The Day Before Yesterday's Thief: A Prequel to the Eric Beckman Series

by Al Macy

  I was holding a ten-dollar bill in my hand, ready to pay for a pound of kashkaval cheese, when something caught my eye. I gasped. How can that be? I threw down the cash and ran along the aisle between the food stands.

  Some old docks extended into the bay from the edge of the flea market, and a few workers were unloading boxes from an aging tugboat. It didn’t seem kosher, but they weren’t trying to hide anything.

  What caught my eye was the man walking out along the pier alongside a pole-thin woman. He had his arm on her shoulder in a familiar way. Were laughing?

  The man was Bolton. My husband Bolton. The husband who’d said he would be in Toronto.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The couple was far away, but it had to be him. Yes? I recognized his easy saunter. And he was wearing the maroon-and-white striped rugby shirt I’d given him. That must have been what caught my attention.

  I got to the chain-link fence at the edge of the market, clawed my fingers into it, and stared. What would give for binoculars. When the man turned to look over his shoulder, I jumped back into a booth selling Persian rugs.

  An Arab woman manning the booth tapped me on the shoulder. “Can I help you?”

  I gritted my teeth. I took off my distinctive hat—one Bolton was familiar with—and eased my head around the rug hanging from the side of the booth. Carly Simon’s “You Belong to Me” echoed from the boom box.

  I had to make sure. I had to get closer. Two brick buildings stood near the dock. I threaded my way through the crowd, climbed over a fence, and slipped into the alley. Perfect, he would have to walk past the bay-side opening of the passageway. A chain-link fence at the end ensured that he wouldn’t come into the alley, and a dumpster provided me with cover. I’d only have a second or two to see him, but that would be enough.

  Some talking from out on the dock reached me. I couldn’t understand the words, but the tones were those of people winding up a meeting—about to say goodbye.

  “Give me your fucking purse.”

  The words were spoken with a quaver, and something hard jabbed into my back. I acted without thought, as my cousin Cezar had taught me. The element of surprise can be reversed, because an immediate response is unexpected.

  I shifted to one side as I spun around, bringing my hand down on the pistol and turning it away from me—unu. I punched the man in the face—doi. With one hand on his wrist, I twisted the gun out of his grip—trei.

  I stepped back and pointed the Saturday night special at his forehead. I pulled the trigger but stopped myself before the gun fired. He was a teenager wearing a hoodie, a peach-fuzz mustache on his upper lip.

  “Pleacă!” I said. My tone was urgent but calm.

  He frowned.

  I glanced down at the stain growing below his crotch. I looked him in the eye. “Run away!”

  He turned and ran. I ducked back behind the dumpster. I smiled at my automatic use of Romanian, but the smile faded quickly. The kid probably ruined my chance of getting a definite ID of my shitfuck husband. I waited for him to come by. And waited and waited. No, I’d missed my chance. He was gone. I wiped my prints off the gun and tossed it into the dumpster.

  But had to be him. The way he walked. And, of course, the shirt.

  Maybe he’d just come home from the conference two days early. Maybe he’d be home when I got there and explain—what?—that he’d gotten some art supplies off a boat at a decomposing pier?

  If he was home when I got there, he’d have some explaining to do. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. But if he phoned, as he does when on the road, and told me about his day in Toronto …

  … then he was a dead man.

  * * *

  The skills that had saved my life on several occasions stemmed from a single, tragic event that happened when I was fifteen.

  I grew up in Alba Iulia, a small city in the region of Romania known as Transylvania. Both my mother and father died soon after I was born, and I was raised by Uncle Zaharia and his companion, a woman I referred to as my mother. We lived together in one of a row of connected mud-brick rooms. Hovels, really. The roofs consisted of canvas sheets laid over leaky corrugated sheet metal and weighed down with old tires.

  Our fortunes changed dramatically when we discovered a cache of stolen jewels that my great-uncle Flavius had left us. The event tied us to the criminal side of our family.

