by Thomas Perry
“Want to try having our talk with her while we’re up here?” said Sid. “Her house looks occupied. She might be home now.”
“Not yet,” said Ronnie. “I think we should wait for our background checks to come through. Everything real we’ve learned about Ballantine has been from the women in his life. We’re probably not going to get more than one chance at this woman, and she’s the last one. I’d like to have every bit of information we can get ahead of time. We may need the leverage.”
“Let’s go get something to eat, and then we’ll come back after dark and take another look.”
Sid and Ronnie returned to the neighborhood at nine thirty, when the sky had already been dark for an hour. They parked their rented blue Accord on a street a block to the north of the gravel road. Ronnie took out her Glock pistol, rechecked the magazine, and pushed it back in, then returned the pistol to the shoulder holster under her jacket.
Sid did the same, and then returned his pistol to the holster on his belt under his sport coat.
She looked at him. “You don’t usually do that. I do that. Are you nervous?”
“No more than usual,” he said. “But I haven’t forgotten that the last time we were out here after dark, we had people shooting at us.” He took out his compact camera, made sure the flash was off and the battery was strong, and put it into his coat pocket.
Sid and Ronnie got out of the rental car and began to walk.
It was another warm evening. There had been a strong breeze just before sundown, but when the sun disappeared, the wind had stopped and the air became still, so it felt as though the world were a giant room. The last of the spring rains seemed to have ended for good, and the next rainy day would probably be in November, eight months away. The thought made Sid remember that last year was an El Niño year, and about this date the rainy season had been far from finished. After James Ballantine was found, it had rained every other day for a while.
As Sid and Ronnie walked, they looked at the houses they passed. This neighborhood was like a thousand others in the city. Some cars were parked in open garages, and others sat in the driveways, probably because the garages were being used to store the mountains of mostly useless stuff people accumulated. It made Sid remember that he and Ronnie didn’t have to worry about belongings anymore. Their house had been burned to ashes and then bulldozed and hauled away in dump trucks.
Sid could see the lights on in the house windows, a couple of kids staring at computers, and in other parts of the house there were television sets throwing a fluctuating bluish light on white ceilings. A woman came out of a kitchen carrying a toddler in pajamas. Sid and Ronnie crossed the street in a dark zone to keep from drawing the attention of a man who was working on a car in his garage. The Abels went by unnoticed, like passing shadows.
They skirted Renfrew Street, passing outside the circles of light under the last few streetlamps so they would not be easy to see. In another minute they were in the margin of the broad, weedy, brush-choked field that was bisected by the gravel road. They moved more slowly now, choosing the places where they set their feet, stopping now and then in the clumps of bushes and saplings to survey the land for the next few hundred paces ahead. Beyond the gravel road they could see the lights of the streets they had visited this morning.
After a few minutes they were passing Clovermeadow, the first street of occupied houses. By ten they were on Callalily, the street behind Mira Cepic’s house. They walked along like an older couple out for their evening stroll. By now, they were the only pedestrians on the street. Ronnie knew that their gray hair had helped them avoid suspicion many times, and it might again if anyone saw them tonight. A few years ago, their daughter, Janice, had told Ronnie she should start dyeing her hair instead of letting it go gray. Ronnie had said, “Do you have any idea what gray hair is worth in our business? Middle-aged women are invisible. Men can’t even see us.”
They walked along Callalily, past one house, and then another, until they came to the one right behind Mira Cepic’s house. It looked perfect. There were no lights visible in the windows. The Abels didn’t change their pace. They simply turned and walked up the front lawn and onto the strip of grass beside the house.
Moving ever more slowly, they made their way to the edge of the yard. There were no dog bowls or dog toys in the yard, and there was no fence, so they kept going until they found a spot between that house and its neighbor where they could take cover and observe. The house had a chimney that protruded from its side far enough to hide Ronnie, and directly across from it was a small metal shed meant to hold garden tools. Sid took a position behind it.
