Once Upon A Poet

by H S Peer

  I watched the tape again to see if there was anything I missed the first time around. There wasn’t.

  How did Cindy and Amber find out about this little scheme? Did Cindy receive one of her own videos stuffed with coke? Had she confided in Amber? What did the pair of them do? Cindy’s photographs of Amber in front of the buildings were a clue to someone, mainly me, a little note from beyond the grave. They must have used different buildings every time, and Cindy was documenting them. How much had she known? How did she find it out? Had she tried to blackmail Smith with what she knew? That would have gotten her killed, but by who? Who was the mysterious Lenny who called in the hit? I intended to find out now.

  I thanked Alfred for his technical assistance and headed home. Safe from the scary world of porn stores and jack-off booths I unwrapped my boxed set of Rainbow’s titles and inserted the first one into my DVD player. I pressed the skip button until I arrived at the end credits. The names of the stars were ridiculous. Chad Hungwell, Sindee, Bobby Flame, none of them were real of course. Who would use their real name on a production like this? I wasn’t interested in the stars but the bit players, the grips and credited flotsam and jetsam. There was nothing on the first two DVDs I watched. On the credits of the third Lenny appeared in the credits. Lenny Apple was the sound man on Fetish Around the World. I popped Crack Pirates into the machine. I’ll admit to watching about twenty minutes of this if only to see Sindee in all her glory. I’d never been a big fan of anal sex, and that’s what this movie featured. Sindee was a pirate of sorts violating other women and men with her sword dildo when she wasn’t being violated herself. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

  Lenny Apple had gotten a promotion for Crack Pirates. He penned the score. My ears said that was no great feat. It consisted of heavy bass and keyboard music. So Lenny was a musician, that would make him easier to find. I watched the rest of the DVDs. Lenny was listed on three more, once as a sound man and on the rest as responsible for the music. Finished, I wanted another shower.

  I wondered what to do with the DVDs now that I was done with them. They weren’t precisely titles I wanted to add to my collection. I couldn’t return them, and I was out $249.95. I’d take it out of Bill Jenkins hide when I got him sprung. In the end, I packaged them up and sent them anonymously to a book reviewer at the New York Times I loathed. He seemed fairly perverted in his reviews; the movies might suit him perfectly.

  I picked up my cell and called Rainbow’s offices. After the receptionist announced the name of the company, I asked for Lenny Apple.

  “Didn’t you call here earlier?” she asked.

  “No, not me.”

  “Mr. Apple is not an employee of Rainbow Productions. He works under contract. Would you like his office number?”

  I answered in the affirmative. After hanging up, I placed a call to the number. The answering machine pronounced that I had called Ear Candy Studios. I left a message saying I wanted to discuss the score of a feature I was producing and hung up. I dressed and walked to the Liar’s Breath for lunch.

  Halfway through my club sandwich my cell rang. I wiped off my mouth, rinsed my mouth with some draft beer and answered it.

  “Is this Rupert Brooke?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “You called regarding the score to a feature?”

  “Yes, Mr. Apple. I saw, sorry - heard - your work in Crack Pirates and am interested in having you do the music for my newest adult feature.”

  “You liked my work?” he asked.

  “Very much so. Are you free to engage in this project are do you work primarily for Rainbow?”

  “I can certainly undertake this project, Mr. Brooke.”

  “I’m thrilled to hear it. I think we should meet. You could take a look at my tape and tell me what you think.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Saturday afternoon? Are you free?”

  He said he was and gave me the address of his studio. I jotted it down on a coaster and promised to meet him at 5 p.m. I hung up. That was done. This was all starting to come together. It was almost over. If this was the right Lenny he could lead me to the hitter of Cindy, I hoped. Then, I wasn’t sure how I could end this. Bill would be free and my life could go back to its usual routine. No more PI Poet, just Poet, thief extraordinaire.

  I called Gael at her precinct.

  “Are you staying sober,” she asked.

