He staggered back into the wall and slumped to the floor, dazed and bleeding. I looked around for his buddy—you know, the one who’d been following me down the stairs—but he was nowhere in sight.
Hmmm . . . maybe he’d taken the elevator down instead and was waiting for me out there in the lobby, with a gun in his hand. . . .
Meanwhile, thug number one was on the rise again. I took him out with a swift karate kick to the jaw. Then I searched his pockets, finding nothing but a big black Beretta pistol. I took it, flung open the door to the lobby, and ducked to avoid the bullets I expected to come.
To my surprise, the lobby was empty. The footsteps chasing me had stopped about halfway down to the ground floor. The elevator door was open. Hmmm. That was weird.
I tried to piece things together. I’d been chased down from the seventh floor, but the footsteps chasing me died after three or four flights of stairs. If one thug had taken the elevator down to ambush me in the stairwell, where had the other one gone? Had he just left the building?
As if in answer to my question, at that very moment the door from the stairs burst open. Thug number two ran right past, without even seeing me.
“Freeze!” I yelled, leveling the pistol at him.
He froze.
“Drop the gun and turn around—slowly.”
He turned around slowly, all right, but he still held the gun over his head.
“I said drop it!”
He lowered the arm with the gun, but he was still hanging onto it. Too long, I thought. He was going to pull a fast one any second, for sure.
I dodged to the right, just in time, rolling over once until I was safely behind a pillar.
By the time I did that, he’d fired three times in a row. I heard a groan from the stairwell, and I knew what had happened—I’d been standing right between the two thugs. Number two had just shot his buddy!
He turned to me, firing again and again. Then a click—his gun was empty. He cursed, turned, and ran for the street doors.
If I’d been a cop, I probably would have fired my weapon—at least a warning shot. But I wasn’t a cop. I didn’t have a license to kill. So I didn’t fire.
I might have followed him to see where he led me, but I knew that would be difficult on the crowded streets of New York. Plus he might have reloaded by now, and I didn’t want any innocent bystanders getting hurt.
But there was something else bothering me: If these guys had come here to kill me, then why had thug number two stopped following me down the stairs?
Only one reason—because he’d gone back up the stairs.
I remembered the looks on their faces when the elevator door opened and they first saw me. Surprised.
I got a horrible, sinking feeling that Glickstein hadn’t pushed the panic button after all.
Maybe he should have.
I checked on thug number one, but it didn’t take long to see that he was stone cold dead. If I hadn’t ducked out of the way so fast, it would have been me.
I rode the elevator back up to the seventh floor. Glickstein’s door was hanging wide open.
Not a good sign.
I went inside and peered over the counter. Nathan Glickstein was still sitting in his chair.
Only now, there was a neat round bullet hole right through the center of his forehead.
13.
Diamonds Are Deceiving
I got to the Bay View Hotel first thing in the morning. I felt awful about letting ATAC down—and even worse about letting Naomi down. From the moment we’d first laid eyes on each other, I was sure she liked me. You know, liked. And you know I liked her.
But now I could tell things had changed. I’d deserted her while Bobo was at least on the job, even though he turned out to be worse than useless.
The reason I’d let Joe go to New York City alone? Well, I felt guilty about it, honestly. But I saw no reason why it should be a dangerous errand—unless he got to Glickstein’s at the same time Twist and Sanguillen did.
What were the odds of that, anyway?
Pretty good, actually—they’d be in a hurry to unload the stolen diamonds and go into hiding until the cops got tired of looking for them. I imagined Glickstein’s job was to find buyers for the stolen jewels, take his cut, and hold the rest for the criminals until it was safe for them to surface.
At least, that’s what I imagined. So I thought it was safe to send Joe there alone and spend my day trying to keep an eye on what the Bayport police were doing, and to get back in Naomi’s good book.
“Any ID on the dead guy yet?” I asked Chief Collig when I saw him in the lobby.
“Not yet,” he said. “We’re running prints now. I’ll let you know.”
“What room’s Naomi in, Chief?”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to see her right now. She’s been through an ordeal—and now her bodyguard’s disappeared.”
“What? You mean Bobo—?”
“That’s right. He wasn’t in his room when the officers knocked with a breakfast tray for him. Then they found two other officers out cold on either end of the staircase. Bobo must have clocked them. They didn’t wake up for a good half hour.”
“But why would Bobo—”
“I asked myself the same thing,” the chief said. “I figure he was part of the robbery. They had to have somebody on the inside, because the motion-sensor boxes were fooled with.”
“But they came in from outside to do that,” I told him. “They had trucks from a security company based in Atlantic City.”
“A nonexistent company, probably,” the chief added, scowling. “But I’m still convinced Bobo Hines was a part of it. He did time in Sing Sing with Shakey Twist, did you know that?”
I nodded. “True. But if he was in on it, then why did they knock him out with the gas?”
“Maybe he was just pretending to be knocked out, so he’d look innocent!” Chief Collig said, extremely pleased with himself.
