Collar Robber (24 page)

He rolled onto his right side, reached laboriously up to get a grip on the counter, and pulled himself to a standing position. He grimaced in pain when he tried to put weight on his left leg.

Claws ripped dutifully at my conscience. If I gave him, say, the AM/FM radio on the kitchen table or our obsolete computer printer to take back to Halkani as proof that he'd completed the burglary and disabled the alarm, the odds of Halkani showing up would improve a lot. On the other hand, fifty-fifty Jimmy would be dead by morning. If I just sent Jimmy on his way empty-handed, then he'd probably go back to Halkani anyway, regardless of any warnings I gave him, because no way he'd leave two-hundred bucks on the table. Jimmy's life would still basically turn on a coin-flip, but Halkani would know something was up. Jimmy versus Jay-Rachel-unborn-child.

“Jimmy,” I sighed, “you're not good at this. If you'll take my advice, you'll go tell your grandmother what you've been up to tonight so she can take a whoopin' stick to your sorry ass and encourage you to find another line of work. If you choose to go back to the guy who handed you this shit-gig, you're as likely to get a bullet as a payoff. But it's up to you. Now get out of here before I kick your ass just to get some negative energy out of my system.”

I unplugged the radio and handed it to him as he limped out the door.

Chapter Fifty-four

Cynthia Jakubek

We finally found Willy's Sable a little after ten p.m. in the parking lot of an oversized strip-mall called Town Centre something-or-other. It took some doing even after the receiver ratcheted its
blipping
up to a steady, insistent level to tell us that the car had to be
right there!
One of the mall's anchors was a twenty-four-hour grocery store and the other was a six-screen movie theater, so scores of cars still dotted the parking lot, whose sodium-vapor lights didn't provide excessive illumination. It took a good ten minutes of driving up one row of yellow-striped parking spaces and down another one before Nesselrode finally spotted the thing—with stolen Maryland plates that Halkani had presumably put on it.

“Why in the name of
dreft
would he stash the thing here?” Nesselrode's question came out thoughtful and puzzled, as if he were pondering a tricky acrostic clue.

“Because it will be less conspicuous here than on a residential street?” By the time I said that I had pulled into a parking space about ten slots from the Sable.

“Yes, you're right, that's exactly it. So Davidovich's house must be somewhere within walking distance—no more than a mile.”

We both climbed out of the car. I headed for the trunk. Nesselrode reached for his smokes.

“We started our search right outside Davidovich's house. If the Sable was that close all the time, why did we have to drive all over Hell's half-acre before we got a blip?”

“Elevation. The signals from the transmitter go in all directions, but each signal goes in a straight line. They don't go straight for a hundred yards and then dive down an embankment.” He pointed to the edge of the parking lot farthest from the entrance we'd used—just about a football field away, if I was any judge. “Twenty to one Davidovich's house is on a street at the bottom of a hill just beyond where the light stops.”

Interesting theory. Might even be right.
Shrugging, I started to open the trunk. Nesselrode shot me a surprised glare through a cloud of smoke rich enough for me to see even in the near darkness.

“You're new at this, aren't you?”

“Yeah, you could say that. I couldn't find a class on covert operations at Harvard.”

“What if a cop doing a routine patrol notices you rummaging through the trunk? Asks for your license? Wonders why someone with a Pennsylvania license is rifling the trunk of a car with Maryland plates? Checks the registration and notices that you don't own the car?”

“I guess I'd suggest that he call Willy.”

“Whose mobile phone is in a hospital storage locker and who's probably taking a mildly sedated snooze right now.”

“Amber, then.”

“Whose name isn't on the registration any more than yours is.”

Nuts. He was right. I turned away from the trunk.

“Any ideas?”

“Yeah. Leave the rental car here. Drive the Sable down to Davidovich's block. Maybe even park it in his driveway. Then quietly and unobtrusively do your search away from prying eyes.”

What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Chapter Fifty-five

Jay Davidovich

I felt better. Not necessarily a good thing.
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy
. Hard to remember helpful adages like that when endorphins start doing threesomes in your cerebral cortex.

