Meaner Things

by David Anderson

  “I can understand that, but I’m glad you stayed where you were.”

  “I actually was about to go back in when suddenly there was an enormous thunk on the other side of the door and I nearly jumped out of my skin. When I tried to open the door your body was blocking it – you were lying in a heap, out cold – and I had to push as hard as I could to squeeze through. One look at your head and I figured out you must have tumbled down the steps and head butted the door. I got Charlie over and we bundled you into the car, with the bags in the back seat beside you.”

  “Bags in the back seat? Wasn’t that a bit casual?”

  “No room in the trunk; too stuffed already.”

  “I’m sorry I ruined our grand exit.”

  “It was still pretty cool. You weren’t bleeding so much by then and had begun to come around, so I knew you’d be OK. It felt like a mountain falling from my shoulders when we pulled out of the garage and roared down the street.” She paused. “Well, actually we didn’t exactly roar much. The old Toyota was sagging quite a bit on its suspension, with all those heavy rocks and gold weighing us down.”

  “Did Charlie say much?”

  “Not a lot. He just beamed like a Cheshire cat. Kept going on and on about how we’d just pulled off” – she whispered the last bit in my ear – “the crime of the century.”

  “He’s right about that. Biggest ever in Canada, I believe.”

  “The whole of North America, I would think.”

  We were quiet for a while, Emma content to look out the window while I finished the wine.

  “Did they believe you in Emergency?” I said.

  She grinned again. “I didn’t give them a chance to discuss it. It was true though, sort of; I mean you really did fall down the stairs, just not at home.”

  “They probably thought it was domestic violence, that you’d attacked me with a baseball bat.”

  “More like a smashed liquor bottle.”

  “So while you were watching them sewing me up in Emergency, Charlie was sorting the goodies and distributing them as planned?”

  “That’s right. It’s all safely hidden away in various locations, as agreed.”

  “Where no would-be heisters will break in and steal it.”

  “We’ll talk to him about it later. He’s promised to keep two deck chairs for us on the beach.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “In the meantime, read this.” She reached into the bag at her feet and pulled out a two-day-old copy of the Vancouver Province newspaper. I took it and read the front page headline:

  ‘Downtown Diamond Centre Robbed of Millions: Super Thieves Bust Impregnable Vault’.

  *

  “You must have felt like a kid in a toyshop,” I said.

  Charlie leaned back in his deckchair and laughed. “You bet. It was like every Christmas and birthday I’ve ever had, multiplied about a million times, except better.”

  “Tell me about it.” I peered through Ray-Bans at Emma paddling in foamy waves at the water’s edge, her black one-piece swimsuit perfectly emphasising endlessly long legs and slim arms. The blood-red orb of the setting sun sank low on the horizon behind her. Charlie and I were far back on the beach, a giant parasol spread over us, purposely situated well away from others so as not to have to worry about eavesdroppers.

  I was content to let him talk and eager to hear about the things I’d missed while lying in a cheap motel room waiting for the pain in my head to go away. The gap in my memory wasn’t very long – I remembered everything after arriving at the hospital – but going over immediately succeeding events helped chip away at the short, annoying blank space preceding them.

  “It was like Monopoly,” Charlie said. “There was so much cash piled on the carpet. I sorted it and counted the stacks. Most of it’s American hundred-dollar bills.”

  “That’s ’cause diamond prices are set in U.S. dollars the world over,” I said.

  “Right. There are plenty of euros too, also Swiss francs, British hundred-pound notes, Aussie dollars and even Israeli sheqalim.”

  “I’m impressed, Charlie; never knew you were such a currency buff.”

  “Never needed to be before now. Anyway, I split it three ways.”

  “You sure about that?”

  He raised his hands in mock protest. “Emma checked it later. Hell of a lot of stuff, as you know. We tried to make the bags less bulky, but the diamonds in blister packs took up a lot of space.”

