They turned another corner and suddenly there were lights on the street, and, in the distance, people-not many, but a few, outside the Xcel Center where John McCain had been nominated for the presidency.
"Still a little traffic," Lane said.
"This is why I had Shafer ready to go," Cruz said. "I was going to call the cops, tell them I'd seen him on a roof. Like he was hiding out in one of these old buildings, waiting for McCain to come in. Every cop in town would have been over here."
"Woulda worked," Cohn said. He windmilled his arms for a few steps, looked at his watch again. "Why'd you pick three-fifteen?"
"Because most of the overnight hotel employees get off at three," Cruz said. "There'll be a short-order cook and a busboy in the kitchen, but they stay down there-it's in the basement-because they're cleaning up. The rest of the people ' You figure most people who get off at three might linger a few minutes, but not long. There's nothing to do. So, give them fifteen or twenty minutes to clear out. Then the day cooks and the rest of the kitchen staff start coming in at five o'clock. They never come in early-they're getting up on alarm clocks. Add it all up and the best time to get in will be around three-fifteen or three-thirty. That'll give us an hour without interference."
"Except maybe for a couple of night janitors."
"I explained that."
"I wish I could think of all that shit," Lane said. A moment of silence, and he added, "Little more than an hour from now, we'll know how it all came out."
Cohn laughed and said, "That's what I think when I'm going into the dentist's office. An hour from now, and you'll be walking out."
They ambled along, taking the night air, looking for other streetwalkers while forcing the minutes down the line: spotted some cops outside the X, but in twos, rather than in crowds. "Most of them have been sent home," Cruz said. "That's a bonus. If there was a riot somewhere, and they were all running around, that'd be another uncontrolled factor."
They turned another corner, walked down the street the hospital was on, and turned down toward the parking structure again. Cohn looked at his watch a last time. "If we drove out of the parking garage right now, we'd get to the hotel at three-fifteen," he said. "No point in slow-walking anymore."
Back in the van, Lane took the wheel, Cohn sat in the passenger seat, and Cruz got in the back, popped her travel case, took out a gray pinstriped women's business suit, and changed over, aware that Cohn was paying attention to her ass.
"Thanks for caring," she said, as she buttoned the blouse.
"Hell, it'd be kinda insulting if I didn't," Cohn said.
She pulled on the jacket and snapped on a small red tie, and then an expensive long brown wig, looked at herself in the window, getting it all straight. Lane had had to make a loop away from the Xcel, circling, to get back through town to the parking ramp behind the St. Andrews. He pulled into the ramp, wound up three floors, and stopped behind one of the emergency cars. Cohn got out, popped the trunk on the parked car, and transferred the weapons bags, tool bags, gloves, and masks into the van, and slid the door shut. Lane took them back down the exit and out, and left, past the St. Paul Hotel, around the corner, down the street, and into the front turnout in front of the St. Andrews.
Cruz hopped out, shut the door, and walked inside, moving easily past the front desk, past the closed bar, past the gift shop, past the closed restaurant-and found two men sitting in the restaurant talking quietly, a liquor bottle and two glasses between them. Breath coming a little faster now, heartbeat picking up. She went back to the front desk where two young women smiled at her, and she asked, "Is anything open? Anyplace where I could just get a snack? I'm famished."
One of the women shook her head. "Everything's closed, I'm sorry. You could still get room service." "Okay. Well, thanks."
Outside, Cohn popped the door on the van and she said, "We're good. Two women at the desk, two drunks in the restaurant, right inside the door, in the dark. That's it."
Cohn looked at Lane: "You good?"
Lane nodded and said, "I guess."
They all pulled on latex gloves and Cohn rolled a mask up like a thin watch cap and then pulled a big baseball hat over it.
The hat sat too high on his head, and looked a little goofy, but what the hell, there was a political convention going on, and goofier-looking people with goofier-looking hats were all over the place. Cruz pulled off the wig, put the end of a rolled-up nylon sock around the top of her head, and then pulled the wig back on. Cohn retrieved a silenced 9mm pistol from the weapons bag, and another, smaller, unsilenced weapon that he handed to Cruz. A silenced Uzi remained in the bag, with a big Cleveland drill and a bunch of spare drill bits-Lane's stuff. "All right?" Cohn asked. "All right," Cruz said.
They popped out of the van, Cruz and Cohn together, and walked through the gilt front doors of the hotel, toward the two women still behind the desk. Except for the Muzak-playing an orchestral arrangement of "A Hard Day's Night," heavy on the strings-the hotel was utterly silent.
Cohn stepped up to the desk and said, "Good evening, ladies," smiling, and they smiled back, and Cohn lifted the gun and said, "This is a robbery-If you don't do exactly what I tell you, I'll kill you. I'm not joking."
They moved the two stunned, frightened women into the darkened nondenominational chapel, which featured a small group of pews looking at a stand with nothing on it. Cruz pulled down her mask-the stocking obscured her features, while still allowing her to see. They ordered the two women into one of the pews, and Cruz said, "If you make a sound, we will kill you. Do you understand that?"
They both nodded, and Cruz said, "I want you to say, "Yes," that you understand. We can't have any mistakes here."
"Yes," they both said.
"Okay. Now, I'm going to tell you what we're going to do…"
As she was talking, Cohn pulled the mask over his own face and walked over to the restaurant, where the two drunks were still talking. "Gentlemen, I have to ask you to come with me."
"Who're you?"
"I'm the robber who's sticking up the hotel," Cohn said. "If either one of you makes a single fucking noise, I'll kill you."
He took the two men into the chapel and made them stand in the aisle, facing the two desk clerks, as though they were about to be married.
He pointed the gun at the younger man, a chubby, apple-cheeked blond who'd started to sweat: "What's your name, and what do you do for a living?" Cohn asked.
"My name is Rob Benedict, and I'm a consultant at Schumer and White."
"What's Schumer and White?" Cohn asked.
"We're a law firm ' in Washington."
Cohn pointed at the older man, a heavyset, weather-beaten farmer-looking guy. "What about you?"
"I'm a farmer, from Nebraska."
"What're you doing here?" Cohn asked.
"I'm a delegate."
"How'd you two get together?" Cohn asked. "You queer?"
The farmer seemed about to object, but then said, "We were the last ones in the bar. They kicked us out. We were too cranked up to go to sleep."
"Okay," Cohn said. He considered for a moment, then shot the consultant in the forehead. As the consultant went down, the farmer jumped back, then half-turned away, waiting for the bullet, and the two women made soft screeching sounds in their throats until Cruz put a finger to her lips.
"Sit in the pew," Cohn said to the farmer.
The farmer sat in the pew. The dead man was stretched down the middle of the aisle, on his back.