Zinio motioned to the cops that he was gingerly setting his gun down. She did the same. They moved in the synchronized way they did when blowing the front door, both lowering to their knees at the same time.  

While he had them distracted, and while still on his knees, he reached behind him into his elastic-waist pants and pulled out a dynamite stick.  

Delaney couldn't believe what she was seeing. "I didn't mean literally pull something out of your ass! I shudder to think how you got in shape for that." 

Gesturing as if submissively putting both his hands behind his back to be handcuffed, Zinio undid the cap. Then he lit the end of the fuse by dragging the dynamite stick, rigged to ignite like a flare, along the pavement. The special slow burning fuse gave him a little under a minute. He revealed the stick of lit dynamite as he stood.  

The cops were only too happy to let the twosome hike the short distance to the entrance of the underground railway station, which was virtually adjacent to the bank.  

When a bullet slammed into Zinio's back from Trigger Finger, knocking the dynamite stick out of his hands, he heard a scuffle and what sounded like the same cop taking a punch to the face. He also heard a "You idiot!" and a bunch of cops taking a collective deep breath and a step back. 

As the stick blew, falling rubble effectively blocked the entrance. 

Delaney checked Zinio, noting the Kevlar vest. "You wore a vest? How come you didn't get me one?" 

"And ruin that figure and the best chance of distracting every male for miles? Not to mention, who would shoot you when they could just as easily shoot me?" He pulled the slug out of his back with a wince. Eying the mangled .45 bullet, he said, "I rest my case."  

A short while later, Zinio and Delaney crawled out from under a manhole cover.  

They took in the sci-fi robots pulling at the rocks of the caved-in muni-entrance. The one on half-tracks used a singular crane-like arm jutting up from its center of gravity to fling rocks the size of a man into a heap. The one on four legs, moved catlike through the debris, tossing massive chunks of rock, either with its mouth or one of its forepaws. Both robots looked DARPA funded and private-company streamlined.  

And then there was the guy aiming a pole with a disk at the end at the asphalt over the Muni-tunnel as he counted paces. 

"They filming a Michael Bay movie?" 

Zinio eyed the robots and sighed. "That's the bomb squad. They don't have to put themselves in harm's way anymore." 

"And the rather handsome guy, mind you, with the metal detector thingie?" 

"He can peer through the ground with that, know if we're still there, dead or alive, hell, if we're phoning home." 

Delaney was hang-jawed. "Out of curiosity, have we considered retirement?" 

Zinio took a moment to appreciate the direness of their situation. "It's not like we have a 401k." 

Cleared of the manhole, they slid under the cars parked against the street one after the other, using what greasy handholds they could for leverage, until they came smack up against the low rider. Zinio banged the bumper with his palm. "Did I particularly not park in front of this guy for just this reason?"  

"The other driver must have left with the meter running and he saw an opportunity. You can't blame a person for trying to save a penny in this economy." 

"Not now with the 'this economy' spiels." Zinio noticed they were in front of a hotel, where people ordinarily came in and out, so he figured he'd risk it. He helped her up, and together they walked their two bags down a car to their black Porsche, threw the bags in the trunk, and made sure to tip the valet when he came out for doing absolutely nothing in case anyone was watching.  

The rest was just two decadent nouveau-riche people-in more ways than one-driving off in their Porsche from a well-respected hotel.

*** 

Kerry had her face buried in the photos of the two bank robbers. "The video you barely look at to get what you need," Sam said. "The photos we can't pry you away from." 

"There's something about these two. These aren't the faces of bad guys. Rogues, maybe." 

"Look, lady, not even you are that good." 

She'd been keeping her attention partially on the video footage outside the Club Quarters Wall Street hotel. "Stop," she said, giving her full attention to the wall projection. The bank of agents in the room, either busy hacking away at their computers, or readying their tech toys for the next big campaign, suddenly looked a lot less in their own world. Sam noticed the din sounded less chaotic and more focused as well. "Back it up," Kerry said. "There. Those two. That's them." 

