Leigh Burrows shifted his feet to try and make himself more comfortable on the wooden chair. It was a lost cause, as he had discovered over the past hour, but he still kept trying.

    "How much longer are we going to sit here?" Brad Coombs asked. He was a thick set man with a crooked nose. Leigh thought he sounded a little like Sylvester Stallone. He looked as uncomfortable as Leigh felt, his grimace emphasizing his opinion of the chairs.

    The third man in the room was standing, long since giving up on the only chairs in the room. Leigh didn’t know him but had gotten his name when they shook earlier, Jimmy Langer. He spoke now, his voice deeper than Brad’s despite his whipcord thin frame, "Artie called, said he had a flat. He’ll be here shortly."

    Leigh wasn’t surprised when Brad complained, saying Jimmy could tell them now and tell Artie later. Brad Coombs had been with one of the families in New York for nearly twenty years before he moved west. He’d been introduced to Leigh’s boss a couple of years before and given some territory. He left the family the same time as Leigh: when their employer had gotten himself and his family blown apart by six sticks of dynamite in his car. They’d decided then that free lancing wasn’t such a bad way to make a living after all.

    But Brad had always been a complainer, Leigh knew. If it was raining then he complained about the rain and when it wasn’t the sun was too bright. Leigh didn’t talk much himself, preferring to listen, to know which way to jump when it became necessary.

    And he mused silently in this business it always becomes necessary – sooner or later.

    Jimmy didn’t pay any more attention to Brad’s grousing than Leigh did. Leigh figured just because he didn’t know Jimmy was no reason to think that Brad didn’t. The big man kept up his steady stream of complaints, some half joking, some not, until Artie came scurrying in.

    Leigh smiled at the thought. While he knew he wasn’t exactly Shwarzeneggefied himself, there was something definitely weasel-like about Artie. He was a short man, shorter even than Leigh’s five foot six, but he moved as if he was always sneaking in or out of somewhere. Like the weasel in the old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, Leigh mused with an inner smile.

    Jimmy started in with the run down as soon as Artie’s apologies began to wind down, which took a little while.

    "Okay, here’s the deal. I’ve got four jobs lined up. Easy marks, no hassles, no troubles with the first two, but the cops will be paranoid after those so the second two might be a little more hairy. More than four and we’re busted for sure. I figure we’ll take an easy hundred grand, probably more; my take for spotting the mark and doing the legwork will be ten grand off the top, the rest will be split evenly. Everyone okay so far? I don’t want to waste my time laying it out if you’re gonna piss and moan about the take."

    "Depends on the risk," Brad said. "If someone’s going to be shooting at me, I might want more than twenty-five large for four jobs. That’s, what, six grand and change for each job?"

    "Damn little risk, if we do it like I’ve got it scoped. And the first twelve grand will be the easiest you’ve ever made; the next twelve will be a little rougher, but doable."

    "That’s only twenty-four," Artie said.

    Leigh rolled his eyes while Jimmy patiently explained that he was just using round numbers to make the explanations easier. None of the three really wanted Artie along, but the man couldn’t be caught once he got behind the wheel of a car.

    Unless he has a flat, Leigh thought with an inner frown.

    "And there won’t be any shooting, unless we do it," Jimmy finished assuring Brad. "We’re gonna hit the softest targets you ever hope to see, just sitting on wads of cash and waiting for us to come and take it."

    "We’re all in," Leigh said, speaking for the first time since he and Jimmy had introduced themselves. He was there on Jimmy’s string because Brad had recommended him. Based on what criteria, Leigh had yet to learn.

    "Okay, here’s the mark: grocery stores."

    "What?" Brad exploded.

    "Sure, listen-"

    "No way, Jimmy; no way to make it pay. These stores take in, what, thirty or forty grand a day? Mostly in debit cards and credit cards. Nobody pays cash anymore. Or check. They get a lot of checks."

    Leigh spoke, softly but he got through to Brad, "This isn’t New York, Brad. There isn’t a store or shop on every corner to eat away the profit centers. Most of the stores around here, the medium to larger ones any way, take in eighty to hundred twenty large a day. And more people use cash here than New Yorkers do."