  My cousin Cezar’s income came from his annual monthlong camps held in the mountains. Because the government was intent on eliminating these “seminars” and killing Cezar, they were held in a new, secret location each time. They provided the kind of training that special forces might receive, and the primary focus changed each year, with topics rotating among weapons, hand-to-hand combat, espionage, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare.

  In the fifties, most of the participants were members of the anti-communist resistance movement. Regular criminals also attended, particularly those in organized crime. That was why the government did everything it could to locate the camps and why Cezar had a bounty on his head.

  From an early age, my twin brother, Costi, and I were required to help out at the camps. I always spent the year looking forward to them. Living rough in the dense forests, cooking outdoors, eating Carpathian boar roasted on a spit—it fit my personality perfectly. Each camp was preceded with a week of cutting down trees, setting up floorless, canvas tents, gathering firewood, and stocking the mess tent. One year it rained continuously for the whole session, but somehow the challenge of overcoming the elements and feeling tough outweighed the dreariness of damp sleeping bags and moldy tents.

  It seemed that I always had some burn or cut resulting from cooking and camp maintenance, but I had no choice but to ignore the pain. Excellent training in itself.

  Costi didn’t fare as well. Although he looked like a conniving street urchin, with hooded eyes and a narrow face, a more loving, sympathetic soul never existed. He was always bringing home abandoned kittens and dogs even after Zaharia explained the futility of it.

  He could handle the onerous living conditions: the cold, the mud, the insects. Like me, he was tough in that way. But the violent nature of the men—and occasional women—in the camp bothered him. At night, lying on low canvas cots in our tent, he confided that he couldn’t watch a man learning how to maim or kill without imagining the pain of the victim. He said he directly experienced the sorrow that he was sure the relatives would feel. The exact opposite of a sociopath.

  “But what if the actions were taken in self-defense?” I asked him. “Or to help us throw off the oppression of the communists?” Yes, I’d been thoroughly indoctrinated with the sentiments and word choices of the campers.

  He shrugged. “It makes no difference. I feel what I feel.”

  One night, when Costi and I were fifteen, a thunderstorm raged through the camp. We slept soundly in spite of the thunder and flapping canvas. I had curled into a ball because the lower two-thirds of my sleeping bag was soaking wet.

  The rain beating against the roof of our tent is what prevented me from hearing the entrance of Bear. Most in the camp had a nickname. Mine was “Mânie,” meaning mania or fury. It came from my explosive temper.

  Bear resembled his namesake, with a barrel chest and a belly of hard fat. He often invited others to strike him in the stomach as hard as they could. Even if someone did exactly that when he wasn’t expecting it, it never managed to wipe his evil smile off his face.

  My first clue of what was happening was the collapse of my cot. Bear had crept over me with his hands and knees on the wooden side supports of the bed. I woke to his foul alcohol-and-pork breath. I pulled myself from the depths of my sleep like someone pulling her legs from knee-deep mud. I immediately knew what was happening—my childhood was anything but sheltered. The man was going to rape me.

  It was the first time I experienced my strange and wonderful time dilation, but Bear was the strongest man in camp. What could I do? I tried to knee him in the groin, but I was in my hea
vy sleeping bag. A flash of lightning showed me Bear’s evil grin. In my heightened state, I even noticed the glint from the drool at one corner of his mouth.

  I reached for the hunting knife on the ground between Costi and me. Because the cot had collapsed, it was within easy reach. But it was gone. Had Bear taken it? With one hand around my neck, the monster jerked the sleeping bag down with the other. He pressed himself down on me.

  Costi’s scream was so shrill and loud, it seemed to momentarily quiet the sounds of the storm. Another flash showed him plunging the knife into Bear’s waist. Bear bellowed and arched back, away from me. I scrambled around and searched through the mud in the blackness for one of the rocks we’d placed around our shelter.

