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They had a few drinks. Gene thought she was wonderful. She was tall and her hair radiated out from her head like an explosion. She was from Nevada. The kind of girl you see driving a pickup truck into a town called Battle Mountain, or Winnemuca. They wear gabardine shirts and real Stetsons; their lips look soft but their eyes are too widely spaced ... sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, they seem to be looking around you. It made Gene uneasy, but excited.

He wanted to know how she happened to be way out here in Detroit. It was a long story, she said. She was cooking on her cousin's ranch and one day she drove into town for groceries. She stopped at the Stockman's Bar and there she met a salesman from St. Louis. She left the groceries to rot in the back of the pickup and went off with the salesman. He beat her up in Denver. Then he tried it again in Kansas City, but she managed to get his pistol out of his suitcase and shot him. He wasn't dead, but she was rid of him. She got to talking to a truck driver in a tavern on the Missouri side and he brought her on to Detroit. She didn't much care for Detroit.

Gene didn't like it either. All of his adult life he had dreamed of leaving. He loved to hear her tell about Nevada. He would go over to her place almost every night. It was tiny and hot and littered with magazines, dirty clothes, and the plastic garbage can in the kitchenette overflowed with beer bottles and crumpled cartons from the Dixie Bar-B-Q. But the bed was comfortable and it was a welcome change from his own apartment.

They would lie in bed and watch television. They ate barbecue and drank whiskey from the bottle, washing it down with Stroh's. Although he was already thirty years old, Gene had never had sex with anyone so uninhibited. She liked variety and she knew ways to do it that had never occurred to him. It was exciting, but also a little scarey. Gene worked for an insurance company. He hated it so much he could barely drag himself there each day. He developed sinus trouble. It was psychosomatic: he had "attacks" that kept him home an average of five days a month. He wondered how much longer the boss would tolerate that. It was just a prolonged way of quitting the job.

Some days he would call in with his head ready to explode and just in the course of conversation with the boss he would feel better. By ten a.m. he would feel fine. Instead of going to work for the rest of the day, however, he would go to Mister Luckey's. He loved to watch Megan dance. He thought she had terrific breasts. It excited him to see her whirling and hopping, shaking her tail, her fine breasts flying. It was even more exciting to be watching her in the company of a hundred staring men, and know that her flying body would be his to stroke in about an hour. She got excited, too. Sometimes he would go back to the tiny dressing room and she would demand that he take her, bending over the table, the door ajar. He supposed she sometimes made it with other guys, when he wasn't available, but he didn't know for sure and he didn't want to know. He loved to go home with her and lie in bed, drinking beer and making love, watching the afternoon movies on tv.

She was the one who suggested that they "do a job" together. She wanted to get back out West. Gene wanted to go out West, too. To get out of Detroit, to be with Megan, to be "out West" -- he would do anything. Anything. What did she have in mind?

Megan shrugged. "I don't know. A Brinks, maybe. A bank?"

It was so casual, the way she said it. Gene was thrilled. He laughed. "Let's go out right now and hit a bank," he said. It was like a terrific game.

"No," she said. "That only works if you think of it and do it, right while you're walking past the bank. You've ruined it, talking about it. We'll have to plan something."

Not long after, they began to go to baseball games. Megan said she loved baseball. Her father had been a semipro pitcher for the Wendover Waddies. Gene took off so many afternoons to accompany her to Tiger Stadium that he was now very close to being fired. But they saw some great games. Once they saw Cecil Fielder hit three homers, one of them onto the roof of the right-field stands.

Gene was having the time of his life. There was nothing like walking into the ballpark with this wild-haired woman in tight jeans and western shirt unbuttoned half-way to her navel. The park was full of kids and goofing-off salesmen and they all turned to watch Megan because she wore no bra under the gaping shirt.

Megan watched the game but she also walked around a lot. After several games she knew exactly when and how the receipts were collected and counted. She knew where they were taken and what time the armored car came to pick them up. And then she told Gene why they went to ballgames so often and what they were going to do.

Gene was jolted. The idea of "doing a job" had seemed exciting, once, but this idea of Megan's was a little too definite. It was too real. He had a sick feeling in his stomach. She really meant to pull a robbery. It wasn't a game anymore.

"There won't be enough take," he protested.

"Wait till Toronto comes to town," she said.

"It's too complicated," Gene said.

