The Looters

by Harold Robbins

  I recognized the guard who let us in and was tempted to say, Hi, Carol.

  Carol looked at me and smiled. I kept a straight face and jaws locked and hoped she didn’t see through the disguise.

  Eric and Angela were waiting in front of the Semiramis display. A makeup artist was putting the finishing touches on Angela’s face.

  “The alarms are off,” Eric told Coby, our film director. “But we have video surveillance from every angle. None of your people are to touch anything but the mask. And they must take utter care in handling it.”

  Eric hung around long enough to let Angela know that he was there if she needed anything and then disappeared, because he wasn’t the one who was going to have his picture taken. Besides the prying eyes of the overhead cameras, one guard was posted in the room with us, but he stayed back, out of the way, and seemed to be more interested in watching movie star Angela than the rest of us.

  That meant there was one less eye on the mask.

  When we were ready to take our places to start filming, Coby had Angela take her place seated in front of the mannequin, Gwyn standing behind her on the right, so she could take the mask off the mannequin and hand it to Angela at the proper moment, and me standing next to Angela, on her left side.

  As I started to take my place behind her, Angela stared at me. Really stared. In fact, glared at me. Jaw slack. Mouth open.

  I began to melt down. Sweat poured from my underarms. My heart pounded against my chest. Had she seen through my disguise?

  “Where did you get those eyes?”

  I stared dumbly at her. Then stared into her eyes.

  Holy shit—she is wearing the same shade of bright blue.

  Coby stepped between us. “She’s not going to be facing the camera. I’ll have her look off to the side.”

  “She can look off to the side behind me. I don’t want her next to me. You,” she snapped at Gwyn, “change places with her.”

  No! I couldn’t change places with Gwyn—she had to make the switch. I had a copy of the mask hidden in my robe, but it was in a pouch only accessible from the inside. Gwyn’s robe had a slit on the outside to slip the mask through. And she was the sleight-of-hand artist capable of doing it with the security cameras rolling.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I stood frozen and did nothing.

  “Are you dense?” Angela asked. “Answer me!”

  “She’s mute. She can’t talk,” Coby said.

  “She can hear, can’t she? Tell her to take her place behind me. And look away from the camera. Or this shoot is off.”

  “Take your place,” Coby said. “Behind her.” He didn’t sound like the old, confident-even-in-a-hurricane Coby.

  Oh… my… God. I couldn’t do the switch. But like a mechanical doll, I automatically took up a position behind Angela. My knees shook. Sweat was streaking down the side of my face and into my long beard.

  “Your beard’s crooked,” Gwyn whispered.

  Her eyes told me she wasn’t completely composed. No doubt she had imagined the door to a prison cell slamming shut when Angela reversed our roles. Gwyn stepped up in front of me and pretended to adjust my beard with one hand while she nudged me with the mock-up mask. I took the mask but didn’t have anywhere to hide it. I kept it tight against my robe and hoped the folds would conceal it.

  My left knee shook so bad I almost fell. Hypocrite that I am, I again silently beseeched the Good Lord for help. I hadn’t been in a church since Sunday school and hadn’t needed God for anything as long as I could remember, but as my father used to say, there are no atheists in the foxholes.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to ask for heavenly intervention to rob a museum, but I had pure motives.

  When the camera crew was in position, Coby said, “First we are shooting Ms. St. John without the mask. When I signal you, remove the mask from the display and hand it to her. Never look directly at the camera.”

  It took a couple seconds to realize that he was talking to me. I repeated the words to myself: Remove the mask from the display and give it to her. And make a switch. Sure. I might as well rip off my beard and scream to be arrested. I was screwed. And for the first time, I saw something akin to worry in Coby’s face: His usually calm features were locked tightly.

  The fact that he and Gwyn were silently panicking didn’t do much for my own confidence level.

  The camera rolled.

  Coby gestured at me.

  I stared at him.

