Firebreak

3

At home, Frank Elkins and Ralph Wiss were completely different from the roles they played on the road. At home, they were family men, living not far from each other in the same Chicago suburb, involving themselves with their families and their community. They both had large extended families, several children each, and cousins and in-laws in all directions, but not one of those people knew what Elkins and Wiss really did for a living, except their wives. The two were known to work together, to travel a lot, and to bring home enough for a comfortable income, but that was all. "We do specialty promotions," Elkins would say, if pressed, as they rarely were, and Wiss would nod. They did specialty promotions.

Elkins considered himself very lucky, both in his family and in his partner. A lot of the guys he knew were loners, and didn't have much joy in their lives;

that wasn't him. As for the partner, it was Ralph Wiss who had the expertise, the craft. Elkins was just along to do the heavy lifting. Wiss was the one who knew safes and vaults, how they were locked, how they could be opened. Wiss did the brain work; once the door was breached, all Elkins had to do was pick up the contents and carry it home.

The Montana job had seemed made to order for them. There were clever locks for Wiss to play with, and a lot of heavy lifting. Too much for just the two of them, which was why they'd brought in Corbett and Dolan. Harry Corbett and Bob Dolan were younger than Elkins and Wiss, but both had been inside and had learned caution. Elkins and Wiss had worked with them in the past, and there'd never been any problem.

Now, there was a problem. Corbett and Dolan were ready to skip, start again with new names and new faces, but that took money. And they, too, had families, and it was their families who had put up the heavy bail money. If Corbett and Dolan couldn't make their families whole again on the bail, with enough left over for themselves, they'd have no choice but to stay and do the time. But that meant they'd also have no choice but to trade Elkins and Wiss for a shortening of that time.

It put a pressure on Elkins that he didn't like, but he couldn't see any way around it. If he were in Corbett and Dolan's shoes, he'd make the same offer. Nothing personal, just the physics of the situation.

The original message, with these alternatives, had been delivered through cutouts, Corbett and Dolan giving the word in a taped and sealed envelope to a friend who didn't know Wiss or Elkins. That friend passed it on to someone who didn't know any of the principals, but did know a friend of Wiss. Since then, a few more messages had arrived via the same route, every one of them the same: What's taking so long? Do we have a deal or not? The prosecutors are on our asses.

Wiss and Elkins were making the same reply every time: We're doing it, this is complicated, we'll get you the 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."

"Well, you oughta know about it," Dolan said. "Harry and me don't want you guys to take a fall, but we gotta give you warning here. Just in case things don't work out, we don't care if they all of a sudden can't find you. If we sing, we sing, and if you've already lammed, tough shit." Dolan shrugged. "You see what I mean? If we can't powder, you two can."

"Thanks for the option, Bob," Elkins said.

Next morning, they took turns driving the Taurus toward Montana. Midway across Minnesota on Interstate 94, with Elkins at the wheel, Wiss said, "I don't usually talk this way, but it might be, things don't go the way we like out here, Bob and Harry would be better off dead."

"They already thought of that, Ralph," Elkins said. 'They thought of it before you did."

"Well, I thought of it now," Wiss said.