Thefts of Nick Velvet

by Edward D. Hoch

  Cormick merely smiled. “Do I ask you how you plan to steal him in the first place?”

  Nick took out another cigarette. “I’m glad you don’t. At this point I have no idea how I’m going to do it.”

  Saturday morning was breezy, with high white clouds that glided swiftly across the sun in irregular formation. Nick helped Jeanie from her car and guided her around a puddle left over from an early morning shower. It was a day for the zoo, and even this early the parking lot was beginning to fill.

  Nick dropped two quarters in the turnstile and they passed through. “I can remember when city zoos were free,” he commented.

  “They still are, in smaller cities. Here they have to pay for guards.” She motioned toward a uniformed man standing near the polar bears. There was a revolver on his hip, and he wore the square silver badge of a local security service.

  “Do they need to carry those guns?”

  Jeanie shrugged. “Probably not loaded.”

  “We’ll assume they are. Where’s this clouded tiger?”

  “Down this way. Let’s stop in the monkey house first, in case the guard is watching.”

  She was a smart girl, with brains that even showed through the blonde hair and the long-legged fullness of her body. He liked being with her, even at the zoo. Even in the monkey house.

  After a time they drifted toward the big cats, while Nick carefully observed the zoo’s routine—a truckful of dirt coming through a service gate in the fence, a keeper hosing down the concrete near the seals, an aging vendor inflating balloons from a tank of gas. Something back near the front gate caught Nick’s eye and he asked, “What’s the armored car for?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Picking up yesterday’s haul of quarters.”

  “Quarters are money.”

  “Forget it. On a good weekend they’re lucky to get two or three thousand dollars. We’re after big game.”

  He paused in front of the cage they sought. “It’s big, all right.”

  The clouded tiger was a massive, mocking beast with mottled fur unlike anything Nick had ever seen. The animal paced its cage with a vibrant stride that seemed to shout its superiority, even over the lion and the more orthodox tiger in the adjoining cages. It was not a beast to meet on a dark night near the Sino-Indian border; it was not even a beast to meet on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the zoo.

  “I don’t like him.” Jeanie shuddered. “He looks as if he could pounce right through those bars.”

  “Maybe he could. My job is to get him through, somehow.”

  “Cormick is crazy! Who ever heard of stealing a tiger from a zoo?”

  Nick smiled. “I’ve stolen stranger things—ten tons of slot machines, once.” But his eyes were busy. The cages all had connecting gates, but the ones on either side of the clouded tiger were heavily bolted. A door in the rear wall led into the beast’s den, and the only other exit was a small gate at the front of the cage, for feeding and cleaning purposes. He studied the padlocked chain on the gate and decided it would present no problem.

  “Seen enough, Nick?” she asked him finally.

  “I guess so.”

  They strolled down by the camels and then stood for a time watching a shaggy old bison who almost seemed to realize it was one of the last. The animal depressed Nick, and he was glad to get back to the car.

  Cormick was pouring drinks when they returned to the trailer. He smiled and held out a glass for Nick. “I thought you might have the tiger with you.”

  “I thought you wanted it on Monday.”

  Harry Smith settled into a chair. “That’s right—Monday morning at a quarter to ten.”

  “Why such close timing?”

  The Englishman sipped his drink. “We’ve made arrangements for the plane at that time. Can you get the tiger then?”

  “It would be easier at night,” Nick said.

  “Not with those guards around. You’d never get by the front entrance. At least in the daytime you can walk right up to the cage without attracting attention.”

  Nick leaned against the wall, eyeing Jeanie’s long legs as she settled into a chair. “Sometimes it isn’t all bad, attracting attention. Now tell me your plans for after I get the tiger.”

  “Jeanie will be driving the pickup truck,” Cormick said. “She’ll follow your orders until you’re away from the zoo, then she’ll drive you to the meeting place. We’ll pay you the rest of the money there and take over the truck. It’s our job to get the animal on the plane for Canada.”

  “Will that truck hold the tiger?”

  “Steel sheeting with a few air holes. It will hold him.”

