41
JEANNIE’S FATHER WAS SITTING ON THE COUCH IN PATTY’S untidy living room, with a cup of coffee in his lap, watching General Hospital and eating a slice of carrot cake.
When she walked in and saw him, Jeannie lost it. “How could you do it?” she screamed. “How could you rob your own daughter?”
He jumped to his feet, spilling his coffee and dropping his cake.
Patty followed Jeannie in. “Please, don’t make a scene,” she said. “Zip will be home soon.”
Daddy said: “I’m sorry, Jeannie, I’m ashamed.”
Patty got down on her knees and started mopping the spilled coffee with a clutch of Kleenex. On the screen, a handsome doctor in surgeon’s scrubs was kissing a pretty woman.
“You know I’m broke,” Jeannie yelled. “You know I’m trying to raise enough money to pay for a decent nursing home for my mother—your wife! And still you could steal my fucking TV!”
“You shouldn’t swear—”
“Jesus, give me strength.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jeannie said: “I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.”
Patty said: “Leave him alone, Jeannie.”
“But I have to know. How could you do such a thing?”
“All right, I’ll tell you,” Daddy said with a sudden access of force that surprised her. “I’ll tell you why I did it. Because I’ve lost my goddamn nerve.” Tears came to his eyes. “I robbed my own daughter because I’m too old and scared to rob anyone else, so now you know the truth.”
He was so pathetic that Jeannie’s anger evaporated in a moment. “Oh, Daddy, I’m sorry,” she said. “Sit down, I’ll get the Dustbuster.”
She picked up the overturned cup and took it into the kitchen. She came back with the Dustbuster and vacuumed up the cake crumbs. Patty finished mopping up the coffee.
“I don’t deserve you girls, I know that,” Daddy said as he sat down again.
Patty said: “I’ll get you another cup of coffee.”
The TV surgeon said, “Let’s go away together, just the two of us, somewhere wonderful,” and the woman said, “But what about your wife?” and the doctor looked sulky. Jeannie turned the set off and sat beside her father.
“What do you mean, you’ve lost your nerve?” she asked, curious. “What happened?”
He sighed. “When I got out of jail I cased a building in Georgetown. It was a small business, an architecture partnership that had just reequipped the entire staff with fifteen or twenty personal computers and some other stuff, printers and fax machines. The guy who supplied the equipment to the company tipped me off: he was going to buy it from me and sell it back to them when they got the insurance money. I would have got ten thousand dollars.”
Patty said: “I don’t want my boys to hear this.” She checked they were not in the hallway then closed the door.
Jeannie said to Daddy: “So what went wrong?”
“I reversed the van up to the back of the building, disarmed the burglar alarm, and opened the loading bay door. Then I started to think about what would happen if a cop came along. I never used to give a damn, in the old days, but I guess it’s ten years since I did something like that. Anyway, I was so scared I started to shake. I went inside, unplugged one computer, carried it out, put it in the van, and drove away. Next day I came to your place.”
“And robbed me.”
“I never intended to, honey. I thought you’d help me get on my feet and find a legitimate job of some kind. Then, when you were out, the old feeling came over me. I’m sitting there, I’m looking at the stereo and thinking I could get a couple hundred bucks for that, and maybe a hundred for the TV, and I just did it. After I sold it all I wanted to kill myself, I swear.”
“But you didn’t.”
Patty said: “Jeannie!”
Daddy said: “I had a few drinks and got into a poker game and by the morning I was broke again.”
“So you came to see Patty.”
“I won’t do it to you, Patty. I won’t do it to anyone again. I’m going to go straight.”
“You better!” Patty said.
“I have to, I got no choice.”
Jeannie said: “But not yet.”
They both looked at her. Patty said nervously: “Jeannie, what are you talking about?”
“You have to do one more job,” Jeannie said to Daddy. “For me. A burglary. Tonight.”
42
IT WAS GETTING DARK AS THEY ENTERED THE JONES FALLS campus. “Pity we don’t have a more anonymous car,” her father said as Jeannie drove the red Mercedes into the student parking lot. “A Ford Taurus is good, or a Buick Regal. You see fifty of those a day, nobody remembers them.”
He got out of the car, carrying a battered tan leather briefcase. In his checked shirt and rumpled pants, with untidy hair and worn shoes, he looked just like a professor.
Jeannie felt strange. She had known for years that her daddy
was a thief, but she herself had never done anything more illegal than driving at seventy miles an hour. Now she was about to break into a building. It felt like crossing an important line. She did not think she was doing wrong but, all the same, her self-image was shaken. She had always thought of herself as a law-abiding citizen. Criminals, including her father, had always seemed to belong to another species. Now she was joining them.
Most of the students and faculty had gone home, but there were still a few people walking around: professors working late, students going to social events, janitors locking up, and security guards patrolling. Jeannie hoped she would not see anyone she knew.
She was wound up tight like a guitar string, ready to snap. She was afraid for her father more than herself. If they were caught it would be deeply humiliating for her, but that was all; the courts did not send you to jail for breaking into your own office and stealing one floppy disk. But Daddy, with his record, would go down for years. He would be an old man when he came out.
The street lamps and exterior building lights were beginning to come on. Jeannie and her father walked past the tennis court, where two women were playing under floodlights. Jeannie remembered Steve speaking to her after the game last Sunday. She had given him the brush-off automatically, he had looked so confident and pleased with himself. How wrong she had been in her first judgment of him.
She nodded toward the Ruth W. Acorn Psychology Building. “That’s the place,” she said. “Everyone calls it Nut House.”
“Keep walking at the same speed,” he said. “How do you get in that front door?”
“A plastic card, same as my office door. But my card doesn’t work anymore. I might be able to borrow one.”
“No need. I hate accomplices. How do we get around the back?”
“I’ll show you.” A footpath across a lawn led past the far side of Nut House toward the visitors’ parking lot. Jeannie followed it, then turned off to a paved yard at the back of the building. Her father ran a professional eye over the rear elevation. “What’s that door?” he said, pointing. “I think it’s a fire door.”
He nodded. “It probably has a crossbar at waist level, the kind that opens the door if you push against it.”
“I believe it does. Is that where we’re going to get in?”
“Yes.”
Jeannie remembered a sign on the inside of it that read THIS DOOR Is ALARMED. “You’ll set off an alarm,” she said.
“No, I won’t,” he replied. He looked around. “Do many people come around the back here?”
“No. Especially at night.”
“Okay. Let’s go to work.” He put his briefcase on the ground, opened it, and took out a small black plastic box with a dial. Pressing a button, he ran the box all around the door frame, watching the dial. The needle jumped in the top right-hand corner. He gave a grunt of satisfaction.