Meaner Things (20 page)

“We need the keypad code,” he’d insisted.

“No good,” I’d replied, “Even if we got it, it’d be just as useless as your cutting the wires idea. Switching the alarms off during the night or weekend alerts the security company automatically and the cops come down on our heads pronto.”

“OK, OK. That means the magnets need to stay together too. So how the hell do we get in?”

I hadn’t had an answer to that and still didn’t. The magnets had to stay together to keep the alarm quiet, but they had to come apart to let us get into the vault. As I said, simple, ingenious, and seemingly impossible to circumvent.

Worse still, time was running out. I already had a preferred date for the heist – Labour Day weekend, which would give us an extra day to tidy up our traces and leave the country. There had to be a way over this final hurdle.

I looked at the magnet on the door and prayed for an idea to come to me.

There
has
to
be
a
way
. . .

The magnet stared right back at me and I realised I had to go. I couldn’t stay here for longer than a minute or two or a guard really would stir himself to come down and talk to the eccentric Mr. Robie who was always absentmindedly wandering around.

I turned away, head bowed, the image of the twin magnets imprinted on my mind.

Then I heard a voice and all thoughts of alarm devices instantly vanished.

It was a Chinese voice. Zheng’s voice.

*

Theoretically, I’d known this could happen. It was Zheng’s building and half the safe deposit boxes were solely for use by his company. It would not be unusual for him to visit his own vault from time to time; in fact, it was pretty much a given. I’d gone over in my head what I might do if I was in the vault when Zheng arrived. To be honest, I hadn’t really come up with any answers to that, beyond keeping my back to him, not looking in his direction, and leaving at the first opportunity. In reality, I had hoped the situation would never arise. Now it had.

I was trapped where I was and daren’t move. If I came out, Zheng would instantly want to know why one of his tenants was lurking behind the door. He’d take a good long look at me and it would be enough to seal my doom. The blond wig and the big black-framed glasses might be good enough to fool him at a glance, but they were wildly insufficient for close-up inspection by someone who had met me before. Security would be called, then the police, then investigations would ensue and I’d be looking at criminal charges.

I stood perfectly still, legs tight together, hoping the bottom of the door would hide my feet from view. I could hear him taking his time, talking to someone as he approached, but I couldn’t make out many of the words. He stopped right in front of the vault door and said something about ‘occupancy’.

“Two more offices leased this month.” It was Boylan’s voice.

“Any security issues?” Zheng was hardly more than the thickness of the door away; for one terrible moment I thought he was taunting me. Beads of sweat trickled down my forehead and into my eyes. I blinked them away and kept my hands still, barely breathing.

“Nothing at all. Davenport recommends we upgrade the box doors. I told him I’d pass it on.”

“Leave it,” Zheng replied, “No-one would ever get that far.”

“That’s what I think too, sir.”

“Good. It’s just make-work for him.”

A rivulet of liquid fear wended its way down my back. Any more of this and Zheng would detect me by smell alone.

“You can leave me now.”

“Very good, Mr Zheng.”

There was a familiar buzz as the day gate was unlocked from above.
Zheng
entering
the
vault
.

An elevator pinged and its doors opened and shut.
Boylan
leaving
.

I made myself count to ten before I tiptoed around the door and walked quickly to the second elevator. My footsteps seemed to echo loudly on the tiled floor, but I dared not look back.

At the elevator I pressed the call button and stood in front of the gunmetal doors, willing them to open. At any moment I expected to feel a tap on the shoulder. At last the familiar
ping
sounded and the doors slid apart.

I found myself staring straight into the cold grey eyes of an all too familiar human gorilla: Zheng’s chauffeur Wark.

I froze in an instinctive paralysis of terror. Wark’s eyes took me in, never flickering. I was certain he was examining my black-framed, Clark Kent style glasses and the short blonde men’s wig that was forever making my scalp itch. No doubt he was laughing inside, astonished that I’d thought such a flimsy disguise could ever fool anyone. I wondered where his first punch would land and how many broken bones I’d have before the cops came.

