Carat Capers

by Dan Kelly

  “She’s something special that’s for sure. I hope her efforts deliver what we’re after.”

  Mickey says, “These people will most likely be wearing disguises, so it will be difficult to pick them out from the crowd. They’ll have to reveal themselves when they try to boost the ruby and then their disguises will be of no use to them. Their crime spree will be over and the fat lady will sing.”

  Chuck says, “Well, while we’re waiting for that to happen can we go get something to eat. My stomach is starting to growl at me. It wants to be fed.”

  Mickey answers with, “I think Lt. Osborne would want us to stay put. He wouldn’t want us wandering around and maybe tipping our quarry off that something is up. I know if the shoe was on the other foot I wouldn’t. I’ll call Mr. Girard and ask him to round up some chow for us.”

  Twenty minutes later there is a basket of French baguettes, a variety of dips for the baguettes, a selection of pasta salads, a fruit bowl with apples, oranges and bananas, a dozen ice cold bottles of water, some French pastries, a large urn of coffee and some paper plates, Styrofoam cups, paper napkins and plastic utensils sitting on the table. There was barely enough room for the monitor and the keyboard.

  Checking out the fare, Mickey starts shaking his head and Vicki asks, “What’s wrong?”

  With obvious phony irritation he answers her with, “Where are the French Fries? Hell, we’re in Quebec! I was expecting some French Fries. No one makes French Fries like the French.”

  A smiling Captain Clancy starts shaking his head and says, “You’ve got to stop hanging around with these two. You’re getting as Looney Tunes as they are.”

  Enjoying the moment, especially the food, Chuck takes a peek through the make shift curtain and notices that the line to the viewing area has shortened considerably. “Like us, people are probably getting something to eat.”

  Another hour goes by with nothing but boredom to pass the time. The line has built back up again, but nothing has occurred to get their adrenaline moving. Looking at the monitor, Vicki sees two men entering the viewing area, one in front of the other, and the one in front pauses and stares at the display as if mesmerized by the beautiful ruby perched on the small pedestal inside the display case. She can’t help feeling a little guilty about tricking these people even if it is for a good cause. After standing there for about fifteen seconds or so, the man draws closer to the display case with his companion close on his heels. They stand side by side and by the looks on their faces they are very impressed by what they are seeing. Then suddenly there’s a bright flash and the monitor’s screen goes blank. “Uh, oh, guys. Something’s gone awry with the camera.”

  Mickey, Chuck and the Captain gather around her and take a look at the blank screen. Mickey starts tapping keys on the keyboard, hoping that he’ll hit the right one to bring the monitor back up. Just as suddenly as the monitor went blank, it comes back to life and Mickey says, “It must have been some kind of glitch in the software or something. I must have hit the correct key to get it up and running again.”

  None of them give the incident a second thought and they all go back to being bored. Another twenty minutes roll by and it’s now Chuck’s turn to watch the monitor. An elderly lady in a wheel chair is entering the viewing area and she rolls up as close as she can to the locked Plexiglas box attached to the display case. After remaining in the same spot for her entire two minutes, she starts to turn her wheelchair in the direction of the exit when one of the chair’s wheels gets hung up on a leg of the display case. After some rocking back and forth against the stand, she manages to get unstuck and leaves the room.

  Looking at the ruby to see how it fared with all of the knocking around, he sees that it’s still in the same position in the locked Plexiglas box, but something’s not right. The ruby appears to be hanging in mid-air and the perch it had been displayed on is now laying on its side on the bottom of the box. Jumping out of his chair he shouts, “How can that be? Something is very wrong, guys.” He points at the monitor and shows them what has his alarm bells going off.

  Using Osborne’s communication gear, Mickey tells him that something’s amiss and to meet him in the display area. Spotting Girard on his way to the display area, he grabs his arm and says, “Come with me. We’ll need your key to open the display box.”

  Needless to say, they were all flabbergasted to find the ruby gone and the hologram in its place. It didn’t take them long to locate the projector stuck to the wall and then to put the pieces together. Vicki says, “They must have switched the ruby with the hologram when our monitor went blank. How they managed to temporarily put it out of commission I haven’t a clue, but somehow they did it.”

  Mr. Girard says, “They could have done that with a high intensity flashlight beam. We have the same thing happen to our monitoring system when the cameras aren’t mounted properly and the overhead lights shine directly into the lenses.”

