The Heaven Trilogy (21 page)

Lacy bent over her oak dinette table half an hour later, the phone book spread yellow before her, a paper towel protecting the phone from her blackened fingers. Her attempt at messing with gears under the machine had proved futile. A lazy voice filled her ear.

“Frank,” it drawled. Frank was chewing gum by the sounds of his rhythmic smacking. He’d obviously slept through the etiquette portion of his plumber-school training.

“Hi, Frank. This is Lacy Cartwright. I’m guessing you’re a certified Goldtech technician, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you?”
Smack, smack.
She swallowed.

“Well, I have a problem out here, Frank. The water pump on my washing machine somehow got stuck open and flooded the floor. I need it repaired.”

“Stuck open, huh?” A hint of amusement rang in the man’s voice. “And what model number are we talking about?”

“J-28,” she said, ready for the question.

“Well, you see? Now there’s a problem, because J-28s don’t get stuck open. J-28s use pumps operated on a normally closed solenoid, and if anything, they get stuck closed. You hear any sounds when this machine went belly up?”

“It squealed.”

“It squealed, huh? I’ll bet it squealed.” He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am, they sure know how to squeal, them Monroe pumps.” The phone went silent. Lacy was wondering where they had found Frank. Seemed to know pumps, all right. But maybe his own pump was not reaching the wellhead.

When he did not offer any further comment, she spoke. “So what do I do?”

“Well, you need a new pump, Miss Cartwright.”

Another short silence. “Can you install a new pump for me?”

“Sure, I can. It’s not a question of
can,
ma’am. I’ve been putting in new pumps for ten years.” An edge had come to his voice midsentence. She lifted her eyes and caught her reflection in the dining room mirror. Her blonde hair had dried in tangles.

“The problem is, we don’t have any Monroe pumps in stock today. So you see, even if I wanted to come out there, which I couldn’t do for three days anyway, I couldn’t do it because I don’t have anything to do it with.” He chuckled again.

Lacy blinked. She suddenly wasn’t sure she even
wanted
Frank to fix her washing machine. “Is it hard?”

“Is what hard?”

“Do you think I could replace the pump?”

“Any idiot could replace that pump, Miss.”
Evidently.
“Three bolts and a few wires, and you’re in and out before you know it. I could do it with a blindfold on. In fact, I
have
done it with a blindfold on.”
Good for you, Frankie.
“But, like I said, Honey. We have no pumps.”

“Where else can I get a pump?”

“Nowhere. At least nowhere in Boulder. You go to the manufacturer in Denver, they might sell you one.”

Denver? She gazed out the window to those ominous clouds in the southeast. It would be an hour there, another hour in traffic regardless of where it was, and an hour back. It would blow her day completely. She glanced at the clock. Eleven. On the other hand, her day was already blown. And she couldn’t very well wait a week for Frankie to come out and walk around her condo with a blindfold on while he did his thing.

“Well, lady, I can’t sit here all day.”

Lacy started. “I’m sorry. Yes, I think I’ll try Monroe. Do you have the number?”

Thirty minutes later she was in the car, headed for the freeway, with the old J-28 pump in a box beside her. Frank had been right. Once she managed to tip the washer enough to prop it up with a footstool and slide under it, removing the little beast had not been so bad. She had even closed her eyes once while loosening a bolt, wondering what possessed a man to try such a thing.

Lacy pulled onto the freeway, struck by how easily the course of her day had changed. One minute lying in attempted bliss, the next diving into soapy gray water.

Goodness.

THE WEEK had flown past, skipping across the peaks of Kent’s nerves like a windsurfer pushed by a gale-force wind. It was the wind of imagination, and it kept his eyes wide and burning. By the end of that first day Kent knew what he was going to do with a certainty that brought fire to his bones.

He was going to rob the bank blind.

Literally. He was going to take every penny he had coming. All twenty million of it. And the bank would remain as blind as a bat through it all. He sat there at his desk, exhilarated by the idea, his fingers frozen over the keyboard as his mind spun.

