Life Expectancy

ten steps led between limestone balusters to the public sidewalk.
        They looked steep.
        I said, "I'll have to carry the boxes one or two at a time to the van.
        The bottom of the handcart's going to get hung up on these steps."
        "No, it won't," he assured me. "That's why we bought one with big tires. It'll roll down smooth and easy."
        "But-"
        "Less than six minutes," he warned. "Don't let the cart get away from you and spill the money. That would be… stupid."
        His admonition was a taunt to the lummox in me, virtually guaranteeing that I would wind up flat on my back on the sidewalk with three million dollars tumbled atop me.
        I got in front of the handcart and pulled it onto the steps, letting gravity drive it, using my body to prevent it from gaining momentum.
        Miraculously, I reached the sidewalk without catastrophe.
        Punchinello and Lorrie descended after me.
        I didn't know whether to pray that pedestrians would appear or that we would be left alone. He was so delicately balanced that even an innocent encounter might lead to more murder.
        Where was a judiciously aimed falling safe when you really, really needed one?
        I pushed the cart to the back of the van.
        Just eight feet away stood my Dodge Daytona Shelby Z. A sweet car- and vulnerable.
        "The van doors are unlocked," he said, following me, stopping short of the curb. "Load the boxes in the back. And hurry."
        Although I understood everything about the effects of yeast and about the chemical process by which eggs raised a souffle, I had neglected my studies of high explosives. I didn't know exactly what would happen when the boom plastic went off.
        Yanking open the doors on the back of the van, I imagined the entire front of Snow Mansion collapsing on us, burying us under tons of brick and limestone.
        Moving boxes from the handcart to the cargo hold of the van, I also imagined the force of the blast tearing us limb from limb in an instant.
        Six boxes, eight boxes, ten boxes… In my mind's eye, I saw myself being battered and lacerated and set afire by a storm of blast-propelled debris, blinded and blood-soaked, running along the street with my hair ablaze.
        Thank you, Grandma Rowena.
        As I shoved the last of the boxes into the van, Punchinello said,
        "Leave those doors open for now. We'll ride in back with the money.
        You can drive."
        When we got wherever we were going and I parked the van, he would be behind me, in a perfect position to shoot me in the back of the head. I knew he would do it.
        The way this guy was behaving, we were going to have to find someone else to be little Konrad's godfather.
        "Catch," he said.
        When I realized he was going to throw the keys to me, I cried out, "No!
        Wait. If I miss them, they might go down the street drain, and then we're screwed."
        Between us lay a four-foot-by-three-foot steel grille with inch-wide gaps between the bars. Walking across it I caught the faint scent of brackish water below.
        He held out the keys, and even though the pistol wasn't pointed at me as I approached him, I had the feeling that he would shoot me when I reached for them.
        Most likely, this apprehension arose from my queasy ambiguity about what I intended to do. As I took the keys with my left hand, I swung my right fist in a low-origin arc hard into his crotch, driving the nail file deep and no doubt pinning the parts of his male package into an unprecedented arrangement.
        In the dark, I could not see the blood drain from his face, but I could almost hear it.
        Surprising myself with a ruthlessness that I had never exhibited-or required-in a bakery kitchen, I twisted the nail file.
        Dimly I recalled that Jack had done something like this to the giant at the foot of the beanstalk, except that he used a pitchfork.
        Letting go of the shiv, I grabbed at once for the pistol.
        As he had taken in the nail file, he had let out his breath with a high-pitched sound, half wheeze, half squeal. The file stayed in him, the breath stayed out, and he made dry strangulation sounds as he tried to inhale.
        I expected him to drop the gun or to have had his grip weakened by shock, but he clutched the weapon with grim determination.
        As she twisted her body and shuffled