"Well, I always wanted to know that. Thanks, Houseman. Can I have my ruler back now?"

"Sure. You got a calculator?"

This time, she didn't say anything. Just pushed it over to me.

"Did you know that a million dollars in quarters would weigh about fifty thousand pounds?" I asked.

"No."

"That'd be four million quarters. At fifteen to the inch, that would be a stack just about four-point-two miles high."

There was a pause. "Can I have my quarters back, now?"

"Oh, sure." I handed them to her, and gave George his. "The banker said they'd likely have at least half a million dollars in change at the bank, over there. Since they use quarters on the boat, I figured that'd be a hell of a lot of quarters." I smiled. "Four-point-two miles, stacked."

She just stared at me.

"Twenty-five thousand pounds," I said.

Hester sort of giggled. "Is there a point to this?"

"Yeah." I grinned. "That's a lot of fuckin' quarters."

It was a great lunch. And, with any luck, the conference would last until suppertime. We did need to be there, though. You could see the bank from Hester's window. You could also see about three easy routes to and from, and all sorts of places for the good guys to hide. Not to mention the bad.

After lunch, I took Volont aside for a second.

"Did you know that Linda Grossman was Nola Stritch's half sister?"

He waited a beat. "Really?" No expression.

"Really. Just found it out. Want me to check further?"

"Sure. But not a high priority. Not now."

Just then Art and George came up, and the four of us rode the elevator to third. I made a mental note to tell George about Linda and Nola. Just in case Volont "forgot."

Back in Hester's office, we got down to it in earnest. One of the first rules is you never, repeat never, take the bad guys while they're in the bank. One of the other first rules is that you never, never prevent them from leaving. And in our case, you wanted to positively encourage them to think they had a clean getaway ahead of them. This leaves you with two basic choices.

First, you take them on the way to the bank, in which case you have a potential problem with proving that they actually intended to hit the bank. You also have a bit of trouble when you don't know just how they intend to do the job in the first place, and just who is involved, and what they might be using for transportation. So, that was out.

Second, you take them shortly after they've left the bank. Wait long enough to not jeopardize the bank staff, but move soon enough to catch them before they could disperse. That was the only sensible plan. If they actually went to the bank, of course. There are no certainties.

"What if they get the cash courier instead?" Art, sitting on the edge of one of the boaties' desks, was the first to put that card on the table. I think we'd all been dreading dealing with that.

"He needs mucho cash," said Volont. "Why go for part, when you can get it all?"

"How big a part?" Hester has a way.

"What?"

"How big a part can they get if they take out the courier? How much do they transfer, and when?"

Hester, George, and I found ourselves walking onto the boat, headed for the security office, and asking ourselves a question. How do you tell the chief of security about what we thought was going to go down, and then get him to be nonchalant? Well, you just don't. Do the basics, but leave out the hot information. Besides, the three of us were bound to get his interest up.

Harmon James was the head of security on the General Beauregard. Nice guy, about thirty-five, fit, bright. Probably made three times as much as I did. He already knew Hester. He met George and me. As we sat, he pressed an intercom button and said, "Agnes, could we have some coffee and mints, please?" I heard a voice on the other end. There hadn't been any secretary in evidence.

"So, what can the General Beauregard do for you?"

If it had been a month or two before the bank job was going to go down, we'd have had a little more leeway. As it was, I was the designated liar.

"We're going to have a disaster drill, and we need something that will involve federal, state, and local law enforcement. You're all we could think of." I shall likely rot in hell.

We talked a bit. Agnes brought the coffee. She was as close to a showgirl as you could get. Short black skirt. Net stockings. Heels. Classy white blouse. Not your typical government employee. The mints were chocolate-covered.

"How do you get a job like this?" I was flattering him. I was also very curious.

He'd been a deputy sheriff in Nevada. No kidding.

"Yep," he said, "this is where we go when we die…"

After that, I began to think we could trust him.

At any rate, we did find out the information we needed. They never transferred more than a quarter of a million at a time.

"That's what dictates the scheduling. And that's the beauty of it," he said. "There's no way somebody can get onto our schedule, because there isn't one. Different employee takes it each time, different vehicle, different route. No way to even know how much we've got onboard. Works."

"Cool." I thought it was.

"We were going to use an armored car service," he said, "but there isn't one available, except the one that services the banks. They can't fit us on anything like the schedule we'd need, and they aren't about to buy a new truck just for us. We really don't want to keep much more than five hundred thousand on the boat, anyway. And even that is divided up by a cash cage on each of three gaming decks, and a counting area under the waterline. A hit on one of them, and all of them are notified and close down. Piece of cake." He had a glimmer in his eye. He knew. Or, rather, he suspected. Either way, I had the feeling that things were going to tighten up on the boat for the next while.

"And," he said, "we transfer coins once a week. Lots and lots of quarters." He grinned broadly. "They accumulate around our slot machines the same way they do on your dresser at home."

As we left, I purloined another chocolate-covered mint.

They sure seemed to have it covered on the boat. Security at the bank, though… a different question altogether. As with most banks, they relied on structures, not people. Structures, and lots of alarm functions that were going to alert law enforcement.

The guessing game was going on when we got back to Hester's office.

"Why Sunday?" Art was saying. "Why not Friday or Saturday?"

"More money." Point to Lamar.

"If Gabriel is still around after all this excitement," added Hester.

"He's here," said Volont. "Don't worry about that."

"Well, now, just a minute," said Lamar. "Let's clear this up right now. Do you actually know he's here, or are you just guessing?"

Volont, I'm sure, wasn't accustomed to being talked to in quite that manner. He handled himself well, I thought.

"He's here, Sheriff. What we do is use several things. Elimination is one of them. We have informants in three or four places he is most likely to be if he isn't here. He's not at those places. We use deduction based on knowledge gained over a long period of time. He's invested heavily in this operation, with the heaviest investment being the two Colson brothers that he killed. He doesn't like to do that. He's got plans. Accomplices. He needs the cash. He's not the type to let a subordinate run the main operation. He's here. All the indications are, he's here." He looked at Lamar.

"So," said my boss, "you boil it down, and skim off the fat, you're still guessing. I'm not saying it's not a good guess. But it is a guess."

"That's right. But it's a truly good guess, and it's right." Volont flicked out one of those tight little grins of his. "Let's see what to do with the bank."