The Vintage Caper

by Peter Mayle

  Two

  It was Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, and all the traditional sights of that most joyous of seasons were on display. Santas in sunglasses-some wearing red shorts as a concession to the heat-rang their bells and wagged their false beards as they set up camp in the prosperous parts of town. In Beverly Hills, a few of the more festive lawns had been dusted with artificial snow imported from China. Rodeo Drive was a-twinkle with the glint of platinum American Express cards. A bar on Wilshire was offering an extended happy hour, from eleven a.m. to midnight, with the added inducement of organic martinis. And members of the L.A. Police Department, brimming with goodwill to all men, were dispensing parking tickets and D.U.I. citations with unusual generosity.

  As the dusk of evening deepened into night, an ambulance made its way through the holiday traffic on Sunset and headed into the hills before stopping at the security barrier that marked the entrance to Hollywood Heights. The guard, yawning with boredom after an uneventful few hours, emerged from his air-conditioned sentry box and peered at the two men inside the ambulance.

  “What’s up?”

  The ambulance driver, spruce in his hospital whites, leaned out of his window. “Sounds serious, but we can’t be sure until we get there. Call from the Roth residence.”

  The guard nodded, and went back into his miniature fortress to call the house. The driver saw him nod again before he put the phone down and the barrier went up. Recording the visit in his log, the guard checked his watch and saw that there were only ten minutes left until the end of his shift. Tough luck on his replacement, who would be spending the rest of Christmas Eve in the gatehouse, watching reruns on TV.

  Arriving at Château Roth, the ambulance was met in the driveway by the man who had given the green light to the security guard, a visibly agitated Rafael. He had been left in charge of the property while the owners spent Christmas in Aspen, and only the thought of vanishing across the Mexican border with $50,000 in cash had persuaded him to abandon his comfortable, if undeclared, employment. He took the two ambulance men down to the cellar and let them in.

  Unhurried and methodical, they pulled on rubber gloves before unloading empty cardboard cartons bearing the name of a winery in the Napa Valley. A preliminary tour of the cellar showed that the bottles of Bordeaux occupied a separate section, which was helpful. They would need to spend less time looking through the storage racks. Working from their list, they began to pack bottles into the cartons, ticking off names and vintages as they packed. Rafael was kept busy putting the filled cartons into the back of the ambulance, with a warning that any breakages would cost him dearly.

  Each carton held either a dozen bottles or six magnums, and by the time the men had finished, forty-five cartons had been filled and loaded. After one last check, and a regretful glance at Roth’s California wines and his boxes of pre-Castro Havanas, they switched off the cellar lights and closed the door. Now it was time to make a few adjustments to the interior décor of the ambulance.

  The cartons were stacked neatly on either side of a stretcher bed before being covered with hospital blankets. Rafael, by now so nervous that he was very close to being a genuine emergency case himself, was tucked into the stretcher bed and hooked up to a fake morphine drip that would alleviate the pain of his fake burst appendix. Thus prepared, the ambulance drove down to the security gatehouse, pausing only long enough to wish the guard a brisk Merry Christmas before disappearing, lights flashing, into the night.

  The driver grinned as he heard sounds of movement from the back of the ambulance. “OK, Rafael, time to get up. We’re going to drop you off before we get on the freeway.” He took an envelope from his pocket and passed it back over his shoulder. “Better count this. It’s all in hundreds.”

  Five minutes later, the ambulance pulled into a dark side street to let Rafael out. Next stop was a lock-up garage on an even darker street in a run-down section of west L.A., where the cartons of wine were transferred from the ambulance to an unmarked van. All that remained was to remove the license plates from the ambulance and abandon it in a nearby hospital parking lot before the two men headed off in the van toward Santa Barbara.

