The Looters

by Harold Robbins

  As I spread my legs and Coby entered me, sending a sensation of pure delight, it occurred to me that I had to watch my back with him.

  Chapter 48

  “Okay, first on our agenda is to find Stocker,” Coby told me forty-eight hours later when I joined the other five members in a powerboat and headed for Neal’s weekend beach house on Fire Island. The sand barrier island was off Long Island.

  Up to now, the SEALs had huddled together debating tactics and gathering weapons equipment that they had stowed in a rented storeroom.

  “Had them stored there just in case,” Coby told me.

  I never got a straight answer out of him as to what “just in case” meant or even where the hoard was stored.

  I had spent many weekends with Neal at the Fire Island beach house. We confirmed he was there by having Gwyn call and speak to his housekeeper at his Manhattan apartment, pretending she was with the auction house.

  Although there were small year-round communities on the narrow, thirty-two-mile-long sand pit, Fire Island was comprised mostly of state and federal parks and seashore. The only vehicle traffic was in parking lots at the end of the two bridges that came over from Long Island.

  “It’ll be easier to get to his place and away again by boat,” Coby told me. “Besides, we’re creatures of the sea. That’s why they call us frogmen.”

  I had a few other names for the band of underwater pirates, but I reserved them for a time when I had time and distance between us.

  The plan was to hit the beach after dark, with GPS guiding us to the right house. We towed a rubber boat behind us that Coby and I would use to land on the beach. Two other SEALs would swim ashore in their wet suits… and pull the rubber boat I was on ashore if Coby needed help, so I didn’t get my feet wet. That was my idea.

  “Why don’t they just ride with us?” I asked Coby.

  “Recon. They’re going ashore first to make sure the way is clear.”

  “That’s a good plan. Neal might be lying in wait to attack us with his laptop and cell phone.”

  “Or his pal Stocker might be waiting with a rocket launcher.”

  “Good thinking.” I smiled in defeat. “I guess that’s why they call you frogmen.”

  ***

  Coby drove the boat in fast enough for it to belly onto the sand. He quickly leaped out in water lower than his boots and pulled the boat onto dry land so I could step out without getting wet.

  Fernando, one of the two men who preceded us, appeared out of the darkness. “All clear. I got a look at the guy through a window. I’m certain he’s alone.”

  “Okay,” Coby said to me, “let’s go visit your friend.”

  “He’s not my friend anymore,” I said.

  We went around to the front and I knocked on Neal’s door. Fernando had disappeared and his partner was no doubt somewhere playing lookout.

  Coby stood a couple feet off to the side so he wouldn’t be seen when Neal looked through the door’s peephole to see who was knocking at his door. In the city, you’d have to get by the 24/7 door staff and surveillance cameras. On Fire Island, the weather was more of a threat.

  I wondered what Neal’s reaction would be when he looked in the peephole and saw me. I found out quick enough. The door flew open.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I smiled. “Good evening, you lying fucking bastard.”

  The minute Coby stepped into sight, Neal tried to slam the door, but Coby muscled his way into the house with me behind him. Fernando suddenly appeared through the doorway and closed it behind him.

  “I’m calling the police.”

  “I don’t think so, pal.” Coby pulled a lethal-looking black semiautomatic pistol from inside his jacket and stuck it in Neal’s face.

  Neal stared at the gun in pure terror.

  “Do you want him dead?” Coby asked me.

  Coby’s question caught me by surprise. I wasn’t sure he was acting. “Not yet,” I croaked.

  I had never seen Neal when he wasn’t calm and collected, even when he was up at the podium doing multimillion-dollar deals. Or coming in bed. Now he was clearly terrified. I guess I would be, too, if I had a gun pointed at me.

  Neal gaped at me. “Why are you doing this?”

  “No, the question is why did you frame me and get all those people killed?” I looked at Coby. “Why don’t we just start by hurting him.”

  He kicked Neal in the balls.

