A man’s voice, disembodied and electronic, seemed to come from the sky above her head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. But we’re closed for the night.”
“What?”
“I said we’re closed now. The bar can’t serve anybody after two.”
She located the speaker, a little square gray metal box with holes on the front in a circular pattern. But what was above it worried her much more. It was a video camera mounted under the eaves of the building. Its single shiny black lens was staring right at her.
She pushed off to move out from the wall, wavering a bit as though she had been standing with her back to the bricks to steady herself, and put on a drunk voice. “I don’t want a drink, thankyou-verymuch. I had some drinks already, and I’ve got all I want in the car. I’m not here for that.”
“Then what are you here for, miss?”
“I’m here to audition.”
“Audition for what?”
“A job. Isn’t this a strip place?” She began to dance to unheard music.
“That’s what you want—to audition for a job as a dancer?”
She shouted, both to let Jeff know that she was talking to someone, and to keep the man’s attention on her monitor rather than spotting Jeff on another one. “Not dancing, silly! I don’t want to dance. I want to strip!”
“Look, miss?”
“What?”
“The manager already went home, and the talent coordinator is only in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from noon to eight. We don’t do auditions in the middle of the night. Please go home, sober up, and give the club a call around noon tomorrow. The manager and the talent coordinator will make an appointment for you. Okay?”
“Fuck, no! I’m not going to leave work to drive all the way over here to take my clothes off at noon. I’m not going to be in the mood then. I’m in the mood now.” She did a wriggling, suggestive dance, lifted the front of her sweater, and undulated her hips, careful not to turn her body to let the gun at the back of her waistband show.
The man in the speaker chuckled. “Please. I can’t deny you’re hot. I’m sure you can get a job here any time you want. But hiring people—that’s not my job. On nights like tonight, I sometimes wish it was. But it isn’t.”
“But you can help me get a job. I’ll show you my act, and you tell me honestly what you think, so I can fix it.”
“I can tell you without seeing the best parts of your act that you’re qualified. Isn’t she qualified?” There was some muffled speech. “My friend says you’re more than qualified.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“He agrees you’re good to go. But as I said, this isn’t how you get the job. If our boss thought I told you different, I’d be out there looking for a job with you.”
“Can’t you help me? I’m the one being brave. I’m a shy person who works in a bank. If I do my act now for two strangers—two, right?—then I’ll be over the stage fright, and it’ll be easier to really audition.” She began to move her hips again in a silent dance.
There was a soft scraping sound as though a hand were muffling a microphone, and then the microphone cleared again. “As long as you understand that we got nothing to do with hiring. We’re just, like, night watchmen. You got it?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “It’ll really help me. All you have to do is watch my act and give me whatever pointers you can.”
She heard the sound of someone fiddling with the hardware on the inner side of the steel door. She shrieked “Yippee!” so Jeff couldn’t not hear it, then spotted his shadow near the corner of the building.
The door swung open, and there was a smiling man. He was very tall and broad-shouldered, with thick, dark hair and green eyes. He wore the pants from a black suit like the ones the men wore last night at the bank, but without the coat. His white shirt had the sleeves rolled up and the collar open. “Hello,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Penelope,” she said.
He bowed. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Penny.”
“Penelope,” she said with drunken insistence.
He turned to call to someone inside. “Jimmy, this is Penelope.”
The other man came to the door and said, “Hi.” He stepped back a few feet. “Come on in.”
She was sure now that there were only two of them. Now that she could see them both, she took a step, leaned drunkenly against the steel door to keep it wide open, and used the awkwardness of the move to cover the hitch of her shoulder to pull the pistol out of the back of her waistband. “Don’t move,” she said.
“Shit,” said the tall man. He made a quick move toward her.
She fired the gun high, so the bullet passed over his shoulder, and he stopped. She looked at the man behind him and said, “If you reach for it, I’ll kill you.”
He raised his hands and looked at her. “Penelope, why don’t you put that away?” He saw Jeff slip in the door beside her. “Oh, boy” Jeff was wearing a ski mask, and he handed one to Carrie, who put it on while he held his gun on the men.
“All right,” said Jeff. “Just shut up. We’re going to do this quick and easy. Both of you go up to face that wall, legs spread, hands out wide, and lean.”
The two men obeyed.
Jeff frisked the two men cautiously, keeping his gun on one of them every second. He found two pistols and tossed them out the open door.
“We’re here because we’re sworn peace officers,” said Carrie. “But not like any cops you’ve ever seen. If we decide to kill you, no local cop is ever going to ask us why.”
“Oh, feds,” said the big man.
“What’s your name?”
“Vassily Voinovich.”
“And how about you?”
“Jimmy Gaffney.”
“All right. You should know that if we find out either of those are false names, you’re going to jail for a long time. If you interfere with what we’re doing, same thing happens. If you make either of us think we’re in danger, you won’t make it to jail.”
“What do you want?”
“We’re doing an audit of the money coming into this business. You’re going to get tonight’s take for us. Our office is going to look for particular serial numbers, do some chemical testing. If we don’t find anything, your boss will get it back. If we do, God help him.”
“We can’t get the money for you. It’s in the safe.”
“Show us the safe,” Jeff said.
“It’s in the next room,” Voinovich said.
Carrie pushed her pistol against his temple. “He didn’t say ‘tell us.’ He said ‘show us.’ Everybody comes along.”
The room was a small, neat office, and Jeff could see this was where the two men had set up to spend the night. The security monitor where the two men had seen Carrie was mounted on the wall, and their coats were hung on the chairs. There were two hands of a gin game laid out on the desk face-down. It told Jeff that the big guy who had gone to the door probably had not known that the wily-looking redheaded Irishman would look at his cards. The safe was a small one—only about two and a half feet high, and two feet wide. There was an electronic keyboard with the numbers zero through nine on the keys.
Jeff said, “Okay. We’d like you to open the safe for us.”
The two men looked at each other in a silent inquiry that Jeff hoped was “Should we?” and not “I don’t know how, do you?”
“We can’t.”
Carrie said, “Do you mean you don’t have the combination, or you’re aware that if you don’t, we’ll kill you, and you’re willing to be killed?”
“The first one,” said the big man, Voinovich. “No combination.”
Carrie said, “That’s bad news.” She aimed her gun at his chest and kept opening and closing her fingers on the rubber handgrips of her big .45 pistol, trying to get the best hold on it to take the recoil.