Cole pulled into one of the empty spots, Deese climbed out of the car, crossed a low fence, and ran down into the channel. There was some garbage and paper trash at the tunnel entrance. As Cole watched, Deese grabbed one of the gate bars and yanked it a foot or so outward, almost enough to squeeze through. He yanked again and it moved another foot. Then he pushed it back in place and ran back up to the car.
“No sweat,” he said. “Soon as I call, you run down there with the money and yank it open.”
Cole said, “It’s after eight. We need to find a place for me to sit. And we need to get the bike off the truck and get you down in that ditch at the Hard Rock.”
Deese grinned at him. “You nervous?”
“Fuck, yeah. I always get nervous. But I’m always there.”
—
THEY FOUND ASPOTin a parking lot across a street from the bank’s lot. The bank’s was ringed by fifty-foot-tall pine trees, but it was easy enough to see between them. And there’d be cars coming and going from the lot where Cole would be. “I can watch him only until he gets in the truck,” Cole said. “Then I gotta go, if I’m gonna get back to the Ferris wheel.”
“Yeah, but you’ll see him when he gets there and gets out of the truck and make sure it’s him and not some cop. When you call me after you see him come back out of the bank, I’ll waitthree or four minutes before I call him. That’ll get you on your way to the Ferris wheel. It’ll take him another five minutes to get to me. You’ll have plenty of time.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You getting spooked?”
“A lot of timing’s gotta be right. When we were hitting those houses, we knew exactly what we were doing,” Cole said. “We knew who was inside the house, what we’d get, where the cops were. This is a crapshoot.”
“Just take it easy when you drive out of here. A goddamn fender bender and I’m dead and you won’t get a nickel,” Deese said.
—
THEY DROVE BACKto the drainage channel, unloaded the bike, lifted it over a fence, and Deese rolled it down the slope to the sandy bottom and pushed it under the narrow bridge. A few street people were sitting outside the tunnel entrance, watching them, but made no move to come over to the bridge. “What are you going to do if one of the bums grabs the bag?” Cole asked.
Deese said, “Won’t happen. If it does, I’ll handle it. You better go.”
“We could still walk away,” Cole said.
“Go! Go!”
Cole went.
—
HE WAS INhis surveillance spot early, ten minutes before nine. Five minutes later, he saw the Yellow Cab Porsche turn into the bank’s parking lot. He saw Harrelson get out of the car—pinkshirt, khakis, sunglasses, bandages on his face. He reached back into the car, got a floppy-brimmed golf hat, pulled it on. No question that it was him. Reached back into the car again and pulled out what looked like an empty green shopping bag. He walked toward the bank. Cole punched his burner, calling Deese, and said, “We’re on. He’s waiting outside the bank.”
Deese clicked off without a reply.
Cole waited for what seemed like a long time. He supposed Harrelson would have to get back into the bank vault, count out the money. Cole once had a safe-deposit box and whenever he took out the box, bank people escorted him to a private room to load or unload it. That would suck up some time.
People came and went from the bank. Fifteen minutes later, Harrelson came back out, climbed into the Porsche... and waited. Cole thumbed the power button on the burner, and when Deese came up he said, “He’s in the car. I’m outta here.”
—
THEY’D DECIDEDDeese would make the call, so that Cole wouldn’t have to do it while he was driving. Cole rolled out of the parking lot, up to Sands, took a left, and headed for the Strip. By the time he got there, Harrelson should be getting close to the Hard Rock. He worked his way to the back of the LINQ parking garage; a security car was parked in one of the spaces he was planning to use, but there was nobody in it.
His phone rang, and Deese shouted, “On the way.” Cole hopped out of the car, got the two metal cash boxes from the backseat, crossed the fence, and ran down into the drainage channel to the metal grates blocking the tunnel entrance.
He yanked the grate bar to one side, stepped through, ran twenty or thirty yards down the tunnel, far enough that a GPS wouldn’t work, and opened the metal boxes; the boxes would act as a Faraday cage if there was a GPS tracker in with the cash. The concept for such a cage had come out of the research he’d done with Beauchamps and the gang in LA. They’d worked hard on that, he thought now. Beauchamps had been a smart guy, and he, Cole, was also a smart guy. How they’d ever gotten a dumbass like Deese hung around their necks...
Fifteen seconds later, he heard the distant motor grind of the dirt bike and saw a tiny dot of light, its headlight, getting closer.
Thirty seconds later, Deese was rolling to a stop. He tossed the money bag at Cole and said, “Dump the money, dump the money.”
Cole began transferring the money from the bag to one of the metal boxes, all they’d need. As he was transferring the last few bricks of cash, he found the GPS transmitter.
