by Steve Levi
“It’s going to cost the American taxpayer $1 million. Here’s how I figure it. Our perp’s husband was owed money by the CIA.”
“The CIA? How did they get into this?”
“I’m betting that the perp’s husband was a CIA agent. He was working for an import-export company, had a Cuban wife with close Cuban contacts – close enough to run arms to Castro and drugs from Castro.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“First, all of the women are in their late 60s and early 70s and the records you have for them are sparse. That means the records of the first two were fakes, to be used as backup if someone is going to check on them. Even if they are real, the crimes are very old. Maybe they actually did run guns for Castro in the 1960s; that would even make them better agents. If they were working for the CIA – which I believe they were – the CIA would want to make sure that when Castro’s people got into NCIC they would find the women were, to use the term your co-worker used, ‘real bad dudes.’ Same goes for our third perp, the one supposedly on trial in New York for three railroad boxcars of cocaine. That’s a lot of cocaine for a 70-year-old woman to be pushing. I’d bet she’s being run through the system to give her credibility.”
“Those are all rather wild guesses.”
“Really? Then why is our non sequitur suing a company that isn’t even in Florida for a cat it probably doesn’t have?”
“I don’t know. Neither did the judge.”
“That’s right. That company is located just outside Langley, home of the CIA. I’ll bet if you start looking at the company closely you’ll find it doesn’t really exist. It’s a CIA front. For some reason, Mrs. Hendershoting feels that the CIA owes her and her three co-conspirators $1 million for something. She’s asked for it and the CIA has said no. Then she sued for it, hopeful that the CIA would settle quietly rather than have one of its front operations exposed in Florida. That didn’t work so the quartet took another step forward. They threatened to release something, maybe some documents they had hidden for just such a contingency. Whether they actually have such documents or not I do not know, but they had to draw attention to themselves in such a way that the CIA would get the message that they were serious.”
“Why the garbage dump?”
“First, because it’s not illegal to steal from the dump. It’s just embarrassing. They knew they would be arrested. They wanted to be. So they made it look like they knew exactly where something was and they were extracting it. After all, they were not dressed for digging. The shovels wouldn’t have done them any good and the arthroscopic equipment was a hint that they knew just about where to look for whatever it was they were supposed to have. Second, they knew that they would be arrested by a sheriff, not a policeman. Sheriff’s departments are more loosely run than police departments. Your computers are not as good or as fast as the big city ones and you are a lot more lax in how you treat your prisoners. You don’t throw them in a jail cell and throw away the key. They knew they were only going to be in jail for few hours, so why get tossed in with the general population? They got arrested, their names hit the NCIC, the FBI got the tip and contacted the CIA. Thirteen seconds later you didn’t have a case. It just kind of disappeared.”
“What makes you think the CIA is going to pay?”
“They’re going to have to. They can’t have four ex-agents running all over Florida getting arrested so they can spill whatever beans they know to some newspaper. No, the CIA will pay and that will be the end of the story.”
“You seem pretty sure of yourself.”
“Actually this was an easy case. Once the feds showed up I could pretty much say anything I wanted. They’re not going to tell you anything. But, frankly, I think I’ve hit the nail on the head.”
“Well, it’s one hell of a story. But there are some loose ends. What about the clock running backwards? What about the dosing wires?”
“Ah, the clock! That was a bit tricky. I cheated a bit there. I had you looking for everything that I could think of off the top of my head. But after I thought about it and the pieces started to fit, I did some checking on my own. What, I asked myself, is going to happen in about 120 hours? You reached me at 1 p.m. Alaska Time on Thursday which means you were talking to me at 5 p.m. Florida time. So the 121 hours would have ended Monday in the early afternoon here in Alaska and the end of the afternoon on the East Coast. On a hunch I called the Alaska Congressional Office and asked for a complete list of meetings that were to take place on Monday afternoon. One of them was a closed-door meeting of the joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee. That’s when the pieces started falling into place. The ticking clock was just a stark reminder to the CIA that, excuse the pun, ‘the clock was ticking’ on their demands. The CIA apparently took that seriously.”
“And the dosing rods?”
“Who knows? I figure they took those along to confuse the Sheriff’s department. Everything else fit with a treasure hunt in the garbage. The dosing rods were just to confuse the issue, stall for time.”
“So this was nothing more than a shakedown by four old women against the elite East Coast corporate structure?”
“You sound like you went to Berkley.”
“Class of 72.”
“You go, girl. And tell your commissioner to tell my commissioner that I should have another two days off with pay for working on my holiday.”
THE MATTER OF THE PENNY-ANTE KLEPTOMANIAC
Captain Heinz Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was deeply engrossed in the ongoing drama of a personal relationship –with his goldfish, Chester.
The two were best of friends.
At feeding time.