Instead all he did was scowl at me. Only then did I realise that I was standing in his way. But I was still unable to make myself move. After an eternity of seconds he shrugged his broad, muscular shoulders and stepped around me. Somehow I was able to totter into the elevator without collapsing in a heap.

When the elevator car began ascending I closed my eyes and laid my forehead against the cool, hard door. On the twelfth floor I rushed to my office and collapsed in a sweat-sodden heap behind the desk.

*

I peeled off my clinging shirt and downed a bottle of Premium Springs water in one long drink. It was warm from being in my briefcase, but it rehydrated me and kept me from fainting in the stuffy room.

For a while I feared a knock at my door, signalling that it was all over. If Zheng had seen me leave the vault foyer . . . if Wark had recognised me . . . No knock came, but I remained agitated and jumpy, unable to settle down and calm myself. My eyes flicked to the door and back, to the door and back, my mouth dry again, heartbeat racing . . .

Even though I’d negotiated the danger well enough in the end, I couldn’t get the thought of Zheng out of my head for ages. There seemed to be more things spooking me every day. I thought about last night, a beautiful evening nearly ruined by my reaction to the car behind us as we drove home. It had turned out to be nothing, but it made me realise how much this heist had changed me. I was paying a heavy price for my meticulous approach to planning and preparation. It might assure success – so I hoped and prayed – but it slowed things down considerably. For weeks I’d been living under the greatest stress of my life. Up until now I’d told myself to go slow, prepare and be vigilant. Now I saw that I had to hurry things up. The sooner this was over, the sooner I could become a normal human being again.

Which meant that it was time to get to work on the alarm.

Some guys mentally undress attractive women. I do it with alarms. The slim rectangular magnets in their smooth, shiny steel casings. The huge hexagonal bolts screwed deep into each corner holding it in place. The flow of magnetic current uniting the separate, but complimentary, halves. It was almost sexual.

The
bolts
. They were probably locked in place on the inside and therefore impossible to unscrew. But even if they weren’t, what good would that do me? Unscrew them and, yet again, the alarm would be triggered.

But . . . there was something there, some little worm wiggling at the back of my mind.

It was driving me crazy. I sketched a diagram of the magnetic alarm and listed its separate parts. I added a note stressing the necessity of a continuous flow of magnetic current. I put a question mark next to the hex bolts. In my mind I ran through a scenario of unscrewing them and dismantling the magnets from the door and jamb. But none of it did any good. Every which way, the alarm still triggered. The cops still came. I got arrested.

The only good thing about the device was that it was on the outside rather than the inside. It would have been more logical to have it on the inner side of the door. That would have made it truly impossible to tamper with; it would have been ‘game over’ and I could have packed up and gone home. Because it was on the outside, I was willing to bet that the magnetic alarm had been installed after the vault construction had been completed, as an additional layer of security.

I liked places with security additions applied piecemeal and ad hoc – that situation had served me well before, when Emma and I had done the warehouse heist. It should be serving me well again. But this time it didn’t seem to make any difference.

The worm at the back of my head wiggled again and this time I managed to hold on to it. The hex bolts . . . maintaining an unbroken magnetic field . . . simplicity . . . I screwed my eyes up and pulled at the worm.

And it came out. The way to beat this simple, highly effective device was with something similarly simple and effective.

What
therefore
God
hath
joined
together
,
let
not
man
put
asunder
. I shook my head gently from side to side and wondered why it had taken me so long to figure it out.

19.

DOORS AND LOCKS

“It’s the elegant way, but are you sure you can do it?”

“It’s a basic skill for anyone in my line of business,’ Charlie replied huffily.

We’d just finished a successful light detector masking trial in his malodorous bedroom, and the black electrical tape had worked a treat. With this piece of the puzzle sorted out we’d moved to the kitchen and to the subject of locked doors. I’d listed the ones we needed to pick: the door accessing the building from the underground garage, the door to the security room between the foyer and the elevators, and the door to the vault-level storage closet where the vault key was stored. They would be locked on the night of the heist and picking them would be the cleanest, quickest, least dangerous way through all three.

