The Buffalo Job

by Mike Knowles

  I leaned in to the voice box installed in the Plexiglas. “Sorry, kid, he’s just pissed he had to come today. We had to listen to the music on the way in, discuss the best characters on the way from the car. Tommy just wants to get in enough trouble to get his butt sent to the car. That way he can sit there and listen to a game on the radio instead of the ‘Banana Song’ for the hundredth time.”

  The kid laughed. “I get it, man. I get it. I’ve been listening to this stuff for weeks. I’m about ready to kill myself.”

  I left the ticket booth and found Miles standing with Carl and Ilir a few feet from the stairs leading up to the theatre floor. The three men turned when I caught up and then started walking. I tilted my head towards Miles and spoke just loud enough for him to hear. “You’re good with your mouth, better than most I’ve met. But you need to learn when to open your mouth and when to keep it shut. We need to spend some time here looking around, and that won’t be easy if some kid at the ticket booth thinks we’re into kids and lets every usher know where we are. And nothing sets off someone’s radar like a person denying something. You say you’re not into kids, he automatically thinks you are. And once someone forms a thought about you, it’s next to impossible to change it.”

  Miles looked at me; the glibness was gone. Underneath the smiles and jokes he wore like armour was something else. Something I had not seen before.

  “Kid touchers are shy,” I said. “Did you know that? They try their damndest to go unnoticed, but their size on the playground always gives them away. The one thing they never do on their own is engage with people. The second they engage, they open themselves up to questions they can’t answer.”

  I stopped talking long enough to hand my ticket to an elderly usher. She gestured towards the rear of the theatre and we set off.

  “Why would four men of varying ages go see a children’s concert?”

  “I have no idea,” Miles said.

  “Exactly. No one does. The burden isn’t on you to invent a reason. If you put an idea into someone’s head, their brain pulls at it like it’s a loose thread hanging from a sweater. But if you let them come up with the idea on their own, they leave it be. Short eyes want to go unnoticed, right?”

  Miles nodded.

  “So get noticed. Let the teller notice you doing something that they wouldn’t do. Something like showing up in a group and buying a bunch of tickets. The kid behind the glass gave us a look, but that’s all it was — a look. He wasn’t concerned, or angry — just momentarily interested. His brain was writing a script and he would have bought his own fiction until he forgot about us. Except you —”

  “Put a word into his head.”

  I nodded. “You would have been better off to talk about something that is considered safe to the masses. Something in the opposite spectrum of deviancy.”

  “Like sports,” Miles said.

  “Like sports,” I said. “Sports are based on teamwork, fair play, family. Sports don’t occupy the same space as child molestation in the public’s perception. People don’t really know child molesters, you can count on that, but they are well versed in what they saw on Law & Order. That kind of knowledge has a rigid structure — things are black or white. If you know that, you can bypass all of the triggers and they will automatically file you into some other category.”

  Miles nodded again. “Most jobs don’t have heart-to-hearts like these.”

  I ignored the con man as we approached another usher checking tickets and helping people find their seats. I spoke first. “I swear to God, if they don’t lose Jeter, I’m going to become a Red Sox fan.”

  Miles picked up where I left off. “You’re crazy. It’s not Jeter’s fault. They got no defence.”

  The usher took my ticket and I caught his eye. “Tell my brother he’s crazy.”

  The usher was another senior citizen. The old man was likely a pensioner supplementing a meagre income with some work that required little movement. “I like Jeter,” he said. “I like those girls he brings to the game, too.” The old man laughed and everyone joined in. Everyone except me.

  “That’s the fucking problem,” I said. “He’s too focused on the girls instead of the game.”

  The language sobered the usher and he glanced around to make sure none of the kids had heard the word I had used. He pulled out of the conversation all together and went for a gesture instead. He pointed out our seats and waved us on. We stopped at our row of seats and turned to survey the chaos. Kids were everywhere — running in the aisles, eating out of reusable containers, crying, and pulling their parents towards the washroom. Floating in the sea of chaos were vested ushers doing their best to keep everyone sitting down.

  “Miles, Carl,” I said. “You need to use the washroom. On the way, see if you can get backstage passes.”

  “Got it,” Carl said understanding my meaning.

  When they left, Ilir said, “So you’re in charge, hunh.”

  “Miles can get pensioners to sign over everything they worked their whole lives to earn. Getting backstage at a children’s concert should be boring for him. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get antsy and decide to pick someone’s pocket.”

  “So what are we doing?”

  “I need to get upstairs and into those offices,” I said.

  “What about me?”

  “You stay here and get the lay of the land. I want to know how this place operates. Where do the ushers stand? Where do the performers enter and leave from? Are there places in and out that we don’t know about?”

  “Alright, no problem,” Ilir said. He wasn’t giving me his full attention. The ass of the young mother two rows up from us was siphoning about seventy-five percent. “No problem.”