    "Still, don’t they make drops? Knew a guy once, went to the bank twice a day. Took a couple of thousand each time. Didn’t want the cash around."

    Jimmy nodded, "Here they have Brinks come and pick it up; every day too. But only once a day, and usually later in the day than not."

    "Still, what are we making, eh?"

    "And don’t forget," Jimmy went on, not answering just yet, "they have to have cash in the safe to run the place. Not just what comes in through the registers but what they keep on hand themselves. We’re in and out in six minutes with twenty to thirty grand in cash."

    Artie spoke up, his voice thin and reedy, "I read somewhere once that stores like that, they keep a wad of marked cash handy. Case of a stick-up, like."

    Jimmy nodded, "Sure they do. It’s usually set aside, wrapped tight together. You can’t risk mixing it in with your other cash, because the numbers are all recorded. It’ll be a couple of grand, nothing much, so you skip any dough that’s set aside. Or, Leigh does anyway."

    "Me?"

    "Yeah. I got you pegged for the over the counter guy. Brad and I will be in the building, crowd control, with Artie at the wheel, of course. We pull up, us three run inside. Leigh you get over the counter – it’s usually only waist high – and hit their cash office. Just kick he door in, cheap locks on most of them. Brad and I’ll keep the customers under control. Grab as much dough as you can in about two minutes and then get the hell out. We run out, get in the car, and zoom, we’re gone."

    "Two minutes?"

    "Way I figure it, no matter how fast we hit them someone’s gonna trip the silent alarm. So we beat that by getting in and out before the cops can respond. The first time will be easy. The second, too, because they won’t be expecting another. Hit like that, they’re gonna figure it was guys blowing through town. The next two’ll be harder because then people are ready for it. More than four and we’re busted sure as hell, so we stop pushing it."

    "Don’t they have store security? For shoplifters and stuff?" Artie piped up.

    "Sure, but most of them aren’t carrying. I mean you stop some punk for stealing and he’s gonna flop over, scared half to death."

    Brad snorted, "Shit, do you ever read the papers any more? You stop some punk for shoplifting, odds are dead on he’s carrying."

    "Maybe. Maybe the papers make it worse than it is in real life, you know? Still, some rent-a-cop isn’t about to start blasting away inside a crowded store, right? They’ll be after the license number – stolen – and the make of the car – also stolen, though maybe not with the plate that he’ll get off of it. Easy as pie."

    It took Jimmy a little longer to talk through all of Brad’s objections, but he finally managed it, with Leigh throwing his voice in on Jimmy’s side. Artie said he was in, got the time they were supposed to hook up to do it, then left. He said he was going to go spot a good place to hook a car and plates. Jimmy gave them the targets they would be hitting, three in the same chain around town. He warned them to steer clear of the one on the south side because he shopped there, they knew him by face and name.

    They broke up a little after that, Jimmy driving off in a year old Corvette and Leigh and Brad splitting a taxi uptown. Once they were rolling, Leigh had to ask how he knew Jimmy.

    "Well, I don’t really know him, myself. He looked me up for this and asked me to round up some people I could trust. You and I always got on good and Artie, well, he’s a pain in the ass, really."

    "But what a driver, right? But how did Jimmy get to you? Yellow pages?"

    Brad laughed, a gruff rumble in his throat, "Yeah. Dial T for Thug. No, he got me through Skinny Brown. You remember him?"

    "That bean pole with the mop of red hair?"

    "That’s him. He got taken down last month, petty theft or some damn thing. Jimmy said he and Skinny were going to get a string but after the kid went away for ninety days to six months he had to get other partners."

    Leigh sat back the rest of his part of the trip and mulled it over. There wasn’t anything wrong with it he could see.

***

    The first job went smoother than Leigh could have hoped for.

    They rolled to a stop in the fire lane – a violation of city fire codes – and piled out of the Lincoln Towncar that Artie had borrowed for the day.

