Part 63 (1/2)
”I had to prove we could pull off something like this. I need your head in the game. People like this don't f.u.c.k around. We slip up and we're in serious trouble. We make it through this, and we're done, we're out. No more jobs, no more running from place to place, just roots.”
I sit down at the table, opposite him.
”I didn't know you wanted to settle down.”
”I don't, but your mother did. I left you with her because it was her wish. She wanted a stable life for you, not this.”
I blink a few times. Dad never talks about Mom, not so casually. There is bad blood between us about this and it has never been aired.
I'll be blunt. My mother needed money when she was dying. It was lung cancer, and it was bad. She never smoked, but it got her anyway. She was only thirty-four when she died in a hospital bed. I don't know what kind of treatments she could have gotten with Dad's money, and I'll never find out. He didn't show himself until after she was gone.
Sometimes I think he just didn't care to see her, sometimes I think he couldn't bear to. There have been other chances in his life, as many as I have, most of the time, and I mentioned the Czech escort he was shacked up with for a while, but she was helping him with some kind of a job. I mean, I don't like to think about what my Dad does to satisfy his urges, that's a little weird, but he doesn't seem to take any joy out of the company of women the way I do.
I mean I do, don't I?
Suddenly I feel bad about... Brenda. Yeah her name was Brenda. I'm not going to romanticize it, paint it as anything more than infatuation on her part, but she was looking at me like I was something more than I was going to be for her. I feel a pang of shame, just taking pleasure from her and leaving. At least I gave as good as I got, right?
There's a photo of Diana on the table. I tap my finger on it and slip it over, turn it around so I can study it. Dad looks up.
”What do you think?”
”About what?”
”Her.”
”I told you my first impression.”
”She's pretty,” he says, in an oddly paternal way.
”Yeah, she is.”
”Not much younger than you.”
”Yeah.”
He shrugs. ”You ever think about another life? Living some other way? Staying in one place?”
”Going to school? Going to college? Getting a job and a house in the suburbs? Please.”
I quit school when we started globe-trotting. My real education was five years of training in thieving and social engineering and hacking and fighting, delivered by a master of all these things. I am an apprentice as much as a son, and I'm ready to take over the family business.
”Sometimes you ask yourself where it ends,” he says, and knocks me out of my thoughts.
I just listen. It's odd for him to open up like this.
”You know, I don't know if I want this for you. Where does it end? When do I stop stealing from people? When I get caught? When I steal from the wrong person and end up at the bottom of a river? There's not going to be a retirement for me.”
”Oh come on,” I break in. ”You said it yourself. We're done after this. The Argentina thing sounds great. Maybe we can both pick up some Argentinian girl with a great a.s.s and just quit. You've got all that cash in the accounts, right?”
”Right,” he says, a touch of sadness in his voice. ”Anyway. Basics. First principles. The painting is going to be moved to an exhibition wing in three weeks, but at night it will be moved back to the vault. We're not cracking this thing open short of some pretty serious explosives, and that's not an option.”
”So, we need the combination.”
”Right, but there's three levels of security on the vault door. One is a set of physical keys.”
”Okay, steal it.”
”The other is a set of codes. There's a pa.s.scode, which stays the same, and an encryption key that rotates. We need those codes?”
”Who has them?”
”Four people. Two board members, head of security, and the curator.”
”Diana's mother.”
He nods. ”Carol Matthews.”
”So what do we do?”
”We go on a date. Or rather, I go on a date. I need to get into Carol's bed.”
I snort. I've read the dossier we have on this woman. ”Good luck with that.”
He looks up. ”Son, where do you think you came from? I can handle this. I have an in.” He checks his watch. ”I have to get moving. There's a dinner at the museum tonight for donors. Our backers have secured a sizable donation.”
”Think Diana will be there?”
”Maybe, maybe not. In any case, I'm working alone on this. I'll be in touch.”
He pats my shoulder as he pa.s.ses by, and jogs down the steps. By the time I get down to the first floor he's already fully dressed. It must be a black tie affair. He nods to me as he leaves and that's the last of it. There's car out front to pick him up.
Everything swirls in my mind at once. I head out to the back porch to get some air. It's cooled off considerably since the afternoon, and there's bugs flitting about, buzzing.
Backers?
We've never worked like this before. There's something he's not telling me. I get the feeling we've been completely set up here- he wouldn't rent a house like this in his own name, and who was driving that car?
I do wonder if Diana will be there. If it's an evening wear type event, she might be wearing something slinky and s.e.xy that shows off those curves. For some reason picturing her in a black c.o.c.ktail dress is more exciting than thinking about peeling that imaginary bathing suit off her.
She looked younger in person. Innocent, somehow. I'm not used to that.
Music wafts over, from the neighbor's yard. They're all outside, lit by the glow of those stinky candles that keep bugs away and paper lanterns and oil torches. A cookout, by the looks of it. A plump father, a homely mother in a long dress, two kids, a boy and a girl, and some extended family. I try not to stare but I write stories for all of them in my head. The other adults are aunts and uncles, grown cousins. There's laughter and happy words I can't hear.
Reminds me of trips to New York. I always seem to find some time to walk the nicer parts of the city. You can't go too far without ending up outside a big picture window looking into a fancy restaurant, and there's always couples inside on dates. I stand there and watch them acting goofy in public and feeding each other and doing couple things, and wonder what that's like.
I feel the same way now. I feel not like I'm on the outside looking in, but like I'm on the inside, and the whole world is moving on around me. When your life revolves around a trade built on secrecy and stealth, at the end of the day, no one knows who you are.