walking backwards, said, 'You got the hammer?'
Hughes, carrying the other end, said, 'Steve has,' and Tebelman said, 'I've got it right here.'
A large sheet of poster paper covered the face of the plywood, and it made small flapping noises now as Grofield and Hughes carried it down the side aisle toward the front of the store. Tebelman and Barnes had gone the other way, to the produce section, where they knew the store kept its ladder.
With a small and unobtrusive camera, Steve Tebelman had taken several pictures in this store in the last few days, a few of them of the advertising poster atop the safe, the one touting the store's own brand of canned fruits and vegetables. That poster had been recreated with perfect attention to detail on the paper stretched over the face of the piece of plywood.
Grofield and Hughes carried the plywood down to the front of the store, between the first cash register and the manager's office, through the little gate in the wrought iron fence keeping customers away from the safe, and at last leaned it against the wall of the manager's office facing the windows and the parking lot outside. There were three cars in the lot, belonging to the clerks working here tonight. Hughes, looking out the window past the signs advertising specials, said, 'No change. Same as when I drove in.'
Grofield looked at his watch. 'We've got about five minutes before that sheriff's car is due again.'
'Plenty of time,' Hughes said, and Barnes and Tebelman showed up with the ladder. 'Steve, give me the hammer.'
'Right here.'
Hughes took the hammer. Out of his shirt pocket he brought two wide-headed nails, and gave one to Grofield. Meantime, Barnes and Tebelman set up the ladder next to the window in front of the safe. Tebelman went away to the right and took one of the signs down from one of the other windows and brought it back with him. Barnes went up three steps on the ladder, and started to fuss with the signs. Tebelman put his back against the window and stood there between window and ladder, holding the sign outstretched between his hands. Tebelman, Barnes, the ladder, and the sign Tebelman was holding, all combined with the two signs already pasted to the window, made it impossible for anyone outside to see the safe.
Grofield and Hughes picked up the piece of plywood and moved it over in front of the safe. Two metal bars had been fastened to the back of the plywood, at about waist height, one extending two inches out the left side, the other extending two inches out the right. There was a hole in each. While Grofield held the plywood in place, Hughes hammered a nail through the hole in the bar on the left and into the partition where it began at the edge of the safe. Then he handed the hammer to Grofield, who drove the other nail in on the other side.
Tebelman said, 'Hurry up, my arms are getting tired.'
Barnes, who was looking out the window between the signs, said, 'There's nobody out there at all.'
Grofield picked a corner of the poster paper with a fingernail, and then ripped a length of paper off the plywood. Hughes ripped some more off, and the two of them stripped all the paper away. Underneath, Tebelman had painted a lifelike imitation of the front of the safe. Standing directly in front of it, one could see it was a painting, but somebody in a car out in the parking lot wouldn't give it a second thought.
'Done,' Hughes said.
'Fine,' Tebelman said, and went away to put the sign back in the window he'd taken it from.
Barnes said, 'I'll get my tools. You boys go to work.' He folded up the ladder and took it away.
Hughes and Grofield went back around the manager's office to the corner where the potato chips were displayed. They took the racks off the wall and put them out of the way and then, with hammer and screwdriver, began to remove the partition separating them from the back of the safe.
They had it half stripped away by the time Barnes and Tebelman came back, Barnes carrying a crowbar in one hand and a toolkit in the other.
Tebelman said, 'Pity you can't just go in through the back.'
'The door's best,' Barnes said. 'Even with the pulling we got to do, it'll wind up a lot faster. You don't know how they build the sides of these boxes.'
'I'll take your word for it,' Tebelman said.
Grofield said, 'Could I borrow your bar for a minute?'
'Sure.'
Barnes handed it over, and Grofield hit a two-by-four horizontal support three times. The third time, it popped loose at the left end. 'There.'
Hughes grabbed the loose end of the two-by-four, pulled it outward away from the safe, and the final third of the partition sprang free. He and Tebelman dragged it down the side aisle out of the way. They were being careful not to leave any of their debris where it could be seen from out front.
Grofield had to use the crowbar again – a two-by-four was nailed to the floor within the partition. Grofield pried it up a bit at a time, and finally Barnes and Hughes together pulled it upward until it snapped at a point to the right of the section they were clearing.
And there was the back of the safe, black metal, hulking, looking as though it weighed a ton and would be neither breached nor moved.
Tebelman said, 'That sheriff's car is gonna come around. We'd better show people stocking shelves.'
'You people get to it,' Barnes said. 'I'll get this baby ready to move.'
9
