The job was in his blood, there was no denying that. He had tried his hand at a great many things in his twenty-eight years, but no job suited him like the job he was doing now. This was The Job, in his mind, the big one, the one that anyone could do but few could do well.

He crouched in the darkened entryway and surveyed the room. To his right was a simple infrared beam projector, and to his left was the reflector that kept the circuit closed. In his experience, this sort of beam was usually attached to a silent alarm, but this one in particular would be no problem. It was simply a matter of stepping over it. Obviously, the beam was intended to snare amateurs.

He stood and lifted his left leg, then stopped suddenly, lowering himself back down to a crouch.

This was too easy.

The infrared unit was in plain view, where even a virgin burglar could see it. This thing wouldn’t stop a ten-year-old.

It was a dummy.

He leaned forward, careful not to enter the room, and slipped a mirror from the leg pocket of his black trousers. He held it up at arm’s length, checking the interior of the room.

On the far wall to his right, at chest-level, was a second infrared beam unit. The idea was to lead a guy over the first one so that he would unknowingly trip the second one.

He smiled slightly in the darkness and tucked the mirror back into its place. This is the difference between a good burglar and a good convict, he thought. This was why he would never get caught; he had a sense about these things, a higher perception that sometimes freaked him out a little. There was good, and there was very good, and then there was Calvin Holloway.

He stood again, switched off the mini flashlight attached to his headgear, then bent at the waist, carefully judging the gap between the beam in the entryway and the one in the next room. Then, like a man slipping between the strands of a barbed-wire fence, he stepped through.

He brought himself upright in the blackness. It was impossible to see anything in the sealed, shielded room without a light, but he didn’t need to see; he knew the room intimately, although he had never been here. For the last three weeks, the living room of his apartment had been a mockup of this room, and he had rehearsed crossing the room in total darkness. Any light whatsoever would activate the tracking cameras in the corners of the room, and they would follow him, capturing his ever move on tape for the authorities to use against him.

Not that they’ll ever catch me, he thought, and smiled again. He stepped forward, his shoes making no sound on the hard tile as he crossed deliberately to the center of the room. He counted his steps, carefully measuring the distance in the pitch-dark, and stopped at twenty-two steps. The glass case would now be at arm’s length.

He reached down and unclipped a homemade device from a special loop on his belt. The device, which he designed and built himself, was equipped with a suction cup on one end and two rotating arms with glass-cutters affixed to the ends. A small, low-voltage motor atop the unit powered the arms.

He slowly pressed the suction cup against the top of the glass case, feeling his way carefully in the utter dark. With the unit affixed, he lowered the arms into place, their attached cutters pressed firmly against the glass. He felt his way to the top of the unit and switched on the power.

With a faint hum and a sound like fingernails on a blackboard, the small but very effective machine went to work.

Now came the waiting. This part was always difficult, and he supposed that it was in these motionless, near-silent moments that a less capable man would break. The tension was easy enough to ignore, when you were busy, but during the waiting period, while the machine did its business, there was plenty of time to realize the gravity of the situation. If the flash of red-and-blues came through the windows down the hall right now, it would be over.

But Calvin Holloway knew that wouldn’t happen. There would be no police in his near future, because there was no better burglar in the city, the state—hell, probably on the entire East Coast.

With a small, quiet clunk the machine finished its job. He reached and shut off the power, then carefully lifted the machine, still attached to a ten-inch circle of cut glass, away from the case. He set the whole assembly on the floor at his feet.

Then he reached into the case.

He couldn’t see her, but he could tell by touch that she was beautiful. He followed the contours of her exquisitely detailed face with his fingers, taking in every line and curve. The artist who had carved this piece, an estimated eight hundred years before, had obviously been in love with her. He could see her in his mind, in an image that did the art far more justice than the cheap, grainy newspaper photo he had clipped two days earlier. She was beautiful, she was valuable, and as of right this moment, this West African artifact was the property of Calvin Edward Holloway.

He wrapped his fingers carefully around her oblong, rounded head and gently freed her from the glass prison, feeling her weight in his hands. A mere ten inches tall, the carving was by no means the biggest thing he had ever stolen, but it was the most valuable single item he had ever scored.

