by B A Trimmer
~~~~
Meyer’s Jewelry was our next stop. Jimmy Meyer was there, still looking like the world’s oldest hoodlum. We browsed the store for several minutes without finding any clues. Sophie bought a nice silver and turquoise ankle bracelet. She stopped outside the store and added it to the collection on her ankle.
It was getting late in the afternoon. I dropped Sophie off at the office in time to go to the wedding. She flipped me off when I told her to catch the bouquet.
~~~~
I called Max and my heart did double-time when he answered. I asked him if the bag had been found.
“There hasn’t been any word of it,” he said.
“What if the Russians or the brothers find it first? Won’t they just take the diamonds and leave the country?”
“The Russians are the sellers. If they find the bag they’ll call and tell us they have the diamonds. Then the sale would take place and everybody’s happy. If the brothers find it first, they might try to sandbag us for a day or two. They’d then most likely insist they had been insulted and try to leave the country with the diamonds. We’ve taken safeguards against that possibility.”
“So, what do you think? Does anyone have the bag yet?”
“I don’t think so. I just talked to both groups about an hour ago. I didn’t detect anything like that. They’re all the same ill-tempered jerks they’ve always been. Both groups are still demanding we find the diamonds and conduct the exchange. We have men shadowing both groups. Other than the fact that the Russians are still holding Alex, nothing of note is happening.”
“Any word on how Alex is doing?”
“None at all. The Russians are playing this pretty close. But it wouldn’t make sense for them to kill him or even seriously harm him. Every move they make is directed by Moscow and they don’t kill or maim without reason. As long as there still is a chance to get the diamonds back, he should be OK.”
I said good-bye to Max and hung up the phone.
~~~~
I drove through the now-darkened streets of Scottsdale, ending up in front of Dos Gringos. I was feeling more than a little hungry and I knew a three-pack of street tacos would hit the spot. I went to a booth and ordered the tacos, along with a Diet Pepsi. The sound of the people laughing and the music playing in the restaurant helped me think.
In about ten minutes, the waitress delivered my dinner. As I slowly munched the tacos, I started at the beginning, piecing together what I knew:
The Russians brought the bag containing the diamonds into the country a week ago Tuesday. Alex delivered a car to the Blue Palms that same morning. While there, he stole the bag from the Russians. I had confirmed Alex was leading his usual life up until the point when he was asked by his boss to drive the car to the resort. Until he went to the Blue Palms, Alex didn’t seem to be involved with any of it.
After he stole the bag, Alex most likely took it back to his apartment. He had probably looked into the bag on the way back to his apartment. This could account for where I found the CD, under the seat next to the passenger door. If Alex had just found the pouch with the three diamonds, he wouldn’t have noticed if a disk had fallen out.
Alex had two of the diamonds appraised, but once he was told they were real, he didn’t wait for the official reports to come in. He fenced the first diamond at a pawn shop in downtown Scottsdale. He got a pile of dough, quit his job, and then went crazy spending the money. A few days later, while I was following him, he fenced the second diamond at Meyer’s Jewelry, and the third at the Tropical Paradise.
Jimmy Meyer alerted Tony DiCenzo that he had just bought one of the missing diamonds. Ingrid Shanker, the pinched-faced art dealer, called DiCenzo and told him Alex was in the gallery fencing the third diamond with the Iceman, Albert Reinhardt, at which point DiCenzo’s men began trailing him.
Since Alex was fencing the diamonds, DiCenzo’s guys naturally assumed Alex was the one who had the bag and was acting alone, but they couldn’t know for sure. If they were wrong and they just grabbed Alex, his partner would bolt, diamonds and all, never to be seen again. Instead, they followed Alex around for a couple of days to see if he would lead them to the bag and the rest of the diamonds. They had already searched his apartment and knew the diamonds weren’t there.
DiCenzo found out about my involvement through the hotel security tapes at the Tropical Paradise. He then used Lenny to hire Gina and me to help him search for the missing bag independently. DiCenzo probably told both the Russians and the Consortium brothers he was going to have me assigned to the case. Tony didn’t realize how quickly the Russians and brothers would become impatient and both groups would try to kidnap me to find out what I knew.
The Russians then tried a more direct approach. They trashed Alex’s apartment. When they didn’t find what they were looking for, they kidnapped Alex in hopes of torturing him to find out what he knew.
The brothers were also frustrated the diamonds hadn’t been found. Since the Russians already had Alex, they decided I would be the next best hope of finding out what they wanted. Unfortunately for them, I escaped. I know they would have come after me again if DiCenzo hadn’t warned them off. So now there was nothing for them to do but to wait, at least I hoped they would wait.
Danica’s house was trashed the day after the Russians kidnapped Alex. Under torture Alex must have spilled the beans that Danica was his girlfriend and where she lived. The Russians must have thought her house would be a likely place for him to hide the diamonds. I also assumed the reason my apartment hadn’t been trashed was that DiCenzo’s men had already gone through it and had told everyone it was clean. Maybe I need to install another deadbolt.
