Moving Day: A Thriller (9 page)

S
o entertain me,” Nick says to the blandly handsome man and the pale-skinned, oval-faced woman who have just slid together into Nick’s booth in a dimly lit working-class bar in Yonkers, a town at the forgotten blue-collar edge of Westchester. “Let me see. Entertain me,” he says, without a smile, so they understand he has no interest in entertainment.

It has come together smoothly up to now. Not surprisingly, Nick knows quite a few experts on keys and locks. One of them told him, simply from the vintage of the key, what year the issuing bank went into business. That made it easy. First County it is.

He has hired Constantine to case the bank for a couple of days. Constantine—neat, silent, morose, accurate. A human tomb, with the knack of invisibility. To make sure no one is watching the safe-deposit boxes. To check on bank procedures and make sure they stay in place. Casing it to make sure no one else is casing it. Being careful. These rich old guys. They’re rich for a reason, after all. And the old man might very well at some point remember that his key is in his desk drawer, the safe-deposit box number taped on it.

Per Nick’s specific instructions, Constantine has in turn hired the man and woman in the dark booth with Nick now. Nick wouldn’t go into the bank himself, of course. That would be foolish.
It is, after all, a small town. And the old guy—if he’s still around—would certainly remember what Nick looks like. He might be ingrained by now in the old man’s angry memory.

Per Nick’s instructions to Constantine, the man and woman rented a safe-deposit box together at First County a week ago. It’s a small-town bank—the new rented box and the old man’s box aren’t far from each other, as it happens. It’s such a small-town bank, according to Constantine, some longtime customers still go unaccompanied to their boxes. The signature cards with the box numbers are kept in a Rolodex outside the entrance to the vault room. The way it’s been for decades, no doubt.

When the man and woman now opposite Nick rented their box, they signed the signature card together. As husband and wife. Making themselves immediately less suspicious, and giving themselves twice the time to get a good look at the signature card itself. Its card stock. Its layout. Its typefaces. To confirm each other’s perceptions of it. In order to help Constantine make a duplicate of the signature card over the next few days—an exact duplicate, with only one small, important detail different. A different box number printed on it. Stanley Peke’s box number.

“Go ahead. Let’s see,” Nick says now in the booth in the bar—humorless, insistent—and the man obediently reaches into his pocket and takes out a deck of playing cards.

Nick has even checked the house once more, just to be sure. The Mercedes sedan wasn’t in the garage. He half expected to see a Volvo station wagon or a minivan, young kids in the yard, a new life, turnover, but found the house still empty. In any case, no first-class mail in the mailbox. The Pekes seem to be long gone. Santa Barbara, didn’t the old man say?

The man shuffles the playing cards expertly. Here in the dark, stifling bar, Nick feels the air from the cards as the man shoots them showily from one hand to the other.

It will take place, in fact, before anyone even enters the vault room. When a half-attentive small-town bank employee pulls out their signature card, and while they are all engaged in the process of signing names and verifying signatures, they will—again, the advantage of two of them—cause the signature card to innocently drop and, retrieving it, will replace it with the duplicate signature card, identical to their own, except for Peke’s box number on it. Signatures verified, the employee will then ask for their safe-deposit key. They will hand Peke’s key to the employee. The employee will bring them Peke’s box.

In the dark bar, the man holds up a card, buries it in the pack, takes it out of his shirt pocket a moment later. He shows another card, fans the deck to show it’s no longer there, pulls the card out from under the booth’s table.

“So, what do you do?” asks Nick.

“Small after-dinner shows. Adult parties. Business functions. Local Rotarian stuff.”

“But not around here,” Nick confirms.

“Never around here,” says the magician.

It should be nothing. The simplest switch—either beneath the Rolodex table or even as they are signing. The most rudimentary sleight of hand. An ace for an ace. Compared with an attentive, eager after-dinner crowd looking for their secrets, a distracted small-town bank employee not expecting magic should be a simple audience.

The man holds up the king of hearts. Drops it on the floor next to the booth. Bends down, picks it up, and turns it over. It is the king of diamonds.

Nick nods with satisfaction. It’s very Nick. It’s in Nick’s style. Utterly simple. Low-tech. Try as he does, Nick can’t resist a smile.

And hey, if they can’t pull it off, if they smell something wrong, they can always back off. They don’t have to go through with it.
They do some piece of business at their legitimate box and exit the bank. But they’ve been hired specifically for their manipulative dexterity. And they know there’s significant reward for their performance. They’ll decide when they get in there.

