Murder Miscalculated (8 page)

“Here and there,” I answered. I didn’t want to bring too much scrutiny to the fed’s tame fence. Plus, I had to keep up appearances. “What are you looking for?”

“The usual. Credit cards, gift cards, driver’s licenses. There’s a couple of outfits from out of town, Russian, I think, that are buying them up as quick as they can.”

I nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

We chatted a few more minutes and then shook hands. Jay left, and after a moment I did the same.

I was half a block down the street from the federal building. I liked the idea of targeting fellow employees of the man who was forcing me back to working the street.

I spotted a likely mark after a couple of minutes.

The man wore a nice suit and was walking toward me, perhaps forty feet away and closing fast. He held a cell phone to his ear. Just what the doctor ordered. When a person is talking on a cell phone, fully fifty percent of his attention is on the person at the other end of the connection, making it much easier for me. I made a subtle correction to the course my feet were taking and brushed against the man as we passed.

“Sorry,” I said as I recovered from a near fall, then continued on my way, his wallet tucked up my sleeve. When he noticed it missing, he would probably have no memory of my bumping into him, let alone be able to describe me.

I still had an hour to kill before I was due to meet my fence, and to tell the truth I was getting bored. I decided to ratchet things up a notch. I searched the plaza and spotted a man and woman walking together. Both carried slim attaché cases and wore conservative business suits. They were talking to each other in an animated fashion as they walked. I walked straight toward them, a wide smile filling my innocent face.

“Glenn? Glenn Raeder? How the heck are you?” The man’s surprise was obvious as I shook his hand.

“No,” he protested. “No, that’s not my name. You have me confused with someone else.” The woman watched with amusement.

I turned to her in appeal. “Glenn’s always doing that, always pretending to be someone else, especially when he’s with a beautiful woman who’s not his wife.”

Her smile became a laugh. “Sorry, but he really isn’t Glenn Raeder. His name is Tom. Tom Driscol.”

I feigned incredulity.

“Not Glenn?” I stood back a step, and took his left hand by the wrist and held his arm out as though examining him. In reality I was slipping my index finger between the tail of his watchband and the clasp and pushing it back through. In a second I had it free. I dropped his wrist.

“Wow, I am sorry,” I said to the man, then to the woman. “He’s the spitting image of someone I went to school with.” I named the school, a prestigious law school on the other side of the country.

The woman smiled again, clearly amused by her colleague’s predicament. “That’s quite all right.”

The two walked away, and I melted back into the crowd, the man’s watch safely in my pocket.

It was time to go see my favorite fence.

Sammie the Louse was the only fence I’d trusted back when I worked the streets. I took the 51 bus from downtown toward the old Tenderloin District. Once there, I walked a couple of quick blocks along cracked sidewalks and past derelict shops and businesses where once bright windows were now protected by iron bars, and doors had steel shutters that rolled down at night. Even in the middle of the day the air stank of decay and neglect. I’m no fan of urban renewal, but if ever a neighborhood qualified as being blighted, the Tenderloin was it.

I reached Sammie’s storefront and pushed open the door. Although it had been over a year since I last visited, the place was still the same. Faded cardboard containers cluttered the shelves along with a bewildering assortment of old toasters, radios, phonograph players and the like. A thin sheen of dust lay on all the exposed flat surfaces.

The floor creaked as I walked up to the gated sales counter. The girl behind the counter, Sammie’s daughter, looked up from her book. Her eyes, thick with mascara and eye shadow, widened as she recognized me.

“Hello Mary.”

She nodded in return. Still as talkative as ever.

I stole a look at the book she was reading.
Siddhartha
, by Herman Hesse. “Moved on from existentialism, I see.”

Her eyes flickered to the book and back to me. “I guess you want to see my dad.”

It was my turn to nod.

She pressed a button with her foot, and there was a soft click from the shelves to my left. I went over to them and pulled. The wall, complete with shelves full of merchandise, swung open silently, and I stepped through. I sensed rather than heard the secret door close behind me.

