Read April Evil for Free Online

any more. There aren’t many people around to handle it. He’s been going legit. He’s had his orders to go legit. The top-side wouldn’t have liked it for him to hide me out, or even make this check, but as I said, he owed me a couple of favors. Now we’re clear. I got to the cash I had stashed, and I’ve got enough to swing this thing. That was what Dingle was after in Evanston, the cash to finance this thing. Now I want to know if you’re in.”
    The Ace picked up his glass and walked to the jalousied windows and looked toward the dark bay. Finally he shrugged big shoulders. “Sure.”
    “That’s good. You’re a good man with a box. There aren’t many good ones left.”
    “But no killing.”
    “No killing.”
    “I’ve never been in on a score where there was any. And I don’t want to start. That’s why I don’t like working with the kid.”
    “I can hold him down.”
    “How do you want to do it?”
    “The easy way. Get in and take over the house. Maybe if we rough the old man up a little, we can open the box with the dial. We’ll study the map and lay out a route. I figure Tampa would be a good place to split up.”
    “How do you cut it?”
    “Expenses out and the balance three ways.”
    “Are you sure the cash is there?”
    “I know this much. When he was selling off land a few years back, the bank used to send a guard right along with him, right to his door, when he was taking the cash home. What does that sound like?”
    The Ace grinned. “It sounds sweet.”
    “This will go like cream and silk. All I worry about is why it hasn’t already been knocked off. Maybe the talent doesn’t get around this way.”
    Sally came to the door and said they could eat any time. The men went out to the booth in the kitchen alcove. She served them big portions of the steaming beef stew. The three of them ate in silence. After Ace had pushed his plate away and sugared his coffee, he said, “How did you make it out? I heard a lot of stories.”
    Harry looked at Sally. She kept her eyes down. He shrugged and said, “No harm in telling you. You know, they gave me those consecutive sentences. The way I worked it out, if I could live to be a hundred and sixty-five, I might get out. So the day I went in, I started planning. I kept my head down. If you make no trouble, you get to move around more.
    “I decided right away I wanted no part of any big crash. That hostage business is no good. It never works out. I had to get out of there all by myself, all alone. And I did. But it took four years. I figured up once I spent twelve thousand hours thinking and planning. You think that hard, something has to give. And I couldn’t try a long-shot chance, because that would foul me up if I was caught. It had to be as sure as I could make it.”
    “That’s a maximum-security prison.”
    “You’re telling me no news, Ace. I finally decided the best deal was with the state road trucks. They save money for the state by using the prison shop and prison labor. There’s a tough smart inspection squad that checks each truck in and out. Once in a while they get some old crock of a truck that needs a lot ofwelding on the frame. I spent a whole year making the right contacts in the repair shop. I couldn’t get in there myself. No lifers in the auto shop. It took a lot of organizing and a lot of pressure. It went wrong a couple of times. But not wrong enough to make anybody suspicious. The timing just went bad. It finally worked right. I got into the shop and hid behind a locker until I got the signal. Then I got under a truck and pulled myself up underneath. My contacts had welded a couple of handles up under there, and a bar I could rest my weight on. They’d built skirts on the side so I was up out of sight. I took the chance. The squad looked under the truck but they missed me when the state driver took the truck out. That damn driver was a cowboy. That bar nearly broke my back.
    “I’d got out from under the truck and