Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  “Faster than a bullet? What do we do if he starts shooting?”

  Kozlowski walked out of the main office toward the back. He returned carrying a pistol and handed it to Finn.

  “I hate guns,” Finn said.

  “More than being shot?” Kozlowski asked.

  Finn put the gun in his pocket. “We shouldn’t have to use guns at all,” he said.

  “We shouldn’t be in this position at all,” Kozlowski said. “Here we are, though. Just having the gun will probably convince this guy he’s better off taking what he came for and letting the rest go.”

  “Where’s my gun?” Devon asked.

  “Shut up,” Kozlowski said.

  “What am I supposed to do when the shooting starts?” Devon asked. “You expect me to fuckin’ duck?”

  “No,” Kozlowski said, “I expect you to throw yourself over your daughter to make sure she’s safe.”

  Devon started to open his mouth, then stopped. He nodded.

  Finn looked at his watch. It was nearly eight, and even through the blinds he could see that the sun was nearly down. Twilight glittered through the gaps. In a few minutes it would be dark out. Finn couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. “How much longer you got?” he asked Kozlowski, who had returned to adjusting the tiny cameras placed around the room.

  “A few more minutes,” Kozlowski said. “I want to test the monitors in the car to make sure everything’s working right.”

  “We should get out of here soon if we’re gonna have time to get the paintings and get back here.”

  “We’ll make it,” Kozlowski said. “When we get back, everything will be ready.”

  He said it with ultimate confidence. Somehow, though, Finn felt little comfort.

  Hewitt and Porter sat in Hewitt’s car, parked up the street. They were keeping a loose watch on the law offices; they were close enough to see whether people were going in and out, but too far away to see much else. That was okay, though; they had the GPS device planted, and the lawyer’s car was back at the courthouse. If they were going anywhere, it was going to be in Kozlowski’s Caprice.

  “What do you think?” Hewitt asked Porter.

  Porter was sitting in the passenger seat. Hewitt had picked him up from the FBI office in a minor detour when their quarry had left Malley’s apartment. Porter looked nervous; he didn’t strike Hewitt as much of a field agent. He also had a feeling that Porter’s obsession had taken him over. “I don’t know,” Porter replied. His forefinger rubbed back and forth across the bridge of his nose. “Something’s going on, that’s for sure.”

  “Maybe they’re just preparing a defense on Malley’s theft charges.”

  “At eight o’clock?”

  “He’s a lawyer.”

  Porter shook his head. “It’s something bigger than that.”

  Hewitt shrugged. “If you say so.”

  Just then Finn, Kozlowski, and Devon emerged from the front door to the law offices. “Here we go,” Hewitt said. He started the car.

  Porter reached over and turned the engine off. “Give them a good solid head start,” he said. “I don’t want to attract any attention. We can follow them on GPS; we don’t need to have them in sight. If they realize they’re being tailed, they’ll call off whatever they’re planning.”

  “What if something happens before we catch up to them? They could be in danger.”

  “If they’re in danger, they put themselves there,” Porter said. “It’s not my problem. I’m not going to risk the recovery of the paintings protecting the people who are mixed up in all this. They had a chance to come in and work with us. They passed.”

  “You’d let people get killed over this?”

  Porter looked at him. “If it’s that or letting the paintings slip away again, I wouldn’t even hesitate.”

  Stone and Sanchez were even further away from Finn’s offices than the FBI agents. The light filtering out from the lawyer’s windows was little more than a distant beacon, but it was enough for them to see the figures coming out the front door. They waited, watching as the Caprice pulled away, staying put as they watched the feds in the car two blocks ahead of them bide their time for several minutes. Staying put ate at Stone. “We’re gonna lose them,” he said.

  “No we won’t,” Sanchez said. “Hewitt and his friend aren’t going to let them get away that easily. They’ve got them tagged; all we have to do is keep Hewitt’s car in sight, and they’ll lead us where we need to go.”

  The traffic on the street was still heavy. Cars passed them, headed to dinner, or home from a late night at work. Cars pulled out from their parking spaces, and others rushed to take their places, excited at the luck of finding a spot in the parking-challenged town. A white cargo van that had been making a delivery pulled out a block ahead of them, and Stone had to crane his neck around to keep his eye on the FBI car. Still they waited as the minutes ticked inexorably by. “This is gonna kill me,” Stone said.

  “Just another minute.”

  The lights in Hewitt’s car came on. It eased back in its parking space, making room to pull out, then shot forward onto the street, following the Caprice’s path.

  “Now,” said Sanchez.

  In one motion Stone turned the engine and threw the car into gear. They were a block behind, and Stone was petrified they might get caught at a light. “Motherfucker,” he muttered to himself. “We lose them, and I swear to God I’m gonna shoot you, then turn the gun on myself.”

  She looked at him. “You questioning my judgment?”

  He nodded. “I’ll follow your lead, and I’ll let you call the shots. But don’t expect me not to question you when it’s just you and me. When it’s just us, I’ll question everything we do if I think there’s a reason.” He was focused on keeping the tail, and his eyes were riveted on the road ahead of them, but he could feel her staring at him. “What?” he said. “Is there a problem with that?”