I knew he was wrong, but I had to admit it wasn’t a bad theory. “I’d still like to see Naomi, if I could,” I said. “I was assigned by ATAC to protect her, after all.”
He frowned, then said, “Room four-oh-five. See if you can find out anything about Bobo while you’re at it.”
“Sure thing, Chief. I’ll do that. Oh, and what about Shakira?”
“We’ll be grilling her for hours,” he said. “She was Shakey Twist’s girlfriend not long ago, did you know that?”
“No kidding!” I said, pretending to be surprised.
“Yes. In fact, before we learned about Bobo Hines’s connection with Twist, Shakira was our main suspect as the inside man—or should I say woman. And right now, she’s our only remaining link to Twist.”
Naomi looked totally freaked out when she answered my knock. “Oh, it’s you!” she said. “Good.” She pulled me inside and shut the door behind us.
“Is it true Bobo’s gone?” she asked me in a whisper.
“Yeah. They think he may have been in on the heist.”
“No way was he a part of that! He and Shakey hated each other—they even had a fight back in Sing Sing and had to be separated.”
“With this much money at stake, you’d be surprised how quickly two thieves can kiss and make up,” I told her.
“Look, I know you don’t like Bobo,” she said. “But I’m telling you, he left because he was flipping out. He can’t stand being confined—even in a hotel.”
I could see how he might feel that way, but I didn’t believe he’d just disappear, knowing how the police would look at it.
“Speaking of which, I need to get out of here too. I’ve got a show in London tomorrow night, and I want to get home first and pack some things.”
“Where’s home?”
“L.A.”
“You want to go to L.A. just for clothes, then all the way back to London? In one day?”
“You see why I need to get out of here? Maybe you could ask Chief Whatsisname to finish questioning me. I mean,
I’ve already told him everything I know.”
“They’re just waiting on some new information,” I explained.
“Oh? Like what?”
“They found a dead body. One of the thieves, they think.”
She didn’t seem as shocked as I thought she’d be. “Oh, really? Well, that’s good, isn’t it? One less.”
Her reaction seemed a little cold. I figured she was angry about being tied up and gassed into oblivion.
“What else have they found out?” she asked.
“Not much. The rest of the gang disappeared. The police know pretty much who they are, but it won’t be easy to track them down. Some of them may already be out of the country.”
“I don’t think so.” She was biting her lip, and her eyes were filling with tears. “Frank, there’s something else,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting next to her and taking her hand in mine.
She leaned her head in close, and her whisper got even softer, as if she thought somebody else might be close by, listening.
“They’re after me, Frank.”
“Huh? Who’s after you?”
“Those thieves. They were after Bobo, too, but he got away before they could get him—at least, I hope he did. . . .”
“What are you talking about, Naomi? Why would the thieves be after you?”
She shrugged and sniffed back the tears. “Beats me. I guess they thought we could identify them. I don’t know why they would think that—I mean, they were wearing gas masks. But I guess they aren’t taking any chances.”
“Where are you getting all this?” I asked. “I don’t believe—”
“Oh, no? Well, check this out, then!” She whipped out her cell phone and flipped it open. Then she called up her recent text messages.
It was from “outside caller.” I read it out loud. Slowly. “‘You can’t escape us. Say your prayers.’”
“Who sent this?” I asked.
“The thieves, obviously. Frank, I’m terrified. If I can get out of town and disappear for a while, until they’ve rounded up all the thieves, then everything will be all right. Or, at least, I think it will.”
“So that London show. . . ?”
“Yeah—I made it up.”
“Naomi, you can trust me,” I said, brushing her hair away from her face.
“Bobo’s gone,” she said. “Will you protect me until it’s safe?”
“You know I will.”
I don’t know what made me say that. I guess I was just blinded by her beauty or something. I mean, I had school starting the next day! Even if I took a few days off, it wouldn’t be enough. It would take the police much longer than that to roll up Shakey Twist’s whole operation, never mind Sanguillen, who was probably on an airplane to some foreign land already.
“Oh, thank you, Frank—thank you! I knew I could count on you.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. It took my breath away. “As soon as you can get me out of here, we’ll take off out of this town and get as far away as we can!”
I left her there for the moment and headed back down to the lobby. Chief Collig whistled me over. “Find out anything from her?” he asked.
“She thinks Bobo ran away because he was afraid they were going to kill him.”
“That’s rich,” the chief said with a laugh. “Why would they do that?”
“That’s what I said. Listen, Chief, she’s pretty frazzled. Do you think you could release her any time soon?”
“I suppose,” he said. “She’s not under suspicion, after all. It’s no crime to hire an ex-felon to be your bodyguard. At least, not last time I looked.”
“Thanks.”
“Reilly! Could you assign someone to process Ms. Dowd’s release?”
“Sure, Chief,” said our old friend Con Reilly, who was sitting at the hotel manager’s desk, arranging reports. “I’ll send someone up to let her know right away.”
“Good man.” Turning back to me, the chief said, “Oh, and here’s something interesting for you, Frank—we got a match on the prints from the stiff.”
