Thief's Odyssey

by John L. Monk

  I am but a humble burglar—one who happened to grow up in the United States at a time when even foster kids had computers and cellphones and other gadgets. I’m half-ashamed to admit it but I’m actually quite good. I hate to think what the great Anthony Spilotro or Charles Peace or Blane Nordahl would say. None of them had used computers. Bill Mason would crash ritzy dinner parties and hobnob shamelessly with celebrities and politicians. Later, after days or weeks spent casing a place, he’d sneak over apartment walls as high as eighty feet, like a human fly, and haul away hundreds of thousands in jewels. He’d even lock the deadbolts again when he was done. He was that good.

  I’d done the deadbolt thing at the Osters’ house. For the record.

  The truth is, sifting through email was the greatest source of burglary leads the world had ever seen. Maybe in twenty years they’d look back and wax nostalgic about the great Bo Mosley. But if I were caught, they’d waste no time labeling me another faceless hacker, smugly spidering through thousands of systems defacing web pages, taking down networks, and stealing credit card numbers. Stuff I’d never done and never would.

  Finished for the night, determined to be the rare thief who never got caught for being too greedy, I turned my back on the money staring at me in the report and ended the script. Then I leaned back and joined Sean Powers for a little shuteye.

  ***

  My fence in New Jersey was four and a half hours away. Like any fence, he paid in cash, but I couldn’t use it to buy a house or a new car or stock in a company because I couldn’t deposit it. And I couldn’t spend too much in the stores I shopped at or risk drawing attention to myself. As a rule, I limited my cash purchases to no more than $500 in any one place, and I always drove used cars. Things had gotten a lot easier once I’d started stealing bullion.

  When people sell gold to an online broker, the broker either cuts them a check or directly deposits the money into their bank account. For me, it was a great way to avoid the Bank Secrecy Act, so long as I kept my transactions small and spread out. You could also do this with cash deposits of less than $10,000, but the Feds were really good at catching people who tried to slip past that way. With bullion, brokers had more leeway on the reporting requirements. If that wasn’t amazing enough, dealers emailed shipment dates and purchase confirmations to their customers. This gave me about ten days to case a house and two days lead-time on the delivery.

  My fence, Scott, was with a customer when I walked in. He had a nice little store in Jersey City with barred windows and a white neon sign saying, “Horton’s Diamonds & Jewelry Repair.” People went there when they wanted a bargain and didn’t mind that their sales guy wasn’t very pretty or leggy or young or even all that interested in selling anything. He owned the building and had a loyal customer base. And it probably helped that he knew guys like me.

  When the customer left, I approached the counter with a hand to my ear and said, “You hear that, Scott? Come on, tell me you heard it this time!”

  Scott tended to treat the world and its occupants like guests who’d stayed too long, and I was no exception.

  He frowned at me and said, “That joke’s as dumb as the first time you told it, and it keeps getting dumber.”

  “You mean you really can’t hear a Who, Mr. Horton?”

  Shaking his head, he said, “Gimme a second.” Then he turned off the sign out front and locked up. “Nobody comes in after five anyway.”

  He led me to a room in the back with a small TV and a dirty workbench with all manner of small tools and equipment attached to it.

  “How are you, Bo?” he said, easing his tired bones into an old leather recliner.

  Unlike almost everyone else in my life, Scott knew my real name. It was a condition of our association I’d reluctantly agreed to—after all, he’d said, I knew his name, and he had more to lose than me.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Pretty good, actually. I got a raise at work—two dollars more an hour.”

  He snorted. “Now you can buy that gum you always wanted.”

  Scott leaned over and got me a Coke from a little fridge and a beer for himself. I wondered if he realized I was old enough to drink.

  “So what have you got this time?” he said. “More junk from Jared? Helzberg?”

