by Al Macy
I heard nothing else and turned back. My mouth dropped open. Samuel and Andrei were shaking hands. They were looking one another in the eyes, as if communing somehow. Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
Samuel then stood, turned, and took me into his arms. I struggled for a second. He was strong. I felt as if I were in the grip of one of those huge snakes at the zoo. Although my breasts were squeezed against him, it wasn’t a sexual thing. I stopped struggling. My muscles relaxed.
“Bine,” he said. Good. Another Romanian word he knew.
We lost our balance and stumbled a bit. He released the hug just in time. He gestured to one of the visitor chairs. Andrei had gone to the wall, examining the texture of the red bricks with his hands as if he were blind.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Actually, I am not particularly enamored of Sherlock Holmes, although I have been known to enjoy Sir Doyle’s books. I readily admit, however, to having an affinity for things from that time period. My automobile, for instance. But enough of that. You told me on the phone there is a problem with your husband. I will do everything in my power to assist you with that.”
“I think he’s leading some kind of a double life.” I got up and poured myself some coffee from the old-fashioned percolator sitting on an electric hot plate.
I filled him in on what I’d seen the day before and without telling him how I got the combination, told him about opening the safe.
“Had you never seen what was inside the safe before?”
“No.”
He turned his head a bit to one side. “Yet you had the combination?”
“That’s not important.”
“What was inside?”
“Mostly money.”
“Okay, not particularly surpr—”
“Over four hundred thousand dollars. Plus two guns and two silencers. Some IOUs totaling ten thousand.”
“Did you recognize the names on the IOUs?”
I shook my head. We were both silent for a while.
“Drugs?” he asked.
“No. I would have told you that!”
Samuel puffed on his damn pipe. “Tell me about these trips he takes.”
“There are a lot of them, and I have a feeling all of them are fake. I called the hotel where he said he was staying and asked to be connected to his room. He wasn’t there. Duh. Sometimes he’s only gone for a few days. The longest was a week. What a fuckhead.”
Samuel tilted his head toward Andrei.
“Sorry, Andrei.” Was there any point in protecting him from bad language? I couldn’t see any. Parents only avoid bad language in front of their kids so they won’t be embarrassed when the kid asks for more fucking ice cream at a birthday party. But what did I know? I didn’t have any kids of my own, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to have any with Bolton.
“Do you think Bolton is engaged in a romantic relationship with this woman?”
“If he is, I’m going to cut off his balls before I kill him.”
“I understand the difficulty of viewing this dispassionately, but—”
“I don’t know what kind of relationship it was. Was hard to read their body language from so far, but there was familiarity between them. Great familiarity. I thought was the familiarity of a man and his wife but … maybe they just worked together a lot. He had his hand on her shoulder, not around her waist. He’s never done that with me.”
“And when they parted?”
I looked at the floor, thinking. “I didn’t see that. There was no kissing that I saw. They walked to the boat, and then there were a number of men around.”
“Does Bolton have a brother?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
“He’d have to have a brother that lived around here—one he’d never told me about—and the brother would have to have the same shirt I gave Bolton.”
Samuel took the pipe from his mouth. “Did you—?”
“Yes. I checked. That shirt isn’t at home. I bought it on a trip at a high-end shop, and I’ve never seen one like it.”
“So, very improbable—”
“No,” I said. “Impossible. I know my husband, and—don’t give me that look, Samuel. Okay, okay, it turns out I didn’t know him … at all … but I know how he walks, how he moves. If he had a twin, sure, but …”
“I will be able to rule that out.”
“It was him, and he wasn’t at the hotel he said he was … at.”
“We are in agreement. I presume that you have never met him at the airport? Maybe you dropped him off.”
“I never met him at gate, no. Once I dropped him off at the sidewalk. He always said he didn’t want to bother me.”
“Even when you were first married?”
“No. I take it back.” I raised a finger. “There was one trip when I saw him get onto a plane. So, they’re not all fake. And we met on a plane, so he does go on trips.”
“When will he return from this trip?”
I slipped my pocket calendar from its assigned compartment in my handbag. Flipped some pages. “Four days.”
Samuel tapped his chin. “What do you plan to do when he gets back?”
“You mean, am I going to confront him?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I said. “Am not going to let on. But can I do that?”
“Do you refer to a lack of faith in your thespian skills?”
Would I ever get used to the way Samuel spoke? “Thespian?”
“Acting.”
I took a breath. “I hate this man. Has wronged me in ways I cannot forgive. His whole life with me has been lie. And now am going to kiss him, cuddle with him, have sex with him? La naiba!”
“You are very strong, Viviana. You can do anything.”
“Maybe. What I want you to do is find out everything you can about him.”
“I will devote all my energies to that goal. Does he have another trip planned?”
I checked my calendar again. “Yes. A week after he returns.”
We looked at one another for a few seconds, apparently both thinking the same thing.
