"Well, goddamnit, Kidd." She walked around it for a minute, then said, "Wait," and walked out of the room, turning toward the back of the apartment.
A minute later, she was back, carrying a black satin sheet. "Let's get the safe. I'll help."
"What're we gonna do?"
"Just help."
We wrapped the safe in the sheet, so we could pick it up by the ends. LuEllen is strong as a horse, and she tied a loop in one end of the sheet so she could get it over her shoulder, and then led me back through the apartment, and out a door onto the balcony.
"What're we doing?" I whispered.
"This way."
"Oh, no."
"Yeah, we can do it. From right exactly here. It'll go right straight down into soft dirt."
"Aw, man." I was scanning the dark golf course. "Somebody's gonna see us."
"Small chance." She was grinning at me; this was what she lived for, and what might send her to jail someday. "C'mon, Kidd, be a good sport."
"Ah, fuck."
Before I became a sport, I called Green: "Anything?"
"Not a peep."
"Drive by and see what you can see."
"One minute," he said
We waited one minute and he came back, "Man reading a magazine."
"Get out of here," I said.
"Ten-four." He wasn't quite laughing.
I picked up the safe, groaning, leaned over the railing, got centered, and let it go. A couple of seconds later, it hit the ground eight stories below with a dull thud, like a small car hitting a wood phone pole.
We stood absolutely still, listening. An intake of breath? A cry surprise? Nothing but a car accelerating in the distance.
"No problem," LuEllen said.
We would have been safer, probably, going down the elevator shaft again. LuEllen convinced me to go over the side of the building. "There's nobody on the balconies. We're good," she whispered
"Jesus."
"Ten seconds from now, we're gone."
Not ten seconds, exactly. I insisted on a last look around I apartment, staying away from the computer but tracking more grease around. We packed up the black bag, and went over the edge on the climbing rope. On the ground, she gathered in the climbing rope and took the bag, while I tried to take the safe. I managed to carry it a hundred yards or so, before I had to stop. Then we wrapped it in one of the sheets, made a couple of handles out of the knots, and in ten minutes got it to the corner.
I sent LuEllen to get the car, with the sheets. She spread them on the backseat, and when she pulled up next to the fence, I threw the safe over, crawled over after it, then picked it up and humped it over to the car.
No problem.
CHAPTER 18
LuEllen always gets cranked when she's been inside a place she's not supposed to have been. Dealing with her was like handling a hyperactive child: you try to keep her under control, slow her down. Tonight, she wanted the car, the safe, and the tools.
"Where're you going?"
"Back to Shreveport," she said. "If I give him the tools back, he'll cut the safe for free."
"We don't want it blown up or anything."
She rolled her eyes. "Jesus, Kidd, nobody's blown a safe since Bonnie and Clyde. He'll cut it open with a lathe."
She dropped me at the hotel and took off. As I got out, I said, "Cruise control."
"Absolutely."
When you're running, you always want to run on cruise control.
Get out on the Interstate, set your speed two miles an hour above the speed limit, and no cop on earth will look at you. If you're not on cruise control, your adrenaline will eventually get to you and you'll go flying past some cop at a hundred and ten, and it'll feel like forty-five.
With LuEllen gone, I walked six blocks to a drive-in phone on the edge of a gas station parking ramp, checked in with Lane, and afterward got online with my dump box.
Lane was almost as cranked as LuEllen.
"What'd you get? How come you're not up here?"
"We don't know what we got. It's in a safe and we've got to cut it open. LuEllen's taking care of that tonight, but she won't be back until morning."
"How about the computer?"
"We should be online with him. I'm going to check in a few minutes."
"Damn it, Kidd, it freaked me out, even though we were outside. Freaked me out. Something for the memoirs."
"Better fuckin' not," I said. "This is not even for your memories."
The dump box was a mailbox I'd set up especially to take everything Corbeil typed on his computer terminal. There was nothing in the box. I hadn't expected anything. Corbeil, the social butterfly, the model-dater, wouldn't be back until late, if at all, unless somebody found the broken door.
Finally, I went out to Bobby. He had nothing more to offer on Jack's Jaz disks, but was certain that the attack on the IRS was coming from Europe.
got some numbers in germany and id'd zombie computers here in states that are feeding attack. will pass along to nsa contact and try to steer her from old names.
she's no wizard. you may be putting too much hope in stupid people.
must push them off. they still thrash after old names.
take care.
and you.
I got to bed a couple of hours before dawn, still worrying about LuEllen. I got three hours of sleep, and, still groggy but unable to keep my eyes closed, got out of bed and nearly fell on my face. I'd felt a little creaky the night before, but now every muscle in my body was screaming at me. That goddamned safe. I know what muscle-pulls feel like, and I had what some docs called micro-pulls, the kind you get shoveling snow off a sidewalk. No major muscles, but hundreds of tiny pulls.
I hobbled into the bathroom, took six ibuprofen out of my dope kit, swallowed them, shaved, and then spent fifteen minutes in a scalding shower. You're supposed to use ice, rather than heat, but this was ridiculous: I'd have to bury myself in a snow drift to chill everything I'd pulled. The heat made it feel better, anyway.
I was toweling off, slowly, when I got the sudden feelinga premonition without the negative vibethat LuEllen had just gotten back. I walked over to a window, opened a slit in the curtain, and looked down at the hotel parking lot. Yet another wonderful day, sunny, but with that early-morning dryness that we don't see in Minnesota. LuEllen was not in sight.
So much for premonitions. As I finished toweling off, I had another one: I'd just seen something important, but I didn't know what. What was it? I wandered around, looked out the window again, looked at myself m the mirror, looked at the towel. What the hell was it?
I couldn't figure it out, gave up, and got dressed, slowly. My back and underarms hurt the worst, and the inner thighs weren't good. My hair didn't hurt at all, but that was the only bright spot I was leaving the room, going for breakfast, I had a third premonition, this one about LuEllen again. I went back to the window, looked out, and saw the black Pontiac GrandAm rolling into a parking spot. An accurate premonitionif you have enough of them, and look often enough, you'll always have a good one. I watched her walk into the hotel, and five minutes later, opened the door as she came down the hallway
"Saw you in the parking lot," I said. "How'd it go?"
"You got a big industrial lathe, cutting a safe is like cutting cheese," she said. She pushed the door shut. "If you can mount it and turn it, you can cut it." Then she stepped up to give me a big kiss, and I winced.
"What's wrong?"
"That fuckin' safe. I pulled every muscle in my body."
"The penis is a muscle."
"It's pulled," I said. Then. "You seem pleased. Maybe even chipper."
She dug in her pocket and took out something glittery, held out her fist, and I cupped my hand underneath it. She dripped a platinum-and-diamond necklace into it "Remember that model chick we saw going into his place? She wasn't wearing it going in. She kept touching it coming out. Looked too nice to be an outright gift. I thought it might be in there."
"How much?"