by Alex Ames
“Sure, Mable, I’ll be with them in a minute.” He looked at me. “The coffee issue is hereby solved. This is the chief’s personal brew, steamed on an Italian coffee maker model.” We sipped, and it was perfect—and I mentioned it.
“Chief, what can we do to get this over with?” I asked him after my third sip and no entree to conversation nor accusation by him.
“Ah, yes, that matter of your registration.” He took a Bic pen and hit an invisible gong with it. “Bong. Consider yourself registered. Thank you, you may go. Don’t leave town.”
“What? That’s it? No endless paperwork, no signature, no electronic ankle bracelet?”
“That it is. I believe in a lean administration. You will be docked in my diary, but I won’t add to the size of your court file or the storage estate of my department. I don’t need a signature. I have that coffee cup of yours for fingerprints that prove you were here and you can’t run anyway.”
“I can’t?” I asked, curiously.
“No. You got your shop and your friends here, are a respected and even prominent member of Redondo Beach society. You are on the board of the Children Unreserved Foundation. Your artwork is on display in major museums including your picture in catalogues and on Google. You can’t run anywhere.”
None of the things above were mentioned in the court material. The dog had done his homework.
“Thank you for the coffee, Chief.” I got up and turned toward the door.
“Anytime,” he said and took the first item from his inbox.
“I don’t hope so,” I muttered under my breath and made my way out of the office.
I was in the process of closing the door when I heard him call, “Oh, and there is a completely different thing, Mrs. Moonstone.”
“Chief Steward?” I turned toward him and saw he had gotten up from his chair, his manner more awkward than commanding.
“Say, is it possible…. Would you consider….” His demeanor was still that of a Chief of police, but his voice had a certain boyish quality to it. He made a brave third attempt. “Would you go out on a date with me?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Case
Fowler Wynn and I met on neutral ground, which meant at one of the seaside fish restaurants on the Redondo Beach pier. I knew the owner well, and he placed us in an inactive part of the restaurant where we could watch the seagulls diving for fish and breadcrumbs in the surf— where we could talk without being overheard.
On the table between us was a stack of files which I browsed while Fowler did most of the talking. The series of thefts had started about nine months ago with the cat burglar style removal of a famed necklace that had been in the hands of several divas of the movie age from the home of the current owner, while she was asleep in the next room. In between then and Monday night’s theft of Swan Collins’ solitaire diamonds were lying ten more burglaries, a nice fruitful series. Always movie stars or movie business people.
“A collector?” I threw in. Collectors were the romantics among thieves, stealing not only for the money but for a certain pleasure, too. In the unofficial “honor of thieves” charts, they ranked probably right behind the Robin Hoods.
Fowler nodded. “That’s exactly my thought. Someone out there fancies the beautiful stones of the beautiful people of Hollywood. Another similarity: always at night. Always a well-planned entry and exit strategy. And no clues left that helped us so far. No fingerprints, no DNA, no usable fabrics, nothing accidentally lost. Which to achieve consistently in twelve cases is purely amazing—or a load of luck. Our man—”
“—or woman.” I grinned at him over the papers.
“…is a professional just like you are. And even better than you are.”
I sniffed. “I don’t know what you are talking about, so I cannot feel offended. Though I might be, in case I was actually a cat burglar.” With Fowler, I always had to negate for the record because—truce or no truce—I counted on him recording our sessions with the hope of catching me admitting something. “But why do you think he’s better than anyone? His variety of styles?”
“No, of course not. While you stick to your one-trick-pony show—”
“Now you’re really starting to annoy me,” I stated and folded my arms.
“No, hear me out. This is maybe the most important finding so far: our man is able to imitate several different styles that have been used before in other heists.”
“Like he is a history buff of breaking and entering?” I asked curiously. “Or gets his challenge in reenacting burglaries?”
“Exactly, my dear Calendar.” Fowler loved this statistical stuff. “He showed three individual styles that I could identify so far. One: open the safe door with a blow torch, cut around the lock, and manipulate the mechanics from the hole. Close the mechanic again as if you want to demonstrate your superiority over us.”
The safe burning method was as old as safes themselves, maybe only topped in rough style by blowing the safe up. It was an antique way of opening the safe without touch and feel for the sensitive safe mechanism, and with modern electronic safes, more and more out of fashion because the modern ones featured sandwich-layered ceramic inlets that were blowtorch-proof.
“Second,” Fowler continued, “he hides in the apartment, sounds the alarm, the owner checks for stolen goods and opens the safe herself, gets chloroformed, and the thief has all the time in the world to remove the material from the safe.”
Another classic method but a little risky. Physically confronting the owner always bore the risk of a fight, something going wrong, something giving you away.
“Did the thief steal everything from the safes, or did he just remove specific pieces?”
“No, he removed only the best pieces or, in one case, the most famous piece. He left other jewels, cash, expensive watches, a pouch of raw diamonds, and in one case even a stack of stock certificates that have an exchange value of about three-hundred-thousand dollars.”
