Thief (7 page)

 

9

BEAU ARSENAULT LEFT THE
limousine on Pearson Street on Chicago's near north side, and entered the Ritz-Carlton. His life could get complicated, and there was unavoidable stress in those complications, which his doctors had warned him was a real threat to someone who had a family history of heart disease.

The mogul exercised almost every day, but the only thing that truly relaxed him was gourmet chocolate. That thought made him move quickly into the hotel lobby where a concierge, a thin, taciturn man, waited with an electronic key.

“The usual suite, sir,” the concierge said.

“Visitors?” Arsenault asked.

“Not as of yet.”

“Excellent,” the mogul replied. “You'll alert me if there are?”

“As always, sir.”

Arsenault went to a special elevator and slid his key through a slot before punching the thirtieth floor. Exiting the lift, he hurried down the hallway, his mind conjuring up ways this all could go, and feeling slightly breathless. The key opened one of the hotel's ambassador suites with a commanding view of Lake Michigan. He was entering when his private cell rang. It was Saunders.

“You have something for me, Billy?” the mogul demanded.

“You're not going to like it.”

Arsenault found this aspect of his security chief's makeup annoying. He'd rather have the facts straight and then decide if they suited his purposes or not. There was no like or dislike about it.

“Do you have results or not?” he said as he walked down the hallway.

Saunders cleared his throat, said, “When my guys at the Bureau ran the prints on the champagne glass, one belonged to you, and the other one got my guys at the Bureau a visit from someone very high up in the judicial food chain.”

Arsenault slowed. “Go on.”

“My guys were told to forget they'd ever seen that fingerprint.”

That made the mogul tighten up inside. “So you're saying what, he's with the government? FBI?”

“I don't know.”

The hotel room phone rang. He crossed to it, said, “Well, find out.”

“How?”

Lifting the ringing phone and setting it back down in its cradle, he said, “Throw some money around. That always works.”

Snapping shut the cell phone the mogul wondered whether the robbery had been a cover, whether someone had targeted him, or was targeting him. He rubbed at his chest, sore from a morning workout, then went to the stocked bar and poured himself some bourbon.

Arsenault took a chair, sipped the sour mash, and let his imagination run to the hour ahead all the while considering what Saunders had told him. That's the mark of a first-rate mind, he thought, the ability to manage two or more trains of thought at the same time. Quite often, he had four or more going.

The lock mechanism whirred and the suite door opened and shut. Cassie Knox entered the room carrying several shopping bags. She spotted Arsenault and stopped dead in her tracks.

“Beau,” the singer said.

“Cassie,” he said.

Knox hung her head slightly. “I didn't know you were…”

“Coming?” he said good-naturedly. “You think I'd miss this treat? That would be like asking a great man not to eat chocolate, and you know how great men like to eat chocolate.”

Her jaw stiffening, the singer set the bags down and took off her down coat and scarf. Arsenault drank the rest of his bourbon, got up, and started crossing to her.

When he was close, she said softly, “I can't do this anymore. I won't.”

The mogul stopped, smiled, and said, “That right, Cassie? You're going to give up everything when you're so close to losing everything already?”

Knox frowned, looked up at him, puzzled.

The slap hit the singer hard across the left cheek and she staggered.

“You think there wouldn't be payment due after the way you betrayed me, girl?” Arsenault said in a low, vicious tone.

Knox held her hand to her face, crying, “What? I never betrayed you!”

The mogul grabbed her by the arm and dragged her toward the bedroom, saying, “Oh, my little dark orchid, yes, you did. You stabbed your benefactor, the hand that feeds you, right in the back.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Beau,” she wept.

“You gave a man a ride off my estate on Friday night,” he said coldly before hauling her inside the bedroom and kicking shut the door with his heel.

“What? I—”

Arsenault threw the singer on the bed, said, “Don't you lie to me, now. Only gonna get worse for you if you lie.”

