If you have any kind of gut feeling, I think youâd better start praying that it was something you ate.â
* * *
Conor crossed the office and lifted down the print that the police department had given him when he resigned. It was Norman Rockwellâs famous painting of a young runaway boy perched on a stool in a 1950s diner, next to a fat, benign cop. It hadnât been given to him without irony.
Concealed behind the print was a small wall-safe. Conor punched out four numbers and then Darrell immediately punched out four more. If the second batch of numbers werenât keyed into the safe in sixty seconds, it would automatically lock and stay locked. The door opened. Inside the safe were two shoulderless safe keys. Conor took one out and Darrell took the other.
Together they walked down to the strongroom door, with Darrellâs rubber shoe-soles squelching on the marble floor.
âI should be in beachwear by now,â Darrell complained. He prodded at his mobile phone but there was no signal down here, under reinforced concrete ceilings.
They reached the strongroom door. Again they had to punch out an eight-figure security code, four figures each. Then they had to insert their keys and turn them simultaneously. The closed-circuit television camera swiveled on its perch like an inquisitive gray parrot.
They stepped inside. The strongroom was coldly lit, about fifty feet long and fifteen feet wide, with rows and rows of bronze-painted deposit boxes on either side and three more rows along the center. This was where some of Spurrâs wealthiest customers preferred to keep certain items of jewelry andbearer bonds and videotapes and whatever else they didnât want even their banks or their spouses to know about. In the last century, Spurrâs Fifth Avenue had been of service to Jay Gould the railroad swindler, among many others; and its more recent clients had been Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Pamela Harriman.
Conor walked along the aisles, jingling his keys and running his eyes up and down the tiers of boxes to make sure that all the key slots were in the horizontal (locked) position, and that none of them was missing.
âAnything your side?â he asked Darrell.
âNothing. That gut feeling of yours was probably gas. Itâs all that health food that Lacey gives you.â
Conor checked the last row of boxes. They were all locked, but he still couldnât shake the feeling that something was wrong. âI guess I was imagining things, thatâs all.â
Darrell gave him a damp slap on the shoulder, like an affectionate seal. âThatâs why we took you on, Conor. Youâve got imagination, as well as muscle. You donât get much of that in the security business, believe me.â
Chapter 3
Conor went back to his office and stared at his salad like a recovering alcoholic staring at a bottle of Perrier water. In his blue plastic lunchbox there was a big red apple and a muesli bar, too. Lacey was trying to give his alimentary canal a daily workout. She was twelve years younger than him and her father had died of colon cancer, and so he couldnât really blame her. But there were days when he would have traded six weeks of his life for a turkey and beef brisket sandwich from the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue, six inches thick, with a pickle on the side. And gravy.
He poked at his salad and then he put it back in the box and closed the lid. He felt seriously worried. Something strange had happened, something that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
Not the end of the world, but something equally bad
. Conor had an Irish sense of reality: in other words he believed that there were always two sides to every argument, but that every side had more than one side, and even those sides had their different sides to them. But he didnât believe in anything that defied the laws of physics, or any other laws for that matter.
He didnât have many friends these
* * *
Conor crossed the office and lifted down the print that the police department had given him when he resigned. It was Norman Rockwellâs famous painting of a young runaway boy perched on a stool in a 1950s diner, next to a fat, benign cop. It hadnât been given to him without irony.
Concealed behind the print was a small wall-safe. Conor punched out four numbers and then Darrell immediately punched out four more. If the second batch of numbers werenât keyed into the safe in sixty seconds, it would automatically lock and stay locked. The door opened. Inside the safe were two shoulderless safe keys. Conor took one out and Darrell took the other.
Together they walked down to the strongroom door, with Darrellâs rubber shoe-soles squelching on the marble floor.
âI should be in beachwear by now,â Darrell complained. He prodded at his mobile phone but there was no signal down here, under reinforced concrete ceilings.
They reached the strongroom door. Again they had to punch out an eight-figure security code, four figures each. Then they had to insert their keys and turn them simultaneously. The closed-circuit television camera swiveled on its perch like an inquisitive gray parrot.
They stepped inside. The strongroom was coldly lit, about fifty feet long and fifteen feet wide, with rows and rows of bronze-painted deposit boxes on either side and three more rows along the center. This was where some of Spurrâs wealthiest customers preferred to keep certain items of jewelry andbearer bonds and videotapes and whatever else they didnât want even their banks or their spouses to know about. In the last century, Spurrâs Fifth Avenue had been of service to Jay Gould the railroad swindler, among many others; and its more recent clients had been Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Pamela Harriman.
Conor walked along the aisles, jingling his keys and running his eyes up and down the tiers of boxes to make sure that all the key slots were in the horizontal (locked) position, and that none of them was missing.
âAnything your side?â he asked Darrell.
âNothing. That gut feeling of yours was probably gas. Itâs all that health food that Lacey gives you.â
Conor checked the last row of boxes. They were all locked, but he still couldnât shake the feeling that something was wrong. âI guess I was imagining things, thatâs all.â
Darrell gave him a damp slap on the shoulder, like an affectionate seal. âThatâs why we took you on, Conor. Youâve got imagination, as well as muscle. You donât get much of that in the security business, believe me.â
Chapter 3
Conor went back to his office and stared at his salad like a recovering alcoholic staring at a bottle of Perrier water. In his blue plastic lunchbox there was a big red apple and a muesli bar, too. Lacey was trying to give his alimentary canal a daily workout. She was twelve years younger than him and her father had died of colon cancer, and so he couldnât really blame her. But there were days when he would have traded six weeks of his life for a turkey and beef brisket sandwich from the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue, six inches thick, with a pickle on the side. And gravy.
He poked at his salad and then he put it back in the box and closed the lid. He felt seriously worried. Something strange had happened, something that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
Not the end of the world, but something equally bad
. Conor had an Irish sense of reality: in other words he believed that there were always two sides to every argument, but that every side had more than one side, and even those sides had their different sides to them. But he didnât believe in anything that defied the laws of physics, or any other laws for that matter.
He didnât have many friends these
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