The Stolen Blue

by Judith Van GIeson

  Claire pondered how people she knew would approach the bridge. She saw herself as walking within a few feet of the railing, then pulling back. Harrison would stare at the bridge, but never attempt to put a foot on it. Evan would stride across, full of purpose, looking neither to the left or right until the minute he jumped off. She didn’t see Anthony on the bridge at all but as skirting the edge of the cliff, flirting with the abyss. As far as she knew, Anthony had no safety net. Was she worried that something had happened to him? Claire asked herself. That he had changed his mind? Or was she just a person who was chained to the clock?

  She checked the time again as she passed through the kitchen, saw that it was now a quarter to eight, and decided to boil water hoping that would produce Anthony even though her mother’s adage that a watched pot won’t boil could easily be translated into a person who is waited for too eagerly will never show up. The water brought her luck, however, because as soon as she turned on the faucet, the doorbell rang.

  Anthony stood on the stoop in his long coat, wearing his pack on his back. “Am I late?” he asked.

  “I was just putting on some water to boil for pasta.”

  “I ran into Joe Carnright, and we went out for a drink.”

  Long drink, she thought, but she didn’t say it. She led Anthony to the guest room to deposit his coat and backpack, then into the kitchen, where Nemesis was curled up in a chair. “Nice house,” Anthony said. “Nice cat.” He picked up Nemesis, who began to purr.

  The water boiled quickly, the pasta cooked in a few minutes, and they sat down to eat. This was the first time Claire had a man who wasn’t a relative to dinner in this house. Anthony was too old to be a son, too young to be a lover; he existed in a kind of no-man’s-land as far as Claire was concerned. Still he added some sparkle to the dinner table, although all they talked about was books.

  After dinner they went to the den, and Anthony logged on to AOL as a visitor, using his own address and password.

  “Is there any way for Five Numbers to tell that this message is coming from Albuquerque and not from your house?” Claire asked.

  “There might be,” Anthony replied. “If he read all the boiler plate at the bottom of the message. Let’s hope the thief is too impatient or too stupid for that.”

  “You’ll be more believable if you set a high price. Then your motive will appear to be money.”

  “Whatever the price, once I sell it, I’m a witness and a threat. James or that redneck rancher or whoever shows up could take the book away, then take me out.”

  “The university police will be there.”

  “Do you trust them?”

  “Rachel set up a sting at Page One, Too, and she handled it well.”

  “Were any weapons drawn?”

  “No. The thief didn’t even show up. If you don’t want to do this, Anthony, I’ll understand. No book is worth getting shot over.”

  “Do you want to call it off?”

  “No,” Claire admitted.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “No. I’m angry.”

  “Then, let’s do it.” He was excited, Claire suspected, as excited as she was and curious, too. The need for danger could be as much a part of human nature as the need for sex and security, only the proportions were likely to change as one grew older. Claire wondered if she sought excitement now because she’d had so little in the BDE—before divorcing Evan—years.

  Anthony clicked the “write” icon. “What’s the address?”

  “It came from an anonymous server in Finland, 26688@anon.net.fi.”

  “What do we say?”

  “You heard someone has been looking for the history, and you have one. Set a high price.”

  Anthony’s fingers pecked at the keys. “A thousand dollars?”

  “That’s good. Say you’re in Arizona, but you’re leaving for New Mexico early tomorrow morning. You need to hear back before you leave.”

  Anthony typed in the message. “What happens next?” he asked.

  “We wait to see if we get a response.”

  Anthony clicked the send icon, got out of AOL, and yawned. He was a man who could go from high excitement to total exhaustion in a manner of minutes. “Time to go to bed,” he said. The word “bed” hung in the air like a particle of dust in a beam of afternoon sunlight until he added, “I’m in the guest room, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “See you in the morning.”

  Anthony went through the door to his room, and Claire went through the door to hers. For her it took hours for sleep to replace excitement. While she tossed and turned, she considered the suspects. To her the book-dealing connection and the art world connection said Samantha, but it was also what she wanted to believe.

  Anthony was up before she was checking his messages on the computer. By the time Claire awoke, it was eight-thirty. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be late for work. Anthony had printed the messages from Five Numbers and was sitting at her kitchen table drinking coffee. He handed Claire the printouts. The first one read, “Your price is too high.”

  “Take it or leave it,” Anthony had replied. Claire was glad she’d been asleep when he’d written that one. It was closer to losing the deal than she cared to get.

  “I’ll take it,” Five Numbers answered.

  “What do we do now?” Anthony asked Claire.

  “Say you need the money today.”

  They picked up their coffees, went into the den, and sat down in front of the computer, where Anthony pecked out a response and sent it into cyber space. “I need the money today. Cash.”

  “Makes me sound like a junkie,” he said to Claire. “A book junkie.”

  They sipped their coffee and stared at the screen while they waited for the messages to circle the globe from Albuquerque to Finland to somewhere in the Southwest and back again.

  “You have mail,” the AOL voice eventually said. Anthony clicked on the mail icon.