“Kid! Right on time.” Sammie got up from his desk and came toward me.

“Hello, Sammie,” I answered. “I have to admit I didn’t expect to find myself here again.”

“Yeah, life can take some strange turns, ain’t that the truth.” Sammie went back to his desk.

I watched him, overcome by déjà vu. How many times before had I arrived here with stolen wallets and watches to sell? How many times had Sammie sat behind that desk as he was now, waiting for me to pour out the contents of my pockets?

Everything was the same and yet at the same time, everything was different. In a rundown building in a rundown neighborhood, Sammie’s office was an oasis of taste. The carpet was both expensive and tasteful. The lighting was subdued and brought out the richness of the wood paneling. A Julie London recording played softly on hidden speakers.

Short and round-faced, Sammie looked at me with an open honesty that belied his occupation. Everything was as it used to be except for me. I had changed, and there was no going back.

“So you’re Talbot’s tame fence,” I said as I took the chair in front of the desk. Sammie lifted his arms halfway and dropped them.

“What can I say? Talbot made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I help them run a sting in return for complete immunity. I don’t like doing it, but I’ve got my daughter to think of, too. If I go to jail, what happens to her?”

“Talbot really knows how to put the screws on, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. When I added it up, I really didn’t have a choice.” He shook his head. “And what about you, Kid? I thought you quit the business for good.”

“So did I. Talbot got to me, too, and there were no good choices.” I didn’t volunteer any details, and Sammie didn’t ask.

I dumped my collection of stolen goods on Sammie’s desk. Sorting through the wallets and watches wasn’t as much fun as it had been in the old days, knowing it was all going to be returned. Sammie took notes on each item as I matched the watches and wallets. The only watch without a wallet belonged to Tom Driscol. Sammie raised his eyebrows when I gave him the name. “I couldn’t help it,” I admitted.

He smiled a knowing smile.

“Well, that’s it,” he said at last, putting the list with the stuff and sweeping it all into a cloth bag. “I’ll pass this on to Talbot’s people, and they’ll get it returned to the rightful owners in a week or so.”

Our business concluded, I got up to leave. Sammie walked me over to the secret door and triggered it to open.

“Kid,” he said, as I made to step through the door. Concern was written across Sammie’s chubby face. “Watch out for Doris Whitaker. She’s got all the pickpockets in town working for her now. She’s not going to like you being back in business and not working for her.”

“You’re the second person to tell me that this morning. She really has all the dips under her control?”

“Yeah, and she’s got enough muscle working for her that no one’s going to cross her.”

I thanked Sammie for the warning. Just what I needed as I went back to my life of crime. I tried to give him some assurance.

“I can handle Doris and her crew,” I told Sammie and left.

I doubted Sammie believed it any more than I did.

“I’ve got bad news, Kid.” Cochran and I were having coffee at a little shop down near the wharves. It was early Tuesday afternoon. Wolfe’s courier was due to arrive the next morning.

“What is it this time?”

“Wolfe’s courier isn’t coming in tomorrow. He’s not due until the day after.”

Another day of working the street. I considered the ramifications.

“You know that Lynn really hates I’m picking pockets again, don’t you?”

Cochran nodded. “I’m sorry, Kid. If I had known what a mess this would become, I would never have suggested your name to Talbot as the person to teach me how to pickpocket.”

We drank our coffee in silence. Finally Cochran spoke up, and when he did it was with a subdued voice. “I’m not certain how much I should say to you, but I feel like I’ve got to tell you a few things about my boss, Mister Lawrence Talbot.” He swallowed and continued. “I called Riley last night. There are some things about this operation that bother me and, well, he’s kind of my mentor, you know.”

I nodded but didn’t reply, not wanting to interrupt his flow.

“Riley tells me that Talbot is straight, but,” his voice trailed off.

“But?”

“But he’s also very ambitious. In the Bureau you only have a few years to make a name for yourself, to get noticed by the higher-ups and tagged as someone who can work at the top levels. Talbot’s running out of time on that, and Riley thinks he may be pushing this operation a little too hard in order to get a big win.”

