“Why don’t you come along, Dice, with a camera? It’s a story you can tell your grandchildren.”
But Dice didn’t answer. He sat laughing until the tears streamed.
It was hopeless. Dice would have no part of the break-in. There was simply no technology available to them that could break through so many alarm and surveillance systems.
Indeed, Dice was so set against the idea, he insisted on getting away from the whole valley. He didn’t like being confined to their motel rooms when there was a perfectly good and convivial bar down the street. He didn’t like bringing in food to avoid being seen in restaurants. He was bored and lonely.
“We’ll have to find another way,” Brewer said.
Dice became wary. “What other way?”
“Well, if we can’t break in after hours, maybe we can go in during the day.”
“Oh yeah? Let me see you write that scenario.”
For the rest of the evening Dice watched television and drank beer. When he went off to bed, Brewer said to him: “If you want, you can catch a flight for New York tomorrow.”
“What about you?”
“I have to get those parts, Dice.”
Dice shrugged and went off to bed.
To mollify him, Brewer took Dice out to breakfast in the morning.
“Sorry about this caper, Charlie,” Dice said. “It’s just too dangerous.”
“It’s okay,” Brewer said. “I’ve solved it.”
“Yeah, how?”
“It’s no big thing, Dice. I’ll handle it after I put you on the plane.”
“Yeah? What are you going to do?” Dice put on a preparatory smile, ready for another absurd solution.
“Don’t worry about it.” Brewer read his newspaper.
“Hey, Brewer. You think I let the side down, don’t you?”
“Not a bit of it. You’re the security-system expert. If you say it can’t be done, it can’t be done.”
“Then how are you going to get in?”
“I won’t. If I can’t get in, I’ll make the parts come out to me.”
Dice began to smile again. “Okay. Lay it on me.”
“Finish your coffee, Dice. You’re going to miss your plane.”
“Charlie, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You did your best.”
There must have been fifty places between their motel and the airport where Brewer could kill Dice and dump the body. And he examined every one as they drove.
Dice became a chatterbox, trying to smooth it over with Brewer. He must have asked two dozen times how Brewer planned to get the parts.
Brewer barely heard him. He studied the road ahead, searching out secluded spots. If Dice got on that plane to New York, he was a ticking time bomb that could blow the whole operation.
The miles rolled smoothly under the wheels of the rented car, getting ever closer to the airport. And still Brewer didn’t stop. At last he found a turn-out that led to a weed-grown thicket, choked with litter and blown newspapers. He pulled in there and stopped.
“What are we here for?” Dice demanded.
“The payoff.”
“What payoff?”
“This is the end for us, Dice. The last job. It’s been nice working with you.” Brewer pulled his attaché case up on his lap and popped the latches. Watching Dice’s doubt-filled eyes, he lifted the lid and reached inside.
“You know, Charlie, you got a hell of a mind. We could go into business together. Working for corporations. Lots of bread. They’ll pay big bucks for your kind of thinking. I mean legitimate stuff, showing them how to make better security systems, preventing people from stealing their industrial secrets, catching spies inside the company. Stuff like that. Big money. Real big bucks.”
Brewer shrugged. “I’ve got other fish to fry, Dice. But why don’t you do it?”
“Nah. I don’t have your smarts, Charlie. I’m good with the equipment but not with the selling and the contacts and the angles. I’m pretty bad shooting the angles. It takes a shrewd cookie like you to handle those animals in the business—worse than anything in the arms racket. Nah, you and me—that’s a combination.”
“Thanks for the invite, Dice.”
Brewer drew his hand out of the attaché case and held it out to Dice. “Here.”
“What’s this?” Dice took the packet of bills.
“Count it,” Brewer said.
Dice counted it. “Jesus, Charlie, this is more than generous.”
“That’s okay. You were a big help.”
“Honest to God, Charlie, I’m sorry about this caper. I mean you got to understand that—”
“It’s okay. I do understand.”
“Charlie. It was great working with you. I learned more about shooting the angles from you in a couple of weeks than I learned during my whole career with the Uncle. I’d sure like to work with you again.”
Brewer started the automobile engine. He drove the car to the airport.
Brewer watched Dice’s plane take off and wondered how much time he had left before Dice would telephone McCall. In McCall’s sunny, book-lined office, in front of the pictures of McCall’s mother and wife and kids staring out from their frames like a Greek chorus, Dice would cut a deal with McCall.
And then Dice would spill his guts.
At five that evening, Brewer was preparing to break into a San Jose business office. The company name was Argosy Ventures Inc., and it made components on contract to the military.
Argosy’s complex of manufacturing buildings itself was as carefully protected by security systems as Prysbyl’s was. But Brewer wasn’t interested in that. After putting Dice on his plane, Brewer had spent most of the day checking out companies in the Silicon Valley that specialized in military hardware. Driving up and down Route 101, which ran like a vein through the valley, Brewer examined some twenty companies that were listed in the Military Purchasing Manual he held in his lap.