"I'll figure it out," Megan said. Gene nodded and tried to concentrate on the game before them. The Indians had loaded the bases against Doherty and now Sparky had gone to the mound to talk to his pitcher.

Several rows behind them, up under the grandstand roof, sat Detective Sergeant Mulheisen. He was there because he was following a guy who had maybe murdered three people. Mul was sure of it, but he had no proof. But the guy liked baseball and so did Mul. For the time being, he was content to go where the murderer did. And that's how he had noticed Megan. She liked to sit behind third base, in the front row of the second deck, just over the Tiger dugout. The murderer always sat in the same section. Mulheisen stayed up under the grandstand roof.

Mulheisen had taken to wearing light sport coats. The days were hot and he had to have something that would hide the .38 Airweight Chief's Special that was tucked into the back of his waistband. He sat up there smoking cigars and drinking beer. This is not a bad job, he would think. Especially with a woman like that to look at. She looked great, just great.

"It won't be easy," Megan told Gene. "We really need another hand. Maybe two. But where would we get them? Who could we trust? And then, there's the split. No, it's better just the two of us."

Gene responded to that notion. He had gotten over the initial shock. Now he enjoyed listening to her talk about the "job" -- as long as it was in the indeterminate future. Just the two of them. Take the money and run. She knew a place up in the high desert country on the Nevada-Oregon border. There was cabin there that used to be a line shack, for the cowboys, but nobody used it anymore. They could get up there without being seen. They would take enough food for weeks. And there was a trout stream nearby. They would lie up there among the mountain lupine and the Indian paintbrush and watch the eagles turn in the sky. And they'd make love in the sun.

Gene's mouth watered. He could see it. No more cities, no more sinus trouble. Just him and Megan, screwing in the sagebrush, among the jackrabbits. Once in awhile, they would run down to a little cowboy town in Nevada and spend some money on the card tables. Or maybe even take a little toot to Vegas.

There are four ticket offices at Tiger Stadium, on different sides of the ballpark. When the money was all in, near the end of the fourth inning, it was collected by two guards at each point and carried to an office in the basement where it was counted and then turned over to the guards again, to take to the armored car. The obvious place to hit was the counting room. But Megan didn't like that. She didn't want to be down in the basement, a long way from the light and the outdoors. She wanted to take the guards as they came from the ticket booths.

Working separately, they could do it. There were only two pairs of guards. Each pair collected from two booths. One man carried the bags and the other walked shotgun, except that he didn't have a shotgun, just a revolver. She figured that after the second pickup, when they were enroute to the counting room, you could come on them separately, show your gun, and walk them out of the park. She would handle the busier side, Michigan Avenue and Trumbull, and Gene could handle the other side.

The problem was getting the money out of the park. There were always a dozen cops or more, hanging around the ballpark. You weren't going to take the money away from the guards and then run out the gate, past the loitering cops, and jump into a waiting getaway car. Oh no. That was why you had to take the guards with you. You had to make them carry the bags.

Gene lay on the bed, watching Charlie Chan on tv and sipping beer. He looked relaxed and comfortable, but he wasn't. "I don't like it," he said. "You can't do it. Walk through the gate with two guards, holding a gun on them? Jesus."

"We don't show any iron," she said. "It'll look like they're taking the money to the armored car. We'll just stroll along behind, like we're leaving the game early. Only, you'll be on Cherry street and I'll be on Michigan."

"But you can't rely on the guards! They'll signal a cop. Or they'll turn on you."

"You have to convince them from the start that they'll get hurt if they try anything stupid."

"And how do you do that?" Gene asked, scornfully.

"Shoot one of them," Megan said. "The other one carries the bags."

"Are you nuts?" he shrieked.

"I didn't say kill him," Megan said. "You don't even have to shoot the son of a bitch. In fact, that's better. Just shoot the gun, close enough to let them know you mean business. The guard keeps his gun in his holster. You walk behi-- ..."

"Shoot? You shoot! And nobody hears it? You're fucking nuts!"

"We'll need silencers," Megan said, thoughtfully.

Gene slapped his forehead. "Silencers! We don't even have guns, for godssake! You know what you have to go through to buy a gun in this town?" He looked around wildly, as if addressing an audience, "And she's talking about silencers?"

Megan hopped out of bed and pranced across the room. The sun was shining in the grubby windows and the sparrows were raising hell in the rain gutters. All she wore was wool boot socks. Gene stared at her jiggling buttocks and forgot about the guns for a moment.

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