Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

by Bill Mason

  There was nothing I could do to stop any of this, but there was something I could do to begin protecting myself. “When do I get my phone call?” I asked King, who appeared to be in charge.

  “Phone call? Whadda you need a phone call for? You’re right here with your wife!”

  “My wife’s not a lawyer,” I said without rancor. “Come on, let me make my call.”

  He walked me to the kitchen, recuffed me in the front and watched as I brought the phone to my ear and held it there with my shoulder as I dialed with my manacled hands. I phoned my neighbor across the street. He was a lawyer, as was another neighbor, and they were both over in less than two minutes. They’d seen the commotion and were prepared, but told me they weren’t criminal attorneys. “We got another guy waiting in the wings,” one of them said. I told them to make the call, and a few minutes later a lawyer named Howard Zeidwig showed up.

  “Not a word” was the first thing he said to me as he walked into the house. He hadn’t needed an introduction to know who was who: I was the only one wearing handcuffs, which were now behind me again.

  “Haven’t said anything,” I told him, and he nodded in approval.

  A few minutes later the lead detective reappeared. “So what’s this?” he asked as he jiggled a canvas bag up and down.

  “For all my client knows,” Zeidwig answered, “it’s your lunch. Why’d you bring it into the house?”

  Detective King had heard it all and wasn’t fazed by this wiseacre attorney. “We just found it. Out in the garage.”

  “Where, exactly?” Zeidwig asked.

  “Under a pile of junk. Paint cans, stuff like that.” King opened the top and held it toward us. Diamonds, a couple of emeralds and a gold filigree bracelet gleamed out. There was also a large number of silver coins. “Maybe your client can tell us where he got these.”

  “Yeah,” my lawyer responded, “and maybe he can tell you how he killed Kennedy.”

  I almost blurted out that the silver coins were mine. They were, but that would be as good as admitting the rest of the stuff wasn’t, so I stayed quiet.

  The detective laughed good-naturedly. Here were two old professional bullshit artists, wary but mutually respectful, playing a game whose sole purpose was for each of them to feel out how savvy the other was. It didn’t take them long to figure out that they could skip the usual tricks that worked only on rookies.

  “What’s next?” Zeidwig asked. “You haven’t booked him yet.”

  “Taking him down right now. You coming?”

  The lawyer looked at his watch, and I knew what was going through his mind: It was still early enough in the day to get a bail hearing, so he’d come with me. Had it been later, there would have been nothing useful he could have done and he wouldn’t have wasted his time.

  He told Barbara to head for the bank and wait there. I was taken to the station and booked, and bail was set at seven thousand dollars. Zeidwig called Barb, who withdrew the money, came down and got me out. Barely four hours after I’d been taken at the motel, I was back home.

  Barb had sent the terrified kids to a neighbor’s, so the first order of business was to get them back into their own house, show them it was still the same and try to settle them down. I gave them a sugarcoated version of events, about how it had all been a mistake, but the cops were so angry it would take us awhile to straighten everything out. I stayed with them a long time, for obvious reasons, but also because I dreaded going back to the living room to face Barb. I knew exactly how she’d react, and I was right.

  She didn’t ask what I’d done, didn’t speak accusingly, didn’t get mad and threaten to leave me or stick my old promises in my face. She asked a lot of questions about what was going to happen, and what she needed to do, and what the likely outcomes were. In other words, she was doing exactly what I’d dreaded, which was being 100 percent supportive.

  Which isn’t to say she wasn’t badly shaken about what had happened that afternoon, or very frightened about what was to come, and that only made it worse. What kind of a complete shitheel would do to a sweet and decent woman what I’d done to Barb? Here was a rock-solid wife who loved me completely, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself from causing her pain. I had a million rationalizations ready to tell myself—I didn’t know I was going to get caught, it was a bullshit bust and the cops knew it, I was just trying to give us a better life—but all of them were sad and sickening in light of this beautiful, trembling woman with red-rimmed eyes doing her best to hold everything together.

  I wanted to explain things to her anyway, and I told her the truth, at least as I knew it at that time and with one or two details slightly modified. On the face of it, everything I told her was plausible because technically I really hadn’t done anything at the hotel, and the cops had truly fucked up. It was the same story I would tell the prosecutors later. The hotel was up for sale—true—and I’d gone to look things over. I sat on the beach for a while observing the kind of clientele they attracted and the service they provided. Then I went inside to check the condition of the common areas and guest rooms. A bunch of rooms were open, so I went in one to have a look. It was unoccupied, and not just for the moment, either: Nobody was checked in, there was no personal property in it and the chambermaids were airing it out. I was in there for no more than a few minutes, then opened the door to leave and got jumped by a team of cops. I had no idea what they’d been doing there—that was the truth, too—and no idea how they happened onto me. The fact that they knew my name had floored me, and, thinking back on it, it was clear they hadn’t just recognized me on the spot. They’d known it was me in the room before they ever saw me in it.

