It was another piece to the puzzle and I could see it fitting perfectly.
*
I checked my watch for the twentieth time and saw that it was coming up to seven p.m., closing time. The hardest part of this heist was turning out to be the long, tedious hours I had to spend sitting around in the office on the twelfth floor, with nothing much to do except make notes and snooze uncomfortably over the desk. I told myself that if I ever did this again, I’d rent a room with a decent view.
I was working on interacting with all the security guards or at least all the ones available in public areas, which was surprisingly few. I had no access to one of the guards in the security control room: a big, muscle-bound, black-bearded animal with ‘Axel A.’ on his name badge, but whom I’d once heard Jeff D. call ‘Razor’. His job was to monitor all the hallways and corridors and to buzz open the fenced day gate to the vault when tenants wanted access to their safe deposit boxes. From the look of him, he probably spent the rest of his time in the gym.
The second of the two guards in the video room, ‘Jeff D.’, was more accessible. He emerged at least twice a day to unlock and lock the vault. Two other guards in the building did have everyday contact with tenants and the public: Andy at the garage entrance and the guard at the main entrance, the one who had accosted me when I’d been filming too obviously.
This guard was called ‘Roger G.’, who spent most of his day in the security booth near the front door. He too had video monitors, allowing him to watch the foot traffic coming in and out during business hours. His other duties included checking visitors’ IDs and issuing temporary day passes, and phoning tenants on the upstairs floors to confirm that strangers had legitimate appointments. Middle-aged, naturally surly, truculent when I did manage to get a few words out of him, he was proving a hard nut to crack. Tonight I was going to have one more go at him.
I exited the elevator on the main floor and took my time about leaving, sauntering slowly towards the door, my eyes and ears attuned to everything going on around me. I soaked up the information coming at me, processed it rapidly, and filed it away for later. As I passed the security control room I looked in and saw the two guards, Jeff D. and his ape-like colleague, switching off their video monitors for the night. In my hand I held a small notebook like a date planner, a slim little thing that wouldn’t make much noise when I pretended to drop it on the floor. I let it drop from my hand and ‘accidently’ kicked it closer to the security room.
I stooped and picked it up, taking a good long look through the security room window, both on the way down and the way back up.
I was thrilled by what I saw. Jeff D. was swapping fresh cassette tapes for the full ones in the recording system. A VCR would be much easier and quicker to access than a computer’s hard drive.
I stuffed the notebook into my pocket and approached the front entrance turnstile.
“Busy day, Roger?” I asked hopefully as I reached him.
There was the briefest of grunts in reply.
“Do they ever let you out of there?” I ventured. I’d tried to engage him in conversation half-a-dozen times already and nothing had worked. This time he looked up and peered at me over the top rim of his glasses. A narrow frown creased his forehead.
“Not a lot, sir.” For Roger this was positively verbose.
“You should switch with Jeff D. once in a while,” I suggested. “He gets to stretch his legs up and down to the vault.”
“Never been down there.” That was all I got in reply before his head went down again.
I pushed through the plate glass doors and lingered outside the building, checking my watch as if waiting to be picked up. It was a couple of minutes past seven o’clock. Using my side vision as much as possible, I watched as Roger G. opened one of the glass doors. He reached up and yanked down a rolling, garage-style door. It slammed into the ground with a crashing thud, followed by the distinct ratcheting sound of a lock being engaged. I assumed that the glass doors behind it were then locked too.
I’d observed this closing ritual several times now and was sure it must be standard operating procedure.
I walked to the coffee shop at the end of the block, well satisfied with my evening’s work. Inside, I sat at the window with a café Americano and an overpriced, lukewarm wrap, and considered what I had learned so far about security at the building.
Overall, I was pretty pleased. Once again, just like ten years ago, I had the advantage that this was an older building. The picture taking shape in my mind was of a technology far from cutting edge, and security procedures that hadn’t changed in a long time. The guards evidently relied heavily on video monitoring – using dated videotape technology – for security. Roger had never even been down to the vault room and Andy probably hadn’t either. Based on the demeanour and habits of the guards, they seemed to have grown dangerously complacent over the years, none of them seriously expecting any attempt to be made on robbing the vault. On the contrary, they trusted the vault’s impressive built-in security features implicitly and were content to stare at monitor screens all day while sipping lukewarm coffee from Styrofoam cups.
This was all to the good as far as I was concerned.
Already I was pretty sure that getting into the building to do the heist would not be particularly difficult. That still left the vault door to be overcome, with its heavy slabs of steel, long key and four-number code with a hundred million possible combinations. Somehow, I had to figure a way past that.
*
I finished up my cardboard wrap and walked back to the building. Tenants were allowed to stay behind and work in their offices later than seven p.m. – they just didn’t have any access to the vault until seven a.m. the next morning, or Monday morning if it was a weekend. The way out after hours was through a door beside the elevators into the back corridor to the garage exit, after which one drove out through the garage gate, using a key that raised the yellow bar and activated the gated exit.
Of course, the way out after hours could become a way in after hours.
