Perfectly Good Crime

by Dete Meserve

  We set up the interview in one of the smaller recording bays, a room specially lit for Skype interviews. My hands were twisted in a tight knot as we waited for Locksley to log in to Skype. I stared at the blank screen, the blinking cursor ticking off the passing seconds, trying to wrap my head around the questions I wanted to ask. My radar for hoaxes and scams was on full alert, and I tried to imagine what he could say that would convince me that he was Robin Hood.

  Our recording technician, Dan, sat across from me, clearly bored. He was a big guy and the rising temperature in the bay was bringing out beads of sweat on his forehead. He kept rubbing his eyes and yawning to make it obvious he wasn’t expecting anything of importance. I began to have the feeling he was right.

  I was also worried. If this turned out to be Robin Hood, how would I explain to my father why I hadn’t taken myself off the story, why I hadn’t handed the story off to Conan or any other reporter who wasn’t Hale Bradley’s offspring? The answer was obvious to me but it wouldn’t be to him. Scoring an interview with Robin Hood would be one of the biggest coups of the year. What career was I forging if every story I covered had to be measured against the impact it might have on my father’s political career?

  Suddenly the image of Robin Hood flashed up on the screen. But not the icon Errol Flynn, Russell Crowe, or Kevin Costner made famous. This one was an older painting, one where an intense-looking Robin Hood wore a red hat and hawk feather and was poised to shoot an arrow as his Merry Men looked on.

  David took a seat next to me, a few feet out of range of the camera but close enough that he could see exactly what was going on. He took a long sip of his green juice and put his feet, clad in his signature black loafers, on the table.

  “No more Dr Pepper?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Fell off the wagon for a day. But I’m good now,” he said as though trying to assure himself it was true. He cracked his knuckles.

  Seconds later, a blurry image replaced the Robin Hood painting, followed by a few other images. At first none of us could figure out what they were, then we realized they were photos taken at the heists. One photo showed two masked men using some kind of power tool to break into a safe. Another was of three men, their faces partially cropped, choosing items from a drawer filled with expensive jewelry and watches. In the final photo a person wearing a black ski mask held a painting I recognized.

  It was Man Reaching for the Moon by Antonio Mora. The same painting Thomas Speyer had shown me that had been stolen from his estate.

  I whispered to David. “This is one of the paintings stolen from the Holmby Hills estate. The owner, Thomas Speyer, showed me a photo of it.”

  David pulled his feet off the table and sat up.

  “This is Kate Bradley,” I said to the screen. “Who is this?”

  “This is Locksley. I believe you and the news media are calling me and my team Robin Hood.” The voice was clearly processed, like Hannah had said. Still, even through the processing, I heard the hints of an Eastern European accent.

  “Where are you located?” I asked.

  “Did I provide sufficient proof of my identity? Or would you like more photographs?”

  David nodded.

  “Please keep sending photos. But for now, assuming you are—”

  “Let me tell you why I’ve agreed to speak to you today,” he interrupted. “First, we want to apologize for the injury to the housekeeper in Palazzo de Bella Vista. That was an unintended consequence of our mission and we apologize. We have made a hundred-thousand-dollar deposit into her bank account to compensate her for our mistake. Second, let’s talk about those from whom we stole. My organization took millions from a handful of the hundred wealthiest people in the United States. The combined worth of the wealthiest one hundred is over two trillion dollars.”

  “We’ve established that the victims are extremely wealthy but—”

  “Let’s be clear that none of the people we took from will have lost anything. Zero. Their insurance companies will be reimbursing them for their losses. We took nothing of sentimental value and nothing that couldn’t be easily replaced. It is a victimless crime.”

  I tried to get control of the interview, but whoever Robin Hood was, he was a formidable interview subject. “But you can’t argue that stealing is good—”

  He was also intent on ignoring me. “Meanwhile, a few miles away from some of the greatest concentrations of vast wealth this country has seen since the Industrial Age, forty percent of the people are living below the poverty line. I’m not only talking about the homeless but also the working poor, some of them working two or more jobs to survive, and nearly half of them—forty-two percent of them—will never get out of poverty.”

