Thief's Odyssey

by John L. Monk

  I sighed wearily and shook my head.

  “What do you know that we don’t?” Kate said, leaning closer. “Why does she think you can help?”

  “It’s my angel face,” I said. “She thinks I can do anything. I’m cursed.”

  For a second I thought Kate might hit me again.

  Steadily, she said, “After it happened, we went to Debbie’s, but she wouldn’t answer the door. She’s not returning our messages. I assume Mrs. Swanson wants you to talk to her again, see if she has an idea where they’re at.”

  “What if I told you I’m not going anywhere near that guy again and that you should call the police?”

  She snorted. “Then eleven-year-old Jimmy and Anna will probably be hurt, or worse. Unless we find them first. We’ve got people out there looking, but the trail’s gone cold.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Saying what?”

  “Eleven-year-old Jimmy.”

  Kate just stared at me, mostly expressionless except for that ever-present look of disapproval she wore almost better than that sundress … eleven years?

  When it came to me, I wasn’t sure how I got there, but the next thing I knew I was sitting down on the cold marble of the lobby, mouth agape and shaking my head, No. I may have been gibbering too, because someone who looked a lot like Kate was tugging on me to get up, making shush sounds, and telling me to pull it together.

  I said, “Jimmy from the mansion, right?”

  Kate nodded, a slight smile on her face.

  “Are you telling me that kid’s my son?”

  “I’ve been ordered to tell you no such thing regarding eleven-year-old Jimmy,” she said, clearly enjoying the effect of her words.

  I rubbed the back of my head. “Mrs. Swanson always managed to slip in something about him when we talked over the phone—what he was doing, trouble at school with his teachers, that kind of thing. I thought it was just her being her, you know? Except she didn’t talk about any of the other kids. Why didn’t she just tell me?”

  The moment stretched with nobody saying anything.

  A shade gentler than before, Kate said, “Anna made her promise not to. Said she didn’t want to burden you. Mrs. Swanson hoped it would help turn your life around if you knew, but Anna wouldn’t budge. Then, last year, Anna left Jimmy with her and disappeared so well nobody could find her. A few months ago, she showed up for a visit—high as a kite. It was rough on the kid, seeing his mom that way. He had this fantasy she was flying around the world on a tour.” She shook her head and added, “Fosters and their fantasies, I swear.”

  It was something, all right. That one night, all those years ago, had produced a child. My child, if I could believe her, and I had no good reason not to. I didn’t think Mrs. Swanson would ask Kate to lie about something like that. Which meant I was a dad. Scratch that—I was a birth father, a progenitor, nothing more. But that didn’t excuse my responsibility, it only added to my guilt. Why hadn’t Anna come to me years ago? Who knew how things would have turned out if I’d had more than myself to be responsible for?

  Kate was watching me, a different look in her eyes than every other one I’d seen from her. It was probably pity or understanding or something equally human, and I couldn’t handle that right now.

  I turned away.

  “We leave in the morning,” she said. Cool and professional Kate again.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “What do you want me to do? Why don’t you just call the cops?”

  “Weren’t you listening? Fruit’s protected. Well protected, by all accounts.”

  I didn’t believe that for a second. No way was anyone official protecting a guy like that, but Kate seemed unwilling to budge on it.

  “Have you at least reported her missing?” I said.

  “There’s no record of Anna living in DC, so how is that missing?”

  “What about Jimmy?” I said. “He’s missing.”

  Kate shook her head. “He’s with his mother. Mrs. Swanson never had custody and she never reported that Anna had abandoned him. You were supposed to find her so we could help her.”

  “Yeah, and now they’re both kidnapped. What’s wrong with you people? Go to the damned police. Don’t go to the thief who got her into this!”

  Slowly, as if talking to a child, Kate said, “There are things about the situation you don’t understand, I keep trying to tell you. Now look, you do the denial thing all you want, but you’re leaving with me tonight. Be down here at 2 a.m. Nod if you understand.”

