The Day Before Yesterday's Thief: A Prequel to the Eric Beckman Series

by Al Macy

  They eventually decided on option two, taking him out of the van at some house, presumably the residence of an immoral physician. Then we drove another thirty minutes with very little talking. The metallic smell of blood filled the van. I gathered that the vehicle had been stolen specifically for this kidnapping.

  I tried to track our location from sounds and the movement of the van. Up hills, down, left and right turns. It was impossible. We did pass one of the cable car lines—the one on Hyde?

  When we came to a stop, they untied my legs. My hands were tied behind my back. Running blind was not an option. I would bide my time. They manhandled me out of the van, and we were joined by two or three others. One had wine-breath. I filed that information away. I listened for sounds that would tell me where I was. Foghorns, church bells. No such luck.

  They led me down some steps and through a door. Food smells hit me and … uh … someone was sick in the house. The medicinal scent had a slight urine component. Funny to walk down stairs to come into a residence. Ah. It was built on a hill, and we’d entered from the uphill side. They took me into a smaller room, judging from the echoes of our footsteps. This was the sick room. Someone pulled my hood off.

  I blinked a few times. The room was elegant. A crystal chandelier hung from a tin ceiling. A hospital bed extended out from one wall. The bed had a view out the window.

  I immediately recognized the wretched soul in the bed: Ignazio Mizrachi, the infamous business mogul with clear ties to organized crime. The words of the FBI agent came back to me: We know you’re involved with organized crime. Well, perhaps I wasn’t before, but somehow, now I was.

  The man was a shrunken version of what I’d seen in newspapers and magazines. He was bald with straw-like hairs above his eyes and on the sides of his head. More in his eyebrows than up top. Age spots dotted his forehead like tiny bugs. Ticks, maybe. The window was wide open, and the room was freezing, but the man was sweating. His nose rivaled Jimmy Durante’s, and his eyes, under crusted lids, gazed at me sadly.

  “Ms. Petki, I sincerely apologize for inconveniencing you.” His voice was mostly sand and razor blades, but the words were clear. His accent was European, perhaps Israeli. “I have requested your presence to ask for your help.”

  Fat chance. There was no point in telling him there was no requesting involved, that he’d kidnapped me. We both knew it. Remain silent and wait was my rule.

  “I would like you to help us steal something.” He descended into a coughing fit and then recovered. “You will be richly rewarded, of course.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. Okay, I broke my rule, but I needed some information. “What makes you think—?”

  He held up a wrinkled hand. “I’ve long followed the exploits of an unknown jewel thief. The police usually attributed your thefts to the work of a gang, but I knew better. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘If only he was working for me.’ Then recently, the identity of that thief, namely you, Viviana Petki, became known to me.”

  I said nothing.

  “I do not have much time. I take it from your silence that you do not want to work for me. I would like to convince you otherwise.” He turned to the bodyguard standing by his bed. “How does it go, Marcus?”

  Marcus took his eyes off me then bent down and whispered in the old man’s ear.

  Mizrachi laughed, precipitating another coughing fit. He tapped the bodyguard’s side and pointed to me.

  The bodyguard said, “He’d like to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

  All the goons in the room, I counted six, laughed, looking at me.

  Mizrachi regained his voice. “Do you think I’m a good actor?” he asked me.

  The men all laughed again. Where was this going?

  I said nothing.

  “I must be a good actor,” he said, “because look, I have an Academy Award.” He pointed to a shelf where a golden Oscar sat. “Someone give it to her. Marcus, give it to her.”

  Marcus started for the shelf.

  “No, idiot!” Mizrachi yelled, pulling strength from somewhere. He took a gnarled hand out from under the bedsheets and wiggled the fingers.

  Ah. Understand now.

  Marcus pulled a pair of leather gloves from his pocket and put them on. He brought the Oscar over to me. Someone else cut my hands loose.

  “No, thanks.” I put my hands under my thighs.