Staring at the same screen, Sam and Carter took a collective deep breath, lowering their heads if not their eyes. "Not even with visual enhancement can you tell that, lady," Carter said. 

"Probably not." Kerry folded her arms and straightened her spine, signaling she was switching into higher gear. "Being as they're both keeping their faces down, away from the cameras. But you'll notice he's also positioning his body so the cops attending the bank scene up the street can see him paying off the valet, should they be on the lookout for anyone fleeing the scene, as if he's just another hotel guest. And you'll recall that the couple parked their own car earlier." 

"And..." Sam said impatiently, not buying it so far. 

"And," Kerry said, "You'll observe even the valet is hip to what's going on. The second that much money touched his hand he gave the scene up the street a look, then winked at our two bank robbers." 

"So why didn't he phone them in the instant they were gone to collect an even bigger reward?" Carter said. 

"I'm guessing he's illegal."  

"That's just racist, lady," Sam said. "This is New York. We got two percent of everybody." 

"If you want to bet half your check, Sam, I'm game. Unless you think he got greedy for money one minute, then was suddenly beyond being tempted by it the next." 

Kerry gestured to Milo who had been following their conversation but was uneasy about interjecting an opinion until he had more to work with and-once again making himself sound like the fool; a lesson which Sam and Carter were still mastering. "Let's find out where that black Porsche went to, Milo. If we don't have anything on the car and its owner, use the city grid cameras to chase them down." 

"I'm sorry, I'm just not buying it this time," Sam said, rolling his Playboy up and swatting his own thigh with it. 

"Okay, Sam. Why don't you get one of the techies to measure the distance between the front of the car and the wheels, then factor in for the weight of the money they stole from the bank?" 

"They always lie about that," Carter interjected quickly. 

"Not this guy. The camera that took these pictures," she said, holding out the sheets with the images of the bank robbers, "also showed them packing up the money, remember?" 

"That's a 1957 Porsche, lady. You know what the front end suspension on that thing is like after all this time, assuming he left it in the condition he bought it in?" 

"Good one, Sam. Make sure to factor that in too. I'm sure one of our techies can pull up those numbers for you." Kerry turned her back to them to return to her vigil staring at the photos.  

"You heard that?" Carter whispered, leaning into Sam. "She said, good one. I think we just did something right again." 

"You mean I did something right. Time you started carrying your own weight around here." 

"Oh yeah, and what weight is that exactly? Horse fly weight or more like fruit fly weight." He made a teensy-weensy gesture with his fingers. Sam was ignoring him, already in a rush to find one of the techies as his latest coconspirator to unseat Kerry from her throne chair. He hardly needed to rush; her people were already on it. By now they could read her face and respond, saving her the time of moving her lips half the time, just the way she liked it.  

Carter looked at Sam trailing off then back at Kerry, who had turned her back to them to return to her vigil staring at the two photographs. He waits till she shows her ass to walk off. The man has no sense of timing at all. And he wonders why I can barely carry my fruit fly weight around here. 

"The stern look she's giving him; the pained look he's giving her; I wonder what that's about," Kerry mumbled, still staring at the photos. "Can't believe that damn camera only snapped pictures every 30 seconds and these were the best we got." Carter, overhearing her ramblings, chose to ignore her. 

Dead Man Walking was running the analysis of the Porsche's front end suspension against the numbers he'd gotten on the weight of the money. Sam could see as much from his computer monitor, so he pulled up a seat alongside him. And stared at his face. "You one of those Goth types, paint white flour on the face, and all that?" Sam said gesturing with his hand about his own face, in an effort to break the ice. "How come you don't go in for the rest of the getup, nose rings, multiple ear piercings? I see you have the straggly black hair that doesn't look like it's been washed in weeks. Points for that. Hey, I can hook you up with the jewelry if it's a budgetary thing. God knows I'd like to pluck those things right out of my daughter's nose and give them to you straight away. Just be sure to wash them first. Probably a bit unsanitary, not that sanitary is high up your roster of concerns." Sam took a whiff to confirm. Finally, getting no response from stone face-the guy hadn't even looked away from his monitor-he sighed. "Sorry, I get chatty and rude when my anxiety level climbs. If it makes you feel any better, my blood pressure rises and-if my doctor is to be believed-I stroke out, which should eliminate me as an annoyance in short order." 

