Free Worth the Trip by Penny McCall Page B

blew me off, like, completely. Jeez, she barely even looked at me. That guy was sitting in the back of the room and she was hot to get out of there.”
    “You must be mistaken.”
    “Nope. I broke into the house last night just like you told me to, Dad.”
    “Don’t call me Dad.”
    There was a short, hurt silence.
    “Someone could overhear.” And there was no way this kid could be his son, but he stayed mum on that subject, too. He needed Bobby. For the moment.
    “Oh, right, I forgot.”
    “So, you broke in.”
    “Yeah.”
    He rolled his eyes. “And?”
    “That guy was there. That guy you said is an FBI agent. He woke up, so did Professor MacArthur, but he didn’t, like, pull a gun on me or anything. I could’ve taken him if not for her. She hit him with a book, and I ran away. Are you sure he’s a cop, ’cuz he didn’t even chase me.”
    He didn’t say anything but his blood pressure rose so fast he was afraid the top of his head might blow off. You were out of the picture for a little while and some guy moved in on your turf. It was damned inconvenient. But not exactly unexpected. Norah was a woman who deliberated, who made decisions based on reason and logic. She didn’t jump into things. Lucius MacArthur, the last living member of the Gold Coast Robbery, was about to be released from prison, and that would bring out all kinds of treasure hunters, and Norah might feel safer with a Fed squatting in her house. “You were disguised, weren’t you?”
    “Yep,” Bobby said proudly. “I wore my Halloween costume. Robin.”
    “You went as a bird?”
    “Robin. You know, ‘Holy breaking and entering, Batman.’ ” The kid was laughing. It took him a minute to realize he was the only one. “The TV show,” he said. “Batman and Robin.”
    The caller lifted his eyes heavenward, wondering what he’d done to be saddled with this doofus of a kid. “I’m familiar with it,” he said. “It was a little before your time, though.”
    “They play it on TV Land all the time. It’s really cool, how they walk up walls and stuff. I wonder how they did it.”
    Another eye roll. He would have explained it, but what was the point? “Maybe you should actually attempt to learn something in those college courses you’re taking.”
    “What for? I’m gonna be rich, right?”
    “Only if you do your part.”
    “You want me to break in again?”
    “No.” They’d be prepared for it now. “Go keep an eye on the house, let me know what they’re up to.”
    “But . . . the neighbors all know each other. If I park on the street, they’ll notice my car. And I can’t lurk in the bushes for two days.”
    Hallelujah, he wasn’t so stupid after all. “Go in disguise.”
    “But you said—”
    “Not Robin,” he said with another eye roll. “Try being a meter reader or the cable guy. Nobody ever notices the cable guy.”
    “Then I must be the cable guy all the time.”
    Okay, now he felt bad. But only a little. “I’ll call you in a couple days, see how it’s going. And stay away from Norah.” No point in pressing their luck. She was too observant—when the FBI wasn’t around to distract her. And apparently Hell had frozen over; it was the only way he’d be thanking the federal government for putting a man in Norah’s house.
     
    THE UNITED STATES PENITENTIARY AT MARION, Illinois, sat nine miles outside its namesake city and over three hundred miles from Chicago. From 1906 to 1963, the worst of the worst criminals were sent to Alcatraz. After The Rock closed, they were relocated to Marion, USP. Two guards were killed in 1983, sending Marion into permanent lockdown, meaning the inmates, including the likes of John Gotti and Pete Rose, spent twenty-three hours a day confined to their cells. It was the perfect place for an aging bank robber whose true identity would earn him a one-way ticket to the afterlife his particular religious beliefs threatened him with.
    The prison had converted to medium security a