Cleopatra Gold

by William Caunitz

  “It doesn’t matter with Parapoint, Che-Che,” Alejandro said. “Even if they should find out about it, there’s nothing that they can do to stop it. There’s no way they can know when and where you’re going to use those parachutes.”

  “Unless someone tells them,” Pizzaro said, his attention being drawn to one of the women on the dance floor.

  They fell silent.

  Fiona and the women at her table had their heads together. They burst out laughing.

  Alejandro had focused on Fiona and was watching her. Che-Che noticed his stare and, moving his head closer to the singer, asked, “You like?”

  “Yeah, I like. Is she with anyone?” Alejandro asked.

  “Not so far,” Pizzaro said, smiling at one of the women on the dance floor.

  “Excuse me,” Alejandro said, sliding out of the booth.

  Approaching the table, he saw Fiona and the other women watching him. One of the women whispered something, and all three laughed. Alejandro felt as if his fly were open. “Hi,” he said to Fiona, nodding a lukewarm hello to the other dopers at the table.

  “Hello,” Fiona said, beaming at him. “These are my girlfriends Chus, Arlene, and Laura. Chus is with handsome Juan over there, and Arlene is with adorable Tito, and Laura is with—”

  “Everyone,” Laura burst in.

  The women laughed again.

  Alejandro glanced at all the empty wine bottles and asked Fiona, “And who are you with?”

  “I’m with myself. I’ve got a double-headed vibrator that works better than any man.”

  “Maybe I can change your mind? Why don’t we dance and talk about it?”

  “Why not?” Fiona said, getting up.

  Watching Alejandro dancing with Fiona, Pizzaro leaned close to his boss and said, “When are you going to give me the word to take that guy out?”

  “Hector, you’re too anxious to kill people. Who would repack our parachutes and recharge the guidance systems?”

  “We could train one of our people.”

  “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. Besides, I like the way he sings.”

  Pizzaro scowled in anger. “I don’t trust him. He’s not one of us. He could give up the whole thing.”

  “I trust him,” Che-Che said flatly, watching Fiona shimmying her body against Alejandro. “You check that one out?”

  “Yeah, she’s okay. I got her from Caswell.”

  Che-Che looked at Pizarro, a flicker of concern crossing his face. “I was surprised when they let him out.”

  “Hey, Caswell did a lot of hard time.”

  “But not all that he was supposed to do. He could have rolled over to get out. Maybe you should pay him a visit, check her out again. I don’t sleep good when I see a new face mixing it up with our crew.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Pizzaro said.

  Che-Che grabbed his wrist, anchoring it to the table. “Ramón and Conrado were two good shooters, but they let two cops get close to us and they had to pay for that mistake. I hope you never get careless.”

  “I won’t,” Pizzaro said, jerking his wrist free, his mouth suddenly dry.

  With his hands planted on Fiona’s swaying hips, Alejandro ground his body into hers, whispering, “Let’s make this look good.”

  “Not that good,” she said, dancing away from him with her body and hands swaying to the music’s beat.

  Andy Seaver was inside the body of a big RV that was parked in the South Street parking lot, directly across the street from the Fulton Fish Market and a block and a half away from the warehouse where the Cleopatra Gold was stored. He was watching the four television monitors that were inset above the communications console. The radio crackled with reports from the various surveillance platforms strung around the warehouse.

  “I hope our net is good and tight,” he said to Detective Kathy Herer, who was handling the radio traffic.

  “Lou, a mouse couldn’t sneak through the stuff we threw up around that place. We even put static observation platforms in the high-rise office buildings.”

  “What about that boarded-up building abutting the west side of the warehouse?”

  “Deserted as far as we can tell.”

  “Anyone inside our warehouse?”

  “Those that went in together came out together. They drove off in a van.”

  “Did our Break and Enter people do a survey?”