  There was something odd about all this, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It didn’t make sense that Fruit could show up and kidnap a foster child and the police would just ignore it. And why had he nabbed the kid at all?

  Still, I liked that Kate was serious about this. Committed. It took the edge off, knowing I wasn’t sharing the burden alone. I don’t know what I would have done if she were the PI equivalent of Sean Powers.

  I went to rub my eye, then pulled it away when it stung. “You could at least apologize for hitting me.”

  Quietly Kate said, “I was up most of the night working out how to get you out of the country without going to jail, myself, in the process. To get you home, it’s going to cost more money than I make in a year and you probably don’t care. I swear, if it were up to me I’d leave you here to rot like the garbage you are.”

  “Tell me how you really feel.”

  Kate shook her head. “You don’t quit, do you? Just be here.”

  Then she turned around and walked out.

  Chapter 20

  Isabella opened with a number I’d been hearing since my arrival in the Bahamas, the one everyone loved and stuck in my head whether I wanted it to or not. She sounded good. Different from the radio version, not lip-synced or auto-tuned or any of that. She was really pushing the whole De Beers thing, too—her outfit looked like it’d been stitched together with thousands of diamonds. None of them real, of course. The ones I’d seen in every photograph of her had to be somewhere else.

  The audience roared their approval when she began another song. Which made sense, this being a concert and none of them with newly discovered sons held hostage by DC pimps. For my part, I tried not to actually glower when she told the crowd to clap their hands and sing along with her.

  An hour into the two-hour concert, I went back to my room and put on my sneaky clothes and backpack. This was something I could understand, something I could control. When I climbed out on the ledge not five hours from my hypothetical rendezvous with Kate, I didn’t see any pimps pointing guns at me. On reaching the next balcony, no guys with dreadlocks and baseball bats lay waiting to pound me into Mosley-meat. As I gazed across the six-foot expanse of gaping death to Isabella’s suite, I felt strong and steady. Kate’s pronouncement about Anna and Jimmy was the farthest thing from my mind as I leapt backwards, twisting in the air like a cat and quietly clearing the balustrade.

  “Redemption is mine,” I whispered, remembering how I’d clipped it with my foot last time.

  Unlike last time, the entire floor was lit up. I hadn’t been able to tell from the angle of my room. It only made sense that the place would be aglow in anticipation of Isabella’s return, and it stood to reason there could be someone in there waiting for her. A boyfriend, perhaps. It was a risk, but like so many things in my life it was one I’d committed to years ago, and nothing I’d heard tonight had changed anything.

  The same door I’d gone through before was still unlocked. I edged it open and pressed an ear to the crack from my crouched position. Soft music played within, some kind of jazz, but no voices. Cautiously, I opened it wide enough to get a hand through and push the curtain aside for a quick peek. The room was as big as ever, and at first I didn’t see anyone. Then a young white woman walked in cradling a baby. She rocked it slowly, cooing to it, then turned and sat on the edge of the bed. They seemed out of place in so large a room, dwarfed by the oppressive opulence.

  I wonde
red if my mother had ever held me like that.

  Out of nowhere, images of a young boy with moody eyes came crashing into me, carried on a stream of guilt and rage that left me shaking. Rage at Fruit and Manny, sure, but also at Anna and Mrs. Swanson for not protecting Jimmy. But mostly at myself, for jeopardizing my freedom and whatever chance they had on this foolish stunt.

  Anna, for all her faults, was right to keep the truth about Jimmy from me. What if I’d died just now, jumping through the air like that? Or got caught and thrown into a Bahamian prison? How would that help anyone? Amazingly, none of that had occurred to me until now. Then, considering it was me here, maybe it wasn’t so amazing after all.

  Kate’s right. I pretty much suck.

  I needed to get out of there and back to my room, and to hell with the diamonds. I didn’t need them. Never had, really. All I’d ever needed was a dad who cared about me more than drugs and a mom who didn’t want to shoot me. Just like all Jimmy needed was someone—even a shady progenitor like me—who cared about him more than some anti-social pastime.

