“Bless you, my child,” Brant said. “So is it a date?”

“Yeah, let’s try it on Thursday to avoid the weekend rush. Wonder how I should dress.”

“Anything you wear would look great,” he said, and dropped his eyes in a shy way after he said it.

Andi thought, Those green eyes! This one’s going to take me to heaven or bust me down to the ground. Her heart was pounding when Viktor returned to the table.

“There is one thing for sure,” Viktor said to them when he gave his credit card to the waiter, “even if Lidorov is not our robber, it will be good to have his DNA profile. He is a violent thief. And a leopard cannot change its freckles.”

It was a different thief, newly seduced by the heady excitement of power and control, who that very afternoon was in the process of committing the second armed robbery of his life. But his chain-smoking companion was not the least bit seduced as they sat in a stolen car in a crowded parking lot, waiting. She wished that his Russian wasn’t hopeless, and that she didn’t have to convey her fears in English.

“I warn you, Cosmo,” Ilya said, looking like a clown to Cosmo in her red wig, wearing big sunglasses. “This is a foolish thing that we do.”

“Dmitri told me is okay.”

“Fuck Dmitri!” Ilya snapped, and Cosmo impulsively backhanded her across the face, regretting it at once.

He said, “Dmitri say that this is what he plan for long time. He say he is looking for someone like me and you to do it. We are lucky, Ilya. Lucky!”

“We get killed!” she said, wiping her eyes with tissue and touching up her mascara.

“We get rich,” he said. “You seen how the man in the jewelry store do when he seen my gun? He piss on his pants. You seen him cry, no? The guards with money do not wish to die. Dmitri say the money is paid back by insurance company. The guards shall see the gun and they shall give the money to me. You going to see.”

Cosmo, now wearing a Dodgers cap and sunglasses, had received the call from Dmitri the afternoon prior. Cosmo had thought it was about the diamonds, and when he showed up at the Gulag just before happy hour, he was sent upstairs to the private office.

Cosmo had not been surprised to see Dmitri sitting feet up, much as he’d seen him last time, again watching porn on his computer screen. But this time it was kiddie porn. When Cosmo entered, Dmitri turned down the sound on the speakers but left the screen on, glancing at it from time to time.

“Did you wish to talk about diamonds?” Cosmo said in English, as always.

“No,” Dmitri said. “But I been giving much thinking about the happen-ink guy Cosmo, who is my friend. I think about how you get the diamonds and how we going to do the deal for the diamonds very soon. I think maybe you ready for bigger job.”

“Yes?” Cosmo said, and Dmitri knew the look. He had him.

“It feels how? Strong? Sexy? Like fuck-ink when you point the gun in the face of a man. Am I correct, Cosmo?”

“Feels okay,” Cosmo said. “Yes, I don’t mind.”

“So, I have a job where you can get big money. Cash. At least one hundred thousand, maybe lot more.”

“Yes?”

“You know the kiosk in the big mall parking lots? The ATM machine kiosk? I know about one. I know exactly when money will come. Exactly.”

“Big armor car?” Cosmo said. “I cannot rob the armor car, Dmitri.”

“No, Cosmo,” Dmitri said. “Only a van. Two guys. They bring money inside a big, how you say, canister? Like soldier in Russia use for ammunition? One man must go behind kiosk, open door with key. Lock self in. Reload machine with nice green bullets from ammunition can.”

“Please, Dmitri, how you know about this?”

“Everyone drink at the Gulag sometime,” Dmitri said, chuckling in that way of his that scared Cosmo. He could imagine Dmitri chuckling like that if he was slitting your eyes.

“These men have guns, Dmitri.”

“Yes, but they be only regular security guard. They are contract out for these deliveries. I know about the two men. They will not die to save money. Insurance will pay anyways. Everybody know that. Nobody lose noth-ink except insurance company. No problem.”

“Two guys, two guns, two keys?”

“Yes, two keys for, how you say, internal security. You must take money before first guy get to kiosk. That is why I think of you. You prove at jewelry store you got lot of guts. And you got woman with big tits.”

“Ilya?”

“Yes. I give you exact day and time. Ilya is there to do business at ATM machine. Ilya know how to distract man who walks from van with money can. Other guy have a habit. Always the same. He wait until partner get to kiosk. Then he get out and come with his key.” Dmitri grinned and said, “One minute all you need, you happen-ink guy. You rock, Cosmo!”

And now here they were, sitting in a busy Hollywood parking lot, waiting in the fifteen-year-old red Mazda that Dmitri’s Georgian bartender had stolen for them with instructions to wipe it clean and abandon it somewhere east of Hollywood.

Ilya had gathered herself now, but every time she turned toward him he saw a hateful glare. He had slapped her around before, but this time it was different. He could smell his stale sweat and the fear on her. He thought she might leave him after this. But if Dmitri was right about how much would be in the can, he would just pay her off and let her go.

He had a passing thought about trying to reduce Dmitri’s fifty percent by saying that the amount of money in the can was far less than advertised. It gave him a thrill to think about that, but it was tempered when he thought of Dmitri’s sinister chuckle. And for all he knew, one of the security guards might be Dmitri’s informer. And might know exactly how much money he was delivering.

Cosmo looked at his Rolex knockoff and said, “Ilya, go to kiosk now.”

The blue Chevy van looked like anything but an armored car, much to Cosmo’s relief. And it sat there a few minutes, just as Dmitri said it would, while the guards looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just shoppers coming and going to the mall stores. Only one woman, a bosomy redhead, was at the ATM machine, looking very frustrated.

Her black purse was beside her on the tray and she took out her cell phone and appeared to be making a call. Then she threw her cell phone into the purse disgustedly and looked around as though she needed… what? She appeared to be trying her ATM card again but failed to make it work and just walked a short distance away, looking toward the electronics store across the parking lot. Maybe for her husband?

One of the guards glanced at the other. This was their last stop of the day and they couldn’t sit there all evening because of one goofy woman. The passenger got out, slid open the door of the van, grabbed the only canister remaining, and slid the door closed. Then he walked from the van to the kiosk, and when he got to the front of it he saw that the red-haired woman was crying.

The six o’clock news would give the security guard’s age as twenty-five. He was an “actor” who had been in Hollywood from Illinois for three years, looking for work and trying to get a SAG card. He had been with the security service for eighteen months. His name was Ethan Munger.

“Are you okay?” Ethan Munger said to Ilya, only pausing for a moment.

She was wiping her cheeks with the tissue and said, “I cannot make the card work.” And when she put the tissue back inside her purse, she pulled out the Raven.25 caliber pistol, one of the cheap street guns that Cosmo had been given by the bartender. Ilya pointed it at the astonished young guard.

The driver of the van keyed his mike, announced the robbery, and jumped out of the van, his pistol drawn. He ran around the back of the van, where Cosmo Betrossian, crouched below a parked car, said, “Drop the gun or die!”

The driver dropped the gun and put his hands in the air, lying facedown when ordered to do so. It was just as Dmitri had promised, no problem.