"I see.” I stroked my chin, wishing there was some way to hit the speed dial for Dispatch on my cell phone without her seeing it or hearing Dispatch answer. “How did you get into the Van Dykes’ house?"
"Through the door.” She was back to rehearsed-perfect.
"The door was locked. There was an alarm. We found no evidence the lock was forced. The alarm wasn't tripped."
She cocked her head, as if puzzled. “Alarm? The door was open, so I walked in."
"I see. Why did you come here?"
She put her briefcase on the coffee table and opened it. “I wish to return these, but I am afraid to go back to the house. That woman tried to kill me.” She put an envelope and Effie Malone's candlesticks on the table.
I said, “Mrs. Malone only wanted her candlesticks back. What kind of research do you do?"
"I am involved in antiquities and cultural objects.” She closed the briefcase and stood. “I must be going, Stan. Thank you for your help and hospitality.” She moved toward the door.
Time to stop talking and make the bust.
Or try to.
I put down my coffee, stood, put one hand on her shoulder, and snapped cuffs on her. She didn't seem to know what was happening and walked right into me. “Please sit down, Doctor.” I took the briefcase from her hand and exerted gentle pressure on her shoulder. She half stumbled and sat down with a plop, as if she'd lost her balance.
She held up her hands and stared at the cuffs.
In twenty-nine years of arresting people, I have never seen an expression of such pure, absolute, stark terror on any face, and I've seen some damn scared people.
I said, calmly, “It's all right, Doctor. No one will hurt you.” I kept a hand on her shoulder and hoped it was reassuring.
With my free hand I hit the speed dial on my cell phone. “Dispatch, I have the Petite Pilferer."
"No,” she said. "No! You must not! I must go. Now!" She tried to stand up. I increased pressure on her shoulder.
"We must go to the station,” I said soothingly. “We want to ask you a few more questions.” Dispatch hadn't responded. I repeated, “Dispatch, Unit One."
"No! Please! Take them off!” She was straining at the cuffs, as if it was possible to break them.
Still no response from Dispatch. Sometimes cell phones don't work well inside buildings. Never had a problem calling from here before. “Stay there,” I said. “Don't get up.” I backed across the room to the regular phone, picked it up without taking my eyes off her, and punched speed dial for Dispatch by feel.
No dial tone. Somehow, I wasn't surprised. “What have you done to my phone?” I asked.
"I have not touched it.” She bolted. Stood up, grabbed her briefcase with both hands, and ran into the kitchen, with me a step behind.
There's no way out of the kitchen except through a window I painted shut years ago and the back door, which has a key-locked deadbolt.
She wasn't there.
The window was still painted shut. The door was still locked.
Somehow, that didn't surprise me. I stared at the ceiling. “Beam me up, Scotty?” I whispered. I didn't believe any such thing. But it would explain a lot.
I went back to the living room.
The candlesticks and envelope remained. And her shoes, kicked off under the coffee table.
No, I wasn't imagining this.
I pressed speed dial again. “Dispatch, Unit One."
"Dispatch.” Loud and clear.
"In pursuit of the Petite Pilferer on foot, my address. Brown tweed suit, barefoot, wearing my cuffs, carrying a briefcase. Out my door and vanished.” I wasn't about to tell anybody she'd vanished from my locked kitchen, much less about the absence and sudden reappearance of my living room furnishings. I trundled out the door and down the street, just fast enough to make it look good.
Of course we didn't find her. Just tied up two of our crews and one each from Berkeley and Oakland for half the night.
At least Effie Malone would get her candlesticks back—after the lab was done checking them.
I slept late. Didn't matter when I got to the lake. Did matter that I got a good night's sleep.
* * * *
When I went to the kitchen to make my morning coffee, my handcuffs were on the counter by the coffeepot; the cuffs I bought when I went to work for Oakland, fresh out of the Air Force, and carried all these years.
But they weren't mine.
Every scratch, ding, worn spot, and discoloration was faithfully reproduced; the same smooth action when closed or opened, and the same positive turn of the same key in the locks.