  She handed him an official report. He read it, folded the sheet into quarters, and stuck it into his shirt pocket. Studying the monitors in front of him, he said, “Zoom in on those padlocks on the sliding door.”

  The detective pressed a green plastic button on the console; the video cameras that had been concealed in nearby streetlights focused on the steel accordion door.

  “Those padlocks are Rugers. I want one of our people to do a walk-by and get the numbers off them. Once we have them we can order keys from the company.”

  Alejandro and Fiona left the club arm in arm. Turning on the ignition of his sports car, he looked at her and put his finger to his lips.

  After driving the car down the ramp leading into his apartment’s underground garage, he parked in his assigned space, got out, and locked the car. Walking toward the elevator, he slid his hand in hers and asked, “Scared?”

  “A little bit. And you?”

  “I’m always scared,” he said, turning the elevator call key. “Only I don’t let it get in my way anymore. I’m in a state of perpetual numbness.” He looked at her with an expression of sincere concern. “We have to assume that Pizzaro will put some of his goons on us, to make sure we’re really an item. So from now on whenever we’re together we’re going to have to act like we got the hots for each other.”

  “I understand,” she said, looking down at her shoes.

  Walking into his apartment and looking around, she asked, “Do you usually get to take women you just met home with you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She wandered aimlessly around his living room, getting a better sense of him from his possessions. Stopping by his breakfront, she looked at the spines of his books. She admired the Aztec head. “This is lovely.”

  “Thank you. Let’s go out onto the terrace and talk.”

  There was a slight coolness in the air, and the twilight was splashed with purple and pink. He slid his arm around her waist as they looked out over the city. “Do you ever think about our one night on the town, Texas two-steppin’?”

  “Sometimes,” she said softly, looking down at Washington Square.

  “I saw you gabbing with some of those women. Find out anything?”

  Fiona gave him a sly smile. “Girlfriends know a lot more than their boyfriends think they do. It seems that Señor Pizzaro maintains an office on Duane Street. The cover name is Whiggham Associates. None of his crew like to go there because Judith also has an office there—they’re all afraid of her.” Her expression grew serious; she looked at him and said nervously, “According to Chus—one of the women at the table tonight—they’ve come up with a way of fingering undercovers.”

  “How?”

  “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask. But Chus did tell me that Judith’s office is loaded with all sorts of high-tech communications gear; no one is allowed inside her office, even Pizzaro.”

  “I thought that Pizzaro was her boss.”

  “Che-Che gave that order.”

  Alejandro considered what she had told him and then asked, “Are Pizzaro and Judith lovers?”

  “Yes, according to the women. But it’s nothing heavy.”

  “What about Jasmine?”

  “They didn’t mention her.”

  Concealing his disappointment, Alejandro pressed on. “What did they have to say about Che-Che?”

  “They’re all terrified of him. And from the little I’ve heard, they should be.”

  “What about the Oriental guys from the cay who were talking to Che-Che tonight?”

  “Chus made an offhand r
emark that one of the ‘money men’ at Che-Che’s table looked pissed off. She figured that was because he hadn’t gotten … had sex.”

  “The money men?” He was puzzled by this reference.

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Anything else?”

  A smile crossed her mouth. “No, nothing, really.”

  “What? Tell me everything, you never know what’s important.”

  “Well, it seems Juan isn’t circumcised, and that his thing is bent. Chus gets grossed out whenever they do it.”

  A flush came to his cheeks and he said, “Let’s go inside.”

  He closed the terrace door behind them and led her into the bedroom. She sat up with her back against the headboard and her legs crossed at the ankles.

  “Why is this job so important to you?” he asked.

  “My father was pissed off that I wasn’t a boy and spent most of his life taking it out on me. I’m a better pilot than he ever was, yet he’d tell everyone that I couldn’t fly. I guess I still have a need to prove that he was wrong.” She turned her face to him. “So how did you get into this business?”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but the truth wouldn’t come. No matter how much he wanted to, he was unable to say it, so he slipped into a variation of his “legend” about his past.