“If you don’t think I can pick a simple lock,” Charlie continued, “Then why ask me to help you do this?”

I could tell that some pacification was in order.

“OK, I agree. I’m just making sure,” I said. “I’ve been rehearsing my own role over and over again in my head, so don’t get short with me if I go over yours a few times too. We only get one chance at this.”

“Look, I’ll show you,” Charlie said. He went inside and returned a minute later with his hands full. He sat opposite me and I leaned over for a better view.

“This is an Allen wrench,” he explained, holding out a thin piece of metal.

“I’ve seen them in IKEA.”

“You have, but this is a real one. They come in different sizes.” He put it down and picked up another tool. “And this is called an L-shaped torque wrench.”

“It looks like a fancier version of the same thing.”

“Basically, yes. With these two handy gizmos, plus a few metal picks with serrated teeth, I can open just about any standard door lock in the world.”

“How?” I needed to know for sure that he could do it.

Charlie grimaced and I knew I’d annoyed him again. I felt like I’d just asked a magician to reveal his secrets.

“It’s called raking,” he said. “I bung the torque wrench into the bottom of the keyhole and apply pressure. Above it I insert a pick with serrated teeth – ‘peaks’ they’re called in the trade – and drag it over the pins of the lock at the very back of the keyhole.”

“Like a pianist running his fingers across ivory keys,” I said, trying to flatter him.

He thought about that for a moment. “Sort of,” he replied, “Though a lot less posh. Anyway, the pins set one by one and when they’re all in place – Voilà! – the door opens.”

“How long does it take you?”

“Varies. Every lock is different. It usually takes several rakes to set all the pins, but that’s still a lot quicker than the namby-pamby stuff with dentist’s tools you see on TV.”

“That’s great, but is there any way to make it even faster?”

“Sure, I can do a master key ahead of time. I’m working on one for the garage door into the building.”

“How does that work?”

“I know the type of key it takes so I use one of those as the basis, plus an Allen wrench to make a rake.”

I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but it sounded like he knew what he was doing and I’d seen him open a lot of types of lock lying around on his garage work bench. As far as I was concerned, it was another part of the puzzle completed. Only a few more to go and I’d be ready.

“Sounds good, Charlie. Now, how is the deposit box opener coming along?”

“Come to the garage and find out,” he said.

He led me across his cluttered back yard, circumnavigating various
objets
d’art
placed randomly like a bizarre obstacle course. I kept my eyes glued to the grass to avoid tripping over old bricks or treading on the occasional two by fours with rusty nails sticking out of them. Charlie yanked open a corrugated iron door and led me into the saturnine depths of his man cave.

“The locksmith’s drill made a mess of it but I still learned a lot.”

I looked at the old door to my safe deposit box sitting on Charlie’s workbench. It lay in several different pieces, the inside faceplate unscrewed and the brass deadbolt completely removed.

“We got a lucky break with the faceplates on the Zheng boxes being this old plastic sort,” Charlie continued, “It makes breaking them open a lot easier.”

I nodded. “Just as well. The one thing I learned from watching him drill open my box is that it takes far too long. We’d only be able to do two or three boxes in an entire night.”

“And, as soon as we started drilling, it would probably set off vibration detectors anyway,” Charlie agreed. “They’re built into the walls, so there’s nothing we can do about those.”

“And picking is out, as we don’t know any other three-letter combinations apart from mine. So how do we force them open?”

“Let me explain,” Charlie began in his best lecturing tone. “They don’t make it easy. The doors are housed so snugly in their casings that you couldn’t even get a strip of thin plastic in the edge, never mind a screwdriver or a crowbar. So prising them open isn’t an option. The only way in is through the keyhole.”

I’d had a long, stressful day and he was beginning to sound like a character from
Alice
in
Wonderland
.

“Come on Charlie, get to the point.”

