There would be a dark blue delivery van idling in the spot where the armored truck usually double-parked, but given the time of day, given the foot traffic, the pickups, the drop-offs, that shouldn't seem unusual. As a matter of fact, the last two Tuesdays, Black had sat in that idling delivery van himself, positioned in that precise spot, to watch how the armored car driver would react, and both times the driver had pulled up in front, parked, and made his pickup from the Shawmut Bank.

It would be a two-man truck. In spite of his nerves, Black chuckled to himself at the thought. All that vulnerability, all that exposure, and just two men to withstand the world. The entire operation, from start to the safety of a successful getaway, should be over in ten minutes, maximum. Unless, of course, someone screwed up.

Which got back to the issue of Black's nerves and this recurring thought that good help is hard to find. He took another sip of whisky and stared out the window at nothing in particular, out onto Broadway in Chelsea, where immigrants locked in a losing battle against despair drove ancient cars down the litter-strewn street. Their plight escaped Black's notice. One small mistake by any one of his five guys, he was thinking, and the whole thing could turn to bedlam in a fraction of a second, and that one fraction of one second could haunt the rest of a lifetime. Maybe even dictate a lifetime. So it comes down to the execution even more than the plans, and the execution was in the hands of five guys he barely knew. He took another pull of whisky and continued gazing out the window, his chin resting hard on the cup of his hand.

By now, Black was oblivious to the diagrams. Rather, he was fretting about one of his men, a guy with the worrisome nickname of Rocky. The bad news was that this Rocky didn't seem to mind the name at all, at least as far as Black could see. The mildly good news was that the name came from Rocky's given name, Rocco. "Call me Rocky," he had said, jovially, that first time they had met for a hamburger and a beer over at the Red Hat. Black had just rolled his eyes. There are no resumes in this business, and no reliable lists of references. So much is done on feel, and suddenly, in the lengthening shadows of that crucial afternoon, Black didn't feel so good about this one.