So where was the bag? If Alex thought the gym bag was empty, there was a real possibility he had thrown it away. A shudder went down my spine at the thought of that. No, if Alex had simply thrown the bag away he would have confessed that to the Russians. They would have then tortured him until they were convinced he was telling the truth. Everyone would have stopped looking for the bag, or at least be looking for it in the Maricopa County landfill. Since that hadn’t happened, it must still be around somewhere. The question is, where?
~~~~
After dinner, I got back in my car and drove around Scottsdale. This helps me think and sometimes I’ll drive past something that will jog my memory. I shoved a Katy Perry CD in the player and turned the sound up. The light bouncy music helped me concentrate.
I drove around Old Town. I drove the neighborhood around Alex’s apartment. I drove around Gainey Ranch. I even drove back up to the north Scottsdale golf resorts.
After almost two hours of driving, I had to admit I had nothing. I drove back home to Marlowe and went to bed.
~~~~
I had another sleepless night and got up in a bleary-eyed depression. A hot shower helped clear my head. I pulled on jeans and my favorite red knit top, swiped on some make-up, and again did the ponytail thing with my hair.
I got in my car and drove to the office. It wasn’t there was anything going on there. I just didn’t want to sit at home waiting for another idea to pop into my head.
~~~~
Sophie had just arrived. I could tell this because she was still reading the southern California surf report on her tablet. I had seen her do this a hundred times. In her youth she had been a California surfer chick and old habits die hard. She heard me coming in from the back offices.
“They must be having a storm in the Pacific today,” she yelled back at me. “Laguna has overhead waves this morning. I’d love to be back there. It would give me a chance to wear my purple wet suit. I haven’t worn it in years.”
I walked into the front part of the office. Gina was nowhere to be seen. I plopped down on the chair besides Sophie’s desk.
“Wow,” she said, “you look terrible. No luck in finding the bag last night?”
“Nope,” I said, “And I’m out of ideas. I just don’t know where to go next. How was the wedding?”
&nb
sp; “It was great. I met a cute electrical engineer. He works at the Intel plant in Chandler.”
“Did Gina come up with anything yet?”
“She has an interview with a man who knows the woman in the lobby who lost her bikini top. Gina hopes to get a line on whoever paid her to flash her boobs. Apparently, bikini woman works at Jeannie’s, so Alex probably knew her and it was most likely him.”
“We’ve assumed it was Alex, but if it wasn’t we’ll have something new to go on. I’m out of leads. I have no idea where the freakin’ bag is.”
After that we both sat in silence. Sophie had stopped looking at her computer. She instead was staring into space, chewing on her lower lip, apparently deep in thought. I was about to ask her about it.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Sophie slowly said. “We don’t think Alex had anything to do with this until he showed up at the Blue Palms to deliver the car.”
“True,” I said. “Before that, he seemed to be leading a normal life. I talked to his parole officer about it. He said con men sometimes have a relapse. Sometimes an easy con just falls into their lap. They can’t help themselves. They just steal out of a knee-jerk reaction.”
“OK, I get that part. But, if that’s true, then Alex didn’t know he was going to steal the Russian’s bag until he saw it that morning. Maybe he went to the front desk to ask about the person he was delivering the car to? Maybe he saw the little guy holding the bag tightly to his chest? Maybe he could tell it was valuable? Maybe he somehow talked bikini girl into losing her top to create a distraction? I get all that. What I don’t get is where did he get the bag he used to make the switch? Odds are pretty low he just happened to be carrying around the exact same color and type of gym bag.”
It was like somebody turned on a light in my head. It was so obvious. Where did Alex get the bag? A bag that was so identical the Russians didn’t know it was switched until they opened it? I had been assuming Alex had some time to plan this out, but Sophie was right. This was most likely a spontaneous event for Alex. He had to get a bag from somewhere in the hotel. If I could find out where Alex got it, maybe I’d have a clue to finding the one that was switched. We didn’t see any gym bags in the hotel when we were there the day before. But we really hadn’t been looking for one. Maybe I should look again.
~~~~
I got to my car and drove up Scottsdale Road to the Blue Palms. For the second day in a row, I walked into the lobby and looked around. Several shops were located in both the front and the back lobbies, but none of them sold gym bags. One shop carried luggage, but the smallest piece there was much larger than the bag Alex had on the videotape. I asked the woman behind the counter if they sold gym bags or anything small enough to look like a gym bag. She said no, but suggested I try the souvenir shop.
The souvenir shop sold backpacks and beach bags, but no gym bags. I walked around and looked for a locker room or a weight room, without luck. Dejected, I walked over to a comfortable couch and sat. Where could Alex have found a gym bag on a moment’s notice? He would have had five or ten minutes, at most, before both the Russians, and the bag, disappeared forever. Not to mention he also had to convince a woman to flash herself in public.
I let my eyes wonder around the back lobby. I ended up glancing at a shop I had seen before. Again it was like somebody had turned on a light in my head.
