"And you think you can keep your soul intact?"

"I have so far."

"You're still young."

"And you're old and bitter."

"The better to be grumpy with."

"Then there we have it," she said. "If I can make possibly the stupidest decision of my life, then you should be able to accept me. We both need to accept that there's something special here. You gotta be willing to give me at least half a chance."

They stood there for a long time, fingers twisting together. "I didn't realize when I first met you," he told her, "that you were a lunatic."

"I'm not always," she said, "but 'every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.'"

"So are you reforming, Roosevelt?"

"I think we both are," she said. "Don't you feel it?"

"I dunno. Maybe."

"Spoken with true confidence." She kissed him again. "So what are we going to do?"

He clasped her hands tight. "This will all be over very soon. When it is, if you're really sure about this, and you better be damn sure, then it'll be you and me. Hell, maybe we can even work on making that little fantasy of yours come true."

"I just want us to be together," she told him.

He held her close. "I like the way that sounds."

2.

At six o'clock Dempster pulled into the driveway of 1045 Coyote's End Trail and saw that Gardner's Toyota was already there. Inside, the four of them were at the kitchen table, the hotel layout and a couple of other papers spread out on top of the street map.

When Jimmy saw him, he exclaimed with a rare enthusiasm, "Man, this is gonna be one hell of a haul! I bet there's enough in there right now that, if we wanted, we could buy the hotel when this is all done."

"Yeah, just what I wanna do with it," Clark said, puffing away on a cigarette. Then to Dempster, "The hell you been?"

"A lot of things I need to attend to," he said. "After this, I'm going back out."

"The hell happened to you? Looks like someone pulled you out of a crushed car and went at you with a baseball bat."

"Little crises last night. Everything's taken care of."

No one said anything to that.

Sandra had taken Dempster back to his car a little before five, where he'd found a parking ticket stuck under the wiper blade. There were a couple of movies that Sandra wanted to see, so she had gone to one. If Dempster wasn't waiting for her outside when it was through, she was going to see another.

Evan handed him a sheet of paper. "Here's the list of safe deposit boxes."

"I think you'll be pleased with the result," Gardner said.

Dempster studied it for a while. Out of two hundred boxes, one hundred and forty-seven of them were currently occupied. He looked over at Clark, who was still puffing on his cigarette. "You need to study this." Then to Evan, "And so do you." He handed it back.

"That'll be easy," Evan said.

"Y'think so?" Clark asked. "That's a lotta boxes to remember."

"Out of two hundred boxes, a hundred and forty-seven of them are full, right? That leaves only fifty-three empty. Remember the empty ones and we'll be golden."

"Think that's the way to do it?" Clark asked.

"Of course it is."

Dempster looked at Gardner, "You know the combination for the safe?"

"Yes, yes, don't worry, I got it right here." He picked up another sheet of paper.

"No, don't show it to us. None of us can do that part."

"What?"

"You can't let any of us know the combination. If any of us let the tiniest hint slip out, they'll know it was an inside job. The cops will come down on you like you can't even imagine." He looked at the sheet of paper in Gardner's hand. "Have these guys seen it yet?"

Gardner gulped air. "No."

"Good. Keep the combination for yourself. Don't show it to any of us."

Gardner tore out a small section of the page and stuffed it into the pocket of his tan blazer. His hands trembled as he did.

To the other three: "Do we have everything we need?"

"I think so," Clark said. "I've gone over it all about five times."

"Make sure you go over it another five," Dempster told him.

"What's with the airplane model glue?" Jimmy asked.

"Instead of gloves," Dempster told him. "Better maneuverability. Two or three coats of glue on your fingertips works just as well as any glove, and this way you have your own hands."

"That's rather ingenious," Gardner told him.

"I didn't make it up," Dempster said. "Now what else you got on that piece of paper?"

