Black Violet

by Alex Hyland

  ‘You have Jon’s flash drive,’ I said.

  She grabbed her jacket and threw it over the desk so it was out of my reach.

  ‘You were his girlfriend?’ I said.

  ‘Just leave me alone.’

  I kept my eyes on her, then nodded.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But if you’re looking for a necklace inscribed to Miranda, you’re not going to find it there.’

  She shot me a look. ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘I know they killed Jon because of it.’

  I took the necklace from my pocket and held it up between my fingers. She looked taken aback at the sight of it.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ she asked.

  ‘I found it hidden in his apartment.’

  She stepped toward me. ‘You need to give that to me,’ she said.

  I shook my head, then wrapped the necklace around my fist. ‘I’ve got my own score to settle here.’

  ‘I’m going to make sure whoever killed Jon pays for it, don’t worry about that.’

  ‘Then we’ve got something in common.’

  She laughed scornfully.

  I nodded toward her snorkel jacket. ‘What’s on the flash drive?’ I asked.

  She eyed me a moment – realized that she wasn’t going to get the necklace that easily. She leaned back against the wall and looked me up and down, trying to get the measure of me. She produced a pack of cigarettes and lit one with the flash drive. A tiny blue flame.

  ‘Jon told me about you,’ she said. ‘You think I’m going to trust you?’

  ‘If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I didn’t have to mention the drive. I could have just taken it.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because this is Jon we’re talking about,’ I said. ‘And if he gave you the drive, then you must have been important to him.’

  ‘I was,’ she said.

  She leaned away from the wall and stepped toward me.

  ‘You hurt him,’ she said.

  I wasn’t going to deny it. ‘I lied to him, yeah.’

  ‘You were all the family he had,’ she said. She studied me like I was a curiosity under a microscope. ‘How do you live with yourself?’

  ‘I go out a lot.’

  She kept her eyes on me, then stepped away.

  ‘What are you planning to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Find whoever killed Jon and blow his fucking brains out.’

  ‘Really?’ She laughed to herself.

  ‘Why, you got any better ideas?’

  She rolled the flash drive around between her fingers.

  ‘Jon was killed because of a story he was working on,’ she said. ‘I’m going to finish it for him.’

  ‘Put whoever did this behind bars, huh?’

  ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’

  She was probably right, but I was in no mood for civilized justice. You can build all the prisons you like – some people you just have to kill before they’ll listen.

  ‘Whatever you might think of me,’ I said, ‘Jon was my brother. If you know anything, you need to tell me. Either way, the necklace is staying with me.’

  She took a long, thoughtful pull on her cigarette. Gray smoke curled out of her lips as she kept her eyes fixed on me.

  She nodded. ‘You betray me, you’ll regret it. You understand?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ I said.

  ‘Ella.’

  ‘Then fair enough, Ella.’

  Ella plugged the flash drive into an old laptop in the study.

  ‘Jon gave me the drive a couple of days before he died,’ she said. ‘He said it was just a precaution, but he sounded worried.’

  ‘How did you know him?’ I asked.

  ‘We were friends,’ she said.

  I waited for her to elaborate, but she just opened up a document on the drive. Cascading windows filled the laptop screen – pages of notes, transcribed interviews and photographs.

  ‘Two months ago Jon was given the necklace by a girl named Danielle Fisher,’ she said.

  ‘Danielle? Yeah, I know her, she was his girlfriend.’

  ‘The necklace belonged to her father, David Fisher. He was a financier. He died in August during routine surgery. He was worth close to eight hundred million when he died. Apparently he told Danielle that of all the things they own, the necklace was the most important. She asked Jon to help her find out why.’

  ‘Her father never said?’

  Ella shook her head. ‘He was fifty-two. I don’t think he was expecting to die on the table.’

  ‘What about the mom, might she know?’

  ‘He didn’t tell his daughter, he certainly wouldn’t tell his wife. They got divorced years ago, Fisher had an affair with some housekeeper. They don’t speak.’

  I held the necklace up to the light.