“Will follow him,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Just two days later, July 5, 1980, Samuel called and told me he had some background on Bolton. Not a lot, but it could be helpful. Thinking back to the FBI’s concerns that I was being followed, I suggested we meet at Point Reyes National Seashore, an hour north of San Francisco. There was only one road that went out the peninsula, which would make it hard for anyone to follow us without being detected. Was being paranoid? Maybe, but I liked hiking and running there, and it would give us a chance to get out of the city. Samuel even agreed to join me on a ten-kilometer run.
We met at the so-called Cypress Tree Tunnel, a small stretch where huge trees bordered the road and completely covered it. I’d parked my Porsche by the side of the road and was stretching when Samuel parked behind me in his antique car. He was so down to earth in many ways, but the car seemed an affectation.
I put one foot up on the running board and put on a concerned look. “Did you have enough steam to get here?”
Samuel replied, “I am aware that you are being facetious, Ms. Petki, but in fact, steam cars were contemporaries to this Chevrolet Stanhope.” He shooed me off the running board and stepped out.
His running … costume was only slightly outlandish. A sleeveless top had horizontal red stripes. It made me think of a mustachioed boxer from the turn of the century, putting up his dukes for a daguerreotype photo. The running shorts extended to just below his knees. His hi-tops were canvas with leather strips along the eyelets.
“Which way?” he said.
I pointed, and he was off. Much too fast for the distance we’d cover.
I caught up with him after a hundred meters. “Don’t you warm up?”
“I had a tot of brandy in the car. Just enough to warm me up but not impair my dr
iving. I am fine.”
“You’re running too fast. It’s about five kilometers to the lighthouse, and we’ll have to go down and up three hundred steps to get to it.”
He slowed down. “Please forgive me, Viviana. I will be happy to let you set the pace.” We ran on the shoulder of the small two-lane road. Grass and lupines covered the rolling hills, with only a few cypress trees at this point.
“So, what have you learned about Mr. Bolton Vance?” His name came out in a hiss between my clenched teeth.
Samuel glanced at me. He was hardly out of breath. “Let’s see. He was born in 1948—”
“Forty-eight? Are you sure?”
“What did he tell you?”
“Forty-six. September 1?”
“Yes. Born on the first of September.”
“Why would he lie about the year?”
Samuel shrugged without losing his stride. “It is becoming apparent that Bolton lies about a lot of things.”
“No kidding.” I fell in behind Samuel as a car passed then returned to his side. It was like exercising with Paul Bunyan.
“He grew up in an undesirable neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. However, he did not run afoul of the law except for one incident in his early twenties.”
“What happened?”
“He had been accused of forgery related to a real estate deal, but all charges were dropped.”
“That’s all you know?” I asked.
“About that, yes.”
I put on a burst of speed, just for fun. Samuel caught up rather quickly. We kept the new pace going, making it hard to talk. We caught views of the ocean to our right and Drake’s Bay to the left.
We took a break at the top of the stairs to the lighthouse. I put my hands on my knees. “Very impressive, Samuel. How old did you say you are?”
“I didn’t say.”
“A little older than me?” I looked up, raising my eyebrows.
“That would be fair to say.”
We walked down the cement staircase, going easy on the knees, but raced back up. The race ended in a tie, but I wasn’t convinced he wasn’t sandbagging. We collapsed on a bench near some windswept trees.
I got my breath back in a minute or two. “Do you have any more-recent information?”
Samuel nodded. “I do. It seems Bolton visited a psychologist here in San Francisco. Under the name of Christopher Vince.”
“Really? How did you find that out?”
He rolled his shoulders. “Trade secret.”
“Tell me.”
He shook his head. “I really must keep that to myself.”
“Huh. Well, it’s surprising. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would visit a shrink. Confident. Well-adjusted.”
“Perhaps leading a double life is stressful.”
“Da,” I said. “Maybe.”
We dialed it back for the jog back to our cars. The fog had been waiting off the coast, but it beat us to the Cypress Tunnel. I was sure Samuel regretted his sleeveless running shirt. No complaints, though.
While making our final farewells, I said, “Sure would be nice to have those psychologist records.”
He threw me a sidelong glance that made me feel he knew more about me than he was letting on.
* * *
Normally, breaking into an office was a piece of cake. Psychologists don’t care much about security. However, Dr. Tristan Hoover was a successful and expensive shrink—of course Bolton would have gone to the best. Dr. Hoover’s practice was housed in a downtown high-rise. One with good security.
I needed those records. Sun Tzu said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Bolton had become my enemy.
The building had competent, twenty-four-seven guards. The lobby was the choke point—there would be no waltzing in during the small hours of the morning. I scouted out the back entrance. No way. The locks there were way too sophisticated.
Excellent ground-level security was usually a plus. It made everyone on the floors above complacent. Why close the safe door? No one can get past the lobby security.
For Hoover’s building, however, this concept failed. I couldn’t climb my way past the guards. The building was fifteen stories tall and had windows that didn’t open.
I considered posing as a new patient, but that process would have taken too much time. Besides, once I was in the office, I’d need to have a plausible way to look in the filing cabinets and take Bolton’s file. Messy.
I put together a hasty plan—the worst kind.
