by Thomas Perry
“A thousand.”
“I was thinking more like ten.” She had moved her right hand under the bottom of her shirt, and now it rested on her belt, an inch from the pistol.
“I have to get a discount,” said Steinholm. “You know how this business works.”
“Sure,” she said.
His hand came up from under the worktable and set a pistol on the wooden surface; he kept his hand close to it.
“That makes me nervous,” she said.
“It’s there for our safety. I should have put it where I could reach it before. I’ll tell you what. I’ll take the diamonds on consignment now, and I’ll give you the ten thousand in a month.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“Look, I’m trying to give you what you want.”
“After a month.”
“I want the diamonds. I just don’t have the cash right now.” He paused. “And I’m willing to take the rest of the necklace for ten thousand when you come back.”
“No.”
“Now you’re starting to piss me off.” He snatched up the pistol and fired a round at the concrete floor that ricocheted upward and threw concrete chips toward the far wall. He looked at her as though that had settled it and set the gun down.
She pulled her own pistol and fired it into the ceiling above their heads, then instantly brought it down, already aimed at his chest. “No sale.” She glared at him as she backed all the way to the door, keeping the red dot of the laser sight on his chest. She felt for the knob without looking at it, opened the door, sidestepped out, ran to her car, and drove off.
6
Elle stopped a couple of miles away, took out the $6,000, and hid it in the well under the trunk with the car battery. Then she made a long circuit of the dark streets far from the Strip, looking behind her frequently before she proceeded to a trucking company warehouse near the train tracks on the east side of town.
The owner was a man named Stubbs who was well over eighty years old. He apparently had started with the long-haul trucking company and then had begun using the trucks to deliver things his clients didn’t want the police to see. He had long been known for delivering large loads: bales of marijuana, hijacked cargoes, parts stripped from stolen cars, groups of fugitives. The smaller items were said to have come later—overproductions and counterfeit versions of prescription drugs, jewelry, and other items that thieves like Elle brought for sale.
She knew the trucking company opened in the early morning, but it had armed guards on duty all the time, and that made the parking lot a safe place to sleep. The lot was vast, well paved, and empty at this hour except for a long line of trucks and about ten cars parked where there would have been room for two hundred. She parked in the open, far from any other vehicle; locked the doors; and slept until nearly dawn, when men began arriving and moving trucks around in the lot. She knew that when they were ready to meet with her the loadmaster would send someone out to summon her.
This time it was a man with a white cowboy hat and boots. He leaned on the roof of her car and said, “Hello, miss. Do you have something to ship?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay, come on inside.”
She had the merchandise in her backpack, so she swung it over her shoulder and followed him to the door beside the loading dock. He took her to the loadmaster, who was just getting set up for the day in his office. He looked at her and nodded. “You know how this works. You show the estimator the goods.”
“Right.”
He opened his office’s inner door, which led to a succession of rooms without ceilings built on the warehouse floor, and called, “We need an estimate!” Then he left.
A man about sixty years old with a bald head and a paunch that hung over his belt emerged from one of the other rooms beyond, carrying a paper cup of coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other. He set the coffee on the desk in front of Elle and went back to get another from an unseen pot. When he returned he sat down and waited.
They stared at each other for a few seconds while he sipped his coffee. She wondered if he knew she would never drink hers. It would be too easy to have put something like GHB or Rohypnol in the coffee. In two hours her backpack could be trucking its way to a dishonest jeweler in New Jersey, while she was unconscious on her way to a brothel in Mexico.
Finally the man said, “Whatever you’d like to say, I’m all ears.”
“Oh. You were waiting for me to say it first. I get it. I have some stuff that I would like to sell.”
“All right.”
She reached into the backpack on her lap and brought out the box of yellow diamonds. “There are thirty of these, ranging from about two to six carats.”
The estimator reached into a drawer, took out a jeweler’s loupe, and adjusted the desk lamp to throw a bright concentrated light on one spot. He examined the stones one by one, setting them on the desk in a perfect line, largest to smallest, so she could see he didn’t switch or hide any. He announced, “Two hundred each. That’s six thousand.”
“Five hundred,” Elle said.
“Four. That makes it twelve.”
“All right, four,” she said.
“Anything else?”
“Two high-end pistols. A Les Baer special 1911 and an Ed Brown signature.”
“Can I see them?”
She took them out of her pack one at a time and set them on the desk. He examined the finish on each one with a magnifying glass, from handgrip to muzzle. He opened the chambers and looked into the barrels. “Very nice,” he said. “Mint condition. Of course, they stand out. They’re numbered limited editions.”
“They sell for three thousand each in this condition.”
“Yes, they do,” the estimator said. “I’ll give you three hundred each.”
“Five.”
He smiled. “You know they need delicate handling. They’re dangerous to even own. We’d have to ship them far away to do anything with them at all.”
“Yes,” she said. “But you will.”
His smile returned. “All right. Four.”
