Island of Thieves

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Shaw said thank you, and the lawyer quickly rejoined the passengers.

  As he walked back to the terminal, the figure of Rangi grew almost out of proportion. Shaw had originally thought him shorter than his own height but quickly realized that was an illusion created by Rangi’s impressive width. From shoulders to knees, the man was a solid cylinder. Samoan, Shaw guessed, or maybe Maori.

  “Van Shaw,” he said. They shook hands. Rangi’s suit and somber expression lent him the look of a pallbearer. One who could heft the coffin all by his lonesome. Absent the serious mien, his face might have looked boyish with his smooth high cheekbones and deep black hair and eyebrows.

  “Rangi Sua,” he said. “You’re brand-new?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. It’s a good company. Good people. Come on.”

  Shaw followed him down the short hallway back into the terminal lobby.

  “How long have you worked for Droma?” Shaw asked.

  “I work for the family. But one is the other, most of the time.” Rangi took a phone from his pocket as they left the gates, out through the secure exit to the ticketing area. “What’s your number?”

  Shaw told him, and Rangi tapped buttons with a wide thumb as they walked. Shaw’s phone pinged. “There. Got you on a noon hop tomorrow with C.J. Hope you’re cool with flying by seaplane.”

  “C.J. The attendant?” Shaw glanced back in the direction of the Revol Air plane.

  “Attendant on the jets. Pilot on the prop planes. I manage all the travel on land or sea, C.J. has the air covered.” Rangi held up his phone. “She and I have everything synced so she knows when I’m picking them up and I know right when she’s dropping them off. You need a lift to the plane tomorrow?”

  “I’ll have a ride, thanks. Your team is efficient.”

  “Have to be. The family and the big players with Droma travel a lot. I got a hand on a steering wheel every day.”

  “Boats, too?”

  “Oh, yeah. You’ll see the one they keep locally at the island, a forty-five-foot Regal. I love sailing her. In New York we have another motor yacht. The biggest is in Genoa, but that has its own crew.”

  “Heck of a life.”

  Rangi smiled with one corner of his mouth. “You have no idea. Or maybe you will soon. Enjoy the ride.”

  Shaw saluted and headed off.

  From what Rohner had said, Rangi and Edgemont—as well as his own daughter—were unaware of the peculiar competition between the moguls to acquire one another’s possessions. The man himself had called it a private matter.

  Juvenile, Addy might say. But money forgives a lot of eccentricities. For sixty grand Shaw could handle a little madness.

  SEVEN

  Cyndra and Shaw had made a handshake deal. He’d helped her complete some extra credit for her American Government class the previous week—a last-minute push to shore up the girl’s GPA as she closed out eighth grade—if Cyn would dedicate her first free Sunday morning to stuffing envelopes for Shaw’s nascent foundation. Addy lent a hand so they could finish before the bar opened at two o’clock. Wren had brought her laptop and a portable printer, which was spitting out pages of address labels from a list of Washington State social services.

  Shaw had dubbed the foundation Crossroads, his nod to a defunct outreach program called New Road that his mother, Moira, had been working for when she’d died. Shaw figured the name suited where most of the kids would find themselves. Making the choice, consciously or not, whether to follow the same path as their incarcerated elders.

  Between Addy’s long and rich life and Hollis Brant’s ability to forge alliances in the strangest places, Shaw sometimes guessed that he was only two or three degrees of separation from every living human on the Pacific Northwest and a majority percentage of the dead ones. Addy had enlisted a friend named Penelope, a former executive recruiter who was, as Penelope put it, “doubly bored” being both retired and under specialized care for a heart condition. Penelope in turn had found former nonprofit executives to advise Shaw.

  Now that Crossroads officially existed under state law, the mailers and an email campaign would let other social services know about the foundation so that they could partner to assemble a list of potential clients, which would give them supporting evidence for grants and donations.

  Sometimes it made Shaw’s head swim. Money had seemed a lot easier to come by Dono’s way.