Gardner hesitated, then handed over the sheet of paper with the small section ripped out of it. "It's a list of the night staff working tomorrow," he said. "I pull the nightshift, which I only do twice a week. I'll be at the front desk along with this kid, Syd Ramsland, about seventeen years old. He's pretty new and still doesn't know everything. He's strictly by the book so far but he's also a coward, shouldn't cause you any trouble at all. There'll also be one parking attendant in the garage, and we're probably safe, but there is twenty-four hour room service, so there'll be a couple guys way back in the depths of the kitchen. The two guards will be in the back room. Remember, they're armed. Three men will be in the security station, on the other side of the Old House Restaurant, also armed. Most of the year there's only two, but during the summer, when the season picks up, they add a third, just to be safe. And then there's Howard, the night watchman. He patrols the entire grounds, every floor. Unlike the rest of security, he isn't armed with anything other than mace."

"And you have the access code for the engineering area?"

"In pencil, down at the bottom of that page."

Dempster read it. 3114, very easy to remember. He looked back at Doug Gardner. "Another question about the safe deposit boxes."

"Yes?"

"They have double nose locks. Doesn't that mean they need two keys?"

"Yes, two keys are required to open each box. I thought we'd discussed this already. Why?"

"I just wanna make sure you have copies of both keys. Way I understand it, you or whoever was working would have a key, and the guy who has his stuff in the box would have the other key. We can't go at them with hammers or anything like that. We need to have both keys."

"Believe me," Gardner said, a tiny bit smug, "we would never be foolish enough to send a guest away with the only copy of a safe deposit key."

"I just wanna be sure. After all, they were foolish enough to hire you."

Gardner's lips pressed tight and his eyes narrowed.

"Remember," Dempster said, turning to Clark and Evan, "when you get into that back room and get everything situated, you have to make a good show of pressing Gardner here for information and action. Don't be afraid to get a little rough." He watched Gardner's tight expression reverse into discomfort. "You gotta push him until he gives in and fetches the keys. You gotta push him to work the combination on the safe. And Gardner, you gotta hold out a little, try to put up a fighta"but not for too long. Just long enough to make it look good."

"I got it," Gardner said, his voice shaky.

"All right. And you guys remember where to park?"

"Sure," Evan said. "Do you?"

"Don't worry about me," Dempster said. Then he added, "I'm glad that I stopped by there a couple times. With this layout you only get a very general sense of the place."

"Nothing like first-hand experience," Clark said.

"And the uniforms are together and ready?"

"Everything is good to go."

"Okay, I'm packing up. Won't be staying here tonight. I'll see you guys tomorrow."

"What is it you do with all your free time?" Evan asked.

"I attend to things of a different nature," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

3.

At the mall he parked right next to Sandra's Nissan and waited for about forty-five minutes. He was lost deep in thought when she knocked on his window.

"How was the movie?"

"Okay, I guess. My ass got numb sitting in the seat and I got too uncomfortable to give the story my full attention. How was work?" She couldn't help smirking.

"Fine. You hungry?"

"Yeah. I had a soda during the movie and it's kind of hollowed me out."

"Hop in."

"Hang on for just a sec." She went to her car and removed her travel bags, then came around to the Civic's passenger side.

He unlocked her door. When she climbed in she gave him a kiss, then tossed the bags into the back seat. "In case we never come back for it," she said. "It's still registered to Henry Kwatoko anyway."

Dempster nodded.

"How are you feeling?" Sandra asked.

"A little sore here and there, but overall fine, I guess. Where do you wanna eat?"

"Somewhere with you."

"Well, you got that much. You craving anything?"

She giggled. "Actually, I'm craving something cheap and greasy."

"What, like fast food?"

"Yeah, but I imagine we'll be eating a lot of that pretty soon, huh? When we drive across the country?"

"Who cares? We'll just be warming up for it." He thought for a minute, then said, "How about this? We'll go somewhere cheap for dinner, then we'll hit this nice hotel I know of, and we'll have a couple of drinks in the lounge. There we can try to figure out what the hell we're doing."

"I love that," she said. "A man with a plan."

They came to a stoplight and he kissed her.

4.

"Isn't this the hotel you were at last night, when you got jumped outside?"