  “Where in New Mexico are you?” Five Numbers asked.

  “Albuquerque,” Anthony answered.

  “Meet me in the plaza in Old Town at five o’clock,” the message came back.

  “I’ll meet you on the West Mesa. A thousand dollars cash, and the book is yours.” Anthony typed out the directions Rachel had provided.

  Several minutes later the answer came back from Five Numbers. “The money will be there,” it said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  RACHEL’S BACKUP FOR THE STING was a university policeman named Paul Teague. He had the short hair and clean-cut good looks of a Mormon missionary and appeared to be the same age as Rachel—mid-twenties. Nineteen had been proven to be the optimum age for a soldier. Claire wondered if mid-twenties was the optimum age for a cop.

  They met in the Route 66 Diner on Central. Two police officers in the glass bowl of Claire’s office would have sent up a red flag to her coworkers. Claire had found a book that was the same size as the history, and she wrapped it in brown paper. The real history was locked up in the center’s safe; it had become far too valuable to risk losing. Anthony surprised her by showing up at the diner on time, proving that he could do it when he had to. Paul and Rachel wore their uniforms and were armed. Anthony wore his long tweed coat.

  “You’ve got a big responsibility,” Paul said when they were introduced. “Are you up for it?”

  “Sure,” Anthony replied.

  “You need to take off the coat when we get there,” Rachel said. “I don’t want anyone to think you’re concealing a weapon.”

  “Whatever.” Anthony shrugged.

  He was the one who was taking the risk. Although he claimed that didn’t concern him, he tugged at his beard a lot while he drove Rachel and Claire to the West Mesa in his van. Paul followed in an unmarked university police car.

  They took I-40 to Paseo del Volcan, the road that passed the volcano and led to a branch of the Bernalillo County Detention Center, the Double Eagle Airport, and the shooting range that catered to the
public and the police. The signs for each of these places were shot full of holes by marksmen who couldn’t wait to get to the range. It was wide-open country. Chamisa and sage rolled on and on like an unrippled sea, a surprisingly static landscape for a city where the vegetation varied with every change in elevation. At this time of year, the sage and chamisa were gray and dry as kindling. Occasionally the flatness was broken by a fence that became a backstop for tumbleweed or by a mound of broken rocks that had been tossed out by the volcano. The volcanic rocks were black and pockmarked, splattered with splashes of gold and orange lichen. The view looked into the monoliths of downtown and up at the Sandias, which were elephant-gray at this time of day.

  Paul parked the police car at the airport and got in the van. Rachel directed Anthony down a rutted dirt road that followed a fence line. In places, the road had become too bumpy to drive, and a new road had been cut in a loop that swung wide of the old. They drove east until they went over a rise and could no longer see Paseo del Volcan. Rachel told Anthony to park beside a mound of volcanic rock. When they stepped out of the van, the ground was littered with shotgun casings and marked with the hieroglyphics of cowboy boots and running shoes. A paint can, upended on top of a fence post, was peppered with bullet holes. Ankle-deep indentations in the ground indicated a prairie dog colony lived here. A garbage bag had gotten impaled on a creosote bush.

  Rachel looked at her watch and announced that it was three o’clock. She stood with her feet planted a few feet apart and her back to the view, making it clear that she was the one who was in charge of this operation. “I had two reasons to get here early,” she said. “One is to make sure we have this area to ourselves. As you can see, it’s a popular place for shooters. The van is tall enough to be seen from the road by anyone planning to consummate a drug deal or buy a book. Let’s hope the drug dealers go away, and the book buyer doesn’t. The second reason is that I want us to be ready. Claire, Paul, and I will conceal ourselves behind the mound. We won’t be able to see anyone approach, but we’ll hear them. Anthony, if you recognize the vehicle, signal that by stepping out of the van and closing the door. Be sure to activate the tape recorder first,” she said, reminding him of the one she’d hidden in the van.

  “All right.”

  She gave Anthony directions for revealing who the buyers were and whether they were armed. Anthony was thin as a reed and not very imposing in his T-shirt and jeans. Rachel wanted the buyer to consider him a harmless, ineffectual book scout and be duped into making an incriminating admission. There was nothing illegal about buying a book—even for an exorbitant price—so their case might rest on any admissions or threats the buyer made.

  “It’s not likely you’ll get a perp to admit to killing anybody,” Rachel said, “but you may get him or her or them to admit to stealing copies of the book. Collect the money, and when you hand over the book, say so.”

  “And in a voice we can hear,” Paul added. “Don’t mumble.”

  Anthony ignored him. “They’ll want to examine the book. The minute they unwrap it, I’m in trouble.”

  “As soon as you collect the money, we’ll appear. They’ll be looking at the book, so we’ll have surprise working for us.”

  “As far as they know, I’m all alone out here. What’s to stop them from taking the book and keeping the money?” asked Anthony.

  “We’ll stop them. Are you ready?” Rachel asked.

  “Ready,” Anthony said.

  “We need to conceal ourselves now. The buyer may show up early to check out the site.”

