The getaway special (12 page)

"Hang up!" Judy said.

Allen shook his head. "Listen, tell them . . . I don't care about that; tell them it's too late. The word is out, and by this time tomorrow, we will be, too. Out in space, you dumb shit! Yes, I know what the economic—oh, forget it." He growled in the back of his throat and punched the phone's "Off" button.

"Is he all right?" Judy asked.

Allen shrugged. "Sounded like. Sounded like Carl got to him first, though. Why is it," he asked Dale, "half the people who hear about this are terrified that the world is going to fall down around their ears?"

The streets were labeled alphabetically, just "A," "B," "C," and so on. Dale turned right on A Street and headed up a bridge over the railroad tracks. "Maybe they've got too much invested in the status quo," he said.

Judy looked at him a little more closely, surprised to hear the phrase "invested in the status quo" coming from underneath a cowboy hat. "What do you do?" she asked. "For a living, I mean." He grinned. "Rob banks."

"No, really."

"I really rob banks."

14

The guy sounded sincere. There was an uncomfortable silence while Judy tried to think how to respond, but she could only come up with one question: "Why did you tell us that?"

"Because I can," said Dale with a wry smile. "You're probably the only total strangers in the world I can trust with the truth. You're not going to turn me in, 'cause you're on the lam yourselves." Allen turned the phone over in his hand and popped open the peripheral slot cover. "You pulled the GPS receiver," he said.

Judy had heard the phrase "grinning like a thief" before, but she had never realized what it meant until now. Dale was proud of his accomplishments, and happy to have found someone he could brag to about them. "Yep," he said. "I don't know for sure if switching it off actually disables it, so why take the chance?"

He brought the van to a stop at a red light on the far side of the overpass. Judy considered jumping out while they were stopped, but she had no idea how to get back to Trent and Donna's house from here, and she wasn't getting danger vibes off of Dale. She looked at the kids' toys and the baby seat beside her. Did he actually have a kid, or were they just props to remove suspicion from his vehicle?

"Why do you do it?" she asked.

He shrugged. "That's where the money is."

"Yes, but . . ."

"But it's wrong. I know. So's ripping up the ground to get the coal out from underneath it, or cutting down a whole forest for the lumber, or selling tennis shoes made in third-world sweatshops. I decided to cut out the hypocrisy and go straight for the target without screwing anybody along the way."

"Sounds like the banks get a pretty good screwing," Allen pointed out. Dale shook his head. "Actually, not. They're insured, so the individual bank never loses any money. The cost is spread out over thousands of banks, and millions of depositors. And it's not like I knock one over every week. I live modestly. People lose more money under their sofa cushions than what I cost them."

"But . . . you're still stealing from them!" Judy protested.

"So's every industry that uses public land or non-renewable resources. At least I don't steal from the future."

"Yes, but . . ." She stopped. A police car pulled up at the light from the side street to their right. Dale signaled for a right turn, waited for the light to turn green, then waved as he drove past the cop. The cop waved back.

"Always cultivate a friendly relationship with the Federales," Dale said. "But not too friendly. That draws even more suspicion than hostility." He nodded toward the phone that Allen still held in his hand.

"You going to call anybody else?"

It took Allen a few seconds to shift mental gears. "There doesn't seem like much point," he said. "If they got to Gordy, they got to the rest of us."

Dale drove them along a street lined with light industrial businesses: welding shops, a glass shop, several auto repair garages. "What do you need besides money?" he asked.

"A spaceship," Allen replied.

"Well, I can't help you there. But if you need cash, I've got plenty of that."

"You'd just give it to us?" Allen asked.

Dale laughed. "Easy come, easy go. The nice thing about having a realistic attitude toward money is it doesn't rule your life anymore. Besides, you guys just gave the whole world something that's worth a hell of a lot more than what I'm offering you. Maybe I'm feeling generous 'cause of your example." Judy shivered, but it had nothing to do with the cold. They did need money, but she couldn't imagine taking any that came from a bank robbery. It was hard to bring herself to speak, but she made herself say, "I don't think I'd be comfortable with—"

"I didn't figure you would." Dale had lost some of his smile. He bit his lower lip, thinking, then said,

"How about this? Suppose you give me your credit card number, and I give you cash. I've got a dummy corporation I set up for laundering my proceeds; it would be simple to bill a few thousand to your card. Then it's actually your money you're spending."