Bewildered, Knox looked around, said, “Okay, I … yes, I remember now. He said he felt sick and asked me to drive him to his car over by the stable. I did. End of story. How did that betray you?”

The mogul studied her for several moments, and shook his head before slapping her again, this time on the other cheek. “There's more to it than that.”

“You hit me again, I'm calling the police,” she snarled through her tears.

“Darling, you have no idea about the things I own,” he said. “Now you going to tell Big Beau? Or is your entire recording career, all the niceties of your life suddenly going to disappear, leaving you a bitter old girl?”

“There are other labels, Beau,” she said.

“That's a fact,” he allowed. “But a reputation is a terrible thing to shake, and I have the ability to change your reputation at the snap of my fingers. The critics would turn against you. So would the listeners. I'd make sure. Why? Because deep down, I am a vindictive man. A nasty affliction, but there it is.”

The singer stared hatred at him, said nothing.

“What's it gonna be?” he said. “Fame or finished?”

Knox's jaw trembled before she said, “Okay, he said he stole something from you and Louisa shot him and he needed help.”

“And you gave it to him?”

Knox looked at him, said, “He held a gun on me, said he'd kill me.”

“Really?” Arsenault asked. “What kind of gun.”

“A pistol, I don't know.”

The mogul stared down at her. He'd never seen a gun, nor had Saunders or Louisa. Didn't mean the burglar had been unarmed, he supposed.

“He say anything to you?”

“About what?”

“Why he was stealing from me?”

She looked puzzled, but then nodded. “I'm paraphrasing, but he said you were an asshole and deserved it.”

Arsenault swallowed at the anger rising in him. “That what made you want to help him?”

“He had a gun.”

“That all?”

The singer glanced at his right hand, open again, stretched wide. “Okay, he said something about he robbed people like you to give money to orphans in South America.”

The mogul squinted, said, “Like what, Robin Hood?”

Knox nodded. “Something like that.”

That made Arsenault even angrier. He got ripped off so some son of a bitch could give money to poor kids? That was even worse.

I'm going to crucify this guy, the mogul thought, make him hang on the cross longer than Jesus did dying for my sins.

“That's it, Beau?” the singer said. “Can I go now?”

“You never called to tell me,” the mogul said. “You helped a wounded thief escape my house and you never called.”

“He had a gun. He said he'd find me if I talked.”

He slapped her a third time, said, “I'd have protected you.”

Knox rolled over and buried her face in the comforter of the king-size bed, sobbing and moaning, “What do you want from me?”

Arsenault enjoyed his moment of dominance before unbuckling his belt and letting his pants fall, saying softly, lovingly, “What great men have wanted from Thomas Jefferson on down, Cassie, gourmet chocolate to make the stress melt away.”

 

10

BUENOS AIRES

DECEMBER 23

SISTER RACHEL QUIETLY SHUT
the door to the girl's dormitory at ten that night, knowing full well that the moment she shut the door at the bottom of the stairs, they would break curfew and start talking excitedly again among themselves. The same thing was going on in the boy's dormitory on the other side of the lawn.

It was as it should be, she thought. Children, especially orphans, love the Christmas season. The anticipation. The excitement it presents. The candy and food. The story of a child who grows up to change the world.

Sister Rachel went first to the chapel where other members of her order were decorating for a Christmas celebration. Seeing that they had things well under control, she moved on toward the clinic.

It was a warm, humid evening, and in the distance she could hear music playing and people laughing and singing. And that was as it should be, too. Was there a greater reason for celebration? Not in her world. The birth of Christ and the story of his life were real and tangible, a guide and a powerful motivation for her life's work.

Blessed be the poor,
she thought as she reached the clinic.
For they shall inherit the Earth.

Inside, the missionary doctor greeted the night nurse, who told her Robin Monarch was fast asleep, and his vitals were growing stronger.

“Go home, Luis,” Sister Rachel said. “I'll stay with him.”