  I winced. My former business lover went down on his knees gasping with pain. I wanted him to suffer a little after what he’d put me through, but I couldn’t handle watching someone actually getting beaten.

  When Coby looked at me, silently asking if he should really give Neal a beating, I shook my head. Jesus, what a wimp I am. Neal has people murdered and I can’t stand to see him get knocked around.

  Coby and Fernando picked Neal up by his arms and legs and slammed him onto the couch. Each man pulled out a roll of duct tape. In seconds, they had Neal bound hand and foot.

  Coby sat down on the arm of the couch and looked down at him. “We need to know where Stocker and the museum pieces are. And we don’t have much time. You can avoid further pain… and permanent disfigurements… by telling us right now. Or… show him, Fernando.”

  Fernando pulled out a wicked-looking knife.

  “Tell him what you do with that knife.”

  Fernando sat down next to Neal. “My old man has a cattle ranch in the Philippines. When you raise cattle on a ranch, you have to keep the young male calves from growing up to be bulls. You can only have one bull for a bunch of cows or there’s trouble, you know what I mean? So you have to cut off the balls of calves, you know. We rope the calf and pull it down. Grab the sac and… just takes one quick slice,” he made the motion in the air, “and the young bull is turned into a steer.”

  Coby said, “In other words, we turn you into a eunuch. A ball-less bastard, you understand, asshole?”

  Neal spit in Coby’s face. “Fuck you.”

  Wow! I was impressed. I didn’t think Neal had the balls—excuse the pun. Coby wiped his face with his sleeve. He looked disgusted.

  “Bitch!” Neal snarled at me. “If Stocker doesn’t get you, the feds will. Either way you’re fucked.”

  I was numb more from hurt than anger. How had I misjudged him so? Somehow the words flew out of my mouth. “Kill the bastard.”

  “You heard the lady.” Coby put tape over Neal’s struggling mouth.

  “I-I-I didn’t really mean… kill him.”

  “I think you’d better go into the other room,” Coby said. He winked. “This could get pretty ugly.”

  I started for the dining room but stopped and looked back. Fernando was cutting open the crotch of Neal’s pants.

  “You’re not really?” I mouthed almost soundlessly to Coby.

  He got up and led me through the dining room and into the kitchen.

  “You’re not really going to castrate him, are you?”

  “Not unless he doesn’t tell us what we want to know. Don’t worry; it doesn’t hurt as much as you think. We stop the bleeding instantly.”

  “That’s insane. You can’t just—”

  He saw the look of horror on my face. “I’m just kidding. We’re going to bluff him, scratch him, and let him think it’s for real. But I can’t have you out there trying to stop us. Your pal has got to think we’re going through with it.”

  “I didn’t really mean kill him. Not all the way dead, at least.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  He closed the door behind him.

  But I did worry. I waited a few seconds until I was sure he had crossed into the living room before I opened the door and snuck across the dining room to get a peek of what they were doing to Neal.

  They had Neal down on the floor. Coby was sitting on Neal’s upper body while Fernando had Neal’s legs pinned and was doing something I couldn’t quite see because a coffee table was in the way.

  After a moment Fe
rnando straightened up with a wide grin on his face. He held a bloody object in his hand. “You’ll sing soprano now.”

  My God! They had actually done it. But wait a minute—Fernando was Filipino. Filipinos were famous for that medical trick where they pretended to pull bloody objects out of sick people’s bodies to cure them. I remembered seeing a TV show about the routine, and the bloody mass they’d pulled out of someone’s stomach. It looked like what Fernando was now holding.

  I knew everything was okay, but I suddenly felt queasy and sat down at the dining room table. A moment later Coby was at my side.

  “Did you…?”

  “We’ve got the info. Let’s get outta here.” He ran out before I could finish my question.

  I followed them out the back of the house without looking at Neal. Fernando and the other man, Vince, joined us in the rubber boat. As we were racing back to the larger boat, I quietly asked Coby, “What happened?”

