Forty Thieves (32 page)

She turned away again and stared out at the ocean for a moment. “So we’re going to leave it at that?”

“At some point, most people who live by stealing run into trouble and go to prison. A lot of the ones who carry guns meet other people who carry guns and die. That’s just odds. Maybe if we wait awhile, this bunch will disappear. Then we can go home.”

“I don’t want to stay in Santa Barbara more than a couple of days. It’s too close.”

“How about Las Vegas?” he said. “That’s more than twice as far from home, and it’s a lot bigger.”

“Okay,” she said. “Las Vegas.” Then she added, “For now.”

“We should be all right there,” said Ed. “They won’t go looking for us.”

Nicole shrugged. “Of course not. Why poke the snake?”

27

The people of the group had gathered in the far end of the yard three hundred feet behind Gavrilo’s house. It was a quiet, peaceful place because it was separated from the house by the stand of old oaks that had been spared when the house was built. When they’d buried the three Russians, they had found that it was nearly impossible to dig a grave near the old oak trees because the roots had traveled outward a long way searching for water.

Gavrilo had left the trees there because they were big enough to provide shade. Southern California was a parched, hot place, and he had installed round wooden benches around the trunks of a few trees so he could sit there to drink his wine and listen to the warbling of the mockingbirds. These benches were where most people sat and waited their turns to dig.

They didn’t dig four individual graves, because a row of man-sized mounds would be seen by police helicopters and arouse curiosity. The three Russians who had been killed during the raid at the killers’ house had been buried in one grave, and these four would be buried together in another.
The grave was a single wide hole with a sloping path going down into it, so each shift of diggers could walk down into the pit and up again. Most of the digging was done by the men, but a couple of the women, Mira Cepic’s old traveling companion Anica, and her closest friend, Marija, got into the grave and dug.

When the hole was about seven feet deep and eight on a side, three men were posted to watch to be sure the sky remained clear, and then several others brought the bodies down on stretchers.

Marija was forty-five, but still beautiful enough to make people stare at her when she walked on the streets of Beverly Hills. Today her wavy dark brown hair was tied back and her bright green eyes were hiding behind her sunglasses. She had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt to dig, and she had picked up a lot of dirt during the hard, sweaty work. She was aware that right now she looked like the peasant farmer she really was, but she was also aware that a little mud didn’t keep the men’s eyes off her. When she first became aware of herself as a child, the beauty was with her already, and it had never left her.

She looked down at the wrapped body of her friend Mira. About eight months ago she had done her best to help Mira. It was a huge favor, and part of the favor was that she’d decided not to tell her about it. She had read in the newspaper the name of Detective Kapp, the police detective who was in charge of the James Ballantine murder, and begun to search for him. When she found him, she stalked him from a distance. She observed that he was a drinker—not a typical social drinker, but a man who went to bars alone after work and bought a drink, and then another, and another,
until he walked unsteadily. When he had drunk enough to quiet whatever his pain was, he went outside, got into his car, and drove home to a small apartment in a big stucco building in Van Nuys. If he had not been a police officer he would probably have been arrested by then and gone to jail, and maybe gotten cured. Marija was glad that wasn’t what had happened, because another cop might not have been as easy for her.

Marija made preparations. When she was ready she made sure she was alone in the bar that he liked best, which was the worst and most out-of-the-way place he frequented. She didn’t have to do anything to attract him. She’d never had to do anything except respond when men spoke to her. She smiled, talked with him, and drank with him, as she had with many other men over many years. With Kapp, instead of asking questions about jewelry stores and dissolving into the night, she had stayed long enough to put a dose of Rohypnol in his drink, and gone out to his car with him.

Dragan and one of the Russians had been outside waiting in Dragan’s car, but the one who had known how it must be done was Marija, who had learned the method from her father. She had driven Kapp’s car out of the city and stopped on the shoulder of a winding road in the hills. Then she wiped off her fingerprints, and the two men helped her prop Kapp in the driver’s seat. She had used Kapp’s shoe as the wedge to hold down the gas pedal. Her father had taught her that the man must be drunk before he was put in the car, and that the drug she used had to be a natural substance that was quickly metabolized, and therefore difficult to detect in the blood or tissues. There could be nothing out of place in the car, nothing that wouldn’t have been there if the man had
driven himself off the road and over the precipice. In automobile accidents, the victims often lost one or more shoes.