I knew it the minute I picked them up. Nothing visible; nothing I could point to and say, “There it is.” They just weren't the same.
I thought about it while I ate breakfast, finished last-minute packing, and loaded my old ex-cruiser. I started to call the station to suggest that anything the Petite Pilferer returned should be checked for authenticity.
No.
Damned if I knew what good it would do if everything else came back like my cuffs. Nobody'd believe it, anyway. I compromised by dropping off the cuffs for lab analysis on my way out of town.
I promised myself I was not going to think about the Petite Pilferer for the next month and hope she'd been caught or had stopped operating by the time I got home.
* * * *
My promise lasted a week.
I rowed back to shore near sundown and found my vacation neighbors, Bob and Silvie Marsh, waiting on the beach with the woman who'd rented their cabin for the rest of the summer.
The woman was one of them. Don't ask me how I knew, looking at a shadow outlined by last rays of the sun. Twenty-nine years of learning to listen to hunches, I suppose. She was not another Petite Pilferer.
"Stan,” said Silvie, “this is Ania Kirakashian. She's an art historian. She's opening a shop in Oakland this fall."
I shook her hand. “Glad to know you, Ania. I've got more fish than I can eat. Join me?” Stan and Sylvie shared my catch most evenings. Tonight, they were departing for San Francisco.
"Sylvie says you catch the best fish in the lake,” said Ania. “I'll clean them, if you like.” Her voice was low and rich, her accent vaguely Middle Eastern; probably Beirut. Her face was as perfect as Dr. Mrjriirh Tciryq's, except for a nasty scar over her left eye. A glorious crown of gray-streaked black hair cascaded halfway down her back. About five six, slender but muscular, relaxed.
I said, “I'd always rather catch ‘em and eat ‘em than clean ‘em."
Over dinner, the first of many pleasant evenings, Ania explained that she was as much anthropologist as historian. She was interested in the place of art, in the broadest sense, in the everyday life of cultures. “But,” she said, “it's getting rough out there. I'm tired of being shot at and thrown in strange jails, so I'm taking over Grandpa's shop—as much as he'll let go of, anyway. I'll do a little guest lecturing at Cal, or any other university that's interested."
She made it sound plausible.
* * * *
When I came in the next evening, Ania was sunbathing on my beach in a very European bikini, just slightly darker than her tanned, olive skin. She hadn't been making idle conversation when she said she was tired of being shot at. The scar over her eye had companions.
I pulled up my shirt to show my souvenirs of that drug bust. “Looks like we match,” I said.
She laughed and asked how I got mine. I told the tale over another pleasant dinner, which became another pleasant evening.
I'd never felt so good in my life; so full of energy that I found myself doing things I hadn't done in twenty years, without a thought for my slightly marginal heart. A couple of mornings later, for no reason I could think of, I stepped on the bathroom scale. Normally, I never use a scale between one doctor's visit and the next. The scale had been Myra's, so I never threw it out. It said I weighed two-forty-five.
In Doc Adams’ office, not two weeks ago, I'd been two eighty. Antique s
cale; maybe not accurate?
I drove into town to see Doctor Ellis, a young woman who'd taken over the practice of old Doc Harris. No horse-and-buggy country doctor she; all business and the latest equipment. Two forty-three and a quarter, on a gleaming white scale with a digital readout.
Somehow, I wasn't surprised when she said, “You've got the heart of a twenty-year-old. Are you a runner?"
I tried to conceal my shock by saying, “No, just a cop."
I drove back to the lake thinking about walking into an empty apartment, the instant reappearance of my furnishings, the phones that didn't work, and the Petite Pilferer vanishing from my kitchen.
I wondered if I was really me.
At the cabin, I looked in the mirror, half expecting to see a face identical on each side.
Same old reassuringly ugly mug.
* * * *
I didn't push Ania or fish for information. I might get more if I acted as if everything was perfectly normal and let her do her thing. I had almost three weeks.
