Forty Thieves

by Thomas Perry

  The sergeant said into his radio, “The shooters may have left the yard dressed as police officers. Look at faces. Look at badges and equipment. Ask yourself all the questions when you approach another team. I repeat. The suspects might be wearing police uniforms.”

  Three miles away, Ed and Nicole Hoyt sat in the alley behind a row of closed restaurants and stores on Nordham Street in Northridge. Nicole pulled a gray sweatshirt down over her black, short-sleeved police uniform shirt and handed Ed his plaid flannel shirt. He pulled it over his head, and then buttoned the top two buttons. Nicole adjusted the radio scanner beside her to 506.975. It clicked and then a male voice said, “One zebra twenty-six. We went on a burglary at the Springfield Cleaners yesterday morning. They thought a few uniforms might have been part of the missing property.”

  “Copy,” said another voice. “Any security video?”

  “Negative,” the cop said. “The detectives were planning to check the cameras on other businesses that might have picked something up.”

  “We know they won’t find any pictures of us,” Nicole said. “It was as dark as the inside of your pocket that night, and we had ski masks on.”

  Ed started the engine and the car crawled down the alley toward the next street. “Even if they don’t catch us, tonight was crap.”

  “I know,” said Nicole. “I still don’t know why they’re alive. I’ll bet we put sixty rounds each into that car.”

  “We broke a lot of glass, but the shots didn’t go through the doors.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m guessing Abel put steel plates in the door panels. That’s when they should have died—right away, when they were still strapped in their seats and ducking their heads.”

  “But are you sure there were steel plates?”

  “Pretty sure. They should have tried to run. Instead they stayed behind the car, because they knew the doors were armored. We should have learned more about them, and we’d have known they’d pull something like that.”

  She knew better than to press him about what they should do to kill these people now. When he was in a bad mood, Ed Hoyt had a tendency to go nonverbal.

  8

  The police questioned the Abels separately. Because they had both done this kind of interview themselves, they were not surprised that the process lasted most of the day. Detectives took turns talking to them in shifts while other cops analyzed the scene, canvassed the neighborhood, and studied surveillance footage. There were long delays while officers verified the Abels’ histories, checked with the divisions that were investigating the Ballantine murder and the shooting incident in the North Valley, and talked with the people at Intercelleron.

  Other officers checked on the Alex Rinosa case, but ruled him out as a suspect. He had been denied bail as a flight risk, and so far he’d spoken only with his attorney, a former federal judge who had no prior connection with Rinosa and would never have agreed to serve as a go-between.

  It was evening again when the officers drove the Abels back to their house, where the doors were locked but every light was still burning. Their ruined car was still there, waiting to be towed to a police lot to be reexamined by technicians, who would certainly find nothing that wasn’t immediately visible. The police lot was only a stop on the way to the wrecking yard.

  Sid closed the front gate and they walked up the driveway and in the front door. They relocked the door and then went from room to room to be sure nobody had entered since the police had searched. When they had cleared the house, Ronnie stopped.

  “I know this sounds stupid, but would you mind sleeping downstairs in the basement tonight?”

  “Is it something I said?”

  “No, silly. Both of us. We can drag a mattress down there. Then we can lock the steel doors.”

  “The cops said they were going to keep an eye on our house for the next few days.”

  “You know what that means,” she said. “They don’t have enough officers on duty to do more than drive by a couple of times tonight, and come quickly if there’s a call with our address in it.”

  “You know, we’re probably safe upstairs, with the doors locked and the alarm turned on.”

  “‘Probably,’“ she said. “That says it all.”

  “I don’t mind being down there for a night, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “Thanks, Sid.”

  “Let’s get the place set up,” Sid said. “We’ve been up all night and day, and pretty soon I’m not going to want to drag mattresses around.”

  “Okay.” She took his arm and they went to the guest room that had been Janice’s bedroom when she was a child. Ronnie got pillows and blankets and carried some into the kitchen near the doorway to the basement stairs. Then they both dragged the mattress from Janice’s bed through the doorway and down the steps.

  Within a few minutes they had set up their bed for the night. Ronnie stared down at it for a couple of seconds, and then looked around the basement. Across the basement there was a concrete stairway that led up to a sloped set of doors at ground level. The owner before them had installed a steel door at the bottom of the steps to make the basement burglar proof, so all she saw was that. The rest of the basement was dimly lighted concrete walls interrupted by a hot-water heater, a few pipes, a sump pump, a workbench.

  “Pretty dismal, isn’t it?” she asked. “Like a dungeon.”

  “Old-world charm. As long as we sleep with our eyes closed it will look fine.”

  “Let’s go change into something comfortable. And let’s not forget guns and ammo.”

  “Do I need to be armed when I’m asleep?”

  “Of course you do. A team of killers narrowly failed to get us last night. Even if you’re too thick-skinned to die you should want your wife to feel safe. Humor me.”

  He sighed. “All right.”

  They went upstairs, changed into jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers, and brought their pistols, holsters, and reloaded spare magazines. They walked the house one more time to be sure nothing had been left unlocked, and then went back to the basement.

