Night Passenger

by David Stanley

  He threw his bag over his shoulder and slammed the door. He’d changed his mind, perhaps it would be best if he never saw her again. Thorne crossed the street and walked up an overgrown path to the front door. Out of habit, he raised his hand to press the chime, then stopped himself. It was the wrong play. The more he appeared to be a part of Blake’s gang, the better. He needed them to think he was one of them, an old friend, a Marine.

  Most of all, he needed them to forget about Kate Bloom.

  He tried the handle and the door opened.

  Thorne resisted the urge to remove his sunglasses. He was in character now, and they were part of his armor. Voices filtered through from the back of the house and he walked toward them. The hallway opened out into a kitchen, dining and TV area. Blake stood with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He wore baggy workout pants and a sweat-soaked gray T-shirt with Everlast printed across the front. His face was swollen and badly bruised and two white adhesive sutures were holding his forehead closed. Blake smiled at him and held up his index finger for him to wait. Porter sat by the TV on a leather sofa with a man Thorne didn’t recognize. The second man was in his mid thirties with long, black hair and incredibly white skin. The man looked at him and clenched his jaw. Thorne turned to Blake as he returned his phone to his pocket. It seemed like the call had been about him. Blake walked over.

  “You’re not still on the fence about this are you?”

  “No.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t feel good about it.”

  “This painting,” Blake said, “I’m no expert but it’s got to be worth what? Seventy to eighty mill? Somewhere in that ballpark?”

  Thorne shrugged. “Probably closer to a hundred.”

  “No shit. Okay, so some guy spends all that money on a painting…then just leaves it in an art gallery like a book loaned to a friend. That’s whack.”

  “Are you close to getting to the point, Blake?”

  “My point is simple. I don’t have twenty bucks I won’t miss, but this guy has a hundred million in loose change? He may as well have set that money on fire for all the difference it’s making to his life. Do you think money like that can be earned? Didn’t this guy basically pay for this painting with stolen money in the first place? I’ll bet that whatever this guy does, there’ll be thousands of regular Joes like you and me doing all the real work and getting minimum wage. This painting we’re going to steal? It was paid for by them.”

  Blake was good, he knew how to hit Thorne’s buttons.

  Behind him a man spoke in a thick Texan accent.

  “He almost makes you wish it wasn’t insured.”

  Thorne turned and saw a man in an open-necked white shirt with a black tie pulled down past the second buttonhole. He was wearing a pair of cowboy boots whose thick heel failed to raise him above 5’ 9”. His hair thinned at the temples and he had a two day beard you could use to light a match. Based on the grey in his hair and stubble, Thorne placed him as mid to late forties. The Texan smiled and held out his hand.

  “Jay Stockton. Big fan of your work.”

  “Thanks,” Thorne said, shaking Stockton’s hand.

  “He’s referring to what you did to my face,” Blake said.

  Of course he was, Thorne thought. Why’d he still think anyone might’ve seen his TV show? He caught a mischievous sparkle in Stockton’s eye. It only lasted a split second, but he knew he was dealing with a keen intelligence. Thorne had underestimated Blake already and didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. There was something else about Stockton, something about the way he carried himself. All this time out the Marine Corps, and he could still sniff it out. An officer. Not too high, not too low.

  “So, Stockton,” Thorne said. “Is that Captain or Major?”

  The Texan smirked. “You got a live one here, Blake.”

  “I know it,” Blake said.

  “Our rank is history, Thorne. This is Blake’s show.”

  “All right, how about you give me the 411 on the painting.”

  Blake nodded.

  “Follow me, all the shit’s next door.” He turned to the two men getting up from the sofa. “Porter, Lynch, you can sit this out.”

  Blake led him back down the hallway to a room with a closed door, which he unlocked with a key in his pocket. It seemed like a curious detail: locking a wooden door that any of them could get through with the right pair of boots. Thorne noticed Stockton had followed along behind them. This indicated to him that Stockton was second in command and that the others were no more than grunts. The door opened and they went inside.

