by Mike Knowles
“Yeah.”
“If we needed to see someone about some bodywork tonight could he make it happen?”
“Probably.”
I nodded again. “Find out. Carl, put us somewhere where we can see the driveway, but the guard can’t see us.”
“Alright.”
We listened to Ilir talk to Len while Carl put the Jeep down the road from the guard shack. We were positioned on the side of the road with the engine off. I passed the map to Carl and told him to get familiar with the roads. He nodded and lifted the paper to try to catch some of the light coming off of the streetlights. Carl had done too good a job obscuring the Jeep from view. The pocket of darkness we were in made seeing the Jeep difficult but reading in the Jeep impossible. Carl had to settle for using the light from his cell phone display to see the map that I printed.
An hour and a half later, the van made its way around the corner. Miles had been the one who spotted it. He leaned forward in his seat and squinted at the darkness.
“There,” he said.
It took the rest of us a few seconds to catch up. The driver had turned off the headlights, making the blue van barely a shadow in the night. We all sat motionless as we watched the dark van move over the pavement with the silence and menace of a crocodile. The driver didn’t signal when he made the turn onto Sherwood; the van just lazily rounded the corner. The vehicle finally broke its camouflaged approach when the driver applied the brakes. The rear lights gleamed like monsters’ eyes as the van stopped next to the guard shack.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I could have closed my eyes and called everything that happened like the Amazing Kreskin on his best day. The van pulled up next to the shack. The driver parked real close. Close enough to speak to the guard without yelling — close enough to block the guard’s view of the rear doors opening.
“You see that?” Ilir said. His voice was loud in the confined space of the car. We all saw it, but none of us outside the young gangster were surprised.
What happened next was quiet. The three men who had slipped out of the back of the van had knives or something bigger and duller that would do the job just as quickly, but a lot messier. Less than a minute later, two of the three men moved across the light cast from the guard shack and got back into the rear of the van. The last man came out after the motorized gate had been activated. The man rounded the front of the van and got in the passenger seat just as the van sped up the hill towards the Randall house.
“Carl,” I said. “I need to get in that guard shack.”
Carl nodded and the Jeep’s engine revved. He left the lights off as he followed the path the van had taken. When we got to the shack, I got out of the car and entered through the rear door. The old man was slumped in his chair. The light blue uniform that was meant to look official was a dark red down the front. I was right the first time. It had been a knife — something big and sharp. I looked around the surfaces surrounding the body for the piece of paper that had the dimensions I was looking for. I found the card I had passed the man under his newspaper. The corner of the card had been bent. The crease was likely an absentminded gesture made by the guard’s thumb while he checked my story with Miles. I carefully picked up the card and put it in my pocket. I crouched by the guard and ignored the shirt in favour of the belt. On his hip, the cop carried a small-calibre revolver. The gun was a black Smith and Wesson with a walnut grip — likely something supplied with the shirt and pants by the wealthy people on the hill. I removed the gun from the holster and checked the load; all six cylinders were full. I put the gun in my pocket and backed out of the shack without touching anything else. I got back into the Jeep and Carl reversed without a word.
The Jeep turned sharply in the street and everyone was thrown to the left. Carl, who had anticipated his own turn, corrected himself as he threw the Jeep into drive and started back down the road.
“Why not just wait here?” Ilir said. “They gotta come down the hill. We can cut them off there.”
Carl didn’t answer right away. He was already slowing the Jeep down as he cut the wheel to the left and rounded his way back into the spot he had just been occupying a few minutes before. He pulled to a stop, put the Jeep in neutral, and engaged the emergency brake; he left his hand on the lever. “If that guard hit an alarm before they got to him, the cops are already en route. Out front next to a body is a bad place to be. Better to wait here out of sight.”
The van was not visible from where we were parked. The driver had put it somewhere out of the reach of the huge decorative lights that lit up the grounds around the mansion as though it was midday and not closer to the opposite. I looked at the pockets of shadow and chose the dark patch that covered ten feet against the side of the garage. It was the place I would have chosen. I divided my time checking the clock, the house, and the roads. Either the van would emerge from its cave and start down the road, or the cruiser lights of the first responders would add a new colour to the night sky as their sirens broke the kind of silence that could only exist on a weekday after the late-night newscast.
In the end, it was the van that won out, but only by a hair. I saw four specks run across the porch to the side of the house. A second later, the van came out of the pocket it had been stored in like an ugly machine being birthed into the world. The van took the hill without using the brakes; the driver moved through the space in the gate that had been left open when the crew had entered the compound and swerved in our direction.
The hill had given the old van a good push and the tires squealed as it tried to handle the unnatural speed combined with the sharp change in direction.
Carl put his hand on the stick shift. His arm tensed as the van tore past us and within a second the brake was disengaged and the Jeep was in gear.
“No, wait!” Miles said.
We were all thrown forward when Carl hit the brakes.
We all looked at Miles until he pointed up the road. “That house is getting pinker.”
We saw the lights before we heard the sirens. Two cruisers came into view just as the van passed us.
“They turn up the driveway,” I said, “you floor it after them.”