  “Reasonably,” I answered.

  “What do you want now?’

  “I need you to run a name for me.”

  “You don’t want much, do you?”

  “Come on, Gael, I’ll pay you back.”

  “You keep saying that, but you never do.”

  “You can come stay with me in Aruba for a couple of weeks. I’ll buy the ticket, what do you say?”

  “It’s tempting, but I think spending any time with you would look rather bad in my personnel file.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “What’s the name,” she relented.

  “Lenny Apple.”

  “Is that an alias?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Okay, Poet. I’ll get back to you tomorrow, I’m a little busy trying to keep the city safe from the likes of you.”

  “You’re a princess Gael.”

  “Ya, Ya,” she said and hung up.

  I took the deposit to the bank and winked at the pretty redheaded teller. After that I returned home for a nap, I wasn’t used to being up so early. I awoke just after 7 p.m. and opened the envelope Marty had given me.

  What Marty had paid for wasn’t crap. There were blueprints of Demter’s Jewellery, the main floor and the basement vault, alarm schematics and codes, and a set of keys. There are several ways a criminal enterprise comes to fruition. A smart criminal will case out a job him or herself and gather the data before committing the crime. That takes skill, lots of it, to cover all the bases. That was what I specialized in. And I am the best.

  On the other hand, you could buy a job as Marty had done and have all the legwork already done. Some criminals, the ones without the balls to do the jobs themselves, did this exclusively. They set up scores for others. Sometimes an ex-employee with a grudge would give up the data for a job. That’s what had happened here.

  The security was pretty good. Decent locks on the doors, a vault with a three-minute time lock, motion sensors in all the right locations, wired windows and a solid steel back door with a burglar bar. It would have taken all my skill to get in without this Christmas package of goodies. That was assuming the management hadn’t yet changed the alarm codes, the locks or the combination to the vault. I’m no safecracker. I can open a basic office safe easily enough but not the new high-tech ones. I don’t use explosives often and don’t work with people that do. That draws too much attention. It is amazing how many jobs I had pulled where a company had sunk all their money into an alarm system with all the bells and whistles and never thought about upgrading their safe. If you can’t get in the front, you can always go in through the side with a drill and a reciprocating saw, if you have enough time.

  On this job, I wasn’t worried about time. I was pulling it on a Friday night; I had all weekend if I wanted to go through the contents of the vault. This would be the score that financed my winter sabbatical. I smiled at the thought. I’d go in at 2:30 a.m. or so, just after the cops made their half-hour patrol. Twenty minutes to get into the building and the vault and I’d have hours to pick out what I wanted. I could afford to be choosy, this wasn’t a messy little smash and grab. I’d leave by the back door at dawn and blend in with the surroundings before disappearing. Marty had said $1.6 million. That was conservative. Depending on what Demter’s had in stock, I could see that balloon to $2.5 million easily. My ten percent would be wired to my Cayman’s account, and I could spend a slow winter in the sun.

  I committed all the codes and specifics to memory. When I was done, I took to the whole envelope, minus the keys, and went to the basemen
t. I burned the package in an old wood stove. When it was nothing but ashes, I went back upstairs. I decided against going back to the Liar’s Breath and made an omelet of jack cheese and portobello mushrooms. I spent a quiet evening of watching old movies on satellite and sipping brandy. I was in bed by 2 am. I dreamt of Farrell, and the moment my bullet smashed into her forehead. She was gone but not forgotten.

  Chapter 33

  Friday afternoon arrived, and I greeted the day with coffee and cigarettes. I lounged on the couch in a robe and watched CNN for a couple of hours. I checked my stocks on the Internet. They were sluggish. I hadn’t had a decent stock tip in months. I needed to blackmail a broker and get the inside scoop.

  My cell buzzed, it was Gael.

  “I have your information,” she said.

  “Shoot,” I responded.