    Brad and Jimmy thundered into the place, shotguns in their hands. Jimmy shouted out the lines ‘On the floor, nobody move’, which he said were cliché but something people would react to without thinking. Leigh understood. It’s what the robbers always shouted in the movies and TV, people were used to it.

    Leigh took a running leap and jumped onto the counter, in the low spot where the cut out for the ‘window’ was. A girl – eighteen by the look of her – screamed and stumbled backwards. Leigh ignored her, planting a foot by the knob of the inner office and slamming the door open. It never occurred to him to stop and see that it was unlocked. The safe door was closed but the dial wasn’t spun to lock it. Jimmy had said it might not be; as many times as it was used, how many office people wanted to lock and unlock the safe all day?

    It came open even as Jimmy was using his deep voice to shout at people to shut up. Kids were screaming or crying but they ignored those. Kids always cried.

    The safe was split into three sections; one for the cash register drawers, empty now, one for all kinds of junk, and one for cash, both bundled and nearly full with blue bags, each one numbered to a lane. Pick up bags, Jimmy had called them. There was a bundle of cash in the miscellaneous section, but Leigh ignored that and scooped all the rest into the duffle bag he was carrying.

    It didn’t take him two minutes, not even a minute from the time his feet touched the office floor behind the counter. He ran out of the inner office, out the door to the sales floor, and Brad and Jimmy followed him out to the car. Artie took it from there, vanishing from the neighborhood like a big, metallic silver ghost.

    They dumped the car two miles from the store, splitting apart in different vehicles from there. Jimmy took the haul with him to a place he said was safe to store it until the fourth haul. Artie went with him, but Jimmy let him out at a bus stop before he parked the money wherever he had planned to hide it.

***

    A week later they hit again, this time on the north side of the city, at a different store of the chain. They were in the store just seconds after the car stopped, but were delayed by the office. The open ‘windows’ for the customers to slide things through had Plexiglas partitions in them now; too high for Leigh to jump.

    He improvised, using the running start he had begun towards the window to angle over to the door and plant his foot near the knob. The door exploded open, huge splinters flying out from both the catch at the knob and a slide lock mounted near the top of the door. He was into the back office just as easy, though this time there was someone inside.

    "Don’t!" was all he shouted when she tried to push the heavy safe door closed.

    She screamed – lost in the screams of the customers in the registers – and flinched away. The door swung back open as Leigh took her by the arm and shoved her out of the cash office.

    The cops responded better this time, better than Jimmy would have thought. But Artie vanished down a rat’s nest of side streets that Leigh – born and raised in the city – never even knew existed. The green BMW Artie had borrowed for the robbery was left on a street that would have it stripped and gutted before Jimmy got to his still secret hiding place.

***

    They decided to wait two weeks, maybe more before pulling the third job. Jimmy had said that the furor would die down quick enough, people would relax thinking the robbers had moved on somewhere else. Leigh suspected he was right and wasn’t surprised when the papers moved the story back to page four after only two days. After a week it was little more than letters to the editor news, people demanding more police protection, but don’t raise my taxes.

    It was just such a letter as that he was reading in his favorite coffee shop when Brad sat down across from him at the postage stamp table. The place was dark, paneled in black walnut or something, and there wasn’t a trendy twenty-something in sight having wacky adventures with their equally trendy friends. It was quiet and allowed a man to read his paper in peace.

    Until now, Leigh thought with a mental sigh, then asked Brad what he wanted.

    "Why do you think Jimmy’s not taking down the registers?" Brad asked.

    Leigh sipped his drink, "You heard what he said as well as I did, it’d take too long. Probably get us caught."

    Brad ignored that, "And why does he vanish with the swag whenever we split? Where the hell does he take it? And why before the count?"

    "You think he’s shorting us, or planning to? He could cut a few grand out of each take and we’d never know, I suppose."

    "He might; he’s the type, I think. But I can’t figure out why he’s settling for just the safe? There’s probably another two or three grand in those drawers."

    "More," Leigh said. "Figure each drawer has somewhere between five hundred and a thousand dollars in it, there’s ten to fifteen drawers in each of the places we’ve hit. We could be passing up anywhere from eight to fifteen thousand."

