The next morning Hobbs and Hurlocker ate breakfast and went to the stakeout. When they got there, Alan wasn’t on the roof. The notebook was there, but nothing was written in it.
“Well,” said Hurlocker, “now we know.”
Hobbs grunted and looked around.
Hurlocker said, “I wanted to catch him sleeping.”
Hobbs said, “What difference would it have made?”
“Kicking the shit out of him would have served as my daily constitutional. Besides, you get to be my age,” said Hurlocker with a grin, “you’ll jump at any excuse to feel young again.”
Hurlocker turned and walked to the stairs. Hobbs stayed a minute, looking out over Regent Armored. Five stories below him and across the vacant lot, ordinary men were filing in for their ordinary day of work. For a moment Hobbs envied them. Men who had a respectable trade, never worried about the law or the double cross. Then he rubbed his eyes and saw them for the tame creatures they were. He’d be bored out of his mind in a job like that. What was he going to do when it finally did come time to retire? Would such a thing even be possible? He shook it off. He wasn’t retiring today. Today was all that mattered.
He caught up with Hurlocker in the stairwell. The rangy man was standing motionless, halfway down the flight of stairs, as if some movers had abandoned a wooden Indian. Then he turned and beckoned to Hobbs with one finger while he held the other to his lips. Hobbs closed the rooftop door gently and tiptoed down the stairs.
Hurlocker whispered, “You don’t hear it?”
Hobbs shook his head.
Hurlocker whispered, “Hearing’s the first thing to go.”
Hobbs descended.
By the time they got to the fourth floor, Hobbs could hear it, a little at least. Music, high and tinny, no bass. And shitty music at that. Rap, hip-hop, some shit. He looked down and saw that Hurlocker had a pistol in his hand. He held it naturally, conversationally, as if it weren’t a weapon, but maybe a flashlight that he would use to point out structural repairs in the crumbling building.
Hurlocker always did like guns too much, but he’d never been the trigger-happy sort. Hobbs had left his pistols where they belonged, in the trunk of the car. All the same, he eased out onto the floor quietly.
This floor had been a workshop of some kind. High ceilings, exposed timbers. In the corner was an office constructed of lath and plaster. At one time a foreman would have worked there, or maybe the plant manager. The door was closed, but the sound was definitely coming from in there. They picked their way through empty beer cans and spray paint, through trash, and over the grease marks and bolt holes where large machines had once been mounted to the floor.
They set up on either side of the door. Hurlocker held up three fingers and raised his eyebrows. Hobbs shook his head no. He tried the knob and the door swung easily. Hurlocker leaned around the jamb, fanned the room with the pistol, and leaned back. Relief flashed across his face, quickly replaced by disgust.
Hobbs looked for himself. Alan was asleep underneath a table. On top of the table were his laptop and some scattered gear.
Hobbs walked through the door and yelled, “Rise and shine!” Instead of jerking up and hitting his head as Hobbs had hoped, Alan rolled over and said, “Oh, hey.” Hurlocker stayed on the other side of the door.
“Well, you’re fired.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sleeping on the job. Leaving your post. Fuck did you think was gonna happen?”
“I got it all,” said Alan, rubbing his eyes, still not quite awake.
“You got it all my ass. You got nothing. The notebook is blank. You fail, kid.”
“Notes? By hand? Are you shitting me? I took pictures.”
“Pictures?” Hobbs said, turning around. “Best of luck, kid. Maybe you can get a job doing data entry on punch cards or something.”
“Hey!” Alan yelled. He scampered up from the floor and blocked Hobbs’s path, putting a pale, weak finger on Hobbs’s chest. Behind him Hurlocker lifted his pistol and mimed bringing it down on the back of the kid’s head. Hobbs shook his head no. He didn’t mind the kid showing some grit. Even if this one was an idiot, it left some hope for future generations.
Alan said, “You’re the asshole that wanted an audition, right? So let me show you what I can do.”
“You showed me. You were asleep. I need guys I can count on.”
“Job’s done, jackass. Job’s been done. And this? This is bullshit. This is a shitload of busywork just to show you what I’m capable of. But you’re the jackass that wanted an audition. So let me audition.”
Hobbs stared him down. Shitty music crackling away in the background, some kid yelling about bitches over a beat. It was a sound that should have been riding on twenty-two-inch rims rattling a trunk lid somewhere, rather than coming out of laptop speakers. Hobbs said, “Turn off that shitty music and show me what you’ve got.”
