Jake planned. He needed to make sure the owner of the store in fact lived there, and he wanted to correlate the name on the intercom system with the owner’s name, then watch the loft again to double check. Jake still wasn’t certain how he was going to do this, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like an easy target: one owner, poor security, all the jewels locked up, a side street. If the owner brought his jewels home, that might’ve made Jake’s job easier, but he had to check the back room of the store before deciding anything.
He also had to stop bringing around jewels to sell or consign. He needed to withdraw from everyone’s memory. Three stores currently had his rings and necklaces for consignment, but he’d take them back within the next two weeks. Maybe everything in Seattle had cooled, and he could return there soon, give Chih new business.
He glanced at Rachel, who was climbing off the Stairmaster slowly, painfully. She limped over to him and said, “I think I’m done.”
“You were pushing yourself.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out why everything’s going to hell.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I realized something just now.”
Jake waited.
“I realized that my life is defined by fear.”
“How so?”
“I’m afraid of everything.”
“Like what?”
“Poverty, loneliness, death.”
“Who isn’t?” Jake started to smile, but then realized she was serious. He said, “What about working out, exercise? That’s so you feel and look better.”
“Fear of fat. Fear of weakness.”
Jake had to laugh. “Oh, come on.”
She shook her head. “I can trace all my decisions to that one emotion: fear.”
“What about me?”
“You?”
“You drove me today. What were you afraid of?”
She stopped. “I’ll have to think about that.”
“Don’t think too much.”
She sat down next to him on the bench. “Tell me more.”
“About what?”
“About the other kinds of places you’ve…broken into.”
“I’ve already told you a little.”
“Tell me more,” she said.
“Why?”
“I want to know.”
“Here? Now?” he asked.
“No. Let’s go.”
“I’m not finished.” He pointed to the weights.
She leaned forward, her eyebrows furrowed. “Please.” Sweat beaded along her neck, and Jake saw a vein near her throat pulsing. He smelled her faint muskiness and it excited him.
He said, “Okay.”
They left the gym. As they drove away he told her about following a man in a Mercedes for over two weeks, learning his routine and daily schedule. The man, Olsen, as Jake would learn, worked at a Merrill Lynch, and lived in an expensive Newport Beach townhouse. This was when Jake lived in L.A. and was getting better at burglaries. He no longer did easy hit and runs, no longer worked with anyone if he could help it, and he was always careful, always deliberate in his plans.
Olsen was going on vacation. Jake wasn’t sure of this until Olsen had taken a cab to the airport. Jake watched for the usual morning newspaper deliveries, which never came. Jake waited for the mailman, who left Olsen’s box empty. He watched the lights inside Olsen’s house go on and off automatically every evening. His garbage can remained empty. The clincher was the outgoing phone message, in which Olsen’s low voice said to call his cell; he wouldn’t be checking his landline messages for a couple weeks.
Olsen had an alarm system, of course. Jake had already watched Olsen activate and deactivate the system from a control panel next to the door, but this didn’t concern him. He was more concerned about the neighbors, and the possibility that Olsen had given the keys to a friend to water the plants and check the house. What Jake should have realized was that no one knew their neighbors anymore, and Olsen depended too much on his alarm to keep everything safe.
After watching the empty house for three days, Jake decided to act. At midnight, he climbed the telephone pole in front of Olsen’s house, and quickly cut the telephone line. This landline was the link to the alarm company—most companies still weren’t using cell service. When there’s a break-in, a fire, or any major disturbance in the alarm field, the control panel calls the monitoring station, and tells the computer what’s going on. Jake simply prevented the call.
But there was more to do. He had his police scanner on, and plugged in his earpiece, then checked the frequency. He was also worried about triggering an audio alarm, and wanted to turn off the power just in case. He knew from the placement of the electrical wires and the meter that the main fuse box was somewhere on the right side of the house, possibly the basement. He needed to get there first as soon as he broke in.
He walked to the back door. He picked the door locks quickly. He opened the door, and, as he suspected, he heard the control unit beeping. He probably only had fifteen seconds or so to disable the alarm. He ran downstairs, turning on all the lights, and immediately saw the fuse box. He tried to pull open the door and thought for a panicked moment that it was locked. But it was simply stuck. He yanked it open, and quickly turned off all the switches. The lights around him went off. He turned on his flashlight and hurried back upstairs.
The alarm unit was blinking an alert, trying to call the monitoring station about the break-in and power outage. He cursed. The unit was being run by a back-up battery. The audio alarm burst on, a loud siren. Jake quickly pried off the control face, and snipped all the wires. The siren died.
He walked out the back door, re-locked the door handle but not the deadbolt, closed the door, and walked through a neighbor’s yard. He circled the block, then hid behind a large set of shrubs across the street from Olsen’s house. He turned up his scanner. And he waited.
He could never be certain if he had tripped a second silent alarm, if Olsen had a separate, buried phone line, or if the alarm company had installed a new cell unit. He doubted it, but he needed to be certain. If he heard anything on the scanner or if he saw security cars pulling up, Jake would quietly disappear.
But after forty-five minutes, there was nothing.