  “Stocker has the pieces stashed at an old warehouse at the Brooklyn shipyards. We’ll head for there tomorrow after we plan our approach.”

  “Are you sure he isn’t lying?”

  “Naw, he was so scared he was pissing his pants.”

  That from Fernando.

  “Where did you learn to do that?”

  Fernando grinned. “On my father’s ranch. Turning bulls into steers. When they’re calves, you rope ’em and tie ’em down and whack their nuts off. That way they don’t grow up to be bulls and mess up the whole herd.”

  Why did I ask?

  Chapter 49

  As we made our way back to the yacht, I watched the white rooster tail wake behind the powerboat and tried not to listen to the chitchat back and forth about how they would have to deal with Stocker. They sounded like a gang of kids planning an attack on a neighboring tree house. But they weren’t kids and they were talking about killing a former friend… or otherwise being killed by him.

  Ever since I bought the Semiramis, I’ve been looking back on my life and wondering how I got sidetracked. Before that, everything just seemed to click as I went from one career goal to another. Like a game show contestant answering the questions right, I moved up, sometimes crawling, sometimes leaping, as I went from college, to job, to success.

  I knew I had to stay focused on the dangerous curves that lay ahead and stop thinking about the past. I was barreling down a road that led straight to hell.

  No longer was it possible to completely redeem myself.

  You don’t cut the balls off the biggest auctioneer in the business and expect to do business in this town.

  Every man whom I contacted about a deal would experience a queasy feeling in his groin. As they said in Oz… which is Hollywood-speak for Hollywood… I would never do lunch in this town again.

  Ruined. Finished. Hung out to dry. I wondered if they still made license plates in prisons. Or was it quilts they made in women’s prisons?

  Even though my career was not redeemable, I had to worry about something else. It roiled in my head as we bellied over waves in the high-speed boat back to the Manhattan marina.

  I had to save my soul.

  I didn’t know exactly what that meant. I guess it just meant that I had to make up for the evils that I’d spawned. Coby was right. I was part of a daisy chain that evolved from the looting of the Iraqi museum to the death of Abdullah in New York. Along with other deaths and now at least one mutilation.

  That evil bitch Semiramis was at every flash point. Lipton, Bensky, Neal, myself, even Coby and his gang, we all had our lives altered by the queen’s golden mask as if it spread a malevolent virus that ignited the avariciousness in Neal, Lipton, and Stocker, boiling their greed until it was consummated in murder. Even poor Abdullah was affected, because his stubborn pride got him killed.

  And for me? My weakness was the lure of success.

  It boggled my mind that Neal was playing such a dangerous game with my career, especially with my life. That was the real kicker. He made far more money than I did. How much more did he need?

  I guess someone could ask me the same question about my career. How far would I go to get what I wanted? Sometimes along the way we take a wrong turn and it becomes difficult to get back on the right track. Sometimes it’s easier not to get back. Where did I fit in that equation?

  I suddenly felt sorry for Neal.

  “Is he going to be all right?” I asked Coby when he took a break to get a beer.

  “I wouldn’t worry about him. He’ll be ready to run the marathon in a few days.”

  “He’ll call the police on us.”

  “Not likely,” Coby said. “He’ll get to a hospital for sure, but what’s he going to tell them—he lost a nut because he wouldn’t tell where stolen loot and his murdering partner are?”

  I knew I shouldn’t have been so concerned about Neal. He had set a deadly killer on my heels. But I wanted the cycle of violence to stop. Coby and the SEALs talked about how it was their “duty and a matter of honor” to “put Stocker down.” It sounded like they were talking about a rabid dog they once owned.

  What a strange bunch. Stocker was once a partner. Now he had murdered their business partner and stolen their share of the artifacts. And while they talked about “putting him down,” there was never a moral outrage about the high crimes and misdemeanors the lot of them had been committing. I wondered how much of their feelings was duty and honor… and how much was just plain being pissed that their buddy had stolen from them.

