by Pamela Clare
Angel.
That was part of the allure of the jewels: the idea that their purity and beauty would change things somehow and splash over into her life. It never worked. But even now she wanted to hold the damn things.
She looked down. “My arm. It’s bleeding again.”
“That’ll look suspicious.” Macy pulled out a shawl and Angel put it over her shoulders. Then she messed up Angel’s hair. “Okay.”
None of them were happy about returning to the scene. But leaving the gun would draw attention. That damn brainiac security guard would remember making her check it and start wondering. Maybe the staff would start scanning tapes. It could lead them to figuring out three women pulled the job. Female jewel thieves were a lot easier to find than male jewel thieves, because there were so few of them. Borgola would have their descriptions and he’d search the kingdom to find them like a twisted prince in a Cinderella tale. Except they’d die.
A guard stopped them and shone a light into the car.
“I forgot something,” Angel said.
White Jenny drunkenly pleaded with him to let Angel go back and get her gun. Cars were streaming out quickly.
There was a too-long silence where he flitted the light around. They were all aware of the packs under the front seat, full of jewels and hardware.
“Go,” the guy said. “Be snappy.”
They drove on in silence. Angel’s pulse raced. She could feel the tension in the car cranking.
They needed to talk about something else. Angel straightened up. “So when that guy was looking at my cracking tool,” she said, “I told him I listen to music while I do the johns.”
“Funny.” White Jenny slowed to let a car pass the other way. “But I could see it.”
“I thought so. It’s weird, but not that weird.” Angel said. “He believed it.”
Angel followed Macy’s gaze to guys running across the dark lawn. “I don’t like this,” Macy said. Angel heard her shove a clip into her extra gun. They would leave hot if they had to. “I’m going in with you.”
“So anyway,” Angel said, “I told him I let the johns pick the songs. And then he asks me what songs they like to make me listen to while they do me.”
White Jenny snorted. “What did you say?”
This was good. Angel could feel the tension lightening. “I didn’t know what to say. In my mind, all I could think of was like, We are the Champions?”
Jenny snickered. “We are the Champions?”
Macy said, “You didn’t tell him that.”
“No. I just said, not Dancing Queen by ABBA.”
They all burst out laughing. Nervous, crazy laughter.
Guys with guns were going around to cars.
Angel asked, “So what song? That’s my question. What would you guys have told him? What song would a john make his whore listen to while he does her?”
“You Can’t Touch This,” Macy said.
White Jenny snorted. “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
“I’m coming out…” Macy sang.
The obnoxious answers came in full force. They were all hysterical as the guesses went on.
“Wait!” Jenny gasped. “I am Iron Man by Black Sabbath.”
Angel was laughing so hard she was crying. A gun tapped on the window.
Jenny rolled it down, sniffling and smiling. “Yeah?”
A guard asked a few questions. They explained their mission. No, they hadn’t seen anything unusual.
“You girls get your piece and drive safe,” the guy said.
White Jenny glanced back at Angel once they were off again. “Angel, your mascara is weeping black. All horror show.”
“Shit,” Angel said, making to wipe it.
Macy shot her hand back and caught Angel’s wrist. “Stop. It’s perfect. You look truly fucked up. Keep it.”
Chapter Four
A robbery attempt couldn’t have happened at a shittier time. Not a shittier time. Security would be tightened right when Cole needed free run of the mansion. And Borgola would feel paranoid when Cole needed him to feel comfortable.
The robbers wouldn’t have gotten anything, considering the bedroom safe was a Fenton Furst. No, all that these Bozos had done was to jeopardize his operation. And the lives of those kids. Cole had to keep himself from thinking about those kids too hard; that was the fastest way to lose his cool.
A few guests were still leaving. The kitchen staffers were in a line to head out, waiting for the guards to frisk them. Cole pretended to care. To be alert. That’s when he caught sight of her.
Angel.
Her hair was all mussed and black mascara bled down her cheeks like she’d been crying. Adrenaline shot through him and he fought the urge to go to her, ask if she was okay, get the name of who she’d been with.