  “You could have popped them out.”

  “Too slow. Anyway, it’s best to keep them in the packs. Proves authenticity.”

  He was right; I’d forgotten about that. “You’re an old hand at this game, Charlie.” I was glad that he was, as otherwise it would have taken me years to offload so much high end stuff. “How will you dispose of the jewellery?” I asked him.

  “They’re too distinct to risk selling directly,” he replied. “I’ll need to work on them first, remove the gemstones from their settings and melt the gold down.”

  I thought of all the beautiful, unique pieces that Charlie was planning to destroy. But that was the point: they were unique. In other words, every single one of them could get us caught and sent away for a long stretch. “Seems a shame, but there’s no other way,” I agreed. “What sort of equipment will you need for that?”

  “Just a small high-temperature furnace,” he replied. “I have one in the garage already.”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  “For obvious reasons, I keep it out of sight. Somebody called round one day when I was using it and I nearly dropped an open container of molten lead on my feet. Could have got burned to the bone.”

  I imagined Charlie busy smelting million-dollar jewellery settings in his over-stuffed garage and accidently setting his whole house on fire. “What about the watches?”

  “I kept them in their boxes with all the original packaging material. Same principle as the diamond packs – makes them easier to sell on. Proves authenticity and makes them less suspect down the line.”

  “I’m keeping the Patek Philippe. Call it my planning fee.”

  Charlie shrugged. “OK, but it’s a bit dangerous. Too distinctive. I have a well-trusted fence down in the States if you need him?”

  My beautiful Patek Philippe wristwatch was currently wrapped in thick plastic and sitting at the bottom of a bag of frozen peas in the small fridge in my hotel room. I pictured the roman numerals on the sublime blue face, the expertly engraved white gold casing. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep it out of sight,” I replied. My thoughts went back to the sheer quantity of diamonds we’d acquired. “We have so many stones,” I said, “We could flood the market.”

  “Nah,” Charlie shook his head, “They’re the easiest of all to get rid of. Unless it’s off the Crown Jewels nobody can identify a piece of rock. Plenty of dealers out there will lap up the cheap bargains.”

  He was right, of course. Human nature was on our side. “They can always shave a tiny bit off the biggest ones,” I agreed. “Once that’s been done, it’s a different diamond. But they probably won’t even have to bother.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t forget how Zheng acquired many of those diamonds in the first place,” I replied. “There’s no way he’ll ever circulate a list of stolen stones, so honest merchants won’t know what to look for anyway.”

  Charlie nodded. “True enough. That just leaves the ‘pieces of rough’, the uncut ones. They’re totally untraceable.”

  I sat back and considered what we’d achieved. “You know the most satisfying thing about this whole business?” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  I grinned. “Eventually, most of our diamonds will probably end up back in the Zheng vault. So we’ll get to ding the old bastard twice over.”

  *

  I had almost dozed off in the heat when a thought popped into my head. “You got rid of the clothes and equipment?”

  “Of course,” Charlie replied. “Our cl
othes went into an incinerator belonging to a friend of mine. There wasn’t much equipment, but anything in my house that could be linked to the heist went in there too.”

  “Good. Can’t be too careful. No stray diamonds spilled on the carpet?”

  He snorted. “Actually, I did spill a big packet of tiny emerald pointers. Scores of them, all marquise cut, four or five hundredths of a carat each. The buggers popped out of my hand and went all over the floor.”

  I frowned. “But you picked them all up?”

  “Most of them. A few probably got lost in the rug. But don’t worry; we did the sorting in another motel room, well away from ours.”

  “And the three lots of goodies?”

  “Stored in various deposit boxes in several locations. Don’t you remember Emma and me telling you that when we left you on your own for most of a day?”

  “I still don’t remember everything; there are gaps.”

  “You poor sod. We drove around all day, stashing the stuff away under various names. You and I figured all that out before hand.”

