The Chase

by Janet Evanovich

  Huck had thought often about that failed robbery during his ten-year career as a Montreal sewer worker. His fascination with the crime eventually evolved into a plan of his own to steal the Rembrandt collection from the Musée de Florentiny. His plot was so ingenious that he considered himself a criminal mastermind in the same league as Professor Moriarty, Auric Goldfinger, or the Penguin. This secret knowledge of his own incredible brilliance gave forty-one-year-old Huck the strength to go to work and slog through the day.

  He had assembled his crack team with the same careful consideration as George Clooney had in Ocean’s Eleven, had Clooney’s circle of contacts been only people he’d met in the sewers and subway tunnels under Montreal. Huck’s first recruits were two unemployed construction workers experienced with digging and demolishing tunnels.

  Since Huck knew nothing about properly handling paintings or fencing Rembrandts in the international black market, he needed to find a professional thief, and he wasn’t going to find one in the sewers. So he browsed through back issues of Canadian newspapers for stories about thieves convicted of committing art robberies and found one who’d recently been released from prison.

  Two months ago, the men began digging a tunnel from the sewer collector line to a spot directly below the museum’s employee women’s restroom. They were on a tight deadline because Huck’s plan was to break into the restroom, overpower the guards, turn off the alarms, and leisurely pillage the museum on July 1, national moving day. That way they could simply walk out the back door carrying their Rembrandts in moving boxes to the truck they’d parked behind the museum. No one would notice. They would blend in with everybody else on the street loading and unloading trucks and then quietly drive off into infamy.

  At 9 A.M., Huck’s team cut a hole through the floor of the women’s bathroom with a thermal lance, and the four men, their faces hidden by ski masks, quietly climbed out of the tunnel. They brought with them guns, packing tape, and several flattened moving boxes that IKEA had given away in the neighborhood.

  As the criminal mastermind of the group, Huck Moseby was the first one to step out of the women’s bathroom into the corridor. He’d barely emerged from the doorway when he felt something cold and hard pressed against his left ear.

  “I’ve got a Glock pointed at your head,” Kate said. “If my finger twitches, your head will explode like a water balloon, so you don’t want to startle me.”

  He didn’t know what surprised him more, that there was a gun pointed at his head or that somehow he’d missed that there was a female guard on the museum’s payroll.

  “Does she really have a gun?” Huck asked. The question was directed at the three men behind him in the restroom, because he was afraid to turn his head and see for himself. But none of the men answered. They were already scrambling back to their hole in the floor.

  Kate took Huck’s gun from him and, keeping her Glock against his ear, peered into the restroom just in time to see the last man jump into the hole. They left behind their guns, boxes, and packing tape. She was glad to see them go. It made things a lot easier.

  It wasn’t a coincidence that she’d been standing there when they arrived. She’d been expecting them ever since she and Nick had walked by the Hydro-Québec truck on the street yesterday. Nick got suspicious when he saw a worker sitting on the back of the truck texting on his smartphone. Guys who spend most of their time working underground don’t have blisters on their hands unless they’re new hires. That made Nick study the man more closely, and when he did he recognized him as Michel Montoute, a mediocre thief who’d recently been released from prison. Montoute might have recognized Nick too, if he’d just once looked up from his tweeting.

  Kate turned back to Huck and put his gun in her pocket. “This is your lucky day.”

  “It is?” He risked a look at her and was stunned to see that she wasn’t a guard and that she was wearing a ski mask just like his own.

  “Yes, because you were caught by another thief and not the law. You get to go free. But we’re taking the Rembrandts.”

  “Couldn’t I have just one?”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “That doesn’t seem very fair. I put a lot of work into this.”

  “You certainly did,” she said, glancing back at the hole. “Way more than was necessary.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “Trade secret,” she said, and whistled for Nick. He came over a few moments later.

  “Where are the others?” Nick asked.

  She took a step back from Huck and handed Nick two zip ties. “They scurried away like rats into their hole.”

  “That was considerate of them.”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned,” Huck said.

  “They thought you’d been captured by a museum guard,” Nick said. “They knew the heist was blown. You can’t blame them for taking advantage of their one opportunity for escape. I have to congratulate you on your plan, though. Very clever.”

  “Thanks,” Huck said. “Since you clearly respect my skills, what do you say we band together on this?”

  “The only thing we’re going to band together are your wrists,” Kate said, keeping her weapon trained on him. “Hold your arms out.”

  “That’s cold,” Huck said, but he complied. “C’mon, give a guy a break.”

  “We will.” Nick pulled the zip tie tight around Huck’s wrists. “We’ll cut you free before we go. The guards will never know you were here.”

  “You sure I couldn’t have a Matisse or a Renoir as a consolation prize?”

  That question was actually the subject of an argument Nick and Kate had had the previous night. Nick was in favor of letting the thieves take whatever they wanted from the museum, but the FBI agent in Kate couldn’t let that happen. The only way she felt comfortable stealing the Rembrandts was because she was fairly certain the museum would be getting them back.

  “We’ll make sure you leave with a souvenir,” Nick said.

  They sat Huck down, zip-tied his ankles, and returned to the Rembrandt gallery.