  When I was twenty, fresh from quitting college, I’d come to Scott with stuff I’d bought from other stores to see if he’d buy it. I made sure to act real shady, too, the idea being he’d realize what I was on his own. And if he called the cops, well then I’d produce the receipts and move on. Seven years later, Scott Horton and I had a great relationship—one based on greed and the threat of mutual destruction.

  I smiled. “You have to admit, it worked.”

  He didn’t smile back. Instead, he looked at me in a way that made me feel too young to ever share a beer with him.

  “Why are you doing this, Bo? You’re a smart kid, got that computer job.” He knew I worked with computers, though I’d never said where. “You know how many guys like you I’ve seen over the years?”

  I made like I was thinking about it. “One?”

  “Too many—and don’t get smart. Now listen: you know how many I still see on a regular basis?”

  I shrugged.

  “Pretty much you and one or two others,” Scott said, spearing me with a bony finger. “And those guys come and go every five to ten years, if you catch my drift.”

  Scott meant well and I liked him fine, but he wasn’t my father.

  “I understand.”

  “See? Now you’re angry at me. What I get for helping. None of my business what you do.”

  The moment stretched with no one saying anything. I sipped my Coke and tried to figure out this sudden concern for my welfare.

  Finally Scott said, “So what did you bring me?”

  “A lot more than last time. Take a look.”

  I took a plastic bag from my jacket and emptied it on the table.

  Scott laughed.

  “Maybe you should keep doing this,” he said, grinning. “This one’s a real beaut.”

  He picked up a large sapphire drop pendant and analyzed it under a glass.

  I’d liked that one, too.

  Scott spent about twenty minutes looking everything over. We went back and forth on the price of each one, all of them way below what you’d pay for them new. Several pieces were custom, he said, so he’d have to break them up, melt the gold down and give them new settings. I said that had to be easier than competing with the big chain stores, what with their bigger budgets and prime locations. He countered he’d never charged me for that Coke I was drinking, and I could always try selling the stuff in my own store.

  At one point Scott said, “I can’t sell this one. You should give it to your girlfriend.”

  He held up a white jade bracelet intricately carved with Chinese dragons.

  “Why, what’s wrong with it?” I said.

  “It’s old, for one. And real, for another. Probably worth a lot. I can’t sell it.”

  He handed it to me.

  “How old?”

  “I’m not saying it’s from the Ming Dynasty or anything,” he said, laughing in a way that said I shouldn’t get too excited. “But it could be. You should keep it. Or throw it away. But don’t try to sell it.”

  I put it in my pocket, and Scott continued his tally. Eventually we arrived at a number. I thought he could have gone higher, but it was still a mint: $23,000.

  “I don’t have that much with me,” he said. “I can give you about half now and the rest tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow wouldn’t do—I had work tonight.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “How about give me eleven for these”—I moved a few choice pieces over—“and sell the rest on consignment? Whatever you get, we split 40/60, my favor.”

  It was more than he was offering, but it eliminated his financial risk if they didn’t sell quickly enough, all for the price of a little floor space. In the end, we shook on it. I trusted him because
, if he screwed me too much, all it would do was ruin a good thing.

  “I’ll call you in a few weeks,” Scott said, handing me a stack of currency he retrieved from a floor safe.

  Business concluded, we shook hands and I left.

  Before leaving the city, I stopped at an office supply store and bought a black magic marker and a stiff envelope lined with bubble wrap. Then I went to the post office and used their self-help system to send the bracelet back to the Osters.

  What a brilliant guy I was.

  Bill Mason, eat your heart out.

  Chapter 3

  Two weeks later, Mrs. Swanson left a message asking me to drop by. No big deal, coming from someone normal, but from her it was a demand.

  I didn’t mind. I hadn’t talked to her in person in more than a year and felt bad about it. She wouldn’t understand the truth. That when I wasn’t working I was either at the library, studying electronics and other tradecraft, or at the gym preparing against the day I finally made a mistake and went to prison. At six two and two hundred pounds, I was strong enough to have a chance at staying alive. But it meant training in not just weights, but boxing and jiu-jitsu. I’d even considered getting a bunch of tattoos to throw people off, make them think I’d been to prison before so they’d leave me alone, but ultimately decided against it. A little preparation was one thing, and I’d done that—reading prison memoires for tips on fitting in and scaring myself to death in the process. But I needed to stay inconspicuous while free.

