URSE ONCE AGAIN SENT for Cap’n, who’d been off duty since 4:00 p.m. When he arrived, the small patrol of vagrants met in the dark alley behind Eddie’s old truck and huddled around like a grade-school football team drawing up their next play.
“Accordin’ t’ what Sunny says, Luke told ‘im Clint and Mister Vinnie think Eddie jumped outta the second-story window. Sunny was here watchin’. Says Eddie stayed inside.” Nurse turned to Greg, who nodded in return. “Means he got t’ be inside somewheres. . . . Now, ever’body knows who Mister Vinnie is, right?”
A puzzled look crossed Greg’s face. “Who’s he?” The focus of every teammate turned to the new kid on the block.
“For the love o’ soup, soldier!” Cap’n exclaimed. “You don’t know Mister Vinnie?”
Nurse was quick to defend the newcomer. “Easy, Cap’n, he’s only been out a few days.”
“That’s right. You’s a tender new recruit,” Cap’n said with a playful barb. “Most everyone knows who Mister Vinnie is. You give your blood at American Bio Medical, get fifteen bucks. Find a credit card application, it’s worth seventy-five. Work as a pigeon, make a hundred. Don’t matter which store you stop at on this block, it’s Mister Vinnie’s money.” Greg didn’t have a clue what Cap’n was talking about.
Nurse was anxious to move on. “This’s no country picnic. If’n Mister Vinnie finds us snoopin’ in his building, they’ll be pickin’ us off the tracks in little pieces.”
“Don’t you think it’s time we called the police?” Greg finally asked.
Cap’n threw his big head back, his barrel chest exploding in raucous laughter. The others in the circle joined in, the banter bouncing from building to building down the dim alley. When it subsided, Cap’n said, “You was robbed on the street. Why didn’t you ask someone to call ‘em then?” Before Greg could respond, Cap’n continued. “Look at us. We live on the street, feedin’ on handouts from Reverend Keller’s soup kitchen. We all been in and outta the slammer dozens a’ times fer things we never done, and everyone of us is crazier ‘n a wild horse on loco weed. ‘Less we got solid proof, we got nothin’.” The group, as one, gave a nod.
“That outta the way?” Nurse asked. Everyone nodded again, this time including Greg. “Let’s review our assets. Smitty’s got to go in to open the metal door. Got your picks?” Smitty blinked hard, his version of yes, and patted a large leather fanny pack buckled at his waist. “Sound’s got to undo the alarm.”
Sound, who seemed the most normal of the bunch, smiled at the challenge. “It would be easier, though,” he countered, “to cut the phone lines and trip the breaker.” He was a tall, flaxen-faced man. Dark rings under his sunken eyes and a gaunt frame matched his high-pitched, techno-nerd voice. “But I can do it inside, if you really want me to.”
“We don’t want ‘em to know we was here,” replied Nurse. Sound sighed in agreement. “Okay, then. Cap’n has ta’ go in ‘cause he’s got the flashlight. Belle, me, Sunny and Ritter’ll be a watchin’ from outside. If’n someone comes to the front, Ritter’ll bang on the gas pipe twice, then wait, then twice more. If’n someone comes to the back, he’ll bang once, then wait, then once more. Got that?”
“I’d like to volunteer to go in,” Greg blurted out. Everyone gave the newcomer a stare.
“Why?” asked Ritter and Nurse in unison.
“Didn’t you say something about credit cards?”
“Yeah,” Cap’n said. “Mister Vinnie pays for applications the other homeless no-goods find in the trash. If they’re good for credit, he pays ‘em seventy-five.”
Greg shook his head, still stung by what had happened to him. “That’s why I’m here.”
Cap’n flinched. “What? You a cop?”
“No. I mean my life was ruined. Someone used my name and credit. They got me for almost two hundred thousand.”
Sound gasped and put his hand to his mouth.
“Okay, so what are your assets?” Nurse interrupted.
“Like I said, I don’t have any. I’m broke, bankrupt, lost my wife, home . . .”
Nurse wagged her head side to side. “That’s not what we mean. Cap’n’s got a light; Smitty can pick a lock; Sound hates noise from alarms– takes ‘em apart instead. What can you do?”
“I’m a computer programmer.”
“You go too.” Nurse waved her crippled hand. “Cap’n gives the orders.”
Stephanie stood and slid her chair in. “ That stew was the best yet, Grandpa. Now you two go talk your car talk and I’ll do the dishes.” She lifted her palms to show that she meant business. “I think you’ve both heard enough about baby names and childbirth for one night.”
Grandpa slowly stood. “Thank you, dear. Think I’ll take you up on that offer, go out on the porch–that is, if I can get the rigor mortis out of my old bones.” He put a hand to his hip to help straighten up. “Now I believe I know what it’s going to feel like to be dead.”
“Grandpa!” Stephanie chided. “Don’t even say things like that. A tough old codger like you will be around a long time. Besides, you’ve got two great-grandchildren that are going to need you.”
“You might be right, but I’m no spring chicken. We better start thinkin’ about what we should do with this place, you know.”
“We will, Pa. There’s plenty of time.” Mitch swung open the front door and stepped out on the porch.
“That outfit from Yucca Mountain was back again,” Grandpa said as he pulled his pipe pouch from his pocket. “Been stirrin’ up trouble with the locals. The Indians won’t even buy parts here anymore.” He stuffed the end of the ancient hickory implement with tobacco and pressed it to his lips. He gave the pipe’s barrel a nostalgic tap. “If your Grandma was still alive, she’d skin me alive with a butter knife for starting up this dirty ol’ habit again.”