“I’d say it’s more than a little.”

“Yeah, it’s starting to look that way to me, too. The problem is there’s nothing you or I can do about it. So far everything he’s done has been within the rules.”

“Including threatening Barbara with arrest and taking The Book Nook from Lynn and me?”

Cochran motioned to me to keep my voice down. I did, but I was still pretty damned mad. “That guy comes in and forces me to go back on the street picking pockets. Lynn’s furious, and Barbara’s sick with worry. And you say that’s within the rules?”

“Like it or not Kid, it is. Look, I said I was sorry, and I meant it.”

I took a deep breath. I trusted Cochran and knew it wasn’t his fault. “So, did Riley have any advice?”

“He suggested that we—you and I, that is—document everything so that if things blow up we don’t get burned.”

“We? How would you get burned? You work for Talbot.”

“Talbot’s got a reputation for pushing blame off onto those working for him.” Cochran gave a tight smile. “After I talked with Riley I spent a fair bit of time going over the emails I’ve had from Talbot. I noticed something.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I noticed that he always words things so it looks like he’s advising caution, and I’m the one pushing the envelope. That way, if things go wrong, he can cite them to put the blame on me.”

“And if things go well?”

“He’s the one who will write the report.”

“History is written by the victor,” I quoted.

“That’s for certain.”

“So where does that leave us?” I asked as I finished my coffee. Cochran drained the last of his, too, grimacing at the grounds at the bottom.

“Kid, that leaves you and me,” then he added, “and Lynn and Barbara as pawns on a chessboard in a game where none of us have any say in what happens.”

We took leave of each other after that. Cochran melted back into the shady world of the wharves while I made my way to a bus stop. I decided to work the plaza for another hour or two. As I rode back toward downtown and to Knickerbocker Lane, I had a vision of the city and the blocks I was traversing with each block a square on a chessboard and all of us simply pieces being moved by outside forces.

Any doubts I had about my return to a life of crime being believed were dispelled the next morning.

I had settled into a routine of lifting a few wallets late every morning, heading to Sammie’s to get rid of them as quickly as possible, then heading home to The Book Nook and my real life of a respectable book store owner.

That morning started the same as the others. Lynn and I woke, showered and dressed. We did this with our usual efficiency and with little competition for the shower and bathroom. After a year of marriage it still surprised me how easily we had settled into living together. We joined Barbara for breakfast downstairs about nine. It was my turn to cook that morning, so I scrambled some eggs in an old iron skillet, snipped some green onions with my kitchen scissors, sliced a few mushrooms and made toast in the oven. I’d given up on ever finding a toaster that actually toasts.

Lynn, Barbara and I chatted about our plans for the day and the chores that needed doing. We traded ideas about dinner for the next few days with Barbara proposing a Mulligan stew for the next evening, the ingredients of which would depend on what she found at the farmers market that morning.

After breakfast I gave Lynn a kiss and headed out to pick some pockets, feeling like the husband from a 1950s sitcom going off to the office. As I left I wondered how I would look in a fedora.

By midmorning that day I had grabbed two wallets and a wristwatch from prosperous pedestrians. I was working Fremont Plaza in the heart of the financial district, named for that rogue John C. Fremont and a favorite stalking ground of mine in the old days.

The sun had burned off all trace of morning fog and warmed the air. The sound of car and bus engines competed with raucous music from an impromptu band of street buskers. I recognized Molly, a street vendor setting up her cart of warm cinnamon buns, and in spite of my large breakfast, I went over to buy one.

Molly was in her mid-sixties, and her weathered face testified to years of working on the street. When I was a young teen, hustling hard to survive, Molly used to let me have one or two of her leftovers for free at the end of her day. There were nights when they’d been all that kept me from going to bed hungry.

Molly’s face lit up when she saw me. “Kid! How are you doing? I haven’t seen you in like forever!” She beamed a gap-toothed smile at me.