"I don't know," Judy said. "It seems to me we'd still be spending the bank's money."

"They're not marked bills. And you'd be out a dollar for every dollar you spent, so it's not like you'd be getting something for nothing." Dale turned left at another cross street and drove slowly past more businesses.

Allen said, "You'd be mobbed with FBI agents before you finished typing the number in." Dale smiled again. "You haven't had much experience with this sort of thing. If the Feds ever come knocking, they'll find that you bought a computer by mail order from a company in Virginia. So long as you don't challenge the charges, they can't cancel the payment, and the money trail stops at a numbered Swiss account so they can't trace it to me."

Allen shook his head in reluctant admiration. "Pretty slick, all right." He turned sideways in his seat so he could look at Judy. "What do you think?" he asked.

"Honestly? I don't like it. No offense, Dale."

He shrugged. "No skin off my nose either way. I'm just trying to help the only way I can." Allen wrinkled his forehead, thinking. "I'm trying to see how this would be any worse than taking grant money from a tobacco company or Microsoft or somebody like that, and I have to admit it seems a lot less questionable."

"It's apples and oranges," Judy said.

"It's money," Dale put in. "The whole damned concept is so full of moral trouble, you can burn out your brain doing what you're doing. You need cash, I got cash, and I didn't kill anybody to get it. That should be all you need to worry about."

Judy heard the anger in his voice, but she didn't let it stop her from saying, "No, it's not. I don't think robbing banks is right, and I don't think I want to—"

"Look here, miss high and mighty. You've already done more damage to society than I ever could. The fact that you've given us something in return is a point in your favor, but it doesn't undo the damage. Maybe my offer is an attempt to atone for my sins, I don't know, but I do know that you're on pretty shaky moral ground yourselves to be turnin' up your nose at it."

"Maybe so, but I—"

"Stop!" Allen said. Judy was so startled that she closed her mouth, then she opened it again to blast him for trying to shut her up, but he said "Stop the car!" and she realized he wasn't even talking about her.

"What's the matter?" she asked him as Dale pulled over to the curb.

"Nothing. I think I just found our spaceship." He pointed into a lumber yard across the street. She tried to see what he was looking at, but all she saw were stacks of boards, pallets of concrete blocks, and three big yellow plastic igloos five feet high and half again as long.

"Where?" she asked.

"There. That water tank. It looks like the walls must be half an inch thick. I bet if we seal it up, it'll hold atmospheric pressure."

A water tank? Judy looked at the igloos again. It looked pretty cramped inside. No room to stand up in. No room to store more than the barest of necessities. There weren't any windows, either; just a couple of pipe fittings the size of her thighs sticking out either end. She and Allen might be able to make portholes out of them, but they would also have to cut a hole for a hatch and figure out how to seal that after they were inside, and they would have to drill more holes to mount their controls and their acceleration couches and their equipment lockers. They'd also have to mount steering rockets on the outside, plus a parachute and who knew what else. By the time they were done, the thing would look like a wiffle ball. Either that or they'd have to glue everything down, and she could imagine how well that would work the first time they landed hard. They would have better luck going back for the emergency descent module.

Dale didn't seem to think much better of the idea than Judy did. He was chuckling softly and shaking his head.

"What?" asked Allen.

"What you got there is a pretty specialized kind o' tank," Dale said. "I don't think many people would want to go gallivantin' around the galaxy in one."

"Why not?" Allen said. "A tank is a tank, isn't it?"

"Sure it is," said Dale. "Except when it's a septic tank."

"A septic tank?" Allen tilted his head sideways, as if maybe seeing it from another angle would make it look like something else.

