Working silently with tratakum-like concentration, changing bits quickly and efficiently, leaning on the drills to make the whirling blades dig deep, it took us less than ten minutes to drill two one-inch holes in the “safe.”

Inserting the lighted borescope in the top hole, I saw the metal plate that covered the back of the lock mechanism. It was secured to the inside of the safe door with four Phillips screws. Turning the scope, I saw the blue jewelry box on a side shelf.

I used the long Phillips screwdriver to undo the plate, working alternately from both holes. The safe was only sixteen inches deep, so the eighteen-inch screwdriver was plenty long enough. When the plate was out of the way, I studied the wheel pack through the borescope for a while, using the standard screwdriver to probe the action. After letting Reggie take a look, I began to painstakingly nudge the wheels into alignment. It was no picnic getting the entire set into position and I got stuck on the last one. I thought for a while that we were going to have to drill another hole to get a better angle to work from.

“Let me try,” Reggie said, back to whispering.

Resolutely ignorant of history, politics, geography, and most other academic subjects, Reggie was a quick study in all things criminal, and a talented mechanic. After peering through the borescope for a minute or so, studying the mechanism, he took the screwdriver and with a flick of his thick wrist managed to pry the final wheel into place. The safe’s spring-loaded bolt retracted with a loud click.

“Got it!” Reggie said.

We raced for the door. I squeezed out first, and ran around into Hildrebrand’s office. Mysteriously unhampered by his limp, Reggie was right on my heels.

The heavy safe door swung open smoothly on concealed hinges, and I had the blue velvet box in my hand again. Taking it to Hildebrand’s desk, I opened it and shined my flashlight on the rose-colored stones. A lot had happened in the eighty hours since I had last seen the necklace. The world had rolled on, becoming a new place each day as it always does. I had met Mary, Baba Raba, and Evelyn. But the diamonds hadn’t changed. More than almost anything else in the material world, they defied the yogic dictum and resisted decay, staying stable in the midst of the flux, like the still point around which the earth revolves. That genuine characteristic went a long way toward explaining why they were able to carry the artificial value that hucksters assigned to them so effectively. Diamonds were beautiful, certainly, refracting light into heavenly rainbows. But their deepest hold on the human heart was that they touched eternity.

Reggie lifted the necklace from the white satin interior of the box, letting it dangle from his stubby index finger. “Nice merchandise,” he said.

Both of us were grinning. I could feel my cheeks begin to ache. Taking the necklace off his finger, I put it back in the box and snapped the lid shut.

“See if there is anything else worth taking,” I said. “I’ll pack up the tools.”

I had just put the new drill back in its case when Reggie popped in the kitchen door, his eyes as wide open as they could get.

“You musta been good this year,” he said. “Look what Sanny Claws left.” He held out both hands. There was a canvas bag in his right hand, a thick five-by-twelve-inch manila envelope secured by a rubber band in his left.

The bag, delightfully heavy, was full of Krugerrands, bearded geezer on one side, antelope on the other. The lawyer was hoarding gold.

The envelope was stuffed with series EE U.S. Savings Bonds in denominations of $100, $200, and $500, inscribed to various little Hildebrands. Passing his ill-gotten gains on to the next generation-if they were lucky enough to ever actually get their hands on the cash. I could imagine a typical birthday party at the house on Laurel Way:

“Oh, look, Richard, your grandpa got you another hundred-dollar savings bond!”

“Can I have it, Mommy?”

“No, Grandpa will keep it in his safe for you along with all your other bonds.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

We waited in the shadow of a palm tree at the front corner of Hildebrand’s building until there was no traffic on Santa Monica, then started across the wide, well-lit boulevard, heavy packs bouncing on our shoulders.

“How much is the gold worth?” Reggie asked, hurrying beside me.

“Depends on the number of coins,” I said, swiveling my head back and forth, looking in all directions. “Gold’s somewhere between three and four hundred an ounce. Each Krugerrand is an ounce. If there are fifty coins that would be fifteen or twenty thousand dollars.”

“That’s good money,” Reggie panted.

“Icing on the cake.”

“Can we fence the bonds?”

“Yes.”

“What’ll they bring?”

“Depends on the maturity dates. We’ll check it out when we get home.”

There were ten or twelve cars but no people in Norm’s parking lot as we headed to the rental. We put everything in the trunk except for the Tomcat, which stayed in my belt. I slid in behind the wheel while Reggie took shotgun.

“Good job, Robby,” he said in his serious mentor voice.

“You, too, brother.”

The pistol was digging into my side so I pulled it out of my belt and put it in the glove compartment. I had started the engine but not put the car in gear when a black-and-white swooped in out of nowhere and pulled up beside us, rubber barking as it jolted to a halt. It was such a shock that if I had been in the Seville I might have peeled out as a reflex. The Cadillac was faster than the cop car and I knew the terrain and we might have been able to get away. But I didn’t trust the rental car’s power and I wasn’t used to driving it around corners on two wheels, so I turned off the engine and put my hands on the steering wheel.

They popped out of their cruiser like they were spring-loaded, the driver circling behind us to check our license plate and get an overview, the ride-along tapping on my window with his club-light. They didn’t have their guns out, which meant they hadn’t made us for the burglary, at least not yet.

“Let me do the talking,” I murmured to Reggie, then rolled my window down six inches and looked at the cop. “Good evening, Officer. What’s up?”

“Aw, not too much. What are you guys up to?” He was an old-school lurch, six-four, a good two-twenty, the kind of cop that predominated on big-city police forces before rookies started rolling with junior college degrees and mouths full of legal jargon. He looked like he was about sixty years old, poised to prove that he could still cut the mustard if some punk gave him half an excuse. The other cop-black, in his thirties-was of average height and build.

“Just getting something to eat,” I said.

“Here?” He had a foxy look on his face.

“Yeah.”

“What time was that?”

“Earlier this evening.”

“Where you guys coming from just now?” He must have seen us walking into the parking lot.

“Just taking a stroll around the city, soaking up some Santa Monica scenery.”

He looked at his watch. “At one-thirty in the morning?”

“Yeah, we’re only in town a couple of days. Trying to make the most of it.”

“Where you from?”

“Sacramento.”

“What are you doing down here?”

Cops like to ask a lot of questions. It gives them a chance to read you, to see if you are nervous or evasive. They like to ask about times, locations, reasons, trying to pin you down, catch you in a contradiction.

“Vacation.”

“Where you staying?”

“The Georgian, down by the beach.” I could see the name of the hotel impact his thinking. Standard rooms at the Georgian were three hundred a night. The fact that we were staying there moved us up from transients to well-heeled travelers, whether he liked it or not.