out, handful after handful, a blur, like a dog digging up a treasure. Call it another eight seconds. Or ten. Call it twelve seconds, to be on the safe side. So far a total of twenty. But then came the siding. Popping it off the studs would not be easy. It was fixed on with big nails shot out of a gun. Heavy blows would be required. The problem was the angle of attack. He would have to direct low karate-style kicks through a narrow opening. Kind of sideways and downward. Not practical. Hard to develop maximum power. Better to lie on his back. A downward stamping motion would translate to maximum outward force. Over and over again. Eight times at least.
He said, “One minute, maybe.”
She said, “That’s pretty good.”
“If the tile comes off all in a sheet.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“We would have to bust off every piece separately. Just to get to the wall board in the first place. Then from that point onward it would be a minute. Except probably two, because by then we would be tired, from busting off the tile.”
“How long altogether?”
Shorty said, “Just hope it comes off all in a sheet.”
She said, “Are we really going to do this?”
“I vote yes.”
“When?”
“I say right now. We could run straight for a quad-bike. Might be better than a car. We could ride it through the trees. They wouldn’t be able to follow.”
“Except on another quad-bike. They have eight more.”
“We would have a head start.”
“Do you know how to drive a quad-bike?”
“How hard can it be?”
Patty was quiet another long moment.
“One step at a time,” she said. “First we’ll test the suitcase on the tile. We’ll see if it comes off all in a sheet. If it does, then we can go ahead and make a final decision. If it doesn’t, we can go ahead and forget it anyway.”
Shorty opened the bathroom door and glanced across the room at the suitcase. It was still where he had put it down, all those hours before. After he had watched Karel drive away in the tow truck.
He whispered, “They’ll see me get it. Because of the camera.”
“They don’t know what’s in it,” Patty whispered back. “We’re allowed to take our own stuff in the bathroom, surely. We might need it. We might choose to sleep in here, what with people looking in the window all the time. That would be perfectly natural.”
Shorty paused. He nodded. He went to get the suitcase. Cool as a cucumber. Perfectly natural. He strolled over, and hefted it up, and strolled back. He put it down, and closed the door. Then he breathed out and flapped his hand to ease the pain in his palm.
They picked their spot. To the left of the sink. A blank patch of wall. No outlets. Therefore no hidden cables inside to snarl things up. No pipes inside, either. The water came and went all in one place, on the other side of the room. Perfect. Plain sailing.
They pulled and shoved the suitcase until it was in position. They stood facing each other, with the case between them. They bent down over it, and they grabbed the rope with all four hands. They lifted the case, six inches off the floor, to clear the baseboard at the bottom of the wall. They moved away a step, and they set the suitcase swinging, gently, back and forth, back and forth. It was a big sturdy item. Very old. A plywood shell, covered in heavy leather, with reinforcements on the corners. They perfected their rhythm. They let the weight do the work. On each swing they made one arm short and one arm long, to keep the suitcase exactly level, like a piston, so its blunt end would hit the wall square on.
“Ready?” Shorty said.
“Yes.”
“On three.”
They swung once, and twice, gathering momentum, and on three they stepped in toward the wall and accelerated the weight as hard as they could.
The case smacked against the tile.
The result was not what Shorty expected.
His instinctive prediction had been that the wall board would flex inward a fraction, which would cause the skim coat to crack off. The tiles were cemented to the skim coat. If the skim coat flaked off, the tiles would come down with it. In sheets. Gravity would see to that.
Didn’t happen.
Instead half a dozen tiles shattered into pieces. Some of the broken bits rained down on the floor. Others stayed up on the wall. Like random coin-sized fragments,