  Three

  Aspen had been more than usually enjoyable for Roth. Plenty of A-list names were there, skiing and being seen, and he was able to cultivate the acquaintance of three or four potential clients. This, to his surprise, was helped considerably by the L.A. Times piece. Even though it had appeared back in September, those A-listers who were, as they said, “into wine” were thick on the ground that year, and they had all read about Roth’s collection. The traditional topics of Aspen conversation-adultery, stock tips, cosmetic surgery, studio larceny-had been replaced by talk of cellars and vintages, Bordeaux versus California, optimum aging times, and, of course, wine prices.

  Roth found himself holding forth to small but rapt audiences, household names who would normally have been a little out of his social reach, and the business possibilities were not lost on him. It might be wine today, but it could easily be a juicy contractual crisis tomorrow. Throughout that snowy Christmas week Roth’s skis lay untouched, and Michelle had their personal ski instructor all to herself.

  The Roths shared a jet on the way home with a couple whom they knew slightly from L.A., and who had been wildly impressed to see Roth in such celebrated company. Roth waved away their flattery and complained, in a good-natured way, of being kept far too busy to ski. The implication was that he had been talking business, not Bordeaux, and Roth was happy to leave it like that. It was a satisfactory end to a most satisfactory week.

  His good mood lasted until the evening, when he and his wife arrived back at the house in Hollywood Heights and found that Rafael wasn’t there to greet them. Nor had he left a note to explain his absence. It was unusual, and worrying. But as they went from room to room they began to relax. The Warhols were on the walls, the Giacometti was stalking across the terrace, and the house seemed to have been untouched. In Rafael’s tiny basement apartment, his clothes were still hanging in the closet and his bed was neatly made. There was no sign of a sudden departure. The Roths went to bed early, puzzled, irritated, but not unduly worried.

  It wasn’t until the following morning that Roth went down to the cellar.

  “Jesus Christ!” The bellow of anguish almost caused Michelle to fall off her StairMaster. She hurried down to the cellar, where she found Roth staring, as if hypnotized, at a wall of completely empty wine racks.

  “My Bordeaux! Every goddamn bottle! All gone.” Roth began to pace back and forth, fists clenching and unclenching in fury. A hirsute man would have been tearing his hair out. “If I catch that little son of a bitch, I’ll kill him. I’ll tear his heart out.” Muttering ever more grisly death threats, he went upstairs in search of his BlackBerry.

  In quick succession, he called the security guard at the gatehouse, the L.A.P.D., and his insurance company.

  The guard was the first to arrive, clutching his logbook. By now, Roth had more or less regained the power of coherent speech. “OK. I want to know who got into my house and when, and why the fuck they weren’t stopped at the gate.” His finger jabbed the guard’s chest. “And I want to know the name of the asshole who was supposed to be on duty.”

  “I’m on it, Mr. Roth.” The guard, with a silent prayer that he hadn’t been on duty at the time, consulted his log, finally looking up, triumph mixed with relief. “I got it. Christmas Eve, some kind of medical emergency. An ambulance came through at 8:20, left at 10:50. Tom was on duty. Your caretaker gave him the OK.”

  “I’ll bet he did, the little shit.” Roth took the logbook from the guard and peered at it as if hoping for further revelations. “That’s it? No hospital name? No medical I.D.? Jesus.”

  “We got the license number. And I guess they said it was an emergency.”

  “Yeah, right. Couldn’t wait to get their hands on my wine.” Roth shook his head and handed the logbook back to the guard, who made a deferential exit. He got bac
k to the gatehouse just as the police arrived: two bored-looking detectives out on an errand that they already sensed would be a waste of their time.

  “OK,” said Roth when they arrived at the house. “I’m a generous contributor to the P.B.A., so it would be nice for once to get something for my money. Follow me.” The detectives nodded in unison, the same thought going through their minds. Here was another big shot who sent the Police Benevolent Association a check each Christmas for $100 and expected special treatment.

  They were hardly through the cellar door before Roth started. “See that?” he said, pointing at the empty racks. “Three million bucks’ worth of wine, took me ten years to collect, impossible to replace. Impossible. And those bastards knew what they were doing. They only took the Bordeaux.”