  “You don’t have to remind me about that, Charlie. I do remember that much. It’s only the day or so after the job that’s still a bit murky.” I pondered quietly for a minute. “Do you think we wiped out Zheng’s business?”

  Charlie stared at the waves before replying. “Probably. I hope so anyway, from what you and Emma have told me about him.”

  “For us it was personal. He was just a rich, faceless stranger to you.”

  “Not any more, mate.” Charlie fumbled around on the far side of his deck chair and produced a newspaper. “They have the Canadian papers in our hotel foyer.” He held up a recent copy of the Globe & Mail so that I could see the front page. “Your Mr. Zheng has been moaning ever since Tuesday morning.”

  I grinned. “I’ll bet he has.” I took the paper and noted that it was claiming an exclusive interview with Zheng. The photographer had captured him standing outside the Zheng Building, its sign visible in the background over the shoulder of his expensively cut suit. I scanned the article quickly; curious about how much Zheng had figured out about the heist. Various phrases jumped out at me: Canada’s biggest heist . . . internal investigation underway . . . long-serving security guard suspended in the interim . . . video evidence missing . . . the police are following every lead . . . cannot divulge security details . . . unknown how thieves obtained vault’s combination code.

  I paused halfway. The bit about the police was vaguely worrying, but it sounded like boilerplate jargon for ‘leaving no stone unturned’. Of course Zheng wasn’t going to really say anything specific at all. For one thing, he’d have insurers breathing down his neck. If he was smart – and he was – he’d had his corporate lawyer present during this interview. I finished scanning the piece, expecting little more.

  Admits it may have been an inside job . . . building’s tenants being questioned . . . all are co-operating fully . . . some are out of country and still to be questioned . . . no suspects to date.

  “A whole lot of nothing much.”

  I looked up. “You’re right there, Charlie,” I agreed. “But at least he doesn’t mention Emma.”

  “You’re still going to send those documents?”

  “I’ll wait a while until the furore dies down, then send photocopies to Zheng, threatening to make them public.”

  “Be careful he can’t trace the origin.”

  “Of course. And I’ll include suitable warnings of what will happen if he tries.”

  “What then?”

  “He divorces Emma quickly and quietly then I send the documents to the police anyway.”

  “Isn’t that a bit . . . underhand?”

  “You’ve seen what he’s up to. I don’t owe him a thing.”

  Charlie nodded. “You’re right. Human trafficking stinks. Take the bastard down, buddy.”

  “A package to police headquarters in Vancouver, marked ‘Zheng Corporation Investigation’ should do the trick. When the detectives open it they’ll discover they have something even bigger to investigate than a jewel heist.”

  “Bigger even than our record-breaking break-in.”

  “Proud as we are of our forthcoming entry in the Guinness Book of Records,” I agreed.

  Charlie sat back in his deckchair. “Does Emma want a financial settlement too?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t need it anymore. Let’s face it, all three of us are now millionaires several times over. Emma can simply disappear, adopt a new identity.” It wouldn’t be the first time, I thought. “It will take time for the police and courts to send Zheng down and Emma will be out of sight long before then.”

  “You and her together, eh?”

  “Yup. That’s exactly right.”

  “Beach wedding? Can I be best man?”

  I smiled and left without saying another word.

  28.

  THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

  “Do you think they’re running your name through Interpol’s database?” Emma said.

  “Well, my name at the Zheng Building was ‘John Robie’. Google is all they need to figure that one out.”

  “How’d you mean?”

  “It’s the name of the main character in ‘To Catch a Thief’.”

  “The movie?”

  “The Hitchcock movie, from a novel by David Dodge. I have it in paperback. Nice story, but impossible heist.”

  “You never told me that. Once they figure it out they’ll know it was a pseudonym.”

  “Of course, but it won’t do them any good. Maybe they’ll think my real name’s Cary Grant.”

  She smiled. “Guess that makes me Grace Kelly.”