  ‘So, what, there’s something hidden in it?’ I said. ‘A microdot or something?’

  Ella shook her head again. She scrolled through the pages on the laptop and started reading out a lab report.

  ‘Jon had the necklace analyzed,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing hidden in it. Nothing engraved or etched apart from the inscription. They put every single link under the microscope. The diamond is medium grade, just over half a carat. The gold in the pendant is eighteen-carat, standard zinc copper alloy. The gold in the chain and clasp is nine-carat. It’s one of two hundred similar necklaces that were manufactured by Halls and Webb Jewelers of Chicago in 1993.’

  ‘One of two hundred?’ I said.

  ‘Some limited edition. Jon found a couple of others for sale on the net. Two thousand five hundred dollars a piece.’

  I gazed at the necklace. It wasn’t even unique – why the hell did they want this one?

  ‘We need to speak to Danielle,’ I said.

  ‘She disappeared three days ago,’ said Ella. ‘They found a body yesterday. They think it’s her, they’re testing it. It was heavily burned.’

  Jesus. I pictured her, that evening at the house. I felt sick just thinking about it.

  I glanced back at the screen. ‘What about Miranda?’ I said. ‘Did Jon have any ideas who she might be?

  ‘Nothing that he put on the drive,’ said Ella. ‘But he received a call six days before he died. From a woman. She didn’t say who she was. She said that Fisher had a business partner, Philip Swan…that she’d heard them argue about a necklace on two occasions.’

  Ella scrolled down to a photo of Swan. In his fifties. A real fat bastard. Looked like he was ninety-percent sweat.

  ‘Is this the fucker we’re looking for?’ I said.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Ella. ‘Jon asked around about him. Swan’s scared. Since Fisher’s death, he hasn’t set foot outside his home without at least three bodyguards.’

  ‘You think he’ll to talk to us?’ I said.

  ‘He’s not talking to anybody,’ Ella replied. ‘But during one of these arguments, this woman overheard Swan mention the name Gatsby.’

  ‘Gatsby?’ I said. ‘As in The Great?’

  Ella nodded. ‘Swan has a huge library in his home. Thousands of books apparently. From the way they were talking, this woman thinks the book might have something to do with it.’

  ‘Then we need to get hold of it,’ I said.

  ‘Jon tried. He couldn’t even get near the place. Swan owns the Howardson Building on Market Street. The whole top floor is his private residence. Massive security.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘It’s a home. It has a door. It’ll have a key.’

  She took a pull on her cigarette. ‘And keys are your business, aren’t they, Michael.’

  I nodded.

  She thought to herself for a moment, then pulled the flash drive out of the laptop and grabbed her jacket.

  ‘There’s a hotel opposite the Howardson called The Bluebird,’ she said. ‘We’ll stake out Swan’s place from there.’

  ‘Wait, take it easy for a second,’ I said. ‘If we’re doing
this, I’m going to need to know who you are.’

  She stayed silent.

  ‘How do you know Jon?’ I asked.

  ‘It would be better for both of us if you stopped asking me questions.’

  ‘Yeah, why’s that?’

  She said nothing and just headed for the door. I got to my feet, then realized that I’d missed something obvious here. I glanced back at the open filing cabinet that she’d been emptying. You needed a key to open it – Jon always kept it locked. The cabinet didn’t look damaged at all. A thought then hit me.

  ‘How did you get into the house?’ I asked her. ‘Did Jon give you a key?’

  Ella nodded.

  ‘Show it to me,’ I said.

  She eyed me warily, but didn’t produce any key.

  ‘You broke in?’ I said.

  ‘You’re going to call the police?’

  I headed into the living room and took a look around.

  ‘You didn’t break any windows,’ I said. ‘You came in through the door.’

  ‘It’s not exactly Fort Knox.’

  ‘True. But you’d still need to know how to pick a lock...the door...the filing cabinet.’ I eyed her suspiciously. ‘I heard you rifling around in the study, but I didn’t hear you break in. You know what you’re doing, don’t you?’