Nick stands across the street from First County, thinking it all through one last time. He wants to be sure he’s considered everything. He watches a well-dressed, lucky-looking yuppie couple head up the steps and through the bank’s big, twin white doors. The young couple, he notices, seem carefree, cheerful. For their exuberance, their attentiveness to each other, they could be crossing a threshold. Even from across the street, they appear untouched by hardship. He’s always felt resentful of people like that. They bring out his bitterness, stir his ire.

He’s been as careful as he can. So when his yuppie-looking couple enters the bank, heading to their new safe-deposit box, there’s no reason to stand there anymore. Nick heads down the street.

Time for them to deal their one-card hand.

An hour later, as agreed, they meet Nick at a different bar in Yonkers. He searches their faces as they sit down. They look to him and smile—the blandly handsome man, the oval-faced woman—and a feeling of power and satisfaction flushes through Nick. It worked. Christ! It fucking worked. So the old man didn’t remember, apparently. Did not even think of it. Some were that rich: they forgot about their safe-deposit boxes. It took their children to remind them.

In the parking lot behind the bar, the man and woman transfer the contents casually from their pockets into an empty manila envelope Nick has for the occasion. They know to hold nothing back, these yuppie magicians. It isn’t even a question in Nick’s mind. The old brass key that Nick mailed to Constantine, the man hands back to Nick separately. Nick gives the man a small white envelope of cash.

Alone in the rental car, Nick spills the manila envelope contents onto the passenger seat. A few faded, folded bonds, perhaps redeemable, perhaps worthless now—he’ll have to see. A thick gold bracelet. A ruby necklace and ornate matching earrings.

And look at this. Glittering in the sun streaming through the windshield. You don’t see them like this anymore. Hands and numbers composed of tiny diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, perimeter crusted with gold. Some small, defunct, and elite German maker. One of a kind. It needs to be set. Has been sitting there for years, undoubtedly. Time. Time inside a safe-deposit box, waiting to tick again.

He sets it by his own cheap Timex. Winds the ruby stem carefully. With satisfaction sees the second hand begin to move. Time. Time released. Time to let the good times roll.

I
n an intensely floral, aggressively cheerful room (immense green and yellow swells of curtains, bedspreads and blankets and armchair and hassock, a riot of matching bloom), in a steep-dormered inn near the Delaware Water Gap, Stanley Peke and his wife are awakened from an afternoon nap by a small but insistent cell phone–like beeping emanating from his side of the bed.

“
Turnitoff
. . . ,” Rose mumbles irritably from beneath her pillow, assuming it’s the clock radio set by a previous guest, as she rolls over and adjusts the pillow on her head for a few more minutes of rest. It’s a reaction to what has happened, he knows, this need of hers for extra sleep. Her unconscious physiological defense. A way of pushing events away.

Peke gets up, feels around for the little, black beeping device buried in the bottom of the suitcase of new clothes, takes it out and into the bathroom with him. He closes the bathroom door, turns on the light, squints at its tiny buttons, and unfolds the paper directions next to it. He sets the directions down on the edge of the sink. His hands are trembling—with excitement, with disbelief—an extension, a manifestation, of the trembling in his chest, in his being.

He presses the
ZOOM OUT
button and is somewhat startled to see the digital display of a portion of Westchester County. Look at that. I-95 is marked. A little blinking dot right on it. He is trembling, but here in the harsh, sudden bathroom light, he can’t help smiling either. Global positioning. Many cars come with it standard now. His friends have shown it to him excitedly on afternoon outings on their boats. Palm-size devices mounted alongside their sonar that simply and accurately position you in the universe. It must have been a short step, technically, to separating the two functions, to dividing them into twin packages: the tiny sensor that locates where you are, and the little screen and dials that explicitly display that information. Keep track of your kids. Of your cheating wife. The paranoiac’s home companion.

Technology is the opposite of mystery. Technology is the end of mystery. Puts the lie to mystery. Makes everything explicit.

He feels suddenly youthful. Like a fresh-faced boy, bent over a toy, jittery with excitement, excitement uncontainable.

The thief has come for the safe-deposit contents. Peke can’t believe it. It is some dark connection between them, some perverse sympathy of mind, some synchronous, watch-like ticking and clicking in unison.

The thief has come for it. It is Peke’s good fortune and ill fortune rolled into one.

“Maybe we should get going,” he proposes, moving her shoulder gently back and forth fifteen minutes later. “Skip the museum. Try to make Pittsburgh.”