"It's okay, Sam. You get rude, I get positively deadly. If you think I'll move up a notch getting one over on Milo, think how fast I'll move up getting one over on Miss Pierce." 

"The enemy of my enemy...it's one of those deals. I know I didn't like you for a reason, DMW." 

"DMW?" 

"Dead Man Walking. You don't know that's what people call you?" 

"Dead Man Walking. I like that. Sums up my career prospects in this bleak economy if I can't find some way of showing up one of those two bastards." 

"Not to be anal on the subject, but technically, Milo is a prick, and she's a bitch. I just think in our field it's important to nail the nomenclature early on to avoid any kind of confusion." 

"You got me there, Roly-Poly." 

"Roly-Poly?" Sam bit down on his jaw until the pressure had to be vented out his ears. "What self-respecting cop doesn't hit the doughnut box a little hard? I don't deserve that. How about Bear? An animal that uses his extra body fat to hibernate. I like Bear." 

"Good, because you're not going to like this any better, Roly-Poly." Dead Man Walking hit enter and sent the printer at the corner of his desk by which Sam was sitting into a frenzy.  

Sam was going over the photocopies as fast as he could pull them out of the printer. "Tell me what I'm looking at. I don't read tech as well as she does." 

"It means that Porsche is carrying the money. The original '57 suspension, offering 69% of the support of a new pair of struts, together with the exact weight of those two money bags, at three hundred sixty-five pounds, plus the weight of the spare tire, gets you to that height off the wheels," he said, pointing to the gap on the screen showing a measured line graphically demonstrating the two inch difference from what it would be if the trunk were empty. 

"No disrespect or anything, but how is it you can pull all that together so quickly and still be so confident?" 

"I was chief analyst until she came along," Dead Man Walking said glaring at Kerry across the room, hoping to slice her in half with the lasers he was emitting from his eyes, which Sam was sure he could see. Only the smoky atmosphere in the room saved her by scattering the laser light. Sam rubbed his eyes to shake off the illusion. When he opened them, he realized a couple characters were playing irresponsibly and disrespectfully with laser pens, running them over Kerry's body to vent their own frustration, denigrating her to sex object by highlighting their favorite parts, and his depth perception had just been a little off. He had been running a bit sleep-deprived ever since Kerry Pierce showed up, which wasn't helping his performance any. Yeah, let's go with that. It's a sleep disorder thing, as opposed to a brain deficit thing.  

"Pipe the footage over to my desk, will you?" Sam said, managing to peel himself out of the swivel chair, although he felt twice as heavy as when he flopped down on it a moment ago.  

"You want to run the video over and over again in hopes of catching something she didn't, even if it's too little too late." 

Sam glared at him. 

Dead Man Walking defensively threw up his hands. "I'm just saying I know that game, is all." 

Carter crowded Sam as they sat side by side at his desk reviewing the footage outside of the hotel. Different cars came and went from that spot, many with high-flying couples, all of similar age and build. "Shit, they all look guilty to me," Carter said. 

"Yeah, the rich have that way about them. You know they stole from somebody and were too smart to get caught. If they didn't do it, their parents did. If you want a bigger slice of the pie than someone else, that's what it boils down to, doesn't it?" 

"So I shouldn't feel so stupid then?" 

"No, but I find the rationales mitigate the pain." 

"You know, I have been feeling a bit sleep deprived." 

"I added that one to the list five minutes ago. Try and keep up." 

"Did you factor in for her ass in your face every five minutes? What red blooded American male could get enough blood going to their brain to think past that?" 

"Added that one a long time ago." 

"Oh yeah? How many's on your list?" 

"Just enough to make me feel really stupid." 

"Just not like suicidally dumb, or anything? You're right, I got some catching up to do."