  “Mr. Roth.” The older of the detectives had his notebook out while his partner started to look around the cellar. “Let me get some details. Now, when-”

  “You want details? Christmas Eve, we were away, and this ambulance comes to the gate with some dumb story about an emergency. The security guy calls the house and the caretaker gives him the OK.”

  “Caretaker’s name?”

  “Torres. Rafael Torres.”

  “Mexican?”

  “Does he sound Jewish?”

  The detective sighed. A smart-ass. “Mr. Roth, I have to ask you. Did your caretaker have a green card? Social Security? In other words, was he legal?”

  Roth hesitated. “Well, not exactly. But what difference does that make? He let them in, and they must have taken him with them. Because when we got back from Aspen last night, he wasn’t here. We checked the house. There was nothing missing. And then I looked in the cellar this morning.” Roth turned to the empty racks and spread his hands. “Three million bucks.”

  The detective looked up from his notes, shaking his head. “Trouble is, Mr. Roth, we’re now December 31. That’s six clear days since the robbery. They knew what they wanted, and they worked out how to get in and take it. We’ll check for prints, but…” He shook his head again. “This is a professional job. They won’t have left their address.”

  It was Roth’s turn to sigh. A smart-ass cop. That’s all he needed.

  The detective finished writing and put his notebook away. “We’ll get the forensics people round here later today, and we’ll check things out with the security guard. He may have noticed something about the ambulance that could give us a lead. We’ll get back to you as soon as we have something. Meanwhile, I suggest you don’t touch anything in the cellar.”

  Roth spent the rest of the morning on the phone. His first call, to Cecilia Volpé, was fielded by the receptionist. She reminded him that he had given Cecilia compassionate leave to go for hair extensions and a total body tanning spray in preparation for her New Year’s Eve festivities. And so he was obliged to reschedule the day’s appointments himself. Michelle was spending the day in and out of her closets, choosing a suitable outfit for the party they were going to that night in Beverly Hills. Roth was left to stomp around the house, the phone stuck to his ear. Every time he thought about his cellar, the gaping void seemed to get bigger. Even the view from the terrace was shrouded in a thick coating of smog. By early afternoon, when he was due to meet the insurance company’s representative, he was convinced that fate had it in for him. Self-pity was mixed with anger, and anger was winning.

  Elena Morales, the vice president in charge of private, or noncorporate, claims at Knox Worldwide, arrived punctually at three p.m. Under normal circumstances, Roth would have made an effort to charm; Elena was-as her many admirers told her-far too good-looking for the insurance business. She had eyes the color of dark chocolate, jet-black hair, and a body that was well up to Hollywood ’s high standards. Today, however, all this was wasted on Roth.

  Elena just had time to give Roth her business card before he set the tone of the meeting. “I hope you’re not going to give me all that usual insurance crap.”

  Elena was used to such reactions, and the occasional tantrums, of her wealthy clients. The rich, insulated by money and protected by privilege, were not temperamentally equipped to deal with the harsher realities of life. When faced with loss of any kind, they tended to behave like spoiled children-selfish, unreasonable, often hysterical. She’d seen it all before.

  “What kind of usual insurance crap would that be, Mr. Roth?”

  “You know what I mean. All that fine-print bullshit about extenuating circumstances, terms and conditions, limited liability, gaps in the coverage, acts of God, loopholes in the policy, escape clauses…” Roth paused for breath while he searched for more examples of the iniquitous habits of insurance companies.

  Elena remained silent. Experience had taught her to let nature take its course. Clients all ran out of breath and invective sooner or later.

  “Well?” said Roth. “We’re not talking about peanuts here. We’re talking about three million dollars.”