    "Really? I didn’t think it would be that much."

    "Well, I’m guessing. But those stores seemed busy enough."

    Brad shook his head, anger seeping into his voice, "I just wish . . . I mean, what the hell is he up to taking the money? I think next time you should hang onto it."

    "What, tell Jimmy I’ll bring it to the final count?"

    "No. Just hang onto it until we switch vehicles."

    Leigh sensed something in the way Brad said that. "You’re going to do something. What?"

    "I was thinking of finding out where Jimmy’s taking the money."

    "You want to tail him?"

    Brad shook his massive head, "No. I want to get Izzy involved. Tail him, see what he’s doing."

    Leigh thought about that as he waved for another cup. Izzy – Isaac Rosenberg – was a PI that both he and Brad had known for years. Their paths had crossed from time to time, sometimes putting them at odds, sometimes allying in pairs; once all three of them had worked together on a kidnap case that Izzy had needed help on. They’d recovered the kid okay and, as yet, the cops hadn’t found the bodies of the kidnappers.

    Leigh said, "I guess it couldn’t hurt, unless Jimmy tumbles to him."

    "I don’t think Izzy’ll worry."

    Leigh had to agree with that. With his name people automatically thought of him as a little guy with a big nose. (Of course, when people saw Leigh’s name without seeing him, they generally thought he was a woman.) Izzy was six foot four and looked so much like the stereotype Nazi superman that he had trouble going to synagogues where he wasn’t known. Even Brad respected him for how tough he was and to Leigh that was saying a lot.

    "I suppose. Promise him part of the take or pay him his flat rate?"

    "Flat rate. If everything’s kosher, why let him take part of the haul? We only need to know where Jimmy goes after the job. What he does with the money."

    "Okay. I’ll put up half – unless you want Artie in on it?"

    "I don’t think so. I wasn’t even going to tell you, truthfully, but I thought two heads are better than one. I might be making a mistake."

    "So I can share the blame with you if things blow up?"

"Well," Brad said with a grin, "misery loves company, doesn’t it."

***

    They pulled the next job two days before the three week mark since the last one, popping into the fattest cash office Leigh had seen yet. The cash in the safe was an easy sixty grand if it was a dime. He had to ram the last few bundles into his pockets when the sacks filled to over flowing.

    The cops responded like hell on wheels this time around. Artie was hard pressed to lose them in the maze of streets, but Jimmy had called them in the morning for the job; picking a day when a massive thunderstorm was parked over the city, keeping the police choppers on the ground. They finally managed to trade in their stolen car for a different one from a parking garage where Artie had managed to do an end-run around the security system, using that to get to their own vehicles and to safety.

    Leigh and Brad left together, neither turning their eyes to see the battered Ford Taurus that pulled out into the blinding rain behind Jimmy’s car.

***

    "That sonuvabitch!" Brad exploded when Izzy finished reporting to him and Leigh. "That two timing bastard."

    "You’re sure he ditched one of the bags?" Leigh asked, no less angry than Brad but calmer. "He didn’t move one to the trunk?"

    "If he did," Izzy said lazily in his pleasant baritone, "then he had three bags that looked the same as the ones you said you’d be using. For the second drop, anyway."

    Jimmy had gone to a house on the south side, a broken down disaster that Izzy had traced ownership of to a man named Arthur Longsor. No such person existed, of course. Jimmy had taken one of the bags inside, the smaller of the two, and the left empty-handed, driving to another house. At the second house, Jimmy had taken the other bag inside and not come out. Izzy had managed to look in the windows and it was pretty obvious to him that Jimmy lived at that address. The name on the deed was Peter Paulson.

    "I wonder if he’s skimmed from the other jobs?" Leigh asked reflectively, once Izzy had collected his fee and left. He gave them the addresses of both houses. "I only had to use one bag for each of those."

    "Who cares?" Brad snapped. "How much do you think he took this time? What was in the small bag do you think? Thirty grand? More?"