  He took a break to go into the main bar and pour one stout, one Hefeweizen, a cup of lemon tea, and one Coke. He brought the drinks back on a tray, with the certified check from Droma International Solutions placed at the center.

  “Well,” Addy said, “if I have my choice, I’ll take the money.”

  “Let’s toast to solvency,” said Shaw. “Ten grand of my fee is going to Crossroads. There’ll be more after this week.” In between the folding and stamping, he had told them all the story of Sebastien Rohner’s private plane and the CEO’s even more private concerns about an art thief.

  “If you catch this guy, can you arrest him?” Cyndra said. “Like citizen’s arrest?”

  “He probably won’t have to,” said Addy. “Just identifying the culprit should be enough to stop any crime from happening.”

  Wren smirked. “You should do that. Point at the person and cry ‘Culprit!’ for all to hear.”

  Cyn laughed and mimed standing up to thrust out an accusing finger.

  “Rohner doesn’t want the cops involved. Too vulgar,” said Shaw, taking a long pull on his stout.

  “I’m not surprised,” Wren said. “Especially if the art was—how did he put it?”

  “Disputed.”

  She made a face. “A lot of the world’s art is. England looted Egypt of its treasures. William Randolph Hearst acquired art by the shipload while Europe was desperate after World War One. The Nazis stole half of what was left.”

  Shaw set down his pint. “I didn’t know you felt so strongly about this.”

  “I was born in a country carved up like a pie between the French and the Spanish. My parents still remember the time before independence. I love France, and my heritage, but my feelings for it are . . . complicated.” She looked at Shaw. “Like yours, about your nation’s foreign policy.”

  He grinned. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are. But I can’t get into another debate on whether America is a protector or an opportunist. Especially when we can never decide who’s arguing which end of it.”

  “One thing I don’t understand,” said Addy. “If a thief was hired to steal from the art collection, why would he do it this week? While the island has so many people around?”

  “I’d wondered that myself,” Shaw said. “Maybe it’s part of the game these guys are playing. ‘See, I can take your stuff from right under your nose.’ The whole contest is an ego trip.”

  “Or there will be sentries with broadswords and plate armor guarding it later,” said Cyndra. “That’s what I’d do.”

  “Also possible. Once the business conference is over, there’s no reason for Rohner not to have the island protected by trained crocodiles or any other loony idea that comes into his head. He seems like the type.”

  “A megalomaniac?” said Addy.

  Shaw shrugged. “No more so than most world tycoons. Rohner’s an obsessive, I’d bet. The news articles about him show a pattern. Mountain climbing, charter airlines, arctic expeditions. When he gets into something, he goes all out, as fast as he can. Which is damn fast, since money is no object.”

  “Then he gets bored and goes to the next thing.” Cyn snapped her fingers to signal the speed of the change. “My friend Billie is like that.”

  “Perhaps that’s the real draw,” Addy mused. “Now he has worthy opponents.”

  “For an unworthy game,” said Shaw.

  “You don’t like him,” Wren said.

  “I don’t dislike him. He’s aloof and he’s probably felt superior since he w
as a fetus, but he’s not an idiot. I can be civil around the king’s court for a few days.”

  “For a good cause?” said Addy.

  “We need the money.”

  “Not so much that you should—” Addy glanced at Cyndra. “Should rent your honor, if that’s what it feels like.”

  Wren looked at her with curiosity. When Wren was interested in something, her focus was like a spotlight, Shaw had noted. The amber pinpoints in her chestnut-colored eyes glowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Van is class-conscious,” Addy said. “Occasionally to his detriment.”

  Cyndra screwed up her face. “What’s class-conscious?”

  “She means I tend to piss off rich people,” Shaw said.

  “Because you try to,” said Addy. “You needle them so they’ll know you’re not impressed.”

  “And because it’s fun to see them squirm.”

  “You’re joking,” Wren said, “but do you really hold that much emotion over someone’s income?”

  Shaw frowned. How had this become a therapy session? “They’re big fish.”