  I couldn’t easily explain why I had master keys to the entire hotel on me. There is nothing inherently illegal about that as long as you didn’t steal the keys, but the definition of “burglary tools” is fluid and dependent on context. If you have a screwdriver, crowbar and power drill on you and you happen to be in your basement rebuilding a cabinet, you’re on safe ground. But if you’re carrying those same items near a bank at three A.M., you’re in possession of burglary tools. Those are obvious examples, with which few would find argument, but carrying master keys inside a hotel in broad daylight when you’re a licensed real estate agent and the property is for sale is not exactly an airtight case for intent to commit a crime. That I was intending to commit a crime is, of course, entirely beside the point, and I hadn’t been intending to rob it at that time. I was planning to return at night, but only if I thought it worthwhile, and I hadn’t made that determination yet, so was I guilty of anything? You see how convoluted this can get.

  There wasn’t anything convoluted about one of the other charges, though, and that was possession of stolen property. I didn’t know for a fact that they could prove any of that stuff they found in my house had been stolen, but I was starting to think they knew a bit more than I’d first assumed.

  I didn’t share all of this with Barb as we sat and spoke, and she wouldn’t have been interested in the details anyway. I knew there were only two questions on her mind. One was what was going to happen to me this time, and the other was what about next time. I wasn’t holding out much hope that I was going to walk away from the bust, and even less that I would learn any permanent lessons from the situation. In my heart I was ready to swear on my kids’ lives that I’d finally go straight and stay that way, and I really believed it, too. But my mind was telling me something else, that I’d been at this crossroads before, felt just as committed to quitting the life, held out for as long as I could and then lapsed. It’s what a serial dieter must feel like every time he overeats, or a heroin addict right after he shoots up, or a gambler when he loses his last dime for the hundredth time: This is it, man, I’ve had it. It just isn’t worth the grief and I don’t need it anymore.

  Textbook denial, the standard response of the hard-core addict.

  I had a ten o’clock appointment with Zeidwig the next morning. I was on time but cooled my h
eels for an hour waiting for him. When he finally arrived, he apologized for being late and explained it was because he’d been trying to work out a deal with the detectives and assistant district attorney. “I think you’re going to like this,” he said with a self-satisfied grin and a wink.

  We went into his private office and sat down. Zeidwig leaned back in his big leather chair and put his hands behind his head. “They seem to be more interested in closing cases than in putting you away for possessing supposedly stolen property.”

  Supposedly? “Then they don’t know where that stuff came from?”

  “Near as I can tell, they’re still working on it. Stuff like that, though . . .” He shook his head. “Pretty heavy goods. If it came from around here, from southern Florida, they’ll track it down eventually.”

  He was right about that. Even if the cops weren’t interested, insurance company investigators would be, and those guys talked to each other a lot. “So what’s the deal?”

  Zeidwig brought his chair forward and put his elbows on his desk. “Tell them exactly where it came from and they’ll give you immunity in each of those cases. If they have to find out themselves, they’ll prosecute you for every one.” He meant prosecute me for receiving stolen property, since it would be difficult to prove I was the original thief.

  “What about the Ramada business?”

  Zeidwig shrugged and sat back once again. “That stands. They’ll pursue the case against you. I guess they have to justify all that manpower.”

  Why justify it using me? “You telling me all those cops at the hotel, they were there for me?”

  Zeidwig blinked, confused by my question. “Obviously.”

  “But why would they be tailing me?”

  The police, Zeidwig explained, told him that they’d first become aware of me while investigating an unrelated matter at Lago Mar, a very swank place in Harbor Beach just east of Fort Lauderdale. I’d been there over a month before. “They saw you back your car into a parking space and then walk around to the hotel.”

  I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “And . . . ?”

  “And . . . that’s it.”

  I was starting to wonder if my lawyer had asked them any follow-up questions at all, or just believed every single thing they told him. “So you’re telling me they saw a guy back a car into a parking space at some hotel and decided to assign half the police force to follow him for a month?”

  “They said you backed in to hide the rear license tag.” Zeidwig must have realized how utterly ridiculous he sounded, because he tried to get off the topic quickly. “Who’d you think they were at the Ramada for?”

  “How the hell should I know? I wasn’t doing anything!”

  “So how come you were wiping your fingerprints off an inside knob in a guest room?”

  I was too stunned to answer right away and preferred to let the implications sink in first. Wiping fingerprints? “Howard, I have no idea what the hell they’re talking about!”

  Zeidwig’s expression began to devolve into the standard we-both-know-you’re-full-of-shit-but-I’ll-be-polite-because-you’re-my-client mask of studied neutrality, but I wasn’t having it. “Goddamnit, I wasn’t doing anything of the kind! They’re blowing smoke up your ass!”

  “What can I tell you? True or not, it’s four cops against one alleged perp, and there wasn’t anybody else who saw you in the room.” He was right about that. “Although they do have a civilian witness. A woman from Connecticut named Jean Tierney.”