He made a note on his clipboard. “Twelve for the stones, eight hundred for the pistols.” He took the pistols off the desk and put them in another drawer.
She decided it was time for the hard one. “I’ve got a very good sapphire in an old art deco platinum-and-diamond setting. I’ll understand if you can’t afford it.”
“Show me.”
She unbuttoned the neck of her shirt and lifted the necklace off over her head, watching the estimator’s eyes. She set it on the counter so the big sapphire faced him.
She could see he appreciated it. He was nodding to himself, and his eyes never moved from it. He held the sapphire up so he could see it with the magnifying glass. She said, “It’s not like some of the new ones that are pieced together with epoxy or something.”
“I can see that,” he said. He looked at her. “Is it a work of art?”
“No.”
“Has it been in a museum or a major private collection?”
“It came from a house. The necklace was in the safe in a closet.”
He seemed to know she wasn’t lying. “We still might have to cut up the stone into normal-sized jewels—maybe eight. If it were my choice I’d set each of those with some of the platinum and diamonds. It costs money to make a stone presentable and sell it to anybody but a billionaire.”
“I know,” she said. “Do you want to make me an offer?”
“Five thousand.”
“Did you say twenty-five?”
“You know the problems.”
“I do. But you could turn a fifty-thousand-dollar stone into eight thirty-thousand-dollar stones. Reusing the platinum and diamonds makes them forty-thousand-dollar jewels, and anybody who owns a car dealership or a real estate brokerage can buy that as a Christmas present.”
“True,” he said. “But it means having to pay for the work on eight pieces and then having to make eight safe sales.” He loo
ked at his watch. “Last offer, and then I have to move on to some other business. Ten thousand.”
Elle made a face, pursing her lips and looking upward. “Okay.”
She watched the estimator make more notations on his pad. He looked up. “Now, where were these things taken from?”
“All from Southern California: Huntington Park, San Marino, Bel-Air, Beverly Hills, Encino.” She knew he was making a note that all of it should be transported across the country for sale. Nothing would go back to L.A.
He made other notes. “You know anything about that three-way in Beverly Hills a few days ago?”
She considered denying it, but then she’d have to listen to his version of it. “I couldn’t help it. They have it on the news twenty-four-seven.”
“I figured. It’s right in the middle of your territory. I heard both women were married.”
“I heard that too. That leaves two rich widowers. Maybe I’ll marry one.”
“Suit yourself. Just don’t give him a reason to shoot you.” He used his phone as a calculator. “Twelve thousand for the yellow diamonds. Eight hundred for the pistols. Ten thousand for the sapphire necklace. I make that twenty-two eight. That sound right?”
“Sounds right.”
He opened a third drawer of the desk and took out two banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills. “Ten thousand, twenty thousand.” He reached in again and came up with two thin-banded stacks of hundreds. “Twenty-two.” He reached in for another thousand, tore the band, and counted, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,” and put the last two hundreds back and closed the drawer.
“Thank you,” she said, and worked to put the various stacks into order and slip them into her backpack.
“Don’t mention it.”
Elle hung the backpack on her shoulder, turned, and walked out the door. She heard it lock behind her. Twenty-two eight was good. Added to the $6,000 from Steinholm for the watches, it was $28,800. The total was about what she had hoped, roughly 10 percent of retail. With what was left of the cash she’d stolen the other night, she had pushed disaster $30,000 away.
That would do what she wanted right now and keep her and Sharon out of town—maybe even out of the country—for a long time. If she could have stayed home it would have supported her for six months or more. Traveling with Sharon was expensive. Elle would try to keep the cost to $500 or $600 a day, but probably fail.
The money didn’t matter much to either of them except as a way of buying time, and Sharon was a good travel companion. She was beautiful, long-legged, shapely, brash, loud, and completely without inhibitions, so she made friends instantly. She had been a poker player for a number of years, so she was an astute judge of strangers, and had gotten used to staying awake for days at a time, or taking a twenty-minute nap and waking refreshed. It was not unusual for her to go on an adventure with little money, because she knew she could make more when she needed it. Men had paid for most things in her life, and when they didn’t pay, she could still play poker and was not averse to finding temporary work or inventing it.
Elle judged that if they stayed out of Los Angeles for just a month, the police would probably have a favorite suspect in the murder case. And they would certainly have determined that the murderer was a male. The recording that Elle had placed where they could not fail to find it would eliminate her. If she could stay away for a second month, the police would probably have made an arrest. In any case, they would not be searching for a female burglar of small stature. She could come home safely.
By then the ecosystem would be restored and probably healed. New rich people and the ones who wanted to mate with them would have arrived to replace the ones who had gone, bringing new parasites and sycophants with them. Life would be tranquil again.
As Elle walked across the huge parking lot to the center, where she had parked, she noticed that there were now many more cars. The main workforce had arrived and begun the day shift, and trucks were lining up to be loaded and on their way to distant destinations.
