24. 27. Yes. There.

How do I know?

I just know. When it’s shorter, it’s shorter. I just feel it.

Or something beyond feeling it, really. That little piece of hard metal touches the notch a hair width’s sooner than the last time around, and I can feel it, hear it, see it in my mind.

When I had finished the dial, I had three rough numbers in my head. I went back and narrowed those down until they were exact, moving by ones this time instead of threes. When I was done with that, I had the three numbers in the combination, 13, 26, 72.

The last step is a little bit of grunt work. There’s no other way to do it but to grind right through them. So start with 13-26-72, then switch the first two, then the second and last, and so on, until you’ve worked your way through all six possibilities. Six being a lot better than a million, which is how many combinations you’d have to go through if you couldn’t find out those numbers.

Today’s combination ended up being 26-72-13. Total time to open the safe? About twenty-five minutes.

I turned the handle and pulled the door open. I made sure I was watching Manhattan’s face as I did that.

“Fuck me,” he said. “You can just fuck me with a stick right now.”

I stepped aside and let him do what he needed to do. I had no idea what he was hoping to find in there. Jewels? Hard cash? I saw him pull out about a dozen envelopes, those brown paper envelopes that are just a little bit bigger than business size.

“We got ’em. We’re ready to roll.”

I closed up the safe and spun the dial. Manhattan was right behind me with a white rag, wiping everything down. Then he swung the outer door shut and slid the suits back in place.

He turned the light off. We retraced our steps down the stairs. Brooklyn was in the living room, looking out the front window.