  I could feel the anger rising in her – the electricity in the air around her.

  ‘Don’t think that you and I are the same, Michael. We’re not.’

  I couldn’t believe this.

  ‘You’re a thief?’ I said.

  She eyed me coldly, then headed out for her car.

  4.

  With all that Jon and I had been through, I found it hard to imagine that he’d ever get close to another thief. Admittedly, what had hurt him was that I’d lied about it, but even then, he wouldn’t have had any time for Ella unless she was on the right side of the fight somehow. I’d known at least one thief who’d turned legit – who now used his talents ‘obtaining’ hard-to-get evidence for law firms. I think his official job title was ‘consultant’. Ella had to be something like that – it was the only thing that added up.

  Either way, she wasn’t talking to me. As she drove us back to San Francisco, she hardly looked at me, let alone said anything. She kept her eyes fixed on the road.

  I nodded to myself. ‘When you said Jon couldn’t get into Swan’s apartment…you mean, you couldn’t. You worked for Jon, didn’t you? Getting hold of information for the paper.’

  She stayed quiet, but I figured I was on the right track.

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe he asked you to do that.’

  ‘He didn’t. I offered.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Like I said, I couldn’t get near the place. But from what I hear, you think you’re God’s gift, so we’ll see how that works out.’

  ‘God’s gift?’ I replied. ‘I mean, I’m not denying it, but where did you hear that?’

  ‘Jesus, just listen to yourself.’

  ‘You know, this doesn’t need to be as hard as you’re making it.’

  She shot me that judgmental look of hers. ‘Sure it does.’

  I held her look, then sighed wearily. ‘Look, I don’t know what you call yourself...consultant, morally challenged house guest, whatever…you’re still just a thief, OK.’

  ‘Don’t think you know me, Michael.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  I shook my head – I didn’t need her holier-than-thou bullshit on top of everything else. Fucking thieves, I can’t stand them. I stared out of the window and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.

  I might have thought I was God’s gift, but the truth was I didn’t have the first idea how I was going to get hold of Swan’s key. If he was moving around with three bodyguards, I didn’t know if I was even going to get near him. I’d dealt with bodyguards before, but never so many. Swan was paranoid, which meant that any kind of approach on the street was going to be tricky, if not impossible. And even if I did get the key, it was a good bet that he had live-in staff – most of the apartments in the Howardson did. I actually knew the building quite well – in the past year I’d stolen two cars from its underground parking lot. It was all high-end apartments except for a private restaurant club on the ground floor. The main entrance of the building regularly had a doorman and two plain clothes security guards, but they were the least of my worries. Bodyguards – there had to be another way.

  We reached the city, bought a couple of new phones, then checked into The Bluebird Hotel. Ella used a fake ID and credit card in the name of Celia Jones. At least I assumed they were fake – there didn’t seem much point in asking her about it.

  The bellhop showed us into a small fifth floor room that was decked out like a seventies nightmare. Orange patterned walls and chrome spheres. A lava lamp glowed on the bedside table – it looked like an alien had taken a dump in a bottle of Gatorade. As Ella transferred the numbers between the new phones, I tipped the bellhop a twenty.

  ‘We don’t want to be disturbed today,’ I said to him. I winked at Ella. ‘It’s our first anniversary, isn’t it, sweetie?’

  She threw me that look of hers. ‘It feels much longer,’ she said.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said the bellhop. He nodded politely, then left the room.

  Ella tossed me one of the phones.

  ‘I need to make a call,’ she said.

  She headed into the corridor outside the room and closed the door behind her. She was playing her cards close to her chest. I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to push it – she was helping me and right now that’s all that mattered.

  I headed over to the hotel room window and gazed at the Howardson Building across the street. It was nine floors of brown stone – a real monument to old money. I stared up at Swan’s penthouse. Towering windows. Finely carved masonry. Ceilings that had to be twenty-five feet high. I couldn’t make out much detail through the windows, but none of the rooms facing the street looked like they were a library. It had to be deeper inside.

