Surrounded

enough… But what are some things you've done? Who have you worked with?"
        Reluctantly, Tucker leaned back in the stale-smelling couch. He did not want to stay here any longer than he had to, for the disorder and filth put him on edge. However, Meyers was beginning, just beginning, to sound like a careful man. Perhaps he was more and better than he appeared to be. There might be a safe profit in the job after all. "You ever hear about the armored car hit in Boston two years ago? Allied Transport truck was knocked over for six hundred thousand. Four men did the job."
        "I heard of it. That was yours?" Meyers leaned forward, shoulders hunched, interested.
        Tucker explained how it had been done, whom he had worked with. He did not try to make it sound better than it was. He did not need to gloss it over, for it had been a perfect caper, cleverly planned from the start. There was no way, in the telling, to improve upon it.
        "Now you," Tucker said when he finished talking about himself.
        Whether he had planned them or not, Frank Meyers had been in on some good bits of business over the years. And he had worked with many of the right people. He did not appear to be a sound, seasoned, successful operator, but apparently he was. In his retellings he was as straightforward and brief as Tucker had been. His record was not as flashy as the younger man's, but it was solid and impressive in its own way.
        "Anything else you want to know about me?" Meyers asked.
        "Yes. What's the job you've got now?"
        "You don't like the preliminaries, do you?" Meyers asked, smiling.
        "No."
        The big man drained the water from the melted ice cubes in his whiskey glass, shoved to his feet. "Come on out to the kitchen. It'll be easier to go over the plans."
        The kitchen was small and certainly as poorly kept as the living room had been. Dirty dishes filled the sink. The waste-basket was overflowing with used paper towels, empty cartons, and open cans that were crusted around the edges with the food that they had once contained. The cracked linoleum was stained in dozens of spots and was filmed overall with the grime of day-to-day city life.
        A cockroach was feasting on bread crumbs by the refrigerator. It sensed their footsteps and scuttled for cover under the oven.
        "We'll use the table here," Meyers said. He removed a dirty plate and a set of silverware left over from breakfast- or perhaps from the previous night's supper. He ran his big hands over the top of the dinette, satisfied himself that there was nothing sticky or wet to get in their way.
        "Clitus told me it was a bank job," Tucker said. He stood at one end of the table, preferring not to sit down.
        "That's right," Meyers rasped. "And a sweet one."
        "I don't like bank work," Tucker said. "There are too damned many risks. You've got to deal with fancy alarm systems, closed-circuit television, heroic tellers, panicky patrons, guards, limited getaway routes…"
        "This is different," Meyers said, echoing Clitus Felton. He went to the bread box that sat on the counter by the sink and removed a large, folded paper from beneath a tin of store-bought sweet rolls. "When you see the setup, you'll love it."
        When he saw the setup, Tucker thought, he would more than likely laugh in Frank Meyers's face and then get the hell out of there.
        But there was nothing to be gained by leaving before Meyers said his piece. The big man might just have something after all. That distracted look had finally left his blue eyes. He seemed to be more alert, less pumped up with nervous energy, and more inclined to get down to the facts. He was still rumpled and somewhat sour smelling, but he no longer looked as if he belonged in this pigsty of an apartment. Obviously the thought of this bank job energized and lifted him. Which might mean something. Or nothing.
        Meyers unfolded the paper on top of the kitchen table and stepped back to give Tucker a good look at it.
        It was a carefully rendered diagram of a large building. The paper itself was a four-foot square, and the scale was twenty-five feet to the inch. It was well drawn, full of names and shorthand descriptions.
        "The bank?" Tucker asked, impressed by the detail. He bent closer, squinting at the writing.
        "No," Meyers said. "It's the full layout of a small shopping center near Santa