  Mickey’s temper which has been steadily heating up suddenly reaches the boiling point and he quickly leaves the area to get a grip on himself before he lets loose with a burst of profanity that would make a longshoreman blush. “A hologram! That’s one for the books. It’s obvious I’m a mental midget compared to these geniuses. I not only can’t prove who did the swap, I have no idea how much time has elapsed since the swap was made. They could be miles away from here by now. There probably won’t be any prints on the projector or the Plexiglas box for us to use against them either if we ever get our hands on them. That’s another thing. To pull this off so quickly they must have had a master key to the lock on the display case and a remote device for the projector. I thought I was doing the smart thing by insisting on the case being locked. What a dummy. I should have known a lock wasn’t going to stop these guys. I don’t know how they got that projector on the wall without being seen either. Hell, there’s a lot I don’t know. Man, what a disaster.”

  His anger abating somewhat, Mickey starts walking back to the display area, but Captain Clancy intercepts him and pulls him off to the side for some spontaneous ass chewing with a little pep talk thrown in to ease the pain.

  “Feeling sorry for yourself, Lieutenant? In our job, that’s not allowed. Occasionally losing your temper is, but you don’t walk away from your teammates to do it and have them thinking it’s something they did or didn’t do to piss you off. Everyone in that room is taking blame for this operation going belly up by second guessing themselves and finding things that if they had done them differently would have led to a successful outcome. There are no guarantees in our line of work, Mickey. All we can do is keep on trying to do what’s right. You and the people in that room have given your best. You should know by now that even when you do that, things don’t always turn out the way you’d like them to.”

  “Yes sir. I’d better get back in there and back to work. I’m getting some ideas about how we might still bring these guys down. I’d like to discuss them with Lt. Osborne, and Chuck Ferguson first and once I have them fleshed out I’ll run them by you.”

  “That works for me. I’m now going to pay a visit to Lt. Osborne’s boss and personally thank him for his willingness to work with us on this operation and invite him out for dinner. I’m not flying back to New York until mid-morning tomorrow. You folks are flying back tonight, so we won’t be able to discuss your ideas until I get back to the office.”

  “That’s fine with me, Captain. That will give me the time I need to get all of my ducks in a row.”

  Captain Clancy heads for the taxi stand out front and Mickey heads back to the display area. At first, everyone gives him a wide berth, but after he apologizes for his behavior and explains why he acted the way he did things quickly return to normal.

  As Chuck and Lt. Osborne start picking at the leftovers from lunch while talking to someone on their cell phones, Vicki sidles over to Mickey and whispers in his ear. “You know, Mickey, I’ve heard the F word before and some other equally colorful cuss words as well. If you again feel th
e need to explode with some creative invective to blow off some steam and I’m around, feel free to touch base with me. I’m bilingual. Foul language is my second language. Some of my friends who’ve seen me really angry think it’s my mother tongue.”

  Her out of the blue comments shatters his funny bone and he bursts out laughing which is exactly what she was aiming for. When he manages to catch his breath he says, “Thanks, Vicki, I needed that.”

  “My pleasure, detective.”

  Chuck, finishing up with his phone call, walks over to the two of them and asks, “Where do we go from here, Mickey?”

  “I’ve got a couple of ideas I’d like to run by you two, but not here. I could use a stiff drink. Let’s go back to the hotel, pick up our luggage and spend some quality time in the bar. There are some nice corner tables there where we can sit back and relax in a fair amount of privacy.”

  Lt. Osborne finishes his call and walks over to them. “Lieutenant Morretti, I’m sorry things didn’t go as planned. Please let me know if there are any new developments and if I can be of further assistance don’t hesitate to call. I really thought we had these jokers in the bag.”

  “Thanks for everything, Lieutenant. I’m really in your debt. If you ever need anything from me, I will do my very best to oblige.”

  Lt. Osborne heads back to his office to write up his report on what happened at the trade show today and Mickey, Chuck and Vicki head back to the hotel to soak their frustration in some booze.

  Chapter 52

  When Felix and Amos leave the trade show they immediately head for the border, stopping off at a rest area along the way to change back into the disguises they’re wearing in the pictures on their new passports.

  Amos is holding the ruby in his hand, fondling it like it’s a newborn baby. “I can’t believe we got away with this without a hitch. I’ve got to admit, I got a hell of a rush when we walked out of that viewing area with this beauty in your pocket, but I never want to go through that kind of tension again. That was too up close and personal for my taste.”

  Felix says, “You did good in there, Amos. I knew you would. Now we have to figure out the best way to get that to Pierre. After what went down in Paris, I don’t want to rely on our usual means of shipment. Even before those incidents, Pierre was getting concerned about the continued safety of those shipping methods and he convinced me it would be smart to change the way we move our merchandise around.”