  The Swanson Estate in Great Falls, Virginia, was a thing to behold—preferably from down near the gate if you wanted to get it all in. On the outside, a ten bedroom Georgian-style mansion built by her father Sheldon Baron Moring, the copper tycoon, when Mrs. Swanson was a child. On the inside, after more than a hundred foster children had come and gone, often with special needs, the house was something of a wreck. Many of the walls had holes in them, never patched, and the once-beautiful hardwood floors had been scratched and pitted by an endless march of children and the things they dragged behind them. But it was clean and safe, and it was home.

  “Jimmy, right?” I said to a boy with moody eyes, maybe ten years old, who answered the door.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Is Mrs. Swanson in? She’s expecting me.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And I still wanna know who’s asking.”

  Mrs. Swanson had mentioned Jimmy a number of times. A hard case who’d come to her unexpectedly, a year ago. Having seen his type before—heck, I’d been his type—I knew right away not to try to befriend him. All he wanted was an excuse to validate his mistrust of adults, and because it was summer, that’s all he had to do today.

  “Tell her it’s Bo Mosley,” I said.

  He shut the door on me. A minute later, he opened it again and walked off to another room.

  I found Mrs. Swanson in the place I remembered her best: in the kitchen, cooking for her young charges. Something delicious with garlic and basil, from the smell of it.

  “Bo, hand me that strainer,” she said without looking up.

  Automatically, as if nothing had changed in the last nine years, I picked up the strainer from the counter and handed it to her. She hooked it over the sink and poured what looked like two gallons of spaghetti into it while steam billowed around her like a magician in a dry-ice haze.

  “Olive oil,” she said, pointing behind her to the cooking island.

  I gave it to her.

  After dousing the spaghetti liberally in oil, she poured it back into the pot and then set it back on the stove.

  “Have you eaten?” she said, looking at me for the first time since I’d arrived.

  “No, but I heard a Pepsi commercial on the way over.”

  She made a ladylike tut of disdain.

  “Still working on your comedy show, I see. Lucky for you we’re charitable to the unskilled poor. Now, do you want some spaghetti or don’t you?”

  “Yes please, thanks.”

  With practiced ease, she filled five bowls and a sixth for me, then spread one cup of that delicious-smelling sauce over each of them. For mine, she added an extra cup, drenching it the way I liked it.

  “Thought I’d forgotten?” she said, a playful smile tugging her lips.

  “If you did, that’d be the first time.”

  Mrs. Swanson took a long metal spoon and rang a Texas-sized triangle hanging from a rope over the middle of the island. Almost immediately, four children swooped in from different rooms to collect their bowls, then carried them to the table. I was happy to see things hadn’t changed. Back then, the rule was we always ate together, just like any family.

  Sitting at the table with me were two girls, Jimmy, and another boy, a bit younger. Looking at them laughing and joking and carrying on, I felt at home for the first time in a long while.

  “Bo,” Mrs. Swanson said, “I’d like you to meet Karen, Elizabeth, and David. And of course you’ve already met Jimmy. Everyone, say hello to Bo.”

  The two girls giggled and said, “Hi!” simultaneously. David made a big showy wave followed by a booming, “Helloooh Boooh!” which made the girls giggle even more. Jimmy gave a barely perceptible, “Hey,” without looking up.

  “He may look old to you, now,” Mrs. Swanson said, “but Bo used to live here.”

  Jimmy threw her a questioning look.

  “It’s true,” she told him. “He lived here for six years—up in your room, as a matter of fact.”

  That seemed to surprise him. After a few seconds, he nodded his head and said, “Cool.” The closest he’d come to apologizing for the routine he’d given me at the door.