  When he finished he saw her looking at him with an irritated expression. “I don’t believe a word you’ve just told me.” Before he could protest, she placed a silencing finger across his lips and said, “It’s okay. You don’t owe me the truth.”

  At that moment her beeper went off. They both jumped, startled. She looked at the device clipped to her belt, and rolling across his body, she grabbed the telephone off the night table and started dialing.

  He liked the way she felt on top of him.

  Her call was answered before the first ring was over.

  “Where are you?” Pizzaro asked.

  “With Alejandro in his apartment.”

  “Get dressed and meet me in front of the club.”

  “Right,” she said, and thoughtfully replaced the receiver. “It was Hector. He wants me to meet him right away. Looks like they’re making another drop.” She studied the design on the sheet and added, “He thinks we were fucking, of course.”

  “Good.”

  The gray building on Duane Street looked like a squat, flat-topped box with a high-rise smokestack. It was early Sunday morning, and the streets and roadways in this industrial part of the city were largely deserted. Most of the buildings housed factories and warehouses, mostly companies that handled machine tools and automobile parts. An occasional truck broke the silence, speeding along Hudson Street.

  Each one of the eleven floors of the gray building was dark. The front entrance had a locked revolving door and two other doors on either side of it. The lobby was dimly lit. There was a security desk inside, but no guard was in sight. Alejandro had been standing in the shadows of a doorway across the street for the past fifteen minutes, watching the lobby of the gray building.

  Before leaving his apartment Saturday night to do his first show, he had gone into his bedroom and taken the shoe rack out of his closet. He had peeled up the carpet carefully, then, using a kitchen knife, he’d pried up a floor hatch. From a hidden compartment he’d taken out the state-of-the-art burglary kit that he had been issued by the Hacienda’s “Technical Services” section. After looking down at one revolver and two automatic handguns hidden there, he had decided against going armed.

  Now he darted across the street, looked into the lobby, and, seeing no sign of the guard, took out a flat black pouch from the cloth knapsack slung over his shoulder. Then he shook out a tension wrench, a flat band of tempered steel, and a diamond-tipped lock pick.

  He inserted the wrench into the keyhole of the door on the left of the revolving door and turned the wrench to the right, creating a turning pressure on the cylinder the same way as a key. After slipping the diamond pick into the lock, he skillfully began to feel for the tumbler pins that were housed along the cylinder’s sheer line. He found the first one and pushed it up slightly to slide the pick under it, snaking for the next pin in line. The pick operated the same way as the serrated edge of a key, by relieving the spring tension and allowing the cylinder to turn.

  He got the next three pins up and was inching for the next in line when the sudden squeal of brakes made him flinch and lose his grip on the pins; they slipped back into their holes. He turned to see a sports car swaying along Duane Street. Damn! He started over again. It took him another four minutes to work the lock and get inside.

  The lobby reeked of alcohol; he figured the guard must be someplace sleeping it off. He saw from the building’s directory that Whiggham Associates was in suite 900. He hurried over to the stairwell—elevators made noise, he’d been taught at the Hacienda. He paused on the ninth-floor stairwell and cracked the door, sweeping his eyes up and down the deserted corridor. He slipped out into the hallway and padded along the dimly lit horseshoe-shaped corridor, looking for suite 900.

  The entrance to Whiggham Associates did not show any signs of being wired for an alarm system. Kneeling, Alejandro looked into his kit and found the tiny television camera with the long cord and the fiber optic lens at the tip. He should snake it under the door and take a look at what was on the other side, but he did not want to take the time to do that. Even though today was Sunday, he was concerned that some of the companies in the building might have some people working on the weekend. If there were, they’d probably come in late morning. He looked at the time: 3:48. He took out the pouch, shook out the wrench and lock pick, began working the cylinder.