He re-entered the house through the back door, closed it behind him, and thought, All for me.
“And what did you get?” Rachel asked. They were driving towards their building.
He pulled into the underground garage, and said, “I ended up with a stack of Kruggerands, three really nice Rolexes, and some bad jewelry.”
“Kruggerands? Gold coins?”
“Yeah. Those coins let me stop for over a year. I bought a motorcycle with two coins.”
“How many coins did you get?”
“Fifteen,” he said. “We going up?” He opened his door.
“I guess so,” she said. They walked to the elevators. “What did you do with all that money?”
“Eventually spent it.”
“All of it?”
He nodded. Now that he thought about it, he wondered where all that money had gone. He had moved to a nicer apartment, had eaten out every night, and had taken a number of trips, the last of three visits to Seattle convincing him to leave L.A. As they rode the elevator up, he thought about the restaurant, his life up there, and said, “Have you ever been to Seattle?”
“Just once, on business.” They walked down the hallway.
“I think you’d like it. In the summer you can look out towards Mt. Rainier—” Jake opened the door and stopped. There was someone lying on the floor. “Eugene?” Jake said. The overpowering smell of stale liquor wafted from his brother’s dirty suit.
Rachel said, “What the…”
Eugene lifted his head off the floor, his face shiny and streaked with dirt. He burped and said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.”
48
Bobby relieved himself in Mary’s bathroom, the s
harp sting running up through his penis and into his bladder. He gritted his teeth. He gulped down water from the sink tap, and felt less shaky. He looked quietly through her medicine cabinet and drawers, finding dozens of bottles of contact lens solution, but not much else. He felt the bump on the back of his head, but it didn’t seem to hurt. The pains in his gut had raised his threshold for discomfort. When he returned to the den, he thanked her, and said he’d meet her tomorrow.
“Well, you’re here anyway. You might as well ask me what you want.”
Bobby got a better look at her in the light, seeing again her long, shiny, black hair, and wondered how Jake kept finding such good-looking women. He said, “You dated him?”
“Yeah, off and on for almost a year.”
“Why’d you break up?”
“I wanted to live down here. I hated Seattle.”
“Me too. It’s always so goddamn wet.”
She said, “My allergies were killing me.” She pointed to a padded bench. “Have a seat.”
He did, and let out a small sigh.
She said, “He owes you money?”
“He owes me a lot of money.”
“I’m telling you, I haven’t seen or heard from him in years.”
“When was the last time?”
She looked up at the ceiling, calculating. “Over five years. He came down here to visit.”
“I hear he has a brother in the area.”
“He does, but I never met him.”
“Why not?”
“Beats me. No reason to. Jake didn’t really keep in touch with him. I don’t think they’re a close family.”
“What about parents or other brothers or sisters?”
She shook her head. “No idea. He never talked about it.”
“Never?”
“Nope. Just mentioned a brother in the city.”
“Do you have a name?”
She said, “He might have mentioned it once, but I don’t remember.”
“How’d you two meet?”
“He worked in the mail room at a company where I was a secretary.”
“You mean you two went out for a year and you don’t know anything about his family?”
“What, we weren’t married or anything. We were just dating.”
Bobby was suddenly suspicious. She was being helpful, or pretending to be, but just the other day on the phone she had hung up on him. He tried to read her, but couldn’t. He asked, “What do you do?”
“Still a secretary. Actually, ‘administrative assistant’ is what they call it now.”
Her eyes flickered to the hallway, and Bobby suddenly jumped up and whirled around. He was expecting an ambush, but instead he saw a cat freeze, then walk towards Mary. Bobby eased up, let out a slow breath. Mary was watching him with alarm. Bobby said, “Sorry about that. I’m a little antsy.” His quick movements had hurt his stomach. He pressed his hand over his abdomen, but didn’t feel any pain.
“A little,” she said. “It’s just my cat.”
He sat back down. “Now, are you sure you can’t remember the brother’s name?”
The lines around her mouth deepened as she frowned. She shook her head. “I’m telling you, I don’t remember.”
“This other girlfriend said the brother was a techie.” She said, “I don’t know.”
Jake had probably scared her, and now he had to make a decision. Hard or soft? He said, “Look, sorry about all this. You gotta understand that Jake shot me and now I’m all jumpy. The reason why I don’t look so hot is that I just got out of the hospital.”
“Jake shot you?”
Bobby pointed to his lower abdomen. “Pretty bad. I’m all cut up in there.”
“Shot you with a gun?”
“Yeah. I almost died.”
She started to say something, then seemed to change her mind.
“I need to find him,” he said.
“For revenge?”
“For my money. He took my money.”
“Your money?”
“Yeah.”
“He robbed you?”
“Yeah.”
“This doesn’t sound like him. Shooting and robbing? Are you sure you have the right guy?” Her voice had become unsteady.
“I’m sure.”
“It just doesn’t sound like him.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Alls I know is he took my money and I want it back.” He watched the cat leap onto her lap, but after a few seconds, unable to settle in as Mary kept shifting her legs, it jumped back down onto the floor. Bobby leaned over, held his hand out, and whispered, “Pssss, pssss, pssss.” The cat looked towards him.
