She cut half a sleeve off the wet suit and used it to encase the drill, sewing the sound-deadening rubber tightly in place with the nylon twine. From the rest of the wet suit she created a roll-up satchel in which she could quietly carry her custom-made burglary kit.
When her working tools were ready, she rolled them up in the satchel, secured it with a bungee cord and then hid it in the hollow of the Boxster's front right fender, attaching it to the suspension struts with more bungee cords. Her fingerprints were on nothing. If the tool satchel were ever discovered by Thelma Kibble or any other law enforcement officer, Cassie would have a degree of deniability that might keep her out of lockdown. The car was not hers. Without prints on the tools or evidence of her having purchased and made them, it ultimately could not be proved that they belonged to her. They could hold her and sweat her but they would eventually have to let her go.
The seven padlocks Cassie used for practice. She locked them onto a wooden clothing hanger and dropped the keys into a coffee cup in a kitchen cabinet. At night she sat in the dark in her living room and blindly worked the extra set of picks into the padlocks. The nuances of finessing a lock open came back to her slowly. It took her four days to open all seven padlocks. She then hooked them back on the hanger and closed them. She started over, this time wearing latex gloves. At the end of two weeks she was regularly timing herself and she could open all seven locks in twelve minutes with gloves on.
She knew all along that what she was doing was as much mental preparation as anything else. It was getting back into the rhythm, the mind-set. Max, her teacher, had always said the rhythm was the most important preparation. The ritual. She knew it was unlikely she would have to pick a lock on the job Leo would find for her. Most of the hotels in Las Vegas and elsewhere had gone to electronically programmed card keys in the last decade. Subverting electronic protection was another matter altogether. It required inside help or a skill at soshing -short for social engineering, meaning the con at the front desk or the finesse moves with the housekeeper.
The prep time brought her close to memories of Max, the man who had been both her mentor and lover. These were bittersweet memories because she could not think of the good times without remembering how they had all ended so badly at the Cleopatra. Even still, she often found herself laughing out loud in the darkness of her house, the hanger full of padlocks on her lap, her hands sweating inside tight latex gloves.
She laughed hardest as she remembered one soshing trick Max had pulled to perfection at the Golden Nugget. They needed to get into a room on the fifth floor. Spying a night service maid's cart outside a room down the hall, Max went into a service alcove and took off all his clothes. He then ruffled his hair and walked down the hall to the maid's cart, cupping his privates in his hands. After startling the woman, he explained he had been sleeping and got up to go to the bathroom and in his sleepy confusion had inadvertently stepped through the wrong door and out of his room, the door closing and locking behind him. Not wanting to prolong her encounter with a naked man, the housekeeper quickly handed him her pass key. They were in.
What made the story so funny in memory to Cassie was that once Max was in the room he had to dress and return the key to the maid in order to complete the trick. But his clothes were hidden down the hall in the alcove. So he put on a set of the mark's clothes. The man they had targeted was slightly shorter than Max and rail thin. He weighed at least fifty pounds less. He was also openly gay and his clothes announced this to the world. Max walked back down the hall to the maid in a flamingo pink shirt open to the navel and black leather pants so tight he couldn't bend his knees.
Each night when she had finished practicing and was ready for sleep, Cassie reburied the second set of picks and put a heavy winter coat on the hanger holding the padlocks. She zipped the coat closed, hiding the locks, and returned it to a hallway closet. Ever aware that Thelma Kibble might make good on her threat to make an unscheduled appearance, she left no outward appearance in her home or activities of what she was planning and preparing for.
But she never saw any sign of Kibble's presence. The parole officer apparently didn't even make a follow-up call to Ray Morales to check on Cassie's behavior and work status. Cassie believed the woman was simply overrun with too many cases. Despite the stern words to Cassie, Kibble probably had dozens of hard cases that were more deserving than Cassie of a field visit.
As Cassie waited for the call from Leo she kept her old routines as well. Each morning she went running at the Hollywood Reservoir, circling the lake and crossing the Mulholland Dam twice. The run was penance for her earlier morning rituaclass="underline" stopping at the farmers' market on Fairfax for doughnuts and coffee at Bob's. She would take her breakfast in the car, driving up into the hills of Laurel Canyon and stopping, if parking was available, near the fenced playground outside the Wonderland School.
As she ate her glazed doughnuts and gulped steaming black coffee, she watched the children being dropped off by parents and playing in the schoolyard before the morning bell. Her eyes would solemnly scan the fenced playing ground until she found the grouping of the kindergarten girls, usually gathered closely around their teacher – a woman who looked very caring and kind. Cassie's eyes would move into the pack and search out the same face each morning: the girl who wore the backpack with the Have a Nice Day smiley face on it. She would watch as the bright yellow backpack bobbed and moved in the crowd. Cassie would not lose sight of the girl until the bell rang and the children were herded inside to the classrooms. Only then would she crumple the doughnut bag and start her car to head to the reservoir to work her body and mind to near exhaustion before the day had barely begun.
6
FIFTEEN days after Cassie Black made contact with Leo, she got the return call. She was sitting in her office, going over the figures on a trade-in sheet with Ray Morales, when the phone rang. Her mind on the work at hand, she grabbed the phone and punched the line without thinking about it.
"This is Cassie Black, can you hold?"
"Sure."
She recognized the voice with that one word. She paused as a cold finger slid down her spine, then she hit the hold button. A palpable excitement rose in her chest.
"You okay?" Morales asked.
"Sure, fine. I have to take this, though."
"Go ahead."
"I mean alone. It's personal."
"Oh. Okay."
Ray looked a little rejected and maybe even annoyed. To him personal probably meant a new boyfriend was calling. Cassie had gently rebuffed him two days earlier when he had asked her out to dinner after work. Now that he had finally made his move, he was too late. Cassie was waiting on Leo and wasn't going to complicate things with Ray. If things went the way she was planning, she would be doing him a favor by not getting involved with him. He'd have no secrets to hide when the cops came to talk to him.
Ray said he would be in his office if she wanted to finish going over the trade-in report. He moved out of her small office and closed the door without Cassie's having to ask. She leaned forward to look over the desk at the bottom of the doorjamb. She could tell that Ray was standing just outside the door, hoping to hear her conversation.
"Ray?"
He didn't respond but Cassie watched the feet move away. She clicked the hold button on the phone.
"Hello?"
"What, did you go for a test drive or something?"
"Sorry."
"Well, I got something for you."
Cassie didn't respond at first. The trilling of adrenaline in her blood was strong. Outlaw juice. She felt a sense of being at the edge of a cliff. It was time to go over. Now or never. Those people who got in padded barrels and floated over the falls had nothing on this.