“Hmm. Indeed.” Eyebrows semaphored in the pawnshop stillness. Moth flying.
“Like I said on the phone, I wondered what you had in the way of radios.”
“Interesting you should ask. For cars, you said?” He brought three paper bags out from under the counter. He opened one bag and placed a lozenge on the counter. “This radio”—he emphasized the word lovingly—“has a quarter mile range and very low power consumption—the mike sits on this end, and there’s a magnet to hold it in place.”
The Moth brought out a radio from the second bag, like a conjuring trick. “This one is very serious—for long-term monitoring. This behind-dash radio needs to be wired into a power source, and it has a clip lead that allows it to use the FM antenna in the car as a transmitter.”
Audibly humming, he drew a third radio out of its crinkling paper bag. “I like this radio the best. I call it the ‘Whisker’ because of the six inch antenna.” He teased the thin wire that sprang out of the casing. “You attach the mike anywhere you want—it’s wireless and has its own power. The transmitter and antenna fit beautifully behind the bumper, but I have heard they can also slide inside the roof rack on SUVs.” His hands caressed the bug. “It’s Israeli.”
“What’s the transmission distance?”
“Two miles.”
“And the battery life?”
“About five days. They’re lithium.”
“How much for the Whisker?”
“For you, eight hundred but that includes batteries. I also have a digital receiver/recorder that matches the Whisker’s frequency spectrum. It’s three hundred.”
“I’ll take them both.” He counted out twelve bills and left them on the counter. The Moth had an aversion to the touch of others.
“I only have a manual in Hebrew and French, but the drawings are good.” The Moth dropped an old-fashioned sheaf of paper on the glass.
Robko glanced at the copied pages. “I can puzzle this out. I also thought I’d pick up a com-set.”
“Ah, yes. Mmm. Mmm.” The Moth poked around in a cabinet, his eyes darting back to Robko to ensure he didn’t move.
“I only need two, not for a whole team.”
The Moth returned to the counter with his hands full. He let out a full toothy smile, an awful sight. “Here we have our traditional model. The Russian Secret Service uses these. The radio clips onto your belt. Tape the mike on your neck or your wrist, and stick the wired earbud in. The transmitter encrypts based on a revolving code. It uses regular wireless network frequencies, but it’s digital, and therefore hard to pick up on scan. A thousand dollars… for a pair of course.”
“Anything less obvious?”
The Moth twisted his torso with delight. “I do have something new. It’s made with smart phones like your iMob. The phone appears to have regular Bluetooth to plug in your ear, but with unique controls. You have a speed dial, a mute button, and a built in camera on the Tooth. The camera is video and can work in infrared. Comes two to a box, hooks up through regular mobile service but encrypts. Practically a consumer product and only three thousand for the set. Unique.”
“I’ll buy the smart phone coms.” He counted out more cash. It disappeared below the counter. “Hmm, you wouldn’t have some clean license plates would you? For a car and a motorcycle?”
“No for the motorcycle, yes for the car. It’s off a wrecked vehicle and won’t drop out into the system for ten, eleven months.”
“How much?”
“One fifty, and a deal at that.”
“Sure, the plate also.” Robko dealt out more cash. With a whisk of a gray hand the money disappeared off the counter.
“Anything else this fine day? Weapons? Sleeping aids? Incendiary devices?” The Moth placed the two unsold bugs back into their bags and shoved them under the counter.
“Maybe later, as plans firm up.”
***
Thomas didn’t know why he hadn’t done the phone thing before. He booked a room in a restaurant down in Little Italy where he would take his team to lunch. Ducking out early, he caught a cab down to Delancey and hopped off in the Bowery not far from Zlata’s loft. He bought two pay-as-you-go mobiles in two different mini-shops and then walked down to the restaurant. He waited out front at the hostess podium.
When Angie and the crowd milled through the front door, he told them, “They’re expecting us. Go on into the back room, and make your drink orders. I just have to rehash something with Ms. Tommo.” He nodded to Angie. “Step up to the bar.”