It was almost five and getting dark when he found Argosy. He made a careful study of the company’s manufacturing complex first—the fencing, the dog kennel, the guards at the gate, the flood lights. Beyond them, he was sure, were the redundant security systems, elegant state-of-the-art monitoring devices and hardware that had made Dice run for home.
But it wasn’t the manufacturing complex that attracted him. It was the executive offices. These were in a separate compound a few blocks away, where the security was considerably less determined.
He parked in the executive parking lot and sat studying the building. Employees were coming from various exits in the building, and the parking lot was rapidly emptying. He could see one security man at the front door seated at a desk. The building itself was fully lit, and the cleaning people were already working in some of the lower offices.
Inside the glassed-in lobby was a company directory. A small sign said PURCHASING SUITE A310. At the back parking lot were four Argosy Ventures delivery vans.
Brewer felt Argosy was ideal for his needs.
He drove off.
Brewer returned shortly after ten that night. Carrying a box and several shopping bags stuffed with rolls of paper, he went up to the main entrance and rang the night bell. The security guard came to the glass door and looked at him.
Brewer held up a job order so the guard could see it through the glass. The guard opened the door.
“What’s it for?” he asked.
“I’m supposed to decorate the rear wall of the main purchasing department. Let’s see—room A310. It’s a farewell party for tomorrow morning. It’s a surprise.”
The security guard scratched his head. “Never heard of this before.”
“Never heard of it?” Brewer said. “It’s how I make my living. Office surprise parties.”
The guard stared dully at Brewer’s packages. “That’s all you’re going to do—put some streamers on a wall?”
“That’s it. Takes half an hour or so.”
“Okay.” The guard led him down a hal
l. “Through that door. Don’t mess with anything in there.”
“Perish the thought,” Brewer said.
Once inside the main room, Brewer went right to work with tape and crepe paper rolls, standing in his stocking feet on desks to reach up high on the wall. When he got several streamers attached, he jumped down and went through a desk, then another.
He looked around the room for more desks, then walked into one of the cubicles. Quickly he riffled the various blank forms in the drawers. No luck. He went to the cubicle next door and checked the drawers.
This time he found what he was looking for: a neat stack of blank Special Delivery Purchase Order forms. With them he found another form: Military Procurement Restricted Parts Purchase Order Authorization form #PUF/USMIL/86767549. He quickly folded several of each form, pushed them into a white envelope, and put the envelope into his box containing festive decorations.
Then he jumped up on the desk and strung the crepe paper along the back wall. In ten minutes, he had several streamers intertwined high up near the ceiling. In the middle he’d affixed a card that said GOOD LUCK. It was time to leave.
The guard returned.
“What do you think?” Brewer asked. He picked up his staple gun and reels of tape and rolls of paper and dropped them back into the carton.
“You do that for a living?”
“Sure.”
“I’d rather be a guard.” He carried Brewer’s shopping bags with the leftover signs and ribbon clusters as they walked to the front door.
Brewer drove back to his motel and carefully filled out both forms with a word processor, printed them on dot matrix printer, and signed them. Then he went to bed.
Before dawn the next morning, two men met in the parking lot adjacent to the Federal Court House in San Francisco. They both got into one car and drove off toward the Silicon Valley.
“Bobby McCall better have this right,” the driver said. “I wouldn’t get up at this hour to save my mother from a burning building.”
“I wouldn’t get up at this hour to leave a burning building,” his partner said. “What’s the name of this outfit again?”
“Prysbyl Computers.”
“That’s where those guys tried to break in last year.”
“That’s right. Five-to-ten for the three of them. They should never have carried the guns in with them.”
“Maybe this guy we’re after is smarter.”
“I don’t know. I think they make them dumber every year. I wish I was back in bed.”
At 6:00 A.M. a cab picked Brewer up at his motel and drove him back to Argosy Ventures’ executive offices. It let him off at the diner across the road.
It was still quite dark, a half hour before dawn, with a bare tinge of light in the eastern sky. Brewer walked across the highway and down a side road to the back of the executive parking lot. The four Argosy Ventures’ delivery trucks sat under floodlights. Through an office window, he could see his streamers and the sign: GOOD LUCK.
“Good luck,” he echoed.
Brewer hurried along a line of trees until he got within twenty feet of the vans, then crossed a concrete apron. With several quick movements of a locksmith’s tool he popped the door lock on one of the vans and stepped inside. He cut the wires to the ignition switch, stripped them, and twisted them together. The truck started on the first try.
With the lights off, he drove the truck along the back of the parking lot and out through the rear exit. Two blocks away he put the headlights on and hurried through the darkness to Prysbyl Computer Engineering.
The two men drove in silence down Route 101 from San Francisco. They were just outside East Palo Alto when the driver said: “Gotta weewee. That’s French for yes yes.”
“Time for a coffee break,” his partner said. “How much farther?”
“Not much.” He drove into a diner parking lot.
Prysbyl’s loading platform opened at 7:00 A.M., and Brewer was the first delivery truck through the gates. The guard took one look at the Military Procurement Restricted Parts Purchase Order Authorization form and waved him through. Brewer drove to the rear of the complex and backed the van up to the long loading platform.