  Standing inside the waiting room, gazing with amusement at the acoustical ceiling tiles, the garish orange shag carpet, the painting of Christ on the cross, and the plastic roses stuck into the top of the frame, he thought, One of Hector’s crew must have been the decorator. After examining the door that apparently led into Pizzaro’s office and seeing no alarm system, he turned the knob and went in.

  In contrast with the other room, Hector’s office was tastefully furnished. He concluded that a different decorator had done this job. He went over to the big rosewood desk and started rummaging through the stacks of SPRING 3100, the magazine for policemen by policemen, piled high along with other publications. Many of them had different-colored Post-it notes stuck onto the edges of their pages.

  He slipped one magazine out of the pile and began flipping to the flagged pages. On one there was a photograph of a beautiful woman dressed in a red, white, and blue sweatsuit, smiling and holding a soccer ball in her hand. The caption under it identified her as a police officer from the 108th Precinct; she had spent last July in Barcelona, Spain, as part of the U.S. Olympic handball team.

  The next photograph on the page identified the valedictorian of the graduating class of July 3, 1992. There was also a photograph of a Queens Narcotics Unit standing behind a table loaded down with ninety-seven kilos of seized cocaine. Each of the officers was identified by name.

  Quickly shuffling through more of the magazines, he came to one with photographs of the murdered undercovers DiLeo and Levi. There was a handwritten notation that the undercovers had been introduced into the network by Jordon Hayes.

  He put that SPRING 3100 back in its place in the pile and flipped through the stacks of the City Record. The first one he opened had the names of every member of the latest class of recruits to enter the Police Academy. Hector really knows his business, he thought with begrudging admiration.

  After carefully rearranging the City Record stack, he sat down at Pizzaro’s computer terminal, switched it on, and called up the menu. The machine beeped, and “PASSWORD REQUIRED” flashed in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. He glanced at the time and looked across the room, fixing on the door with the cipher lock. That’s gotta be Judith’s office, he thought. From the looks of that lock, that’s where the family jewels are stored.

  He turned off t
he machine, returned Hector’s chair to the exact position in which he had found it, and, lugging his kit, padded over to the door with the cipher lock.

  From inside the knapsack he took out a four-by-five-inch electronic black box with a viewing window across the top. A wire with a suction cup at the end protruded out of the top. The box had an on/off switch on the faceplate and a thin magnet on the back. He had used this device many times over the years but still didn’t have a clue how it worked. Once he’d asked Porges but had been told that only a few of the weirdos in Technical Services understood how it worked.

  He attached the box to the faceplate of the cipher lock and suctioned the cup to the lock. He flipped on the switch. The viewing window glowed red, and six digits began spinning rapidly as the machine searched out every possible combination number. The first digit locked in place; the five remaining parts of the combination continued spinning. The second number locked, then the third and fourth. Within eight minutes he had the combination. He punched the number into the cipher lock’s keypad.

  The windowless room was long and narrow and packed with communications equipment, including a radio console with a large-screen computer terminal, two fax machines, and a shredder. The cramped space was scented faintly with Judith’s perfume. A box of tissues sat on the console ledge, along with a doll dressed in a frilly spring dress, holding a parasol. There was a row of drawers under the console. He opened them and found boxes of pencils, paper for the laser printer and fax machines, unopened boxes of tissues, a spray bottle of perfume, and an unopened package of panty hose. After looking around, he decided that whatever treasures were there were locked up inside the data banks.

  Lowering himself into her chair, he switched on the terminal and called up the menu. “PASSWORD REQUIRED” flashed in the middle of the screen.

  Rolling his eyes, he thought, What password would Judith use to protect her data banks? She’d use something different, not easily thought of or known. Not something easy like her birthday or her Social Security number. No, she’d use something no one would think of, something few people even knew anything about. He thought of her gold Cleopatra medallion and smiled. Yeah, that’s what she’d use. Slowly he typed in the name, Cleopatra. PASSWORD REQUIRED. Cleopatra VII. PASSWORD REQUIRED.