  Nick Velvet nodded. “I have to pick up a few things. Be back before dark.”

  He borrowed Jeanie’s car and drove to the city—to a laboratory supply house that happened to be open on a Saturday afternoon. There he’ purchased an ugly-looking pellet gun that fired tranquilizing darts. Just in case the tiger got nasty about its kidnaping …

  On Sunday afternoon Nick went back to the zoo with Jeanie because he wanted to study the keepers’ uniforms. And, incidentally, because he wanted to study Jeanie. “How did you meet Cormick?” he asked as they strolled near the reptile house.

  “How do those things ever happen? I was a dancer in a little off-Broadway musical, with dreams of doing my own choreography some day. He said he’d help—invest some money.”

  “Did he?”

  “After this job, he says. It’s always after just one more job. But he’s not a bad guy. He keeps Harry in his place.”

  “How long have the three of you been together?”

  “About a year. Harry had a girl for a while, but she took off. He used to beat her, and she didn’t like it.”

  “How did Cormick hear about me?”

  She turned to smile at him. “You’re famous in certain circles, Nick Velvet. But I never thought you’d be so handsome.”

  Nick was no matinee idol and he knew it. He stopped looking at her legs and started to worry. “Let’s go back,” he suggested.

  On the way out he stopped at the balloon vendor’s stand and purchased two balloons, a blue one and a red one. The blue one he gave to Jeanie, but he released the red one and watched its progress as it rose with the slight breeze. He watched it for quite a long time, and then they left.

  Monday dawned rainy, and Nick cursed his luck. He was about to suggest a postponement, but by eight o’clock the sky was beginning to brighten and the rain had settled into a drizzle.

  They met for a final conference in the trailer and Cormick shook his hand.

  “Good luck, Nick. The rest of the money will be waiting for you.”

  “Can’t you tell me where you’ll be?”

  “Jeanie knows. We’ll see you this afternoon.”

  Nick dressed quickly in a close approximation of the work clothes worn by the keepers. Then he followed Jeanie in the truck while she parked her car at a suburban shopping center.

  “All right, boss,” she said, getting behind the wheel of the truck. “What are my orders?”

  “The service gate will be open. We’ll drive in there and then I’ll leave you. From there you can see the tiger’s cage, and as soon as I reach it you start driving toward it, slowly. You’ll have to turn the truck around and back up to the railing outside the cage. That’ll be the tricky part.”

  “What will the guards be doing all this time?”

  He told her.

  “You’re quite a guy, Nick Velvet. Will it work?”

  “If it doesn’t, I’ll have a lapful of clouded tiger.”

  “Should we buy another balloon, just to make sure?”

  He studied the sky for a moment, watching the progress of fluffy white clouds. “No, the wind direction is about the same as yesterday.” He checked the bulges in his various pockets, and decided the two of them were ready.

  As Jeanie drove the truck slowly through the service gate, a uniformed zoo patrolman turned toward them curiously and started walk
ing in their direction. Nick left the truck and hurried forward.

  “You working here?” the patrolman called out.

  “Cleaning the tiger cage.”

  “Huh?” The patrolman kept coming, looking puzzled.

  “Somebody threw a bottle in there during the night. Broken glass.” Nick hoped that the real keepers hadn’t already found the glass and removed it. He’d had to hurl the bottle over the fence from a distance of fifty feet, but his throwing arm was still good. It had dropped into the right cage and smashed in one corner of the clouded tiger’s domain.

  The patrolman turned and stared at the broken glass and the pacing tiger. “Damn fool, whoever did that! I’ll make out a report.”

  “The night man reported it.”

  “Huh? All right.” He started to turn away as Nick jumped over the outer railing in front of the cage. Then, as an afterthought, the patrolman asked, “You got an identification card? I don’t remember you.”

  “Wait till I finish this,” Nick told him. “I need both hands.” He shielded the padlock with his body and snapped the chain with a quick pressure of powerful wire cutters.

  “What …?”

