Island of Thieves

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  The risk that the missing plates would be noticed deep in the dealership’s logjam of cars was low. But Shaw wanted one more level of remove. He drove to a big-box retail store and found a scattering of cars on the outskirts of the huge parking lot. Common for employees working late or just people leaving their junkers overnight. He found a rustbucket Chevy that looked as if it hadn’t moved in a month, with the same blue-on-white New York plates and up-to-date tabs. It took him less than three minutes to swap the set of the dealership plates for the Chevy’s, and to put the Chevy’s plates on his truck.

  Overkill, maybe. But owners were more likely to notice that their license plates were missing than to realize that the plate miraculously had different numbers today. Shaw had already taken a calculated risk by driving all the way from Washington with the truck’s original plates. The truck was clean. There had been no reason for Shaw to gamble by cruising the interstate with plates stolen from Omaha or Indianapolis.

  There was another risk he’d have to take: checking in to a motel. Tomorrow would require being among people. After spending most of three days and two nights in the confines of the truck, Shaw knew he reeked of drive-thru food and old sweat. He rolled down the windows to air himself out on the short trip to Red Hook.

  The motel he’d chosen looked like a brick of spoiled tofu. Three stories of white tinged with brown. But its accommodations included an enclosed garage that took up most of the ground level. The truck would be out of sight of the street.

  Shaw parked in a back corner by the stairwell, changed shirts, and took his rucksack with him to the lobby. Steven Blake Ingram rented a second-floor room for two nights.

  The room looked out onto a narrow side street and the green front of a Thai-foods importer. The lip of the window was fifteen feet off the ground. A long drop, but manageable if he had to make a hasty exit. He knotted bedsheets into a makeshift rope and tied the end to the bed frame. He secured the door by wedging the ironing board from the closet at an angle between the handle and the lower edge of the heavy plywood television cabinet. Almost as good as an old-style police lock. An intruder would need a sledgehammer to batter his way inside.

  The only unpacking Shaw did was to set his gun on the carpeted floor between the bed and the wall.

  He gave the room one last check. His eyes were gritty and his side ached. He knew he should wash the healing bullet graze and change the bandage. Instead he sat down on the bed and managed to take off his boots before he fell asleep, the room lights still blazing.

  Hargreaves’s team began to arrive at the Pioneer Square bar just before 11:00 p.m. He had chosen the bar for its back table where they could talk with the noise of the crowd covering their conversation.

  Tucker was first through the door. The waitress in a J&M T-shirt passed. Hargreaves gave her forty dollars and told her to bring a pitcher of High Life and four glasses and to keep the change. The order was on the table before Louis and Vic showed. They poured and took cursory sips. The beer was the cost of the table, not for enjoying.

  “Louis,” Hargreaves prompted.

  The curly-haired man nodded. “Shaw’s staying off his accounts. There’s been no activity on bank or credit cards since before he was in jail. No purchases before that time that might signal he was getting ready to travel either. Cash withdrawals are less than a hundred bucks each transaction for the past two months. If he’s got money, it’s somewhere else.”

  “Vic.”

  Vic sniffed, as much as he could manage. His nose looked like an eggplant left to wilt on the vine. “Last known address is a house on the east side of the city, but another family’s been living there for at least a year. I went by the marina to see the known associate . . .”

  “Brant,” Tucker filled in.

  “Yeah. Lives on a big powerboat. Easy for me to hang in the parking lot and watch with field glasses—the place is busy with the sun and summer people. The guy’s just fixing stuff on his boat all day. He sits up on deck and eats his meals. He hasn’t gone out and bought a lot of groceries or other things that might mean he has a guest. Looks alone. More than that. He looks like he’s trying to show he’s alone, y’know?”

  Hargreaves nodded. “These are professional criminals. Brant would have heard that Shaw broke out of jail. He might assume he’s under police surveillance in case Shaw shows up. What else?”