And destroy him. Make it right.
Focus, he told himself. This was one woman. A lot of people were about to die, and this was just one woman who’d damn well known what she was getting into when she came to the party.
He looked away. He was tired, that’s all. His search for the secret safe was all-consuming now—he hadn’t slept for too many nights.
But he’d taken her piece. Maybe she wouldn’t have gotten worked over like that if he hadn’t taken her piece. He still didn’t know what had gotten into him, seeing her. He’d felt like an animal darting after something shiny, and he’d just gone for her, needing to engage with her, frisk her.
Fatigue. Desperation. That’s all.
He never went for the hookers. Not that he was some boy scout—there was nothing he loved more than a woman on her knees, begging to be fucked or whatever, but he only loved it if she loved it, he only enjoyed it if his dirty talk or clever fingers had brought her to that point—not money or drugs or threats. What kind of man wanted to be with a woman who didn’t desire him?
Stupid question. He’d spent that last nine months surrounded by men like that.
Angel was talking to the coat check girl now. Her willowy friend loomed behind. The woman handed over her gun. Angel glanced at him briefly as she took it. Yeah, he made her nervous. He took a step toward her even as he knew he should stay away.
“Forgot my pistol,” she said.
This made him sad. That gun was no pistol; it was a powerful little semi-automatic with mother of pearl inlay. She really didn’t belong in such a place. He smiled, wanting to show her he wasn’t a threat. “You know how to use that thing?”
“I’ve shot it,” she said.
“If you’re going to carry something like that, you should go to the range and practice at least every six months.”
She nodded, seeming wired and wrung out. Some of her dark hair was plastered to her forehead, as though she’d been sweating. Sweating and crying. He felt his pulse speed.
Stop.
She turned and left with her friend. Couldn’t wait to get out of there. Well, could he blame her? The party girls—that’s what Borgola called them—had been paid well to come and party. An economic exchange.
Still, it made him crazy, her looking like that. A man using her roughly. How could mere money balance that out?
He watched them leave. At least the night would be over for them.
Mapes sidled up beside him. “Old man offed Sturnvaal.”
Cole swallowed.
Mapes stifled a grin. “With a candlestick in the library.”
Cole fake laughed. Mapes had an idiotic sense of humor, but it was important that his enemies felt smart and comfortable tonight.
So Borgola had killed Sturnvaal, the head of the security team, probably with a gun in his office. The burglary attempt had ruined his party. Wasn’t that Management 101? To kill your people when they made mistakes? Cole glanced at Mapes. “Somebody’s going to get promoted.”
“Might be you,” Mapes said.
“Doubt it.” Cole hoped to hell it wouldn’t be him.
Borgola’s assistant came up. Borgola wanted to see both of them in his office.
/>
“Both?” Mapes muttered under his breath as they headed down the lavish hall under chandeliers draped with pearls.
“Sure hope he’s not making us co-leaders,” Cole said. “Co-leaders doesn’t work.” He did not want a power struggle with Mapes.
Mapes gave him a dark look. In addition to the blood stains on his police record, Mapes had a pedigree of vicious killings under Borgola—hell, Mapes was one of Borgola’s most effective killers. He deserved to be the leader of the security team.
Borgola’s study was a book-lined room with a fireplace and stuffed chairs, something right out of an old fashioned novel, though Cole doubted any reading went on in the place. If you looked closely at the wrought iron chandelier, you could see cuffs from which people could be hung by their wrists or ankles.
Borgola wasn’t there. They were to wait.
The two of them walked around the bloodstain on the floor to stand in front of the man’s desk.
Mapes slid his glance to Cole. “Perps must have gotten something.”
“Who knows,” Cole said, though he doubted they got anything. Cole had gone through the trouble of smuggling in an Association consultant to try and crack the safe. He wouldn’t even try. Pops like a fucking Geiger counter, the consultant had said. You want to open a Fenton Furst? You need to blow it. Even then, it’s dicey.
