and the van’s rolling door slid open automatically. A second button unfolded the wheelchair lift from the side of the vehicle. The dying scooter lurched up beside the lowered lift, Mike’s trembling leg gave way, and the safe plopped out and landed with a clang on the metal. With another touch of the button, the wheelchair lift rose, conveying the safe, still bolted to the severed two-by-fours, into the belly of the van.
Leaving the scooter keeled over on the asphalt, Mike hopped into the driver’s seat and pulled out, passing a second wave of arriving squad cars.
Turning onto the main road, he rolled down his window and spit his chewing gum to the wind.
The surveillance room smelled of coffee and body odor. McAvoy had the director play back the recording a third time. The footage showed Shep leaning against the wall near the vault, relaxed as could be, tilting his face up as if into a warm sun.
‘That’s it?’ McAvoy asked. ‘He just stood there?’
‘Yeah,’ the director said. ‘He didn’t make a move for the vault, nothing. I think it might have all gone down too fast for him.’
‘And he had no gear.’
‘No gear.’
McAvoy stared at the image. Shep pointing his face at the ceiling. No – at the hidden cameras.
As if he wanted the facial-recognition software to pick him up.
‘Wait a minute,’ McAvoy said. ‘Give me that clip on screen twenty-seven again.’
The director complied. Five guards dragged Shep from the keno lounge and across the casino floor. ‘Pause,’ McAvoy said. ‘No, back. Now. Now. There. Stop.’
A frozen image of Shep’s head bucking up above the guards, his gaze focused.
‘What are you looking at?’ McAvoy mumbled. He stepped forward, traced a line in the direction Shep was facing until his finger hit the side of the monitor. ‘Show me camera twenty-eight, same time stamp.’
The director complied. The screen showed an old vet, wearing a beat-up hat and sunglasses, riding a medical scooter. His legs poked out the sides as if they were broken. The hand on the throttle was gloved.
McAvoy paled.
‘Boss,’ the director said, ‘what’s wr—’
McAvoy bolted for the door, motorcycle helmet swinging at his side.
His pace was brisk across the casino floor. He barreled into the admin hall, keying immediately to his door at the end, slightly ajar. He stepped into his office, drawing up short at the edge of the rug.
The Ducati helmet slipped from his hand and cracked on the floorboards.
Chapter 51
When the ragged warehouse door screeched back on its tracks, Mike raised an arm against the light, though the pale dusk glow was far from bright. He’d been inside the dingy warehouse for seventeen hours, trying not to obsess over the limitless ways the plan could go to shit.
Given the low sun at his back, Shep was a perfect shadow, one arm extended, his hand hooked on the handle of the rolling door.
‘’Bout time,’ Mike said.
Passing the day alone had been torturous. The smell of damp concrete had lodged as a
taste in the back of his throat. Empty cans of SpaghettiOs rolled at his feet. The deserted warehouse was cavernous, which made the emptiness resonant, living, gothic. Bats in the rafters. Cobwebs. A rusty faucet dripping into a wide, paint-stained basin.
In the middle of the cracked floor was the pallet of heavy crates that Bob and Molly had delivered the previous day. Though Mike sat leaning against the boxes, he hadn’t so much as popped a lid; he knew better than to handle Shep’s gear. Pulling himself to his feet, he set a foot on McAvoy’s wall safe, a game hunter posing over vanquished prey.
Shep stepped inside. ‘Cops grilled me all day.’
‘What’d you say?’
‘“What?” mostly,’ Shep answered with a faint smirk. ‘I did nothing wrong. I was in a casino, minding my own business when I got manhandled. The bigger concern was my association with Mike Wingate. But of course that’s all years in the past.’ He rattled the door closed behind him. ‘I’d never hang around with the likes of you now.’
‘So that’s it? They just let you go?’
‘As promised, Two-Hawks lined up a pricey Injun lawyer for me.’ Shep produced a taupe business card and flicked it, showing off the fine stock. ‘Plus, it seems that the Shasta Springs Band of Miwok Casino bought a few new squad cars for the Susanville PD last year. For once in our lives, we were on the right side of a favor. With no Graham riding in to pull rank, they released me.’
‘And Bob and Molly?’
‘In the clear. Probably back in Reno by now.’ Shep circled the pallet, appraising the boxes. ‘Not that we haven’t become “persons of interest,” as they like to say. You are one wanted man.’
He started opening crates, unpacking equipment, most of which had been wrapped in moving blankets. Strings of flood-lights hooked onto T-bar stands, which in turn plugged into a generator he had Mike wheel over from the rear of the pallet. With the click of a switch, the center of the warehouse was as bright as day. Shep positioned the floodlights around the wall safe, so it was lit up like some sort of industrial sculpture. Stepping this way and that like a finicky film director, he adjusted the floodlights to reduce glare. Watching Shep work brought Mike back to studying SAT vocab words while Shep whaled away on that wall safe from Valley Liquors, the Couch Mother bellowing down the hall. Not your traditional Hallmark moment, but still, the memory was a comfort.
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