I’d already noted with satisfaction that the garage doors at the side of the building faced a quieter street than the main entrance. This was especially true in the evenings when this part of downtown grew quiet. It would be even more so at, say, midnight or one a.m. when I planned to perform the heist.
I strolled past the garage doors and gave them another close examination. There was no way in from the outside – one was supposed to telephone the night security guard if one wanted inside again. That would not suit me at all. Nor could I stay late in the building the night of the heist. My swipe card would show that I had not left during business hours and that would make me an immediate suspect. I wanted as much time as possible to disappear, so that ‘John Robie’ could simply melt away and never be seen or heard of again.
*
“Beat this Jeff D. guy over the head and make him open the vault,” Charlie said. We were sitting in his garden, sipping Charlie’s non-alcoholic lager, and enjoying the evening sun setting behind the hideous coat-hanger robot and the cow with antlers.
“Nothing doing,” I replied. “Remember, we agreed: no violence.”
“Huh, so you say, but it’s the way most places get robbed.”
“Sure, stickups are one way. Go roaring in with guns blazing, terrorize the guards, hold a gun to Jeff’s head until he gives us the combination. Can you build us a helicopter for our rooftop getaway?”
“OK, I get the point. But what’s the alternative?”
“Finesse, my man, finesse. We tiptoe in, like phantoms in the night, unheard, unseen, empty Zheng’s boxes and be long gone before anyone even knows we’ve been there.”
Charlie snorted. “Sounds lovely. Picnic at Zheng Vault. I’ll bring the cucumber sandwiches. How exactly do we do it?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m getting closer every day.” I put my glass down with a thud that got his attention. “Anyway, I’m serious about no violence, Charlie. Sticking
guns in people’s faces makes us into thugs, lowlifes. We’re doing this to bring Zheng down, not just to make us rich.”
“Fine. All I’m saying is kidnapping a guard, or better still a guard’s wife, is the traditional way to do it.”
“It’s also the traditional way for a hostage to escape, or get hurt trying to, or for one of us to get hurt, not to mention the twenty years to life sentences if something goes wrong.”
Charlie grunted noncommittally.
“And it wouldn’t work anyway. Don’t forget the magnetic door alarm is on a timer. If we got a guard to open the vault after hours, it would set off the alarm.”
“True enough.”
“No, we won’t be taking any unforeseen risks,” I continued. “I’ll plan it down to the smallest detail. Stealth is the only acceptable route, not violence. And when we do it, we do it with élan.”
My little speech over, I took another mouthful of warm beer.
“I’ve never done a job as big as this one,” Charlie said.
“Neither have I,” I said, “And this will be my last.”
“What do you think we’ll find in Zheng’s boxes?”
I thought for a moment. “Don’t know. Diamonds, obviously. You have connections who can handle those. That’s the monetary end of the heist. I’m hoping there will also be all kinds of incriminating stuff.”
“Such as?”
“Documents recording illegal transactions, anything we can send to the appropriate authorities for them to investigate.”
“Compromising photos we can post on the internet?”
“That too.”
“Real dirty tricks, eh?”
“No dirtier than what he’s doing to young girls.”
“Right. I agree with the stealth bit, Mike. But there still could be violence.”
I gave him a puzzled look. “How’d ya mean?”
“Creeping around in the dark has risks, doesn’t it?” he replied. “Silent alarms for one thing. That could get us caught.”
“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. Anyway, that’s not violent.”
“It only takes a trigger-happy security guard to mistake a crowbar for a shotgun. Then suddenly it’s violent,” Charlie said gloomily.
I opened my mouth to say something reassuring about minimising risks, then decided against it. I sat back and thought about what Charlie had just said. He was more experienced than me in these things, and he was right. Missing one small detail could spell our doom. Even the most extensive preparation couldn’t cover everything.
I reminded myself that penetrating the impenetrable was my forte. I thought about my escape from the museum warehouse years ago, and reminded myself that I was good at handling the unforeseen too.
“See ya, Charlie. Gotta have an early night.” I finished the tepid lager, glad there was no more left.
“Not like you to be early to bed,” he replied.
“I have to be up with the birds tomorrow. I intend to be at the vault door bright and early.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Yup, I’m going to pick Jeff D’s brains without him knowing it.”
“Good luck with that.”
I drove the Corolla back to my place while going over the plan in my head. I was determined to make significant progress tomorrow. To do so I needed some very specific information from Jeff D. about operating procedures with the video tapes. I couldn’t just waltz into the security room and ask him – the door was kept locked anyway – so I would have to engage him in conversation again while he was opening the vault. And perhaps also when he was closing it in the evening, though that would be pushing my luck considerably.
I said a silent prayer to my Irish ancestors for the gift of the gab.
*
I left the vault and walked wearily towards the elevator, leaving Jeff D. to lock up behind me. I’d barely got a word out of him this morning and now he’d been even less communicative. Worse still, I’d pushed too hard and he’d grown suspicious. He wanted to know “Why all the questions, Mr. Robie?” I’d nearly died inside when he’d said that.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ruined the entire heist, but I just might have; time would tell. If I got a call from Boylan in the morning or, worse still, some security guards knocked on my office door, I wouldn’t be too surprised.