Mary sat up and said quickly, “I wish I could help but I don’t know anything.”
“Pssss, pssss, pssss.” The cat began walking towards him.
She stood. The cat stopped. She said, “You should go now. I don’t think I can help.”
Bobby sighed. Hard or soft. It was going to have to be hard. He pulled out his gun and placed it next to him on the bench. “Will you sit down, please?”
“Oh, no. Wait… I just…”
“Please, Mary. Sit down.”
She did.
“Pssss, pssss, pssss,” he said to the cat. He leaned over, and the cat walked lazily towards him.
49
Jake and Rachel managed to drag Eugene to the sofa and pull off his jacket and tie Rachel brewed coffee. Eugene collapsed back, his head lolling from side to side as he whispered, “I’m so screwed. I’m so screwed.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Rachel said. “You’ve got work tomorrow. Are you trying to mess things up?”
“I’m so screwed.”
Jake turned to her. Work? Didn’t she know?
“Drink this.” She held up the cup of coffee to Eugene.
“Does he do this a lot?” Jake asked. He stared at his brother’s blotchy face, and said, “He’s always drinking.”
Rachel shook her head. “He’s never done this.”
“Sure he has,” Eugene said, trying to lift his head but giving up. “He got wasted at Louis Egglesworth’s bachelor party. Remember? He was sick for a whole day.”
Rachel smiled sadly. “Why are you doing this?”
“You’re leaving me. After all we’ve been through.”
“Goddammit, don’t,” she said. She stood up.
“I’m claymation. I’m Mr. Bill. Oh no, Mr. Bill. Come get me, Mr. Bill. Jake? Jake? Did you ever see that? Mr. Bill?”
“No.”
“Right. Past your bedtime.”
“Have some coffee.”
“There was this Kung-fu movie on one of the satellite channels. Man, it’s been so long since I saw one of those. Remember that, Jake?”
“Yeah. You used to watch those a lot.”
“Last month. At three in the morning. Man, what a kick! This poor boy sweeping out the temple for lessons. You know what happened? He was the only one who could take on the bad guys! Oh, it was great. He was the only one. He was even fighting off the bad guys with a bowl and chopsticks! You should’ve seen it. All those villagers cheering and thanking him. Chopsticks! Can you believe it? I got all weepy.” He sniffed and wiped his eyes. “The little guy was fighting the odds.”
“Just like those movies when we were kids,” Jake said, smiling. “Those dubbed ones.”
“You remember them?”
“Of course. You used to want to practice on me.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Rachel, Rachel, I used to practice Kung-Fu on Jake.”
“I heard.”
“Rachel, Rachel, I really screwed up big time—”
“No. I told you it’s not just you. It’s everything. We have to—”
“No, no, no. Not that. You don’t get it. You don’t get it. Jake, she doesn’t get it.”
“Jesus,” Jake said to Rachel. “He’s gone. We should just put him to bed.”
“Do you remember me doing Kung-Fu?” Eugene asked. “I was pretty damn good at it.”<
br />
“I remember,” Jake said, motioning to Rachel. They began to lift him up. “You did it in the basement.”
Eugene was quiet as they hefted him against Jake. Then he said, “That fucking basement. I hated that goddamn fucking basement. Do you remember the basement?”
“How could I forget?” Jake said. He then recalled the charts and asked, “Hey, you don’t still have those charts, do you?”
“Charts? What charts?”
“You used to graph the fights.”
“Charts? Stock charts? More money I’m losing?”
Jake walked him slowly towards the bedroom, his clothes smelling of alcohol and sweat. Rachel helped on the other side. Eugene lurched forward, then back. “Whoa there,” Jake said. “No, you used to chart the fights. You know, give it a number and graph it out.”
“He did?” Rachel said.
“I did?” Eugene said.
Jake wondered if he had imagined it, then shook his head. “Don’t you remember? You kept it hidden behind the Bruce Lee poster? The night she left must have been a really high number.”
“Ah, Bruce Lee was a hack. A hack, I tell you. His stupid Jeet Kune Do was just a hodgepodge of half-assed forms he made up ‘cause he couldn’t handle the real stuff. A hack!”
They brought him to the bedroom and Rachel said, “Wait. Let me take off these dirty pants before putting him down.”
“Woo-hoo,” Eugene said. “She’s taking off my pants!”
“Euge, I’m very disappointed in you,” she said, unbuckling him and yanking down his slacks. “Why’d you do this? How are you going to handle work tomorrow?”
“You don’t have to worry about my work. You’re leaving me. You’re not allowed to do that anymore.”
“That’s not fair,” she said. She motioned for Jake to lay Eugene down, which he did, and she peeled away the slacks.
“Jake, little brother, how about slipping me some cash,” Eugene mumbled. He crawled up to the pillows and curled into a ball.
“What?”
“Some cash for my stash. Running low for the hash.”
Jake and Rachel glanced at each other. Then Eugene said, “Uh, I don’t feel so hot.”
Rachel said, “Wait! Don’t throw up on the bed! Let me get a bucket!” She raced out of the room as Eugene groaned.
The Lockpicker Page 17