Marija looked down at Mira’s body.
By now you know how I tried to help you,
she thought.
And I know you would have done the same for me. Rest now. I’ll see you soon enough.

Marija took her shovel and threw one shovelful of dirt on Mira, one on Jovan, one on Mihailo, one on Bogdan. Then she handed the shovel to her sister, Jelena. She walked up the sloping path to the grass and looked around her at the trees. It was going to be a shame to leave California. The air was warm like the breath of a baby. In most of Europe there was still snow on the ground.

At the grave, while others put their shovelfuls of earth over the bodies of the four, Anton Karadzic recited from memory an approximation of what his father, who had been an Eastern Orthodox priest, used to say. When he was a boy, Anton had often gone with him to keep track of his vestments and supply muscle if the pallbearers were old enough to have earned the honor but too old to carry the coffin by themselves. Anton could also still perform a passable wedding ceremony, but unlike his funeral, it wasn’t binding.

He spoke with some feeling. He had inherited a good voice, and his friendships with the four dead thieves was sincere. He kept talking long enough for the mourners to cover the bodies with about four feet of earth. As he finished, five of the strongest men took the shovels and energetically threw in the rest. When the grave had been filled and the ground had been scraped and tamped down even, Todor took the four copper plates he had etched with the names of the four dead thieves, and set them at their heads. Then he shoveled dirt on top so they would not be found easily.

There was some talk that they would eventually be able to bring the bodies back to be reburied in Europe, but nobody believed the talk. It was hard enough to smuggle one live thief across a national border. In most cases it didn’t matter. Whoever Mira’s relatives in Romania had been, they had never known her. And Jovan’s, Mihailo’s, and Bogdan’s closest relatives were probably the ones standing around their grave right now.

After the grave markers had been covered, a few of the men walked across the lawn, lifted bags of gravel from the bed of a van, and poured gravel over the site. Todor and Tomislav leveled the site with rakes. Then the men who had carried the gravel lifted the prefabricated wooden gazebo they had assembled and set it over the grave.

When all the work was done, the group gathered in the shade of the oaks and sat on the round benches. They opened bottles of wine and beer and drank a few toasts to their dead friends.

Gavrilo, who seemed to be the obvious one to speak, stood up. “Thank you, friends. I hope that somebody has taken care of the belongings the four had set aside for their futures.” His half-lidded eyes drifted across the crowd and noted who reacted. Tomislav, Todor, Srdan, and Jelena all nodded and waved a hand to signify that they, as close relatives, had salvaged the money and valuables of the dead.

Gavrilo knew that the others all assumed one of them had taken all the valuables Mira had left—possibly Marija or Anica. But yesterday while some of the younger men had carried Mira’s body out of his living room and some of the others had cleaned the blood off his marble floor, he’d had five minutes alone, and had rifled the backpack she had left
in his hallway. He had taken most of the money and diamonds before anyone else could think to ask. Marija had come by later and picked up Mira’s pack and taken it with her without looking inside it. Gavrilo felt no guilt about the theft. Everyone was a thief—Mira, Marija, Tomislav, and all the others. And taking Mira’s money was like picking up a fallen soldier’s ammunition on a battlefield. She had no further need of it, but because of it, he could go on.

Gavrilo said, “Now that we’ve done what we could for our friends, we have to think hard about the future. Who has a plan? What about simply walking across the border into Mexico?”

Todor snorted. “I’m not sneaking into a country that’s on the verge of anarchy. We wouldn’t last a year.”

Sonja said, “And I’m not interested in going back to Serbia. Where would I go, my old village? I hated it then, and I’d hate it now.”

“We should decide on one place,” said Anica. “I don’t want to be separated from all the people I care about.”