  He grimaced and gestured again. Give her the mask, he silently mouthed.

  Time to make the switch.

  I turned and detached the mask from the gizmo that made it look as if the mannequin-queen were holding it. I fumbled it. The mask dropped to the floor at my feet.

  The world stood still. Not a sound could be heard.

  The sounds of silence were shattered by Angela’s scream. The shrill outburst sent a jolt of pure panic juice shooting from my toes to my head.

  I bent down to grab the mask. As I bent over, I switched the fake mask to my right hand and picked up the Semiramis with my free hand, keeping the real mask concealed in the folds of the baggy robe.

  “Get her out of here before I kill her! Get that creature away from me!”

  As Coby shot forward to grab me by the arm, I dropped the fake in Angela’s lap.

  Coby took me to the side. “Stand right here. Do… not… move.” His eyes told me that he’d kill me if I budged an inch. He knew I had made the switch.

  Coby and Gwyn calmed Angela with the medicine that worked best on her—flattery—and the shoot continued.

  After Coby yelled, “Cut,” like a pro, Angela replaced the mask and stormed out immediately, but not without a good-bye comment to me: “Fucking moron.”

  Strangely calm, I resisted the urge to taunt her with, Ha-ha, I’ve got the mask; I’ve got the mask! I kept it exactly where it was when I first grabbed it—pressed in a fold of the robe.

  That meant I had to keep the hand holding it in an awkward position. If any guard took a good look at me, it would spell disaster.

  We were heading for the door when Eric shouted Coby’s name. My knees melted and I felt as if I were going to pass out.

  “You forgot to give us your insurance papers,” he told Coby.

  Coby slapped his forehead. “Christ, sorry. They’re in the van; I’ll bring them back.”

  I just walked quickly out as Eric told Coby and the others that they also needed to film the outside of the building.

  As Coby lamented that they couldn’t do it now because of the lack of light, I made a run for a taxi parked outside. I told the driver, “Jamaica Plains. Hurry.”

  Chapter 64

  The driver pulled away from the curb and never said a word about my costume. Only in New York could a woman dressed as a Babylonian king get into a taxi without any questions being asked.

  My insides were quivering gelatin. I had reacted out of pure instinct. The SEALs must have some murderous thoughts right now. And I would be the victim in all of them. God, I felt as if my feet were tangled in the webs I’d weaved and I was really to collapse.

  We hadn’t gone far when the cabbie suddenly pulled into an alley and slammed on the brakes. The way out was blocked by a large gasoline tanker truck parked at a gas station at the far corner.

  He turned in the seat and slid open the dirty Plexiglas window that’s supposed to separate drivers from robbers. He pointed a pistol at me. “Don’t move.”

  I closed my eyes tight. Kidnapped again by an Iraqi. Same man, same taxi. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was so worried about the SEALs behind me, I hadn’t taken a good look at the driver.

  Coby arrived in less than a minute and opened the door. He gestured for me to get out. I climbed out and tried to maintain a brave front, but I was dying inside. Caught red-handed trying to do the right thing.

  “I was on my way back to the boat.”

  “Where did she tell you to take her?” he asked the driver, who had got
ten out and was standing on the other side of the cab.

  “Jamaica Plains.”

  Coby raised his eyebrows. “Funny. I don’t remember the boat being parked there.” He held out his hand. “Let me have it.”

  “It belongs to—”

  “Me. I stole it first. Give me the mask.”

  “You promised to give it back to the Iraqis.”

  “Did you really think I would do that?”

  “No.”

  “Then it wasn’t a real promise, was it?”

  “That’s no—”

  “Look, I’m actually going to keep my promise. The mask is going back to Iraq.”

  “Fine. Then let’s get it to Abdullah’s daughter.”

  “For a price.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want a finder’s fee.”

  “What? How can you get a finder’s fee for something you stole in the first place?”

