Heat

Chapter 56

Wednesday. Jesse suffered through the day, stopping work now and then to do his yoga breathing exercises, the only thing that seemed to help him relax. At the end of the day, he pretended to still be working while he waited impatiently for everyone to leave. When he was finally alone in the plant he went downstairs to the machine shop, found a canvas tool bag and started to select equipment. He wasn’t sure what he’d need, but he chose a six-pound sledge, a couple of cold chisels, wire cutters, pliers, some screwdrivers, a thick roll of duct tape and a pair of short bolt cutters. Finally, he unplugged a heavy-duty, half-inch, battery-operated drill from its charger and dropped that into the bag, along with a spare battery. The bag wouldn’t hold any more, so what he had would have to be enough.

He drove home, forcing himself to obey the speed limit, and parked the truck in the garage, then he dug out his bag of equipment from Kip and tucked it behind the seat of the truck, along with the tool bag. He crawled under the truck, opened the safe and extracted the contents. He put the pistol and spare clips into the canvas backpack and took the money, the passports and the miniature tape recorder into the house. Jenny was feeding the girls an early supper, as planned.

“Hey, everybody,” he said, trying to sound jovial. He sat at the table and drank a glass of milk while they finished their dinner, and, when the girls had been tucked into bed, protesting, he took Jenny back downstairs to the kitchen.

“All right,” he said, “time for final plans.” He went to the sink, took a plastic tool box from underneath it and emptied out the tools, then he removed the money from its brown paper bag and packed it into the tool box. “That’s a little over fifty thousand dollars,” he said. “Pack some sandwiches around it.”

“What’s going to happen tonight?” she asked.

“I’m going to a dinner meeting at Jack Gene’s house, and I’m going to record the proceedings; what I get there should be enough to put everybody present away for a long time.”

“Do you want us to wait here?”

“No. I want you to pack one bag for each of us, and put them into the trunk of your car, along with the toolbox and some blankets, and at two A.M. I want you to take the girls and drive out to the St. Clair airport.”

“Are we going to fly out of here?”

“Just listen. Be sure and have some story ready, in case you’re stopped by a patrol car. There’s a big hangar next to the flight office, and it has a combination lock; the combination is 1234. I want you to unlock the hanger and, just inside the door, along with several other airplanes, you’ll find a Cessna — that’s an airplane with high wings, the kind you can walk under — and the number on the side of it is N123TF. Got that?”

“N123TF,” she repeated, “and the combination for the lock is 1234. That’s all very simple.”

“The airplane will be unlocked; there’s a rear door to the luggage compartment on the left-hand side, and I want you to put all the luggage and the toolbox in there, then I want you to put the two girls in the back seat of the airplane with a couple of blankets. Then you drive your car into the woods, where it can’t be seen from the airport, go back to the hangar, close the doors from the inside, get into the airplane and wait for me.”

“Jesse, can you fly an airplane?”

“Sort of. Now listen; if I’m not there by three-fifteen, I want you to put everybody back into the car, drive back to the main road, turn east and then, as soon as you can, head south toward Salt Lake City. There, do what you were to do in Seattle the last time we planned this: get most of the money converted to traveler’s checks and a cashier’s check; make a reservation for Tokyo, this time through Los Angeles. Here are your passports and Carrie’s birth certificate; you can talk her through with that.

“After Tokyo, it’s the Peninsular Hotel in Hong Kong for a week, then to Sydney and the Harbour Hotel, ask for Bluey at the bar.”

“I remember all that.”

“I’ll join you if I can. If I can’t, take care of yourself and the girls; make them happy.”

She reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

“I’ll most likely make it to the airport, but if not, look for me in Hong Kong.”

While Jenny was upstairs packing, Jesse took off his shirt and dropped his pants. It wasn’t the first time he’d worn a wire. Using the special tape provided with the wire, he taped the recorder to the inside of his left thigh, high up, next to his testicles. In his experience, most men didn’t like groping other men’s crotches, even in a search. He plugged in the microphone wire, then ran it between his legs and up between his buttocks to his waist, anchoring the wire there with tape. He then ran it up his back, taping as far as he could reach, then again at his shoulder. He ran it down his left arm, applying patches of tape as he went, then he attached the microphone to the wire and taped it securely to the inside of his wrist, a couple of inches above his watchband. A switch on the tiny microphone would allow him to start the recorder; after that, it would record whenever it picked up someone’s voice.

He got dressed again, swung his left arm around and walked around the kitchen to be sure he had free movement. The microphone wire was very thin, and he didn’t want to put any strain on it. He went upstairs, got his dark brown sheepskin coat, a pair of hiking boots and some thick socks, then came back down to the kitchen. Jenny joined him there.

“You’re sure you understand everything?” he asked.

She nodded.

Jesse looked at his watch; quarter to seven; time to go. He took Jenny in his arms, hugged her, kissed her; he tried to keep it light; didn’t want it to seem like goodbye, although God knew it might very well be.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you,” she replied.

He got into his coat, tucked the sheepskin jacket and the boots under his arm and left the house.