  “Lenny Apple is an alias. His real name is Leon Crabapple. Usual juvenile stuff, car theft, possession with intent, concealed weapons. His rap sheet is varied, to say the least. He did five years in Attica for trafficking in cocaine and heroin. After that was assault and battery, grand larceny, armed robbery, conspiracy to commit murder and mail fraud, never convicted. He’s a known associate of Carmine Lagusa’s crew. That’s about it.”

  “A shady character.”

  “Very.”

  “Just my type of people,” I said.

  “Where do you meet these people, Poet?”

  “Around.”

  “Don’t be messing with Lagusa, I don’t want to investigate your disappearance,” Gael cautioned.

  “Carmine’s a pussycat,” I told her.

  “Ya, okay. I’ve seen his sheet too. He makes your friend Lenny seem like a lightweight.”

  “Don’t worry Gael, I know what I’m doing.”

  “So you say.” She hung up.

  I decided to stay in today. I had a job to mentally prepare for. I went over it again and again in my mind. The front door, the alarm console, the locks, the stairs, the basement, the vault, and the ice. I pictured the whole thing in my mind over and over. It was a cakewalk, or so it seemed. Many things could go wrong between that front door and my meeting with Marty to drop off the stones. Many things. I tried not to think about that and focused on the positives.

  I knew a little about diamonds. I had some resting in my vault in a velvet bag, some lovely five-carat cut stones I’d taken when I burgled the office of a wall street exec. I was saving one for an engagement ring I was sure I would never use.

  I like women, don’t get me wrong. I have dates in spades, all with women of the underworld. We go out, spend my money and have a good time. We drink champagne, eat expensive strawberries out of season and play roulette. It’s all window dressing, a little diversion from my otherwise static life. Sure, there’s sex, lots of it, but it’s not fulfilling. I’ll never find a bride in my circle of friends. I need someone well-read, someone that will recognize poetry when I quote it, with a bloom untainted by the underworld. But where would I find such a woman? Maybe a professor at NYU or Columbia would fit the bill. I believe, as the poets do, in love at first sight. When I saw her, I would know. She would be the one, without question. And I would follow my heart.

  I pushed those thoughts from my mind. I didn’t need women, or my lack thereof, to cloud my judgment. While most criminals would be busy arranging an alibi I made some poached eggs. The staff at my place realize what I do, there’s no way around that, they just come to understander what the customers do. If questioned they will say I was in the bar on the night in question. Biscuit is loyal to a sad degree; he’d take a bullet for me if it came to that. Even with his background, he’d swear on a stack of bibles I was in the bar on any given night. No need for an alibi.

  I ate my eggs, a holdover treat from my childhood. I watched a horror movie on TV and drank Evian water. So went the afternoon. By 7 pm it was time for a nap. I pulled a blanket over me on the couch and snoozed with the television still on. By 10 pm I was back among the living and showered again. I dressed in jeans, a fleece shirt, and running shoes. It’s dramatic to dress all in black, but not very practical. It would be daylight when I left Demter’s, and I didn’t want to look out of place on the street. I gathered my tools and the night vision goggles and dropped them in a backpack, ready to go. I watched television until 2 a.m. and then it was time to leave.

  I locked up and made for a subway stop. There are different theories as to how to get to a crime. Most underworld figures steal a car, something fast, and use that on a job, dumping it later. Some others use a driver. I’ve used both but on this little caper decided the subway was the best way to go. I certainly wasn’t driving to the diamond district in my own car and leaving that parked on the street. I wasn’t stealing one either. That was all I needed parked in front of Demter’s, a stolen car. With all the police presence in the area that would be asking for trouble.

  I sat on the train and tried to blank my mind to everything but the job. I didn’t look at the other riders and try to amuse myself, as I usually did, with their probable occupations. I was in the zone, neither here nor there. I was ready for whatever would come next. A .380 automatic with hollowpoint rounds rested against my inner left ankle. I didn’t think I would need it, it was mostly there out of habit. I usually worked on my own and didn’t have to fear a double-cross. I thought again of Farrell and her shattered head, lying dead on the docks, dead by my hand. I pushed that thought away.