"I've never figured myself out,” she said, one night. “I need to get away from everything and be alone, just me by myself, but I need people too.” Her eyes flicked over the paintings Myra and I bought for our cabin. “Never thought I'd find a kindred spirit in a Piedmont cop. But...” A long pause. “I suppose a lot of what I do is detective work ... of a sort. Find the pieces, put them together, decide what they mean, if they mean anything..."
I felt the closeness too. It was strange and didn't seem to have anything to do with who she was or why she might be here.
Ania told stories of things she'd done, places she'd been, people she knew—things that could be checked out. She'd attended American University and had a doctorate from Cal. My Beirut guess was half right, but way too simplified. She had a Lebanese-American father and a Palestinian refugee mother. The “Grandpa” she referred to, whose antiques shop she might take over, was Lebanese by birth. His family fled the Armenian genocide of 1915 and found temporary refuge there, until it became possible to come to the U.S. Mahomet Kirakashian was among the most respected dealers in the Bay Area, if not the nation. Myra and I had visited him often. We didn't buy a lot. Most of his stuff was too expensive, but every now and then we found bargains, or he advised us where to go to find something similar that we could afford. I still dropped in every now and then, mostly to admire his collection ... but, as had been true while Myra lived, every so often I saw something that spoke to me and bought it, hoping that Myra, wherever her soul went, would know and appreciate it. He's a true gentleman, of the old Middle Eastern school.
Ania listened to my cop stories with as much fascination as I listened to her tale of how she got her scars. She'd been caught between Shining Path guerrillas and government troops in Peru. Shining Path won that battle, picked her up, decided she was a friend, and nursed her back to health. When she returned to civilization, the government charged her with being Shining Path. The embassies couldn't get her out of jail, so she managed her own escape, taking half a dozen Shining Path with her. The Path smuggled her across half of South America and got her safely on a plane, with forged papers.
Indiana Jones, take a back seat; the lady got there first.
* * * *
Two weeks passed. She neither said nor did anything to confirm what I knew every time I looked at her face. I found myself enjoying her company and getting closer in spite of myself. I decided it was time to poke a little bit.
We were sitting on my patio under a clear and star-filled sky. “Ania, did you ever meet a Dr. Mrjriirh Tciryq? A specialist in antiquities."
"Her?" A slight rise of inflection told me I'd hit the right button. “Once. In Kabul, just after the Russians left. Why?"
"What does she look like?"
"Four ten, ninety pounds, black hair to the waist, brown eyes, narrow face, full lips. She's doing her thing in Piedmont?” There was just the tiniest bit too little surprise in her voice.
"Yeah. Is she reputable?"
Ania laughed, the kind of hoot you hear in a squad room when detectives get talking about con artists they've known and caught. "Reputable? Hoo! If her ‘Doctor’ is real, I'll eat my bikini and walk to town naked. A vulture. A ruin-sacker. A culture-looter of the worst kind. Last I heard, about ten, twelve years ago, the Taliban had her. Wouldn't wish that on any woman, but can't say I was as sorry as I should have been. Tell me about it."
There was just the faintest trace of command in her voice. I told her the whole Petite Pilferer story, right down to the return of the not-mine handcuffs and my strange weight loss and return to health. “Do you know whether she has any Mysterious Eastern abilities to vanish from locked rooms?"
Ania let out her breath in a long sigh. “She got away from the Taliban. That's about the same thing. Candlesticks, jewelry, and Tupperware? That figures, but returning stuff? Not her style, not at all! Something scared her. Maybe Grandpa. She wouldn't have hit if she knew he was around. Everything she returned is probably a copy, like your handcuffs. Your living room stuff is probably original. She didn't have time to make copies. Hm. She's small. Did you look in places you might not think a person could get into? Under the sink? In cupboards? She can get into spaces you wouldn't think a child could fit. I've hidden in places you wouldn't think an eighty-pounder could squeeze into, and I'm one twenty. When your cuffs came back, were they locked or unlocked?"
"Unlocked. I didn't look in the cupboards. She didn't have time."
"You'd be surprised how fast you can hide when someone three times your size is chasing you. After you were asleep, she could get your keys and free herself. Do you have any theories?"