  She turned away and looked out the windshield as they stayed within sight of Hewitt’s car. “No,” she said after a moment. “There’s no problem with that at all.”

  For the first time since they had been riding together, he felt that they were partners.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Kozlowski steered the car northeast, through the quaint brownstones and Newport-styled clapboard town houses going for two million a pop, down along Warren to Chelsea Street, the dividing line that separated one Charlestown from another.

  As they pulled down Chelsea and out around onto Terminal, Finn looked across the Little Mystic Channel toward the Newtown Projects. The name might have been appropriate in the sixties, but now it seemed like sarcasm.

  Near the end of the road, they came to an open gate. “Pull in here,” Devon said.

  Kozlowski pulled in and headed north, toward the water. Two cement structures sat long and flat, running north-south, set nearly flush against the edge of the river. The sign that read “Charlestown Self-Storage” had been repainted, but otherwise the buildings hadn’t changed much in twenty years. “It’s around the back,” Devon said.

  Kozlowski followed the path Devon had traveled with Bulger fifteen years before, out around by the water, onto a narrow strip of driveway, then back up into the darkened, narrow alley between the buildings. “Park here,” Devon said, halfway down.

  The three of them got out of the car and walked to a door set in the side of the building. A weak bulb protected by a rusted casing screwed into the cement above the steel door threw off barely enough light for them to make their way with confidence.

  “You got the keys?” Finn asked.

  “Right here,” Devon replied. He pulled out two keys and tried one in the lock. It worked on the first try, and he pushed his way in. Once inside, he reached over to the wall and flipped a light switch. Nothing happened. “Bulb must be out,” he said. “Anybody think to bring a flashlight?”

  “Yeah,” Kozlowski said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a
slim black-steel flashlight and flipping it on, pointing it down the long narrow corridor.

  Finn looked at him. “You’re good.”

  “I think shit through.”

  “What’s that like?”

  “It’s the last one on the left,” Devon said, following the beam of light down the hallway. Once he got to the last door, he grabbed the padlock. “Gimme some light.”

  Kozlowski pointed the flashlight at the padlock, and Devon used the second key to pop it open. He removed the lock and leaned down, grabbing the door and sliding it up.

  The darkness inside the tiny storage unit was so complete Kozlowski’s flashlight had difficulty penetrating it. The beam crawled into the corners first, covering the parameters of the space, as if Kozlowski expected someone to be hiding within. There was nothing. The cement floors and cinderblock walls were cold and uninviting. Then the beam moved to the center of the room.

  It was there. A wooden box that looked solidly constructed, sealed at the corners. “That’s it,” Devon said. No one moved; the three of them stood there looking at it as if it were a treasure that held the secrets of the universe. “You wanna see ’em?”

  “We don’t have much time,” Finn said at last. He looked at his wristwatch, but it was too dark for him to make out the time.

  “You checked them recently?” Kozlowski asked.

  “Yeah,” Devon said. “When I took the pictures and got the paint chips.”

  Kozlowski nodded. “Let’s get moving.” He stepped into the storage room and put his hand on the corner of the box. It moved easily, and he looked down at the bottom, his flashlight illuminating the small wheels at the corner of the box. “Handy,” he said. He walked around to the back of the box; Finn and Devon stood on either side. The three of them rolled the box out like pallbearers, paused after it was past the threshold while Devon closed the door and replaced the lock, then continued down the hallway.

  Walking slowly so that the narrow container wouldn’t tip, Finn felt as if the walk back down the narrow passageway took forever. As they passed each of the other storage doors in succession, his heart beat a little faster. It was almost as if he believed that one of them might open and someone might jump out. It was absurd, of course, but something about the place gave him an eerie sense of the supernatural.

  They got to the end of the hallway and Devon opened the door, holding it ajar with his foot. They all lifted gently to get the wheels over the lip of the entryway, and then they hit the cement outside the building. Finn checked his watch again, this time in the watery light of the lightbulb over the outside of the door. It was after eight-thirty; they still had time. He nodded and they began rolling the box again.

  They loaded the box into the giant trunk of the Caprice. As large as it was, they couldn’t close the back fully, and Kozlowski used some rope to tie the lid of the trunk down. It wasn’t perfect, but they only had a short drive back to Finn’s office.

  They climbed into the car and pulled out slowly, following the drive between the buildings back toward the river the way they had come. When they reached the corner of the building, Kozlowski began to turn, then jammed hard on the brakes.

  There in front of them, blocking the narrow egress, was a white van. It was backed up against the corner of the building, and standing by the side of it was a man with jet-black hair. He was next to the driver’s-side door and there was barely enough room between the van and the low wall that ran along the river for him to stand. Sally was standing in front of him, bound at the ankles and wrists, a piece of duct tape covering her mouth. He was using her as a shield, and he had a gun to her head. He held the gun up and signaled for them to stop. “That’s far enough!” he yelled.

  “Slowly,” Sanchez said as Stone pulled the car into the self-storage parking lot at the end of Terminal Street. Their lights were off, so they wouldn’t be spotted. They could see the FBI agents sitting in their car down toward the end of the first building.