  Thorne took off his sunglasses.

  The room had been cleared of furniture, save for an oak table which sat directly under a bare light bulb. Around the walls were boxes and canvas bags, the contents of which Thorne could guess from the smell of gun oil and grease that filled the air. There were no windows. Light from the bulb was harsh and drew his focus back to the table, which Blake now stood behind like a blackjack dealer. Spread out before him were floor plans with pen marks and cross hatchings drawn on top. He moved closer for a better look.

  “Okay,” Blake said. “At the moment the painting’s hanging in an gallery in Beverly Hills. They got security in that place like you wouldn’t believe. Lasers, thermals, all that Mission Impossible stuff. On Saturday, the painting gets shipped back to the owner. It’s his birthday and he wants his picture back for his party. This will be the third year he’s done this, but this year will be the last. The painting’s on show all day Friday, then, when the gallery closes up, they take it down and crate it up ready for transport first thing Saturday morning. Overnight it’s stored in what’s basically an office. Security is minimal. They have cameras, pressure mats, infrared sensors, plus, obviously, the doors are all alarmed.”

  Thorne snorted. “Minimal, huh?”

  “Don’t you get it? They spend all the money on the fancy security out front where the art is, but the offices around back are all Radio Shack. It wasn’t originally part of the same business. Ten years ago the gallery expanded and bought the unit next door. They knocked a couple of doorways through, slapped on some paint and that’s about it. Most of the time it’s only documents and old computers in there, so they never upgraded the alarm. They figure no one’s going to steal that crap and they’re right. The alarm in the office is separate from the one in the gallery, so one doesn’t trigger the other. We go in through the back and as long as we stay there and don’t go near the gallery and a couple of other areas then we’re all set.”

  Thorne frowned. “You have someone on the inside?”

  Stockton cleared his throat. “Uh. Not exactly.”

  “What then?”

  “A former employee,” Blake said. “His fat ass got fired for being drunk on the job a couple of months ago but the information’s still good and checks out.”

  “And you trust this drunk not to talk?”

  “Chill, man. He can’t identify us.”

  Because he’s dead.

  Silence stretched out between them. In that moment, Thorne knew he’d made a mistake getting involved, but what choice did he have? If they killed this man their threats were all the more real. He decided to start nodding, as if he’d been thinking through the information Blake had given him, rather than making him for a killer.

  “You have a buyer in place for the painting once we have it?”

  Blake smiled. “Of course, it’s a slam-dunk. I wouldn’t have the first idea how to move a stolen painting, would you? We only get a fraction of its true value of course, but it’s still a lot of money for a night’s work.”

  Thorne stared at the plans with a fixed expression. He was still thinking about the security guard and wondering how many others might have already died. Blake could have the same ending in mind for him when he was no longer needed. Why pay him nearly a million dollars when he could keep it for himself?

  “There’s something I meant to ask you, Blake. This job will make you a mu
lti-millionaire, even after your sister’s medical bills, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So why the big deal about that hundred thousand?”

  “Things didn’t work out too well for me after the trial. What they did to me, it was unnecessary. My tour was over in a couple of months anyway. After years of service, all I was to them was an embarrassment - a dog that had shat on the wrong lawn. It wasn’t enough to end my military career, they had to take away my future.” Blake paused for a moment before continuing. “The hundred thousand isn’t about money anymore. The loss of that job was pivotal in my life and I figure if I can in some way get it back, my life will return to the way it was meant to be and my run of bad luck will end.”

  It surprised Thorne that a man as tough as Blake could think like this; as if his life were a fairy tale plagued by an ancient curse. All the same, he’d had his own problems with the Corps and had also left under something of a cloud. It hadn’t cost him his Honorable Discharge, but he could understand where Blake was coming from, if not why he should have to pick up the check.

  “I think when you’re a millionaire you make your own luck.”