  “Shaw’s got no social media at all. Phone records are scattered,” said Tucker. “We only found records to one account in his name so far. Most of his calls are to a woman living near the house Vic checked.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  Tucker shook his head. “Old woman. Former neighbor, so I’d guess Shaw looks after her some.”

  Hargreaves filed that fact away. A possible pressure point there, if there was a way to make Shaw aware that they could get to the woman.

  “And?” he said.

  The three men exchanged glances, each apparently hoping the others had something more to offer.

  “Here’s what I see,” said Hargreaves, his affectless voice low enough that the other men had to lean in to catch every word. “He’s slipped away from you twice. That’s more than simple chance. You’ve underestimated him. When I offered additional support to break him out of police transport—only two officers there, I’ll remind you—you declined. Now he’s in the wind. Given his family history and his training, it’s a fair assumption that he may be all the way gone, drinking better beer than this shit somewhere in Mexico.”

  “If he comes to sell the chemical . . .” Louis began.

  “I’m no longer convinced Shaw has the sample,” Hargreaves said. “If he did, he’d be looking to cash in by now. His first move out of jail would have been to contact Rohner. Or Karla.”

  “You sure he hasn’t?” said Tucker.

  “I know he hasn’t. Because Rohner doesn’t make a move without Anders, and we’ve got Anders on lock. Also because Rohner’s been too busy running around with his ass on fire. His daughter suspects the deal was dirty from the start. He’s begging Chen to come back to the bargaining table. Chen keeps stonewalling, saying it’s taking longer to get a new chemist. As though his bosses couldn’t have a planeload of party loyalists with Ph.D.s here within twelve hours.”

  “What about Karla? She didn’t hear anything?” said Vic.

  Hargreaves looked at him. “Let me worry about Karla.”

  Vic’s eyes turned to the table.

  Tucker frowned. “But Shaw knew what the sample looked like. He described it to Chiarra. He must have seen it at least.”

  “Yes. That’s the only fact that makes me hesitate. It’s possible that Shaw spotted Bao or Chen with the sample on the island. He’s a thief. Maybe he poked around in their rooms. He might not have known what the sample was at the time, just that they were protective of it. When Karla told Shaw about the chemical and dropped the hint to sell it back, he put two and two together.”

  “And used that to trick us into busting him out,” finished Tucker. “He’s got balls.”

  “So who does have the junk if Shaw doesn’t?” said Louis.

  Hargreaves smiled without humor. “It’s possible that the chemical was never missing in the first place. That the honorable Mr. Chen is stringing us along, seeing if Bao’s killer surfaces. Or if his partners wind up eating each other.” He shook his head. “Time is on Chen’s side. And ours. We have what Chen and Rohner require. The final piece of their precious polymer.”

  He waved away the approaching waitress.

  “Keep up surveillance. We’ll stay on Shaw through the weekend. If there’s no change by Monday, then I’ll have to find a way to move things forward with Chen myself.”

  Easier said, Hargreaves thought. He would have to have a very convincing story to keep Chen from bolting once the Chinese agent learned who he really was. But he was confident that Chen’s objective would win out over his caution.

  He finished his glass. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Louis glance at Tucke
r. They were the smarter ones. They would be curious about how far they would have to go to shut this operation down and prevent any comebacks.

  “Talk to you tomorrow,” he said. Vic and Louis absented themselves immediately. Tucker hung back, just for a moment, and then nodded abruptly and left with similar haste.

  Hargreaves knew that Tucker and the others had been talking among themselves about Bao and about the lawyer, Linda Edgemont. Making their own guesses as to what had happened to each. Hargreaves stayed informed of his team’s communications, professional and private.

  They all doubted that Shaw had been behind the killings. They were correct about that, if nothing else.

  Smart, Hargreaves thought again. Smart not to ask the question to which you didn’t really want to know the answer.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “Ms. Abrams?” Shaw said, rapping on the open door of A&A Investigations.