They leaned on the mahogany rail, and she tilted her face towards him, a glowing Mediterranean oval that charmed him. “What is it, Thomas?”
“Face the bottles, Angie. Legal and Insurance probably read lips.” She did as he asked. “Slip this vidi in your purse. I’ve bought another for myself, and we’ll use them for key calls. I turned off my regular vidi, so I can’t be tracked. You might want to do the same.”
She palmed the mobile. “I left my real phone in the office last night before I sneaked off to Staten Island. How we found Sibyl just popped into my head.”
He texted her. “Here’s my new number.”
“You have a safe place to stay?”
“Yeah, I have a flop up in the Bronx.”
“Flop? Your language becomes more colorful by the day.”
He mugged and growled an old-time Bronx accent out of the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. Youse is gettin’ da pik-cha.”
She laughed, a bell trilling out.
He leaned closer. “Let’s go entertain the troops. But before we do, I want to ask you to think about something. If you wanted to lock the Governor down, how would you do it? Just think about it again.”
***
They bugged the bond broker’s German car easily enough—Robko used the operation as a training exercise for Sibyl. They disabled the alarm, defeated the locks, and placed the bug within ten minutes. Fun over, the real work began, following the jerk around. By the second day, Robko found Sibyl less than gracious.
“Boring, boooring. You could at least let me drive.”
“You drive too fast. You’d be on his bumper all the time.”
“Try me. I know the difference between shadowing and just belting down the Parkway.”
He pulled over to the curb. “Okay, let’s change over quick. He’s at the light just ahead.”
“Like I haven’t memorized the ass end of his car.” They swapped quick and smooth and caught back up. She had been right; she tailed better than he expected.
Robko picked up the receiver and screwed the earbud in. “He’s on the vidi again—golf date—now he’s got the tee time. Hanging up—calling for dinner reservations at Chez le Poconos or something.”
“Robert, you don’t have to keep up a running monologue. It’s very irritating.”
He hmmphed. “It’s exactly what you did when you rode in this seat.”
“Just tell me the good stuff. Appointments to meet celebrities. Phone sex. News about bonds.”
“Sure.”
She drove for fifteen minutes through stiff traffic. Silence filled the van except for road noise. “What’s happening now?”
“Not phone sex.”
“What then?”
“You didn’t want to know.” He wagged his finger at her, and she bit at the end of it.
She scowled. “Well, the occasional update would be good.”
“You lucked out with the timing on the driver switch. He’s punched in a motivational sales course on his sat radio. Wait, incoming call—you’ll like this. The office confirmed an armed delivery of bearer bonds.”
“How much?”
He heard that quiet sound of greed in her voice, a smoothness like sexual arousal. “Two fifty. For a couple named Tony and Amanda Petersen. They’ve been notified and will drive in from Laurel Canyon this afternoon at three for pickup.”
“I always wanted to ask, what do you do with bearer bonds?”
“Anything you do with cash. Ille
gal things. Also, bonds are far less bulky. Ordinary money in big bills is traceable, and of course, unhygienic.”
“So where is Laurel Canyon?” She followed the broker’s car through a left turn, timed it so they remained back a hundred yards and just clipped the yellow light.
He had his vidi out. “I’ll look it up now. Here they are. They’re in the book—I’ve got their address and phone now. Mulholland Drive. Let me see it on a map. 3D? Sure, why not. Beautiful house, Sibyl. It would be nice to visit.”
“I don’t think they’ll invite you over.”
“You guess? We’ll slap on the landscaping sign and the new plate and drive by this afternoon, while the Petersens pick up their bonds. You can take surveillance photos with that beautiful camera.”
“Why drive by at all?”
“I want to know who their security company is. That would eliminate a lot of alarm types. I need to focus us on the two or three alarms to prepare for. And there’s some information we might want to buy from an old acquaintance, if we can tell him the company.”
“When does it get dangerous? That’s what I want to know.”