  Ronnie set their two pistols on the floor at the head of their improvised bed and lay down beside her husband.

  “This is actually pretty comfy,” she said.

  He didn’t reply. They had been busy all day with their investigation, then lived through an ambush and firefight, and finally spent the rest of the night and part of the day at the police station. Now they were home, underground, behind a steel door designed to protect commercial buildings. The night was silent.

  Ronnie moved closer on the mattress and held her body against Sid’s. “Thanks for putting up with this,” she said. “It just makes me feel good to be barricaded down here where nobody can get at us for one night.”

  “Yep,” Sid said. “Tomorrow we’ll talk about remodeling the basement. If we’re going to sleep here more than once we might want to decorate. Or at least dust.”

  They were silent for a few seconds, and then she said, “Sid?”

  He sighed. “I’ll go check.” He got up and walked across the basement to the steel door in the concrete wall. He unbolted the door, and then climbed the narrow concrete steps up to ground level. Above him was the sloping wooden door. He unlatched the door, lifted it about six inches, and looked out to scan the moonlit yard for a few seconds, then lowered it again. He bolted it, descended the stairway, closed and bolted the inner door, and walked back to the bed he and Ronnie had made.

  Ronnie’s eyes were shut and her chest rose and fell in the deep, slow rhythm of sleep. Sid looked down at her for a few seconds, and then went to the wall switch, switched off the lights to throw them into darkness, and slid onto the bed beside her.

  He kept thinking about what had happened last night, going over all of it in his mind. The shooters must have planned many hours earlier to kill them and to escape by impersonating cops. Thinking about the police uniforms stolen from a dry cleaner’s shop disturbed him, but also brought back a memory of t
he day he had met Ronnie.

  They had been married over thirty years now. At first he was not quite able to believe in her affection. He had wondered if she was one of those career-oriented people who went into relationships assuming they would end pretty quickly anyway, so there wasn’t much of an emotional investment. His mother’s sister Amelia had been married about five times and she had never seemed especially elated to begin a relationship or sad to end it. Men were just one of many commodities, and she paused to sample a few of them as she passed by on her way to something else that interested her.

  Ronnie had not been that way. They had met on a task force that was assembled to break up a Los Angeles group that was moving prescription drugs they’d obtained in a series of hijackings and burglaries in eastern states. He had been attracted to Sergeant Veronica Hall instantly—the gleaming brown hair, big, intelligent blue eyes, and incredibly smooth skin made it hard to keep his eyes from returning to her whenever she wasn’t looking. He was at the meeting with another detective who was called out unexpectedly and took their car, so Ronnie had offered to drive him back to Metro.

  On the way they talked easily and found things to laugh about, and he caught the moment when she was stopped at a light, and in midsentence flicked her eyes downward from his and double-checked his left hand for a ring. His pulse quickened. She must be interested. But maybe she wasn’t, because what she said next was, “Would you mind if I made a very quick stop on the way? I have a couple of uniforms at the tailor’s.”

  “At the tailor’s?” he said. “You have uniforms tailor-made? Not that you don’t look great, but are you taking money from the evidence room or something?”

  “It’s just alterations,” she said. “They’re a necessary expense. Women’s uniforms have to be taken in at some places and let out at others or they don’t fit right.”

  “You mean everybody still does that in this day and age?”

  “Only people who aren’t shaped like men. Meaning women. Female officers.”

  “But that’s not fair. You should complain.”

  She laughed. “Don’t cry for me. The world’s nearly perfect. There’s body armor made to fit women, sort of. If you and I were the same rank I’d have the same title and be getting the same pay as you. And if you were to put your hands on me without my permission, I could get you suspended and probably fired. That’s enough progress for one lifetime.”

  “I’ll remember to keep my distance,” he said.

  “Very prudent,” she said. She pulled to a stop in front of a small shop. “I’ll be right back.”

  He watched her run inside, hand a woman at the counter a credit card, sign a slip, and take a couple of uniforms on hangers, then hurry back. She put the uniforms in the trunk, resumed the driver’s seat, and pulled back out into traffic, heading toward the police headquarters building. “I apologize for that,” she said. “Of course, your wife probably picks up your uniforms from the cleaners on the rare occasions when a detective needs one.” So maybe she was interested, but she wasn’t sure if he was married. Plenty of married cops didn’t wear a ring on duty.

  “Interesting thought,” he said. “I’ll add it to my collection of fantasies about my future wife.” He felt a moment of pride for the way he had slipped that into the conversation.

  “I hope the rest of them are better than that,” she said.

  “They are, but they can’t all be about the same subject or I’ll seem shallow.”

  “You’ll have to tell me the others another time,” she said. “Here’s your stop.”

  He thanked her, got out, and went into the building. As soon as he was inside where he could watch her pull away, he regretted not asking her to go for coffee sometime, or asking for her phone number, or giving her some absolutely clear signal that he wanted to see her again.