  The woman behind one of two desks at the far end of the elongated office examined Shaw over the top of her computer monitor. “Mr. Shaw.”

  “Right. Thanks for seeing me.”

  It was Friday morning, early enough that Shaw could smell the stale air accumulated during the night in the hallway outside the PI office. Inside, an air conditioner in the window was turned up high, laboring to produce a breeze.

  “Lorraine Abrams. How do you do.” She swept her hand over the surface of her desk, holding a pair of bifocals with the other hand over her nose. “Pardon, I’ve dropped a screw out of my glasses. The irony being that I need the damn things to see to— There it is.”

  Abrams stood up, the errant bit of metal pinched between her fingers. She was above average height with broad shoulders, like someone who had rowed crew in college and never quit. Shaw guessed Abrams was in her midfifties. Her short-sleeved black blouse and gray slacks were crisp enough to have come straight from a dry-cleaning bag.

  She motioned to a chair in front of her desk. “My husband stepped out for coffee. You may have passed him on the sidewalk.”

  Shaw reviewed the one-room office as he walked its length. Landscape watercolors on the left side, the Abramses’ framed certifications and photographs on the right. NYPD promotions, distinguished-service awards, medals of valor. State of New York private-investigator licenses. All lined up neat as a pin, Lorraine’s on the top row and Ronald’s on the bottom. All identical save for the dates and the fact that Lorraine had made detective first grade while Ronald’s career had apparently stopped at second. The photographs showed them at various points in their careers in uniform and in suits, shaking hands in classic photo-op fashion with various cops of high rank whom Shaw did not recognize, and at least one former NYC mayor whom he did.

  Tread lightly, he concluded. These people know people, even if the most recent photograph looked to be a decade old.

  “Impressive careers,” said Shaw.

  “Up to a point.” They shook hands and sat. Abrams set the screw and the disassembled reading glasses on the padded surface of her desk, as if they were surgical instruments on a tray. “Working for ourselves has been better. You said on the phone you were conducting a background check?”

  “An unofficial one, yes.”

  “Who is it that you’re checking on?”

  “Karla Haiden. More broadly, whoever she works for now.”

  Lorraine Abrams did not move. Her expression did not change in any way Shaw could perceive with his eyes. But the natural intensity of the woman became a little more rigid.

  “Why are you asking?” she said.

  “I have a short answer and a longer one. Which do you want?”

  “Both. Start with the short.”

  “I need to know if I can trust Karla. I need to know if the company she’s working for now is dirty. Those might be different answers.”

  “Why come to us?”

  They were interrupted by Ronald Abrams coming in through the door, two coffees and a bag from Hudson Bagel in his hand. He was about the same height as his wife, but heavier in every limb and especially around the middle. The dark blue of his golf shirt and trousers matched an NYPD uniform closely enough that Shaw wondered if the choice was intentional. He stood up to shake Ronald’s hand.

  “Mr. Shaw is inquiring about Karla Haiden, Ronald,” said Lorraine.

  “I see,” Ronald said, in a tone that implied he did not. He went behind his desk to move his chair over to Lorraine’s side. Their desks were alike in equipment, each with a monitor and laptop dock and computer mouse that might all have been purchased at the same time. Both desks had framed photographs, presumably of family, though the angles didn’t allow Shaw to see them.

  The similarities ended there. Lorraine’s workspace held no papers, only a closed notebook set to one side of the keyboard, its pen tucked into the spiral binding. Ronald had a baker’s dozen different writing utensils held in a Mets mug that looked like a stubby castle tower among the ramparts of paper and binders. Any surface space not given to the computer was covered with something, if only a Post-it.

  “Is this about a job reference?” he asked, once both were seated in front of Shaw.

  “I’m trying to get a grasp on the history,” said Shaw. “From what I know, Karla was a police officer in Boston for six years. Then she moved to New York and joined your firm. She earned her PI license, and after that she left to work for someone else. That was about three years ago. Do I have the timeline right?”

