Life Expectancy

it."
        "That's exactly what he figures. When one season ends, the other is beginning, so then he's tracking weather reports along the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic seaboard."
        At the top of the stairs, the three larcenous jack puddings had opened a hole large enough to afford them entrance to the vault.
        With flashlights, Punchinello and Crinkles disappeared through the broken masonry. Honker stayed behind, keeping a watch on us from the landing.
        "When the generator didn't come on after the power went off," Lorrie said, "maybe an automatic alarm went out over the phone line, and the police are in the bank right now."
        Although I hoped her unshakable optimism would prove justified, I said,
        "These guys would've covered that. They seem to have thought of everything."
        She fell silent. So did I. I suspected that our thoughts were occupied with the same worry: Would Punchinello keep his promise to let us go?
        His cohorts were going to be the problem. Neither of them seemed tightly wrapped, but they weren't insane in the way that the son of the great Konrad Beezo was insane. Their feet were more solidly on the ground than his. Honker was motivated by greed, Crinkles by greed and envy. They would not be in the least sentimental about the son of Rudy Tock.
        Silence sucked. Worry thrived in it.
        I felt better just hearing Lorrie talk, so I tried to start her up again. "I'm surprised your mother and you didn't travel with your father. If I were married to a storm chaser who was away from home all the time, I'd want to be with him. Well, her."
        "Mom has her own successful business. She loves it, and if she left L.A." she'd have to give it up."
        "What business is she in?" I asked.
        "She's a snake handler."
        This seemed promising.
        Lorrie said, "Having a mother who's a snake handler isn't as much fun as you'd think."
        "Really? I think it would be a delight."
        "Sometimes, yeah. But she worked out of our home. Snakes-they aren't as easy to train as puppies."
        "You can house break a snake?"
        "I'm not talking potty training. I mean tricks. Dogs love to learn stuff, but snakes get bored easily. When they're bored, they try to slither away, and sometimes they can move fast."
        Punchinello and Crinkles came out of the vault, onto the high landing where Honker waited for them. They were carrying boxes which they put down and from which they removed the lids.
        Honker whooped when he saw the contents. The three men laughed and high-fived one another.
        I figured the boxes contained something more exciting than either snakes or pastries.
        They brought sixteen boxes out of the vault, carried them down the stairs, and loaded them on the handcart that had previously held the explosives. These were cardboard cartons with removable lids, similar to the kind in which movers pack books.
        "Over three million in cash," Punchinello said when he urged Lorrie and me to our feet and led us to the loot.
        I remembered something he'd said earlier: To all appearances, it's not a major bank, not worth knocking over.
        "There wouldn't be this much cash on hand in most big-city banks,"
        Punchinello said. "This is a Treasury Department collection center for what's called 'fatigued currency." All banks cull worn currency from circulation. Those in a twelve-county district send it here on a weekly basis for retirement, and in return they receive freshly printed bills."
        "Two thirds of this," Honker said, "is fatigued currency, and the other million is new and crisp. Don't matter. It'll all spend the same."
        "We just drained some blood out of a capitalist leech," said Crinkles, but his weak metaphor reflected his physical exhaustion. His explosion of wiry hair had gone limp with sweat.
        Consulting his watch, Punchinello said, "We're going to have to shake ass to beat the fireworks."
        Crinkles and Honker exited the bank's subcellar first, one pulling and the other pushing the handcart. Lorrie and I followed, with Punchinello close behind us.
        In Cornelius Snow's secret subterranean corridors, half the fat yellow candles were guttering in the sconces. The quivering flames illuminated the passageway less well than they had done previously.
        Sinuous figures of light and clawing shadows contested silently on a