  “You mean good eating?” Cyndra guessed.

  He looked at her. Cyn was small-boned, her frame disguising the toughness that came from growing up in a series of L.A. County group homes and foster families. She’d dyed her hair pink to celebrate the end of her middle-school career, and the skin around her hairline had turned a rosy hue from the tint.

  “You remember about my granddad?” Shaw said. “Like your dad, Mickey?” A career felon.

  The teen nodded gravely.

  “Growing up with Dono, I got to think of the rich as targets. Which is another way of saying they were the enemy. They had money, we didn’t.”

  “Prey,” said Wren.

  “Yeah. Then I grew up and realized that at least half the people and businesses we stole from were just as crooked as we were, but smarter about it. Maybe their families had smuggled diamonds a couple of generations back, or they’d fleeced partners in a real-estate deal, or they just crushed their competitors through bribes and undercutting.” Shaw pointed at Cyndra. “That doesn’t mean what Dono and I did was justified. Especially to the few who’d made their money honestly. You get my point?”

  “Two wrongs,” Cyn said.

  “Bingo.”

  “So your opinion of the wealthy is . . . ?” Wren prompted.

  “Big fish eat little fish. That’s how they got to be big fish in the first place.” Shaw drank his beer. “Complicated, like you said. I try to be polite. But kicking the deserving ones in the shins doesn’t cost me anything.”

  Addy raised her cup of tea. “Here’s hoping Sebastien Rohner remains among the unbruised.”

  EIGHT

  Wren drove Shaw to the address provided by Rangi, near the southern tip of Lake Union. The primary location for seaplane flights out of the city. A handful of passenger and sightseeing companies operated off the same collection of docks, with space for private aircraft to tie up during the day.

  “Don’t forget your bag,” Wren said.

  “In a minute,” said Shaw, leaning across to kiss her.

  She’d stayed at Shaw’s apartment overnight, a rare occurrence. In the six months they’d been seeing each other, Wren had slept over an equal number of times. Sleeping being a relative term, and not only because of sex. Wren stayed awake much of the time, in Shaw’s living room, reading or watching television. She had told Shaw she didn’t rest well away from her own bed. Shaw had tried staying at her place twice, and her story checked out. Wren had slept soundly while Shaw had been the one staring at the ceiling, either awkwardly twisted in the sheets on her cramped full-size bed or trying to ignore her housemates arguing or screwing or both. Maybe it was a childhood thing, he thought. Wren had come from a large family. Shaw had barely had anyone around at all.

  “You’re back on Thursday?” Wren asked when they surfaced for air.

  “Best guess. Could be longer or shorter.”

  “I get back to town and you leave. We should coordinate the next trip.”

  “Together?” he said.

  “Why not? Perhaps if the bed is new to both of us, it’ll even out.”

  He grinned and reached into the backseat of her battered Jeep to grab his duffel. He’d packed underwear and socks for four nights, three changes of clothes, spare boots, and a heavier coat than the gray barn jacket he wore now. The forecast claimed the beautiful June weather would continue all week. Maybe Rohner had paid off the clouds. Shaw preferred to trust his own experience when it came to the mercurial Seattle climate.

  The clothes served as padding for his gear. Frequency scanners for wireless alarm signals, portable power tools, a spare tablet computer, and a few other electronics. Rohner had said no burglary would be required, but even a cursory evaluation of the estate’s system might require a specialist’s touch.

  “Ever been to Kyoto?” Wren asked as Shaw shut the passenger door.

  “I’ve never been across the Pacific,” he said. “Every place the Army sent us out of Fort Benning was east.”

  “I’d like to see Japan. With you.”

  “Is Japanese one of your languages?” Shaw said.

  “No.”

  “Good. We’ll both start from square one.”

  Wren said, “Race you there,” and drove off.

  Shaw slung the duffel over his shoulder and headed for a long, white two-story building.