  “Those are the basic events,” Ronald said. “Not the full story.”

  “Before we get to that,” said Lorraine, “let’s cover why you’re asking. And who you work for.”

  “Myself.”

  “Doing?”

  “Most recently I was hired to consult on security systems by the founder and president of a multinational business. That’s what it said on the contract. The real job was more like a watchdog. It didn’t last long. Before that I worked in a bar, and before that I was in the Army for ten years.”

  Lorraine nodded as if Shaw had confirmed a guess of hers. “And Karla?”

  “That’s where this gets tricky. Karla and the company she’s supposedly with, a capital-investment firm called Bridgetrust Group, are involved in a business deal with the corporation that hired me. Karla was introduced to me with a false name. I learned Karla had been a cop and a PI. Maybe she still is. Bridgetrust might be a paper front. Or it might be cover for a legit firm who’s investigating the corporation that hired me or one of the other players.”

  Ronald raised an eyebrow. “And you want to, what, protect your former employer?”

  “I’m protecting myself. There are three players, besides me. Bridgetrust, the people who hired me, and representatives from another international company. They all met last week, at a conference that was supposed to last three days. That meeting was cut short when one of the participants was killed. A proprietary item crucial to their deal went missing.”

  “What is it?” Lorraine said.

  “A chemical sample. Not narcotics, I know that much. It might be completely legal, or it might have been lifted from another chemical manufacturer. Industrial theft. But I have to assume the sample is unique if someone wants it so badly. Twice since the conference, I’ve been attacked. Both times an attempt was made to abduct me. I think those men believe I have the missing sample, and they aim to make me give it up.”

  The couple exchanged a glance. A long way from convinced.

  “Why would they think you have it?” asked Ronald.

  “My best guess is that I was hired for exactly that purpose. As a fall guy. The job was weird from the start. I couldn’t figure out why they would insist on hiring me when they could have had more secure coverage from any rent-a-cop outfit. Now I suspect the plan from the start was to steal the chemical and set me up as the obvious suspect, at least long enough to sell it or copy it or whatever they had in mind.”

  “Why would you be an obvious suspect?”

  “My late grandfather was a career burglar.” Shaw
spread his hands. “I’m not in the same line. But I know my way around security systems and how someone might get past them. I was told that was the skill they wanted when they hired me.”

  “You’ve got a record?” Ronald said.

  “Arrest record. No charges, no convictions. I want to keep it that way.”

  “You said Karla gave you a fake name,” said Lorraine.

  “A false surname.” Shaw took out his wallet and removed the business card with the name Karla Lokosh. He handed it to Lorraine. She picked up the working part of her reading glasses to examine it while Ronald looked over his wife’s shoulder. “If her first name hadn’t been the same, I wouldn’t have found her at all.”

  “How’d you manage that?” said Ronald.

  “I’ve been motivated,” Shaw said. “From things she mentioned, I found her college in Boston and her real name, and that let me track down her job history. And you.”

  Ronald let out a grunt. Shaw wasn’t sure if that meant the PI was impressed or just taken by surprise.

  “You know,” said Ronald, easing back in his chair, “we could pick up the phone right now and call Karla and tell her you’re here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That might screw things over for you pretty well.”

  “Especially if she’s connected to the guys hunting me.” Shaw shifted in his seat. The night’s sleep had revived his body, but the wound on his ribs felt as though someone had scored it with sandpaper.

  “For argument’s sake, let’s assume we buy your story,” Lorraine said. “What is it you want to know about Karla?”

  “Your gut reactions, along with some facts. Why you hired her. What motivated her to become a PI. Why she left and especially who she works for now. Anything you think might be useful.”

  “Is your interest more in Karla or in her employer?” she said.

  “My interest is in my own safety. Like I said. If Karla can help me out of this jam, I’ll be first in line to apologize for prying into her life.”