Ryan said, “She’s inside this person, uh?”

“She won’t admit she’s in there, but she is. You can see her looking out.” Nancy smiled. “That’s fun, to get her to look out. She does that a lot, and sometimes she’ll even stick her head out a little. But I’ve never been able to get her out all the way.”

“I don’t get it,” Ryan said.

“It doesn’t matter. I wish we had cigarettes,” she said then. She sipped her Cold Duck and filled their glasses again. “You like?”

“It’s all right.”

“But you’d rather have a shot and a beer.”

“One or the other.”

“Good old Bob Junior is strictly beer. Ray is martinis.”

Ryan hunched forward, resting his arms on the table edge. “Can I ask you a question?”

“What am I doing here,” Nancy said.

“Something like that.”

“Just letting it happen, I guess,” Nancy said. “Looking for the bounce, like everybody else.”

“Why Ray Ritchie-a guy twenty years older than you are?”

“Twenty-five, Charlie.”

“All right, but why?”

“Why do you steal?”

“I told you, I don’t anymore.”

“Did you ever steal money?”

Ryan hesitated. “Sometimes, if there was some laying around.”

“What was the most you ever got?”

“Seventy-eight bucks.”

Nancy was turning the stem of her glass between her fingers slowly. “What if you came across fifty thousand laying around?” She looked up at Ryan. “Between fifty and fifty-five thousand. Would you have the nerve to take it?”

Ryan sat relaxed, keeping his eyes on her eyes, aware of the faint creaking sound again and, for what it was worth, waiting for her to make something out of the silence and the way he was looking at her. He didn’t smile or make a remark or try to be funny; he didn’t have to ask her if she was serious. He knew as soon as she said it that this is what it was all about: why she was here and why he was here.

Nancy said, “If you’d rather not talk about it-”

“Whose fifty thousand, Ray’s?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where?”

“In his hunting lodge.”

“He keeps fifty thousand in his hunting lodge. Sitting there.”

“He does the night before he pays the migrants.” Nancy watched him. “Multiply three hundred and fifty workers by a hundred and fifty dollars each. Isn’t that the average?”

“About.”

“It comes to fifty-two thousand, five hundred. Not checks, money. In pay envelopes. Three hundred and fifty envelopes in two cardboard boxes.”

“How do you know?”

“From last year, and when they were paid this year after planting, or whatever they did.”

“Ray brings the money? How does it get here?”

“I’m not sure,” Nancy said. “Last year we were at the lodge, a police car drove up and Bob Junior got out with the boxes and put them in Ray’s office, in the den.”

“The money’s already in the pay envelopes?”

“Uh-huh. Then the next day Bob Junior sits at a card table and they line up and he pays them.”

“How do you know they always bring it the day before?”

“Bob Junior told me.”

“You asked him?”

“Making conversation. He said it’s the way they always do it.”

“And they leave the money there, forget about it all night.”

“Not exactly.” Nancy paused. “Bob Junior said he stays with it. I don’t know if in the same room but in the lodge.”

“Well, if he’s sitting on the boxes, how’re we supposed to get them?”

Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you wait till he goes to the bathroom.”

“There’d have to be a way to get in,” Ryan said. “If you have only a minute, you can’t fool around breaking something to get in.”

“What if we went in the day before and arranged it?”

Ryan finished the Cold Duck in his glass. “You sure there aren’t any cigarettes?”

“I looked before.”

“How long have you been thinking about this?”

“It didn’t come to me until after I saw you Sunday.”

“Why me?”

“Don’t be modest. Because it’s your bag.”

“Fifty thousand isn’t a TV set.”

“It’s lighter,” Nancy said. “Think of it that way.”

“I mean, why think about it at all? You’ve got about everything you want.”

“And things I don’t want.” Nancy leaned in, letting her hair fall close to her face. “Let’s not go into all the whys, all right?”

Ryan put his mind back on the fifty thousand. “Are you talking about splitting?”

“Of course. I’m not greedy.”

“What if I take the whole thing?”

“Because you know I know and you wouldn’t sleep at night until you were arrested.”

“After we get it, then what? How do we get away?”

“We don’t,” Nancy said. “We hide the money.”

“Where?”

“In the beach house.”

“Come on.”

“Really. It’s the best place; right under Ray’s nose. You stay in Geneva Beach until Ray closes the place for the summer, then break in and get it. I’ll stay with him for about two weeks after we’re back in Detroit, then we’ll have a fight and I’ll leave him.”

“We meet in Detroit,” Ryan said. “Then what?”

Nancy smiled, hunching her shoulders like a little girl. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“I think I’d want to rest awhile.”

“Or take a cruise. The kind I was telling you about?”

“I could get my own boat.”

“And a car and new clothes. Anything you want.”

Ryan nodded, thinking about it. “Just about anything.” He looked at her. “What about you? What do you want?”

Nancy took a sip of Cold Duck. “Do you really want to know?”

“Sure, tell me.”

“I might go out to Hollywood. I think twenty-five thousand would be just enough of a stake.”

“You mean it?”

“Why not? Hook myself a producer. A nice rich producer.”

“Just like that.”

“I think I could fake most of them out of their socks in about four minutes.”

“You mean out of their jocks.”

She shrugged. “I bet I could.”

“Do you know how to act?”

“Fake that too,” Nancy said. “That’s what acting is, isn’t it?”

“You’re not planning on us staying together, then.”

Nancy shrugged again. “I don’t know. Right now I don’t need a lover, Jackie, I need a breaking and entering man.”

Jackie again. He didn’t say anything.

“I want the money,” Nancy said. “If I have to justify wanting it, then it’s because I think Ray owes it to me. You can do it for whatever reason you like. I’m not your conscience.”

“All right, you want me to think about it?”

“If you can’t say yes or no right now.”

“You’ve been thinking about it awhile, I haven’t.”

“It’s fairly simple,” Nancy said. “You either want it or you don’t.”

“I have to look at the lodge first,” Ryan said. “Then I’ll let you know.”

“Tomorrow’s Wednesday. If they’re bringing the money Friday, you won’t have much time.”

“Maybe I can borrow this guy’s car I work for. Go over there sometime tomorrow. Tell him I got to get something in town.”

“Creepy Ray,” Nancy said. “He took my keys or you could use mine.”

Ryan nodded. “I heard you had a car.” He tried to picture her running the two guys off the road and he wanted to ask her about it, but he said, “What if I could start your car?”

“Without a key?”

“If you can get me some wire, it’s done.”

It was a friend of Ryan’s, Bud Long, who had taught him how to jump wires: how to short out the starter and run a wire from the battery to the coil making sure to hook it on the right side of the coil so it wouldn’t burn out the points. Bud Long worked for a loan company in Detroit, on Livernois, up among the miles of used car lots, and most of the paper the company carried was for car loans. When a customer got behind in his payments and wouldn’t acknowledge receiving the payment notices, Bud Long would go out at night and repossess the car with a jump wire. Sometimes Ryan and one or two others would go with him for something to do and Bud Long would let them jump the car. Usually they drove off and that was it. But a couple of times, when somebody saw them, they had to leave the car fast with the hood up and the wire hanging, cutting between houses to Bud Long’s car parked on the next street. Once they took a 16-gauge shotgun blast in the rear quarter panel, but they got away. (Bud Long said the son of a bitch probably owed money on the shotgun too.)