  “But why help the working poor this way? Why not go through legal channels—get the government involved or work through a charity?”

  “Government and charities can’t solve this problem fast enough. But that’s not why we are taking from the rich to give to the poor.”

  David leaned forward, clearly engrossed. He seemed to be changing his mind about this being a fake confessor.

  “Why then?” I asked.

  There was a long pause and I worried that Robin Hood had hung up or we had lost the connection. The silence in the room suddenly became deafening. David drew a giant question mark on his yellow pad and pointed at it.

  Long seconds later, Robin Hood returned. “No one would pay attention to the plight of the poor if we quietly helped others and gave away scholarships and food to the needy. Charities and individuals are doing that kind of work every day throughout this country. Yet the news media rarely cover those stories. But we knew that if we created a sensation—crimes of unimagined proportions—the global media would be riveted. Suddenly they are bringing attention to the crisis of the poor. Now very few people on the planet can say that they aren’t aware of the problem.”

  “But aren’t you advocating that others steal from the rich and give to the poor? Aren’t you encouraging others to commit crimes?”

  “We are strategic and specific. We target those with the greatest wealth—none of the top one hundred has a net worth of less than five billion dollars—and we take what we know is valuable yet easily replaced. We do no harm to the property or to any individuals. No one should follow in our footsteps.” What sounded like a laugh, or a cough, escaped his throat. “Do not try this at home.”

  “What is your connection to Russia?”

  “This is our origin.”

  “Russian government?”

  “No.”

  “Are you here legally?”

  His voice rose. “Like Robin Hood, we live in the slums, but yes, we are here legally.”

  My cheeks grew red hot. “Why me? Why are you telling your story to me?”

  “You made the connection between user Locksley on League of Legends and Robin Hood. We’re impressed. And curious how you did it.”

  I looked at David, who was apparently wondering the same thing. “You started each mission by telling your team that you were ‘summoning the champions.’ That’s how you begin a mission in League of Legends.”

  “That kind of research is exactly why I am talking to you, not someone else.”

  I smiled a moment, happy that I’d scored kudos from Robin Hood even as David was still scowling next to me.

  “I also understand that you start each mission by telling your team you are ‘changing the world.’ Do you really believe that?”

  “This is a movement for shared prosperity. We know with one hundred percent certainty that we are changing the world.”

  I heard my father’s words ringing in my ears and felt the pressure to say them. “Some would call this class warfare or class envy. You and your merry men are robbing from the super rich because you’re jealous of what they have.”

  His tone became brittle. Even through the voice processing, I could tell I had made him angry. “They’d be wrong. We don’t envy t
he rich. We see unused utility in what they have. They have money and resources even they can’t use or enjoy. And their unused wealth doesn’t help the economy either.” He cleared his throat. “We are simply helping the ultra wealthy to bring light and hope into our troubled world.”

  The screen went black. Dan tried to get the connection back, but Robin Hood didn’t answer.

  We put a digital forensics expert to work reviewing all twelve of the photos that Robin Hood sent over, verifying that they hadn’t been doctored and that they were actually taken from the crime scenes. Then my report aired every hour on Channel Eleven and was picked up by the network and shown around the country in newscasts and breaking-news reports throughout the day. Viewers by the hundreds of thousands flocked to the station’s website to download the Robin Hood interview, overloading the system and taking the site down for ten minutes—an eternity in the news business. It was a heady feeling watching the story gain momentum on air and go viral online.

  I admired what Robin Hood was doing, but I wrestled with whether this was the right way to go about it. I couldn’t argue with one fact, though: his heists had brought worldwide attention to the poor and disadvantaged. If he hadn’t been robbing all these high-end estates, no one would have paid attention to what he did helping others. And now that he had the nation’s attention, people were listening.

