The kid was still screaming. The car was still dipping, and we were at least thirty seconds over time. Cra...no.
Shi-
Sugar.
Sugar-an’-Salt.
I heard a deep sigh behind me. Monty being his pretentious-as-fudge himself again. For just a second I wanted to turn around and put him on ice like I did The One all those years ago, but he hopped down from his beam and onto the ice-float, which started to pitch and yaw like nobody’s business. “Get off, you two. You’ll only make this sink faster.” We grabbed our little cables, and- well, Jane was in such good shape she probably coulda done it even before she took the little blue rock candy bits. Me, for a few seconds I felt like I was trying to climb the rope in gym class, with Mr. Lambert swinging a paddle behind us, ready to give a healthy, humiliating swat to whoever was slow enough to be within reach.
Damn, it was hard even with the stuff, but I made it.
“Sir?” it was Monty again. Trying to talk him down as the kid screamed into the afternoon sun. “Sir?”
More screaming. Monty- jumped into the back of the armored car.
“Blamed fool,” Jane said, but her voice sounded more in awe than in frustration.
We heard Monty’s voice again, calm, subdued. He said ‘sir’ about five more times, then somehow got the kid to say his own name.
The floe was about to tip and take a drink.
“A little help here people?” Monty suddenly said. “Mister Jefferies here would like to get some help so he can go home to his lovely wife and new baby.”
Jane looked at me, whistled low. I unhooked a couple of straps from the underside of the dock above me, and tossed them in. I heard two clicks, and then a great, deep, sucking sound as the ice finally gave way and the car tipped over, pointing straight down and filling with water as soon as the lip of the car touched the water’s edge.
The car went down, but three nylon straps pointed down into the drink. Jane and I pulled together on one, which went slack until Monty popped up in the water at the end of it. Then we grabbed the next one as Monty pulled himself into the beams under the dock. I was praying we were pulling up the kid, and . . . we did! He hit the surface, spluttering.
His wound wasn’t so bad at all. His temple was just grazed, it looked like. But he was still upset, still panicking, or near enough to it.
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“Here, James? JAMES!” Monty’s yell was just a few notes higher than a whisper,but the kid heard it and started swimming towards it while Jane and I pulled on the last strap.
And oh, the happiness when the large canvas bag bobbed up to the surface!
I won’t bore you with the details; we got the kid up to the surface, and the bag got stuffed into the trunk of the old car.
Right after we stashed Jane’s pistols, my beam and Monty’s monocle-strap-thingie into the lead-line pocket in our old Crown Vic, we start talking amongst ourselves to make poor James the security guard think we’ve forgotten him. He’s just a hair smarter than the average normy, and begins to creep away. We’ve had this part planned, too. The most obvious route to escape with is down an alley between two warehouses, after he takes a very, very quiet walk about fifty feet from us.
Jake is waiting at the end of the alley. Ready to get the kid’s attention and add the coup de grace to the whole affair: in under thirty seconds, the kid has a re-done memory of just who has managed to grab a big pile of money in a few minutes on a warm summer day.
The other guards are gone- gone too quickly and too traumatized to have gotten a good look at us. Only James has, and he’s gonna be our ace in the hole.
We piled into the Vic and took a drive down the pier.
After a mile, Monty got out. I looked at my watch- yep, just about time. And the liver spots sprouting on my wrist said so, too.
After another minute, Monty’s hair had gone from jet black to greyish white again. The crow’s feet were back in the corners of his eyes, and his hands looked like sodden messes that had been left in the sun to long. He smiled at us, and without a word took his walking stick from the backseat and started to take a walk, his jaunty gait replaced by a slow, plodding pace with a slight limp on his right side.
Jane and me? I hit drive, found the nearest garage, and switched cars. Now we were in a sturdy little black sedan. For some reason, my nephew the car salesman assured me, old coots like me always preferred a black car.
And in another ten minutes, we had our lawnchairs out on the riverbank, and I had my fishing pole out. Just another, happy old retired couple whiling away a weekday afternoon, Jane with a Zane Gray novel, me with my stick and line.
We really didn’t need it; turned out we didn’t see a super all afternoon. They’re not everywhere like the funnybooks’d have you believe; know how they say ‘never a cop around when you need one’? A city like ours has at least 10,000 cops, but maybe a half-dozen actual capes, the kind that could give us trouble. Unless you’re doing something along the lines of bringing a giant robot to stomp around downtown, chances are you may live your whole life here and only see a cape actually in action but once or twice.
Jane said the only one we hadda worry about was the pretty black chick, the one who dressed like something outta Spartacus. If we got lucky, then Russ had done his job right with his flying suit and distracted her good while we got away with the goods. After the heat was off in a few hours, we’d go back, transfer the stuff from the Vic into our new wheels and skedaddle. after that we set the Vic on fire, and soon the only thing left’ll be a smoking chassis and the lead-lined trunk. Not that we’re really worried; we haven’t had a cape who could see through walls n’stuff like that since the 60’s, when that guy Mr. Peepers, or whatever his name was, got arrested for using his powers (ahem) improperly.
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