Dragan, who had been sitting with his arm around her, pulled back theatrically. “You’d still be with me. Doesn’t your husband count?”

“I meant my girlfriends. I can get bad sex anywhere.”

The others chuckled to thank her for trying to lighten the mood, but the pervading sadness was too strong to overcome. When they arrived three years ago, they had been so optimistic. They had planned to stay in California for the rest of their lives. Now they were going to have to move again—probably scatter in all directions. This wasn’t a new exploit. It was a retreat.

Jelena said, “The reason we’re alive and rich is that we’re careful planners. We’ve never done anything without making a detailed plan and executing it with precision. So let’s make a plan.”

Gavrilo said, “I’m willing to talk all night if that’s what it takes. Who has an idea to start us off? It doesn’t have to be a detailed plan, just an idea. Just tell us a country where you’d like to go.” He looked around at the group, and watched four, then five men and women stand up from their seats among the trees.

28

“They’re all gone,” said Fuentes.

“What?” Sid said. He punched the speaker button on the phone so Ronnie could hear.

“The panthers. Mira Cepic isn’t the only one. We checked the names and billing addresses of the people who recently talked to Mira Cepic on their phones. We checked their names against the Interpol lists, and we’ve found five more that matched. We sent officers to their addresses with warrants. And now all of them are gone.”

“Gone how?” said Ronnie.

“The same way as Mira Cepic. Their beds weren’t slept in. The garbage is gone, the vacuum cleaner has been heavily used and then removed, and every scrap of paper is gone. Each house has been left so it looks occupied until you start to search the place. The lights and televisions and things are on timers. The ones that have alarm systems have them turned on.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I talked to one of the officers who went to serve the warrants.”

“Have they dusted for prints?” Sid asked.

“He said they’ve called in the crime scene people, but there hasn’t been anything useful yet.”

Ronnie said, “What’s the department’s theory about what’s going on?”

Fuentes said, “The people downtown all think this means the panthers are about to pull the robbery they’ve been planning. They think it must be today.”

“The panthers have been planning a robbery for three years?” said Sid. “One robbery?”

“Captain Albright says the bosses are convinced of it. Once the panthers moved out, they started the clock ticking. They can’t stand around on a street corner for the next week waiting for the right moment to pull their robbery. That’s the thinking, anyway.”

“So what’s the department doing about it that they weren’t doing before?” asked Ronnie.

“They’re sending lots of officers to the obvious places—major jewelry stores, the jewelry district. You can hardly walk down Hill Street without getting run over by a plain unit. Every parking lot must be full of cars with government plates.”

“How about Beverly Hills?”

“Beverly Hills has a hundred and twenty-seven cops on its force, spread over three shifts. There’s too much for them to cover alone, so we’re helping. The three hundred block of North Rodeo Drive has Van Cleef and Arpels at 300, Harry Winston at 310, and Cartier at 370. A crew of thieves could pick up the GDP of some countries without crossing a street. By now there are LAPD officers inside, outside, and on all the surrounding streets.”

“What are they trying to do—catch them in the act, or scare them away?” asked Ronnie.

Fuentes said, “The reason for all the officers is to keep the thieves from shooting somebody or taking hostages. The thinking is that it’s too late to be subtle. They’re already on the move.”

Sid said, “How about keeping them from getting away?”

“That’s a whole separate operation. The TSA and airport police have been reinforced by a whole lot of LAPD officers with lists of names, mug shots of the people we know are here, and so on. They’re even in the short-term parking lots and in the shuttle stations for the long-term lots. The sheriff’s deputies have been quadrupled in Union Station on the theory that Europeans are used to trains, and there are more deputies in every subway station in case they have to shut down the subways. The CHP is ready to close a freeway or two if they get the call.”

“If they pick up Mira Cepic, we’d love to hear what she has to say about James Ballantine,” said Sid.

“Me too,” said Fuentes. “I’m hoping if we get her I’ll be able to get her aside by herself and ask what she knows about him. I’ll let you know as soon as anything happens.”