He hustled up to the back door; Little opened it from the inside.

“Another surprise,” Little said, holding up a painting, turning it over in the thin light. Big squinted at it, then looked at Little: “We agreed we wouldn't take anything off the walls.”

“Wasn't on the walls,” Little said. “It was stuffed away in the storage room.

It's not on the insurance list.”

“Amazing. Maybe we ought to quit now, while we're ahead.”

“No.” Little's voice was husky with greed. “This time… this time, we can cash out. We'll never have to do this again.”

“I don't mind,” Big said.

“You don't mind the killing, but how about thirty years in a cage? Think you'd mind that?”

Big seemed to ponder that for a moment, then said, “All right.”

Little nodded. “Think about the SLs. Chocolate for you, silver for me.

Apartments:New York and Los Angeles. Something right on the Park, in New York. Something where you can lean out the window, and see the Met.”

“We could buy…” Big thought about it for a few more seconds. “Maybe… a Picasso?”

“A Picasso…” Little thought about it, nodded. “But first-I'm going back upstairs. And you…”

Big grinned under the mask. “I trash the place. God, I love this job.”

Outside, across the back lawn, down the bluff, over the top of the United Hospital buildings and Seventh Street and the houses below, down three-quarters of a mile away, a towboat pushed a line of barges toward the moorings at Pig's Eye. Not hurrying.

Tows never hurried. All around, the lights of St. Paul sparkled like diamonds, on the first line of bluffs, on the second line below the cathedral, on the bridges fore and aft, on the High Bridge coming up.

The pilot in the wheelhouse was looking up the hill at the lights of Oak Walk, Dove Hill, and the Hill House, happened to be looking when the lights dimmed, all at once.