Free Mixed Blood by Roger Smith Page A

of Bessie like a tablecloth. Then, with great care, he set the feast out before her, item by item. She sniffed at the potato salad but was not to be drawn. She granted the Belgian chocolate a cursory lick, then snubbed it. Benny Mongrel placed the T-bone steak in front of her. She feigned disinterest for a moment, but the smell was too much to ignore.
    She grabbed the bone between her front paws and started working away at the steak, her jaws moving as she chewed. He squatted beside her and rolled a cigarette, sneaking glances at her as she ate. At last she was done, and she lifted her head and looked him in the eye.
    Benny Mongrel could have sworn that she smiled at him.

    Burn slept fitfully. His dreams were full of dead men, and the fat cop made a guest appearance. Matt wet the bed again, and in the early hours Burn carried him, still asleep, to the bathroom, where he cleaned him up and put him in a fresh pair of Disney pajamas.
    He took Matt back to bed with him and lay listening to his son sleeping until gray dawn light washed the room.
    At five thirty Burn was sitting out on the deck, watching the sunrise. Thinking. Thinking how he had been obsessed with chance, luck, the roll of the dice, the spin of the wheel. How he had convinced himself that he had been born with that extra edge, that extra percentage that would always swing things his way. That he was a winner.
    Until that day in the bookie’s Cadillac.
    The deal Nolan had offered Burn was simple: he was putting together a team to take down a bank in Milwaukee. Recruiting people who had no links with Wisconsin, who would leave no trail for the cops to follow. They were going in at night to blow the vault. Nolan needed a security expert to override the alarms and patch a loop into the surveillance cameras. He’d done his homework on Burn and knew he was the guy.
    If Burn signed on, not only would his hundred-grand debt to Pepe Vargas disappear, but he would get a chunk of the six million they expected to lift from the vault. If he didn’t, Nolan would pay Susan and Matt a visit. There was a deadness to Nolan’s eyes that told Burn this was a threat to take seriously.
    Burn had thought of running. But with what? To where?
    So he had signed on. He told Susan he was attending a security convention in Dallas, and he went off with Nolan and two other men to Wisconsin.
    Everything went perfectly. Burn sat outside the bank, in the back of a minivan, working the keys of a laptop. He disabled the alarm without alerting the bank’s security. For Burn, who built and installed these systems, bypassing them was easy. Then he fed a looped image of the empty bank vaultmonitors at the bank’s surveillance center. The security guys working the graveyard shift drank their coffee, read paperbacks, and dozed without any idea that the bank was being hit.
    Nolan and the two other men went into the bank. Burn stayed in the van, in radio contact, sweating despite the freezing weather. Terrified. Every few minutes Nolan’s calm voice would give him a terse progress report. The vault door had blown. They were in.
    It seemed like hours but took no more than forty-five minutes. The three men returned with the money in kit bags. There was an air of quiet jubilation. Nolan slid into the driver’s seat. A big guy who had hardly spoken sat next to Nolan. The third man, a skinny kid in his twenties, joined Burn in the back. He grinned and lit a smoke, offering one to Burn, who shook his head.
    Nolan drove through downtown Milwaukee. He kept to the speed limit. He stopped at the lights. Then a prowl car nosed up behind them, and the cop driving whooped the siren.
    Nolan pulled over. He looked back over the seat. “Keep cool.”
    Nolan got out of the van to talk to the cop. The van had a busted taillight. There was another cop in the prowl car who didn’t bother to get out. Things seemed under control until the first cop stepped up to the van and shone his flashlight at the big guy in the