  A peek back into the room showed woman and child lying on the bed, resting together.

  After quietly sliding the door shut, I stood up, walked to the edge of the balcony and gazed down like I was supposed to be there and hadn’t just been peeping in a famous woman’s bedroom. Then I walked casually toward the main doors, smiling and pretending to look around while tugging every door on the way. Nothing to see here, just out for a stroll.

  When I got to the main entrance, the doors opened and a crew of six people came out carrying boxes and fold-up tables and decorations. Islanders in hotel uniforms. One of them glanced up and saw me standing there in my dark clothes and backpack. Another one saw him and joined in staring at me, and then all of them were staring at me.

  One of them said, “Are we disturbing you, sir?”

  I was so surprised by the absurd question I followed with one of my own. “No?”

  He flashed me his Bahamian smile and said, “Thank you, sir.”

  This was the cue for the others to continue bringing everything out for what appeared a grand party in the making. As I watched, the workers set up the tables and a small bar in the corner. A look inside showed the place crawling with hotel workers, decorating and moving furniture around and setting up still more drink bars. A dance floor had been opened in the center of the room beneath a disco ball two men were hoisting into place.

  “May I prepare you a drink, sir?” asked the first man.

  “Uh, sure. Thanks.”

  “What will you have, sir?”

  “Uh … I’ll have a Coke. Please. Shaken, not stirred.”

  The man laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d heard today. “Right away, sir!”

  I reached in my pocket to pay him and he said, “No charge, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  I didn’t see a glass out to tip him so I settled with just thanking him again. Then I stepped inside with my drink like I’d been invited. At the last second, I remembered to put on my sunglasses to hide my horrible eye.

  Nobody paid me any attention as I looked the place over. The room was designed for gawking, so that’s what I did. They’d arranged a big enough buffet to feed the entire hotel: lobsters and prawns and thick prime ribs layered like playing cards beneath infrared lights. I was too nervous to be hungry and what a shame that was.

  The woman and child were nowhere to be seen. Probably still in the bedroom. According to my phone, the show was set to end in a half hour, at which point, I assumed, everyone would come back here to party like it was 1999.

  I took a few steps toward the unguarded elevator and the rest of my life … and then stopped. The workers buzzed around me, setting up. Calmly, I took a sip of my drink and affected a vague smile. I could get that safe open in under a minute, that’s how junky it was. Just pop the little brass logo off, poke through with my paperclip to the reset button and that was that. No need to pass it up before I left the country. If I left now, I’d regret it forever.

  I slipped down the hall toward the master bedroom and then veered off at the last second into the closet with the safe. With the hall free of anyone who might see me, I opened the door, stepped through and shut it behind me. As I’d hoped, the little white hotel safe was now closed where it had once stood open. To either side, the enormous closet was packed tight with a wide assortment of trendy clothing. Though never one for fashion, they were so sparkly and colorful and sheer and exquisite that I couldn’t help running my hands lightly over the closest few, knowing they belonged to someone famous and maybe having just a little of that energy rub off on me.

  Yeah, the rich and famous are people just like the rest of us, but there’s still this unshakable sense of divinity-on-earth about them. I’d experienced a similar feeling after robbing that famous publicist in DC. She’d been at the center of a terrific scandal involving a famous actor who, in a coked-up rage, nearly ran over a tabloid photographer. At the time, everyone was talking about it, with new details of the actor’s out-of-control life coming out each day. The next day, it felt strange to read that same actor’s over-the-top publicist had been robbed of a “fortune” in jewels. I’d gotten about fifteen thousand from Scott Horton—maybe a third its value—but she’d billed it at a quarter million. The talk show hosts oohed and aahed every time she told the story, and for a moment, a tiny bit of the world’s attention had shifted to me. A heady feeling, and dangerous to indulge.