It was feeding time and the “Bearded Holmes” was nose-to-snout with only a sheet of glass between the two. One was ignoring the particles of fish food trickling down from above and the other was wondering why the fish food was not drifting down on the inside of the fish tank. It was only when one of the particles landed on Noonan’s nose did he realize he had been feeding the floorboards of his office and not Chester. With a flick of his tail, Chester was gone in a flight of indignation.
“Cockroaches will love the fish food,” yelled Harriet from across the room. Harriet was Noonan’s no-nonsense administrative assistant, mother confessor and paperwork tyrant. Without her the Detectives – both the office of that name and the denizens therein – would be a mob rather than a cohesive office where something actually got done.
“How’d you know I missed again?” snapped Noonan.
“Simple,” she replied. “It’s 10 a.m. on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday and that’s feeding time for Chester and every feeding time for Chester starts with fish food for the cockroaches. I know that even though my back is turned.”
Noonan peered over the top of Chester’s tank and, just as she had stated, her back was turned.
“This is outrageous,” he started to say.
“Yeah,” Harriet said as she turned around, “but the cockroaches love it! Before you get snippy, there’s a call on Line One. It’s one of your specialty calls.”
“Captain Noonan.”
“This is Javier de la Vega from Morrison City. I’m told you can solve unusual crimes.”
“It’s been said but I’ve been lucky.”
“This is an odd one.”
“If you’re calling me, it’s odd. What do you have?”
“We have a penny-ante kleptomaniac. But it is not what is being stolen that is bothering us. It’s where the thievery has been committed.”
“OK. Where have the thefts been taking place?”
“In locked rooms within secure vaults in a passkey protected building.”
Javier de la Vega did not look like a Javier de la Vega was supposed to look. He looked Irish. Right down to the red hair and freckles.
“This will be terribly racist,” Noonan began but Vega finished his sentence.
“. . . but you don’t look like a de la Vega.”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
Vega laughed. “There’s an old joke in Boston. A minister asks a child if she is a Steinberg and she says ‘Yes.’ The minister asks if her father is Rabbi Steinberg and she says ‘yes.’ Then he asks if her mother is Jewish and the child says ‘yes.’ Then why, the minister asks why does the child think she’s Irish? The child replies she must be Irish because she was born in Boston.”
“Let me guess, you’re Irish.”
“Mother was. My father was kindof/sortof Spanish.”
“What is kindof/sortof?”
“This is more ethnic that I wanted to get but let’s finish it.”
“If that was a pun on the Finns I am not impressed.”
“It wasn’t but you’re quick. I get asked about my name and heritage a lot because I look Irish with a Spanish name. Do you know why they call Italians wops?”
“Do I want to know?”
“For the story of my name, yes.”
“OK, why?”
“Because when the Italian immigrants came through Ellis Island many of them had no identification. So the United States Immigration Service – or whatever it was called in the days – filled out paperwork for them in English. Then the Immigration Service agents stamped WOP on the forms, WOP for With Out Papers.”
“And this is important because . .” Noonan let the question hang.
“Because my grandfather from Spain, who did not speak English, said, in Spanish that he came from the meadowlands, the low lands, de la vega. It was easier for the Immigration Agent to list him as de la vega than my grandfather’s official six names most upper class Spaniards had at that time.”
“Good enough for me,” Noonan said. “But it is neither here nor there when it comes to this case.”
“Actually,” de la Vega noted, “it is at the heart of the case. My grandfather married well – which was easy in the days because he came with money – and had six children. They married well and we ended up with an extended family of 39. That is, there are 39 of us still living. We are all partners in the same family company. And referring the ancestral discussion we just had, we are the ethnic rainbow of America: Spanish, Italian, Jewish, Muslim, Mexican, African and we even have a woman from Iceland in the mix.”
“What does the company do?”
“It’s an odd company for America. It does not have a central purpose, like selling computers or dentistry. My grandfather wanted everyone to ‘do their own thing’ – he was a very 1960s kind of guy when he died – and left shares of stock in the company he founded to his six children and grandchildren to do what they wanted. But none of his blood descendants could sell their stock.”
“So you are one big happy family.”
“Uh, yes. Sort of.”
“In my world,” Noonan said. “That’s a very big no.”
“Well, we have our disagreements. Each of the six families has an equal share in the company and each of the six families went their own way. Then their kids went their own way with the shares they had and today we’ve got a company that is, shall we say, eclectic. Our services include guitar construction, software consultants, book and music publishing, shoe repair some teachers, two doctors and a lawyer.”
“All under the same roof?”
“The traditional business, yes. But the teachers, doctors and the lawyer have offices of their own outside of the building.”
“The building being the one where the kleptomania is striking.”
“Correct.”
“None of those professions sound like they need a locked vault much less a secure room.”
“They don’t. My grandfather made his money in diamonds and precious gems. That’s the source of the wealth. The diamonds are in a secure vault in the locked room with a passkey protected portion of the business.”