And then some Bozos from the party had set off the bedroom safe alarm. The bedroom safe wasn’t the secret safe he sought, but it got safes on the old man’s radar.
The temperature in the library dropped ten degrees the second Borgola walked in. The man was lithe and fit, with a sinewy neck and overly built up jaw from the incessant grinding of teeth. And he was slime incarnate.
Cole and Mapes waited impassively, standing strong. Borgola liked to imagine himself as some sort of commander, addressing the troops. He had been in the Marines as a youth, though he’d barely made it out of boot camp before he was court marshaled.
“Here’s the situation—we’ve been hit,” Borgola said. “We’ve got five bags of diamonds hanging out there, and at least two thieves who were at the party or let in by a party guest. That’s confidential, by the way.”
“Did they blow it?” Mapes asked.
“No, they opened it,” Borgola grumbled.
Cole could’ve fallen over. They’d simply opened it? But he kept his eyes on the floor, the walls. It didn’t do to look at Borgola while he was stung, and obviously the man was stung by this robbery. He’d been boasting about having the diamonds. They were something special, those stones.
“Needless to say, I won’t be using Sturnvaal’s services after this.” He nodded at the bloodstain on the carpet, eying both of them, back and forth, wanting the message to sink in.
Cole was more interested in the fact that the thieves had breached a Fenton Furst.
“I have my men scouring the grounds,” Borgola said. “But the two of you have the most investigative abilities, so you two are on the hunt.”
Cole nodded. “We’ll look into this.” The Association had given him a whole fake P.I. and Special Forces background.
“Whoever comes up with the culprits gets to be my new security head,” Borgola added.
Great.
“We’ll do our best, sir,” Mapes said, smiling at Cole.
Borgola said, “I have Hensen and Smits dusting the area around the bedroom, but it doesn’t look like we’ll find much. You two will go out there, rip up all of fucking L.A. finding them, and you will kill them and dispose of the bodies. You will bring me their severed hands, and you will bring me the diamonds. And I need results very soon. I want you two to hit the streets, chase down every fence, everyone who deals in diamonds. I’m having all the crime scene info forwarded to you both. Fingerprints and so on. I want the diamonds, and I want the hands of whoever did this.”
“Understood,” Cole said.
“I’ll run down known fences,” Mapes said.
Cole knew Mapes wanted to beat him out and be the one to catch the guys, but it was sloppy to skip the crime scene and go right to the fences. Obviously Mapes was banking on the fact that the pros who pulled this job wouldn’t leave evidence behind.
Maybe he was right. Maybe not.
What Cole knew for sure was that a crime scene was like a story problem: one faulty fact at the beginning could throw the whole thing off. And there were variables beyond things like fingerprints to consider. For example, the climate of fear Borgola had created in his security squad by killing Sturnvaal. Fear created hasty crime scene work; you had to account for that. A frightened man noticed less.
Cole tried to look morose. “I’ll take the scene of the crime.”
“I have Hensen and Smits on it,” Borgola said. “You’ll both share any information gleaned by them. I want you two beating the bushes.”
It was dangerous to counter a Borgola request, but Cole had to see the scene. “I do like to start at the scene,” Cole said. “Just the way I run.”
“That works, because I’ll have the fences and jewel networks,” Mapes said. “I’ll ask around and see who’s moving rocks. They may have put out advance word. This sounds planned.”
“Fine. Cole, work the inside heading the scene investigation,” Borgola said.
Cole eyed Borgola. “If it comes down to a choice between getting the hands or the stones, you got a preference?”
He knew what the old man would say before he said it. But part of the trick of undercover work was making the subject look and feel good. A puffed-up man noticed less, too.
Borgola smiled his oily smile. “All of the above. Stones and hands. Got it?” Borgola left him and Mapes standing there.
“This thing is mine,” Mapes said. “Don’t get in my way.”
Mapes left then, too.
