animated and smiling cartoon faucet posed on the side of the van next to the words “Drip Bros. Plumbing, Las Vegas, NV, Est. 1978. We Do It All!”
I pitched in, grabbing a sack that weighed at least fifty pounds and clanked when I hauled it over my shoulder, and we all ended up in my motel room with the door dead-bolted and the curtains drawn tight. I turned on my laptop and pulled up the photos I’d taken at the loft—a selectively pruned collection, leaving out the shots of Ecko’s pet monster.
“We’re good on wheels,” Stanwyck said. “I’ve got a place to stash the car, for the switch, and I found a perfect boost just a few blocks from here. A Lincoln with local plates, and the mail piling up says the owners haven’t been around in days. Nobody will report it stolen until we’re long gone.”
“Catch us up,” Coop said. “What are we up against?”
I brought up the shots of the storefront, taken as we cruised past in Stanwyck’s car. “Seismic alarms on the windows, motion detector on the ground floor, and he’s got a contract with Polymath Security. We can’t
get
to the second floor without beating the security in his shop. Second-floor windows are alarmed too, probably on the same circuit.”
Coop whistled. “Well, that’s a pickle. We know anything about his safe?”
I showed him the picture of the upstairs office and the black steel door poking out behind Ecko’s desk. He got closer, leaning in and squinting at the screen.
“Can’t tell the make and model with that. We’ll just have to load for bear and expect the worst. Ain’t met a safe I couldn’t crack, but that assumes we get in and have plenty of time to work uninterrupted. Don’t suppose you got any friends at Polymath?”
“
Nobody
has friends at Polymath,” I said. “They vet their employees harder than the Secret Service. No, our only option is to get in without triggering the alarm at all.”
Augie sat on the edge of the bed, brow furrowed and lips slightly parted, like he was trying to do long division in his head.
“If the alarm box is at the bottom of the window display,” he said slowly, “why not just cut the
top
of the glass away and not touch that part?”
I shook my head. “Like I said,
seismic
alarm. It monitors the tension of the entire sheet of glass. Break it or cut it—anything that gets the glass vibrating too hard—and the alarm goes off.”
I tabbed back to a photo of the storefront. Something was bugging me, something I should have caught. And a slow smile spread across my face as I realized what it was.
“Good job, Augie. Didn’t think to look until you brought it up. See, the windows have seismic alarms,” I said, tapping the screen. “The glass on the door
doesn’t
. The alarm will catch anyone trying to jimmy the lock…so how about we break through the glass and leave the lock untouched?”
“Looks like tempered double-pane.” Coop stroked his goatee while he thought out loud. “Smash-resistant. Not smash-
proof
, though, and I can get us in nice and quiet.”
“How long?”
“Five minutes buys us a hole we can wriggle through. What about that motion detector?”
“Hold up,” Stanwyck said. “You want to bust through a jewelry-shop door in full view on a busy street? Totally exposed for at least five minutes? First cop to cruise by is gonna make us, and that’s assuming some helpful citizen doesn’t call it in first.”
The first rule of camouflage is to conform to local expectations. What looks natural in the wilderness sticks out like a sore thumb in a city, and vice versa. I thought back to when I first arrived in Chicago, walking the streets, taking in the local color.
“Construction.” I snapped my fingers. “Lot of street construction going on, right?”
Stanwyck snorted. “Always. Always too much and always too slow. They stretch the jobs out until winter comes, then start all over again in the spring. I spent most of the day driving different routes,
I pitched in, grabbing a sack that weighed at least fifty pounds and clanked when I hauled it over my shoulder, and we all ended up in my motel room with the door dead-bolted and the curtains drawn tight. I turned on my laptop and pulled up the photos I’d taken at the loft—a selectively pruned collection, leaving out the shots of Ecko’s pet monster.
“We’re good on wheels,” Stanwyck said. “I’ve got a place to stash the car, for the switch, and I found a perfect boost just a few blocks from here. A Lincoln with local plates, and the mail piling up says the owners haven’t been around in days. Nobody will report it stolen until we’re long gone.”
“Catch us up,” Coop said. “What are we up against?”
I brought up the shots of the storefront, taken as we cruised past in Stanwyck’s car. “Seismic alarms on the windows, motion detector on the ground floor, and he’s got a contract with Polymath Security. We can’t
get
to the second floor without beating the security in his shop. Second-floor windows are alarmed too, probably on the same circuit.”
Coop whistled. “Well, that’s a pickle. We know anything about his safe?”
I showed him the picture of the upstairs office and the black steel door poking out behind Ecko’s desk. He got closer, leaning in and squinting at the screen.
“Can’t tell the make and model with that. We’ll just have to load for bear and expect the worst. Ain’t met a safe I couldn’t crack, but that assumes we get in and have plenty of time to work uninterrupted. Don’t suppose you got any friends at Polymath?”
“
Nobody
has friends at Polymath,” I said. “They vet their employees harder than the Secret Service. No, our only option is to get in without triggering the alarm at all.”
Augie sat on the edge of the bed, brow furrowed and lips slightly parted, like he was trying to do long division in his head.
“If the alarm box is at the bottom of the window display,” he said slowly, “why not just cut the
top
of the glass away and not touch that part?”
I shook my head. “Like I said,
seismic
alarm. It monitors the tension of the entire sheet of glass. Break it or cut it—anything that gets the glass vibrating too hard—and the alarm goes off.”
I tabbed back to a photo of the storefront. Something was bugging me, something I should have caught. And a slow smile spread across my face as I realized what it was.
“Good job, Augie. Didn’t think to look until you brought it up. See, the windows have seismic alarms,” I said, tapping the screen. “The glass on the door
doesn’t
. The alarm will catch anyone trying to jimmy the lock…so how about we break through the glass and leave the lock untouched?”
“Looks like tempered double-pane.” Coop stroked his goatee while he thought out loud. “Smash-resistant. Not smash-
proof
, though, and I can get us in nice and quiet.”
“How long?”
“Five minutes buys us a hole we can wriggle through. What about that motion detector?”
“Hold up,” Stanwyck said. “You want to bust through a jewelry-shop door in full view on a busy street? Totally exposed for at least five minutes? First cop to cruise by is gonna make us, and that’s assuming some helpful citizen doesn’t call it in first.”
The first rule of camouflage is to conform to local expectations. What looks natural in the wilderness sticks out like a sore thumb in a city, and vice versa. I thought back to when I first arrived in Chicago, walking the streets, taking in the local color.
“Construction.” I snapped my fingers. “Lot of street construction going on, right?”
Stanwyck snorted. “Always. Always too much and always too slow. They stretch the jobs out until winter comes, then start all over again in the spring. I spent most of the day driving different routes,
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