“So, we are talking about a steal to order scenario,” I stated the obvious, which earned me a pair of rolling eyes from Fowler. “You mentioned a third style.” He had me hooked to this strange series of thefts and his theories.
“Yes, this one I saved for last intentionally. The third method is basically a silent entry at night when the owner is away or asleep in another part of the house. Open the safe with acoustic or electronic skills only, no force or owner’s help. Close the safe again without leaving a calling card and get out without a trace. Well, let us say, the thief leaves traces that are hard to detect.”
I was silent for a minute. “Well, come to think of it … the style you just described is the style of….”
Fowler completed my fine selection of words with an approving nod in my direction. “My favorite alleged villain. Yes, our thief imitates your style, Calendar.”
I let that sink in for a moment. First my ego was bruised by that stupid McAllister necklace affair, and now my arch enemy was telling me that I was being imitated by some cat burglar freak who was into reenacting burglary styles.
“My head is spinning Fowler,” I said. “There are so many consequences to this.”
Fowler leaned back and studied me. “Come on, just spill your thoughts to me. I am interested in your first impression of this.”
I folded my arms and stared unfocused into the Pacific distance. “The initial thing that comes into my mind is: all your yearlong accusations against me were false. Because it was never I who stole all these stones but this ‘impostor.’ It was his style all along.” I looked at Fowler, expectantly.
He snorted. “Nice try, but go on. Let’s assume he imitates you in this series. What else?”
“Not so fast with your assumption of one burglar with various styles. Another logical explanation: it is not a single thief but a group. They select the targets together and maybe even prepare the heist as a group, but one of them has the lead and plans it in his special style. It is even safer that way because you can have two lookout
s to watch your back. Plus: your fellow gang members can be used as backups and logistical support, should you need to transport something heavy, like the blowtorch for the safe door, for example. And you are able to select the method of entry according to the site’s circumstances.”
Fowler nodded. “That used to be exactly my thinking for a while. It even makes more sense when you think about the timing factor of the planning. Twelve heists in nine months. A single guy must be pretty active to coordinate the targets, get the necessary information, and then stake out the place so that he knows the comings and goings of the target site.”
“For a while? You don’t buy that scenario?” I asked.
“Well, you know my expertise, when it comes to jewelry and art thefts. You may be my favorite villain…,” I stuck out my tongue at him, “…but I studied almost every burglary ever paid for by an insurance company and collected intensive statistics.”
“Numbers beat intuition?”
“Right on,” Fowler gave a rare smile, “and the statistics at least support my hunches. I analyzed six-thousand recorded cases from the nineteen-fifties up until today that are comparable to our cases. Of those six thousand, there were only roughly three hundred performed by groups. All other ones were attributed to single thieves. Even though the facts may point to another possibility, my first instinct still tells me to look for a clever individual who can effortlessly imitate classical break-in patterns.”
“You make him sound like an aficionado, a connoisseur of crime styles. Be glad he didn’t choose to reenact murders.”
“At least it would solve my problems,” Fowler remarked sourly. “I am only in it for the jewels. We are paying ourselves silly right now. My best guess is that our suspect is a spoiled rich kid who grew up in a cultured environment. He possesses a good education in the arts and in aesthetics, not by visiting a school or anything but by experiencing art and jewelry around his parents’ home.”
“You make it sound as if a rich background is a prerequisite for an art specialist,” I said dryly.
“I know that your background is fundamentally different, but you learned a great deal by going through an apprenticeship, a school, if you like. You didn’t live with beautiful art and jewels in your childhood.” He was remarking on my youth spent in a hippie commune with my parents.
“I won’t start a discussion about art fundamentalism and the common man, so go on,” I said angrily. Fowler had me on edge with his stupid theory, but I brushed it off because it was no good. I could always kill him later and blame it on my social background.
“Okay, where was I? Yes, spoiled rich kid. I bet the parents are in the business—”
“The business? Steel?” I asked, slightly confused.
“Sorry, comes with the case. You tend to speak the local Hollywood lingo in no time if you are surrounded by movie and music stars and execs. Most jewels were stolen from people who were associated with the LA music and film business.”
“Movies per minute,” I muttered.
“Excuse me? Well, the pieces that were stolen have high face value, but in most cases an even higher collector’s value. And our thief mostly went for those, just like the two pieces stolen from Swan Collins. All the other loot was just window dressing, in my opinion.”
I contradicted him. “The other explanation is that we have a skilled thief from a totally different background, let us say bank robbery, who simply gets the instructions about what to steal from a fanatical collector who is part of ‘the business.’”
“Of course that is a valid option, too, my dear.”
“One more ‘my dear,’ and we have a murder added to my rap sheet.”
Due to the escalating friction between us, we took a small break from our conversation and I went to powder my nose, while he went outside with his cellphone to get updates on whatever.
“So, what do you have in mind for me, Fowler?” I asked him outright after we had reassembled and reordered refreshments.