  In place of reports about the latest celebrity arrest, stories cropped up about how one in every five children in the U.S. lives in a household without adequate food. Instead of updates on the latest sports cheating scandal, the media rolled out reports about the growing number of Americans who are homeless each night. Reports of people helping others even disrupted the hallowed litany of crime stories that usually dominated our newscasts. It was no exaggeration to say that Robin Hood was changing the world.

  My dad didn’t think so. He called on my cell phone and wasted no time expressing his frustration. “Kate, what you’re doing is ruining my chances for reelection.”

  I was silent a moment, processing what he was saying. “How?”

  “Because your Robin Hood reports are getting some of the most play across the country, my donors feel they are under attack by me. They’re saying they won’t back my campaign for reelection.”

  “You’ll find other campaign donors. You always do. You’re one of the best at fundraising.”

  He raised his voice a notch. “That’s not how it works. There’s an organization planning to spend nine hundred million dollars on the next election. If I’m not part of that campaign spend, I don’t have a chance in hell of being reelected. And the men who run those funds have made it crystal clear that if I don’t rein in this story—if I don’t rein in my daughter—they won’t spend a penny on my reelection.”

  “Your donors want to control the media and the world we live in. That’s why they contribute millions to political campaigns each year. But I don’t play requests on the news. It’s time they found out that some things can’t be bought.”

  “I admire your idealism,” he said. In my line of work, idealists don’t last more than six months. But I was beginning to wonder if I was turning into one? Was the Robin Hood story changing me? “But you’ve crossed the line. When big donors become unhappy with politicians like me, they can carpet-bomb my campaign. My political career will be over. Finished.”

  My throat constricted. After thirty years in public service, my dad was doing his best, most important work as Senate Majority Leader. The thought that I might somehow be responsible for him losing the next election made me feel sudden, sinking dread.

  I had to distance myself from the Robin Hood story. But how?

  By nine o’clock that night, I was exhausted and wondered why I hadn’t heard from Eric. If he’d turned on the TV or even looked at social media, he was sure to have seen the story. It was odd that he hadn’t texted me with his usual “Wow” or “Good stuff” when he’d watched a story I’d done.

  I pulled up in front of Eric’s house and was surprised to see that nearly every light in the house was lit. As I walked up the concrete path to his front door, I was also surprised to hear laughter and music coming from inside the house. As many times as I’d been here, he’d mostly been alone. Sometimes he’d have a few of his friends over to watch the game or hang out over a barbecue. But given the demands of his job, he wasn’t home often, and when he was, his house was a place to rest and recharge.

  The front door was unlocked, so I opened it without knocking. A woman was sitting next to Eric on the leather couch in the living room. Her back was to me and all I could see was that she was holding some kind of pink drink in her hand. Their heads were close together as they looked through a book. The music was loud and they didn’t hear me come in. I recognized the song as one by Maroon 5, not one of Eric’s favorite groups by any stretch. Eric’s face was flushed—probably from the red wine he was drinking—and when he looked up and saw me, an expression I hadn’t seen on him before flashed across his face. Guilt.

  “Kate,” he said, standing. “I didn’t—”

  The woman turned to look at me. She had the face of a model, with high cheekbones and thick sable brown hair that rested in waves on her shoulders.

  “Hi, I’m Carrie Gilbert,” she said, standing. She was petite, about five-foot-four, the kind of woman who had to have her size zeros taken in to fit properly.

  I crossed the room. “Kate.” I shook her hand and shot an expectant look at Eric.

  “Carrie and I go way back,” he said. He seemed uncomfortable, unsteady in his words. “We used to—”

  “I went to school with his brother Brian and then met this goofball on one of many sailing trips.”

  Goofball. If there was any word I wouldn’t use to describe Eric, it was “goofball.”