There was a set of headlights that went on in the parking lot as she drove off. She wondered who would be driving out right now—a night watchman? She had been one of the first outsiders to do business this morning. Maybe the man had forgotten that he’d had the lights on when he’d parked at night, because he turned them off after a few seconds. The sky was now bright, so she could see that the car was a blue two shades lighter than most people liked. It was almost royal blue.
Elle looked ahead to see where she was going and then back to see if the blue car was going there too. What she saw worried her. It was a second car, this one white, that was coming out of the lot on the tail of the first.
The two cars appeared to have little in common. Their moving now was a bit odd. When she had come out of the building she had not seen anyone else walking toward his car and saw nobody sitting in one. Had they been hiding, keeping their heads down, or had they run out of the building to follow her?
The best way to follow a car was to use two or more cars. That method allowed one car to keep an eye on the prey while the other either dropped back out of sight or pulled far ahead and kept in touch by phone. Few people were alert enough or scared enough to make the connection between the two cars. She decided she was scared enough.
She got onto Interstate 15 and headed for Los Angeles. The driving was seldom a problem at this hour unless there was construction on the road, and today there was none. She tried slowing down and then speeding up. Both the white and the blue car slowed and then sped up. After a few minutes the white car dropped back until it was not visible in her rearview mirror. When she slowed again, the white car reappeared and the blue one sped ahead.
Elle wasn’t sure what was going on. She began to regret that her route and direction were so predictable. She couldn’t elude a follower by turning off at Jean or Mountain Pass or Baker. They were just rest stops along Interstate 15. In her favor was the fact that she was in some of the driest, most inhospitable land on the planet, but it had an enormous, fast, smooth highway across it, traversed at all hours by thousands of tourists, interstate trucks, and military transport vehicles. It was a rather public place to pull a woman over in daylight and do her some kind of harm.
She stepped on the gas pedal and pushed her speed as high as she could as she crossed into California at Primm. If the men in the blue car and the white car were cops who had followed her from California, now was going to be the time. She was in California again and she was giving them a reason to pull her over. They would come after her now or drop back. If they were just creeps trying to get her they wouldn’t want to be pulled over by police at ninety … ninety-five … a hundred.
She was heading for Barstow, and as she saw the signs she slowed abruptly and took Exit 184 onto Main Street. She kept going until she reached a mechanic’s shop and turned in between two cars parked in front. As she got out and walked to the open bay she began to feel the fierce heat of the sun on her back and neck. The temperature had risen rapidly since early morning. She glanced back up the road but didn’t see either of the two cars. She stepped into the shade of the building.
A man with freckled skin and strawberry-blond hair and eyebrows stepped out holding a red shop rag in his hands. “Good morning,” he said. His smile was boyish and hopeful.
Oh that, she thought. Men her age all seemed to be interested in every woman until she was proved undesirable or scary. Elle could see her arrival had raised his initial idea of the potential of the day. All business, she said, “I think somebody may have hidden a transponder in or under my car while I was parked overnight. Some creep in Las Vegas, you know?”
He nodded. “That happens sometimes. Are you being stalked?”
“I’m starting to think so. I would like to pay you to take a close look at the car. If you find something that doesn’t belong there, please take it off.”
“Sure. It’s just that I have a couple of cars ahead of you.”
“I’ll give
you five hundred dollars in cash. You can give each of the two owners a hundred-dollar discount for waiting and still keep three hundred. I don’t know who this is, but there were people following me until a few minutes ago. I think I surprised them when I pulled off the highway and they went past, but if we wait long enough, they’ll be back here.”
“All right. Are the keys in it?”
“Yes.”
He got in, started her car, and drove it into the empty bay. Then he got out and raised the car on the hydraulic lift. He unhooked a light that consisted of a single two-hundred-watt bulb in a caged reflector with a hook and then began to walk back and forth, staring up at the undercarriage.
Elle said, “Do you have a bathroom?”
“Yeah, right around the corner of the building. The key’s on that ring on the wall by the doorway.”
She found the key and went to the restroom. It had a mirror that somebody had etched with a diamond: KYLIE + NEIL. She assumed the scratcher was Kylie. She promised the universe that if somebody ever gave her a diamond ring she wouldn’t use it to deface a public bathroom. Then she took out the folded hundred-dollar bills from her jeans and counted out five of them.
When she returned and hung up the key, the mechanic was wiping his hands on the red rag again and the car was back on the ground. She asked, “Find anything?”
He said, “I found three of them,” and pointed to the workbench. There were two plastic disks, one white and one blue, and a flat black rectangle with two wires protruding from it. He picked them up one by one. “These two are battery operated. They probably only transmit for a few hours. They have a magnet, so you just put them on any surface that’s steel, like a door panel. The black one was connected to a circuit in the fuse box under the dashboard. If you close the cover it can’t be seen, and it lasts until somebody finds it.”
Elle handed him the $500. “Are you sure you got all of them?”
“Pretty sure,” he said.
“How do we make sure they’re not working now?”
