Firebreak

money before your lawyers run out of stall time. They could only hope this answer would keep Corbett and Dolan satisfied.

And they certainly didn't expect the next message would be delivered in person.

This suburban Elkins played in a softball league, neighborhood teams or company teams, most of the players middle-aged like himself, a few young guys among them. Elkins was in better physical condition than all but a few of the kids in the league, but in soft-ball you didn't need to be in great condition. The ball never moved very fast, and neither did most of the players.

Elkins was one of the heavy bats in the league, so he played right field, except when they were short a player and he played center-right. Today they were playing on a bare field beside a Roman Catholic church with a Polish saint's name, Elkins' neighborhood team versus a team from Baseline Tools. It was an overcast day, a nasty wind whipping across the field out of Canada and across Lake Michigan. Elkins hopped from foot to foot when he was out on the field, trying to keep warm, waiting for the game to end. Finally, in the seventh and last inning, he just managed to race in and catch a looping Texas Leaguer over the second baseman's head, to retire the side and end the game with Elkins' team, the Bearcats, winning three to two.

As he trotted in toward the benches, carrying the ball—which they'd have to use next time—he was surprised to see Wiss among the very few attendees seated on the windy bleacher along the third base line. Wiss didn't normally come watch Elkins play ball, any more than Elkins spent time in Wiss's darkroom. But then Elkins' surprise turned to something else, making him lose the rhythm of his stride, jog with a gimp in it before he got his balance back. Seated next to Wiss on the bleacher was Bob Dolan.

As the teams gathered around home plate, congratulating one another, reminding themselves about the next game in the series, Wiss and Dolan got to their feet and joined the people walking toward the small gravel parking area between the ball field and the church.

Elkins had to spend the next few minutes with his teammates, talking and listening, doing the postmortems, savoring the victory, but his attention was with those two, as they walked away and got into Wiss's car, an anonymous pale green Ford Taurus. The few other cars drove away, out to the street past the church, but the Taurus sat there, pointed at third base.

What was Dolan doing here? The cops were keeping a tight eye on Dolan and Corbett. The law had only agreed to bail in hopes they'd be led to the heisters who'd gotten away, and now Dolan had led them here, unless he'd made damn sure he wasn't followed.

But even if he was careful enough, why let the law know he'd taken time out from their radar loop? Elkins, smiling and laughing with his teammates, kept looking past the ball field at the church, the street out front, the looming red brick elementary school some distance the other way. Would those spaces suddenly fill up with blue uniforms? What had Dolan done here? And why?

As soon as he could, Elkins left the ball field, walking around the backstop and over to where he'd left his own car parked at the curb near the church. His vehicle was also deliberately forgettable, a gray Chevy Celebrity. He started the engine, rolled the passenger window partway down, and waited until the green Taurus went by; then he swung in behind it.

Wiss drove them twenty minutes east, across the line into Chicago, before pulling in at the outsized parking lot of a discount hardware store. Elkins, hanging back along the way as much as he could, kept an eye on the rest of the traffic as they went along, and it didn't seem to him that anybody besides himself was interested in following Wiss. Or Dolan.

When neither man got out of the Taurus, Elkins finally left the Celebrity, walked around the intervening parked cars, and slid into the Taurus backseat. 'Hello, Bob,' he said, trying to be as neutral as possible.

Wiss's worried eyes met Elkins' in the rearview mirror. 'Bob's unhappy,' he said.

'You don't look happy yourself,' Elkins told him. 'And fuck knows I'm not happy.' Leaning forward, forearms on the seatback so he could be close to Dolan, who was half-turned in his seat, mulishly glowering at both of them, he said, 'And from the look of you, Bob, you are a long way from happy.'

'I'm not a long way from jail, Frank,' Dolan said. A bulky-shouldered guy in his late thirties, he had a shelf of bone across his eyebrows that made him look teed off even when he was cheerful. At the moment, quietly, he was teed off. He said, 'We're not getting off the dime here.'

'You're off the dime,' Elkins told him. 'You're off the reservation, Bob. What's the law think about that?'

'They think I'm quarantined, sick in bed with mumps,' Dolan said. 'I got a doctor I helped before, he's helping me now. I went out in his coat and hat and drove away in his car, and he's watching TV in my sickbed. Soon another doctor visit, and there I am, never left home.'

'I admire that,' Elkins said, 'but it's still a hell of a chance.'

'One I had to take,' Dolan said. 'Because the prosecutors are going to the judge. This thing's dragging out, they want it off their desk.'

'We're getting it done, Bob,' Elkins assured him. 'You know how tricky that damn place is.'

Wiss said, 'I've been telling him that.'

'Tell the prosecutors,' Dolan said. 'Except, I don't think so. Sometime next week, the judge's gonna hand down a revised order. Either he revokes bail, and Harry and me go inside, or he puts a tracker bracelet on us. Either way, we can't go black any more. Either way, we got no choice, your ears are gonna start burning.'

'Next week.' Elkins had just heard from Larry Lloyd that Parker said he was almost done dealing with the problems Larry'd fucked up and brought him. Elkins and Wiss were planning to head for Montana tomorrow, and Parker should be there anytime after that.

Except, what did 'anytime' mean? What if Parker got held up another week, two weeks? If Dolan and Corbett had this problem, where they could no longer skip out if they were in jail or braceletted, then Elkins and Wiss had a worse problem. They didn't have to be locked up or fitted with a tracker device. They were family men, community men. They couldn't suddenly turn into Jesse James, they wouldn't last a week.

All they could do was hope the lawyers would hold out long enough, and that Parker could deal with his problem quick. Elkins said, 'Next week. You make it

Monday, we're probably in trouble. You make it Friday, we're probably okay. That's all I can say.'