  Marcus backhanded me with the heavy statue in his hand. I didn’t want to give them any satisfaction, but an involuntary yelp escaped my lips. I clamped them shut.

  Two goons extricated my arms, and Marcus placed the statue in my hands. He kept one gloved hand fastened to the base, apparently thinking I might use it as a weapon.

  “And don’t pull them,” Mizrachi said.

  “Pulling” is a technique thieves use when handling something without gloves. By sliding, or pulling, the fingers away when releasing an object, such as a doorknob, the fingerprints are smeared, rendering them unreadable.

  I held the statue then gave it back. There was no way to avoid getting my fingerprints on it. But to make sure, Marcus grabbed and squeezed my fist with the thumb sticking out. He carefully rolled my thumb on the statue’s widest point, the upper part of the back. The print would be so good that perhaps a defense lawyer could discredit it. But if it came to that, I’d be sunk anyway, from my many other crimes. Marcus returned the Oscar to the shelf.

  “That will be all, Miss Petki. I thank you for your attention. I will be in touch.” Mizrachi made a shooing gesture with his hand. “Drop her off downtown.”

  The goons put the hood back on—too late, though. I smiled under the black fabric. I didn’t know exactly where Mizrachi’s house was, but I knew how to find it. And I knew what to do to make this problem go away.

  * * *

  The next day, the warm weather came to an end. When the hot air in the interior valleys of Northern California rises, the foggy air over the cold ocean abhors the resulting vacuum and rushes in to fill it. It comes through the Golden Gate and over the coastal hills with a vengeance.

  I wore a leather trench coat with gray wool slacks and lace-up leather boots, yet the damp fog still chilled me as if a damp blanket were somehow part of my wardrobe.

  I knocked on the door of Samuel’s office and went in. His clothing could have passed for normal, except for a thick vest with vertical stripes and a pocket watch chain. Was he taking the Sherlock Holmes thing too far?

  Samuel wasn’t surprised to see me. Perhaps his supernatural sixth sense had told him I was coming.

  “I need help once again, Samuel.”

  “It would give me great pleasure to render additional assistance,” he said. “Have you found Bolton Vance already?”

  “He found me.” I sat in the visitor chair and filled him in on our day together.

  “That sounds quite romantic. Do you anticipate a lasting amorous affiliation?”

  “Samuel, isn’t it tiring to speak that way?”

  He cocked his head. “Tiring?”

  “Never mind. Today, I need to locate a house but have only limited information.”

  “Fascinating.”

  I glanced at him. Satisfied that he wasn’t being sarcastic, I pulled out the map I’d bought on the way over. Together, we cleared things off his desk.

  I cleared my throat. “When I was in this house, I looked out the window, and—”

  “Hold on. You’ve already been there, but you don’t know where it is?”

  “That’s—”

  “None of my business,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “I infer that you were either drugged and taken there or perhaps blindfolded. You could have woken up there after a night of intemperate alcoholic libations, but in that case, when leaving this residence, you could not have failed to discover its location.”

  I ignored him. “When I looked out the window, I saw the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. They were lit up.”

  “Viviana, your safety is
more important than you can appreciate.”

  I looked up at him then back at the map, putting my finger on the Golden Gate Bridge. “Here’s the thing, Sam. The two towers lined up exactly, one behind the other. Understand?”

  He held up his hand. “Hold on.” He went out the door.

  I sat down. Should I tell him whole story? Is no point. It won’t help me find the house. Actually, I could probably do this myself, but I felt a compulsion to include Samuel.

  In a few minutes, he returned, waggling a yardstick. He placed it on the map, lined it up with the deck of the Golden Gate Bridge, and drew a line along its length. Exactly what I’d planned to do. The line extended through the Presidio and the Richmond district, through Golden Gate Park, and over Forest Hill.

  “Where on this line?” he asked.