  I left the train and walked ten blocks to the diamond district. There was no one on the street, and I saw no cops. One look in my bag and they would have had some questions for me. I hid behind a dumpster in an alley beside Demter’s and watched the street. The police car, with the spotlight shining on storefronts, came by at 3:36 am. I watched it pass the alley, gave it a minute or two to get away and went to work. I stood and left the alley.

  I walked to the front door of Demter’s and pulled the key ring from my pocket. They were all labeled. I found the one for the front door and inserted it. It fit. I don’t know what cocaine feels like, that rush you’re supposed to get. But that’s what I was feeling now. My whole body was zinging, every nerve alive. I could feel the adrenaline in my system, red-lining it. I turned the key. The lock disengaged.

  The alarm was a silent one, and it wasn’t on the wall next to the door as they usually were. It too was a Formosa, only the best for Demter’s. I walked around to the walkway between the display cases, now empty for the weekend. I found the alarm pad tucked low against the wall. I crouched and opened the small door covering the keypad. With the code already committed to memory, I typed it in and waited. Now was the time I might have to run if the code had been changed. I didn’t want this job to go south, it had too much potential.

  The two seconds it took for the red-armed light to go off and the green ready light to start to blink seemed an eternity. I was balanced on the balls of my feet, my whole being ready to sprint if it didn’t work out. There was an escape plan already in my mind. Through a couple of alleys, over a couple of fences and back to the subway. Marty would have been disappointed, he’d already paid off the inside man or woman, but sometimes that was life.

  The alarm off I stood up and wiped my brow. I was sweating. I always do when I work, I must have over-active glands. There was a light filtering through the windows and burglar bars, enough for me to see the lay of the land but little else. I couldn’t risk turning on a light yet. From my backpack, I pulled the night vision goggles, turned them on and slipped them over my eyes. The world now glowed a strange green, and I could see everything. I walked to the door at the back of the storeroom and went to work with the keyring again. The deadbolt opened, and I was in a short hallway. I shut the door.

  There were packing cases lining the walls. There were three doors in the hall. One led to a spotless bathroom, one was the backdoor with the burglar bar, and the other was locked and led to the stairs to the basement. I found the right key and unlocked it.

  Walking down a flight of stairs
in night vision goggles is not something easily done. Although I could see everything in shades of green I had no depth perception. I put one foot down after the other and hoped for the best. I made as good time as I could. There was another alarm waiting at the bottom of the stairs. The timer had started the minute I opened the upper door.

  I found the keypad and typed in the second code. Again, a Formosa. The armed light blinked off, and the ready light started to flash. I was in business. Looking at the walls, I found the light switch. I flipped it on, relatively safe in the windowless basement, and dropped the goggles back into my bag.

  The walls of this room were covered in stacked cardboard boxes. As well as being the vault room this was the storeroom. There was a cast-off dining room table in the middle of the room covered in black velvet. The vault door stood embedded into the cement wall. A smart business owner would have had a time lock on the door, one that only opened between say nine and five, business hours. For some reason Demter’s hadn’t gone this route. There was a time lock, but it only kept the door closed three minutes after the combination was dialed in. This was a way to deter thieves like me from hold-ups. It wouldn’t work now; I had all the time in the world.

  I approached the thick metal door and looked it up and down. Without the combination, there would have been little to do except blow it, and that makes too much noise and causes a mess if you don’t have a professional on the case. I tried the handle on the off chance someone had left it open. No dice. I spun the dial twice to clear it and went to work. 36-24-36, someone had a sense of humor.

  I waited and heard a muted click after three minutes. I tried the handle, and it gave way. I pulled open the door and stood back. It wasn’t a big vault. Six feet high by five feet wide and six feet deep. It was lined with shelves and held many leather cases stacked on top of each other. I pulled out a flashlight and shone it around.