The back of Mira Cepic’s house was only twenty feet ahead of them now. There were lights on in the kitchen window, and a softer light glowed from another back window that was probably a bedroom, with the curtains closed. A few feet from it was a small, textured glass window that was undoubtedly the bathroom of the master suite.
Ronnie watched the house while Sid took out his compact camera and turned it on. The camera had a zoom feature with a four-power capability, and he aimed the camera and adjusted it.
They waited for a few minutes, but there was no activity in the kitchen. Sid signaled Ronnie to stay where she was, and moved cautiously along the side of the house. He came to a window and moved his head close so he could bring one eye to the corner.
Mira Cepic was in the living room, sitting in front of a high-definition television set about five feet wide. She was around forty, with blond hair to her shoulders. Her cheekbones were prominent, and she had a thin, angular look, like a marathon runner or a retired model. The fact that she wore no makeup and her hair was not combed didn’t disguise the fact that her face was pretty. Her arms were bare to the shoulder, and they looked thin and sinewy.
Sid was aware that the human eye was extremely sensitive to movement. If her eye caught motion, not only would the sensation reach her brain, but she would also not be able to resist looking. Sid took at least a minute to move the camera far enough into the corner of the window so the lens could see the woman. He took three photographs. He noticed that what she was watching was a television show about young women trying on wedding gowns. He slowly lowered the camera, and then just as slowly withdrew. He made his way back to join Ronnie at the rear of the house. She looked at him inquiringly, and he nodded.
Sid and Ronnie prepared to turn and go back out to Callalily Street. But they both sensed a change. There were faint sounds from inside Mira Cepic’s house. Then the woman appeared in the kitchen. She moved past the window to the refrigerator, where she took out a bottle of beer. She reached up and opened a cupboard for a glass.
Sid began shooting pictures of Mira Cepic again. She faced the rear window as she opened her bottle with an opener, and then turned away. A moment later the kitchen light went out. Sid and Ronnie waited a few minutes and then stepped out onto Callalily Street, and turned south at Renfrew Street, heading for the place where they had left their rental car.
“We got a good look at her, anyway,” said Ronnie. “And pictures. I also took a couple of shots with my phone while I was sitting there.”
“What did you think of her?”
“I think I want to see whatever information our trace has come up with before I commit myself.”
“You don’t have a good feeling either, huh?”
“I think she probably cleans up really nicely when she wants to. But my first impression is that she looks a little bit hard.”
“Maybe it’s time to start cooperating with the official investigation,” said Sid.
“Let’s get these pictures to Miguel Fuentes at North Hollywood, and see if he can find out anything.”
Ed and Nicole Hoyt watched Renfrew Street for half an hour, but they never saw the Abels after they went up toward the far side of the field and turned down another street. Nicole said, “I guess they’re gone for tonight. I wonder what they’re doing around here. Do you think they found that Mira Cepic woman’s house?
”
Ed said, “How would they find the girlfriend of one of those dead Russians? They can’t know about the Russians, let alone who they called on their cell phones. I think the Abels are still hung up on finding out where Ballantine went into the sewer. I really hated to pass up a shot at them, though. They were out in the open, without much to hide behind.”
“So were we. Even if we weren’t out here where people would get alarmed at the shots and come after us, what would be the point?” asked Nicole.
“We got two chances at them at their house, and nothing we did seemed to put them in front of a bullet,” he said. “Then we planted a bomb and knocked over a robot. It’s been frustrating.”
“Boylan hired us to do that job, and he’s dead. We got much more money from his house than he would have paid us for the Abels,” she said. “I think we came out a mile ahead on them. If we find the guy who hired Boylan, we’ll be even further ahead.”
“We did okay, I guess,” he said. “But you can’t make a living killing the people who hire you.”
“Why not?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Why is that money any worse?” she said. “Money is money.”
Ed smiled. “It’s a funny idea. You get people to hire you to kill somebody, and you kill them instead. You take the money they would have paid you, and any other money they had.”