  “I’ll just bet you’re right about that,” Blake said. “Who knows? If this goes to plan I may give you the full mill after all. No hard feelings and all that. For sure you’ll deserve it more than that sneaky prick, Lynch. Leave it with me, OK?”

  Thorne smiled, made it as natural as he could.

  “That’d be cool, man.”

  Somehow, the idea that he might be given a full share in the robbery was less believable than a share with the bullshit hundred thousand removed. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but that cut had provided the $1 million payday with a degree of authenticity. The way he figured it, if Blake hadn’t planned to give him the money at the end, he could promise any amount he chose at the beginning and the fact he hadn’t had made him immediately trust him. The next thing he knew, Blake would offer him Lynch’s share on top. It was manipulation pure and simple, designed to keep him on-side. He couldn’t tell if this was a sign Blake intended to kill him, or a reflection on how he did business; through fear and temptation.

  Blake put a box next to the plans and pushed it across the table.

  A prepaid cell phone.

  “That’s your burner. Use it any time we need to keep in touch. I already added my number, it’s the only one on there and I suggest you keep it that way. Don’t use your own cell to call me and don’t use the burner to call personal numbers as that will identify you. I paid cash for the burners and bought them all from different stores so they aren’t part of the same batch. There’s no link back to us from them.”

  “All right, but why would I be calling you?”

  “Any operation needs comms, Thorne, you know that. We can’t use our own cell phones on the job because they can trace them. You might as well leave a business card at the scene.”

  “Fine. I got it.”

  Blake passed him a laptop. “Use this for any internet activity connected with the robbery. Google searches, maps, whatever. It all gets saved somewhere. Cookies, processor ID number, MAC addresses, all that. Don’t tell me about clearing caches, it’s all shit. They can bring back any data they want to, trust me. We use this for everything then, when we’re done, we destroy it.”

  Thorne raised an eyebrow. “A burner laptop?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What about internet connection?”

  “Lynch helped the old woman next door set up her computer while she was away on vacation. We’re hooked into her Wi-Fi. If we see her getting dragged away by the FBI, it’s time to leave town.”

  Blake had thought of everything. He’d also spent a lot of money so far and he couldn’t help wondering where it was coming from.

  “Who’s fronting this, you?”

  Blake stood up, his chest puffed out.

  “The buyer. We got a hundred large for costs, any left over we keep.”

  Somewhere, most likely in this room, was a bag full of money. At least half of it would still be left. He noticed Blake had become tense again, and he didn’t want that.

  “That’s fantastic.”

  Blake said nothing.

  Thorne studied the plans to stop the tension building. There was a stack of pages and he flipped through each one before returning to the top. They were from different floors and sections of the building, at a decent size. The pages had been both rolled up and folded at different times and the paper lay flat with rolled up corners. He looked up and Blake tilted his head to one side. It was the same movement Sara had done in the car.

  “I’m going to need to see it beforehand.”

  “Of course,” Blake said, relaxing. “Tonight.”

  “I’m also going to need equipment. Some won’t be easy to get.”

  “Don’t worry, I got a guy. He’s not cheap, but he can get you pretty much anything you want, no questions asked. What else?”

  “Coffee.”

  Blake smiled. “Doughnuts?”

  “Definitely doughnuts.”

  Thorne sat studying the schematics for the gallery while making notes in a notepad. He’d moved into a back bedroom of the bungalow and was set up in front of a writing desk. He’d been at it for a couple of hours, and the others had left him to work. In his head, something had changed. He was on a mission now, there was no going back. This was how it’d been in the Marines; the self doubt, the fears, it all had to be put to one side. Negative thoughts produce negative outcomes. If you headed down a path believing you’d fail, you nearly always found a way to make it happen.