I raised a hand to the stars. “Beam me up, Scotty,” I said softly.
Brief silence. “Beam me up? Oh, Star Trek. I've only seen one of the movies. They saved the whales. That was a long time ago. Do you believe in UFOs, Stan?"
"Never met an alien I didn't like."
She shared my laugh.
"UFOs?” I said, “No. Not even a little. Not logical, Mr. Spock. Somebody so advanced that they can go between stars can look at us all they want, any way they want, without making funny lights in the sky. Hell, Ania, we can count cars in a parking lot from a satellite. If they wanted to let us know they were here, I can think of better ways, and I presume they're smarter than I am."
She laughed softly. “I poke around old ruins and study living cultures which are ... according to us ... ‘less advanced’ than our own. If we could travel to other stars, I'd be doing the same thing."
"And there'd be the Mrjriirh Tciryqs of those stars, messing things up, one step ahead of the cops, wouldn't there?"
The squad room laugh. “You'd better believe!"
I said, reflectively, “I can imagine there'd be considerable research and academic value in the cultural artifacts of a world like this ... and in living here to study the way we live. Hell, if someone invented time travel, wouldn't every archaeologist in town want to go back to live in ancient Greece, Egypt, China, or somewhere, never mind chasing down the reality behind the Bible, looking over Moses’ shoulder when he discovered the Ten Commandments, and such? If people who can travel the stars wanted to do their version of such research, they could come in, pick up anything they wanted to examine, replace it with something that seemed identical, and, if they were responsible, return the original when they were done. They wouldn't steal the stuff and replace it a while later with a copy. But ... there would be those, like the art and antiquities thieves of this world and those who buy from them, who'd feel there was value in the originals, and how could those primitives tell the difference, anyway, so why would it matter? I expect the outside folks have cops chasing the Tciryq's of their worlds."
Her soft chuckle told me all I needed to know. I'd guessed right. She said, as if this was an ordinary conversation, “Want another beer, Stan?"
"Sure."
"Back in a minute.” She went inside. I heard the bathroom door close. More discreet than vanis
hing into thin air.
Five minutes later she put a cold bottle in my hand. “If something like that were true, Stan, there would never be enough cops to live on a world like ours, become part of it, and be able to move freely when a vulture struck."
I took that as confirming the source—the gift—of my sudden weight loss and return to heart health.
"You can use all the local help you can get, can't you, Ania?"
Silence for several seconds. “A cop can't be everywhere.” Another silence. I waited. “Yes."
"You've got it, Ania."
She put her hand on top of mine. “Thank you, Stan."
More silence, broken by the rustle of the wind, the soft lap of water on the shore, the creak of my old lawn chairs, and Ania drinking beer.
I said, “Did you catch her?"
"About an hour ago. You tagged her when you put your cuffs on her. Don't ask me why we could track your cuffs, but not the jewels, candlesticks, and such. Be like explaining quantum mechanics to Pythagoras. It was a merry chase, they tell me. We've been after her for years.” She squeezed my hand.
"Glad we got her,” I said.
"Thank Grandpa. He's not as quick as he used to be, but he hasn't forgotten how. He's about to retire and leave the shop to me. Want to join me in the ... antiques ... business? When you ... retire?"
The idea had a sudden appeal. And a sure sense that when she said “join me,” she meant much more than just a business and police partnership. I said, “Might be ... interesting. Sure, Ania."
She squeezed my hand again, not the way Myra used to, but with the same message. I felt no need to say anything more.
After another silence, she said, “How did you know she was the black hat and I'm the good guy?"
"I knew you were a cop the minute I saw you."
"How? Nobody ever guessed."
"Takes one to know one, Ania."
Copyright (c) 2008 Walter L. Kleine
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Short Story: WHAT DRIVES CARS by Carl Frederick
People—or things—good enough to do a good job are likely to have ideas of their own....
Paul Whitman stepped into his car and relaxed. He'd only had the vehicle, Victor-16, for a week but he'd already become attached to it—even fond of it.
Analog SFF, May 2008 Page 16