  For sure, they were crooks, with their own moral code and personal definition of duty, honor, and country.

  The discussion and hashing over plans about how to breach the defenses at the waterfront warehouse, terminate Stocker silently and with extreme prejudice, and recover the antiquities continued after we boarded the yacht and while they ate hot dogs, tortilla chips, and salsa and drank plenty of beer.

  “Stocker will be expecting us,” Coby said. “He’s not stupid. He knows that ultimately we’ll find him. He’ll have set up an electronic defense perimeter as an early warning. He knows we won’t have to beach a boat, that we can swim ashore, come in underwater. Once we get our feet on land, that’s when we have to watch out for detection beams and booby traps.”

  No one expected Neal to tell Stocker that he’d squealed on him any more than Neal would confess to the police. So they expected an element of surprise for the raid.

  “Why would you go in by water if he’s expecting that?” I asked.

  “He’ll have the land side approach covered, too.”

  “But it sounds like you and him are thinking the same way, reverting back to your military training. Maybe you should change your thinking,” I pointed out.

  He squinched his face like I’d said something disgusting. Everyone was quiet. I had crossed the line. A mere woman telling these commandos that maybe they didn’t have all the answers. I could see the ire and contempt on their macho, gung-ho, military faces.

  “Wait a minute; she’s right,” Gwyn said. “We’re talking like the land approach is enemy territory. Hell, it’s just Brooklyn; you can drive up to the front gate.”

  “Don’t forget this is the good old USA.” Coby grimaced. “We can’t just start shooting and launching rockets. Our biggest problem will be noise. We can use silencers on pistols and machine guns, but if Stocker starts hurtling rockets, the whole damn city will know it.”

  “Like you said, he’s not stupid,” Gwyn said. “If we come by boat, we could always just back off and run for it if the cops arrive. He can’t go anywhere without packing up a truckload of antiquities.”

  “You’re assuming again that he’s thinking like you,” I said. “You’re also assuming that he’s rational. This guy used a rocket to kill people and destroy a building in London in broad daylight. There had to have been a quieter and more effective way to get the job done.”

  “Stocker’s a nutcase, class triple A,” Coby said. “I always told you guys that, but because he was on the team, we ignored
it.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call him crazy,” Gwyn said.

  “I would. You could see it was getting worse. When he started using drugs, he got more schizoid.”

  I said, “I think we can all agree that a guy who plays with a rocket launcher like a pacifier isn’t playing with a full deck. In that case, we shouldn’t assume that he’ll cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. When you hit the beaches in those rubber commando boats, he’s likely to start firing rockets that will make the area around the warehouse look like the Fourth of July.”

  Coby scratched his jaw. “Yeah, even just opening up with a handgun will probably bring the police.”

  “The police, hell,” Gwyn said. “With everyone on edge about terror attacks, we’re likely to have the Army, Navy, Air Force along with half a dozen fed and state agencies shooting at us.”

  The group started throwing out more ideas.

  Someone proposed a gas to put Stocker to sleep—or better yet, kill him. But poisonous gas had a way of migrating…. Another suggestion was to drop onto the roof by helicopter while two others landed by rubber raft.

  Names of weapons and their firepower flew around the room like confetti at a victory parade.

  At some point I simply tuned out and went to bed. My mind was swirling. I just wasn’t into the commando scene. I heard someone suggest that I ride shotgun on the chopper and watch for police vehicles approaching the warehouse. I couldn’t quite see myself hanging out of a helicopter with a pair of binoculars. And I didn’t ask who would fly the chopper.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  Another nagging question wiggled like a worm in my brain. What was going to happen to the Iraqi antiquities if this band of commandos managed to kill Stocker and recover them? Would Coby and company really return them to a grateful Iraqi government? Anonymously, of course.

  When hell freezes over. That’s how I felt about the chance of Coby and his band of frogmen thieves giving back millions of dollars in stolen loot they’d risked their lives for.