He tried in vain to concentrate on Cliff ’s questions about why he’d chosen this routine or where he could find that link. And that was a problem, because now more than ever, fitting back into the bank as Joe Smooth Employee took on significance. The way he saw it, he already had some ground to make up; some kissing up to do. Walking around the bank with a big red sign reading “Here walks the man who screamed at Bentley over employee of the month parking” would not do. He would have to concentrate on being normal again. On fitting in with the other fools who actually believed they were somehow important in this nine-to-five funny farm. There was the small matter of his having lost a wife and son, but he would just have to bite his tongue on that one, wouldn’t he? Just try not to bleed all over the place. He would have to rein in his mind, control his thoughts. For the sake of ROOSTER.

But his thoughts kept sliding off to other things.

Things like what he would do with twenty million dollars. Things like how he could hide twenty million dollars. Things like how he could
steal
twenty million dollars. The details flew by, dizzying in his analytical mind. A hundred sordid details—each one spawning another hundred, it seemed.

First, he would have to decide from where to take the money. Using ROOS-TER he could take it from almost anywhere. But, of course,
anywhere
would not do. It would have to come from a place where twenty million would not be quickly missed. No matter how untraceable the transaction itself might be, its net result would be nearly impossible to hide. Nearly.

Then he would have to decide where to put the money. He would never actually have the physical bills—the coin—but even a ledger balance of twenty million was enough to generate at least interest. And that kind of interest was not something he needed. If the money ever turned up missing, the FBI would be all over it like stink on sewer. He would have to find a way to lie at the bottom of that sewer.

He’d have to plan the actual execution of the theft very carefully, of course. Couldn’t very well be caught downloading twenty million dollars. “What are those large balances on your screen, Kent?”

“Oh, nothing. Actually, that’s my bonus from AFPS, if you must know. I’m just taking an early withdrawal.”

He would also have to find a way to exit his current life. Couldn’t be a millionaire and work for Borst. Had no ring of justice to him. And this whole thing was really about justice. Not just with his job but with life in general. He had climbed the ladder like a good boy for twenty years only to be dropped back on his tail in the space of thirty days. Back down to Stupid Street where the concrete was hard and the nights cold. Well, now that he had taken the time to think things through, being forced to climb that ladder again, rung by rung, made as much sense as setting up post on the local corner, bearing a sign that read “Will work for beer.”

Not a chance. It took him thirty days to fall; if all went well it would take him no more than thirty to pop back on top.

The hardest part of this whole scheme might very well be the spending of the money. How could Kent Anthony, computer programmer, step into a life of wealth without raising eyebrows? He would have to divorce himself from his past somehow. Not a problem. His immediate past reeked of every imaginable offensive odor anyway. The notion of divorcing himself from that past brought a buzz to his lower spine. His past was tainted beyond redemption. He would put it as far behind him as possible. Wash it from his memory entirely. Begin a new life as a new man.

In fact, it was in this last stage of the entire plan that he would find himself again. The thought of it pushed him into the certainty that coursed through his bones like charged electrons. After weeks of empty dread, it came like a euphoric drug.

Kent looked over Cliff ’s shoulder at the wall—at the picture of the white yacht hanging in the shadows. An image of that same boat he’d plastered on the refrigerator at home sailed through his mind. His promise to Gloria.
I swear, Gloria, we will own that yacht one day.

A lump rose to his throat. Not that she had cared much. She’d been too enamored with her mother’s religion to appreciate the finer things. Kent had always hung on to the hope that it would change. That she would drop her silly obsessions and run after his dreams. But now she was gone.

For the first few days the thoughts whispered relentlessly, and he began to construct possible solutions to the challenges. Not too unlike debugging. A natural exercise for his mind. While Cliff busied himself with the code before them, Kent busied himself with another code altogether. This morning alone, he had apologized three times for his drifting mind. Cliff guessed it had to do with the loss of his wife and son. Kent nodded, feeling like a pimp for hiding behind the sentiment.

It was one o’clock before he shut down the Cliff machine. “Okay, Ace. I’ve got some errands to run over lunch. You should have enough to keep you busy for a couple of days anyway.” He stood and stretched.