    Leigh shrugged, "I was just grabbing as much as possible and stuffing it in the bags. It might be thirty, it might be less."

    "Doesn’t matter. And he’s going to take ten large off the top for his finder’s fee," Brad added. "That makes him come out a good deal better than us, no matter how you look at it. And, yes, I know we agreed to the ten grand, but it doesn’t make his snaking us any better."

    "So, what do you think we should do? Confront him? Kill him?" Leigh asked.

    "Nah, I don’t want to kill him. Not too much."

    "Just let him walk?"

    "Hell no! I’ve got an idea, if you’re interested."

    "I am. I’m no more fond of Jimmy putting one over on me than you are."

    "Well, we tell him we’re through with three jobs. The cops damn near had us a couple of times. If Artie wasn’t as good a driver as he is annoying in person we’d have been nailed for sure."

    "Plus the rain."

    "Yeah, plus that. But, anyway, we tell Jimmy we’re out. We get the split, giving him his ten grand without a fuss, then we hit the fourth store without him."

    "A threesome?"

    "Sure. I can handle the crowd. You’ve got that gazelle leap down pat, and Artie can get our chestnuts out of the fire. We split the take three ways and, incidentally, make it too hot for Jimmy to try the fourth one with another team. We’ll do a store that he didn’t lay out for us, keep him from thinking any part of the city is open if he wants to try the play again later."

    Leigh liked the idea, though he was wondering if it would go as smooth as if Jimmy were there. He was the one to come up with the scam and do all the scouting. They could eyeball some targets themselves, but he wasn’t sure if they’d have the same knack for it that Jimmy had displayed.

    But he agreed, also agreeing to contact Artie after they split the take and cut him in on the new deal.

***

    Last time, Leigh thought, slipping the mask over his head. They were rolling to a stop in front of a Food Market Supercenter on the south side, the same type of store they had hit with Jimmy on the first three jobs. It was raining again, but not as hard as it had been the time before. They were each fourteen thousand dollars richer and planned on doubling that in just a few minutes.

    Jimmy hadn’t liked them backing out, but Brad and Leigh were adamant, demanding their split and walking out. Artie had been willing to make the final play, but Jimmy had decided to drop it when half his team left. He paid Artie off and the little man left, only to be taken aside by Leigh the next day during his lunch.

    Once he found out what Jimmy had done, he was in for the final ride. Leigh was amused to see that Artie was actually quivering with rage – he’d never actually seen someone move so tensely just with their own suppressed anger.

***

    They waited only a few days, breaking the week or more cycle the cops were expecting. Artie had taken a BMW again; a supercharged sedan with something like four hundred and eighty horsepower. He assumed the police would respond in record time and wanted to be ready for them.

    Leigh and Brad barreled into the store, Leigh carrying a gun for the first time. It was only a .38, but it was enough to help the customers shriek away from the two of them. Brad was carrying his shotgun, shouting at the terrified people.

    Leigh kicked in the doors as easy as ever, scaring the office girls half to death. He made them lie on the floor and turned to the safe in the inner office. When he tried the handle it opened soundlessly on well oiled hinges.

    Christ! They really do never learn.

    He started shoveling cash into the bag.

    A gunshot froze him into place. A shout – Artie inside? – "Brad, it’s-!" Two more, larger caliber, then Brad’s shotgun roared. The first gun slammed through shots – Artie’s .22? – then the larger handgun roared again – five, six, seven, eight, nine, Christ!

    Leigh snatched the .38 into his hand and came running from the office.

    A security guard in full uniform stood nearby, looking down at Brad’s and Artie’s bodies, chest heaving as he sucked in great lungfulls of air, his back to Leigh.

    Someone shouted ‘Behind you!’ Leigh almost – almost! – turned; then figured out they were warning the guard.

    By instinct he pulled the gun upwards.

    The guard spun, a .45 in one hand and a 9mm in the other.

    "Jesus!" Leigh started to scream, to throw his gun down, to throw himself to the floor and keep his hands clear of his body. Trying to do all at once only got him killed.

    Jimmy shot him twice from the 9mm and once from the .45.