by Al Macy
Contents
TITLE PAGE
BOOK OFFER PAGE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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BOOK OFFER PAGE II
ALSO BY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Day Before Yesterday's Thief
A Prequel to the Eric Beckman Series
By Al Macy
AlMacyAuthor.com
Copyright © 2018 Al Macy
All Rights Reserved.
Version: RC01 2018/04/22 8:53
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CHAPTER ONE
One second after I’d scooped the jewels from the safe, the door to the condo opened. I froze with five diamond bracelets, one necklace, and the Portensia diamond clutched in my gloved hand.
La naiba! Damn. I had four options.
First, run out the door, leaving the owner openmouthed. Most “civilians” were so shocked to see a stranger in their living space that they found themselves rooted to the floor in disbelief.
Second, knock the owner down and run. But I don’t go in for the rough stuff. Unless it’s necessary.
Third, talk my way out of it. After scaling the building’s wall, I’d slipped a clingy pink dress over my black leotard. Instead of a cat burglar, I looked like a sexy woman with a poor sense of fashion. I’ve used that option successfully in hotels—oops, wrong room, bye!—but this was a high-class condo. Nobody enters the penthouse suite by mistake.
Fourth option: hide.
Voices! I leaned forward, listening. A man and a woman. They were laughing as they entered the condo’s living room. I squinted and turned an ear toward them. Were they drunk?
I went with my fourth option. I leaned out of the closet and looked around the bedroom for a place to hide. Reflected light from the city filtered in through the windows and reflected off the hardwood floor. Hide behind the thick drapes? No, they might see my feet.
Hide in the closet? No. Closets make lousy hiding places. The evening had been warm—July on the Riviera—so they wouldn’t be wearing coats, but Ms. Gautier was likely to take off her jewelry and return it to the safe.
The bed! I pushed off the side wall of the closet, ready to sprint over and slide under it. The knob on the bedroom’s door turned. I reversed course, slipping and almost turning an ankle before jumping back into the closet. Aargh! Was close call.
Ms. Gautier opened the door, snapped on the light, and called out to her companion, “Fais-nous le soixante-quinze!”
French wasn’t anything like Romanian, but like a good European, I’d learned it growing up. Gautier wanted him to make cocktails. The “French 75.” If she came to the closet I’d run out of the condo and hope that her boyfriend—big, from the sound of his voice—would be distracted. But she didn’t. She headed for the bathroom. The second she closed the door, I returned all the jewelry to the safe. Except for the Portensia diamond, of course. I slid that into my pocket, slipped off my backpack, tiptoed across the floor, and slithered under the bed.
It was a tight fit. Not dusty though. Only the best maid service in this world-class high-rise.
The toilet flushed, and the rich matron came back into the bedroom. She headed for the closet, diamonds glinting from her gaudy shoes. A wave of her perfume—classy but way too heavily applied—rolled under the bed. I wrinkled my nose.
Based on the sounds that reached me, she’d put her jewelry back into the safe. No exclamation of surprise. Bine. Good. She clicked it shut and spun the dial. Conclusion: Her companion was young and attractive. She’d left the safe open when the condo was empty. Typical. Why bother locking and unlocking the safe each night when your building has great security? But she had enough sense to appreciate that the firm, young hunk wasn’t attracted to her sagging dowager ass. He wasn’t to be trusted. Time to lock away the valuables.
She slipped off her pumps and kicked them to the wall. Mr. Gold Digger called from the other room, “Viviana!”
I startled, knocking my forehead against the underside of the bed. Then I smiled. Ms. Gautier and I had the same first name. Yeah, I knew that, but it was still a shock to hear my name called during a job. I guess I was more keyed up than I realized. I took a quiet but deep breath.
“Ici!” Gautier answered. In here.
The man entered the bedroom, and from the sounds, I inferred he was holding a tray with a shaker full of French 75s—ice, gin, and sweetened lemon juice.
“Ooh la la!” The seventy-year-old widow sat on the bed. I’d seen her and estimated her weight at 100 kilos, but the bed was sturdy—it didn’t sag. Much.
He poured drinks and joined her. They clinked glasses. The next round came quickly. They were in a hurry. The lights dimmed. Pieces of clothing dropped to the floor on both sides of the bed. A thong put an unwanted picture in my head. Heavy breathing and long moans soon followed.
I might have been turned on had I not seen the photos of the overweight dowager in the paper. The photos that told me what jewelry she owned. Didn’t rich women realize that the society pages were like the Sears catalog for jewel thieves?
Strangely, snafus like this were what I lived for. Sure, the feeling of climbing a high-rise, picking a lock, and getting inside a forbidden space made me feel like Superwoman. Finding an unlocked safe and choosing the highest quality jewels was a rush. But for me—and this made little sense—the biggest thrill came when things went wrong. When I had to find a way out of a jam. It was addictive.
Yes, my compulsion was an illness. Kleptomania. But the desire to have things go wrong was a disease on top of a disease. I was lucky, however. I’d already stolen a fortune. I could quit anytime … yes?