  Free of my partner, I walked out into the aisle. I scanned the crowd and saw Miles and Carl speaking with one of the ushers. Miles took something from his pocket and showed it to the usher. A few seconds later, the usher was guiding Miles backstage with a helping hand on his back. I grinned at the con man and then started back for the lobby. There was what looked like a last surge of people flooding in before the curtain was set to rise. Everywhere employees were busy working or answering questions. I flagged down the most exasperated-looking person wearing a name tag I could find. The woman was in her mid-forties and not wearing a red vest like the other old ushers. The woman had brown hair streaked heavily with blonde and too much mascara. She had a walkie-talkie in her hand and frowned at my interruption. “I’m with the show. Tom needs to speak with the person in charge ASAP.”

  The woman looked up at me and was unable to mask her confusion.

  “Tom?”

  “He manages the show, and he is not happy with the way things are going backstage. It’s like no one even read the rider. He wants to speak with whoever is in charge.”

  “What seems to be the trouble?” the woman, already going into damage control, said.

  “I don’t know all of the details. I just know that Tom is freaking out and he is demanding to see whoever is in charge.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said running a hand through her hair. “I can radio Mr. Dickens and he can call your boss right now.”

  I shook my head. “Nuh unh. It won’t be enough, not for Tom anyway. He wants a face-to-face.” I lowered my voice and leaned in a little bit. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but Tom has a habit of suing venues. The suits are bullshit, but the places always pay up. Don’t give him a reason to scream B.O.C.”

  “B.O.C.?”

  “Breach of contract.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  She didn’t, but she looked worried. “I’ll go get Mr. Dickens now.”

  The woman turned and hustled past the entrances to the floor seats. She finally stopped in front of a door that required a keycard to open it. The woman scanned the card and pulled the door open just enough for her shoulders to slip inside. I had
followed her, keeping twenty feet behind, like a lazy bloodhound, and took a spot against the wall. My right hand found the plastic egg inside my pocket and lazily spun it around.

  A few minutes later, the door opened, revealing a set of steps just inside. An older man in a finely tailored suit came out ahead of the woman who had gone looking for him. The well-dressed man had a head of snow-white hair that stood out against his dark tanned complexion.

  My hand closed around the egg and forced the plastic to quietly pop open. The Silly Putty that had been incubating inside oozed between my fingers. When my hand came out of my pocket, no one noticed the flesh-coloured putty hitching a ride on my palm. I caught the side of the door and politely held it open for the woman with the walkie-talkie while I mashed the putty into the lock. I let the door go after the woman passed me and extended my suddenly empty right hand towards her boss. “Mr. Dickens, nice to meet you. I am with the production and there are some concerns that my manager would like to speak with you about.”

  “Certainly. I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t work out.”

  I gestured for the two employees to lead the way and kept pace. I followed the pair to the theatre entrance, but stopped short when I suddenly had to take a call. It was Dickens who noticed my lag and he turned an exasperated expression in my direction. I held the phone up and shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “What can you do?” Dickens narrowed his eyes and then he turned his back on me and started for backstage.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dickens had not given any sign that he wanted the woman to follow him. She waited, watching him march away from her, until she felt it was clear he wasn’t going to ask her to join him. Free of her boss, the woman with the streaked hair pulled the walkie-talkie from her belt and resumed looking frazzled. I, phone to one ear, open palm to the other, weaved through the screaming children in search of a quiet place to take a call. I found my way back to the door Dickens had exited and pulled the handle. The putty had done its job keeping the mechanism from engaging again. I pulled the Silly Putty out of the lock and moved up the stairs two at a time to the second floor.

  The second floor had a medium-sized conference room and a number of offices. I could hear people muffled by walls, but still audible because of open doors. I let the stairwell door close and moved up to the third floor. The third floor was the final level and the stairwell door exited onto a long hallway that overlooked the floor of the auditorium. The silence told me that the glass was soundproof. There were two large offices at the end of the hall. The first, locked and dark inside, had the wrong name posted on the door. The second had its door ajar, lights on, a computer still logged in, and a name plate on the door for John Dickens. I gave Dickens another few minutes to realize he had been duped and another couple for him to make his way back to his office — more if he stopped to yell at the woman who got him involved in the trick.

  I walked the perimeter of the room and tried the file cabinets only to find them locked. There was a door in the corner of the room that could have either been a private toilet or a closet. It was a closet. It being summer, there was nothing hanging on the rod. Above, on a shallow shelf, was an umbrella with an expensive-looking handle. I closed the closet, took a seat at the desk, and began pulling drawers. There was nothing in the files about the charity event or the violin. I went to the computer next and began a dated search for documents modified in the last seven days. I got multiple hits — most were files related to the operating system, but there were several document files with the word benefit or the date of the concert in the title.