When Gina and I first saw the security videotape, Lenny said the small black bag was a gym bag. I hadn’t questioned it. Gina hadn’t either. It sort of looked like a small black gym bag and we just assumed Lenny knew what he was talking about. Could Lenny have been wrong? Up until now, nobody knew exactly what the bag looked like. With the poor quality of the videotape it could have been any type of bag. All of the guys have assumed it was a gym bag. Mobsters are tough guys, after all, and tough guys carry black gym bags.
I got up and walked into the shop. Thirty seconds later I knew where Alex had gotten his bag. I also knew what he did with the bag after he took the three diamonds out of it.
THIRTEEN
I sped down Scottsdale Road, hung a hard left at Doubletree Ranch Road, and raced into Danica’s subdivision. I pulled into her neighborhood and drove to her house.
When Danica answered the door she looked better than she had Saturday night, but I could tell she still hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep. She had on a short tropical print sundress with spaghetti straps and flat sandals. She was only wearing a hint of make-up and her hair was bunched in a loose knot on top of her head. It was the closest I had ever seen Danica to being messy.
“Hey,” I said, letting myself in. “How’s the clean-up going?”
“Oh, it’s going OK. There’s just so much damage. It’s going to take a few days to go through everything. The police came over again this morning and were here for almost an hour. They just left a few minutes ago. I think now they’re trying to see if this has anything to do with Alex or not.”
We walked through the destruction of the living room and into the kitchen. Danica pulled an open bottle of white wine from the refrigerator. She poured out a full glass and handed it to me. She then refilled her glass, which had been almost empty. Danica held up her glass and looked at it.
“For some reason they decided not to break my wine glasses. I thought I should celebrate by using them a lot today.”
I held up my glass and she tapped it with hers. It made a pleasant dinging sound.
“The other night you thought nothing was taken,” I said. “Have you found anything that’s missing yet?”
“I’ve spent all morning sorting through the mess. The insurance company wants me to make a list of everything that’s missing or damaged. I’ve gone through the entire house and I haven’t found anything missing. Damaged yes, destroyed yes, missing no.”
“What about your purse?” I asked. “The big black shoulder bag you’ve been carrying around all week.”
She looked at me like I was just short of insane. “I don’t know. I put it in the closet a couple of days ago. I’ll go see if it’s still there.”
We got up and went into the living room. She walked into her bedroom, only to return a moment later. I knew the answer by the look on her face. I felt my heart sink.
“It’s gone. How did you know?” she said, wonder in her voice. “Who would ransack an entire house, ignore thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry and art, only to steal an empty purse? Sure, it was a Farucci, but there wasn’t a wallet or a checkbook in it. Not even any make-up, nothing.”
Two chairs in this room were more on less intact. I sat in one and waved for Danica to sit in the other.
“Tell me about the bag,” I said. “When did you get it?”
“There’s not much to tell,” she said. “It’s a Farucci Spy bag. I got it last week, on Tuesday, I think.”
“I saw you at Nexxus last Monday. You had it there, so you must have bought it before then.”
Danica blushed two shades of red.
“Danica,” I said. “What is it? Tell me what’s wrong.”
“If I tell you something, you’ve got to promise never to tell anybody. I’d never do anything to hurt Alex.”
“OK,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers. “I promise. Now what is it?”
“Well, the Saturday before he disappeared, Alex and I had dinner at A Different Pointe of View. It was so wonderful. That restaurant has one of the nicest views in the city. I could tell Alex was excited about something. He can’t ever hold a secret. After dinner he gave me a handbag. He even tied a red bow to the strap. Just seeing the look on his face as he gave it to me made me so happy. He hasn’t been able to afford many presents, so this was a big deal to him. I think it was the first spontaneous present he had ever given me. It was a Farucci, a Spy bag, just like the one they took from my closet.” Danica then leaned over and whispered to me: “But that one wasn’t a real Farucci. It was a knockoff, like they sell over the border in Rocky Point or Nogales.”
“Did Alex say where
he got it?”
“He was a little vague about that at first, but he eventually said he found it.”
“He said he found it?”
“He said he found it in the trash in the back of the Scottsdale Blue Palms.”
“In the trash?”
“I know, but he said the rich women staying there are always tossing away things like that. He said that for some women, spending two thousand dollars for a purse isn’t any more of a big deal than me paying two hundred dollars for a pair of shoes. When they get tired of their purses, they just toss them. I know I’ve sometimes done the same thing with shoes when I’m tired of them.”
Man, I’d really like to take a crack at her closet.
“But since the bag was a fake, I thought maybe the woman was just too embarrassed to keep it.”
“Did he say what he was doing up at the Blue Palms? That’s quite a ways from where he lives or worked.”
“He was delivering a sports car to a woman who was staying at the resort. He said he was driving the car around to the back and he saw the purse sitting on top of a pile of boxes in a dumpster.”
“Was there anything in the bag when he found it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. When he gave it to me it was empty. I even checked the pocket.”
“Tell me more about it. You said it was a knock-off? Are you sure? How do you know it wasn’t real?”
Danica just sat there, giving me a look.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t give me that look. I need to know. I wouldn’t know a real Farucci from a fake Farucci if it hit me in the head.”
Danica looked down at my bag, $18 at Bargain Barn. This brought a sad smile to her face.