  Elena glanced at the copy she had brought with her of Roth’s insurance policy. The Bordeaux, according to Roth’s instructions, had been insured separately, but not quite for three million. Elena sighed. “Actually, Mr. Roth, it’s down here in the contract as 2.3 million dollars. But we can discuss that later. Now, I’ve already been in touch with the L.A.P.D., so I know most of the details, although obviously we’ll have to conduct our own full investigation.”

  “How many years is that going to take? The wine’s gone. It was insured. What else do you need?”

  Elena looked at the vein pulsing on Roth’s temple, a throbbing, furious worm. “I’m afraid it’s a necessary part of our claims procedure, Mr. Roth. We can’t pay out substantial checks until we’re satisfied with the circumstances surrounding the robbery. I’m sorry, but that’s standard practice. This case is a little more complicated because the robbery was clearly made possible by a member of your household. We just need to do our due diligence, that’s all.”

  “This is outrageous.” Roth got up, walked over to where Elena was sitting, and glowered down at her. “Are you insinuating that I had something to do with this? Are you?”

  Elena stood up and slipped the Roth policy into her briefcase. “I’m not insinuating anything, Mr. Roth.” She snapped the case shut. “I don’t think we’re going to get much accomplished today. Perhaps when you’re less upset you’ll have a chance to consider-”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ve had a chance to consider. I’ve had three million dollars’ worth of wine stolen, and you and your goddamn procedures and cockamamie standard practices are doing your level best to duck your legal responsibilities. I want my wine back, or I want a certified check for three million dollars. Is that clear?”

  Elena made for the door. “Quite clear, Mr. Roth. Our investigator will be getting in touch with you. Happy New Year.”

  I shouldn’t have said that, Elena thought, as she was driving back to her office. Right now, he’s probably having a heart attack. Not for the first time, she wondered whether the money she was paid made up for the arrogance and dishonesty she had to tolerate. The nerve of the guy, trying to bump up the insured value of his wine by seven hundred grand. Her cell phone rang. It was her boss.

  “Roth’s been on the phone. It sounds like it wasn’t a great meeting. Let’s talk when you get back to the office.”

  The president of Knox Worldwide, an elderly man whose benign appearance concealed a keen mind and a professional reluctance to pay out money, stood up when Elena came into his office. It was one of the things she liked about Frank Knox, a touch of courtesy in an increasingly ill-mannered world. He came around his desk and they settled into two battered leather club chairs next to the window. It was a minor source of pride to Knox that he hadn’t changed the décor of his office for thirty-five years. The massive partner’s desk, the heavy walnut bookcases, the fine old oriental rugs (now wearing a little thin on top), and the cracked oil paintings of stags and other noble creatures-they were all part of a previous century. Like Knox himself, they
were elegant, well-worn, and comfortable.

  He grinned at her. “Another fun-filled day in Hollywood. Tell me about it.”

  Elena went over what she had learned from the detective handling the case, and gave Frank a brief account of Roth’s behavior, including his attempt to inflate the insured value of his wine. “Frank, believe me. He was practically foaming at the mouth. He wasn’t making sense. There was no point in my staying.”

  The old man nodded. “I got some of that when he called me.” He gazed out of the window, his fingers tapping the arm of his chair. “Now let’s see. The robbery took place six days ago, plenty of time for everyone to get away. The police reckon they were pros. It was an inside job, made possible by an illegal immigrant. I’d say there’s no chance of tracing him. And there’s our friend Mr. Roth, jumping up and down for a certified check.”

  “For three million,” Elena said.

  “He wishes. Unfortunately for him, he only paid the premium for 2.3 million. Even so, an amount like that has considerable sentimental value, and I’d hate to part with it.” The old man leaned forward. “How many bottles did you say were stolen?”

  “Between five and six hundred-that’s if you believe Roth.”

  “Well, that’s going to take some time to drink. Maybe that’s what we should be looking for: not the crooks, but the wine. Getting rid of five hundred bottles won’t be easy, unless they did the job on commission.” He stood up, and smiled at Elena. “We need a bloodhound. Got any ideas?”

  Four