  In no time at all I had the safe open. Isabella Rhodes was a De Beers divorcee, and every picture of her was a bejeweled reminder of that. This safe should have had enough diamonds in it to shame even the most pretentious of publicists. Instead, I found eight composition journals. I pulled them out and scooped around the back of the safe, looking for a false bottom, but there wasn’t one.

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” I said, and opened the topmost journal. The last entry was dated the day before:

  I should not have invited Trevor. I should just go to his house and see him. He’s sweet and normal. He was so nice back in school, before everything got so messed up. I wonder if he will be the same or if I’ll seem the same to him. Things I can say if I don’t know what to say:

  1. Are you still working on your art?

  2. Ask about his brothers, especially Tommy.

  3. When in doubt, turn the conversation back to Elise. I hate to use her like that, but she’s too tiny right now to mind.

  4. Try to find a way to see if he’s involved with someone, and if so, how serious is it. But do NOT sound desperate.

  5. Suggest we go for a walk, then think of something.

  I flipped a few pages back, to a snatch of song or poetry, titled: “LFE without I.”

  Sickness in my heart,

  Keeping me from me,

  Adding two and two,

  And still getting three…

  I needed to move, but this was valuable in a way gold or cash never could be. And yeah I felt like a creep for reading her private journal. But I’ve always been good at tamping down feelings like that, so I picked up another and kept reading.

  After a few pages, I learned Elise was the name of her baby. That had to be her baby in the other room with the unidentified woman. A few pages more and I learned the woman’s name was Harriet, her assistant and sometimes babysitter.

  Then, regretfully, I read this:

  A letter arrived with no return address. Harriet opened it and immediately brought it to me. She was crying. There were photographs of me in it. Copies of the ones taken by Griffin when we were first married and I was stupid and insecure.

  My thumb had found the page easily because the pictures were there, tucked into the spine like a bookmark. I looked at them before I knew what they were, which doesn’t actually get me off the hook, I know. Nothing pornographic. Think Playboy, not Hustler.

  I know they weren’t stolen because there was no note asking for money and the pictures aren’t all over the Internet. He wants me to know he
can destroy me anytime. I told Edward, and he was angrier than I have ever seen him. Men take these things worse than women, even if it doesn’t happen to them. It’s funny, but seeing him get so mad showed me Griffin can never hurt me again, even if the pictures get out. I’m not ashamed of my past. My real fans won’t care at all. To show him, I should leak these photos myself. It’s just my body, so what? Then everyone will think it was HIM, and they will hate him even more. Some of my fans are a little crazy, he has no idea what he’s risking.

  This was way more reality than I’d expected, and I wanted nothing to do with it. Also, something was making me uneasy, and not just the line I’d crossed tonight.

  I closed the journal, packed everything back the way I’d found it and moved to relock the safe—and that’s when the source of my unease came crashing around me.

  “Jesus,” I said, clenching my teeth.

  The way a hotel safe works is, once someone opens it, the combination is erased. To lock it again, I’d have to give it a new combination, and that’d tell Isabella someone had been inside. She’d know that for however long since she’d seen those journals someone could have accessed them. Though I hadn’t meant to, in opening it I’d done as much harm to her as Griffin and his pictures. At least with him she knew where she stood. My not stealing them wasn’t good enough because, for all she knew, I could have scanned the whole lot to use against her or sell or anything I wanted.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I got out a pen, took Tom Harrington’s card, and inserted it in the last page of her journal. Then, underneath the bit about her friend Trevor and the things she’d talk to him about, I wrote with my aviator pen:

  My name is Beauregard Mosley. I’m a jewel thief, not a diary thief. I barely looked inside this journal before I realized what it was and then stopped.

  A white lie, but I thought it’d make her feel better.

  Your business is your own. I don’t blackmail people and I’m not a gossip. If you want to pursue this at a later date, that’s fine, but you may have to wait in line as I’m sure to be arrested as soon as I get home. This card belongs to my lawyer in Virginia, USA. My sincere apologies for any trouble I may have caused you.