Halkani had suckered Jimmy into verifying the code Halkani had come up with. In fifteen minutes or so, even with Jimmy's gimpy leg, Halkani would have that verification. Jimmy wouldn't mention me. He'd blame the knee on a fall going up or down the hill.

Jimmy figured to be spreading this story all over Southeast D.C. within an hour, so Halkani almost had to come in before dawn on Saturday. Suppose he made his move around two in the morning. I'd already figured long odds against a second-story entrance for reasons that still made sense to me, so I had a pretty simple job: Reset the alarm; get a bead on the back door while keeping a wary eye on the front door just in case; and wait.

Making sure that I'd relocked the back door behind Jimmy, I turned to the security console to reset the alarm. Would the broken window pane keep me from doing that? What if the system somehow read the vacant space as an open door? The console's mini-screen would unhelpfully flash ERROR—ENTRANCE NOT SECURE. One way to find out. I punched in the code to turn the alarm back on. SYSTEM ARMED. Now just find a spot to—

Holy shit! The ladder!
A panicky tremor shook through me as I remembered the ladder that I'd stumbled over on the hill this afternoon. What if it wasn't just detritus someone had jettisoned? After all, it looked to me like it was in pretty good shape. Head spinning, I realized that I'd bought into a misdirection play as simple as the one I'd pulled on Halkani when I'd conned him into stealing a brushed steel attaché case without the document he was looking for.

Halkani had
not
brought a brainless chatterbox like Jimmy into this deal for a code-verifying dry run. He'd sent Jimmy in to trip the alarm at the kitchen door
so that Halkani could go in through an upstairs window at the same time!
That's why he'd hidden the ladder on the hill, figuring that it would look like discarded junk. Using the ladder to get to the first floor roof, he could smash the pane of an upstairs window as soon as Jimmy's break-in made the
beeps
start. He'd probably jostle the motion detector on the sash, but if he knew what he was doing he could get the metal contacts matched up with each other again before Jimmy turned the alarm off downstairs. From that point he could just sit and wait. Bottom line, I had to assume that
the sonofabitch was in my house right this minute!

I felt iced right through my pores. Two long strides through our cozy dining room, then I hit the deck, shoulder-rolled into the living room, and swept it with my Colt in the modest light, Nothing.

Thank you, God. Dodged the bullet. Didn't deserve that break, but I got it anyway. Halkani hadn't made his move yet. Why should he? He could bide his time upstairs while I strained every nerve standing watch for hours. Sooner or later, sometime during the day tomorrow, I'd fall asleep or just lose my edge from fatigue.

Okay, buddy. Deep breath. Bad scare, but situation retrieved. I'd actually gained a smidgeon of tactical advantage. Halkani had lost the element of surprise but probably didn't know it.

What now? Going up after him would be stupid squared. Halkani could hide wherever he wanted to and ambush me before I even got a look at him.

Option two: keep watch as long as adrenaline and doses of concentrated caffeine would keep me awake; if he hadn't shown by full light, call the cops. No. I'd be sitting in a static defense, out of direct contact with the enemy, leaving the initiative for hours to him. Didn't work at Yorktown, didn't work on the Maginot Line, didn't work at Dien Bien Phu—didn't work at Masada, for that matter. Hard to like the odds.

No, the right choice was the boring option, the anticlimactic one: get the cops here right away. Yeah, officer, I had a home invasion. Chased the perp away, but I'm afraid he had a buddy who's still hidden somewhere upstairs. Think it might be the same guy who burgled the place a week or so ago.

Think it through. Cop cars pulling up with lights flashing would flush Halkani. Ten to one he'd exit through the upstairs window, across the roof, and down the ladder. If he got away, I'd gone to a lot of trouble and bruised a punk's knee for nothing. But if I got the back door wide open and the yard lights on, I might actually manage a decent shot at him. That could lead to some legal inconveniences, but if it came down to that I'd rather be judged by twelve jurors than carried by six pallbearers.