  Emma and I had left Barbados two days ago, having decided that a month of frying on the beach there was more than enough. Charlie had stayed behind, citing an affinity with the place and especially with the local girls in the nightclubs. He said he might buy a yacht. We advised him to learn how to sail first.

  It was a new feeling for me to know that I could now go anywhere in the world I wanted. Emma and I had decided to explore Europe together. We had to start somewhere and ended up on a flight to Milan, Italy. But when we got there, we both realised that we felt like staying somewhere quieter than a big city, even an historic one. Emma had consulted her guidebook yet again and we’d rented a car and driven north east up to the Italian Lake District, stopping at a slim finger of water called Lake Iseo. Smaller than Lake Como, it was just the sort of tourist-free place we were seeking, with beautiful countryside dotted with vineyards, medieval castles and monasteries, steep rocky hills and a stunning Alpine backdrop.

  In Barbados we’d stayed at a modest mid-range hotel and made do with meals at back street cafes and fast food joints, even though we could have afforded anything we liked. In the days following the heist it was hard to shake off a feeling of having to lie low, be as inconspicuous as possible, even thousands of miles away from Vancouver. Now, more than four weeks on, we wanted to make a conscious effort to live like normal people again. Normal, very rich people.

  So we’d booked into the L'Albereta in Erbusco, a nineteenth-century villa with its own helipad. Our bedroom was supremely comfortable – it even had a retractable roof for a night under the stars – and the bathroom was exquisite. I was still getting used to forking out six hundred and twenty-five dollars a night for such luxury.

  Those rates didn’t even include breakfast or dinner, so tonight we’d decided to dine in the hotel’s restaurant, the Gualtiero Marchesi. Three Michelin stars, and named after an elderly Italian chef famously temperamental, according to Emma who, as usual, had read the guidebook. We’d both ordered the risotto with saffron and pure gold leaf, served al dente, which Emma informed me meant ‘firm to the bite’. So rich I can eat gold, I thought, as I put the first forkful into my mouth. We followed this with lobster, and washed it all down with an excellent sparkling wine called Franciacorta Bellavista, the hotel's own label. Not a bad bit of grog, as I delighted in telling Emma
quite loudly.

  We passed on dessert and settled for coffee instead. While the waiter was bringing it I looked out the window behind Emma and thought about the last time that she and I had gone fine dining together, on top of Grouse Mountain. Without fully realising it, I’d carried an enormous burden on my shoulders back then. I felt freer now, shorn of responsibility for planning and executing the seemingly impossible.

  “You’re better company these days, now that you’re unburdened,” Emma said, as if reading my mind.

  “Thanks. I feel as light as a feather to be honest.”

  “Do you think you’ll get back into the saddle eventually?” she asked.

  I laughed. “Never,” I replied. I looked around, checking that I couldn’t be overheard, before adding, “If you mean another heist. The Zheng Building was both the climax and the end of my career. I have no desire to ever repeat it.”

  Emma looked relieved. “You’d better not,” she said.

  I thought about it for a moment. “It does feel good,” I said quietly. “It was one hell of an achievement. There’s the satisfaction of an incredibly difficult job well done.” I looked straight into her eyes. “But I did it for a higher cause.”

  She smiled. The waiter brought the coffee and we were quiet while he served it. As soon as he was gone she said, “I heard from him, through his lawyers.”

  She didn’t have to specify who she meant.

  “Don’t worry,” she continued, “I called them before we left Barbados. They don’t know where I was or where I am now. He’s divorcing me.”

  “Sudden change of heart?” I said.

  “He got the documents you sent him and now he can’t get rid of me fast enough. He always gets his priorities right.” There was an understandable bitterness in her voice.

  “We still have to stop what he’s doing,” I said, “No more human suitcases full of shiny stones.”

  She nodded agreement. “Do it,” she said.

  We sipped our coffee and left it at that.