  That part solved itself a few days later, at the next meeting of the task force. He came into the conference room and sat down, and she came in a moment later and sat down beside him. All through the meeting he wondered how to broach the idea of seeing her alone. When the meeting ended, they both took an exceptional amount of time packing papers into file folders and briefcases, while others left the room. When it was safe he said, “I’d like to talk to you for a moment,” but she replied by placing a business card in his hand. She said, “Then call me.”

  He nodded and walked out, and took a few paces to think it over. She’d had the card ready in her hand before he had spoken. As he took it he had seen the standard police business card, but he had also seen a personal number written in a fine, tight script.

  He dialed the handwritten number about an hour after the shift ended. She said, “This sounds like the police force’s most eligible bachelor.”

  “Right. I’m sick of that,” he said. “I called to see if you would marry me.”

  “I think we should start with something less risky. How about dinner and a movie? If we don’t like each other during dinner we can skip the movie.”

  He said, “That sounds safe. What kind of movies do you like?”

  “I don’t care. I’ll sit through anything that doesn’t have cops in it, or lovable thieves. I don’t care if it’s got British actors whacking each other with swords, just so it’s not like work.”

  “And for dinner, is there anything you don’t eat?”

  “Surprise me. If I hate it, I’ll have something to complain about and I won’t have to strain my brain for stupid small talk.”

  “I’ll pick a place from the Health Department warning lists.”

  “There should be a lot of tables on short notice.”

  “Cheap too. Want to give me your home address so I can pick you up?”

  “Okay. It’s 5-9-9-5 Montevideo in Sherman Oaks, apartment B as in Bravo.”

  “I know the building. Adobe brown stucco on top and wood brown below. I got a homicide in the apartment on the left in the back once.”

  “That’s apartment D,” she said. “It’s kept the rent low. If it hadn’t happened I’d have had to kill somebody here myself.”

  “Maybe it’s good that we didn’t solve it. See you at six thirty.”

  They went to dinner and got so deeply engaged in conversation that they forgot about the movie and went to her apartment. They talked from the moment they arrived at her door until he left at 2:00 a.m. When she let him out the door she said, “Thanks, Sid. That was the best first date I ever had.” She watched him nod, but he said nothing, so she added, “I thought I was pretty fun. Aren’t you even going to kiss me?”

  “I figured you’d find a way to let me know if you thought that was a good idea. You brought up the permission issue the first time we met.”

  “We’ve been talking ourselves hoarse all night. You couldn’t find four words to ask?”

  He took her into his arms and gave her a long, gentle kiss. When he pulled back, she was still standing in the doorway with her eyes closed and her head tilted up toward him. After a second she opened her eyes. “I guess you’d better get going.”

  “Didn’t like it?” he said.

  “Liked it too much,” she said. “See you.” She shut the door.

  Tonight, as Sid lay on the mattress beside her, he spent a few seconds thinking how glad he was that his captain had put him on that task force years ago. Then his mind returned to the events of last night.

  In spite of his exhaustion it was hard to get his mind to stop going over and over the situation they were in. He and Ronnie had made no progress yet on the murder of James Ballantine. They had barely caught up with the information the police compiled right after the crime. Yet there were two potential killers out there at this moment who wanted Sid and Ronnie dead, and their last attempt would have killed them if it hadn’t been for sheer luck. The Abels hardly ever drove the Volvo with the steel in it for work anymore. They’d only done it last night because the BMW had taken a rifle bullet through its windshield. He still hadn’t seen the shooters, or heard their voices, or even identified
the make of their car. He kept reminding himself that lying here awake was getting him nowhere. He needed to sleep. The only way to get rid of the killers was to solve the murder. But solving the murder required going out and interviewing people, and going out would expose them to the killers. Only after he had followed the circle enough times did he slip into sleep.

  9

  Nicole Hoyt hoped this would be the success that she and Ed had coming. She looked up and down the quiet night street, where the streetlamps every hundred feet or so made small pools of light on the sidewalks and a little portion of the street. Nobody was visible, and the only cars were parked along the curb. All the houses had gone dark hours ago. She watched Ed kneeling on the strip of grass by the curb. He reached into the small concrete opening in the lawn and turned the wrench clockwise to shut off the water supply to the house. Then he replaced the cover and stood.

  Together they moved to the high hedge at the front of the yard. Ed lifted her into it so she could reach the chain link fence hidden inside the hedge’s foliage. She pulled herself over, and then lowered herself through the hedge with a whisper of leaves and the soft crackling of twigs. She pictured herself as a ghost going through a wall.

  She waited, and Ed reached over the fence to hand her the five-gallon can he had brought, and then climbed over to join her. His transit through the hedge was louder than hers, but it was over in a moment. They crouched by the hedge for thirty seconds to see if anyone had heard, and then walked up the driveway to the front of the house. Ed had spotted the antique leaded-glass window when he came to dig the car trap a couple of days ago. Most of the house had replacement windows that were double-pane safety glass that you couldn’t break with a hammer. But the Abels must have had a soft-headed view of the antique glass, and left it in when they updated the place. Ed used his knife to bend the lead frame, pried out a pane of the glass, then another, and another, until there was a space large enough for Nicole to fit through. He boosted her up and in, and then handed the five-gallon can in after her.