Nicole said, “That’s what we ought to be doing. Seriously. When somebody hires you to do a killing, you know they’re doing it because they aren’t up to a wet job themselves. In other words, they’re weak. You know they have at least as much money as they’re promising to pay, because hiring a killer and not paying him is something not even a moron would do. And they also have other money, at least as much as they’re offering you. So if you kill them instead of their enemy, you can double your money.”
“Jesus, Nicole.” He stared into the night. “But I have to admit, the biggest thing I worry about when we do a job is that somehow the client is going to get caught, because he’s actually got some reason to hate the target—something to make the police suspect him. And when the police start talking about death penalties and stuff, he’s going to give us up.”
“Right,” she said. “The client is definitely the biggest threat.”
“We’ll have to think about going into the client-killing business. But it’s got to be after we get whoever is sending these people after us.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You have to wonder, if he had the insect people, why would he bother to hire Boylan?”
“Or us,” said Ed.
22
When morning came, Sid and Ronnie came down from their room and had breakfast in a booth at the back corner of the hotel restaurant where they weren’t as likely to be noticed, and then took the elevator to the parking garage.
As they walked to their car, Sid stopped. Ronnie said, “What’s wrong? Why are you stopping?”
Sid muttered, “Oh, there it is. I forgot for a minute that we had another new rented car. It’s the gray one.” He clicked the key fob, and the car gave a little yip in response.
As they got into the car, he said, “I guess this case is starting to get to me.”
“Me too,” she said. “The company says they’re interested just because they can’t bear to give up on James Ballantine, but they hardly knew him. The ex-wife, who’s probably had to deal with racists from time to time, thinks it’s obvious he was killed by racists. As soon as the first girlfriend learns he had other girlfriends, she tries to plant the idea one of them must have killed him. The married girlfriend says he was blackmailing her to keep having sex, and that raises the likelihood that somebody killed him because he asked for it. And the girlfriend who says she knew him best, knew nothing about him after two years.”
“And everything we got from the background checks on the next girlfriend is garbage. Mira Cepic might as well have arrived from the planet Neptune the day before yesterday. Jobs? Education? Marriages? Last address? Not found not found not found.”
“There’s still the criminal background check you requested, and then we’ll get the immigration status from the government,” Ronnie said. “She’s got to have grown up in another country. We’ll get it eventually.”
“If we’re forced to wait long enough, maybe the people trying to kill us will.”
“Yes,” she said. “Somehow those people never seem to slip my mind. Especially when I look forward to going home to sleep in our own bed, and remember that we don’t have a home or our own bed.”
“I guess we should check with Miguel Fuentes in North Hollywood, and see if he’s gotten any new information since we sent him the pictures of Mira Cepic and the background stuff.”
“Or the lack of background. We should call him first instead of dropping in,” said Ronnie. “Maybe it’ll give him time to look for her in the system.”
“I’ll do it,” said Sid. He took out his phone and hit the number for the North Hollywood station. “Can you please connect me with Detective Miguel Fuentes? This is Sid Abel.”
Fuentes’s voice came on. “Sid?”
“Hi, Miguel. We’re getting ready to go talk to Mira Cepic, and we were wondering if—”
“Great timing,” said Fuentes. “I was just going to call you. Can you both meet me at First Street in an hour?”
“The police headquarters building?”
“Yes. Those pictures you sent me caught my eye, and I sent them to Major Crimes. One of the detectives there thought he recognized the face, and sent the pictures to Interpol. Their guy will be here in an hour.”
“We’ll be there,” said Sid.
“And Sid?”
“Yes?”
“I probably don’t have to say this, but stay away from Wintergarden Way,” said Fuentes. “When Interpol in Washington got the pictures, it took them about two minutes to call back.”
Captain Albright was a woman about fifty-five years old with blond hair that she wore in the police on-duty bun. Her suit jacket was unbuttoned, and the others could see she had a .45 in a shoulder holster. She raised an arm to indicate the man in a gray suit who had come into the conference room with her. “This is agent John Roche. He’s from the US National Central Bureau of Interpol.”