Most of the warehouse doors were open; inside, the parts department was already busy. Men in coveralls worked behind long counters, pushed hand trucks, and climbed ladders in front of ten-foot shelving filled with parts. A large sign said JUST-IN-TIME PURCHASE ORDERS GO TO SECTOR 14.
Brewer climbed up on the loading platform and walked to sector 14. He laid both forms on the counter.
“Just-in-Time P.O.” Brewer said.
The inventory man behind the counter took a look at the forms, then at Brewer.
“Never saw you before. You new?”
“No,” Brewer said. “I’ve been around a while. Can you hurry this order, please? They’re really screaming.”
The counter man shrugged and pulled out a directory. He checked the company name against a master list. Then he studied the Military Procurement form.
He said, “Well at least someone’s on the stick. This is the first time I see this new procurement form. Beats the socks off the old one. Too complicated.” He walked away.
Brewer watched him: He walked far down a long, narrow corridor to a wall phone and dialed a number. Brewer wondered what it was about the papers that the counter man didn’t like. Brewer turned and studied the cyclone fence. If anything was wrong with that paper, he was trapped. No place to hide. No way out. His instinct told him to get into the van and drive off.
He stood and waited. The counter man had disappeared.
The two agents from San Francisco arrived at Prysbyl’s and pulled up to the gate. The driver showed his badge.
“We’re here to see Metzer.”
“Security building,” the guard said, pointing. “Park your car there and walk through that door.”
Ten minutes later, the counter man returned with another man. The other man held Brewer’s papers.
“Where did you get these forms?” he asked.
Brewer sighed. “Hey. You got any problem with the paper, call the office, okay? I just drive the truck.”
“Uh huh.” The man studied the forms again. “Hmmmm.” He looked at the counter man. “It’s okay, I guess. I mean, you people”—he looked at Brewer—“aren’t using this part for anything so far as we know. Now you order it out of the blue. From Justin-Time inventory.”
Brewer pointed at the form. “See that number. You call it and tell them your problem. And I’ll go back and tell them you’re holding up the order. I get my pay in either case.”
The man took a long questioning look at Brewer, then handed the paper to the counter man. “Fill it,” he said and walked away.
The counter man went down another long corridor. Brewer waited again. He turned and surveyed the loading platform. Maybe that second guy was making a phone call to Argosy. Brewer fought a strong impulse to get into the van and drive away.
Then another Argosy Ventures delivery van drove around the corner and down the line. The driver pulled into the platform five spaces away from Brewer’s van.
Brewer quickly turned away and lowered his head. The driver got out of the van and clambered up onto the loading platform. He stepped through a doorway.
Brewer told himself to run like hell. Instead he held his breath and waited.
He saw the counter man at the end of the corridor. He was chatting with another man, nodding and stepping away, then resuming the conversation. He turned and looked directly at Brewer. He talked again, nodding again. He walked toward Brewer carrying a small box. He paused again to speak to another man. Both of them looked at Brewer. Then he made his way to the counter.
“Sign here,” he said to Brewer.
Brewer signed a scrawl. The counter man shoved the small box across the counter along with carbons of the order forms.
“Pass,” Brewer said.
The man wrote out the gate pass, looked at a clock and pencil
ed in the time, and pushed the pass across the counter. Brewer saluted and turned to leave. The driver of the other Argosy van was standing on the platform looking at the truck, then at him.
Brewer skipped off the platform and waved to the other driver. Trying to be casual, he stepped into the van, started the engine, and deliberately drove toward the gate. In his side mirror he could see the other driver still staring after him.
“Seven come eleven,” Brewer said. “Let me have it all, Lady Luck.” He drove up to the gate and waited in line as the guard handled two trucks in front of him. It took forever. When Brewer drew up to the guard shack, he saw the other Argosy van driving toward the gate.
The guard checked Brewer’s papers and waved him through. As he drove off, Brewer saw two men from the security shack waving at the guard and running toward him.
Brewer headed south. In his side mirror he saw a car pull through the gate and follow him. It was driving very fast.
“Hot damn,” Brewer said.
The car openly pursued him now. About a mile ahead was the motel. Brewer pressed the accelerator to the floor. In his mirror he could see the car still racing after him.
Brewer passed the motel and turned at the next side street. He turned into a driveway and rolled behind a garage. He jumped out. He hurried through a thicket and across a field toward the back of the motel. A woman at a kitchen window watched him go.
A moment later the car turned in and raced by the driveway, then stopped and backed up. When Brewer reached the motel, he saw the woman hurry from her house to the car.
The car turned and hustled back to the intersection. Brewer would never get to his car. He turned and ran back across the field to the van and got in it. He raced it down the driveway onto the side road and drove away, making a big loop. Five minutes later he arrived back at the motel from the other direction and drove the van to the back. Quickly he jumped into his own car and started the engine.
As he pulled out of the motel, the other car was just turning in. The two men were searching for the van.
Brewer turned north and raced off.
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