  But now the cage door was beginning to rise, and Nick hoped that Jeanie was getting the truck into position. “Stand clear, officer. We don’t want an accident.”

  “You going to clean the cage with those wire cutters, wise guy? Who the hell are you?”

  Nick brought the heavy cutters up quickly, catching the guard on the temple. He gasped and started to go down, as Nick’s other hand pulled something else from his pocket.

  Jeanie arrived with the truck, and was backing, it into position. Somebody shouted and Nick turned to see a keeper running toward them. Far off, near the gate, another guard had turned in their direction.

  Nick paused only an instant to gauge the wind direction again, then hurled two smoke bombs at the oncoming figures.

  “Nick!”

  “Hurry! We’ve only got a minute!” He pulled a plank from the truck and laid it across the railing to the cage door. Then he tossed another smoke bomb into the cage and pulled the door open all the way.

  The tiger, momentarily terrified, turned toward its den, then changed its mind and bolted out of the cage, up the plank, and into the waiting truck.

  “Done!” Nick yelled, yanking out the plank and slamming shut the steel door of the pickup truck. “Let’s get out!”

  One of the guards had made it through the smokescreen and was pawing at his holster when they heard the shots.

  “Those came from the main gate,” Nick said, scrambling onto the seat next to the girl. “What’s going on?”

  She didn’t answer, but thumped hard on the accelerator, shooting the truck forward through the service gate. He’d been prepared to smash through, but the gate was still open. Behind them a patrolman fired one wild shot and then they were away.

  “This truck won’t be safe for long,” Jeanie said.

  Nick glanced out the side window as the truck roared past the zoo entrance. The armored car was there, standing at the main gate with its door open. Two uniformed men were stretched out on the pavement near it.

  “Never mind the truck,” Nick growled. “What about that?”

  “What?”

  “You know damn well what! Your friends have played me for a prize patsy!”

  She spun the steering wheel like an expert, cutting off suddenly onto a side road. It was dusty and bumpy, and almost at once the tiger started to growl.

  “You’re getting paid,” she told him. “Stop complaining.”

  “Cormick didn’t want the tiger at all! You didn’t even care if I got it. The whole thing was just a diversion while Cormick and Smith knocked off the armored car.”

  “I didn’t know there’d be any shooting,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road.

  “If the guards caught me you’d have left me there. Did you do all this for a few thousand dollars in quarters?”

  She snorted in disdain. “Use your head, Nick. The armored car stops at branch banks on its Monday morning run. With any luck we’ve got close to a million bucks!”

  “They waited inside the zoo, jumped the armored car men, and took their keys. Both armored car men came into the zoo?”

  “They always did,” she told him. “They figured it was a safe stop, like a church. All we had to do was distract the zoo guards somehow. That’s where you came in.”

  “And I also make a good fall guy for the cops to chase.”

  “I’m sorry, Nick.” Behind them the tiger roared again.

  “I’ll bet you are! You just came along to keep me on schedule.”

  “That’s about it. I’m leaving you with the truck and this damned tiger and taking my car.”

  “Where are you meeting them?”

  “Sorry, Nick. You’re not making the trip.”

  He reached past her leg and switched off the ignition. The truck shuddered and rolled to a stop on the narrow dirt road. “Tell me,” he ordered.

  Jeanie yanked open the door on her side and began to run as soon as she hit the dirt. He sprang after her, and she turned quickly, her hand coming out of her shoulder bag.

  “I can take care of myself, Nick,” she said, swinging a tiny pistol toward his stomach.

  “You crazy fool!” His own hand had moved almost as fast—to the pellet gun he carried in a bulky side pocket. He dropped to his knees and squeezed the trigger, putting a tranquilizer dart into the wrist of her gun hand a split second before she fired.

  Nick left-her sleeping in a field and drove the truck to the shopping center where she’d left the car. Already the news of the robbery was on the radio, and he listened with a kind of foggy indifference.