Carl’s hand wrung the wheel and it made a sound like a tree bending beyond its limits in the wind. He nodded.
The cruisers picked up speed as they passed the guard shack.
“Down,” Miles yelled as the cars screamed past us.
“Go!” I said when we were left alone on the road.
Carl shoved the stick into drive and slammed his foot down on the pedal. The Jeep’s tires squealed and kicked up stones until the tires got the traction they wanted; the Jeep U-turned and the momentum that followed propelled us back hard into the seats.
The van was nowhere in sight, but we could see the lights of the police cruisers as they gave chase up ahead. The direction of the van put it on a collision course with the Scajaquada Expressway. The van already had a head start down Nottingham. That put the getaway car well on its way to being out of the nest of near-million-dollar homes that slummed it next to the gated compound the Randall property occupied. There was just over five hundred metres before the sleepy two-lane would offer a turn-off onto the expressway.
“They’re going for the highway,” I said.
Carl nodded as we came onto a stretch of straight road. He fed the engine more gas and the Jeep responded with a roar. “Only way to go in this direction.”
“Shit,” Miles said.
“What?” Ilir wanted to know.
“We know that the highway is where they’re going and we just looked at a map a few times. Local cops know these streets better than the people who planned them. They’ll know about the highway and they’ll have radioed ahead.”
We ran a red light at Delaware and narrowly missed a car driving through the intersection. The teenagers in the blue Chevy came close enough to hitti
ng the Jeep for me to identify the teams on their hats. Carl was cool behind the wheel; he was sure of himself and the Jeep, and he gave the narrow escape no attention.
“Up ahead,” he said in a voice so low and even it was almost monotone.
The entrance to the expressway was lined with cones and the road behind it was crowded with road workers and equipment.
“They kept going,” Miles said, motioning to a set of tire marks arcing away from the cones.
“I see it,” Carl said. The wheelman fed the engine more gas and I felt another pull towards the back of the seat. Nottingham Drive ran along Delaware Park and the late hour had turned the road into a vacant straightaway for the cops and robbers. The van and the two cruisers had thirty seconds on us, but on a stretch of empty blacktop thirty seconds was a lot of distance. The only sign that we were even on the right track was the distant flickering lights of the rearmost cruiser.
“Is there another on-ramp?” Miles asked.
I used my phone to check the map. Half a click ahead was another access point. From the turn-off, it was only one hundred metres to the expressway.
“Can’t be more than a click, and they’re already a good chunk into that.”
The Jeep left the ground for a split second as it skipped over the first in a series of small potholes. Suddenly, sooner than expected, the artery came into view; so did the van. What was left of it anyway.
“Slow down,” I said as I rolled down the window. I wiped the gun I had taken off the security guard with my shirt and tossed it out of the Jeep. The revolver was loaded, but not only with bullets; it was loaded with years — a life sentence. Taking the gun had been a necessary risk, but it wasn’t necessary anymore. The van hadn’t made the turn. A pickup truck had turned for the highway at about the same time as the van. For a brief second, the same small space must have been home to both a van and a truck. Then, a briefer second later, it was all sorted out. Both van and truck were obliterated.
Carl managed to slow down without causing the tires to skid and we rubbernecked the scene. Through the broken windshield of the van we could see the two men up front had their chests crushed against the dashboard. At least that was what we had thought before we passed by. Ahead of the wreck, sprawled across the side of the road, were two mangled bodies — the men in the driver and passenger seats. They had been in such a hurry that they neglected to buckle up before they fled the scene of the crime. The men crushed by the dash had to have been thrown forward from the rear compartment — no one had used a seat belt.
The two cruisers that had been following the van were on the side of the road behind the wreck. Up ahead were two cruisers that had already been in place to intercept the van before it made it to the highway — a dead end before the men knew it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
We rode the Jeep back to the motel and mimicked sleep in the cramped room. The next morning we found a dive diner with free refills of bad coffee and read every newspaper article related to the murder and robbery at the Randall mansion. Only one paper used the word attempted in the headline — all of the others liked the sensational word robbery much better. Every story had the same basic facts. Four men entered through the front gate after murdering a decorated retired BPD officer who had left the job only eighteen months ago. After killing the guard, the perpetrators then entered the house by smashing in a window next to the front door. The men did not find the widow at home, but there were two maids in the kitchen. The burglars learned of the violin’s whereabouts and executed the two maids. The vault that housed the instrument, along with other instruments that skirted the title of priceless, was unopened. It seems the four burglars were unprepared for a vault on a timer. After several attempts at opening the vault with gunfire, the robbers fled the crime scene. A police chase ensued and three of the four thieves were killed in the pursuit. The fourth unidentified man was, at that moment, brain-dead according to all of the papers.
“That rules out hitting the house,” Miles said when we all put down our papers.
“It rules out everything,” Carl said.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ilir said. “You were hired to do a job. You were given half of the money up front. You can’t back out. No one backs out from my uncle.”
Carl laughed. The show of emotion looked strange on the serious driver’s face. It was like watching a robot programmed to laugh. “He can have his money back.”