“Are you sure, Sister?” Luisa asked, brightening.

“Completely,” she said.

“
Felice Navidad,
Sister,” Luisa said, bowed, and rushed out the door.

Sister Rachel walked to the doorway to Monarch's room. She walked in quietly, not wanting to wake him, and scanned the various machines monitoring and aiding his recovery. Luisa was right. His vitals were stronger.

The missionary doctor sat and studied Monarch, feeling conflicted. On the one hand, she loved Robin like a son. On the other, he was a constant source of worry, puzzlement, and uncertainty. It had been so right from the beginning.

Almost twenty years before, in the middle of the night, Claudio Fortunato had run into her clinic in the Villa Miserie, the worst slum in Buenos Aires. He brought her to
el ano
, a garbage dump where the poorest of the poor scavenged for survival. There she found young Robin Monarch sprawled in the mud.

He had been stabbed through the ribs and into his right lung, which had collapsed. She'd managed to save his life physically, but had found it much harder to reach him spiritually.

The process had taken months, but in Sister Rachel's memories that Christmas Eve, the arc of time shrank into moments. She saw herself by his bedside in the old slum clinic, gesturing to the gang tattoo on young Robin's inner right forearm after he'd grown strong enough to sit up.

“
Is
that what you plan to do when you're well?” Sister Rachel asked. “Go back to your life with La Fraternidad de Ladrones? The Brotherhood of Thieves?”

Angered, Robin said, “I've got no other life. My parents were murdered. I lived on the trash heaps in the
ano
, Sister. I ate garbage, Sister. The brotherhood rescued me, Sister.”

“And the brotherhood almost killed you,” she said.

Robin said nothing, looked away.

“Who stabbed you?” Sister Rachel asked.

Robin looked over at her and shrugged. “Just some random guy.”

“You must think I'm stupid.”

He blinked, but then shook his head. “I don't, Sister. You're a great doctor. You saved my life.”

“Yes, I did, though I'm beginning to wonder why.”

That seemed to upend him. “Why? Didn't you take like some kind of oath to help people or something?”

“You didn't think I'd be able to piece it together from your wounds? The slashes high on your right arm, the cut across your left wrist? You were in a knife fight.”

“No,” Robin began.

“You're lying to me,” Sister Rachel said. “Your whole life has been spent lying, hasn't it? Lies, upon lies, one emptiness after the other. Lies are all you have to look forward to if you return to your old life, Robin. Sooner or later, the lies will disintegrate under the weight of truth—they always do—and you'll be in some other hospital or prison bed, or dead with an empty soul to show to God.”

Sister Rachel fell silent for a long moment. “Or you can decide to end the lying and the deception and the thieving and the violence and become a better person, a stronger person, a person whose soul God would find worthy.”

Robin gaped at her as she got up from his bedside, and made to leave.

“My soul has already been emptied,” Robin called after her retreating figure. “God will already find me unworthy, Sister. It's over for me.”

The missionary doctor turned, her face softening. “God never finds the living unworthy, Robin. God always gives us a chance to redeem ourselves.”

“What does that mean, redeem?”

Sister Rachel returned to his bedside. “It means that you take another path, a better one that helps make up for whatever it is you've done before.”

“I don't understand.”

She thought for a moment. “Have you ever seen a balance beam scale?”

“You mean like fence's have?”

Sister Rachel winced, but said, “Exactly. And now I want you to think of your life as a scale, and the weight of what you've done is far out there on that beam, pinning your life down.”

For several moments he stared off into space and then hung his head, tears welling in his eyes.

“You see it?” she asked.

Robin nodded as tears dripped down his cheeks.

“Good,” she said. “And now I want you to imagine yourself differently, acting differently, thinking differently, a young man with a purpose to his life, dedicated to the greater good. And I want you to believe that gradually, step by step, action by action, the weight on that beam will begin to shift and then come into balance, or better.”