I felt a great heaviness on my shoulders as I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to close the doors, leaving Jeff behind. In the foyer I nodded to Roger G. and slunk out the glass doors, thoroughly depressed. This wasn’t how it was supposed to have gone.
I wandered aimlessly down the street and came across a swanky pub with people sitting outside at grey metal tables and drinking pints of beer. I looked up and saw that it was called ‘The Knotty Shillelagh’. There were gold shamrocks all around the doorway and, beside it, a cardboard cut-out of a little leprechaun guy with his fists in the air. In other words, it was a typical Vancouver faux Irish tavern, kitschy as hell and about as authentically Irish as Gandhi’s big toe. In my present mood, I went in anyway.
I ordered a pint of Harp lager, known as fly piss in its native land but priced here as if it were ambrosia of the gods, and sat at the bar, sipping it slowly. In my mind I went over my brief conversations with Jeff D., berating myself for having made such a pig’s ear of both attempts. They didn’t get any better the more I replayed them in my head.
Perhaps my ambitions had been nothing more than impossible daydreams; my grandiose plans one long chain of improbabilities. If so, the daydream balloon had now burst; links in the chain had broken. My second pint of fly piss engendered even more of these maudlin mental images.
I picked up the little round coaster under the pint glass and read it for the first time. ‘Old Irish pub, closed during Mass’ it said. The banality of this place knew no depths and I decided it was time to make my way home. I drained the last dregs from the bottom of the glass and laid it down on the beer-soaked coaster.
“Mr. Robie, fancy meeting you here.” The voice was terrifyingly familiar. I’d just been hearing it in my head, over and over again.
“Hi Jeff,” I replied.
“It’s been a tough day for you too, eh?” he said, as he sat down on the barstool beside me. I gave him a welcoming smile broad enough to charm a shark.
“Lovely to bump into you,” I replied, “Can I buy you a pint? The Harp here is on tap. It’s very good.”
“Thanks very much, I think I’ll have one of those.” He shuffled his taut, muscular rump on the tiny stool. “By the way sir, I want to apologise for being rude to you earlier. Had a bunch of things on my mind, girlfriend problems, stuff like that.” He smiled defensively. “Sorry about that.”
“Not at all,” I replied, “Let’s grab our pints and go over there to the snug where we can talk better.”
16.
TAKING SHAPE
“I’ll never travel in the back of that van again,” Emma said.
She and I were sitting in the threadbare valley in the middle of Charlie’s ancient grey sofa, its springs protesting loudly every time either of us moved even slightly. I happily submitted to being pressed, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, tightly against Emma while Charlie roamed the windows, shutting venetian blinds, closing curtains, and drawing drapes of various sizes, shapes and materials. The room grew dark and shadowy and I switched on a table light next to the couch. The bulb must have been all of twenty watts.
“Saving on hydro bills?” I asked Charlie.
“Your eyes will adapt quickly,” he replied.
Emma leaned to her side and switched on another lamp that was slightly brighter.
“Sorry for getting here so late,” I said, “But I’m only just back from downtown. I got held up unexpectedly.” I hoped that Emma wouldn’t smell the beer on my breath. “Anyway, I thought we should discuss progress so far,” I continued. “First on the agenda is some good news.”
“And what might that be?” Charlie asked, sitting ne
ar the couch.
“Well, it might be that it’s Open Vault Day at the Zheng Building tomorrow.”
Charlie’s eyes widened in surprise.
“But it’s not,” I hastened to add, noting the rapid frown on his face, “I’m just kidding.”
“So what is it then?” Emma said.
“It’s about the video cameras.”
“There’s far too many of those,” Charlie replied, “Must have been a sale on that day or something.”
I nodded. “That’s true; they’re all over the place. But the good news is they rely on them too much. The guards hardly ever bother to patrol anymore.”
“How does that help us?” Charlie asked.
“It’s like this . . .”
I went over my discovery that the cameras recorded on old-fashioned videotape, rather than onto a computer hard drive. And, that the tapes were changed each night, with the old ones stored in a metal cabinet in the security room.
“OK,” Charlie said, “But you already told me that last night.”
“Yeah, but Emma didn’t know. Now here’s the new news. I had a very interesting conversation with Jeff D. today. Very enlightening.”
“Do tell,” Charlie replied.
I made an on-the-spot decision not to tell them about the Irish pub. Somehow it didn’t seem professional. “I must get up early more often. Jeff D’s much more talkative first thing. He says there are only two guards there overnight. He often takes that shift himself for a bit of overtime.”
“Forgive me for not getting too excited yet. With your ‘no violence rule’, two guards are still too many.”
I wagged a finger at Charlie. “Patience, my man. Here’s the best bit: the guards don’t watch the monitors overnight.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Charlie shook his head in disbelief. “What do they do if not watch the monitors?”
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