‘But tonight,’ Mike said, ‘it’s about both.’
‘Tonight’s nothing. The nut isn’t the safe. It’s Brian McAvoy and Deer Creek Enterprises. Money, connections, power – they’re the guys sitting behind all those doors that’ve been closed to us all our lives. But if we apply the right pressure at the right time, make the right incisions’ – a nod to the cuts in the steel face – ‘pull the right levers, we’re gonna crack those mother-fuckers wide open.’
He resumed drilling, leaning on the handle, going through a second drill bit and then a third. At last, the resistance gave way, the drill chuck free-falling three inches to slap against the top of the safe. Shep blew the hole clear, then uncoiled a fiber-optic camera and fed the black wire through into the safe.
‘You see the negatives?’ Mike asked, the words coming in a rush. He had done his best to forget that every risk they’d taken was based on a hunch: that McAvoy had parked the photo negatives in the safe. Now they were inches away from knowing.
Shep studied the green footage on the tiny attached screen. His mouth drooped a bit, and then he leaned over the drill hole, sniffed a few times, and cursed under his breath.
Mike had the sensation of losing his stomach for a moment, a roller-coaster dip. ‘They’re not in there,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Shep said. ‘They are.’ But his expression stayed dire.
Mike looked on the tiny monitor. All he saw were a few brittle papers and – thank God – the thin stack of film negatives. Then he noticed it – a stripped wire rimming the safe’s interior. If the walls were tampered with or the door opened, the end of the wire would be pulled into contact with a bare wire loop. ‘If those exposed parts touch-’
‘They’ll ignite,’ Shep said.
‘So how did McAvoy get in?’
‘If you open the safe the right way, then the weight of the locking mechanism pins down the slack wire, moving it out of reach.’
‘But you destroyed the locking mechanism,’ Mike said.
Shep sat back on his heels, his hands resting on his stained jeans.
Mike wouldn’t let himself fully acknowledge Shep’s expression of defeat. ‘So we’ll just be ready to throw water in the minute the door opens,’ Mike said.
Shep grabbed the back of Mike’s collar and moved his face down toward the drill hole. ‘Smell.’
An acrid scent singed Mike’s nostrils.
‘That’s cellulose nitrate film,’ Shep said. ‘They made movies with it in the thirties and forties. But amateurs used to cut it down and use it for still photography.’ He pushed the fiber-optic camera in farther, moving the lens right above the strip of negatives. ‘See the horizontal dashes between every fourth sprocket hole?’
‘How do you know this? What are you, the Professor from Gilligan’s Island?’
Shep didn’t smile, which heightened Mike’s alarm. He just poked his tongue into his lip and said, ‘If you find it in a safe, odds are I’ve come across it. That shit is highly flammable – basically the same as flash paper. If it catches a spark, it’s up in a puff.’
Mike exhaled and let his forehead bang against the safe. Those photo negatives were a foot away, sitting behind an unlocked safe door that he couldn’t swing open. To have gotten this far, only to be undone by two lengths of stripped wire.
He swore sharply, a shout that echoed around the warehouse, rustling the bats in the rafters. Then he leaned back, spit into the darkness beyond the lights, and gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’m never going to see my daughter again, and it’s because some botanists from Stanford used cheap film eighty years ago.’
‘There’s no way I could’ve known.’ Shep’s voice was too loud, and his hearing had nothing to do with it.
‘I know that,’ Mike said. ‘I’m not blaming-’
‘I mean, of all things, cellulose nitrate-’
‘-you. I’m just grateful-’
‘-that shit’s so flammable it burns underwater.’
Mike bolted upright, Shep’s head snapping up. Mike jogged off into the darkness, shouting, ‘Get some light over here!’
He found the faucet near the wall by feel and cranked the handle, water drumming the wide basin below. Shep directed one of the T-bars of floodlights over, nearly blinding him.
Mike said, ‘We gotta drown the circuit. No oxygen, no spark.’
Shep came over, and they watched the rust-colored water slowly turn clear. ‘And if the water ruins the negatives?’
Mike found a crusted rag and used it to plug the drain. ‘We’re out of options.’
As the water rose, he spread several moving blankets out on the floor beside the basin and angled a set of floodlights directly down onto them. ‘We have to peel them apart right away.’
When Mike cut the water, the silence was pronounced, every plink from the faucet reverberating off the high rafters.
They crossed to the safe and lifted it from either side, careful to keep the door clamped shut. With some effort they carried it over and rested it on the lip of the basin. Shep’s eyes were shiny and excited. ‘Ready?’
They slid the safe over, and it hit the water with a slap, a wave rolling back and splashing their thighs. A spike of two-by-four gouged the underside of Mike’s forearm, but he held tight, settling the safe gently on the bottom.
He stepped back and shook his arms, spattering the concrete with drops of blood and water. Shep stayed put, elbows resting on the edge of the basin, a dugout-railing lean. After testing that the blankets had warmed beneath the floodlights, Mike went to Shep’s side, mirrored his position, and peered down. Bubbles streamed from the drill hole in the top of the safe. They made the faintest sound when they hit the surface, like guppies feeding.
Mike tried not to think of the water seeping into those photo negatives. He tried not to think about what would happen if they got ruined, if the wires sparked when the door opened despite the water, if they weren’t the negatives Two-Hawks was looking for. His knee vibrated up and down, a nervous tic.
They waited, watching the safe slowly fill.
Chapter 52
William and Dodge sat in the musty kitchen of the clapboard house, flipping desperately through the list of foster homes in California and the neighboring states. They had narrowed the list considerably but still had a mile of addresses. Boss Man had been breathing down their necks, so William and Dodge had forgone sleep for two nights running. After last night’s heist, Boss Man’s impatience had turned to fury. William had been calling in favor after favor from various patrolmen in various departments, crossing names off the list with a bloody red marker. He had cops spreading out through four states, checking in on foster homes, looking for new faces.
The kitchen was so far gone that months ago he and Dodge had given up any pretense of trying to clean it. Grease spattered the wall above the stove, dust clouded the windows, spills of salt dotted the floor like mini pyramids. And yet somehow they managed, cleaning out a coffee cup or a plate at a time before returning it to the dirty dishes mounded in the sink or stacked along the counters. Perched anomalously atop the long-broken microwave was a fax machine, a few dead flies caught in the paper feed.
Dodge sat across from William, reading a graphic novel and sipping deliberately from a glass of hot tea. In the soft light, his features looked even more indistinct, the edges of his nose blurred into his cheeks as if smoothed out with a putty knife. Now and then he absentmindedly rubbed the broad pad of his thumb against his forefinger, giving off a rasp. That was how he showed impatience when he was itching to use his hands.