“He wants that violin,” Ilir said.
“Tell him to come and get it himself then. This job is dead.”
I shrugged.
“Wilson,” Carl said, “you can’t be serious. That thing will be under guard twenty-four seven until the show.”
I nodded. “You’re right,” I said. “That thing will be under guard twenty-four seven. Until the show.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WEDNESDAY
It was a big day for Andrew Dickens; that fact didn’t get him out of bed any earlier, but it was still a big day. Samuel Hall was about to get a donation that would amount to a six-and-a-half-million-dollar cash infusion when the violin changed hands after the benefit concert.
I had learned a lot in the two days I had been shadowing the director of Samuel Hall. The first day was spent in meetings. I had been in the parking lot for four hours when Dickens angled his car into his reserved space at nine-thirty and strolled his way into the building. He paused at the door and stifled a yawn while he went into his jacket pocket for his keycard. The card went into a slot next to the door and the tired director went inside the building. He got about ten minutes to himself before another car showed up. This one was an expensive white sedan with two men in expensive suits riding inside. The two men waited in their car until a second vehicle arrived. The second car was a large pickup truck with a black finish as dark and shiny as obsidian. The man who exited the car shouldered a bag and met with the other two. There was a short conversation before they were greeted at the entrance by Andrew Dickens. When all four men had been inside for a few minutes, I left the car, a Chevy I had boosted earlier in the morning from a carpool parking lot, and did a quick walk around their white Infiniti. I took shots of the sedan’s plates with my phone and checked the doors just in case someone had been careless — no one had. Through the passenger window I saw a cup in the cup holder. A stainless steel mug with the emblem of Coleridge Insurance on the side. I went to the pickup and took a shot of the vanity plate. The licence read SECUUR. The metallic grey logo on the side of the truck identified it as a company vehicle. I guessed it belonged to the owner of Taylor Security.
I walked back across the lot to the Chevy. The car was parked at the edge of a cluster of other vehicles that belonged to employees of Samuel Hall. There must have been a rule about parking away from the entrance because everyone who had shown up for work that morning had put their car in the same general area. Back behind the wheel, I Googled Taylor Security. It was a private firm with offices in New York and California. The site was expertly made and had the vague details that only a service that catered to the wealthy could get away with. The dots connected in my mind. After what had gone down at the Randall place, Coleridge had demanded an increase in security and Taylor was the answer.
The meeting ran an hour and ten minutes; the next meeting started twenty after that. The second meeting was with two more people in expensive suits. These men were Asian and I guessed they were associated with the buyer. The attempt on the violin must have scared a few people with a lot of money. The knee-jerk response would have been to cancel the event and just proceed with the sale of the instrument. But the donation, and the concert, were big news, the kind of press the Buffalo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra wasn’t used to but sorely needed. Dickens would want the concert to proceed, and to do that he needed all of the parties involved to stay on board.
At one o’clock, the fourth meeting had just ended, and my first began. Carl pulled
up to the Chevy and rolled down the passenger window. Miles passed me a bag from the passenger side window.
“Everything you asked for is there.”
I nodded. “Did you —”
“Charge it and hook everything up? Yes, Mother.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You good?” Carl asked.
I nodded. “Where is the kid?”
“Making the calls you told him to make.”
“He talk to the uncle?”
“Yeah,” Carl said. “Pyrros doesn’t know anything about the robbery that we don’t know, but he said he would look into things.”
Violins don’t get stolen every day. The idea that two people were going after the same instrument in the same week meant that more than one person was thinking the same thing, or about the same person. There was bad blood between the Albanians on both sides of the border. The American Albanians could have just as easily hatched their own plan to steal the violin so that they could bribe the godfather back home. There was a second option, though. Someone in Vogli’s organization could be after the violin themselves. It wouldn’t be the first time some power hungry lieutenant went after the boss’s job. Pyrros had hired outside of his own mob to keep this thing under wraps. Hiring outsiders meant the insiders were a problem. It also meant Ilir couldn’t be trusted — not completely anyway.
“Keep an eye on the kid,” I said.
“You don’t think he’s in on this, do you?”
I shrugged. “I’ve seen his work before. He’s a smash-and-grab guy.”
“Maybe,” Carl said. “You said he failed to impress his uncle once. This could have been his chance at fixing things. Using outside guys would have been smart. If the job failed, there wouldn’t be any blowback.”
“Can’t be smash-and-grab and crafty at the same time,” Miles said.
“Nope,” I said. “But we might not see all of the angles.” Criminal organizations were more complicated than anthills. There were lots and lots of workers, but unlike single-minded worker ants, mobsters all had aspirations of running the crew one day. Ilir was a gangster and gangsters wanted the throne. Pyrros’ opinion of his nephew was clear, making succession unlikely. If Ilir couldn’t climb into Pyrros’ chair, maybe he thought he could tip it over by tipping off the Americans. Helping the competition acquire the violin would greatly improve their odds of overseas succession, and a power shift like that in Europe might then lead to another shift back home. With new, more grateful, hands on the reins of power, Pyrros would likely find himself out, and Ilir in, north of the border.