Noonan shook his head. “I’m trying to see what the problem is. None of the diamonds are missing so there’s been no theft.”
“Yet. We are concerned because what has been stolen was specially meant to attract our attention.”
“Meaning?” ask Noonan.
“Three weeks ago a desk blotter was stolen. Two weeks ago it was the carafe from the coffee maker. Last week paper tray for the copier.”
“These items were in the vault?”
“No, the locked room where the vault is located.”
“Do you have security cameras in the locked room?”
“We have one over the door outside the room but no camera in the room. Lots of the family go in and out of that room all the time. We’re not concerned with what goes in the room, just what comes out. I’ve looked over the tapes for the last three weeks and there is nothing suspicious coming out.”
“But no camera inside the room?”
“There has never been a reason no reason to have one in the room. It’s a small room with just a desk and office material.”
“What’s the desk used for?”
“Anyone who has to work in the room opens their vault drawer and takes out of they need. If they have to work in a secure location, they use the desk. Then they lock up and leave. You see, the vault has more than diamonds. It has all of the documents for all of the businesses, software designs, guitar wood that has to stay at a certain temperature, personal drawers for each family members.”
“How big are the diamond drawers?”
“Small. Diamonds are not that large. Just large enough for the diamonds in their envelopes. We’re talking about a bank of drawers that are two inches high, two feet wide and ten drawers high.”
“None of the diamonds are missing?”
“Not yet.”
“But you believe that diamonds are about to be stolen?”
“We’re being careful.”
Noonan leaned back in his chair. “I’m going to have to think about this for a while. But I am going to need some more information.”
“Wait a second,” de la Vega said, “Let me write this down.”
“I need to know how many personal locked drawers there are in the entire vault including the diamonds. What the largest drawer and the smallest? Is there an actual safe, I mean one with tumblers, in the vault? How many people have used the vault in the last three weeks and how many were repeat visits? Has there been any discussion about changing the character of the company lately and if so, what is the vote? How many diamonds did your grandfather leave the company and how many do you have now? When was the last time the vault door combination was changed? Who changed it? Does the vault have any other type of security, like a motion or heat detector? That will do it for the moment.”
“I can answer some of those questions now.”
“No, I want all the answers together. How long do you think it will take to get the answers?”
“A day or so.”
“Fine. I’ll expect to hear from you, say, in two days. Oh, one more thing. How much does everyone in the extended family know about diamonds? Are any members of the family jewelers or appraisers of gems or antiques?”
“I’ll get you what I can.”
Three days later de la Vega was back like a bad penny.
“OK, I have all of the information you wanted.”
“Shoot.”
“No one in the family is a jeweler or appraiser per se. I’m a broker and I have handled the sale of gems, antiques and historic items but I never handled the actual items. I just dealt with their paper, the Provenance of the objects. There are 60 personal locked drawers, some members of the family have more than one. Of them, 11 are empty in the sense that no one is using them. They may have been used in the past but are not active in the sense that someone has placed anything in any of the 11 empty drawers. The other drawers vary in volume from the size of a file cabinet drawer to the diamond drawers which are two inches high, two feet wide and two feet deep. There are ten drawers of diamonds. There are two safes in the vault but they do not have tumblers. They have keys which are kept on pegs over the safe.”
“Why do you have keys for a safe over the safe?”
“Sometimes we do business with outsiders. The meeting might last through lunch so we put all of the working material into the safe and lock the safe with the key. Then we take the key to lunch to show the client that the paperwork will be out be tampered with.”
“I see. Go on.”
“Over the last three weeks there have been 76 visits to the vault and of those, 15 people made three visits, 7 made two. The rest were single time visits. There are always discussions about changing the character of the company and all are serious. But the real problem is that selling diamonds is tricky. They do not have a firm market value like the price of oil or beef. Where, how and when you sell them has more to deal with their value than how many are on the market. Everyone is talking about selling but no one knows how to go about it without being skinned. My grandfather left six drawers of diamonds. The other four drawers are empty. All drawers are locked with double key entry. The vault door lock combination is changed every three months and the last it was changed was eight weeks ago. The combination is changed by an expert we hire and we always hire a different expert to change the code. Four of us are there when the code is changed. Then the code is passed out to the responsible members of the family.”
“Responsible meaning?”
“Six copies are made, one for each of the families. The only people in those families who get the code are those who need it. No young children or people out of town.”
“Security other than the door?”
“None.”
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“You’ve solved the crime?!”
“No. There is no crime here. Here’s what I think is going on. There is a crisis brewing, what kind I cannot tell you. Since there have been three kleptomaniac thefts and there are 15 people who have made three visits, one of them is responsible for the thefts. There have been three thefts. I’m betting that the first one was to attract attention. The desk blotter did not get out the door so it is probably in an empty diamond drawer. It is flat and if you tried to bend it you would get particles of the blotter all over the floor. No one noticed any particles so the blotter was not bent.”