She surveyed the big conference table. “This is Detective Miguel Fuentes of North Hollywood Homicide. Lieutenant Dennis Cole, Major Crimes. Sergeant Daniel Trevolino, Major Crimes. And joining us today are Sidney and Veronica Abel. They’re the private investigators who took the photographs. They’re both retired Los Angeles police detectives, and you can talk freely in front of them.” She looked around as though the room contained hiding places. “I don’t see Detective Hebert. Anybody hear from him?”
Lieutenant Cole said, “He’s in traffic.”
“We’ll fill him in later,” she said. Her expression betrayed a slight irritation. “Agent Roche is here to brief us about those photographs.” She nodded to Roche. “Agent Roche?”
“Thank you, Captain,” said Roche. He said, “Sergeant Trevolino forwarded the photographs to our office in Washington last night, and immediately two of our agents recognized this lady.” He paused and watched the people in the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve got a panther infestation.”
He seemed pleased with his choice of words, and even more pleased that they meant nothing to the others, who merely looked at him expectantly. “It’s what the police in Europe call them—pink panthers, after the old movie. They’re diamond thieves. The London police caught a couple of them once with diamonds hidden in a lotion jar, which was a trick used in the movie, and the press picked it up. It’s an unfortunate name, because it keeps people from taking them seriously.”
“They’re from London?” Lieutenant Cole said.
“No,” said Roche. “They were mostly from parts of the former Yugoslavia. Over the years, various European police agencies have arrested a hundred and eighty-nine of them. They were Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian.
A few were from other places in Eastern Europe.”
“That’s a huge number of men for a jewel theft ring,” said Cole.
“That’s another thing,” said Roche. “They’re never all men. There are always women too. Let me run you through the way the thefts work.”
He reached into the briefcase he’d brought and took out a file. Ronnie and Sid could see it contained printed photographs. He said, “The first step is that a woman comes to the door of the jewelry store. She’s vaguely foreign. She wears all designer clothes. She’s attractive. Sometimes she wears a little bit of high-quality jewelry. It’s not garish, but the jeweler who sees her will recognize that it’s very expensive. Usually she’s alone. If she’s with a man, he dresses and acts like he’s capable of buying her whatever she wants.”
Roche opened the folder and took out a print of one of the photographs Sid had taken. He handed it to Captain Albright to his left, and she looked and passed it on. Roche said, “The lady in the picture is Mira Cepic, and she’s one of these women. She’s originally from Romania, a child of Serbian parents who we believe disappeared shortly after she was born. She was apparently raised in an orphanage in Bucharest. This is significant because the Ceausescu government used to take some of these children and train them to be members of the Securitate, the secret police. We don’t know much about her history in Romania—education, foster parents, and so on are absent from the record, and this would be typical of the children that the government took. At some point after the Ceausescus fell in 1989 we think she lived in Serbia. She was arrested with a Serbian passport in Bern, Switzerland, in 2008 after a diamond theft, and then again in London in 2012, carrying a Serbian passport and a Canadian one. Both times she was charged as one of the thieves, but later released.”
“Why did they let her go?” asked Lieutenant Cole.
“It was hard to prove she wasn’t a bystander or victim, because her job is ambiguous. The woman cases the store on the first visit and then gets the door opened for her on the second. The first day, the woman comes to check display cases, window displays, guards, alarms, automatic locks, and so on. At the same time she’s appraising the diamonds that she can see. When she can, she photographs everything with a cell phone or small camera. Then she’s gone. The next day, or a week later, the woman shows up again. Because she’s been there before, the clerks know her. They remember she’s rich and interested in buying something. They can hardly get the door open fast enough. As she enters, a man comes in right behind her. He’s armed. He takes care of the guard and opens the door. Three more men come in quickly. Instantly they’re smashing glass cases and pouring diamonds into pouches as fast as they can. It’s usually over within sixty seconds. Their record is under thirty seconds. Then they’re all gone.”