Things above me finally came to a noisy climax, followed by noisier snoring. I closed my eyes, listening hard. Only one person was snoring. Was the other breathing regularly?
I looked at my radium-dial watch: 3:14. Showtime. Even if someone was awake up there, they probably wouldn’t be looking at the floor. And I would be soundless. It was something I was good at.
In slow motion, I slid my body from under the bed. I paused, listening to the breathing—no change—and slid some more. I flipped over onto my stomach. With my slim backpack in front of me, I pushed my hands against the floor, ready to rise, when something grabbed my ankle. The bulldog grip was strong enough to shoot a wave of pain up my leg. I spun my head around.
Mr. Gold Digger! Lying stomach down, half off the bed, he stared at me with a lopsided grin. The light was dim, but he was getting a good look at my face. Nu e bine. Not good. He was indeed about forty years younger than Ga
utier. His long blond hair looked like Farrah Fawcett’s. I pulled and kicked but couldn’t dislodge his hand. He brought the other arm out from under the covers. The old lady’s snoring stopped.
I slid closer to the bed and kicked such that his wrist slammed into the metal edge on the bottom of the box springs. That snapped off his silly grin. He let go and grabbed his injured wrist with his other hand. I could have kicked him in the head, but as I said, I don’t go in for the rough stuff.
Go, go, go! I got my feet under me and, like a runner from the starting blocks, exploded toward the door, snagging my backpack on the way. Out in the tiny hallway, I bypassed the elevator and slammed into the stairwell. No sounds of pursuit. Yet.
My backpack on, I flew down the stairs, five at a time, grabbing the railing and whipping around on each landing toward the next flight. I’d actually practiced this as part of my conditioning. But one misstep and I’d sprain an ankle. Still no sounds of pursuit by the naked gold digger. Nine more floors to go. My rope was neatly coiled in my backpack. At the second floor, I’d exit into the community exercise room, sprint out to the balcony, and rappel down to the ground. This might work.
On the third floor—almost there—disaster. I was flying down one flight of stairs when I caught sight of a man sprinting up the next flight. We were both headed for the same landing. He had a handgun stretched out in front of him.
Without slowing down, he fired! The explosion was deafening in the echoey stairwell.
When you’ve been shot, you gain a whole new relationship with guns. My mind flashed to the job back in Bucharest, when it had happened to me. In mid-jump, I reexperienced that sting in my side. Without that episode in my past, I might have ignored the warning shot and continued past the security guard, perhaps even trying to grab the gun. Of course, that’s the attitude that got me shot in the first place.
My mind is a little fluffy on what happened next. I think I stumbled at the landing and smashed my head into the cinder block wall of the stairwell. Did I lose consciousness? The next thing I knew, I was handcuffed. My hands were in front of me, with the chain between the cuffs encircling the railing. I blinked and shook my head. I needed my wits about me. Have gotten out of worse situations. Wake the hell up!
The young security guard pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. Based on his wild shot, he was inexperienced. But if he called the police, I’d be sunk. Even if I cast away the Portensia diamond, they’d probably find it.
I had a better idea. He was standing too close to me—another rookie error. I exploded up and kicked at his hand radio. The walkie-talkie flew straight up. He grabbed at it on its way down but missed. We both watched it fall down the central space of the stairwell. Its faraway impact on the floor of the basement echoed up to us. Its walking and talking days were over.
“Ça ne t’aidera pas,” he said, still out of breath. That won’t help you.
I shrugged, keeping my head down. Actually, it would help a lot. He ran down the stairs to retrieve the radio or, more likely, call the police from the front desk.
There are three ways to defeat handcuffs. One is to fashion a key and pick the lock. The second is easier: use an actual key. I slid my hands down toward my shoes and pulled my handcuff key from a Velcroed pocket. I pushed it into the keyhole and turned it. I did it again. It didn’t work. La naiba! Most handcuffs use the same universal key, but apparently these did not.
The third way is to defeat the ratchet. Handcuffs have a tongue that slides into place and ratchets shut. Teeth on the tongue mate with those on a spring-loaded pawl. I pulled my shim from the other shoe. It looked like a long, thin key with no serrations on it. I pushed it in along the toothed tongue until it stopped. Then I pushed both the tongue and the shim in farther, squeezing my wrist painfully. The shim raised the spring-loaded teeth, disengaging them from the tongue. I held it in place and slipped open the cuff on my left wrist.
With the cuffs dangling from my right wrist, I headed down one more level, went through the exercise room, and began to pull my rope from the backpack. But I froze. I saw a much faster way to get down. Back in the exercise room, I propped the door open, moved farther inside, and ran. Through the door, across the balcony. I dove over the railing. Just like my favorite mount on the uneven parallels but without the half twist or kip on the high bar.
Would I make it? Part dive, but mostly belly flop, I hit the water of the pool less than a meter from the edge. My toes grazed the cement and my chin grazed the bottom, but it worked. I didn’t die. I pulled myself from the water, sprinted around the pool, climbed over the fence, and ran.