"Yep," said Dale. "Made for stickin' in the ground and fillin' with shit. Not exactly what I'd call spaceship material."

Judy couldn't help laughing, but Allen's earnest expression didn't change.

"Why can't it be?" he asked. "Just because it's designed for one purpose doesn't mean we can't use it for another. I've spent my whole life thinking of things in different terms, and that's why I've gotten where I am today."

Dale snorted. "In a minivan in the back side of nowhere, with no money in your pocket and the Feds hot on your ass. Yessir, that's an accomplishment."

"Look who's at the wheel," Allen said quietly. "You're two for three yourself." That took a little wind out of the bank robber's sails, but not all of it. "I'd debate that with you if it mattered," he said.

"The Feds have no idea where I am, and there's nothing to link me to any of the robberies even if they did. But that's not the point; the point is, they
are
after you, and you've got no money and no vehicle to make your getaway. I think you're nuts, but if you want to make a spaceship out of a septic tank, my offer still stands. Cash for credit, or I could just buy the tank for you outright. Your choice." Or they could just get out of the van right now and forget they'd ever met this guy, Judy thought, but she knew they weren't going to do that. For one thing, it was a long, cold walk back to Trent and Donna's house, if they could ever find it from here. For another, they really did need to make a clean getaway, and soon. After the trouble the government had already gone to in suppressing Allen's invention, they weren't going to stop until he and Judy were in custody, or dead. And despite her misgivings about the source, how many people could she reasonably expect to offer them the money they needed? They'd been incredibly lucky so far, but they couldn't count on luck forever.

"All right," she said. "Buy us the tank."

15

They didn't buy it then and there. For one thing, something that large would have to be delivered, and they had no idea what address to give the driver. It would be pushing Trent and Donna's hospitality considerably to ask them to give up their garage for a spaceship assembly building, and Judy and Allen couldn't very well do it in the back yard, either. All it would take would be one curious neighbor—or a cop driving by in the alley—to blow their cover.

They needed a workshop, but Judy wasn't about to ask Dale for help with that, too. She wrote down his cell phone number, then had him drive her and Allen back to the spot where he'd picked them up.

"We'll get in touch when we're ready," she told him.

"Good enough," he said, tipping his hat slightly to her as she climbed out of the van. "Glad to help whenever I can."

The cold air made her cheeks tingle again the moment she stepped down to the street. She shoved her hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders to pull her collar tight around her neck. As they stood on the sidewalk and watched Dale drive away, Allen said, "Does that guy have a Robin Hood complex, or what?"

Judy grinned. "I think he's just trying to out-do you."

Allen started walking back toward Trent and Donna's house. "Maybe. Whatever his motives, we've got a financial backer. That's better than we had this morning."

"We've got a sugar daddy, is what we've got. And I still don't like how he got his money. But I guess beggars can't be choosers."

"Nope."

Allen led them past the street the house was on, then turned in at the alley beyond it. Judy looked behind them, half expecting to see Dale's van or a black sedan full of FBI agents tailing them, but there was nobody in sight. A dog barked from behind a high board fence, but it stopped as soon as they were past.

Judy looked at the packed gray dirt of the alley, at the dingy snowbanks with strands of windblown brown grass poking through. It all seemed so normal, so mundane. If the memory of yesterday's flight weren't so fresh in her mind, she could almost believe she was a little girl again, exploring the neighborhood around her house with the boy from across the street.

Then again, maybe she was doing just that. Or getting ready to, anyway. It was just a bigger neighborhood than she was used to.

"Are we really going to use a septic tank for a spaceship?"

Allen kicked at a loose rock, which skittered a few feet ahead of them down the alley. "Unless you can think of something better. A septic tank is designed to hold up against the weight of half a dozen feet of dirt; it's probably the sturdiest pressure vessel we're likely to find on short notice."

"I guess." She kicked at the rock, but it veered into a snowbank in the lee of a garbage can. "What about the emergency descent module? We hid it pretty well. It's probably still out there, and we
know
it'll hold air."