when all three of the fluorescent strips had been turned on, and they gave everything an eerie, bloody hue
'We can take the money and the stones,' Tucker said.
'You're serious,' Meyers said, moving up close to Tucker and staring into his eyes.
'Sure.'
Meyers grinned hesitantly, then more surely, then as broadly as he could. 'You sonofabitch, you really mean it!' Meyers laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.
Bates laughed, too, but more nervously. 'Tell us about it, for God's sake.'
Tucker told them.
The door of the Countryside Savings and Loan Company's main vault measured eight-feet-four by six-feet-two and was, — in Edgar Bates's professional judgment, at least nine but no more than twelve inches thick. It was constructed of from twenty-eight to fifty-four layers of highly shock-and heat-resistant steel alloy, set as flush with the wall as could be done, and it had beveled seams that were half an inch deep and an inch wide where it was joined to its steel frame. On the top, bottom, and right-hand side these seams had been filled tightly with a contiguous charge of gelignite, a grayish plastic explosive that resembled carpenter's putty, although it was a good deal more rubbery and more cohesive than putty. On the right-hand side, where the door and the frame joined, there were three massive hinges as large as automobile shock absorbers, each twelve inches long and four inches in diameter. These were protected from assault by heavy blue steel casings that had been shaped to the hinge cylinders and then riveted shut when the door was hung in place. Edgar Bates had carefully molded six ounces of gelignite to each of these hinge casings.
'One of the finest vaults made,' Edgar said as he worked. He was flushed and happy. 'Pekins and Boulder Company of Ashland, Ohio. They're always a challenge.'
Tucker was kneeling on the floor on the other side of Bates's open satchel, in front of the vault door. 'Has one of their safes ever stumped you?' he asked the older man.
Bates was disgruntled by the question, and he made no effort to conceal his irritation. 'Hell, no. Of course not. You know how good I am.'
Tucker smiled. 'Sorry I asked.'
'I've knocked down and split open maybe thirty of them over the years. Not a bit of trouble any time. They're always a lot of fun, though.'
The safe's hatchlike opening handle, a wheel with a two-foot diameter, the design for which had been borrowed straight from the watertight doors in submarines, was also packed with gelignite at every jointure. It was most likely affixed too smoothly and too seamlessly to the main body of the door to be easily blown loose. However, there was no harm in trying.
Bates had chiseled away the manual combination dial above the wheel, had removed the guardian plate that was soldered beneath it, and had squeezed several ounces of gelignite into the vault door's primary mechanisms. This lump of explosives had been tied to that around the wheel and to that which was molded in the door's seams by a thick gray thread of itself.
Consulting his wristwatch, Tucker said, 'It's five minutes of one. You about finished?'
'Done,' Bates said, getting to his feet and quickly massaging his tension-knotted thighs. Again, he might have been a Russian peasant working out the kinks in his muscles after a long day in the fields. 'Except for the detonator.'
Tucker rummaged in the satchel, came up with a blasting cap about half as large as a breakfast muffin. He passed this on to Bates, closed the jugger's neatly packed black bag, hefted it, and stood up.
After he had examined the cap's battery and timer to be sure they were operable, Bates set the device for a two-minute fuse. The moment he had plugged its two base prongs into the gelignite on one of the hinge casings, he said, 'Let's get out of here.'
They hurried around the desks behind the tellers' cages and went through a half gate into the bank's lobby. Out in the south corridor they ran sixty or seventy feet to a stone planter and stooped beside it, waiting for the explosion.
Tucker handed Bates the set of master keys he had taken from Chet, the night watchman. 'As soon as it's clear that the safe is finished, you can go for the jewelry store. I'll clean out the cash in the bank and join you later. We don't have any time to lose.'
'We're doing okay,' Bates said. 'We-'
The blast was like a muffled crack of thunder. The glass front of the bank shattered and was pushed out across the corridor in a wave of sparkling fragments. Smoke, like sea foam, rushed out behind the glass, roiled up.
An alarm began banging away inside the bank. At police headquarters another alarm would also be sounding.
'Let's go,' Tucker said.
Glass crunching under their feet, they pushed into the savings and loan company's lobby, fanned away the acrid smoke with their arms. The vault door had been ripped from its two highest hinges and was hanging loosely from the third. The wheel was smashed, and the lock mechanism was a mass of jagged metal splinters. The plaster around the vault entrance was broken and charred, but no fire had been started.
'Beautiful,' Bates said with more than a little pride.
Tucker choked on the foul air, wiped at his teary eyes. 'It looks good,' he agreed.
'It looks perfect.'
'You go hit the jewelry store.'
Whistling despite the corditelike stench in the air, Bates turned and disappeared down the corridor.
Tucker went back behind the tellers' cages to the breached vault, wishing he could somehow silence the strident alarm bells. But that would take time. And right now they needed every minute they could get if they were to bring off what they had planned before Kluger came charging in and stopped them.
He stepped into the vault, past the multilayered door that the gelignite had begun to peel apart like the many crusts of a good Danish pastry. Inside he found an accordion gate separating him from the money. He raised his Skorpion, put the muzzle close to the gate lock, and shot away the heavy latch. The barrier slid back easily after that. In the corner stood a mahogany rack that held canvas money sacks labeled contryside savings. Tucker took two of these and began to fill them with the well-bundled stacks of bills that blossomed everywhere on the shelves and on the counters and in the drawers of the inner vault.
Ten minutes later, when he joined Edgar Bates at the rear of the jewelry store next door, he found that the older man was still whistling merrily. 'How's it going here?'
Bates smiled broadly, whistled the last bars of the tune he was on, and said, 'After the Pekins and Boulder beauty, this one is a cinch.'
'You're a marvel.'
'I know.'
'How long?'
'Another couple of minutes.'
Accent Jewelry's safe was not so large as the bank's vault had been, but it was a walk-in model and appeared to be quite formidable. For nearly anyone else but Edgar Bates, Tucker supposed, it would have been a major job.
'You got the money?' Bates asked as he examined and primed the electric fuse.
'All but the change.'
'How much?'
'I didn't take time to count it.'
'Make a guess.'
Tucker indicated the two gray canvas sacks. 'Well, it seems to be more than I first thought.'
Bates raised his white eyebrows. 'Really? Better than a hundred thousand?'
'Maybe twice that.'
'Ahhh,' Bates said, finishing with the cap and plugging it into the gelignite.
They went out into the corridor again and waited for the explosion, which, when it came, was only half as violent as the first one had been. The store windows shattered outward across the hall. Another alarm began to go