  “A more immediate problem is where to stow this thing before we get to the border. If for some reason the Border Patrol doesn’t believe us when we answer the standard question ‘Do you have anything to declare?’ in the negative, it has to be in a place where they’ll never think to look.”

  “The best place to hide something is right out in the open because everyone thinks no one would be stupid enough to do that. Where’s that spirit gum we used to don these disguises?”

  “In the gym bag on the back seat.”

  “Get it.”

  Amos gets it.

  Taking off the gold chain necklace he’s wearing he says, “Now attach the ruby to the chain with the spirit gum.”

  Amos follows the instructions.

  “Now hand the necklace to me.”

  Amos does.

  Felix hangs it over the rear view mirror and says, “Voilà! My version of a St. Christopher’s medal. I take it with me whenever and wherever I’m driving a car. It’s my good luck charm and it’s also a beautiful piece of cut glass to look at.”

  Amos laughs and says, “I’ll be damned. That’d fool me.”

  When they get to the border, it fools the border patrolman too. When he asks if they have anything to declare and they say no, the guy looks straight at it and comments on how pretty it looks, accepts Felix’s explanation about it without question and waves them through.

  When they arrive back at the Econo Lodge, the message light is on in their room. The message is from Ezra. The folks who own the house they’re going to rent have left for Florida a few days earlier than expected and if Felix and Amos are ready to move in they can drop by his office and pick up the keys.

  Felix says, “The timing is perfect. I was thinking I was going to have to walk around with this in my pocket for the next few days because no way was I going to leave it in this room for a maid to discover and maybe put it in her pocket and disappear.”

  Amos says, “I’m emotionally drained. Let’s ditch these disguises somewhere, go get something to eat and then hit the sack early. We can pick up the keys tomorrow.”

  Felix nods a yes and says, “Alright, let’s do it. Man, what a day! All we’ve got to do now is lay low until the heat cools off and then look out Chile here we come!”

  Always the worry wart Amos says, “I never thought we’d be so stinking rich. Let’s not do anything to screw up the good life that’s waiting for us down there. This has to be our finale. We’ve been pushing the envelope way too long.”

  “Amos, when are you going to learn to go with the flow? Only losers turn their backs on a winning streak. The real winners ride it to the very end.”

  “I’d rather be a stinking rich loser in my hacienda in Chile than a poor loser in a state penitentiary. I’ve had it with the life of crime. You’re on your own now if you get the itch again. I’m not going to help you scratch it. This time no manner of convincing will change my mind.”

  “Okay, if that’s the way you want it.” “Damn, I think he really means it this time.”

  Chapter 53

  Sitting in the hotel bar commiserating with each other over the disappointing results of their well thought out plan Chuck eventually asks, “What are the ideas you want to run by us?”

  “To put it succinctly, I think it’s time for a full court press. Subtleness, trickery, patient doggedness, sneakiness, clandestine prying, whatever words you elect to use to describe our attempts to corner these suckers, nothing has worked. It’s time for blatant pursuit with a vengeance. It’s time to put so much pressure on them they’ll burst with apprehension and throw caution to the wind to get out of the spotlight. Scared people are a lot more likely to make mistakes than those who feel they are safe and secure.”

  Chuck reacts with, “Okay, Mickey, you’ve got my attention. How about fleshing this out with some details?”

  “I’m suggesting we go to the mass media, both print and broadcast, and ask them to spread on a saturation basis a general public BOLO for these people, showing the pictures we have of them and using their real names and telling their readers and audiences about the horrific things they have been doing. We might even offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of these dredges on society. We can include in the script that folks should be on the alert for these people wearing disguises since we now are pretty damn sure they’ve been wearing them during their robberies, at least some of them.

  “I’m suggesting that we put a special emphasis on getting the security people at airports, train stations, bus stations, immigration and customs people, car rental employees and cab drivers involved in the search for these crumbs and hold out the reward to them as well.

  “I’m suggesting we do everything we can think of to get them so rattled they’ll be looking over their shoulders so much they’ll develop permanent cricks in their necks and look like crabs when they’re walking around.

  “I want to push them into a stage of panic so severe that their fear of capture will override any sense of caution they may still possess and push them into making the kinds of mistakes that will remove them from society once and for all.

  “I want to freeze their assets, everyone we can locate, so they won’t have the financial resources to help them elude capture. Hell, I might even consider putting out Wanted Dead or Alive posters! I want them sweating blood, peeing in their pants, shaking in fear.

  “How’s that for fleshing things out?”

  “It works for me.”