  Connecticut? “What does someone from Connecticut have to do with—”

  “That was her room they found you in, number 127. She’ll come down and testify that she was registered to it, which establishes that it was occupied, which makes it a lot easier for them to prove you were committing robbery.”

  “Howard, that room was completely empty,” I tried to explain. “The door was wide open because they were airing it out. Chambermaids don’t do that with occupied rooms.”

  “I believe you,” he protested, holding up his hands like I was wasting my breath trying to convince him. “But maybe she was exceptionally neat and kept everything in drawers.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Perhaps. But how are you going to argue with them? If you tell them you looked in the drawers, then you were robbing the room.” He waited for that, his only triumph in this irritating conversation, to sink in, then said, “I recommend you take the deal, Bill.”

  Sure he did. He would walk away with a fat fee and no loss at trial on his record. His failure to poke at the police at all—a standard tactic to let them know you thought their case was hogwash and planned to fight them tooth and nail—let me know I was on my own to analyze this in terms of my self-interest, not his.

  It took about ninety seconds. “I want it in writing that I walk on any case I tell them about, and I want all the silver coins back they took from my house. Those are mine.”

  Zeidwig, relieved that I was going for it and no longer challenging his commitment to my case, ushered me back into the waiting room so he could make the call. Less than a minute later he came out. “We have a deal.”

  He didn’t know the half of it.

  We met with Detective King early the next morning. He handed me two copies of the written agreement and a pen. “Sign these and let’s get to it.”

  When Zeidwig didn’t do anything, I took the papers, ignored the pen and sat down to read. Without looking at him, I could sense King fuming as I took my time.

  “It’s pretty standard wording, Bill,” Zeidwig said.

  “How would you know?” I said without looking up. “You haven’t read it.”

  “Listen—” King began, but I reached out for his pen and he quieted down. As soon as I had it, I began crossing out sentences and paragraphs and writing in the margins.

  “What the hell are you doing!” he snarled.

  “Just want it to say what we agreed.”

  “It already does. What are you trying to pull, Mason?”

  “Pull?”

  “I signed it, didn’t I?”

  “You wrote it!” I stopped writing and looked at him, then at my lawyer. “Does anybody in this room expect me to put my signature to a document I don’t agree with?”

  Zeidwig, who clearly just wanted to get this whole episode over with, nevertheless didn’t have much choice in answering that question. “Course not. So what’s the problem?”

  “Couple of things. For one, there’s all this legal gobbledygook I don’t understand. I want this in plain English.” I read from my own writing: “ ‘Mr. Mason will receive immunity for everything he tells the police.’ That’s what the deal was, right?”

  “And that’s what it says,” King insisted.

  “The hell it does.”

  King reached out and took the document himself. I think he saw the deal falling apart and was starting to sweat. I was banking on the fact that he’d already had it reported right up to the police commissioner that he was about to close three or four frustrating cases, and all he needed was to go back to them and say that he’d blown the whole thing because of wording problems in the written agreement.

  He read for a few seconds, then sat down and started writing his own stuff. “First off, it’s not anything you say, it’s anything you say today, during the ride-around.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. We negotiated for about twenty more minutes, Zeidwig occasionally chirping in because he was, after all, supposed to be my attorney. Truth was, though, I didn’t want him too involved. I had an agenda and hadn’t bothered filling him in on it.

  “Now I gotta go get this typed,” King said at last.

  “No, you don’t,” Zeidwig said. “Both of you initial each change, make a photostat and it’s perfectly legal.”

  We did that, and then it was down to the squad car. King drove, I was in the front passenger seat and Zeidwig was behind me. “Okay,” King said as we pulled out of the parking lot. “Start singing.” He really
said it just like that.

  Hard to believe, but I kind of liked Detective King. He’d been nothing but polite, even friendly, since this whole business began. I think his attitude was that as long as a perp wasn’t giving him any trouble, there was no reason not to be civil. That was a pretty enlightened way to behave, and I felt a little bad about what I was getting ready to do to him. I hoped he wouldn’t hold it against me but knew he would. Big-time.

  I waited until we were out in the street and said, “Well, there was the Fountainhead job.”

  King blinked a few times, then said, “The what?”

  “The Fountainhead. The one where—”

  “I know what the goddamned Fountainhead job is.” His eyes grew wide and he turned to me. “You telling me that was you?”

  “Yep. Hey, watch the road!”

  He jerked his attention back to his driving, which had been fine, but I just wanted to throw him off a bit. At a red light he pulled a small black notebook out of his shirt pocket and made a note.

  “Armand Hammer, too,” I said, as casually as I could.

  “Bullshit!” King retorted, anger beginning to sound in his voice. “Like hell you did Hammer! Bullshit!”

  I decided not to answer right away, to give his anger time to die down, and also to let the implications of what I’d just confessed sink in. The Hammer score had never been mentioned in the press.

  “Bullshit,” King repeated, but more softly this time. “Nobody even knew about that job. The Hammers, their insurance company and a couple of cops. We kept it quiet. Nobody else—”

  “The thief knew,” I reminded him.