  “Done all the time, remember. That’s the main reason high-profile art is stolen. It can’t be sold because it can’t be displayed, so it’s sold back to the owner for ten percent. In this case, we’re making the finder’s fee an even five mil.”

  “A starving country isn’t going to pay millions to get back an antiquity.”

  He shrugged. “Hiram will if they won’t.”

  “Bastard.”

  He grinned. “Thank you. I’ve worked hard at it. The mask?” He held out his hand.

  The driver yelled something and then ran. He had yelled in Arabic and disappeared around a footpath that led between buildings.

  Coby yelled, “Where you going?”

  I looked to the rear and gasped. A large black SUV had pulled up to block the end of the alley we had entered.

  Gwyn was in the driver’s seat.

  The passenger door opened and Stocker got out, holding a machine gun.

  Chapter 65

  “Get down!” Coby shouted as he pulled a pistol.

  I wasn’t about to stick around. I ran for the pathway at the back of the buildings, in the opposite direction the cabbie took. Behind me I heard the dull pops of weapons with silencers being fired from the alley. I was running as fast as I could in my disguise when my world exploded.

  Knocked off my feet, I went down, stunned, lying facedown on gray brickwork pavement. I stared blankly at the brickwork. I thought I’d been hit by something, but I realized I’d been bowled over by a blast of air and noise.

  I rolled over and sat up, looking back at the taxi. It was on fire. My brain was numb, but I knew immediately what had happened. Stocker’s machine-gun fire had ignited the tanker truck.

  I struggled to my feet and staggered back to look for Coby. A blackened human form was wedged under the back wheel of the taxi. All I could clearly make out was the soles of the shoes.

  The burning taxi blew. I wasn’t hit by debris, but the explosive sound caused me to spin around and keep going the other way.

  My mind was swirling. I had enough sense left to know I had to get away and to take off the Babylonian robe. I held on to it as I came out of the walking path from behind the buildings.

  I walked into a scene not dissimilar to the day Lipton’s gallery had been blown up—excited people asking one another questions about what had happened.

  I pushed through the crowd and kept walking until I came to a subway station and stumbled down the stairs like a zombie. Without thinking, I tried to get by the gate without a ticket. I fumbled in my pocket and got out a ticket with a ride still on it.

  As I boarded the first train that arrived, I had no idea as to where it was headed. I just sat down and stared blankly at the opposite wall. The car was almost empty.

  No one had lived through the blast in that alley; I was certain of that.

  Poor Coby. Even though he had a criminal mentality, he had never really tried to hurt me. Not even when I double-crossed him twice. I grieved for him, but something inside me kept my tears back. I felt stone dead, like I had no feelings left. Just numbness from the horror I’d seen. I had fallen for Coby. Another victim of loving the wrong person.

  Stocker deserved to rot in a burning sewer in hell for eternity.

  I hoped to God Gwyn survived the blast because she was in the SUV. I liked her. What I didn’t understand was, What was she doing with that crazy maniac bastard?

  The subway had been heading downtown. I got out when it reached midtown and walked until I found myself in front of a car rental.

  I needed to get distance between me and the city, to think things out. I wanted to give the mask back to Abdullah’s daughter, but right now I didn’t have the strength or courage to find my way to Jamaica Plains. I wanted to hide, to find some peace. Do some thinking. Figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Figure out what I was going to say to Special Agent Nunes if he asked me why I had robbed a museum and blown up part of the city.

  ROYAL LUST

  In The Divine Comedy, Dante sees Semiramis (along with Cleopatra) among the souls of the lustful in the second circle of hell.

  The image was drawn from her history as a woman who loved… with a vengeance.

  Semiramis (Sammu-ramat) first came to royal attention when she became the mistress of a King Ninus, an Assyrian general who was besotted by her beauty. The general conveniently committed “suicide” so she could marry the king.

  Said to have a voracious sexual appetite, she quickened her royal husband to the grave after he discovered she was enjoying sex with palace guards.

