The big roller door covered just about the whole of the front wall. There was a small staff door just around the far corner which gave on to the main floor. There was a cage just inside the staff door where the roller door winch was sited. Go in the staff door and turn left, there was an open metal staircase running up to an office. The office was cantilevered way up into the top back corner of the huge shed, hanging there about forty feet above the main floor. The office had big windows and a railed balcony looking down into the shed for supervision. In back, the office had a door leading out to an external fire escape which was another open metal staircase bolted to the outside back wall.

“OK,” I said. “Clear enough, right?”

Finlay shrugged.

“I’m worried about reinforcements,” he said. “Guards on the exterior.”

I shrugged back.

“There won’t be reinforcements,” I said. “I’m more worried about the shotguns. It’s a big space. And there are two kids in there.”

Finlay nodded. Looked grim. He knew what I was saying. Shotguns spray a cone of lead over a big wide angle. Shotguns and children don’t mix. We went quiet. It was nearly two in the morning. An hour and a half to wait. We would leave at three thirty. Get up there at four. My favorite attack time.

THE WAITING PERIOD. LIKE SOLDIERS IN A DUGOUT. LIKE PILOTS before a raid. It was silent. Finlay dozed. He had done this before. Probably many times. He sprawled in his chair. His left arm hung over the side. Half of the shattered handcuff dangled from his wrist. Like a silver bracelet.

Hubble sat upright. He hadn’t done this before. He just fidgeted around, burning energy. Couldn’t blame him. He kept looking over at me. Questions in his eyes. I just kept on shrugging back at him.

Two thirty, there was a knock on the door. Just a soft tap. The door opened a foot. The older of the two old barbers was there. He pointed a gnarled and trembling finger into the room. Aimed straight at me.

“Someone to see you, son,” he said.

Finlay sat up and Hubble looked scared. I signaled them both to stay put. Stood up and pulled the big automatic out of my pocket. Clicked the safety off. The old guy flapped his hand at me and fussed.

“You don’t need that, son,” he said. “Don’t need that at all.”

He was impatient, beckoning me out to join him. I put the gun away again. Shrugged at the other two and went with the old guy. He led me into a tiny kitchen. There was a very old woman in there, sitting on a stool. Same mahogany color as the old guy, stick thin. She looked like an old tree in winter.

“This is my sister,” the old barber said. “You boys woke her up, chattering.”

Then he stepped over to her. Bent down and spoke right in her ear.

“This is the boy I told you about,” he said.

She looked up and smiled at me. It was like the sun coming out. I caught a flash of the beauty she must have had, long ago. She held out her hand and I took it. Felt like thin wires in a soft dry glove. The old barber left us alone together in the kitchen. Stopped as he passed me.

“Ask her about him,” he said.

The old guy shuffled out. I still had the old lady’s hand in mine. I squatted down next to her. She didn’t try to pull her hand away. Just left it nestled there, like a brown twig in my huge paw.

“I don’t hear so good,” she said. “You got to lean close.”

I spoke in her ear. She smelled like an old flower. Like a faded bloom.

“How’s this?” I said.

“That’s good, son,” she said. “I can hear that OK.”

“I was asking your brother about Blind Blake,” I said.

“I know that, son,” she said. “He told me all about it.”

“He told me you knew him,” I said, in her ear.

“I sure did,” she said. “I knew him real well.”

“Will you tell me about him?” I asked her.

She turned her head and gazed at me sadly.

“What’s to tell?” she said. “He’s been gone a real long time.”

“What was he like?” I said.

She was still gazing at me. Her eyes were misting over as she trawled backward sixty, seventy years.

“He was blind,” she said.

She didn’t say anything more for a while. Her lips fluttered soundlessly and I could feel a strong pulse hammering in her bony wrist. She moved her head as if she was trying to hear something from far away.

“He was blind,” she said again. “And he was a sweet boy.”

She was more than ninety years old. She was as old as the twentieth century. So she was remembering back to her twenties and thirties. Not to her childhood or her teens. She was remembering back to her womanhood. And she was calling Blake a sweet boy.

“I was a singer,” she said. “And he played the guitar. You know that old expression, he could play the guitar just like ringing a bell? That’s what I used to say about Blake. He would pick up that old instrument of his and the notes would just come tumbling out, faster than you could sing them. But each note was just a perfect little silver bell, floating off into the air. We’d sing and play all night long, then in the morning I’d lead him out into a meadow, and we’d sit under some old shade tree, and we’d sing and play some more. Just for the joy of it. Just because I could sing and he could play.”

She hummed a couple of bars of something under her breath. Her voice was about a fifth lower pitched than it ought to have been. She was so thin and fragile, you’d have expected a high, faltering soprano. But she was singing with a low, breathy contralto. I thought back with her and put the two of them in an old Georgia meadow. The heavy smell of wildflower blossom, the buzz of lazy noontime insects, the two of them, backs against a tree, singing and playing for the joy of it. Belting out the wry, defiant songs that Blake had made up and that I loved so much.

“What happened to him?” I asked her. “Do you know?”

She nodded.

“Two people on this earth know that,” she whispered. “I’m one of them.”

“Will you tell me?” I said. “I sort of came down here to find out.”

“Sixty-two years,” she said. “I never told a soul in sixty-two years.”

“Will you tell me?” I asked her again.

She nodded. Sadly. Tears in her misty old eyes.

“Sixty-two years,” she said. “You’re the first person ever asked me.”

I held my breath. Her lips fluttered and her hand scrabbled in my palm.

“He was blind,” she said. “But he was sporty. You know that word? Sporty? It means kind of uppity. Uppity with a smile and a grin is sporty. Blake was sporty. Had a lot of spirit and energy. Walked fast and talked fast, always moving, always smiling his sweet fool head off. But one time, we came out of a place in town here, walking down the sidewalk, laughing. Nobody else around but for two white folks coming toward us on the sidewalk. A man and a boy. I saw them and ducked off the sidewalk, like we were supposed to. Stood in the dirt to let them pass. But poor Blake was blind. Didn’t see them. Just crashed into the white boy. A white boy, maybe ten years old, maybe twelve. Blake sent him flying into the dirt. White boy cut his head on a stone, set up such a hollering like you never heard. The white boy’s daddy was there with him. I knew him. He was a big important man in this town. His boy was screaming fit to burst. Screaming at his daddy to punish the nigger. So the daddy lost his temper and set about Blake with his cane. Big silver knob on the top. He beat poor Blake with that cane until his head was just split open like a burst watermelon. Killed him stone dead. Picked up the boy and turned to me. Sent me over to the horse trough to wash poor Blake’s hair and blood and brains off from the end of his cane. Told me never to say a word about it, or he’d kill me too. So I just hid out and waited until somebody else found poor Blake there on the sidewalk. Then I ran out screaming and hollering with the rest of them all. Never said a word about it to another living soul, that day to this.”