  Having finished with the plans, he opened Blake’s laptop and waited for it to finish its start-up. About ten seconds from cold, not bad. It was a Windows machine running an OS he hadn’t used before. Thorne had been a Mac user from day one, but it seemed like there wasn’t much in it anymore. Using Chrome, he pulled up the gallery on Google Maps. Beverly Hills wasn’t a neighborhood he was familiar with, having neither the budget to shop there, nor the desire to do so. Using Street View, he drove around the neighborhood stopping occasionally to rotate and tilt up to get the full picture. He’d only see the area at night, so it was important to absorb as much detail as he could from the daylight pictures.

  The best vantage point would be from the top of the Wells Fargo building, but he was guessing that roof access there would be an operation in itself. That left a six floor parking garage directly next to the secondary building of the gallery. He enabled satellite imaging and smiled as a parking grid appeared on the roof. It was perfect, they’d be able to look over the edge at the gallery below.

  Thorne sat back and pressed the tips of his fingers together.

  He believed Blake’s initial analysis was correct. The front of the gallery was too well protected, not to mention highly visible to pedestrians and passing traffic through the wall of glass that wrapped around the entrance. Attempting a break in there would be suicide, but the rear of the secondary property was a different story. It had above average security for a an office or store, but inadequate for an art gallery.

  He licked his lips, a kind of fever taking hold. It occurred to him that he was looking forward to the heist. It was stupid and crazy and he should have no part in it, yet here he was almost high at the prospect of carrying it out.

  The way he saw it, all his money problems were over.

  FOUR

  Blake decided to take Thorne to the gallery on his own. No one else needed to be there and he wanted to get a better sense of where Thorne was at with the robbery. He’d made it clear that he was on board, but it was obvious to Blake he’d bail given half a chance. Thorne was a straight arrow and always had been. It was a trait that had made him a loyal friend and a dependable Marine, but they were playing by a different rule book now and what they were planning went against everything that made Thorne who he was. Until the two of them were standing inside the gallery, he’d assume nothing.

  “I used to think someda
y I’d live in a place like this,” Thorne said, looking at the houses around them. “A big time Hollywood actor, you know? A huge house, a flash car. I guess none of that’s going to happen if my show’s canceled.”

  Blake said nothing. He liked the sound the AC made as it pumped freezing air into the cabin. It calmed him, and he didn’t want to break the spell talking to Thorne about the way his life was panning out. From where he was sitting, his old friend had it pretty good.

  “How’s your face?”

  He glanced at Thorne, the change in direction surprising him.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “Only because I didn’t finish what I started.”

  “You still want to finish it?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  Blake smiled. He’d always found Thorne easy to talk with and despite the years that had passed, little seemed to have changed. Sure, the man probably hated him now, but they’d been through bad patches before and somehow it always worked itself out.

  “You’ve not said anything about the gallery. Do we have a problem?”

  “I don’t know how extensively you looked at those blueprints, Blake, but there are a lot of infrared sensors. Close to thirty in the office building alone. Even using the shortest route possible, I figure we’re looking at passing eighteen units before we get to the painting. The sensors overlap one another so…no dead zones.”

  Blake shrugged his shoulders.

  “You’ll figure something out.”

  “Thanks, Aidan. You’re a big help.”

  “I know, right?”

  He expected Thorne to make a joke, but he was distracted by pedestrians on the sidewalk. It was like they’d arrived in a parallel world.

  “What's the deal with those guys of yours?”

  “My deal?” Blake said.

  “Where did they come from? Is there a 1 800 number for goons?”

  Blake sighed. It was easy for Thorne to mock, he didn’t know what it was like. He’d parachuted out of the Marines and hit the ground running.

  “This may surprise you, but I used to volunteer at the VA. Our grateful nation has tossed a lot of veterans away like yesterday’s garbage. It’s not hard to find people prepared to cross the line for a payout. This country owes us, make no mistake.” He paused, but Thorne remained silent, his calm face giving nothing away. He felt the old anger returning, thinking about the wounded men he’d met, the shattered lives. “We don't all get to be famous actors when we leave the service. Heroes with rows of medals and a big cheesy smile.”