  “Exactly. It was south of the park, maybe four blocks away. And I saw a church. There is a church right … here.” The label on the map read Saint Anne of the Sunset. “So the house is probably … here somewhere.”

  “And you haven’t driven around there, because you think the organized crime boss or his hooligans might recognize you.”

  I made the timeout signal, a T made with my two hands. “Who said anything about organized crime?”

  “You were kidnapped, which, judging from your strength and grace, would require multiple assailants. You were transported to a residence in an affluent neighborhood. It stands to reason—”

  “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

  “Something like that, yes. Viviana, I am concerned about you. You have presented me with two unrelated problems, both of which, however, seem connected to criminal activity.”

  I crossed my arms. “Why do you think my search for Bolton Vance involved criminal activity?”

  “You were next to one another for more than ten hours on the flight from France. That would have provided you ample opportunity to decide you wanted to have further social intercourse, yet you failed to provide him with contact information. I’ve inferred that after the flight, after you’d parted from Mr. Vance, something happened that changed your mind.”

  “Maybe, but there’s nothing there that says ‘criminal activity.’”

  “And yet,” he said, “you chose not to share any of that with me.”

  “Am private person.”

  “Incarceration lends few opportunities for privacy. If you fail to change the course of—”

  “Do you want to help or not?” I folded the map.

  He stood and put on a dark blue scarf and a heavy tweed coat. “I presume you want to take my car, since the totally noncriminal owner of this house may recognize your Porsche. Am I correct?”

  “Don’t private eyes eschew flashy cars?”

  “Ha! You got that word from me, did you not? Sorry, I didn’t mean that to have a condescending tone, it’s just that I have never heard anyone from this decade use that word.” He led the way out the door and down the sidewalk. We both pulled the lapels of our coats tighter.

  “Could speak like—as—you do if I wanted,” I said.

  “I am all ears.”

  I rounded my vowels and put on a bit of British accent. Samuel didn’t sound like an Englishman, but there was something formal even in his tone of voice. I had to speak slowly. “Let us forthwith endeavor to navigate the exceedingly affluent precincts of our fair city and—no! You must be joking.”

  “What?” Samuel had stopped and opened the door of an antique car—some kind of Model T or something. It had a pale green body, running boards you could stand on, and wheels only slightly more modern than those on a covered wagon.

  “You’re taking this Sherlock Holmes thing way too far.” I started looking around for a cab.

  “The Holmes stories predated this car by ten to twenty years. This is a wonderful car.”

  Twenty minutes later, heading into the Sunset district in a Checker Cab, I got Samuel to admit that although it was his car, he wasn’t totally serious about taking it on the job.

  Our first stop was the church. It was indeed the one I’d seen from Mizrachi’s sickroom window. Two pinkish-tan towers rose above the central section of the church. The cab waited for us as I stood in front of it, looking into the hills, estimating angles. We were on the right track.

  As we arrived in the Golden Gate Heights neighborhood, I put on a baseball cap and large sunglasses and slumped down in my seat. We narrowed it down to two houses and had the cabdriver drive us back slowly along the street.

  Samuel handed me a pair of opera glasses. “Check out the curtains.”

  Of course. The sickroom had had heavy brown curtains. “Bingo,” I said. Mission accomplished.

  The cabdriver looked at us through his rearview mirror. “I know a great real estate agent for this area.”

  “That is kind of you, sir,” Samuel said. “However, we have already retained the services of another.”

  * * *

  “Wanna come up and see my etchings?” Those were the first words Bolton said when I answered the phone. He was back from his conference or meeting or whatever.

  “Do I know you?” I put on a puzzled face even though he couldn’t see me.

  “Probably not. I’m just calling numbers at random.”

  “Does that work?” I kicked off my heels and relaxed back into the leather cushions of my sofa.

  “If I get my voice low enough. Let me try again.” He made several “ahem” noises and deepened his voice, doing an impression of Barry White. “Hey, baby. Wanna come up and see—?”

  “Are forgetting heavy breathing.”