  Anthony climbed into the van. Claire looked back before they went behind the mound and saw him sitting in the driver’s seat with his arm resting on the open window. Rachel knew exactly where to hide. When they sat down on the ground with their backs to the rock pile, Claire asked if she’d done this before. “Twice,” Rachel said. “When I was with the APD. I did a lot of surveillance back then. It can be very boring. You have to train yourself to stay alert and to hold your water.”

  “Is that why you went to work for the university?”

  “Part of it. There’s a better class of criminal at UNM. Mostly what you get on the APD is mindless violence—fights, armed robbery, drug deals.” She stretched out her legs, crossed her arms, and began listening for any sound that wasn’t airplanes or wind, indicating that conversation had ended and surveillance had begun. Paul sat down beside her and followed her lead into a state of deep concentration.

  Claire made herself as comfortable as she could and watched the sky where cumulonimbus clouds took on ominous shapes of mouths and claws and a vulture circled lazily. The plan that had seemed like a calculated risk in her office, was becoming a reckless long shot out here. The thought that they could be risking Anthony’s life over a book made Claire very anxious. There was no way of knowing who would show up, how many would show up, how dangerous they would be. If Rachel and Paul hadn’t looked so determined, she would have suggested calling the plan off.

  She wondered what Anthony’s thoughts were while he waited in the van. Two hours could be an eternity if you counted every passing minute. A cloud passed over the sun. A rabbit ran across the mesa, stared at them briefly, then darted away. She became aware of distant sounds, cars coming and going on Paseo del Volcan, dogs barking in the yards of houses down below. Occasionally voices or snatches of music reached her on the wind. The words were indistinct, but the music had a sixties beat, and she wondered if she was overhearing Anthony listening to his favorite tapes. Time passed, she became accustomed to the rhythm of the place and the music of the wind. She heard a vehicle come down the road, rattling its axle as it bumped across the ruts. Claire hoped Anthony had turned off his tape deck and turned on the tape recorder.

  She looked at her watch—4:30. “The buyer is here early,” she whispered. “If that’s who it is.”

  “The perp might have wanted to get here first to set the scene,” said Rachel.

  Before the newly arrived vehicle even came to a stop, they heard the door of the van slide open and roll shut again, the prearranged signal that Anthony recognized the buyer. The faces of book dealers and Burke’s heirs flashed through Claire’s mind.

  They heard the vehicle stop. Rachel and Paul got into crouches with their guns in their hands. Two doors opened and shut.

  “Samantha?” they heard Anthony ask incredulously. “You’re Five Numbers?” Although Claire had suspected Samantha, up until this moment the possibility existed that the thief was someone else, someone Claire didn’t even know. That she’d been right didn’t make her feel victorious. It made her feel sick.

  “This has to be the first time in your life you’ve ever been early,” Samantha said to Anthony.

  “Am I? I hadn’t noticed. I don’t wear a watch. I did what I had to do in town and came over here.” Anthony was enunciating clearly, maybe too clearly, Claire thought.

  “What did you have to do?”

  “Buy and sell books. Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Rusty.” She didn’t mention a last name. “How did you get my e-mail address?”

  “A bookseller gave it to me and said if I had a History of the Blue, someone at 26688@anon.net.fi might be interested. I had no idea it would be you.”

  “What bookseller?”

  “I promised not to tell.”

  “Why are you asking such a high price for a regional history?”

  “I was told that someone at your address might be willing to pay. That’s all I know. A thousand dollars would go a long way right now.”

  “Did you bring the book?” Rusty spoke for the first time. His voice had lost the ironic, mocking tone Claire had heard earlier and gained a hard edge.

  “Yes. Did you bring the money with you?” The way he phrased that sentence was a signal that one of them—or both of them—could be armed. Claire tensed. Paul began to inch forward, but Rachel motioned for him to wait.

  “We want to see the book first,” Samantha said.

&nb
sp; It was the point at which Anthony was supposed to hand over the book, signaling for Rachel and Paul to appear, but instead, he attempted to draw Samantha and Rusty out. “You haven’t told me why you’re willing to pay a thousand dollars for it,” he said. Claire admired his daring, but Rusty’s voice indicated he was irritated.

  “Just give us the book,” he demanded.

  “What difference does it make?” Samantha asked. “You want the money, I want the book. A book’s worth whatever price a buyer and seller agree on. Isn’t that what you always say?”

  “I just want to know. That’s all. To satisfy my curiosity.”

  “It was important to my father. It’s important to me.”

  “Important enough to steal and ruin your reputation for?”

  “Give us the book,” Rusty snapped.

  “It’s in the van. I’ll get it.”

  “No, I’ll get it,” said Rusty. “Where exactly is it?”

  “On the passenger’s seat.”

  They heard the door open and shut. “Make sure it’s the right book,” Rusty said to Samantha, “and we’re out of here.”

  No money had changed hands, and it wasn’t the signal they’d been expecting, but the time had come for Rachel and Paul to act. They ran out from behind the mound with their weapons drawn.