My wardrobe provided the persona I needed: overworked secretary. I chose a blue blazer with a white blouse whose collar flared out over the lapels of the blazer. I tied my hair back into a ponytail and chose a pair of stylish reading glasses at the drugstore. I hung them from my neck. The thinnest, lightest attaché case I could find completed my disguise.
I went into the building around five. I took the elevator to the fourth floor, where Hoover had his practice. I walked down the hall. The door to his outer office was propped open, and a secretary sat behind a desk. She glanced up as I passed.
Next, I took the stairs up to the cafeteria on the eighth floor, got a coffee, and settled down with my book, The Thorn Birds.
At eight, the lights flashed. The cafeteria was closing. I was the only one there. I placed my coffee cup into one of the gray tubs and headed back to the fourth floor.
Picking locks was possibly my best skill. Linus Yale invented the pin tumbler lock in 1848, and the basic design had changed little in the hundred and thirty years since then. Tiny springs push a set of pins down into a lock’s plug and keep it from turning. When the correct key is inserted, the pins line up, and the plug is free to turn.
Another way to line the pins up is to individually manipulate them with a tool while applying torque to the plug. If you’re lucky, you can just rake your lockpick back and forth while applying tension. The plug will turn slightly as each pin moves to the right position.
That’s what I started with. I did it without kneeling down. Harder that way, but if someone came by, I would look less suspicious.
I’d just started doing this when the door opened. I whipped my tools out of sight. Dr. Hoover stood there, a hippieish-looking man with long hair and a folded bandanna wrapped around his forehead.
“Yes?” He was frowning and had alcohol on his breath.
“Oh, hi. You must be Dr. Nash! Am so glad you’re in.” I always noted the names of others on the target’s floor.
Hoover’s frown diminished but only by a bit. He pointed down the hall. “You have the wrong office.”
“Oh, sorry. Sorry to bother you.”
“Wait. What were you doing? You didn’t knock. I heard a noise.”
“Oh, right. I’m so nervous. I was going over what I was going to say. I think my attaché case rubbed against your door.”
Hoover closed the door without another word. Is rude for psychologist. I smiled. My conscience wouldn’t bother me when I stole from him. Besides, Bolton’s records weren’t valuable.
Bother. I’d have to wait longer. I found a utility closet one floor up. Raking the pins worked for that lock, and I was in. It held an office chair with a broken back. Not as comfortable as the cafeteria, but the light in the ceiling was good enough to read by. It’s not all glitz and glamour in the jewel thief business.
I forced myself to wait until 1:00 a.m. then went back to the shrink’s office. This time I held my ear against Hoover’s door for a good five minutes. No sounds.
Raking didn’t work. I had to go pin by pin. Because no lock is machined perfectly, you can usually find the one pin that’s holding the cylinder—the plug—from turning. Free that pin and—click!—the plug turns a bit. Then on to the next. After only five minutes, the final pin fell into place. I turned the lock, opened the door, and went in.
Shouldn’t take long now. The filing cabinets were in the outer office, but they only went to “P.” The
door to the inner office wasn’t locked. I did the listening thing again. No sounds, but then again, the door was pretty solid. I inched it open. The lights were on.
I opened it farther and peeked around the edge.
La naiba! The shrink was passed out on his own couch. A whiskey bottle stood on the floor. A half-full tumbler sat on his stomach, loosely held.
Abort? No! If he woke up, he’d be confused. I’d run out and be in the stairwell by the time he got to the hall.
The room held only one filing cabinet, a nicer looking wood affair. The memory of the man in Saint-Tropez holding on to my ankle played back in my head. The man I’d assumed was asleep. This was different—Hoover was definitely out.
The top drawer was “Q-R-S.” I pulled the drawer below it open, centimeter by centimeter. “T-U-V.” I kept my eyes on Dr. Hoover until it was all the way out. I looked in. There. “Vince.” Almost done.
“Housecleaning! Maid!”
I put my hand on the folder and turned. An older woman with a headscarf pushed in through the door, a vacuum cleaner right behind her.
Dr. Hoover jerked awake, the glass dropping from his hand, knocking to the floor. Whiskey spilled out onto the carpet. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he rubbed his face.
“Oh, sorry, sorry.” The cleaner had a Mexican accent.
I think Hoover hadn’t even opened his eyes before I stumbled out over the vacuum cleaner. In the hall, I sprinted toward the stairwell, the hanging folder held by the top. Something fell out and bounced along the floor. Could be important. I reversed course, snatched it up, and kept going.
The sound of yelling reached me. Maybe he did see me. But I was already at the door to the stairwell. It opened before I touched it, and a night watchman came out. Had he seen me running?
Another shout reached us.
The night watchman grabbed me by the elbow. “Hey. What’s going on?”
I pointed back toward the shrink’s door. “It’s that crazy Dr. Hoover. He is flipping out again. He is drunk. I’m so outta here.”
I pulled my elbow free and ran down the stairs. At the lobby I walked out with a businesslike stride, my attaché case in my right hand and the file folder held against my left side.
