Stone Junction

Daniel returned the drugs and money to the safe. ‘So what is this?’ he sneered. ‘Art for art’s sake?’

‘You flatter yourself. It’s merely practice. After much practice, it might become art.’

Daniel fired at him, ‘Hey! I’ve been living on a hundred dollars a month for almost a year!’

‘That’s plenty,’ Willie said. ‘Besides, you’ve been living on five hundred a month – a hundred for room and board, four hundred for Oriana.’

‘I get it,’ Daniel said wearily, ‘I suppose it’s charged to my account. You guys are merciless.’

‘Not really. We’re just playfully fair.’

‘Playful?’ Daniel repeated. ‘That’s twisted thinking.’ Daniel started to swing the safe door shut.

‘No,’ Willie stopped him. ‘Wait. Not only do we not take anything, we always leave then something for their trouble.’ He handed Daniel a small, elegantly printed card. On it was a quotation from Rilke:

     … there is no place

that does not see you.

You must change your life.

Smiling to himself, Daniel dropped the card on the baggie of cocaine, closed the safe, and gave the knob a carefree twirl.

For Daniel, the most illuminating aspect of cracking safes was the things people chose to keep secret. Money and drugs were the most common items, with jewels, documents, and guns close behind, but after those the list got strange:

A quart jar of glass eyes

A flattened typewriter

A pair of black panties tied around a pair of roller skates (Oriana had howled when Daniel told her)

A tree-sloth fetus floating in a jar of formaldehyde

A small twenty-four-carat gold yo-yo with a string of finely braided silver that Daniel had wanted so bad he could taste it

An old coffeepot

A piece of chalk

A petrified loaf of French bread

And Daniel’s favorite, a neatly printed note in an otherwise empty safe: ‘Eat shit, George. I’ve taken it all and I’m on my way to Paris with the pool boy.’ (This was Oriana’s favorite, too.)

Transcription (Partial): Telephone Call Between

Volta and Willie Clinton

VOLTA: A certain large library in our nation’s capital has come into possession of some old documents that rightfully belong to us.

WILLIE: I’m on my way.

VOLTA: What about Daniel?

WILLIE: You know I always work alone on jobs like this. To cite a popular Southern California proverb, ‘Just because everything’s different doesn’t mean anything has changed.’

VOLTA: Fine. I just thought it might make an interesting final exam.

WILLIE: He doesn’t need a final exam. He’s proficient, but that’s all he’ll ever be as a safecracker. Granted, he has some feel for it, but not wholeheartedly. My sense – and I may be wrong – is that Daniel doesn’t want in, he wants out. And it was Schiller, I believe, who said, ‘Blessed are those whose necessities find their art.’ In my opinion, safecracking isn’t Daniel’s art. It hasn’t helped that his attention has been confounded by a lovely young woman.

VOLTA: I’ve never been a foe of sweet confoundings. After all, who’s to say what the lesson is unless you learn it.

WILLIE: You’re shameless! You stole that from Sophocles!

VOLTA: William, as T. S. Eliot said, ‘A good poet borrows; a great poet steals.’

WILLIE: I don’t have time to listen to you mangle quotes all day. When do I leave?

VOLTA: Twenty hours. Bruce on Castro is making the arrangements. What about Daniel? Any suggestions?

WILLIE: Give him some money and some time off. A hundred a month really is a bit grim. Otherwise, I fear San Francisco will be hit with a spate of B&E’s.

VOLTA: Well, as they say: ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him do the backstroke or suck blood from a turnip.’

When Daniel arrived at Willie’s Friday evening he found the door locked and a note pinned to the sill: ‘Daniel – Come on in.’ His brain still floating from the previous night’s session with Oriana, Daniel took a moment to comprehend the note.

He picked the lock and went in.

There was a safe on the worktable, a small Sentry combination. It was a snap. Inside was a stack of cards with the Rilke quotation, a handmade set of vanadium picks, and another note from Willie:

I’m sorry I can’t give you my personal farewell and good wishes, but some urgent business has usurped my