Grandpa’s property was bordered by the interstate to the east and Indian tribal land to the west. He’d successfully won a lawsuit against the government 30 years before, after they’d illegally put an off-ramp through his land. The tribe didn’t want the white man’s exit, so Grandpa sued the government, and won. He’d had many friends in the tribe– mostly gone, now–who’d supported his business to help him with the attorneys’ fees.
“What about the guys from Yucca Mountain?” Mitch asked.
“Rumor has it they paid the tribe a quarter million to force me to sell. The money’s theirs as soon as I’m outta business. Another twentyfive million goes to the tribe when the road’s finished. Only thing keepin’ one of the locals from killin’ me and takin’ the land is the war they’re having within the tribe about a highway cuttin’ their land in two. Meantime, a few of the local bullies deal with anyone that buys parts from me. I think they’re on the payroll of the outfit workin’ on the mountain.”
“I didn’t think they’d even decided where to put the road yet.” “You kiddin’, boy? Anyone droppin’ that kind of cash knows what they’re doin’.”
“How long’s this been going on?”
“‘Bout a year. I’d sell and move to the city, if I wasn’t so dog-gone stubborn. It’s the principle a’ the thing, you know. Ain’t right someone showin’ up and takin’ somethin’ that don’t belong to ‘em.” “How much longer do you think you can hold out?”
“Year–maybe two, if I keep doin’ repairs and sellin’ cars. The savings all went to fix the place up.”
“Dang, Grandpa, you shouldn’t have done it then.”
“I haven’t felt so good about spendin’ my money for a long time. I want to be sure you bring those little ones to see me without ‘em gettin’ all grimy.” The old man pulled a match from his shirt pocket and struck it on his pant leg. “I’ll quit smokin’ again, too, before the babies come.” “That’s why you quit?” Mitch watched him draw the flame to his pipe and remembered the old geezer used to smoke it before his son died. “Because I moved in?”
“Your grandma insisted. Had a mind of her own, that woman. Wasn’t enough I took it to the porch. She insisted I set a good example for you. . . . By the way, ‘d you sell the goat?” He abruptly changed the subject, perhaps, Mitch thought, to keep the memories at bay. Mitch’s eyes dropped to the wooden porch. “What is it, boy? I’d know that look even from the grave.”
“It’s been . . . stolen.”
“Balls of fire! What happened?”
Mitch reluctantly launched into the story . . . all about Vinnie and his fancy Ferrari, the mobster’s job offer, and his stolen car.
Back at the gym, Cap’n led the motley crew down the darkened corridor toward the second metal door. Smitty, having successfully jimmied the back door, drew the pick set from his pants pocket. “Gotta hold on, Smitty. Let Sound disarm the alarm first.”
Sound took a screwdriver from the tool belt at his waist and pressed it behind the small keypad on the wall. “This’ll be too easy. Standard-issue, residential . . . low-tech, Radionics, single-entry keypad . . . no mercurylevel protection.” Within 30 seconds he’d popped it off the wall. “Hmm.” He crossed one arm at his chest, lifted the other to support his chin in thought. His weight shifted to one long leg, pivoting his hips to the side. “If I could just remember . . . which wire to pull first. My mind isn’t what it was before I got sick.”
“Take it easy. You can do it,” whispered Cap’n. “We don’t wanna scrub the mission on a technicality.”
Smitty had placed the tension bar in the door lock and slid the pick inside to the pins. Seeing the arched shadow cast across the room to the opposite wall, Greg realized the source of Smitty’s hunched-over posture. He felt his own heart rate quicken and his breath become labored by the stress of the break-in. What a rush!
“I think I got it,” Sound murmured. He reached down and tugged a thin green wire and a miniature screwdriver from the pouch. With a flick of the wrist he attached one end of the wire to a stubby screw on the back of the keypad. “Cross your fingers.” Then he lifted both hands in the air, fingers crossed, and mumbled a cursory prayer, his eyes squeezed shut.
Sound dropped the screwdriver back onto the pad and promptly retracted his hand, pressing his thumbnail to his front teeth and nibbling pensively. In an instant, the driver was back in his pouch and the small wire mounted in position. The keypad beeped and a luminous green digital glow reflected down the front of Sound’s drab shirt and pants. He sighed a soft breath and lifted the pad to review the readout. “Oh my gosh!” he exclaimed, wide-eyed. “We’ve got just twenty-eight seconds–I mean twenty-six!” He dropped the keypad, left it dangling by the wires poking through the wall, and raced down the hall to the back door, his arms and legs waving wildly in the air.
Cap’n shone his beam on the fleeing man, then back on the keypad. Lifting the pad, everyone saw the readout–“19, 18, 17 . . .” The back door clicked shut. “Time to pull out the troops,” he ordered. Cap’n lumbered down the hall, his army boots thumping the floor with every step. Smitty was three steps behind; Greg stumbled to catch up.
“Fire in the hole!” Cap’n hollered as he jumped from the landing, careening head-on into Ritter, who was standing in his path. The two men tumbled, rolled, and lay sprawled on the crumbled asphalt, with Ritter gasping for air.
Greg shook his head at the sight–equal parts Three Stooges and Keystone Cops. The ragtag band was running from a simple building alarm as if a bomb were about to detonate. How far down the pit had he fallen? Six months before he’d have been sitting in his posh corner office on the eighth floor of the biggest computer chip manufacturer in the state of Nevada. Now he was breaking into a stinking gym–shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of misfit vagrants–to rescue its missing owner–and he was actually getting a rush from it. “The Alley Team,” that’s what he’d called them; “or maybe the A-team” for short. A rare bunch of sick alley cats.