Alan turned around and went right to the laptop. Next to the binoculars was a fancy digital camera with a long lens on it. Alan tapped some keys and a screenful of photos came up. They were a little grainy, but they didn’t look as if they had been taken at night. They looked as if they could have been taken on a cloudy afternoon.
“I didn’t take notes, you’re right. I took pictures.”
“Yeah, but what time did all that happen?” Hobbs asked as he watched the entire night play out in photos. Second shift going home. Third shift coming on. The doors opening to let the fresh summer night air in. A truck being finished and moved to the side lot.
“I’ve got time stamps on all of them.” He fiddled with the computer and all the photos were displayed in a timeline. When he rolled over them, they zoomed to fill the top third of the screen.
Hurlocker was impressed in spite of himself. “That’s one fancy notebook.”
Alan held up a finger. “Just wait, my grim friend.”
“I ain’t your friend,” said Hurlocker.
“Do you even have friends? Or is it just farm animals that can’t outrun you anymore?”
Hobbs snickered and wished he hadn’t.
“Boy, I got a gun.”
“And a love for old, slow-moving sheep. Now watch this. See this guy right here?” He zoomed in on one picture of a man standing in the doorway, taking a break at about two forty-five. “This is Timothy Grahl, ASE-certified master mechanic. I picked him out using facial recognition technology and cross-referencing it with Facebook.” He clicked and another window popped up, displaying a map. “This is where he lives.”
“Wait, you’re telling me this ol’ boy has a Facebook page?” said Hurlocker.
“No, but his daughter does. Anyway, this is the complete list of everybody who was on shift last night,” he said, clicking with a flourish. “Here’s the complete employment records from the Missouri Department of Labor, Unemployment Security Division—I had to pay a guy to get these, so you’re going to have to reimburse me.”
“How much?” asked Hobbs.
“One bitcoin.”
“What’s a bitcoin?”
“Right now about two hundred and sixty-two US dollars, but that’s not important. ’Cause after that, I really got to work. I couldn’t hack into their security cameras for a real-time feed—that shit is for the movies—but I did get in through their router, and their cameras all transmit images via Wi-Fi. So I grabbed some from each camera…”
Views of the shop floor scrolled across the screen. “And I noticed something interesting.”
He stopped on one image of a workbench and a wall. There was a time clock, and some fat guy was holding a strut and gas shock in the air, looking at the joint.
“What?” asked Hobbs.
“You don’t see it? How about you, animal lover?” he asked with a smile, looking to Hurlocker. He shook his head no. “Ah come on, it’s right there! I mean for a couple of hardened criminals like yourselves.”
“Get on with it,” said Hurlocker.
“You’re no fun at all.” Alan zoomed in. Next to the time clock was a lockbox with a keypad on it. “Bingo, key to every vehicle in the place, including the boss’s new Benz. Not really my style, but the nicest car I’ve seen since I hit this shithole town.”
“So?” asked Hurlocker.
“So then I wrote a little script to run a track on it. Pull a capture every half second. The combination is 75309.” He looked over his shoulder at both of them. “So after that, I was tired. So I went to sleep. Oh wait, wait.” He hit another key. “This is their project accounting software. It also handles shipping and receiving. So we don’t even need to steal an armored car. You just tell me where you want it delivered and I’ll have a bonded, third-party transport company drop it off. I just mark it as paid in their system and the fuck does the guy on the floor care?”
“Huh,” said Hobbs. “Good job.”
“Sure, you’re tough in the real world, but I kick ass on the data layer, bitches,” said Alan.
“Bitches?” Hobbs asked Hurlocker. Hurlocker’s expression didn’t change.
Alan said, “Now if you two Luddites will excuse me, I’m gonna go back to the hotel, shower the smell of this place off me, and get some sleep.”
As Alan packed up his gear, Hobbs said to Hurlocker, “I hate to say it, but it’s a good job.”
Hurlocker nodded. “I still don’t like him.”
Hobbs said, “You’re not the trusting kind.”
Hurlocker shrugged. It could have meant Sue me. It could have meant I don’t give a fuck. It could have meant anything.
Alan turned at the door. “Listen, if you guys just like hanging out in old buildings like a couple of crackhead hobos, that’s fine with me. But when you’re done, you just tell me where you want the truck delivered.”
“It’s not that easy, you still gotta steal it,” said Hobbs.
“What are you talkin’ about? I don’t…I just told you! We can have it delivered like a fucking pizza. There’s no need.”
“We need the truck,” said Hurlocker. “But we need to know you can handle yourself more.”
“Oh, fuck you guys! Why you always gotta do things the hard way?”
“Not us,” said Hurlocker, finally smiling. “You.”