*
Cole tried hard not to wince at Borgola’s lavish bedroom with its mirrors, heavy curtains, and freak-show style of art.
“No prints,” Smits said. “And they really screwed up the electric. Tech guys are mad.”
Cole inspected the safe. He looked at the interior alarm. Whoever got in hadn’t counted on Borgola’s techie modifying the safe. Interesting.
“Was anything else in here beside the diamonds?” Cole asked.
“Nope.”
As they traced the robbers’ footsteps backwards, something like hope swelled inside Cole’s heart. The electric around the bedroom safe was ruined, and the safe itself had been compromised. So what would Borgola do if the diamonds were returned?
There’d only be one place to put them: the hidden safe. The secret safe. It was the only other safe on the premises.
In a flash, a plan clicked into place.
He’d have to find the guys who did the job. He’d make them turn over the diamonds, which he’d promptly bring back to Borgola, but with something extra: a tracking string or two sewn into the bags. The trackers would lead him to the hidden safe, wherever the hell it was. And he’d force whoever cracked the bedroom safe to crack that one, and in that way, he’d get the shell corporation documents. If he got the gems fast enough, it could all happen in the space of a day or two.
They’d find the boat. And more—if they could get into the secret safe without tipping off Borgola, they could start taking apart Borgola’s operation right under his nose. It would be a worldwide tidal wave of drug, kiddie porn, and snuff film arrests.
He just needed to find the guys before Mapes did.
The thieves were good, but the experience of countless operations told Cole that there was always something off, something missed. He had to find that something fast.
He and the team eventually traced the path to the ISI in the lower level security closet. The thieves had disabled just the right mansion cameras. A few minutes later, one of the guys brought in a maid.
“You need to come up to the fourth floor,” the guy said. “Their escape route wasn’t the roof.”
The maid told him about a broken vase and a jammed elevator w
ith a rope hanging off the bottom.
They went up to inspect.
The fourth floor tended to be a business floor; it was full of meeting rooms that weren’t used a whole lot. They stopped in the hallway where pieces of a broken window and a broken vase spread across the patterned carpet, catching the light of the moon. It had been walked over a lot, unfortunately. The elevator had been jammed between floors.
“They tipped over a vase,” one of the guys observed. “In hurry.”
Cole tried to keep a neutral face, but no, the vase had not been tipped over; it had been smashed—an angry, thuggish move that was unusual for a cat burglar. What the hell kind of guys had pulled this job?
But it was the cut-up carpet that really interested him.
One of the perps had injured himself. He didn’t want to leave blood behind, which meant he was probably in the federal database.
Cole cordoned off the area. Smits and Hensen had a decent processing kit, complete with Luminol. Cole took over and proceeded to Luminol the hell out of the carpet. Nothing. He played out the movements of the thieves. Guys on the ground thought there had been three of them. One would’ve been monkeying with the elevator—not the one cut. That one and the other would’ve been looking for blood. The cut would’ve happened coming through the window. He traced their steps, turned. His gaze fell onto an unassuming patch of wallpaper which he promptly Luminoled. And there it was. The spatter. They’d gotten the rug, but not the wall.
He cut the square and dropped it into a baggie. Then he cut a couple of other squares of wallpaper—blank ones. He took two patches of carpet, too.
He ordered Smits and Hensen to scour the shaft down to the basement for more blood, but he knew they wouldn’t find any. The thief would have stopped the bleeding on the fourth floor.
While they were busy, Cole ducked out onto the roof and pulled his tiny earpiece from his pocket. He activated it and stuck it in his ear. It was after two a.m., though it could be morning for Dax.
“Got a break, Dax, but I need DNA run. Fast. And I also need the hands of a fresh white male adult corpse along with the blood from that corpse. I need the blood in three hours, but the hands I won’t need for twelve.” He’d put the blood on the carpet patches to give to Borgola’s guy to run. Then when he produced the hands, they would match the blood. All nice and tidy. Meanwhile, he’d have the real culprit as his new partner.
