Behind them, the first squeal of tortured metal sounded.
11
Hughes appeared at the end of the aisle and waved to them. 'It's open. Come on.'
'Think about it,' Grofield said to Tebelman. 'We could use a good set designer. Give you something to do summers.'
'It might be nice at that,' Tebelman said. He and Grofield moved away from the stock cart and walked down the aisle toward Hughes.
It was now close to one o'clock; the sheriff's car had gone by twice since Barnes had started on the safe. Both times, Grofield and Tebelman had been hard at work stocking shelves, moving to a different aisle after each passage of the patrol car, so they'd give the right impression.
Hughes didn't wait for them. He went over to one of the check-out counters, reached underneath, and came up with a couple of shopping bags, the kind with handles. 'Looks like a good haul,' he said, as Grofield and Tebelman came to the end of the aisle.
Tebelman said, 'Good. I could use the money.'
'Everybody could use the money,' Hughes said.
Barnes was on his knees beside the safe, repacking his toolkit. He had stripped to the waist, and sweat gleamed on his meaty shoulders and chest. He was puffing a little bit, and when the other three arrived he looked up and said, 'They really build those mothers.'
Grofield took a look. Barnes was an accomplished stripper, and an accomplished stripper leaves a mess behind. The safe door opened from left to right, with the combination at waist height to the left and with the hinges inside on the right. Barnes had found a purchase on the lip of the door at the top left and had gradually forced the metal out and back, like peeling a sardine can. He had stripped open a triangular section of the door, most of the way across the top and down the side almost to the combination. There were three layers of door, each about half an inch thick, and he'd stripped the layers separately. When he'd finished opening the triangular hole, he'd reached in with hammer and chisel and chipped away the combination lock piece by piece, until the numbered face had fallen out onto the floor and the door had sagged quietly open.
Inside were shelves and trays, all metal. The trays contained mostly papers and some rolled coins. The wrapped bundles of money were on the shelves.
Hughes gave the shopping bags to Grofield and Tebelman and stepped in front of the safe. He handed out stacks of bills, and Grofield and Tebelman tucked them away in the shopping bags.
'Roughly sixty grand,' Hughes said, at the end.
'That's good enough for me,' Barnes said. 'Carry my bar, will you, Hughes? Did I leave anything?'
They made sure nothing had been left behind. Barnes carried his toolkit; Hughes, the crowbar; and Grofield and Tebelman, the two shopping bags full of bills.
They left everything temporarily in the stock room while they unloaded Walter and the other clerks from the back of the truck. Working in pairs, they picked each of the clerks up and carried him out of the truck and into the first room in the building, leaving the seven of them sitting in a row along the rear wall. Then they carried the money and tools and guns into the back of the truck and Hughes closed them in and drove them away from there.
There was no talking this time. Grofield spent the time thinking about what he would do with fifteen thousand dollars. A summer of stock could eat ten thousand with no trouble, but the other five was for a vacation. He'd take Mary somewhere, maybe for three weeks. Not now, it was too close to the beginning of the season. In September or October, when the season was over. This time, he would definitely set five thousand aside for a vacation. By September they would both need one.
The truck traveled for twenty minutes, and then stopped. That was about the right length of time, there was nothing to be alarmed about, but Grofield nevertheless reached for the machine gun on the floor beside him in the darkness. He could hear the other two also reaching for guns.
But it was Hughes who opened the doors, and they were where they were supposed to be. Hughes, sounding happier than Grofield had heard him before, called, 'How you doing in there?'
'Spent it already,' Tebelman said. He sounded happy, too.
Past Hughes, Grofield could see the river, and the shapes of the two cars, Hughes' Javelin and Barnes' Pontiac. Tebelman would leave with Hughes, and Barnes would give Grofield a lift back to the hotel.
They were in the parking lot behind the remains of a burned-out diner just outside Granite City, north of Belleville but still on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. They would leave the truck there. The guns they would throw in the river. The money they would split up now.
Hughes said, 'Just wait a minute for me. I'll get our satchels.'
'We've got to wait for you,' Grofield said. 'You've got the light.'
Hughes went away and stopped briefly at each of the cars, then came back with his arms full of various kinds of things to carry the money in. Grofield's was the black attachй case.
Grofield stood at the back of the truck and Hughes handed the bags up to him and then climbed up and pulled the doors shut after himself. There were a few seconds of darkness, and then Hughes had his flashlight out of his pocket and switched it on. 'Let's get to it.'
They all crowded close, and Tebelman counted the money by the light of the pencil flash. It came out to fifty-seven thousand three hundred dollars. They put four thousand to one side; that Hughes would take to repay the doctor who'd financed them. Fifty-three thousand three hundred left. Thirteen thousand three hundred twenty- five dollars each.
'That isn't bad,' Grofield said. Nobody disagreed.
12
'Mr. Martin!'
