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Trixie s daughter Katie. They want the money Trixie took from them, or they re
going to kill Katie. I went to see Trixie in prison. She has a plan for how we
can get into her safety-deposit box, get the money, give it to these guys. One
of them is holding Katie at our house. If anything goes wrong, he gets the
call and kills her.
I waited for Sarah to say something, but then heard another voice.
How s the linoleum thing coming along?
Frieda, the Home! editor.
Then Sarah. I m on the fucking phone, Frieda. Zack?
I m here.
Where are the kids?
Not at home. Angie s downtown at a class, Paul s at school, both of them
said at breakfast that they weren t going to be home after school today.
Most of the time, they don t show up when they say they re going to. Not the
other way around.
That s what I m hoping.
Are you okay?
I guess you could say I m a bit rattled. But otherwise, yeah, I m okay. But
once this is over, if it goes off as planned, there s a deal to hand me off to
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another set of bad guys. Or bad gals, actually.
What?
Let s not worry about that now. The immediate problem is getting into the
safety-deposit box.
How are you going to do that without Trixie?
I paused. There was no easy way to do this. Gary wants you to do it. He saw
your picture on the fridge, when we were at the awards dinner, and he thinks
you can pull it off. We have Trixie s red wig, which is part of her Marilyn
Winter persona. That s the name she used to get the safety-deposit box. You d
have to go in, pretending to be her, with the key, sign in as her. Then you
get into the box, transfer all the money into a bag, and bring it back out.
Give it to Gary, Katie gets released.
Sarah said nothing.
Honey? I said.
I m here. Another pause. Tell me about Katie.
She s scared to death, Sarah.
Do you think they ll actually let her go?
I felt a wave of hopelessness wash over me. I m just going along for now,
Sarah, hoping this works out the way it s supposed to.
Merker said, Can we get this show on the road? Tell your lady we re coming
to pick her up. Where s she work?
TheMetropolitan, I said.
Where s that?
Sarah, I said into the phone. Don t do it. This has all gone far
Gary Merker snatched the phone back. Hey, lady, you don t do it, he s dead,
the kid is dead. You in?
I m in, I heard her say.
Twenty minutes later we picked her up out front of the paper. And now Merker
and I were sitting in the Ford pickup, waiting, wondering how it was going for
Sarah inside the bank.
As I sat in the truck, I spotted something just barely sticking out from
under Merker s seat. It was a handle for something.
It was the stun gun. The one he d used on me and one of the twins at our
house.
He had his real gun sitting in his lap, his right hand resting on it, but
without a finger looped around the trigger.
She smart, your woman? he asked me.
Yes, I said. A lot smarter than I am.
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Yeah, well, that I can believe. How long she been in there now?
Only a couple of minutes, I said. It just seems like a long time.
How long should it take? You go in, you show them the key&
Just hang in. Maybe the bank is busy. Maybe it s taking her a while to get
someone to help her.
Merker fidgeted nervously, scratched his nose, but, mercifully, stuck nothing
in it for once. She has to get the signature right. If she can do that,
she ll be fine.
She s been forging mine for years, I told him. She can do this.
But it was torture, sitting out there in the truck, having no idea of how it
was going inside.
Maybe I should go in, I said. Just watch from a distance, see that
everything is going okay.
Merker snorted. Yeah, that s a great plan. I sit out here all by myself, let
the two of you just run off. Merker turned on the radio, twisting the dial
from station to station, then, deciding there was nothing interesting enough
to take his mind off his current situation, turned it off.
Shit, he said, looking up the street. A police cruiser with two officers
was approaching. Shit shit shit, he said. She fucking told.
I glanced down again at the handle of the stun gun. Relax, I said. They re
just driving down the street. It s not like they re slowing down or anything.
If they were
The police car slowed down.
Shit! Merker said through clenched teeth. He slammed his fist into the
steering wheel. She s blabbed, I know it.
She won t have done that, I said. Unless, of course, she was unable to pass
herself off as Marilyn Winter and had to confess to what she was up to, what
was at stake.
The cruiser came to a stop in front of the bank, and the cop on the passenger
side got out. He said something to the driver, held up two fingers, as if to
say he d only be a couple of minutes. Unless, of course, it meant to send for
two more police cruisers.
Merker got out his cell phone, punched in some numbers. Leo?
Jesus! I said. Nothing s happened yet.
Merker waved at me to shut up. Just checking in, man. How s it going there?
Merker listened, nodded, looking back and forth between me and the bank across
the street. The cop had the door open and was going inside. It looked as
though he was reaching into his back pocket.
He s going for his wallet, I said. He s just going to the ATM.
Merker was listening to Leo. Okay, good, yeah, well, we re just waiting on
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this end. What? Leo was telling him something else. Well, take some Pepto or
something. Fuck, I got bigger things to worry about than your stomach. I ll
call you back if anything goes wrong here.
He put the phone back into his pocket.
Where s the cruiser? he asked.
It kept on going. I think he s doing a loop around the block. If there were
a problem, he wouldn t waste time looking for a parking spot.
Yeah, maybe. He looked in his mirror, checking to see whether the cop car
was still visible. Hang on, he said, opened the door, and stepped out so he
could get a better view down the street.
I leaned swiftly across the seat, reached down and grabbed hold of the stun
gun. I was back in position, holding the gun down by my right side, between my
body and the door, by the time Merker was getting back in.
I think he s doing a slow drive around the block, he said. Maybe you re
right, maybe he s just using the money machine. He better be.
His eyes were trained on the doors of the bank. Come on. Come on. I want to
see somebody come out of there. Your wife, or that cop, and not together.
I d been waiting for my moment, some way to get the drop on Merker, and now
it was at hand. Stunning him would only put him out of commission for a few
seconds, but it would be long enough to wrest the gun away from him, to get
his cell phone, to smash his goddamn fucking head in if I had to. Then I could
wave down either the cop as he came out of the bank, with or without Sarah, or
the other one doing a loop around the block. Once Merker was subdued, police
could surround our house, get Katie out safely.
My mouth was dry, my heart was pounding in my ears.
There was nothing to say to Merker. No need to give him a warning. No need to
tell him to freeze or drop his weapon.
I could just stun the bastard.
And so, while he sat with his back to me, focused on the bank doors, I
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