“Back in the car,” Snickers whispered.
We all got back in. From the backseat, leaning over my shoulder, Snickers, who could have used a healthy dose of Scope, guided me slowly to a driveway two estates over from the Hoffmann place.
“They ain’t home,” said Snickers. “Go right over the lawn. Lights out. Park near the pool on the grass. Cops can’t see a car from the street and they don’t do a house-by-house until a little after midnight or one depending on which cop is working. Tonight’s Friday. It’ll be the fat old white guy, off-duty North Port cop. He came by about half an hour ago. He’ll hit this stretch at one, maybe a few minutes past, then again at three-thirty.”
I nodded and got out of the car, following Snickers, who disappeared through a clump of bushes.
“Wall’s not hard to get up,” Snickers said, stopping when we got to the barrier. “But up top it’s got a jolt that’ll send you flying and lucky to land on your ass and they’ll know inside something’s been climbing or landing.”
The moon was almost full but not bright enough to show us what Snickers’s flashlight, produced from the inside of his leather jacket, put into a white pool of light.
“Dead birds, gulls, raccoons on the ground all along here,” he said. “All zapped. Probably won’t kill a man though I don’t know, a skinny one like me or you even or an old one like old Ames here wouldn’t want to test it out.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“We wade in the water,” Snickers said, snapping off his flashlight. “Like the old song says. ‘I’m gonna wade in the water.’”
We followed him along the wall to the narrow beach where the wall ended, but a metal fence about twelve feet high extended into the water about ten yards.
Hoffmann’s house was clear from where we stood. It sat back, three stories, lights on in almost every window. I didn’t see anyone looking out of a window at the white-moon ripples on the waves.
“We’re gonna get wet to the ankles,” Snickers said, taking off his shoes and socks, rolling up his cuffs, and motioning for Ames and me to do the same. We did, tucking the socks into the shoes. “Tide’s low, real low. We get around the fence. You do just what I do, right behind me, know what I’m sayin’?”
I wasn’t sure that an answer was called for, but I said, “Yes.”
“And remember, don’t touch the fence,” Snickers said, shoes tucked under his arms. “I repeat, do not touch the fence.”
The water was cool but not cold, bare feet on finely ground shells and then firm sand as we followed Snickers.
The water was up to my calves when we moved around the fence. Something slithered against my foot. I tried not to think of what it might be.
The wooden dock I had seen from inside the house stood high out of the water, with a small cabin boat tied to it and bobbing.
Snickers motioned to us and, heads together, he whispered. “Dock is wired. Boat’s wired too. Likewise about ten feet of the beach from fence we came around to fence on the other side. Some scared people in there with something to hide. A challenge. Anthony Bussy likes a challenge.”
“Anthony Bussy?” I asked.
“Me,” he said with irritation. “You don’t think my momma named me Snickers do you? We ain’t no comedy team, Snickers, Cowboy, and the Wop. We’re Ocean’s Three and the head man is me.”
Anthony “Snickers” Bussy was high on something. I hoped it was sugar.
We waded single file to the dock but didn’t touch it. Snickers moved toward the beach and motioned underneath the boards of the boat dock where small waves were lapping. He bent over and duck-walked under the dock, still ankle-deep in the water. On the far side, he turned and held up his right hand. Then he reached up and took hold of a two-by-four that jutted out and with both hands swung himself up on the deck. Then he turned and held out his hands, motioning for me to reach up to him.
For a skinny little man on a sugar high, Snickers was strong. He pulled me up and balanced me with one hand to keep my feet next to his. Then the two of us helped Ames follow us. This was a little trickier, since Ames was taller and weighed down by whatever armor he carried under his slicker, but he made it.
“There’s a wood plank under the sand,” Snickers whispered. “About as wide as J. Lo’s behind. Walk behind me real tight-ass and you’ll feel it with your toes.”
Snickers led the way, with Ames behind me probably wondering who Jay Lowe was and how wide a behind he had. We must have looked like three Alzheimer patients playing Follow the Leader.
After about a dozen steps Snickers stopped.
“Safe here,” Snickers said. “No dogs. Let’s move.”
When we reached the shadow of the house, Snickers put his back to the wall, wiped the bottoms of his feet to get rid of the sand, and motioned for us to do the same. Ames and I brushed our feet and put on our socks and shoes.
I had made a rough two-page drawing of the inside of the house, but Snickers had said he didn’t need it. He had been here before. All he needed was to know which room we were going for.
“Windows are wired,” Snickers whispered. “There’s a door back here, back of the garage, and a big door to the house. We go in back here.”
The back door was on a broad, covered porch with wooden deck chairs padded with plush turquoise down pillows. The windows off the door were dark. Snickers moved to one of them and looked in. Satisfied, he reached under his leather jacket and came up with two six-inch-long needle-thin rods of metal.
“Spend maybe a hundred and fifty thousand juicing this place and the lock on the back door ain’t worth fire-ant shit.”
He inserted both pieces of metal in the lock, played with them for a few seconds, and heard something over the waves that Ames and I didn’t hear.
“Black jack, quinine, a bit of dose,” he said, putting the pieces of metal away and coming out from under his coat with a ribbon-thin strip of dark metal and a pliers, the thinnest pliers I had ever seen, with long pincers.
“Dead bolts,” he whispered, going to work. “Two of them. Got a real quiet little handsaw with diamond blades I can rent from a supplier in Tampa, but I didn’t have the cash and you didn’t have the time. This worked last time. If they didn’t change to something better, it’ll work again.”
Snickers went to work, slowly, quietly.
“You’re working cheap,” I said, seeing beads of sweat beginning to form on his nose.
“Love of the game,” he said. “Here comes our only sure noise. Cowboy?”
Ames reached under his slicker and came out with his shotgun.
There was a metallic double click, not loud but not quiet either. Snickers tucked his tools away, opened the door, and walked in, with Ames and me behind him.
We were in the kitchen. There was enough light coming from the next room to show us that. We stood waiting, Ames’s shotgun aimed at the passageway between the kitchen and what looked like a family room or den.
There were voices far away, deep in the house. We followed Snickers through the next door and found ourselves in a room filled with overstuffed dark chairs and shelves of books and videotapes. A large television set with a monster screen stood at the end of the room.
There was a single floor lamp on. Between the shelves of books and tapes were huge paintings of baseball players in full uniform, four of them altogether. In one, Willie Mays stood with his bat back, waiting for the pitch. In another, a pitcher, hands up, ball protected, looking over his shoulder at a man on second base, was frozen forever deciding whether to throw a fastball or curve. I thought it was Robin Roberts. I wasn’t sure.
The third painting looked as if it had been copied from an old baseball card, a very old baseball card judging from the player’s uniform, mustache, and the part down the center of his hair. I guessed Honus Wagner.
The fourth painting was someone I didn’t recognize at first. The Yankees uniform, the confident smile, the bat over his shoulder, the cap tilted back. It was Kevin Hoffmann, an idealized Kevin Hoffmann, a Kevin Hoffmann at least thirty years younger than the man I had met, but definitely Kevin Hoffmann who, I knew, had never played for the Yankees.