Seemed like the right answer for sure, but I resisted the impulse to just dive in and call nine-one-one. No need to jump the gun. Maybe there was an option 3-A that I hadn't thought of yet, a Proxy-type option that a little outside-the-box thinking would turn up.

I willed the adrenaline sluicing through my body to chill. I needed to think this through—that and keep my eyes open.

Chapter Fifty-six

Cynthia Jakubek

Even though we finally knew where we were going, it took us a solid ten minutes to navigate our way back to Davidovich's block. About thirty feet from the turn Halkini whispered an order.

“Cut the lights.”

I did. I also slowed way down, without being told to. We eased onto the street and crept along. I noticed three lights on in Davidovich's house, one downstairs and two up.
Hmm. Proves nothing, but interesting all the same
.

I did
not
park in Davidovich's driveway. I went all the way to the end of the cul-de-sac at the base of the hill where I couldn't see either street lights or houselights, and pulled to a gentle stop. Breath I didn't know I'd been holding exploded from my lungs.

Okay, time for round two with the trunk. Opened my door quietly and slipped it almost silently shut. Nesselrode did the same on his side of the car. We approached the trunk as if we were sneaking up on it. When I stuck the key in and turned it, the
thunk
sounded to me as if everyone on the block could have heard it.

Raising the trunk lid turned on a small, white light. I tugged at the near driver-side corner of a cover-cloth and pulled it all the way to my right to expose the spare tire, nestled in a well cut into the trunk's bottom. Except, of course, it wasn't a
tire,
it was a
wheel
, pinioned to the chassis with some sturdy looking metal tubes. Willy had said that he'd stashed the envelope in the tire's rim, but a hubcap that looked like it didn't plan on moving fit tightly above the bead and sealed the rim off.

Now what?

“Allow me,” Nesselrode whispered.

Feminist scruples about the big strong man coming to the aid of the helpless female gave way to practicality. I hadn't changed a tire since sixteen, when my dad made me do it before he'd give me keys after I got my license. Nesselrode seemed to think he knew what he was doing.

He did. He was short of breath and panting now, and even in the meager light I could see beads of sweat on his forehead and waves of pain rolling whitely across his face. But with only a bit of initial strain he quickly got the triangular hunk of metal on top turning to the left and inching up, exposing the threads of a very long, thick screw as it rose. When he got the triangular thing all the way off, he flipped one of its sides up, stuck its blade underneath the hubcap, and popped the thing off.

Now I found myself staring at a black wheel with a circular opening just about the size of my hand in each of its quadrants. I hit paydirt on the third hole. I felt smooth paper with a hint of grease. I pulled it toward the hole, got a corner of it peeking through, and then worried it the rest of the way out. Remembering Davidovich's sleight-of-hand at the Museum, I opened the envelope and took out the single page of cursive script that it held.
Bingo
.

“Congratulations,” Nesselrode said.

“Thanks. And thanks for your help.” I started for the driver side door.

“Where are you going?”

“Back up to the mall. I can get an envelope and stamps at the grocery store and put this thing in the mail to my office. Whatever happens after that, the cops won't find it unless they start searching the U.S. mail.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Well, I'm standing here talking to you, so you could get plenty of votes for yes.”

“Give me that thing!” he snarled, grabbing it from me. He came up with an old-fashioned Ronson lighter and coaxed flame from it.

“Wait a minute!” I grabbed for Amber's forgery and got Nesselrode's iron-hard bicep instead. “I came down here to get my client's document into safekeeping—not to destroy evidence.”

“Sure you did,” he muttered as a corner of the document caught fire. “Anyway, you're not the one destroying it, are you?”

The point seemed moot, because by now the flame had reduced half the page to a charred crisp, and the other half wasn't far behind.

Then we saw headlights. High-mounted headlights, coming at us fast and then going off suddenly while the truck (or whatever it was) hurtled toward us.
Cops for sure.
Wrong. A good forty feet from us the thing swerved to the left, partly into Davidovich's driveway and mostly onto his front law. The vision that climbed out didn't look like any cop
I'd
ever seen.

Now the destroying-evidence point seemed
real
moot.