The Big Caper | Page 7

anything from him. He's not used to
losing."

"I know," he said. "He keeps 'em until he's tired of 'em and then he
throws 'em out."
She took her hand away suddenly and her eyes held a hurt, unhappy
look.
"We weren't going to talk about it, Frank," she said.
"O.K. O.K., we won't. But I can tell you one thing: The second this job
is over and done with, I'm through. Through for good. Then we cut and
run."
She looked over at him and again her hand found his.
"That's right, Frank," she said. "We'll both be through. So don't worry
about him. It won't be long now. Just until Saturday. Nothing can
happen until then. You know Flood. He won't let anything, anything at
all, interfere with this one. This is his pet, the big one. The job means
more to him than anything else."
He leaned over and kissed her lightly.
"I still wish you didn't have to see him," he said.
They stood up then and started back toward the house. They held hands
as they walked.
"I'm going up and see Kosta," Frank said as they reached the porch.
"Drunk or sober, he's got to get up. I want him out and around the town
this afternoon. I want him to go over the maps."
"I've got to get those damned dishes done," Kay said.
"Alice is bringing the kids over this afternoon and I promised I'd go to
the beach with them."
She pulled him to her suddenly and her arms went around his waist and
she lifted her mouth to his kiss.

"Don't ever worry about Flood again," she said.
Chapter Two

1.
Nothing suited him. The warm, indolent climate, the second-floor room
in the tourist home that he had rented for a week, the restaurant two
blocks away where he had his meals--he hated them all, the same as he
had hated the long ride down on the train.
He was an old man, well past seventy, and he was set in his ways.
Never married, with any memory of family long faded, with neither
friends nor companions, he was a man who had always lived alone and
who had become intolerant of change. No human being in the world
meant anything to him, and the few persons with whom he was forced
to deal in the course of his solitary life he accepted only grudgingly.
The ones whom he would be working with on this job he neither knew
nor wanted to know. He had no curiosity about them, no interest in
them.
Flood had hired him and Flood was the only one who meant anything
at all to him. Flood meant fifteen thousand dollars in cash--the money
he was being paid to do what he had to do.
There were only a very few like him left and he knew it. He knew his
value. That was one reason he had been able to drive the bargain with
Flood when he had been approached. That's why he had told Flood to
take his percentage and shove it; that his price was fifteen thousand,
paid in advance.
And he had had his way. Flood had been forced to agree.
For Flood he held a certain degree of respect, if not liking. Flood was
an expert in his field. Not a specialist, but at least an expert.

This old man with his faded blue eyes, his veined, gnarled hands, his
sunken chest, and his gaunt, stooped frame was a specialist. He knew
his business backward and forward. He'd started out in Bavaria as an
apprentice in a toolmaking shop and he'd been several years learning
his trade. What he had learned he'd learned well, and it had always
stayed with him.
When he had first come to the United States he had worked in a
shipyard, and then later he had worked for a safe and vault firm. That's
where he had obtained the second part of his education.
Years later, long after he had finished his first stretch in the penitentiary,
he had taken up explosives, and he had mastered the delicate technique
of handling them with the same thoroughness that characterized his
mastery " of his other crafts.
He never forgot anything and he never lost the amazing dexterity that
had made him an artist in his field. Not even the last long stretch, the
fifteen years in the federal penitentiary, had made him lose it.
He was one of the very last of an old school. In his entire career he had
never carried a gun or found the necessity for using one. He didn't
understand or approve of the current crop of burglars and hoodlums. He
was a criminal and that he freely admitted, but he belonged to a