I make a few quick hops to check when he goes on his rounds and then select the location number of the room on the fifth floor and jump there.
Turning on the flashlight on my phone, I think I’ve made an error. The reinforced space that should be right in front of me is not there. In its place is a painted wall. After I softly rap on it and hear the echo of an open space beyond, I run my fingers up the two strips of molding that appear to parallel the edges of the hidden space. About three quarters of the way up the molding on the left side, a small piece moves a fraction of an inch sideways as my hand touches it. When I push the segment farther, the wall suddenly swings out.
I shine my light into the opening and find — surprise, surprise — a large metal safe sitting on the raised floor.
My next jump takes me six months forward to late spring, 1999, and back on the street, where I can first safely check the building. The fence is gone, and while there are a few lights on inside, the top two floors are dark. A second jump, and I’m once more inside the storage room.
A metal door now shuts off the main entrance to the room; it is secured by multiple locks, while heavy-duty metal shelves sit along the walls. Each shelf is filled with shoe box — size plastic-wrapped packages.
I try not to think about what the bundles must hold, but it’s impossible. I don’t need any research to tell me that over the next several years, people will become addicted and many will die because of the drugs passing through this place. My rewinder training would instruct me to just let it go, but I don’t work for the Upjohn Institute anymore, and, especially in cases such as this, I am more than willing to operate under a modified set of rules. The drugs, however, are something I can deal with later. Right now it’s the cash that’s important.
After opening the false wall and revealing the safe, I mount the tiny camera I’ve brought with me from 2015 inside the top of the doorframe. The device is motion-activated and has a battery that — as long as it isn’t in constant use — should last about three days. The elevated position isn’t the greatest, but putting it anywhere else will increase the chance of its discovery. I’ll just have to make it work.
My next jump takes me to the street again, three nights later. When all looks quiet, I return to the storage room. Many of the plastic-wrapped packages are gone, further deepening my hatred of Munoz’s operation.
I open the secret panel and am happy to see my camera is still there. On an empty shelf, I set up my laptop computer and hook the camera into it. There are four video clips, each of the same man opening the safe. In two of the clips, he blocks my view, but the other two are clear. Well, relatively anyway. The angle of the shot means that I’m seeing only the top of the dial, not the actual number of the combination, which, in this case, lines up with a mark on the right side. But I can use the number I do see as my guide, and soon the safe is open.
As I hoped, it holds considerably more cash than I’ve come across on previous missions. Before, my record take for a single trip was around $9,000. From the stacks of bills in front of me, I know I will shatter that number.
I pull out a balled-up duffel bag, the last extra item I’d included in my satchel, and start stuffing money into it as fast as I can.
It is nearly three quarters full when I hear a key slip into one of the locks on the main door. I suck in a surprised breath and momentarily freeze. I was so sure I would be undisturbed.
My heart racing, I decide to forgo the remaining cash. I zip up the duffel and grab my chaser. As I am reselecting the location and date for the very first place I went after leaving my apartment, the final dead bolt slips free, and the door swings open.
It’s Munoz himself. I recognize him from the newspaper articles. Even though he is clearly startled by my presence, it doesn’t delay him from reaching for what I assume is a gun. Before he can draw it, however, I disappear.
I arrive just a block away from where I was moments before, at almost the exact same time of night, only instead of June 12, 1999, it is July 17, 1996, and on the lot where Munoz’s building will be erected is a rundown house that has sat there through much of the twentieth century.
“How did it go?”
Iffy stands right where I left her. Though she is well aware that I have done much in the time I’ve been gone, from her perspective I left only moments ago.
I hand her the duffel bag. “Munoz came in before I could fill it all the way.”
“Didn’t you do a check first?” she asks, not hiding her concern.
“The top floors were dark. I thought no one was there.”
She looks me up and down. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” I say, though my nerves are still on edge. It was the closest call I’ve had on one of these missions. “Let’s get this over with and go home.”
She wraps her arms around me, and we jump forward to January 20, 1999, a mere few weeks after Munoz’s drug operation has moved into its new quarters. Pay phones are much easier to find here than they will be in 2015. The one we locate is in front of a closed liquor store and is covered in stickers and scratches. Thankfully, though, when I pick up the receiver, there’s still a dial tone.
From my experience on previous money-gathering trips, I know the call I’m about to make doesn’t need a coin. I also know this is the moment I’m about to once again break the institute’s number one rule: never knowingly alter the past. Of course, this won’t be even close to my largest transgression. While my actions will cause changes to the time line, it’s unlikely any ripple will affect my or Iffy’s future life in California.
Well, there would be one exception if I had left Iffy in 2015. In that case when I returned, she’d have no memory of where I had gone or why. A small change, perhaps, but who knows how it might affect our relationship? That’s why I always bring her along and leave her a few years farther in the past while I work, just to be safe.
The line rings several times before a woman answers, “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
I give her the address of Munoz’s building and tell her about the drugs and the money before hanging up. Iffy and I then jump home.
Before I even move, she grabs her laptop from me and plops down on the couch. After a minute, she smiles. “It worked.”
She turns the screen so I can see the news article she’s located.
“Munoz and his men were taken into custody three weeks after the phone call,” she says. “He was convicted and sentenced to thirty years in prison. Which means he’s still behind bars.”
This was but a minor blip on the current time line, but a change nonetheless. The six-plus years Munoz would have remained in business had he not been arrested have now never happened. I’m not fool enough to believe my actions put a big dent in the central Florida drug scene, but I am hopeful that a few people might have been helped.
Iffy opens the duffel bag and counts the money. When she’s through, she says, “Seventy-nine thousand, three hundred and forty.”
I definitely shattered the record.
Here’s where stealing from criminals and changing time lines work well together. The money I’ve taken from Munoz’s safe was now never there in the first place. He was already in jail, his operation dead, by the date I popped into his drug closet. Yes, I know, it messes with your mind. All you need to remember is that I am the constant. It’s the path of the traveler that must be followed. When I took the cash, the old time line still existed, and when I made the call that changed Munoz’s future, the money was already in my possession, so it didn’t just disappear. It does mean that each bill I’ve taken has a duplicate out there somewhere, but it’s unlikely to cause us a problem.