Chapter Nineteen: The Known Devil
Thomas, Garland, LeFarge—all received the summons from the Personal Assistant to appear before O’Brien to report their successes and to be chastised for their slowness, none of them to be exempted. Garland and Thomas marched up to the PA’s desk at the same time and shot each other an oblique glance. The PA scurried in front of them to the Governor’s door and held it open. As they strode in, Don stopped with a jerk, one step in. Thomas caromed into him. Thomas peered over Don’s shoulder to see three people immersed in O’Brien’s magnificent couch: O’Brien himself, LeFarge, and sitting between them, a young woman. Don whispered, eyes wide, “Is that who I think it is?”
Thomas murmured in his ear, “Isobel Dupont, minus her goth-girl look. You said she had an accommodation with LeFarge.”
“But I thought her as house slave, not out-and-about… much less anywhere in public with the Governor.”
“Don, we look like fools, stuck here in the door.” Garland took a couple of steps, swung back into stride. As they approached, O’Brien patted Isobel on her knee and whispered a word to her. She rose with a shrug and strolled towards the executive bathroom hidden behind the wall. As she ducked in, she glanced at Garland and Thomas over her shoulder, flat-faced, expressionless.
As the two newcomers joined them, O’Brien continued his conversation with LeFarge in a low voice. Garland wavered at O’Brien’s elbow, standing at half attention, but Thomas dropped onto the couch beside LeFarge. “Morning, Egan.”
“Just a minute, Tommy,” said O’Brien. The Governor leaned into LeFarge’s face. “So, you did get rid of those hotheads?”
LeFarge lolled in the couch, an arm thrown over the back. “No problem. The rest of the team is as volatile as a pack of bookkeepers. We’re ready to deploy as and where you say.”
O’Brien pivoted, put his elbows on his knees, tipped that giant head up at Thomas and Garland. “Egan awaits information that can lead him to the memflashes and to Zlata. Information from you two. I know you’ll have something to contribute this fine bright morning.” He leaned back into the overstuffed couch and showed his teeth in a cheerless smile.
Thomas said, “Not anything conclusive for you today. The company we identified is definitely working a memflash to bend the judge. Now we need to figure out which officer has it.”
“It’ll be the CEO. I know him, the bastard,” said O’Brien.
“Possible. But it could be the Chief Operating Officer. And there’s a Board member who is the original founder’s grandson and who likes to strut his stuff.”
“So when will you know?” asked O’Brien.
“We’re following the money. One of the three will have made a substantial withdrawal recently to buy the memdevice.”
Nodding like a bobble-head doll, Garland said, “We’re cooperating on this. All three men were in Belgium last week, and we confirmed an auction in Brussels occurred about the same time. Motive, opportunity, resources.” He rocked from one foot to the other.
“So when will you know?” asked LeFarge.
Thomas replied, “Tomorrow probably, the day after for sure. Both Don and I would prefer the financial team under our General Counsel get the memdevice back, using the right pressure points.”
LeFarge said, “That wouldn’t be up to you now, would it?”
Garland reached out his hands towards O’Brien, diverting the Governor away from LeFarge. He looked like a supplicant standing there. “I propose we find the new owner first. There’s lots of work left to do.”
O’Brien said, “Next time find out about the auctions or sales before they happen, so I can send Thomas to work it. Moving on, what about Zlata?”
Thomas said, “The only new thing we have on Zlata is really about the priest.” His eyes bored into LeFarge. “It turns out some family members with unsavory reputations have feelers out. They want his killer.”
LeFarge ducked his head to hide a smirk.
Thomas plunged on. “Speaking of dangerous family members, isn’t Ms. Dupont another risk for you? And us?”
LeFarge raised his eyes to Thomas and stared hard at him. “You take it head on, don’t you, Steward.”
Thomas felt lucky. “Simple question, LeFarge.”
O’Brien grinned and scrutinized the two men. He watched to see which would break the hard stare first.