“Your favorite insurance agent together with the LA police task force did a little detecting and found out the following.” Fowler brought up another folder. “Here, you see the lists of the people who visited each of the crime scenes from about three months prior to the break-ins.” Rows of names with all the different break-in locations were listed in separate columns on the right. With some crosses here and there, it looked like a database printout.
“You don’t want me to go through it, do you?” I asked doubtfully, thumbing through the inch-high stack.
“The computer did that for us and came up with a list of four individuals who showed up at least three times at the twelve break-in locations.” Fowler produced another sheet of paper which he placed in front of me but covered the content with his hand.
“That is conclusive for the police and you?” I said.
“No, and this is where you come in.”
“I mean, this could be perfectly harmless. The people in question could be the party kings of Bel Air or the recommended sought-after pool cleaner.”
Fowler nodded. “Right, completely, but I want to make sure.”
“And you propose what for me, exactly?”
Fowler rolled his eyes briefly and made a “go on” sign with his right hand as if I had to figure that out for myself.
“Fowler, could you please be specific?”
“For legal reasons, I don’t want to.”
“You piece of fake British chicken shit,” I shouted, and the whole restaurant went quiet and looked at us. I apologetically raised my hands and stared the masses down. Life continued. Hopefully TMZ was not present on the premises. I turned back to Fowler. “Okay, I will spell it out for you, and you may just nod or shake your blockhead. I will check out the four names on the list and take a look at their underwear drawers at night.”
“I expected nothing less from you, Calendar,” Fowler said and took away his hand that covered the names.
“Phil Krueger, Jeannie Anthony, Pretty McAllister, Gordon Webber,” I read quietly. I pointed at Jeannie Anthony’s name. “I know her of course. Interesting fact is that Rip Delaware was her companion at the Swan Collins party.”
“But Rip showed up only at the Collins party, never before,” Fowler remarked. “Same as you, by the way.” He apparently had done his homework.
I shrugged it off. “Pretty McAllister, how could I not know her as I was framed for the theft of her necklace?”
“And ruined it completely,” Fowler threw in.
“Hell, she could make it into a reality show—Pimp My Jewels. Phil Krueger? Never heard of him.”
“He is an exec at Mountainview Studios and better known for his constantly changing string of blonde girls and affairs. I think he holds the record for Hollywood divorces, about ten ex-wives behind him,” Fowler explained.
“And Gordon Webber?”
Fowler sighted. “Mr. Gordon P. Webber is the other reason I asked you for help. He is a huge movie fan and in a way he is the epitome of your ‘Hollywood party animal’ … and his status gets him invitations of all kinds to all the major events in LA-LA-Land.”
“Come on, don’t make it so exciting. Who is he?”
“He is the chief of police of the city of Los Angeles, nickname…,” Fowler said.
And I completed, “…the Party Chief.”
Fowler looked sheepishly at me. “Sorry about that.”
That remark called for a round of fresh coffee. Fowler sipped silently and watched the Pacific Ocean while I picked through the different reports. I decided not to form a theory at this point. What was more important to me was: how could I ever get out of this mess?
Fowler came back and sat down again, gazing outside.
“Okay, this is all well and good.”
“Intrigued?”
“Of course. Especially….” I stopped myself.
“Yes? Something caught your eye?” Fowler peered over at the paper I held in my hands.
I shook my head. “No, nothing in
the report, but I have a general problem here. I almost started deducing and brainstorming just as if you were a good friend and we were exchanging ideas how to improve the security of jewelry owners.”
Fowler cocked his head. “Your point, my dear?”
I almost took his hands to plead with him. “Fowler. You are my arch enemy. I couldn’t just bounce some ideas of you like I would … with myself. I almost started discussing the style of the Hollywood burglars and commenting on the difficulties of education.”
“Education?” I had lost Fowler—or maybe not.
“Stop it. Yes, how do you think the imitator of my alleged style knows his handiwork? You don’t learn these things in evening school, you read me?”
“You are right, Calendar. Where do you learn these things?” Fowler looked at me intensely, his features turning into a snake ready to strike.
“That is exactly my point! I cannot tell you. I throw in a point, an idea, an observation, and you could ask intelligent questions that I could answer truthfully, you would follow up with questions, and sooner than we know it you have unraveled my complete personal network of friends and colleagues, and you would pester them with questions of our common involvement of jewelry thefts for the last five years.”
Fowler looked at me quietly for a minute. “How do you expect our cooperation to work then?”
“I cannot brainstorm and exchange ideas with you, Fowler. Our ‘collaboration’ extends only to our common case of the Hollywood thefts, not any further. I help you to find the real culprit and receive a get-out-of-jail card in exchange. But that is as far as it goes.”
“You mean, you will not discuss things with me?”
I gave a single, serious nod.
Fowler folded his arms, frustrated. “How do you expect us to work together then?” We were running in circles.
“We discuss strategies as I see fit. I let you run errands and deal with certain red tape.” I counted off on my fingers. “I investigate and deduce and let you know when I have something interesting, but we won’t be developing theories and leads together. Of course, if you want, you may tell me about your theories, but it remains a one-way street.”