Hard Luck

Gerald Kowalski has a scan with months on it, a son buried since February, and forty-one years of insurance brackets that all come out in the same place. His wife Meredith has never met a problem she couldnt manage with a list. So the end has been planned like everything else: a Friday morning, a kitchen timer, and the good coffee measured to run out that day.

With a little over two hours left on the timer, $565,000 of stolen bank money drops off a getaway helicopter. One duffel lands in the front gutter; the other comes through the garage roof.

They dont call anyone. Meredith writes rules instead: nothing traceable, nothing over nine thousand dollars, nothing that outlives them.

A crew boss with an eight-minute plan and nothing to show for it narrows the drop to six blocks of Linden Street. One of his crew finds the Kowalskis a day before he does. An FBI agent working out of a hallway that used to be a supply closet has drawn a line six blocks wide across their neighborhood.

Meanwhile Meredith pays cash for a massage, Gerald settles up with his tailor and buys a case of Chianti, then goes to a casino to lose two thousand dollars of their own savings. He cannot stop winning at craps.

Read it before your own schedule falls apart.