  “She’s something, huh?” I said, when Mrs. Swanson stepped away.

  Jimmy turned a not-so-tough shade of red and shrugged.

  The kids were great—smart and full of fun. David enjoyed a good joke and seemed the most capable of pulling Jimmy out of his life-imposed funk, even getting him laughing at one point. It turned out the two girls were sisters whose parents were “on vacation,” a term everyone understood to mean they were in prison. My own mother was one such case, currently serving lifelong vacation in North Carolina for murdering my father.

  After lunch, when the kids cleared out, I followed Mrs. Swanson to her study, a richly furnished north-facing hexagonal room that had somehow resisted the hurricane of children over the years.

  Sheldon Baron Moring had been a forceful man, much given to posing for dour-looking portraits that glared their viewers into submission even fifty years after his death. He’d commissioned seven of them in his life, and Mrs. Swanson had moved five of the gloomiest here, to this study, shortly after the death of her first and only husband. As a kid, after getting in a fight at school or stealing something and getting caught, I’d been forced to endure the collective brunt of their disapproving stares for hours while Mrs. Swanson sat behind her desk knitting or reading. Those paintings, if for no other reason, were why you simply didn’t mess with the woman.

  “Take your seat,” Mrs. Swanson said, not even bothering to say where—my seat and everyone else’s being the hard, straight-backed chair in the exact center of the room.

  She considered me for several seconds.

  “Bo,” she said, “what am I supposed to do with you?”

  Surprised by her sudden pronouncement, I gave a nervous smile. “Who, me?”

  “You dropped out of college.”

  “That’s sort of old news,” I said.

  “You never told me why.”

  I tried to come up with something she could understand. “I didn’t like wasting your money.”

  Mrs. Swanson pulled a look I hadn’t seen in years and somehow scared me even though I was bigger than her. “And how, exactly, is making something of yourself a waste of anyone’s money?”

  There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t make me look dumber, so I just waited.

  Mrs. Swanson took a deep, steadying breath and said, “Here, let me show you something.”
>
  She opened a drawer and pulled out a manila folder.

  I got up and walked over, feeling the full weight of those dead, judging, portrait eyes on me. When I examined the array of photos she laid out, it was all I could do to keep from denying every bad thing I’d done since leaving the mansion. She had it all: me, crossing the street to Doug and Linda’s. Me, walking into a political headquarters to rob a safe full of thousands in cash contributions. Another shot had me casing a place I’d hit last year—the hotel room of a famous publicist who liked to appear on TV wearing a fortune in jewels. She’d been in town, so I’d made my move.

  I was in every picture, looking surprisingly shifty in my nondescript clothes and backpack full of burglar tools.

  I folded my arms. “What’s this about?”

  “You’ve been a busy young man, haven’t you? Why were you going to all these strange places?”

  “I could say the same thing to you—what’s with all the sneaky pictures?”

  Straightening her back, Mrs. Swanson said, “I have not been taking sneaky pictures, Mr. Mosley.”

  “Well then who did?”

  “My detective agency.”

  “What do you mean your detective agency?” I said, wondering what had happened to the nice old lady I’d grown up with.

  “Just that. My agency—I own it. I own a lot of things you don’t know about, and one of them is McLean Investigations. Among their other pursuits, they keep me apprised of all the children I have ever fostered.”

  I shook my head, genuinely worried for her. “To what end?”

  “Never mind that,” she said. “There’s one more picture I want you to see.”

  She pulled out another shot: of me, walking into Horton’s Diamonds & Jewelry Repair.

  “Well?” she said. “Bo, do you have any idea who this man is?”

  I nodded. “Scott Horton. He runs that shop. I bought something for a girl I was dating. What of it?”

  “She must be some girl. You’ve been there at least three times this year. Does she live in New Jersey?” She held up a hand when I started to say something. “Oh, spare me your lies, Bo, I deserve that much. Just answer me: what else do you know about this man?”