  “What now?” Stone asked as he pulled the car into a spot where they could maintain a good view of Hewitt and his partner.

  “We wait,” she said.

  “You serious?”

  She looked at him. “You got a better idea?”

  Using the GPS to track people had its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, modern technology had become so sophisticated that Hewitt and Porter could pinpoint the location of Kozlowski’s Chevy on the little driveway in between the two buildings. From the GPS mapping, they could see that there was only one way out, so all they had to do was wait, watching the corner of the building, for them to come back around. On the other hand, because they felt secure with the tracking device, they hadn’t felt the need to keep the car in sight. When they showed up at the self-storage on Terminal Street, they were probably three or four minutes behind Finn and Kozlowski, and they had no idea what was happening.

  “Should we go around the building?” Hewitt asked. “See what’s going on?”

  Porter gnawed at a fingernail. “No,” he said at last.

  “We’re blind out here,” Hewitt said.

  Porter studied the GPS map. “We go around the building, we’ll be spotted. We stay here, we can see anyone coming out.”

  Hewitt looked over at the other agent. “It’s a storage unit. I can only think of one thing they’d be picking up,” he said.

  Porter considered this. “Move closer to the corner of the building,” he said. “Be ready to stop anyone coming out.”

  No one moved in the Caprice for a moment. They just sat there, staring straight ahead at Sally. Staring at the man. Staring at the gun he was holding to her head. There was no way around the van; it was parked diagonally across the drive, its nose near the riverbank. The doors at the rear of the van were open.

  “Fuck,” Finn said.

  “Get out of the car! All of you!” the man yelled.

  The three of them did as they were told. They were about twenty feet away from the van. “Sally, are you okay?” Devon shouted.

  The tape over her mouth prevented an answer. “She’s fine,” Kilbranish said for her. “She won’t stay that way, though, if you don’t do what you’re told.”

  “We’re doing this at my office,” Finn said to Kilbranish. His voice sounded petulant, even to him.

  “Plans have changed. Take the paintings out and load them in the back of the van.” He was careful as he spoke to keep the girl in front of him, blocking any shot. There was nothing she could do; her limbs were bound.

  Finn looked over at Kozlowski. He could tell that his partner was deciding whether to pull out his gun and take the man down. Finn didn’t think the odds were particularly good. Kilbranish sensed the hesitation and pressed the gun harder into Sally’s temple; hard enough to force her head painfully to the side. “Do it now!” he yelled. “Or I swear to Jesus I’ll kill her right here!”

  Kozlowski nodded at Finn, and the two of them moved to the back of the car. “It’s gonna be okay,” Devon said to his daughter.

  Kilbranish sneered. “Shut up. She wouldn’t be in this if it wasn’t for you.”

  “You’re getting what you want,” Devon said. “Just don’t hurt her.”

  “Hurry up!”

  Kozlowski got the rope holding the trunk closed untied, and he and Finn lifted the box out of the back, setting it down gently on the rollers. They pushed it around to the front of the car.

  “Put it in the van,” Kilbranish said. He took the gun away from the girl’s head for a moment and pointed it over her shoulder at Finn and Kozlowski. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Finn and Kozlowski moved the box to the back of the van and hoisted it up, laying it on its side.

  “Close the doors,” Kilbranish ordered. He was up toward the front of the van, and as they swung the doors closed, Finn couldn’t have been any more than ten feet away—almost close enough to touch him. He looked up and he caught Sally’s eyes. They didn’t look scared. They looked angry and determined.


  “Step back!”

  Finn and Kozlowski moved back slowly. Devon hadn’t moved; he remained by the side of the car, looking at his daughter. His hands were extended from his body, as if he was reaching out to her. “You’ve got what you wanted, you let her go now!”

  Kilbranish was holding Sally around the neck with his arm, pointing the gun at her head again, holding her up as she leaned precariously with her feet bound together. “Not yet,” Kilbranish said. “I haven’t got everything I want yet. You crossed me.”

  “I didn’t,” Devon said. “I had nothing to do with any of this.”

  Kilbranish shook his head. “You crossed me. If we’d had the paintings, if we’d had the money, the movement would never have died. You killed it. You and yours.”

  “Please,” Devon said. “Please give me my daughter back.”

  “You want her back?” Kilbranish said. “Then you take her back!” He pushed her hard in the back, not toward Devon, but toward the slurry wall that ran along the edge of the river, falling off on the other side to a deepwater slip at the edge of the pier. With her feet bound, Sally had no way to stop the descent. Her hands shot out in front of her to brace her fall, but it was useless. Her shins hit the wall and her momentum carried her forward, over the edge and into the water.

  “No!” Devon screamed. He rushed forward to the spot where Sally had gone in. As he did, Kilbranish was in retreat, headed to the van’s open driver’s-side door. He turned and let loose a volley of gunshots. Finn hit the ground, looking up just in time to see Devon dive into the water.

  Kilbranish fired twice more in Finn’s and Kozlowski’s direction, but they were wild efforts, intended more to buy time than to actually hit anything. He jumped into the van; the engine was running, and he hit the gas, kicking up rocks and dust as he peeled out.