Garland shifted from foot to foot and made a shuffling sound in the deep carpet. “It is irregular. How much does she know?”
O’Brien waved him off. “Both Egan and I quite like the young woman. We have an understanding with her, and certain—constraints—have been placed upon her independence. Not that it’s your business. Your business is finding Zlata and my property.”
“Well,” said Garland in a tight voice, “we better get to it then.” He pivoted and headed for the door.
Thomas strolled out of the office. In retrospect it was all a case of “what have you done for me today?” He slipped a yellow pill in his mouth and swallowed it dry.
***
They crouched in the California thicket, halfway into a gully, and watched the house across the way. The chamisa breathed out an acrid, compelling perfume, dusting their clothes. The creosote bush Robko gripped smelled like tar. “You know, we don’t need the money yet. One last time before we do this. We can delay. I’m willing to treat this as a future bank and make the withdrawal when we need it.”
“We’re not here because we need the money.”
“Why are we here?”
“Because you remember stealing turns me on, and you want to make it with me.”
“Well, that could be a motivator. I’ll lead; you follow.”
“How about I follow, you lead?”
Robko dropped further into the gully and scaled the other side. Under the house, he seized a steel column that supported the deck. Using his feet and hands, he shinnied up the post like a palm tree. He knew when Sibyl began her climb. The soles of her shoes made high-pitched squeaks, and he could hear her breath go ragged and heavy. Now his head was just beneath the deck’s underside. He reached his left hand up. He rolled up and under the railing, lay flat on the deck, and peered over the edge. He dropped his hand to her.
“About time,” she said. She grabbed his wrist with first one hand then the other. Her weight loaded full on to his arm. She scrambled up his arm like a monkey and grabbed the bottom rail.
“You have your knee on my head.”
“Lucky for you I’m so light.”
They strode up to the doors. He bowed to her and extended his hand to the sheets of glass. “After you.”
She fished in the pouch strapped to her waist. Within a minute, she had the face off an innocuous box and had clipped into the house’s wires. Punching the buttons on the sequencer, she stared, hypnotized as it tried code after code. He watched the deck, the neighborho
od, and the driveway at the end of the house. “Got it.” The automatic controls opened the wall of glass and folded it back, forming concertinas at each end. The living room waited, a dark cave that lurked behind the deck.
They palmed flashlights and entered, searching for the floor safe they knew had been purchased four years before. The safe hid beneath a credenza—he toggled the switch on the back, and the left end wheeled humming into the room. “Go ahead. Just like the rehearsal.”
She knelt in the space that had opened. A square cut out of the parquet revealed the face of the safe, quite large. She began to work.
He slipped off to cover the front. He hovered in the dark of the house, listening and intent. Through the open door, he could discern the faint hum of traffic, ever-present in Los Angeles. He could hear a passing flight out of LAX, and a clock in the hall ticking. He could catch the sound of a faint scratching and a high-speed whining. For five minutes he waited and watched the portico and parking pad outside. When the drill stopped, he slipped back to the living room.
“Ready,” she said. He handed her the bulky gloves and the Dewar flask. She leaned well away and tipped the flask, slow, slow. Some of the nitrogen vaporized in midair. A drop of it bounced around on the safe front, boiling and jitterbugging about. A thin stream arced down into the hole in the safe front.
“Not too much. You don’t want to break free into the interior. Not too little, or the works won’t shatter and release the bars.”
She shot him a sneer. “You’ve said that eighty-four times already, you forty-watt ass. Is that enough?”
“Yes. If not, we’ll soon know.”
She corked the flask—she reached down and tried the lever, easing it sideways and then jerking it up. The bars shattered, and the safe opened.
She brought out a jewelry case first, then some watch cases, and with a flourish, the bearer bonds. Other documents lay secreted below, and those she shoved into the backpack with the bonds for future inspection. She cleaned up the scene while he stood in the door, listening to the front of the house. She wriggled into the backpack straps.
The Big Wheel Page 18