  Bear and Costi tumbled out of the tent. The frequent lightning flashes allowed me to witness—in a series of still images—my twin’s fury. It matched my own. I found a rock the size of a grapefruit and ran to the man-versus-boy melee. I couldn’t strike because they shifted around so—there! A flash illuminated the struggle, and I heaved the rock down toward Bear’s now-bloody back. The bodies moved so quickly. Had I struck Costi by mistake?

  The struggle only lasted another moment. Bear gave a final grunt and ran off, crashing away through the undergrowth.

  Even before running to my twin, I knew he was gone. There had been something between us, almost as if we could read one another’s minds, but it was gone. I picked up his body, my hand running over the bloody canyon that went across his neck.

  I descended into a state of catatonia from which no one could rouse me. I had no memory of the next several days. Without needing to be told, Cezar understood what had happened in our tent. I learned later that he and the other men had hunted Bear down. Cezar tore him apart with his bare hands and even cut off his head and brought it back to camp on a spike.

  It took a week for Cezar to bring me out of my torpor. There was no sympathy or cuddling involved. No one held me or stroked my hair. I was, that year, the only female in a secret commando training camp, after all. Instead, Cezar appealed to me to toughen up. He used the Romanian equivalent of the expression, “Shit happens. Get over it.”

  I have never fully recovered from the loss of my soul mate. I have never told anyone that I suspected my ill-timed blow played a part in his death.

  Cezar felt responsible for what happened, and his atonement included a resolution to make me the world’s toughest, meanest fighter. I should mention that Cezar was Andrei’s father. At the time of this incident, Andrei was only one year old, at home with his mother in Bucharest.

  My extreme training began almost immediately after I emerged from my dormancy. Like a butterfly’s cocoon, those days marked the division between the two phases of my life. That year’s camp focused on hand-to-hand combat, and the camp’s expert drilled me tirelessly. That was okay with me. My new obsession helped me push my recent memories to the back of my mind.

  Up until his death at the hands of the government, Cezar insisted on my attendance at each of his annual camps. Firearms, combat, sabotage—I soaked it all up with a vengeance. A vengeance that might soon land on my husband’s cheating head.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  That night I paced around the condo. I rifled through Bolton’s bureau and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. No. I hadn’t touched one for twelve years. I would never go back to smoking.

  Calmează-te! Calm yourself. I turned my back on his paintings—too much risk that I’d start tearing them up—and faced the bay, watching a container ship make its way toward Oakland. I breathed deeply. Maybe time for Oscar-winning performance. I could lie like the best of them.

  Eight o’clock came and went. I tried to read a book. The sun set. Nine o’clock came and went. What would it mean if he didn’t call?

  I jumped when the phone rang. Showtime. I let it ring three times. Four. “Hello?”

  “Do you miss me?” His standard opening when on the road. He was dead man.

  I took a calming breath. “I always miss you.”

  He laughed. “It sounded like you hesitated there.”

  “Am not so sure, right now.”

  “What?”

  “Just joking. Was doing some exercising. Out of breath.”

  “You should see someone about all that exercising,” he said. One of our standard jokes.

  “Is good for me. Maybe you should do more. You don’t want love handles, no? Maybe are eating too much on the road. Are in Toronto now, yes?”

  “Today I had wonderful seafood. You would have loved it. I wish you were here. Mussels in a butter and garlic sauce.”

  “What restaurant?” Stop. Has already sunk himself. Don’t make him suspicious. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh … I forget the name. What did you do today, sweetheart?”

  “I watched you walk around with your skinny fuck buddy.” That’s what I wanted to say. Instead: “Nothing exciting. Ran across Golden Gate Bridge and up hill on the north side. To the tunnel. Had lunch with friends. Took nap. Are in hotel now?”

  Time to evaluate his lying. Perhaps, for future reference, I could make note of some tell or hint.

  “Nice place. Good rooms. I’m going to hit the sack—”

  “Same one as last time?”