“Oh, yeah? And?”
“It was Shakey Twist himself.”
I stood there in total shock. The dead man didn’t look a whole lot like the photos of Twist we’d seen. He must have had plastic surgery done on his face recently. I wondered if Shakira knew anything about that.
“I know, I can’t believe it either,” said the chief. “Different face, but the prints were the same. You’d think he’d have spent the extra money to do them over too.”
I wandered out of the hotel and into the heat of the sunny spring day. But I was still deep in my own thoughts.
Shakey Twist had been killed by one of his own partners—right after a wildly successful robbery. I’d seen cases on TV where the boss of a mob rubs out one of his underlings, but I’d never seen it live.
The killer had to be Sanguillen, or one of his men. But why? There was no way Twist would have tried to hide a piece or two of jewelry for himself, since he stood to get most of the profits from the heist anyway.
So why had he been killed? And what was the diamond ring doing in his pocket?
I had wandered about three blocks by the time I looked up and noticed where I was. The Bayport Diner was on my right, making me realize how hungry I was. And on my left was a jewelry store with a sign that read EDMONDSON’S.
I remembered the guy from the morning before, who’d come in to certify the jewels as genuine. And something, some urge inside my head, made me go inside.
“Well, hello there!” said Nicholas Edmondson, who’d been standing behind the counter, showing a fine jeweled watch to a customer. “I’ll be with you in a moment, okay?”
I took a seat and waited for him to finish. When the customer left, Edmondson turned to me and said, “I remember you from yesterday morning. You’re one of the security fellows from the convention center, aren’t you?”
“Guilty as charged,” I said, shaking his hand. “Frank Hardy.”
“How can I help you, Frank? Is it about the robbery? I’m so shocked and appalled! Wasn’t the place swarming with police?”
“It was. It was . . . a very sophisticated robbery, sir.”
“Ah. Well, then. You wanted to see me about. . . ?”
“This,” I said, pulling the ring out of my pocket and handing it to him.
“Ah, yes,” he said, admiring it while holding it up to the light. “I remember this one. Lovely. I suppose they left it behind in their rush to get away?”
“I was just wondering,” I said, ignoring his question. “Wasn’t it you who was telling us about how the diamonds are etched with serial numbers to prove their authenticity?”
“I think that was Mr. Carrera.” He sighed. “That poor man—I hope he was well insured.”
“Didn’t he say these had been etched with special numbers to tie them to this specific batch of gems—you know, that were once illegal?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, could you look at this closely and write down the number for me? I think we could try and find the others that way.”
“Certainly.” He took the ring behind the counter and placed it on a viewing platform, then sat down and bent over his magnifier.
“Well?” I asked, ready with pen and paper to write the number down.
“But . . . this is impossible!” he gasped.
“What? What’s impossible?”
“Where did you get this ring?”
“I—why? What do you see?”
“I see no number at all,” he said.
“But I thought every diamond in the show had been specially etched!”
“Yes. But that’s not all.”
“No?”
“No. I’m afraid that stone is not a diamond at all—it’s very good, mind you, but a fake is a fake. This,” he said, handing it back to me, “is as phony as a three-dollar bill.”
14.
Two Plus Two Is Sometimes Five<
br />
I called the police, and when they came, they took me into custody before I could even explain what happened. It took five hours before ATAC managed to convince them to let me go.
By the time I got back to Bayport, it was late afternoon. I found Frank alone at home, looking tired.
“Man,” I said, “have I had a brutal day!” I proceeded to tell him everything I’d been through from the time I arrived in New York City.
When I was done, he looked even more troubled than before. I asked him why, and he told me about Shakey Twist’s death, Bobo Hines’s disappearance, and the fake diamond ring.
With all this new information, both of our heads were reeling. We sat there in silence for a long time before Frank said, “Here’s how I figure the whole thing went down.”
“Shoot.”
“See what you think of this scenario: Carlos Sanguillen arrives in the States from Antwerp a few days ago. He and Shakey already have plans in place to break into the convention center and steal the diamonds. Based on what we saw, I’d say their plan had to have been in the works for weeks, maybe months.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Go on.”
“They have teams of technicians to replace the security camera tapes with cartoons, disable the laser motion-detection alarms and security systems, and make sure the escape route is clear while the ‘A Team’ goes in with their tanks full of knockout gas, their gas masks, their nail guns, and their hammers.”
“Continue.”
“They’ve got Sanguillen in the theater, watching the show to make sure everything’s good on the inside. He leaves—we saw him go, remember?—and meets them backstage. The heist goes as planned, they get out with the gems and arrive at the dock, where the getaway boat is waiting for them.”
“Good so far,” I said. “What about Shakira?”
“What about her?”
“Didn’t there have to be someone on the inside, helping? And remember, she dated Shakey till just a few months ago.”
“Could be, but I don’t see how she could have helped much. Maybe he got the idea for the heist because he knew about the upcoming show through her and decided to contact Sanguillen for muscle.”
Death and Diamonds Page 9