  “Two armored car guards were slain this morning in a daring holdup at the Glen Park Zoo. The zoo’s patrolmen, distracted by the theft of a tiger from its cage, were unable to assist the armored car personnel. The two masked gunmen escaped with an estimated seven hundred thousand dollars, while another man and a girl were stealing the tiger. The missing beast—a rare clouded variety—is described as being extremely dangerous.”

  Nick switched off the radio as he turned into the shopping center, then changed his mind and turned up some loud music. The tiger was beginning to growl again. Nick wondered if there might really be a prince willing to pay $30,000 for the animal.

  He found a road map in the glove compartment of Jeanie’s car, and studied it carefully. Four circles had been drawn with pencil. He frowned and thought about it. Cormick and Smith wouldn’t be near the zoo, or the airport, or the last place he’d seen the trailer. That left only one logical circle, and he decided to chance it.

  “Say, mister,” somebody called as he went back to the truck, “you got an animal in there?”

  He smiled at the man. “My dog. He’s a big fellow.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  Nick was still smiling as he wheeled the truck onto the highway. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use the tranquilizer gun again.

  There was a trailer camp where the circle had been drawn on the map, but Cormick and Smith were not there. Nick parked the truck in some nearby woods and waited. It was almost dark before they pulled in, near the edge of the camp. Nick smiled for the first time in hours.

  When it was dark he slowly backed the truck against the side of the trailer and got out. “What in hell’s that growling?” he heard Harry Smith ask from inside. Nick unlocked the back of the truck.

  It was Cormick who opened the trailer door, pistol in hand. “Who’s there? That you, Jeanie?”

  “One tiger, as ordered, Cormick.”

  “Velvet!”

  “Hungry and mean, but in good condition.” Nick opened the back door of the truck.

  The tiger leaped for the lighted trailer and made it to Cormick in a single bound. Behind him, Harry Smith started to scream.

  Afterward, Nick used the tranquilizer gun on the tiger and then scooped up the loot of the holdup. He push
ed through a gathering crowd of frightened spectators and drove away as the first police car was coming down the road …

  Nick Velvet stopped at the corner grocery for a six-pack of cold beer. He walked slowly, enjoying the feel of the warm evening, until he came in sight of the house and saw Gloria waiting for him on the porch. Then he smiled and started walking faster.

  “Hello, Nicky,” she said. “Home to stay?”

  “For a while,” he answered, and opened a couple of beers.

  The Theft from the Onyx Pool

  “YOU STEAL THINGS, DON’T you?”

  Nick Velvet regarded her with a slight smile. “Only the hearts of beautiful maidens.”

  “No, seriously. I can pay.”

  “Seriously. What do you want stolen?”

  “The water from a swimming pool.”

  He continued smiling at her, but a portion of his mind wished he were back on the front porch with Gloria and a cold beer. The habits of the very rich had never been for him. “I could always pull the plug,” he suggested, still smiling.

  The girl, whose name was Asher Dumont, ground out her cigarette with a gesture of angry irritation. “Look, Mr. Velvet, I didn’t arrange to have you invited here so we could trade small talk. I happen to know that you steal unusual things, unique things, and that your fee is $20,000. Correct?”

  “All right,” he told her, playing along. “I don’t know exactly how you came upon that information in your circle, but I’ll admit it’s reasonably accurate, Miss Dumont.”

  “Then will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “Steal the water from Samuel Fitzpatrick’s pool?”

  Nick Velvet had been approached by many people during his career, and as his peculiar reputation had grown, he’d been hired to steal many curious things. He’d once stolen a tiger from a zoo, and a stained-glass window from a museum. His fee for such odd thefts was a flat $20,000, with an extra $10,000 for especially hazardous tasks. He never stole money, or the obvious valuables that other thieves went after. He dealt only in the unusual, often in the bizarre—but in his field he was the best in the business.

  “That’s a peculiar assignment even for me,” he told the girl. She was blonde, with shoulder-length straight hair in the tradition of girl folksingers. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see her back in his old Greenwich Village neighborhood, but somehow she seemed out of place sipping cocktails at a society reception in Westchester. It was only her dress, a gleaming satin sheath, that belonged at the party—not the girl.