  “Yeah. Hotel Elizabeth. You’d like it.” There were no clues that he was lying. None. No false notes. Perhaps face-to-face would be different, but I doubted it. It was almost two years since we’d met on the plane. I’d caught a few of his small lies but only because they’d revealed themselves in other ways. Like the time he’d given me a present and told me it came from Saks Fifth Avenue. I’d found the receipt in the trash. Macy’s. Nothing wrong with Macy’s, but he’d chosen to lie simply to make the present seem fancier. Or something.

  “Maybe we can go there together sometime.”

  “Absolutely. Hey, I’ve got to hit the sack now. I miss you, sweetheart.”

  “Me, too.” I miss me, too. I missed the woman from that morning. The one who, apart from worries about the mob, her kleptomania, and her uncle’s disappearance, didn’t have a care in the world. At least that woman had a loving husband. Or thought she did.

  * * *

  The next morning, I picked Andrei up earlier than ever. He was still in bed when I arrived at Pathways, and the change in morning routine threw him as I’d known it would. What might have taken a few minutes stretched out to an hour, but we finally got on the road.

  The fog was showing off, and we couldn’t see the tops of the towers as we drove back over the Golden Gate Bridge. I took him directly to the condo and sat him down on the couch. I sat next to him, close but not touching. We both looked out the window, Andrei with his yes/no board on his lap.

  “Andrei, I need your help with something today. It involves a safe.”

  He glanced at me then continued looking out the window.

  Should I lie to him? Tell him that I had changed the combination. “Andrei, I—”

  Buzz. He had pressed the No button.

  I laughed. “But you don’t know what I was going to say.” No, I wouldn’t lie to him. He needed someone to trust.

  He stared straight ahead.

  “Can you open Bolton’s safe again? For me? It’s very important.”

  He put his hand on the No button but didn’t press it.

  “Are there four numbers in the combination?”

  Buzz. No.

  “Three?”

  Ding. Yes.

  Okay, good. I stood and paced. This could work. Or could it? I now had three numbers to discover, each between zero and ninety-nine. Fifty questions for each, on average. Andrei’s patience wouldn’t last that long.

  What the hell, I’d try. “Andrei, is the first number zero?”

  Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. No, no, no, no.

  What was he trying to tell me? Was he buzzing the buzzer once for each number?

  “Is the first number, four?”

  Buzz. No.

  “Three?” Maybe four b
uzzes included the zero. Zero, one, two, three.

  Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. No, no, no, no.

  “Am I missing something?”

  Ding.

  “Ah, of course!” I hit my forehead with my palm. “Is the first number less than fifty?”

  Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. Got it. Called binary search?

  “Is the first number less than twenty-five?”

  “Ding.”

  What a strange disease autism was. Different for each person, I was told. Andrei wouldn’t open the safe if he knew the combination, but he could tell me the numbers. I think he had a rigid sense of right and wrong known only to him. Did he feel it was it wrong to open a safe for which he knew the combination?

  It didn’t take him long to communicate the first two numbers: Five and seventeen. I rushed into the bedroom. Two rotations to the left to five then to the right, one turn, past five, to seventeen. Then I jiggled the handle as I rotated the dial left again, anticlockwise. I remembered vaguely that the last number had to be above sixty for some manufacturers’ safes.

  Andrei had come in and was watching me. What emotion was he feeling inside that shell of his?

  When I got to seventy, the handle turned.

  Ding.

  “We did it, Andrei. Thank you.” Still on my knees, I held my breath and swung open the safe’s door.

  * * *

  I blasted into Samuel’s office with Andrei right behind me. The private detective was smoking, I kid you not, an old, curved pipe.

  “Really, Samuel,” I said. “This Sherlock Holmes thing is getting pretty fucking old.” I stomped over to the window and crossed my arms, looking down through the trees to the street.

  “Viviana, you are upset.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”