  Upon seizing the throne, she became infatuated with Ara, the handsome young King of Armenia. Spurred by his rejection, she invaded Armenia.

  The young king fell in a battle against her army in the Ararat Valley of what is now Turkey.

  Grieving over his death, Semiramis beseeched the gods to bring him back from the dead.

  The gods sent doglike creatures down from heaven to lick Ara’s wounds, bringing him back to life.

  Chapter 66

  Life had taken me from a park-view penthouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to a sleazy sex motel off the Jersey Turnpike.

  I kept thinking about Coby. My body and mind had relaxed enough now to grieve over him. How could I have loved a man with a criminal mentality? I knew the simple but correct answer to the question: People don’t pick out who they choose to love.

  Anyone who thinks a man or woman chooses who they love needs a reality check. Women who have led honest, faithful lives as mothers and wives have run off with motorcycle trash or bought guns and helped scumbag felons escape from jail. Men with good business sense have trashed their marriages and careers and run off with secretaries, babysitters, or the coworker in the next cubicle.

  Soul mates came together without rhyme or reason. They just happened. And they weren’t always made in heaven. If they were, Gwyn’s attraction to Stocker had been the work of the devil.

  Her choice was nuts, but I don’t believe it was voluntary. I’ve never blamed any of the people who get themselves into bad relationships. Love is not rational.

  I’d heard the New Age word “karma” bandied about most of my life. But what exactly did it mean?

  Fate? Destiny? Some sort of magnetic attraction?

  Magnets have no choice in what they attract. Fate and destiny are a done deal—you are attracted to who your kismet bonds with.

  Right at the moment, I didn’t know and didn’t care if cosmic forces were at work. I just knew that there was a vacant place in my heart now that Coby was dead. Bastard that he was, he was the bastard that I loved.

  I cried myself to sleep with the john grunting and the whore faking ecstasy on the other side of the wall. And woke up from a nightmare of being in a dark room and having a man beside my bed. That much was a bad dream.

  Getting a phone call from the dead was the real thing. I returned the call.

  “You’re supposed to be dead!”

  “Would I be calling you if I was? That was Stocker’s scorched body under the cab,” Coby
said. “As he came up to the taxi, I rolled out the other side and made a dash behind the buildings. Stocker got it as he came forward shooting from the hip.”

  “What about Gwyn?”

  “She got away in the SUV. No doubt to put some distance between her and her partners now that we know she’s been double-crossing us. That tanker truck was parked at the station for the night, almost empty. It made a hell of a bang but just blew out some windows. Stocker really took it from the gas tank in the taxi. I think his bullets started the fire and then—boom!”

  “You bastard. You’re really alive.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re overjoyed at my miraculous escape from the jaws of death. Not to mention we’re clean as to the museum job. It’s pretty certain your FBI pals will pin the museum heist on Stocker and that Viktor Milan guy who just keeps fading away the closer anyone gets to him. Must have been Milan that Stocker was after when he bought the farm in that alley. Hey—we’re in the clear, baby.”

  He was right: I was bubbling with joy that he wasn’t dead. But that good news was now past history by at least thirty seconds. This man had lied to me repeatedly. And now I had the upper hand: the mask.

  “Coby, listen carefully. You are one of those extremely rare criminals who are likeable. But you are still a criminal. And a liar.”

  He started to reply and I told him to shut up.

  “You’ve lied to me and lied to me and lied to me. It’s over, done with, kaput. Do you understand? No more lies.”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “Shut up, you idiot. And listen.” I took a deep breath. “The mask is going back to the Iraqi museum. No arguments, no recourse. It’s going back. Period.”

  “Maddy—”

  “No, it’s going back. That’s a done deal. You’ve broken every promise you’ve made about the mask. This time I’m not listening to you. It’s going back to where it belongs.”

  I heard tapping on the door. It sent my heart racing.

  “Maddy—”

  “Somebody’s at my door.”