  “I can’t believe another crew tried to rob this place on the same day as us,” Kate said.

  “At least I spotted them ahead of time.”

  Nick removed the three paintings from the wall and wrapped them in plastic. He continued his work while Kate assembled the boxes. They then put the paintings into the boxes and sealed them with packing tape. Nick stepped out of the gallery and returned a few minutes later, pushing two of the museum’s handtrucks. They loaded the boxes onto the handtrucks, then each took one and wheeled it to the back door. On the way, Kate stopped beside Huck, bent down, and cut his ties.

  “I want to see you go back into your hole before we leave,” Kate said.

  Huck stood up and faced Nick. “You told me I’d get to take something with me.”

  Nick reached into the box on the top of his handtruck and pulled out a Musée de Florentiny T-shirt with Rembrandt’s Old Man Eating Bread by Candlelight on the back. “Wear it in good health.”

  “I was expecting something more valuable.”

  “What could be more valuable than your freedom?” Kate said. “Go before we change our mind, tie you back up, and leave you here for the police.”

  Huck stuffed the T-shirt into his jumpsuit so it wouldn’t get dirty in the sewer and reluctantly returned to the women’s room. The sad notion wasn’t lost on him that his tunnel robbery was as big a failure, and as doomed by bad luck, as the one attempted at the Bank of Montreal twenty-two years ago. At least he was getting away free and clear, just like those other would-be thieves did. But unlike them, he had something to show for it, even if it was only a lousy T-shirt.

  Kate and Nick waited until Huck disappeared into the hole. They removed their ski masks and went outside. The two trucks parked behind the museum, the one left by Huck’s crew and the other driven by Willie, served as a barricade blocking the rear of the museum from view on the street.

  Willie and Joe got ou
t of the cab and opened the back of the truck for Kate and Nick. They were just four more movers on Avenue Lincoln, loading IKEA boxes into a truck. Nobody noticed them. If anything was attracting attention, it was all the trucks from New York and their crews unloading tons of stuff onto the sidewalk in front of the Château Florentiny, much to the dismay of the other people trying to move in and out of the building.

  The four thieves got into their truck and drove away with three Rembrandts worth $375 million.

  It was a twenty-minute drive out of the city, over the St. Lawrence River, and south to the suburb of Brossard and one of the many body shops tucked away amid the clutter of car dealerships along Taschereau Boulevard. Willie stopped the truck in front of the wrought-iron fence that surrounded a run-down body shop, leaned out the window, and typed a code into a security keypad. The gate slid open and she drove up to a garage door, opened it with a remote, and eased the truck inside.

  There were four bays in the garage. A two-year-old Camry was parked in one. A late model Chevy Malibu was parked in another. The new Ford E-150 panel van Willie and Joe had driven up from New York a week ago was parked in the third. Willie parked the moving van next to the E-150, and Kate opened the van’s back door and jumped out. She took the smallest Rembrandt from Nick and carried it to a worktable. Joe took the second, and Nick took the last and largest.

  Large sheets of construction-grade Styrofoam leaned against the table, plus preassembled cardboard boxes. The boxes were the exact size needed for the three paintings. The Styrofoam was cut and securely taped around each painting, creating a snug container, which was then slipped into a cardboard box. The packing would protect the paintings from shaking and damage on their short journey. Once the packaging was completed for each Rembrandt, Willie climbed into the Ford E-150, started the ignition, put the car into neutral, moved the passenger side mirror forward while pressing the brake, and then lowered her window halfway. That combination of specific actions activated the hydraulics that simultaneously opened hidden compartments in the ceiling and side panels.

  Nick had bought the van for cash from an underworld contact with a body shop on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. The street was known among smugglers, porn stars, rappers, major league athletes, and the very rich as “the Rodeo Drive of Trap Cars.” Trap cars were vehicles outfitted with the latest innovations in secret stash compartments for hiding drugs, weapons, cash, stolen objects, jewelry, and other valuable goods. And it was entirely legal. There were no federal laws against altering cars to create hidden compartments, only against some of the things that might be put into them.

  “That is so cool,” Joe said. “I’ve got to get a stash pot like that in my Camaro.”

  “What for?” Kate asked. “You don’t have anything to stash.”

  “I have my cell phone and sunglasses,” Joe said.

  “You could put them in the glovebox.”

  “But that won’t get me laid,” Joe said, gesturing to the secret compartment in the ceiling. “That will.”

  “He’s got a point,” Nick said.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Kate said. “What kind of woman would be turned on by that?”

  “I’m kind of turned on,” Willie said.

  Kate didn’t think that was much of an endorsement. Willie was turned on by grass growing.

  They placed a Rembrandt in each of the side panels and in the roof compartment. From the driver’s seat Willie closed up the hiding places with another, different combination of switches and actions.

  Nick leaned on the driver’s side door and looked at Willie.

  “Take it slow and enjoy the drive.”

  “I can’t do both,” Willie said.

  She opened the garage door with the remote and drove out.

  “Do you think they’ll have any problems at the border?” Kate asked.

