The Firm Page 0,120

dozen big file cabinets, unlocked. A few cardboard boxes and other junk, but not much else."

"A dozen?"

"Yeah, tall ones. All legal size. We'll be lucky to finish by six."

It was a single motel room with a queen-size bed. The sofa, coffee table and bed were pushed to the wall, and a Canon Model 8580 copier with automatic feed and collator sat in the center with engines running. On lease from Island Office Supply, it came at the scalper's price of three hundred dollars for twenty-four hours, delivered. It was the newest and largest rental copier on the island, the salesman had explained, and he was not excited about parting with it for only a day. But Abby charmed him and began laying hundred-dollar bills on the counter. Two cases of copy paper, ten thousand sheets, sat next to the bed.

They opened the first briefcase and removed six thin files. "Same type of files," Tammy mumbled to herself. She unhitched the two-prong clasp on the inside of the file and removed the papers. "Mitch says they're very particular about their files," Tammy explained as she unstapled a ten-page document. "He says lawyers have a sixth sense and can almost smell if a secretary or a clerk has been in a file. So you'll have to be careful. Work slowly. Copy one document, and when you restaple it, try to line up with the old staple holes. It's tedious. Copy only one document at a time, regardless of the number of pages. Then put it back together slowly and in order. Then staple your copy so everything stays in order."

With the automatic feed, the ten-page document took eight seconds.

"Pretty fast," Tammy said.

The first briefcase was finished in twenty minutes. Tammy handed the two key rings to Abby and picked up two new, empty, all-canvas Samsonite handbags. She left for the condo.

Abby followed her out the door, then locked it. She walked to the front of the Palms, to Tammy's rented Nissan Stanza. Dodging at oncoming traffic from the wrong side of the road, she drove along Seven Mile Beach and into Georgetown. Two blocks behind the stately Swiss Bank Building, on a narrow street lined with neat frame houses, she found the one owned by the only locksmith on the island of Grand Cayman. At least, he was the only one she'd been able to locate without assistance. He owned a green house with open windows and white trim around the shutters and the doors.

She parked in the street and walked through the sand to the tiny front porch, where the locksmith and his neighbors were drinking and listening to Radio Cayman. Solid-gold reggae. They quietened when she approached, and none of them stood. It was almost eleven. He had said that he would do the job in his shop out back, and that his fees were modest, and that he would like a fifth of Myers's Rum as a down payment before he started.

"Mr. Dantley, I'm sorry I'm late. I've brought you a little gift." She held out the fifth of rum.

Mr. Dantley emerged from the darkness and took the rum. He inspected the bottle. "Boys, a bottle of Myers's."

Abby could not understand the chatter, but it was obvious the gang on the porch was terribly excited about the bottle of Myers's. Dantley handed it to them and led Abby behind his house to a small outbuilding full of tools and small machines and a hundred gadgets. A single yellow light bulb hung from the ceiling and attracted mosquitoes by the hundreds. She handed Dantley the eleven keys, and he carefully laid them on a bare section of a cluttered workbench. "This will be easy," he said without looking up.

Although he was drinking at eleven at night, Dantley appeared to be in control. Perhaps his system had built an immunity to rum. He worked through a pair of thick goggles, drilling and carving each replica. After twenty minutes, he was finished. He handed Abby the two original sets of keys and their copies.

"Thank you, Mr. Dantley. How much do I owe you?"

"They were quite easy," he drawled. "A dollar per key." She paid him quickly and left.

Tammy filled the two small suitcases with the contents of the top drawer of the first file cabinet. Five drawers, twelve cabinets, sixty trips to the copier and back. In eight hours. It could be done. There were files, notebooks, computer printouts and more files. Mitch said to copy it all. He was not exactly