He slipped a small leather pack off his shoulder and eased the figurine carefully inside, tucking her in among the towels he had placed there earlier. It wouldn’t do to chip the old girl now, after all, with so much money yet to be collected. He slipped the pack over his left shoulder and reached down with his right hand, collecting the cutting machine. Then he turned to the doorway.

This was his favorite part, the part where he would intentionally trigger the alarms and bring the police on the run. By the time they arrived, he would be across town and letting himself into his apartment. While they were scouring the scene for his nonexistent fingerprints, he would be slipping quietly beneath the blankets in his warm, safe bed. While they were releasing the first of the sketchy details to the media, he would be slumbering away, dreaming whatever dreams may come in the hours before he left for the airport and went to meet his buyer.

This was his favorite part.

He clipped the cutting machine to his belt and steadied himself. After a deep breath, he charged through the doorway, passing directly through both sets of infrared beams, setting off the alarms that could only be heard in a small room at a security company downtown. He burst through like a triumphant runner taking the tape at the end of a grueling race, and he envisioned a whole field of uniformed cops chasing along, with three-digit numbers taped to their chests, laboring fruitlessly to keep up. The vision brought a slight smile to his face.

He went to the emergency exit at the rear of the building and knelt by the reinforced-steel door. He peered out the door through the sizable hole he had cut with a welder’s torch nearly an hour before. Outside, the back lot looked exactly as it had when he came in; a big, empty expanse of asphalt designed to accept the overflow from the museum’s main parking area.

He heard footfalls behind him, the sound of someone running full-speed down an empty corridor. He froze, listening for the sound. He estimated the time, ticking off the seconds on his fingers, three, two, one…

"SHIT!" a voice called, followed by a dull thud and a furious hissing sound. He listened for a moment longer and, as expected, heard nothing.

So much for museum security, he thought, and smiled again.

He turned and crawled through the hole in the door and into the dark, waiting night.

Five steps away from the building, he felt a hand on his shoulder, followed immediately by a hard steel object pressing against the base of his skull.

"Nine millimeter," a voice said. "Not a huge bullet, but the exit wound should include everything from just below your nose to just above your collarbones."

Calvin held out the bag containing the sculpture. "It’s cool," he said shakily, "I don’t want any trouble."

"Trouble you got," the voice answered. "Take a walk with me, what do you say?"

He nodded and began to walk, led by the muzzle pushing against his neck. He rounded the corner of the building and saw, in the faint yellowish glow of the arc-sodium streetlamps, a nondescript blue Ford. It was parked askew, oblivious of the neatly painted lines on the parking lot, and the trunk lid stood open.

"Go ahead and put your little trinket in there while we talk business," the voice behind him said softly.

Okay, he thought, this is not a cop. A cop would have been bad. This was worse.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice cracking.

"I told you what I want. Put the nice African lady in the trunk where she’ll be safe."

He did as he was instructed, then turned to face the gunman. His captor was a middle-aged man, probably in his early forties, heavy-set, with a deeply lined face that showed his age and then some.

Now he was pissed. Not only had someone got the drop on him, some old fart had got the drop on him.

The gunman opened the rear door on the Ford’s passenger side. "Get in."

Holloway hesitated only a moment. The guy was old, and probably slow, but the Beretta in his right hand was undoubtedly plenty fast. There was no running away, at least not yet.

As he started to climb into the Ford’s back seat, the gunman produced a pair of handcuffs. With one lightning motion, he slipped one steel bracelet over Calvin’s left wrist, then pushed him up against the car. In an instant, he had secured the other wrist.

"Hey, what the fuck?" was all Holloway could manage to say.

"I see your education has paid off," the gunman replied simply. "It will be handy to know a few good four-letter words when you get to Broadmoor." He placed a hand on Calvin’s head, pressing him downward and pushing him into the back seat.

Calvin sat down, wanting to resist but not wanting to taste a bullet. The gunman leaned into the car and drew out the seat belt, dragging it across Calvin’s lap and closing the buckle with a loud, clear click. He then turned so that his nose was almost touching Calvin’s. "Don’t go anywhere, okay, cutie?"

The gunman stood quickly and slammed the door shut.