The sound of pursuing steps reached me. I glanced back. Someone in plain clothes. Not the guard. A man from the hotel? The Farrah Fawcett guy?
He was gaining on me. I ran faster.
“Help! Aidez-moi!” I yelled.
The picture favored me: a woman in a pink dress being chased by a big man. I’d gathered up the cuffs in my right hand; from a distance an observer would see what looked like a bracelet. Dawn was approaching. My lead was dropping.
Finally, someone put two and two together and came up with five. A garbage truck accelerated and got ahead of my pursuer. It jolted onto the sidewalk. The brakes hissed, and two burly men jumped out. They grabbed him. Game over.
I turned a corner and slowed to an easy jog. I wended my way back to my rented Porsche, dropped into it, and unfastened the remaining cuff. I let out a breath. The Portensia diamond would be my best souvenir yet. Maybe I could stop thieving now. Or not.
Of course, I had to get it past customs before I could get it home to San Francisco. Should I mail it? I shivered. No, too risky. Customs wouldn’t be a problem. Would it?
* * *
At SFO, the customs agent’s gaze passed over me then snapped back. A classic double take. His eyes narrowed as if he’d found something he’d been looking for. He jabbed a finger right at my nose then pointed toward the special exam room. I should have mailed it!
I frowned. “Me?” He couldn’t hear me, but he must have noticed the puzzled look on my face. I stepped back, knocking over the suitcase of the man behind me in line—the guy who’d flirted with me on the plane. I fumbled his bag upright. With a deep breath, I followed the agent toward a glass-walled exam chamber.
My flustered body language was loud and clear: There must be some mistake—I’ve never been accused of wrongdoing. My outfit communicated a story of high status and financial well-being: a body-hugging black dress matching my hair color. An open white coat of the finest Mongolian cashmere flowed behind me as my spike heels clacked across the marble floor. I have more money than I can ever spend, it said.
In the chamber, another agent joined us and shut the door, snapping off the din from SFO’s echoey customs area. The fluorescent ceiling lights flickered and buzzed. Agent number one held out his hand. All business, no smile. And way too much Old Spice cologne. I caught a glimpse of the composite sketch on the curly fax paper in his other hand.
I gave him my passport and declaration form. “Is problem?”
The agent ignored me. He leafed through the passport. “Ms. Tatiana Petrescu.” A statement, not a question. “Born in Romania. Age … uh … twenty-eight years. In the US since 1972 … six years. What was the purpose of your trip?”
“Les Charleaux.”
He looked up.
“Sorry. Is annual Saint-Tropez festival, yes? Arts, dance, concerts.” I crossed my arms, standing without moving, my face neutral. He stared. Men do that. In general, my features are delicate, with high cheekbones and a small chin. My nose is long—aristocrat nose? Is good nose.
The second agent removed every single item from my bags, spreading them on the table. He patted each one as if he might discover something sewn inside. Next, he searched for hidden compartments in my luggage. He found none. With a stainless dental instrument, he scooped out the contents of each of my lipstick tubes. He opened my jewelry case and held up a diamond necklace.
“I reg
ister jewelry when left States.” I pointed to my leather portfolio case.
Agent number two opened it and examined the forms. He held a finger on each list item while he located the corresponding piece of jewelry.
“Have nothing to hide. You make mistake, yes?” I said. “You think am someone else. I forgive you, you are doing job, but can please be hurrying?”
Next, they took me to a windowless room where I waited an hour. Finally, a babushka-shaped matron entered, pushing a wave of garlic breath in front of her. “Time for your body cavity search, honey.” She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and smiled.
La naiba! Damn. My forgiveness evaporated as the disgusting woman poked and prodded. She was enjoying it. Some kind of … what is word? Pervert.
After another hour alone in the locked room, a third customs agent entered and told me I was free to leave. No explanation. No apology.
I wheeled my luggage out to the curb. I took a deep breath of humid San Francisco air and shook out my hands, willing away the irritation. Is all part of job, yes? Is worth it?
It was worth it. Jewels: the most portable form of wealth. The small vial contained the priceless Portensia diamond.
The police were unaware of my real name, Viviana Petki. No one had my fingerprints. As always, I’d used gloves on the job—gloves like those belonging to the garlic-breathed woman.
The agents had seen the police Identikit sketch of me. Am getting sloppy. At least the nose was all wrong.
Of course, I didn’t have the vial anymore. Not a vial, actually, but a container of French Chapstick: Dermophil Indien. I’d scooped out the contents and melted them. I’d dropped the diamond in and poured the balm back. When it hardened, there was nothing suspicious about the container except some added weight. It wouldn’t have escaped the thorough customs search I’d just gone through, however.
I’d slipped the Chapstick vial into the luggage of the man behind me in line. The one who’d flirted with me on the plane. Must now locate him. Would he find the jewels in his suitcase? I pictured him unpacking and finding the lip balm. Throwing it away? Aargh! Maybe he would use it and be surprised to find a diamond at the bottom.
