Hot Ice

alarms.”
    “Everybody’s got a specialty.” He looked back, back over the years in San Francisco where the days had been misty and the nights cool. “We cased that job for weeks, calculating every possible angle. The alarm system was a beauty, the best I’d ever come across.” That memory was pleasant, the challenge of it, and the logic by which he’d outwitted it. With a computer and figures, you could find more interesting answers than the balance of your checkbook.
    “Alarms’re like women,” he mused. “They bait you, wink at you. With a little charm and the right skill, you figure out what makes them tick. Patience,” he murmured, nodding to himself. “The right touch, and you’ve got them just where you want them.”
    “A fascinating analogy, I’m sure.” She watched him cooly from under the brim of her hat. “One might even say they have a habit of going off when provoked.”
    “Yeah, but not if you keep a step ahead.”
    “You’d better go on with your story before you get in any deeper, Douglas.”
    His mind was back in San Francisco on a chilled night where the fog came in long fingers to sweep the ground. “We got in through the ducts, easier for the Worm than me. Had to shoot out a line and go hand over hand because the floors were wired. I lifted it; the Worm has clumsy hands and he wasn’t long enough to reach the display anyway. I had to hang down over the case. It took me six and a half minutes to cut through the glass. Then I had it.”
    She could see it—Doug hanging by his feet over the display, dressed in black, while the diamond glinted up at him.
    “The Sydney was never recovered.”
    “That’s right, sugar. It’s one of the little entries in the book in my pack.” There was no way he could explain to her the pleasure and frustration he felt reading about it.
    “If you had it, why aren’t you living in a villa in Martinique?”
    “Good question.” With something between a smile and a sneer, he shook his head. “Yeah, that’s a damn good question. I had it,” he murmured, half to himself. He angled his hat forward but still squinted against the sun. “For a minute I was one rich sonofabitch.” He could still picture it, still feel the near-sexual pull of hanging over the display case, holding the glittering piece of ice in his hand, the world under his feet.
    “What happened?”
    The image and the feeling shattered, like a diamond split carelessly. “We started back out. Like I said, the Worm could squirm through the ducts like a slug. By the time I got through, he was gone. The little bastard’d lifted the rock right out of my bag and vanished. To top it off, he put an anonymous call through to the police. They were crawling all over my hotel when I got back. I hopped a freighter with the shirt on my back. That’s when I spent some time in Tokyo.”
    “What about the Worm?”
    “Last I heard he had himself a cozy yacht and was running a high-class floating casino. One of these days…” He relished the fantasy a moment, then shrugged. “Anyway, that was the last time I took a partner.”
    “Until now,” she reminded him.
    He looked down at her, his eyes narrowed. He was back in Madagascar and there was no chilling fog. There was only sweat, aching muscles, and Whitney. “Until now.”
    “In case you have any notion of imitating your friend the Worm, Douglas, remember, there isn’t a hole deep enough for you to slide into.”
    “Sugar—” He pinched her chin. “Trust me.”
    “I’ll pass, thanks.”
    For a time they walked in silence, Doug reliving every step of the Sydney Diamond job—the tension, the cool-headed concentration that kept the blood very still and the hands very steady, the thrill of holding the world in his hands, if only for a moment. He’d have it again. That much he promised himself.
    It wouldn’t be the Sydney this time, but a box of jewels that would make the Sydney look like a prize in a Cracker Jack box. This time nobody’d take it from him, no bow-legged midget, and no classy blonde.
    Too many times he’d had the rainbow in his hands and watched it vanish. It wasn’t so bad if you blew it yourself on foolishness and chances. But when you were stupid enough to trust someone… That had always been one of his big problems. He might steal, but he was honest. Somehow he figured other people were as well. Until he ended up with empty pockets.
    The Sydney, Whitney mused. No second-class hood would’ve attempted to