  “Their passports are good, and it’s the same small crossing at Hemmingford they drove through a week ago in the same car. Besides, it’s not as if Customs has a dog that can sniff out Rembrandts.”

  Nick had chosen that particular border crossing because it was small and rarely had a long line of cars. The last thing they wanted was for the van to be mired in a holiday backup at the border when word trickled down to Customs about the museum theft. Unless the Musée de Florentiny guards managed to wriggle free, the theft wouldn’t be discovered for at least an hour, and it might be another few hours on top of that before Customs heard anything about it. By then Willie and Joe would be in the clear.

  “There’s no reason to suspect Willie and Joe of anything,” Nick said. “They don’t resemble us physically and their passports are authentic and in perfect order. Even if the van is searched for some reason, it’s nothing to worry about. The secret compartments are undetectable to the naked eye, and they can’t be opened unless someone is sitting in the driver’s seat and hits the right combination of buttons in perfect sequence.”

  “It feels risky,” Kate said.

  “I’ve done dozens of border crossings like this before,” Nick said. “And I’ve never been caught at it.”

  “That was you,” she said. “This is them.”

  Kate left a few moments later in the Malibu, and Nick left twenty minutes after that. They were both headed to the Montreal airport to take separate flights to different places.

  Kate took the 1:45 Delta Air Lines flight to New York City, and Nick departed on the 2:10 Air Canada flight to Washington, D.C.

  Kate arrived in New York at 3:30 and took a taxi to an unoccupied loft in SoHo that Nick had found. It belonged to an investment broker who was serving a fifteen-year prison sentence for fraud and embezzlement. The loft was one of the broker’s many properties that were in limbo while his bilked clients, the brokerage house he worked for, and the government fought for his assets.

  Kate settled in and waited for Willie and Joe to arrive that night with the paintings.

  Nick arrived in D.C. a little after four in the afternoon and took a taxi to Gelman’s Haberdashery in Dupont Circle, getting there just as Gelman was closing up shop for the day.

  Zev Gelman greeted him at the door and leaned on his gnarled cane. “How did it go with the autodialer on that Hemmler J507?”

  “A sky-high success.”

  “Glad to hear it. Be sure to give me a good review on Yelp.”

  Gelman stepped aside to let Nick pass. He closed the door and secured it with a simple deadbolt and turned around to see Nick grinning at him. “What’s so funny?”

  “You relying on that simple deadbolt when you’ve got cutting-edge security systems for sale in that hidden showroom of yours.”

  “Shows how little you know about locks. That deadbolt is the best theft deterrent I’ve got. If I had anything fancier on the door, people would think I had something more valuable in here than handmade shirts. Who’s going to steal a shirt?”

  “I would,” Nick said. “Those are nice shirts.”

  “You didn’t come here for clothes, though you ought to let me make you a suit sometime.”

  “I will, but tonight I’m looking for a small tracking device.”

  “How small is small?”

  Gelman stepped up to the full-length mirror and pressed the hidden button on the frame. The green beam of the retina scanner behind the glass passed over his right eye. He stepped back as the wall slid open to reveal the showroom, the polished metal paneling gleaming under the bright lights.

  “Virtually undetectable to the human eye,” Nick said as they walked inside and stood beside the tall glass-topped counter in the center of the showroom.

  “The smallest GPS tracker I’ve got is about the size of a quarter.”

  Nick shook his head. “That’s way too big.”

  “I see.” Gelman put both hands on top of his gnarled cane and thought about that for a moment. “How much do you have to spend?”

  “You’re asking me to negotiate with myself.”

  “I’m asking what you can afford.”

 
“Assume that money is no object.”

  “Funny you should say that. Because ‘money is no object’ is how much the Pentagon told defense contractors they were willing to spend on tracking technology after 9/11. They invested tens of billions of dollars to develop smartdust that tiny drones the size of hummingbirds could spray on Osama bin Anybody without him noticing.”

  “What is smartdust?”

  “It’s sticky electromagnetic taggant particles that allow satellites to track your movements, or a predator drone to lock a missile onto you. It’s highly classified technology.” Gelman pointed his cane at a slim silver briefcase on a high shelf. “Can you get that for me?”

  Nick reached up and brought it down, setting it carefully on the glass-topped counter. Inside the case, resting in foam cutouts, were a jam-size jar filled with what looked like black pepper and a device similar to a highway patrolman’s radar gun but with a much larger display screen above the grip.

  “What is this?” Nick asked.

  “A covert operative’s tagging kit. There’s enough powder in that jar to target an entire terrorist camp. A few particles are really all you need to tag someone or something.”

  “What’s the radar gun for?”

  “It’s much more than a radar gun. It’s advanced technology that can home in on a dusted object the same way a missile homes in. The gun can also be used by someone on the ground to tag an object with an invisible beam that guides a missile right to it.”

  “That’s a nasty game of tag.”

  “It certainly is,” Gelman said. “I assume that’s not what you want this for, not that I am making any judgments, mind you.”

  “I don’t have any missiles.”

  “I could get you some. The instruction manual would probably be in Russian, though. Do you speak the language?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m not in the market.” Nick tapped the case. “How did you get your hands on this stuff?”