“I suppose you’re right. Thanks for the time. I’ll just keep digging. You never know what I’ll come up with.”

A thought crossed Kent’s mind. “Actually, why don’t you focus on debugging for a few days and leave the digging. I mean, be my guest, dig all you want, but wandering aimlessly through my code is not necessarily the best use for a mind like yours, pal.” He shrugged. “Just my opinion, of course. But if you want to find something, just ask me. I’ll save you a mountain of time.”

Cliff smiled brightly. “Sure, if you’re here. I think that was the concern. What happens if Kent Anthony disappears?”

“Well, a week ago that strategy made sense. But it’s now obsolete. I’m here to stay. You tell that to whoever punches your buttons.” Kent grinned to make the point stick.

Cliff saluted mockingly. “You got it, sir.”

“Good then. Off you go, lad.”

Cliff left grinning ear to ear. Kent honestly felt nearly jovial. The drug of his plotting had worked its way right through his veins. It felt as though he had stepped out of some nightmare and found himself at the gates of a new undiscovered world. And he fully intended to discover every corner of it.

He locked his office, made some comment to Betty about how much work there was, and hustled out the back. Normally he would have preferred the front doors, but now was not normally. Now he would have crawled through a trapdoor in the floor if there had been one.

He hurried down the alley to his car and slid onto the leather upholstery before considering his destination. The library. He had some books to check out. No. That would leave a trail. The bookstore, then. He had some books to purchase. With cash. The nearest Barnes and Noble was three miles down Sixth Avenue. He made a U-turn and entered the flow of traffic.

Kent was not one to stop and lend a hand to stranded vehicles. Road kill, he called them. If the morons didn’t have the foresight to either have their cars properly serviced or sign up for AAA they surely didn’t deserve his extended hand. The dead vehicles were usually old cars stuffed with people from Stupid Street anyway. As far as he was concerned, a little breakdown on the road in heavy traffic was a good indoctrination to responsibility, a rare commodity these days.

Which was why it struck him as strange that the white Acura sidelined ahead on the left-hand side of the divided thoroughfare even caught his attention. And even stranger was the simple fact that once it was in his eyesight, he could hardly remove his eyes from the vehicle. And no wonder. It sat like a beacon of light ahead, glowing white, as if a lightning bolt had lit it up. It suddenly occurred to him that the sky was indeed rather foreboding—in fact downright dark. But the Acura was actually glowing up there, and all the other cars just sped by as if it did not exist. Kent gripped the steering wheel, wooden.

A woman with blonde hair, dressed in jeans and a green shirt, was climbing out. She turned to face his approach, and Kent’s heart bolted. He didn’t know
why
his heart jumped like that, but it did. Something in her face, possibly. But that was just it; he could hardly
see
her face from this distance.

Then Kent was past the car, torn by indecision. If ever there was a soul who deserved assistance, it was this one. On the other hand, he didn’t do roadkill. Thirty yards flew by before he jerked the wheel impulsively and slid to a stop, five inches from the guardrail, cars moaning by on the right.

The instant he stopped, he decided it had been a mistake. He thought about pulling back into traffic. Instead, he slid out of the seat and jogged the forty yards back to the Acura. If the glow that had surrounded the car had ever actually been there, it had taken leave. Someone had pulled the plug. The woman had lifted the hood so that it gaped, black-mouthed, at him like a steel alligator. She stood watching his approach, bouncing in his vision.

Kent was ten feet from the woman when recognition slammed into his mind like a sledge. He pulled up, stunned.

It was the same for her, he thought. Her jaw dropped to her chest, and her eyes grew wide. They stood fixed to the pavement like two deer caught in each other’s headlights.

“Kent?”

“Lacy?”

They responded simultaneously. “Yes.”

Her eyes were like saucers. “Kent Anthony! I can’t believe it’s actually you. My . . . my car died . . .”

He grinned, feeling oddly out of sorts. She was prettier than he remembered. Thinner perhaps. Her face was still rather ordinary, but those eyes. They shone like two beaming emeralds. No wonder he’d taken to her in college. And age was wearing well on her.