  She swatted his arm with the back of her hand. “Remember all those pranks you and I used to play on Brian? We drove him crazy.”

  They both laughed, and an uncomfortable feeling crept into my veins. I could feel the intimacy between them, and even if it was a remnant from the past, I didn’t like it.

  Eric stopped laughing. “We used to move stuff around the boat and Brian, who always liked having a solid sailing routine—”

  “—and knowing where everything was—” Carrie said.

  “He didn’t like it.”

  Carrie covered her mouth. “Remember that time he thought there was some kind of ghost on the boat?”

  Eric nodded. It was one of the rare times I’d seen him smile at a memory of his brother. His eyes met mine. “Carrie lives in San Francisco. She’s in LA visiting her dad.”

  Carrie put her drink on the table. “My dad, who turned seventy-two last month, broke his leg while skiing at Mammoth. At seventy-two! And this one,” she said, pointing to Eric. “This one has been helping me out. I still can’t believe how you were able to make that ramp for him so he could get down his front steps.”

  Eric shook his head, clearly embarrassed. “Just a sheet of plywood and some bolts.”

  Carrie touched a hand to his forearm. “All those years, I never realized you were so good with a saw.”

  I felt a flicker of nausea. How many times had they seen each other since Carrie had been in LA? And why hadn’t Eric told me about her? Or that he was helping her father?

  From the way she looked at him, all flirty smiles and misty-eyed, I had no doubt she was attracted to him. Then again, who wouldn’t be? At the same time, I couldn’t imagine her ever being Eric’s girlfriend. No doubt she was beautiful in a way that makes most men pay attention. But she seemed somewhat vapid—or was that simply the alcohol?—and from the rapid way she talked, a bit on the insecure side. But she kept touching his arm, and he wasn’t stopping her.

  “And then he goes and repairs my dad’s screen doors too. While he’s at it, he says. My dad thinks you’re Superman.”

  I’m not one afraid to ask questions. Ever. But in that moment, the questions I wanted t
o ask were locked in my throat. I didn’t even try to speak, because I knew my words would sound weak and thin. Or possibly like the demon’s voice that came from Linda Blair’s throat in The Exorcist.

  Then Carrie fixed her light blue eyes on me and the smile left her face. I could tell she was trying to figure out who I was and how I fit in—or how I was going to disrupt this cozy picture. Was I a neighbor? A friend? Surely not a coworker at this time of night.

  My cell phone rang then, annoying me. David Dyal’s name flashed on the screen. David rarely called me on my cell. My stomach lurched at the thought that he’d found out about the ANC offer. Why else would he be calling me at eight thirty at night?

  Carrie lifted the photo book from the coffee table. “Mind if I borrow this? My dad will get a kick out of it. I’ll give it back when I see you tomorrow.”

  I looked at Eric, and then at Carrie, trying to decide whether to answer the insistent ring.

  “Everything okay?” Eric asked, nodding toward my purse.

  The phone rang again.

  “I’ll take this outside,” I said finally.

  I felt Eric’s eyes upon me, imploring me to understand, as I stepped outside and closed the door behind me. “David?” I said, answering the phone.

  “Kate,” he said, with a surprisingly buoyant tone in his voice. “The Morning Show wants you on the show tomorrow. Just got off the phone with the executive producer, who’s an old buddy of mine from way back when we worked the news desk in Dayton.”

  It was the longest, chattiest sentence I’d ever heard David say. “Doesn’t Teresa usually coordinate—”

  “Yeah, I’ll put her on in a sec, but I wanted to call you first myself. To say that was one hell of an interview with Robin Hood today.”

  Was he sick? Dying? Quitting? David never gave out compliments. The closest I’d seen him come to it was when Chuck Raines, one of our anchors, received a Peabody Award for an investigative report he did on migrant workers in Southern California. Even then David only managed a brusque “Good work, Chuck,” then changed the subject to talk about the Senate debate on immigration.