“That’s the important part. If you’re not there, they’ll catch my ass and nobody gets no money. You gotta be there. That’s why you’re driving.”
Deese pointed the way again, the turns, until they got to a spot under the Ferris wheel that had a couple of parking places for security personnel and was directly above the exit from the tunnels. “Ralph says their cars are hardly ever here. As soon as Harrelson throws the money, I’ll yell into the phone and be here one minute later. One minute. You jump out of the truck with the money box, meet me down there.”
“There’s bars across the tunnels looks like a jail cell,” Cole said, peering into the drainage channel.
“They can be pushed open.”
“Yeah, but if it turns out they can’t be, if somebody locked them since Ralph was here, you’re fucked.”
Deese nodded. “Okay, you’re right . . . Pull in there.”
Cole pulled into one of the empty spots, Deese climbed out of the car, crossed a low fence, and ran down into the channel. There was some garbage and paper trash at the tunnel entrance. As Cole watched, Deese grabbed one of the gate bars and yanked it a foot or so outward, almost enough to squeeze through. He yanked again and it moved another foot. Then he pushed it back in place and ran back up to the car.
“No sweat,” he said. “Soon as I call, you run down there with the money and yank it open.”
Cole said, “It’s after eight. We need to find a place for me to sit. And we need to get the bike off the truck and get you down in that ditch at the Hard Rock.”
Deese grinned at him. “You nervous?”
“Fuck, yeah. I always get nervous. But I’m always there.”
* * *
—
THEY FOUND A SPOT in a parking lot across a street from the bank’s lot. The bank’s was ringed by fifty-foot-tall pine trees, but it was easy enough to see between them. And there’d be cars coming and going from the lot where Cole would be. “I can watch him only until he gets in the truck,” Cole said. “Then I gotta go, if I’m gonna get back to the Ferris wheel.”
“Yeah, but you’ll see him when he gets there and gets out of the truck and make sure it’s him and not some cop. When you call me after you see him come back out of the bank, I’ll wait three or four minutes before I call him. That’ll get you on your way to the Ferris wheel. It’ll take him another five minutes to get to me. You’ll have plenty of time.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You getting spooked?”
“A lot of timing’s gotta be right. When we were hitting those houses, we knew exactly what we were doing,” Cole said. “We knew who was inside the house, what we’d get, where the cops were. This is a crapshoot.”
“Just take it easy when you drive out of here. A goddamn fender bender and I’m dead and you won’t get a nickel,” Deese said.
* * *
—
THEY DROVE BACK to the drainage channel, unloaded the bike, lifted it over a fence, and Deese rolled it down the slope to the sandy bottom and pushed it under the narrow bridge. A few street people were sitting outside the tunnel entrance, watching them, but made no move to come over to the bridge. “What are you going to do if one of the bums grabs the bag?” Cole asked.
Deese said, “Won’t happen. If it does, I’ll handle it. You better go.”
“We could still walk away,” Cole said.
“Go! Go!”
Cole went.
* * *
—
HE WAS IN his surveillance spot early, ten minutes before nine. Five minutes later, he saw the Yellow Cab Porsche turn into the bank’s parking lot. He saw Harrelson get out of the car—pink shirt, khakis, sunglasses, bandages on his face. He reached back into the car, got a floppy-brimmed golf hat, pulled it on. No question that it was him. Reached back into the car again and pulled out what looked like an empty green shopping bag. He walked toward the bank. Cole punched his burner, calling Deese, and said, “We’re on. He’s waiting outside the bank.”
Deese clicked off without a reply.
Cole waited for what seemed like a long time. He supposed Harrelson would have to get back into the bank vault, count out the money. Cole once had a safe-deposit box and whenever he took out the box,