Calvin looked around. The front seat was set apart from the rear by a dirty, scratched sheet of bulletproof Plexiglas. An ID card hung from the rear-view mirror, but it was turned so that the blank back was to him, and as it swayed there he could see that it would take a miracle for the picture-and-information side to come into view.

So who was this asshole?

He glanced over his shoulder and out the Ford’s rear window. The gunman was leaning against the back of the car and lighting a cigarette. He drew in a deep breath and blew out a great gust of smoke, then reached up with his free hand and brushed something away from his grey suit jacket.

Both hands visible, but no Beretta in sight.

Calvin decided to bolt. He wasn’t sure how he could get to the door handle, with his hands cuffed behind his back and the added constraint of the lap-and-shoulder belt, but he was damn sure going to try. He had only been to jail once, and that had been enough.

He looked down at the door panel and saw exactly what he should have expected: nothing. There were no inside door handles. This car was meant to transport prisoners, and, like any police car, the rear doors had been modified to prevent escape.

Shit.

The driver’s door suddenly opened and the gunman got in the car. He put the keys in the ignition, but rather than starting the car, he turned his attention to his passenger.

"So," the stranger said levelly, "what do you plan to do with that sculpture?"

"I’m not saying shit until I talk to my lawyer."

The gunman laughed. "Lawyer, now that’s funny. Why in God’s name would you have a lawyer? You’ve never needed one. You’ve never been in a courtroom. You’ve never been tried for any of the burglaries you’ve done, because you do a good job of not leaving enough evidence for the Grand Jury to do anything about you."

Calvin narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

"That’s why I’m here, Mr. Holloway. Because you’re good. You’re very good. And I need you."

"Really? You need me? Well, why didn’t you just call me? I’m in the Yellow Pages under Go Fuck Yourself."

The stranger in the front seat smiled. "I like your energy, unrefined as it is. The problem you’re facing, Mr. Holloway, is that you are not in a bargaining position."

Calvin said nothing. He swallowed hard, despite his efforts to avoid showing fear.

"Now, we both know you’re fond of setting off alarms on your way out after a big job."

Calvin’s eyes widened, and he forced himself to try and appear normal. He wondered whether the stranger had seen his reaction.

"So, since you and I both know that the police are on their way, perhaps we can cut through some of the unnecessary rhetoric and get to the point."

Calvin nodded slowly.

"Good boy. Now, when the police get here, I have two options. I can flash them my credentials, tell them how my office has been after you for a long time, clap one of them on the back, spew some crap about how lucky I was to be in the right place at the right time, and you and I can ride off into the sunset.

"The second option is, I can flash my credentials and hand you over to the locals. They’ll pull their dicks for a few hours while they figure out what to do with you, but in time you’ll be en route to Broadmoor where you’ll get to spend the next fifty years being someone’s girlfriend."

Calvin shook his head. "Bullshit. Simple burglary, I won’t get more than a five-to-ten."

"That would be true, if it were really simple burglary. But, you see, when that first police unit rolled up on the scene and you killed that officer, things got more complicated."

Calvin stared, slack-jawed, as his captor produced a small-caliber pistol. The grip was wrapped in a handkerchief.

"Shit," he whispered.

"Your eloquence will take you far."

Just then, the first of the marked police units arrived on the scene, bathing the gunman’s face in alternating strobe-flashes of red and blue.

"So what’ll it be, Cowboy?" the stranger asked.

Calvin opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

"I’ll take that as a yes."

Calvin nodded.

"Good," the stranger said, his face twitching slightly to form a thin, weak smile that reminded Holloway of the crocodiles on those late-night nature shows.

The stranger got out of the car, his credentials in full view. He passed the I.D. wallet to the uniformed officer, who looked it over, then handed it briskly back to the stranger. "What’s happening here?" the officer asked.

"I got lucky," the gunman answered, clapping the officer on the shoulder. "We’ve been after this asshole for five years. I was in the right place at the right time."

The cop smiled a little, but quickly straightened his face. "Anything we can do here?"

"Some agents will be along shortly to collect evidence. If you would, keep a tight perimeter in the meantime. Can you do that for me, Officer Cortez?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Eichmann."

The gunman gave Calvin a wink as he climbed back into the car. He keyed the ignition and sped away into the night.

9/20/2003 1:07:14 AM

Comment on this fan fiction!