“You might be able to grab the bag and run. You wouldn’t be able to copy it without him knowing.”
“Where’s the cop?”
“In the restaurant,” she said. “He’s also a bodyguard, he eats across the room from Goodman. I ate with him a couple of times. The cop.”
Jake thought about it for fifteen seconds. “That’s pretty iffy.”
“That’s all I can think of,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Jake slapped his legs, said, “Well. Time to go to Plan B.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you what: you keep quiet about this visit, get well, stay away from Arlo, go to school like a good girl, and when everything quiets down, give me a call. I’ll get you something you’ll like.”
“You promise?” The light in the eye again, just like when he told her that she’d be gorgeous.
“We take care of people,” Jake said.
Back in the car, Madison asked, “Get what you needed?”
“Maybe.” He thought about it for another moment, and then asked, “Do you know a place called Westboro’s? A restaurant?”
“Sure. Everybody in Richmond does. Political hash house.”
“Let’s go over there,” Jake said. “I’d like to look at a parking garage.”
“Who’re you meeting?”
“No one, I hope.”
He told her about the laptop. She said, “That’s pretty iffy,” picking the word right out of his head.
“We’re hurting pretty bad here,” Jake said. “We need a way to break something out.”
“Jake, there’ll be alarms . . .”
“It’s all in the timing,” Jake said. Thought about the package. “Everything’s in the timing.”
“Well,” she said, “whatever happens, it’ll be a heck of a rush.”
Westboro’s was a low red-brick building four blocks from the capitol, with an old-fashioned lightbulb marquee out front, and under that, a red neon script that said, THE CAPITAL’S BEST STEAKS, CHOPS, SEAFOOD. The parking structure was an ugly poured-concrete lump fifty yards farther down the block. Jake looked at his watch: almost eleven.
He took the car into the garage, saw the entrance, but no gate. “How do you pay?” he asked.
“Parking meters inside. The meter guy enforces the meters.”
“Excellent.”
He turned into the ramp. As Cathy Ann Dorn had said, it was dark inside. He could see no cameras. The ramps were two-way; you went out the same way you went in. The first upward-slanting ramp was full;the next, around the corner, was only half full. A man walked past them, down the ramp, and out. Jake went onto the next four ramps, then turned around and started down again. On both the back and front walls of the ramps, there were staircases going down.
He pulled into a parking space, let the engine run, stepped into one of the back staircases, walked down two floors and out. The door opened on a sidewalk along another street, less busy than the front, but still with cars moving along it.
Jake went back up, got in the car, and they drove back out. Madison asked, “What?”
“We could do it,” he said.
“If we get caught, Goodman’ll put us in jail,” she said. “If the cop hasn’t shot you.”
“I might be able to blackmail my way out of it. If the cop hasn’t shot me.”
“Tell me . . .”
He outlined his idea, and she said, “If anyone sees you going in, they’ll tell the police that it was a man with a limp. They’ll know who it is.”
“If I walk on a left tiptoe, I don’t limp. I can’t do it for long, but I can do it for a few hundred yards.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” she asked. “Wait at Mom’s house until I find out whether you’re dead?”
“That would be the pessimistic version of it,” Jake said.
“Bullshit. I’ll drive.”
He smiled at her: “I was hoping you’d offer.”