  C.J. was waiting at the railing. No flight-attendant uniform today. Just a white shirt and blue jeans and running shoes even brighter than the blouse.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Hello. Is this a Revol Air flight, too?”

  “Kinda. We run a regular shuttle to Vancouver. Droma has a lot of managers and executives working here or there or both. Part of the innovation corridor between our nations.”

  “And your clients pay for that?”

  “The clients pay for the talent,” C.J. said, with the same implied wink as she’d had at Paine Field. “The shuttle helps recruit that talent for Droma.”

  Shaw followed her into the office. The orange D logo of Droma was painted on the front window and again in reverse on the window to the rear. The office’s interior was simple to the point of being deliberately bland, though the view of the lake made up for it.

  “Pilot for one airline, attendant for the other,” Shaw said, “and Rangi told me you arrange the executives’ commercial flights, too. That’s a lot of juggling.”

  “It was just the pilot work at first,” C.J. said, moving behind one of the desks to collect paperwork. “Paid by the job. Then their local travel coordinator quit, and I made an offer to handle everything Rangi doesn’t. Worked out. I’ll be a pilot for Revol Air, too, once I’m certified for that level.”

  “Onward and upward,” Shaw said.

  C.J. smiled. “Exactly, Mr. Shaw.”

  “Van.”

  “Van. And which diversification of Mr. Rohner’s are you with? Not everyone rates a private flight to Briar Bay.”

  “I’m also an independent. Facilities manager for the island. If this week goes well, we’ll see.”

  She placed the papers into a satchel. “Help yourself to coffee while I complete the prechecks.”

  Shaw poured a cup and followed her out to the wide floating dock. The day promised to be perfect for flying, with a light wind and only a few scattered mares’ tails of cirrus clouds. Shaw fished his sunglasses out of his pocket. Floatplanes of various vintages bobbed gently on either side of the dock, their pontoons squeaking against the recycled tires that formed an unbroken line of fenders. Like young birds eager to leave the nest.

  The Droma plane was second on the right. A sleek white-over-blue single-prop. C.J. unlocked the door, tossed her satchel onto the pilot’s seat, and began a preflight check of the plane’s exterior. Shaw understood her surprise at his being granted a private hop. The plane had room for eight passengers not counting the pilot and copilot, and enough space at
the rear of the cabin to store a full set of luggage for every one of them.

  C.J. caught him looking over the plane’s fuselage. “You know planes?”

  “Some. Last prop plane I was in was a Huron, I think.”

  “In the military?” Shaw nodded. C.J. patted the plane’s wing. “This girl’s an Otter. A DHC, from the Great White North.”

  “How long’s our flight?” Shaw asked.

  “Just over an hour. Are you in a rush to get there?”

  “No.”

  “Good. We can take a little time and go up Rosario Strait and around. It’s a sightseer’s dream today, and I’ve barely seen that part of the islands.”

  He finished his coffee while C.J. ran through the rest of her checklist. She invited Shaw to take the copilot’s chair, indicating a set of headphones hanging from a hook under the dash. He buckled in and adjusted the headset as she started the engine and cast off the last line. The engine heightened in pitch, and the plane eased away from the dock.

  C.J. taxied slowly, careful of paddleboarders or other people on the lake. The nose of the plane drew parallel with the row of buoys that marked the runway on this side of the lake. She eased the throttle forward and the Otter surged ahead, the propeller spinning until only an afterimage of lazily rotating sickles was visible. Shaw felt the water under them dragging at the pontoons. Then they were hydroplaning for an instant before the craft lifted away.

  She banked left. They passed over the Fremont Bridge and its bumper-to bumper traffic at the start of the workweek.

  “Was that your wife dropping you off?” C.J. said through the intercom.

  “A friend.”

  “She’s lovely.”

  “I agree. How often do you fly to the island?”

  “It was once every couple of weeks at first. I only started with Droma three months ago. All the island construction and the family moving in happened last year.” She waggled a hand. “I guess moving in isn’t quite the way to put it. They still live in Seattle when they’re in town, most of the time.”