  I opened the first file in the list and found an updated VIP guest list. The first name on the list was no surprise — Alison Randall, now known in the press as recent widow Alison Randall. Telecommunications magnate and philanthropist Allan Randall had died last week. Part of his estate was left to the ailing Samuel Hall. Samuel Hall was home to the Buffalo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and, according to newspapers, one of the last bastions of true classical music in the city. Samuel Hall had been built in the fifties on the waterfront of Lake Erie. The concert hall was built, and survived, on patronage and Allan Randall had been a major benefactor to the hall. He had been personally responsible for rebuilding the stage after a fire had gutted it ten years ago. In death, he was no less generous. Included among the assets left to the organization was the violin — an extremely rare Stradivarius made in 1720. The estate bequeathed the violin with instructions to sell it in order to fund the hall and the orchestra for years to come. The donation ended up occupying a short paragraph in an article about Randall. The short paragraph fathered numerous follow-­up stories on the Stradivarius as offer after offer came in. After two days, the Buffalo Met released a statement that the violin had been sold. The buyer was not named, but there was unverified speculation that the Stradivarius had been sold to a buyer representing a Chinese billionaire. The violin had yet to change hands — the Board of Directors of Samuel Hall had made plans to honour Allan Randall and his generosity with a benefit concert. They had secured the world-renowned David Lind to play the famed violin on stage on the night of the benefit. The Stradivarius would change hands after the concert and where it went from there was anyone’s guess.

  Currently, the violin was still in a vault inside the Randall family home. Allan Randall had built a hermetically sealed vault to house his instruments while he had still been alive to appreciate them. The vault was visible in a fifteen-year-old profile done by a classical music magazine that I had come across online during my research on the contents of the drive given to me by Pyrros in the park. The piece was done before Randall acquired the Stradivarius and featured him standing, arms crossed, in front of a glass case displaying several brass instruments. The writer went on and on about the fact that the vault controlled humidity and dust, thereby keeping the instruments in the ideal conditions. I could tell by looking at the portion of the door that was visible that breaking into the vault would be difficult — impossible if we didn’t add a jugger who could tackle something like that to the crew. There was the option of moving on the violin on the day of the concert when it preceded the widow to the show, but moving something like that Stradavarius wouldn’t be a toss-in-the-trunk kind of operation. There would be security, likely an armoured truck, involved. The insurance company representing the new owner would demand guarantees of safe transfer; so, probably, would the buyer. Thinking about the layers of security surrounding the violin made me think more and more about the venue. A vault was a single, meant to be impregnable, space, whereas a charity event, planned with just over a week’s notice, would be porous and full of mistakes and missteps that could be taken advantage of. I was still going to look at the house and the vault, but I wasn’t putting much faith in it.

  Below the widow’s name were two open spots. There was no indication who was meant to occupy the second and third most important places on the list. I guessed the spots were left open in case the rumoured Chinese buyer and a date decided to show. I gave the list a quick read through before minimizing the window and moving to the next file. It took thirty seconds to find everything else related to the event. I pulled a USB drive from my pocket and went under the desk to insert it. I heard the computer respond with a chime and dragged the files onto the drive. While the computer copied and pasted the documents, I went to the window and looked down at the concert floor. I saw Dickens right away because he was one of the few bodies moving in the wrong direction. The curtain was about to rise and everyone was moving towards their seats. The older man was moving out of sight as he neared the curtained entrance to the seating area. At the pace he was moving, I had maybe a minute tops before he was in his office. I pulled the drive from the CPU and restored the screen to the way I had found it. I got out of the chair, making sure to slide the wheels of the chair back into the grooves indented into the carpet, and then crossed the room and got into the closet.

  It took longer than a minute for Dic
kens to come back — maybe he was out of shape and the stairs presented more of a challenge than I gave him credit for. From the sound of his footsteps, he had barged into his own office. If he had expected to find someone, he must have felt silly seeing the room empty because he didn’t look around. I heard the chair groan in a way it hadn’t for me when it caught his weight and then angry key strikes that sounded like the peck of a diligent woodpecker. I checked my phone and saw that the show was going to go for an hour and a half. How long Dickens would stick around after that was anyone’s guess. I quietly pulled my phone out of my pocket and sent a text to Carl.

  Be a little while. Go grab something to eat. I’ll let you know when I’m done.

  A minute later, I got a silent reply. Carl didn’t ask any questions; he just sent back one word:

  Sure

  I took a slow breath in and let it out. I kept dragging the air slowly into my lungs until it only had to happen twice a minute. Doing the job at the concert hall had potential, and that meant I had to keep from being noticed by the boss. I watched the thoughts form in my mind and efficiently disassembled them. Eventually the thoughts waned, leaving emptiness behind. I set up camp in the emptiness and waited. I could wait for days like that and had before. Although I saw potential in taking the violin from the concert hall, I wasn’t yet sold on it — I had to hear what Carl and Miles had seen backstage, and I had to go over the information John Dickens had on his hard drive before I would even consider committing to the location. But the hall did have a major benefit that had to be taken into account: there was no vault.

  It ended up being three hours before Dickens got out of the chair. The squeak that came with the release of pressure sounded like a sigh of relief. I heard heavy footsteps as John Dickens moved around the room shuffling papers and opening drawers before shutting them hard. Eventually the sliver of light that had been stabbing into the closet from underneath the door receded, leaving me in total darkness. I stayed exactly where I was and waited another thirty minutes. I had no idea if Dickens was the kind of boss who stopped to talk to the people who worked for him before he left for the day — it was best to wait and reduce my chances of a second face to face with the boss.