I left the room, went halfway down the hall.
Then I stopped.
I went back to the room and looked at the gift basket. I loosened the cellophane wrap and took out the can of talcum powder.
Then I went back out. To that last room. I opened the door.
“Michael!” It was Lucy’s hushed voice, from somewhere behind me. “Where are you going?”
I went to the safe. I poured out some talcum powder into my hand. Then I held the powder up about two inches away from the touchpad. And blew.
“What are you doing?” She was standing right behind me now.
I looked around the room and found a flashlight in one of the drawers. I brought it back and shined it on the touchpad. I played around with the angle, moving my head, moving the flashlight, until I finally achieved the effect I was trying for.
“Are you telling me…”
I nodded without looking at her.
“I’ll go tell those guys to stall a little bit. Good luck!”
She left the room. It was just me now. Me, the touchpad, the flashlight, some powder, and four visible fingerprints on four of the numbers.
I knew how to do this last part. It was just like when I would narrow down the numbers on a dial, and then go back and try out each possible combination. With four numbers, that meant twenty-four possibilities, assuming each number was only used once. I started going through them, hitting the ENTER button and then watching the little indicator light. Around the fifth try, I started to wonder if there would be some kind of lock-out mechanism if you tried too many incorrect combinations.
I held my breath and tried the sixth possibility.
Or you know what? Maybe too many incorrect tries sets off an ear-splitting alarm. That would be fun.
I tried the seventh combination.
Right about now, I thought. If this next one is wrong, something bad is going to happen. The alarm will go off, and those huge men will come storming onto the boat with guns.
I tried the eighth combination. The little light went from red to green. I turned the handle and opened the safe.
Now, I know what a stack of hundred-dollar bills looks like. A hundred bills in one stack equals ten thousand dollars. A hundred stacks equals one million. Off the top of my head, I was guessing we could fit a hundred stacks into one empty wine bottle crate. So I left the safe open and hurried back up to the second deck. And walked right into a party.
The two guards had come up the gangway and were standing at the bar now. Each with a bottle of Mexican beer. The women were still smiling and laughing, still playing their parts, but as I caught Ramona’s eyes I saw the flash of helpless desperation. Julian and Gunnar were still rearranging everything on the bar, moving all the wine bottles around and otherwise trying to look like they still had a good reason to be there.
I knew we needed several empty wine crates downstairs, as quickly as possible, but there was no way we could take them down there and fill them with money. Not while these guards were here.
“You guys about done?” one of the men said.
“Oh, just about,” Julian said. “Making sure everything’s perfect.”
“Maybe you need to show us around the boat,” Ramona said. “As long as we’re here…”
“That could be arranged,” the man said. “For a reasonable fee.”
She gave that one a little laugh. I could see the muscles in Gunnar’s forearms straining as he slammed a wine bottle down on the bar.
“Show us what’s up here,” Ramona said, pointing to the upper deck. “Like, is there a place where you can get a good tan?”
“We can show you the sundeck, sure. Maybe the staterooms, too?”
Ramona was practically pushing the man up the stairs. Lucy followed with the other, giving Gunnar a quick look as she did.
“Come on, let’s go,” Julian said, when they were gone. He grabbed two of the empty wine crates and headed down the stairs.
Gunnar didn’t move.
“We’re wasting time,” Julian said. “You gotta focus here.”
“I will fucking kill that guy if he touches her,” Gunnar said, grabbing two more wine crates.
When we were all back in the safe room, Julian and Gunnar started packing the bundles into the crates. While they did that, I took the talcum powder back to the room where I had found it. I slipped it in the gift basket and then went back to the safe room to help with the money.
“There’s too much here,” Julian said. “We’re not even halfway through it.”
“This isn’t four million dollars,” Gunnar said. “Is that possible?”
“What did they do, double the buy-in this year? I think there’s fucking eight million dollars in this safe.”
“There’s no way they’re just playing poker. Something else is going on here.”
“Does it matter? Just keep moving!”
A few minutes later, we had all six of our wine crates packed tight. There was still about two million dollars left in the safe.
“Come on,” Gunnar said, “let’s get these to the car, so we can come back for the rest.”
“This is enough,” Julian said. “It’s six million dollars.”
“We gotta come back anyway, right? You’re gonna leave two million dollars here?”
So each one of us took two crates apiece, one under each arm. Probably fifty, sixty pounds of total weight, so it was hard to move fast, especially as we got down to the end of the gangway and had to keep going down the whole length of the dock. When we finally made it to the car, Julian was breathing hard.
“This is what you get for not working out with us,” Gunnar said. He opened up his two crates and dumped the money into the trunk. “Mike and I will go get the girls and the rest of the money. Start the car and have it ready to go.”
Julian looked at him for a moment, not accustomed to being the one receiving the orders. Then he gave us a nod and took out his keys.
“Did you see how he just let Ramona go off with that guy?” Gunnar said as we were running back to the boat. “It didn’t seem to bother him one bit.”
All part of the job, I thought. What the hell else was he supposed to do? But no matter. We had two more cratefuls of money to pack up, and then we could all get the hell out of there.
Up the gangway, moving so fast now it lunged up and down like a trampoline. Back down to the lower deck. Shoving the rest of the money into the last two crates. Then, just as we’re finishing up, we heard the noises from upstairs.
“What the hell is that?” Gunnar said.
I closed up the safe while he went to the door and peeked down the hallway.
“Come on, I think we better get out of here.”
We were halfway down the hall, each of us carrying a crate, when we heard the men on the second deck. We ducked into the nearest stateroom.
“Now what?” Gunnar said. “We’re totally fucked now.”
I put my hand on his arm. I didn’t think we had a huge problem.
“No, you’re right,” he said. “We just made one more trip. Now we’re all done. So what if we’re carrying these? Just pretend they’re empty.”
I nodded.
“Okay, let’s go.”
We walked up the stairs. Just two deliverymen finishing up their work.
That’s when we saw the limos.
They were pulling up to the gangway, as the two guards ran down to greet them, followed by Ramona and Lucy. Lucy took a quick look back and spotted us, her eyes growing wide, but she couldn’t help us now. I saw one limo door opening. I saw Sleepy Eyes getting out. Followed by the man from Detroit. A red-faced man who must have been the harbormaster ran up to them and started yelling. Not happy about the limos driving on his dock, no doubt. Ramona and Lucy used the distraction to slip away without being seen-but we were still trapped.
“We can’t go down there,” Gunnar said. “They’ve never seen me, but you…”