  “Nah, tried that. It just sounds like I’m having a heart attack. They tell me to call 911 and hang up.”

  I smiled. “If by ‘etchings’ you mean delicious home-cooked meal based on family recipe passed down from old country, with soft music, candlelight, and a dusty bottle of French wine, I might consider it.”

  “Would grilled cheese and Ripple work?”

  “Am hanging up now.”

  “Wait, wait!” he said.

  “Da?”

  “Maybe we could find some Romanian babushka to do the cooking for us.”

  “Oh, you think I look like babushka?” I said, putting some mock outrage into my voice.

  “Uh … only if that’s a good thing. I don’t really know what a babushka is.”

  “Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Does it mean sexy woman with long dark hair and shapely breasts?”

  “Ha! Is Russian for grandmother. And is ba-bushka.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No. Accent on first syllable. Ba-bushka. Not ba-bush-ka.”

  “Oy vey! You grandmas are such sticklers.”

  I laughed. “Have good cookware?”

  “Of course. Are you kidding? You can’t make a good grilled cheese with that cheap stuff from Woolworth’s.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll do some shopping and be at your place at … what time?”

  “Six?”

  “So early?”

  “Well,” he said, “that’s when my grandmother always eats dinner.”

  “Ha! See you at six.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At two minutes to six, the receptionist-slash-security guard in the lobby called up to Bolton’s condo. “Your dinner guest is here, sir.”

  “Thanks, Rodney. Send her up.”

  Bolton took a last look around. Perfect. He should have suggested a later time—the sun wouldn’t be setting for another two hours. Was the grandmother early-dinner joke worth it? Maybe. Of course, she’s seen the same sunsets from her own building, just a block or two over.

  Light the candles now? No, later.

  He shook his head. How silly to be counting the seconds until she’d arrive. He stepped out into the marble-floored hall and waited. The elevator dinged, and she walked out rolling a carry-on bag.

  Whoa! She was even more beautiful than he’d remembered. He immediately had a better understanding of the word
“stunning.” Same for “takes your breath away.” She wore a sleeveless dress—a sheath dress?—white with an abstract design on it. Like a Jackson Pollock but with straight paint strokes. Like a pile of black pick-up sticks.

  She’d pulled her long hair into a ponytail, showing off a pair of diamond-shaped pendant earrings with a similar abstract pattern on them. A narrow diamond bracelet graced one wrist.

  He looked forward to having his hands on her waist, perhaps moving them up as they kissed. Down boy.

  He cleared his throat and cocked his head. “Are you moving in?”

  She came up and kissed him. Short but sweet. “Have more luggage downstairs. I misunderstand invitation maybe?” She said it with an exaggerated accent. Like “meesunderstand.”

  Smiling, Bolton closed the extended handle on the bag and lifted it. “Jeez! What are we having for dinner? Lead?”

  “Make man strong like bear.” She held her arms out, elbows bent, fists high, in the classic muscleman pose. Impressive biceps, actually.

  He followed her into the condo and closed the door. “Seriously. What do you have in here?”

  “Will see. What are drinking?” She pulled his wrist down and looked into his glass.

  “Guess.” He handed her the drink and she sipped it.

  “Ha! Is Moscow Mule. Someone needs geography lesson, yes?”

  “No need. Romania, not in Russia, not in the USSR.”

  “Have been studying, yes?”

  “A bit. Would you like one of these?” He pointed to his drink.

  “Is too sweet for me. Maybe just vodka on rocks.”

  “Smirnoff?”

  “Russia again. Sure.”

  “Just a coincidence.” He poured her the drink and brought it to her.

  “Is good. Say goodbye now.”

  “What?”

  “Say goodbye to kitchen, now.” She took a sip from her drink and put it down. “Can sit over here.” A high counter separated the kitchen alcove from the living room. Spinning him around, she pushed him over to a stool on the living room side. That’s when she first saw the paintings.