I hadn't even thought of that. I got out of there.
The minutes crawled by. Every minute seemed like an hour as I stood there in the darkness behind the garage with a thousand insane fears tearing through my brain. What if Sheldon fouled it up? What if he pulled the wrong switch, cut the wrong wire? What if the sky fell? What difference did it make? I was in it to my neck and there was no pulling out.
Then the lights went out. The garage was black. The whole building was black. But the lights were still on in the factory building across the way, and the floodlights were still on. I heard my breath whistling through my teeth in relief.
Sheldon had done the job right. Sheldon was a good man. At that moment I almost loved him. I heard him walking carefully across the cement floor of the garage, and then he was at the door.
“All right,” he said, “I got the keys off the watchman. Let's go.”
We went around to the far corner of the building, then under the catwalk, and walking into those floodlights was like walking into machine-gun fire. We cast shadows twenty feet long. We stood out like tarantulas in the snow.
“Jesus!” Sheldon said. We stood there blinking, our backs against the office building. I felt that if we walked under those lights they would be able to see us all the way to Tulsa. But there was absolutely no other way to do it. We had to go right up to that front door and open it.
“Well,” Sheldon said finally, “at least we can be thankful that traffic is light on the highway.”
“Give me the keys,” I said.
Sheldon was still staring at that highway. “I'll take care of the door,” he said at last. “You move back in the shadows and let me know the instant you spot a car. The first damn instant, understand?”
I was getting tired of being treated like an irresponsible idiot, but I kept telling myself that it wouldn't last much longer. I moved back against the wall, then went back to the catwalk and crossed over to the factory building, where I could stand in the shadows and still see the highway. Sheldon glanced at me and I nodded. He slipped around the corner and headed for the door.
He cast a shadow as big as an elephant against that brick wall. He went up the two cement steps to the door and I could hear the keys jingle as he went to work. I was so busy watching Sheldon that I didn't see the headlights on the highway until it was almost too late. Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference, maybe the people in the car wouldn't have noticed. But at that moment it seemed absolutely impossible that they could fail to notice Sheldon's enormous black shadow under the glare of those lights, and if they ever noticed, it was sure going to look fishy. People just don't fool around factories at that time of morning.
“Sheldon!” I called hoarsely.
He didn't hear me. He was so busy with that lock, concentrating so hard on which key to try, that he didn't hear a thing.
“Sheldon!” I practically yelled it this time, and this time he heard and reacted instantly. He hit the ground as though a bomb had gone off. He dropped off those steps, maybe three feet down, and hit face down in a flower bed. The car roared past the factory and hummed off into the night.
After a minute I gave him the go-ahead and he picked himself up and went back to work. It didn't take long. Not more than a lifetime. But he got the door open and motioned me to come on.
I crossed back over to the office building and sidled along the edge of that brick wall as though I were walking a tightrope. By the time I got inside, Sheldon was ready to go to work. It wasn't dark in there, with those floodlights pouring through the front windows, and Sheldon had already spotted the safe.
“Well,” he said, sounding pleased, “this shouldn't be difficult.” ”
It still looked like a hell of a safe to me, but Sheldon was supposed to know. He was the expert.
“How long will it take?” I asked.
He shrugged, walking back and forth in front of the safe, looking it over from all angles. “That all depends. I'd say about fifteen minutes if I could use an electric drill, but I can't. As it is, it shouldn't take longer than thirty minutes.”
That was going to be long enough for me. Already the echoing silence in the place was making me edgy. Sheldon was down on one knee, his black satchel open. He pulled on a pair of tight black suede gloves and tossed a pair of white cotton work gloves to me. “Put these on and wipe both doorknobs. Wipe the doorframe, too, while you're at it, and any other place that you think you might have touched.”
By the time I had done that, Sheldon had his tools laid out—a hand-operated brace, diamond-tipped drilling bits, a teaspoon, a small bottle of yellowish liquid resting on a cushion of foam rubber.
“All right,” I said, “what do I do now?”
“When I blow the door,” he said, “we need to have something over the safe. Something like a very heavy quilt or blanket would do, but we'll have to make out with what we can find.”
“How about a canvas tarp?” I said. “They usually keep them in the warehouse.”
“Fine!” He locked in a drilling bit. “I couldn't have ordered anything better.”
The warehouse was dark and ringing with silence. I could hear my own breathing, I could hear the wind sliding softly over the high tin roof. The echoes of my footsteps sounded like an army of marching men in the darkness.
I had no light, but I knew my way around back there, and I finally found the pile of heavy tarps that I was looking for. They were big pieces of canvas, maybe twenty feet square and very heavy. They used the tarps to protect new shipments of material from the weather when there wasn't enough storage room in the warehouse. The thing was too cumbersome to carry, so I dragged it across the cement floor and through the partition to Sheldon.
“How's it coming?” I said.
He just grunted. He had shed his coat and loosened his tie, and in the floodlight glow I could see the drops of sweat beaded on his forehead as he struggled with the brace and bit.
“Anything else you want me to do?” I asked.
“Just keep out of my way,” he said shortly. “Go over to one of those windows and keep an eye on the highway. Don't bother me until I'm finished.”
It looked like Sheldon's show from here on in. I went over to one of the far windows and stood staring out at the night. This was the part I didn't like. As long as I was too busy to think, it wasn't bad, but just standing and waiting began to get on my nerves. I began thinking about that Buick sitting outside. It was in the shadows, of course, hard against the building, but it would be a lot better if we could just open that big back door and drive it into the warehouse.
Then I began worrying about Otto Finney. What if the old man was really hurt? Hurt bad? What a hell of a mess that would be!
I looked at my watch and it was almost one-thirty. We had been there in the office almost forty minutes. What was taking Sheldon so long? Then I heard him throwing the tarp over the safe.
“You going to blow it?” I asked.
“That's what we came here for, isn't it?”
“You need any help?”
“All I need is for you to keep out of my way. Get over there by the partition and stay on your belly until this door's off.”
I thought: One of these days I'm going to shove that nasty voice down your throat, Sheldon. But not now. I was going to be a good boy and do exactly as he said, because this was Sheldon's party.
“You ready?” he called.
“Yes.”
“All right.” He set the fuse, then took about five quick steps and lay down behind the safe. The building seemed to bulge with the explosion.
It wasn't such a loud noise—most of it was muffled by the tarp—but it was loud enough for me. It was enough to make the windows rattle. It was enough to make my teeth rattle, too.