  As I thought about the best way to lift Swan’s key, I took a dime from my pocket and started my exercises. I spun it and let it dance across my fingertips – the coin twirling from ring to thumb, then index to middle. This wasn’t some poker player lazily rolling a coin across his knuckles. This was speed. Accuracy. Magic. Faster and faster until the coin and my fingers were nothing but a blur. Not that I even glanced at it – I kept my eyes on Swan’s apartment.

  I grabbed the dime to a halt as I saw a figure in one of the rooms. Probably the maid. Blonde hair tied straight back, white blouse. She was opening windows – airing the place. The upside to live-in staff was that the place wouldn’t be alarmed. The downside was there’d be someone there when I broke in.

  Ella entered the room and got off her phone.

  ‘OK, Swan’s definitely in town,’ she said. ‘He’s attending some charity fundraiser this afternoon.’

  ‘Where are you getting this from?’ I asked.

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘What friend?’

  She walked to the window and stared at the Howardson.

  ‘He’s in town, that’s all that matters,’ she said. ‘How do you want to do this?’

  ‘He’s taking three bodyguards with him?’

  ‘At least.’

  I sighed and glanced back at Swan’s apartment. The maid was still at the windows. She had linen with her now – was changing a bed by the look of it. She was going to be our best bet.

  ‘We’ll do the maid,’ I said. ‘She’s got to have a key, right?’

  Ella eyed her carefully.

  ‘How are you going to get her down from the apartment?’ she said.

  ‘You still have Jon’s lighter?’

  ‘The fire alarm?’

  I nodded. ‘They’ll empty the building. There’s a restaurant on the ground floor. I’ll set off the alarm from there.’

  Ella stared down at the restaurant.

 
‘I’ll do it,’ she said.

  I glanced dubiously at her. The restaurant was smart and exclusive. It might be easier for a woman to get in than it would be for me, but Ella looked like she lived on the street.

  ‘You got anything else to wear?’ I asked.

  She laughed to herself.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. I wasn’t going to worry about offending a woman who’d held a knife to my throat.

  ‘We’ll set it off after Swan leaves,’ I said. ‘While everyone’s milling about outside, I’ll take the maid’s key. Plus it’ll clear the apartment long enough for me to find the book.’

  Ella toyed pensively with a tiny silver cross hanging around her neck. It was meant to ward off evil. Me probably.

  ‘You’re sure you can do this?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry. Once I’m close, I can take pretty much anything from anybody.’

  ‘Show me,’ she said.

  I shot her a look.

  ‘I’m putting a lot of faith in you here,’ she said. ‘Show me. Take my watch.’

  She held out her wrist – a black plastic digital watch strapped around it.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘I can’t take it, you’re expecting it. It’s all about distraction. Plus, that’s a rubber clasp...’

  I grabbed her wrist and turned it over so she could see the clasp of the watch.

  ‘They’re really tricky to open,’ I said.

  She glanced at the clasp. ‘You’re making excuses.’

  ‘I am,’ I replied.

  I let go of her wrist and held up my other hand. In it I had her cross hanging from its chain. She gazed at it, and instinctively placed her palm to her neck.

  ‘Not bad,’ she said.

  ‘Not bad?’ I replied. ‘Come on, you were expecting something. That was great.’

  She smiled to herself, then reached for a bottle of water and took a sip.

  She eyed me carefully.

  ‘You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘You’ve got to be in this business.’

  ‘A little too sure of yourself, maybe.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s a thrill for you, isn’t it? You’d do it even if you didn’t have to, wouldn’t you?’

  I stayed quiet. She may have been right, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of admitting it. I stepped toward her, reaching around her neck as I put the cross back on her. She went still like an animal – kept her eyes on me. My face was right beside hers as I carefully tied the clasp. I could smell her hair – natural and warm. Could sense her breasts gently rising and falling beneath me as she breathed. I turned and gazed at her lips only a few inches from mine. She stared defiantly back at me, like I’d regret it if I even thought about making a move on her. I held her look for a moment, then let the cross hang.