He shrugged. “OK, here’s how we do it. I’ve made a special tool – several of them in fact, as you said – that will pull the doors directly outward with enough cumulative force to bend the deadbolts and wrench them out of their steel casings.”

“Show me.” I rubbed my eyes wearily. This was crucial stuff, but I needed to get home and have a good long sleep.

“Here’s my masterpiece.” He reached under the bench and produced what looked like a small vise. “As I said, the plastic faceplate that keeps the deadbolt in place is a lot easier to break than tempered steel. Once we insert this pin through the keyhole and start applying pressure it won’t take much to crack the faceplate. We keep applying pressure and, by my calculations, we only need to bend the deadbolt about forty-five degrees at most before the faceplate breaks. Once that happens, the whole length of the deadbolt is exposed and we just keep cranking until it pulls completely out of the slot in the door jamb.”

“Thereby opening the door.”

“Exactly. Not as elegant as you usually like, but effective.”

“You’ve tried it out on the old door, I assume?”

“What do you think? I’ve done it over and over again. These deadbolts can be ordered from specialty stores. I’ve bent them until I nearly pulled a muscle in my hand. This device works, Mike.”

I wasn’t quite convinced. “The pin looks the most vulnerable.”

“You’re right, it’s as strong as I can make it but it still broke a few times. That’s why I’ve made some extras.” He reached down again and produced two more of the door-clamp devices.

I grinned. “Charlie, there’s an easier way.”

“What like?”

“Just bring extra pins, rather than the whole shebang.”

He looked flabbergasted. “Hadn’t thought of that. I can make them so that they’re detachable.”

“Charles, if you’ll pardon the pun, I think you’ve cracked it.”

“Thanks, I’m pleased with it myself.”

“Just make plenty more pins though, right?”

He gave me a pretend salute. “Will do. Not now though. It’s time for my medicine.”

I groaned inwardly. Charlie’s ‘medicine’ was the cheapest lager he could find in the local liquor store, sometimes served warm as he, not infrequently, forgot to put the six-pack in the fridge. I usually left at this point, but tonight would be different. I still had to break the news to him about Emma’s hands-on participation in the heist. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

“OK mate, let’s down a few,” I replied, with as much heartiness as I could muster.

Back in the kitchen I readied myself for battle. Charlie sat at his chipped Formica table, perfectly quiet apart from the occasional loud slurp of tepid beer, almost as if he was waiting for me to begin.

“Emma wants in,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Wants to take part on the night. I agreed.”

There; I’d finally broached it. It was a distinctly dodgy moment. As soon as I said the words he froze on the spot, lager can held aloft, as if he’d turned into a statue. I prepared for an eruption.

After what seemed forever he put the lager down gently. “Expect me to rant and rave now, do you? Well, I won’t. We need a third person. Always have. Unfortunately, it’s got to be her.”

My jaw had almost hit the floor.

“But she’d better not fuck up,” he added.

“How come?” I asked. I had to figure this revelation out.

Charlie shrugged. “We only get one chance at this; we can’t go back for second helpings. A third person means thirty-three per cent more loot. With her in, everything I grab I get to keep.”

And that was that. All my worries about it had been for nothing.

*

The 99 B-Line bus duly pulled up at Broadway and Willow and I felt stiffness in my legs as I stepped off. My body was weary but my mind was buzzing, synapses firing with ideas, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep if I went up the hill home. Instead, I strolled to the end of the block, went down Laurel and crossed the land bridge to the car-free quietness of Charleson Park and the Seawall at sunset.

The cerulean water of False Creek gently swashed in front of me; Science World lay to my right and Granville Island to my left. I took the latter path, embracing the old, or at least what is old by Vancouver standards, in preference to the new and gaudy.

I’d expected to go straight home and crash out after I’d left Charlie’s place, and sleep off the upset that would undoubtedly arise after I told Charlie about Emma’s decision to take part in the heist – and my decision to back her. This walk along the Seawall was almost a pilgrimage of gratitude for his unexpected assent.

I still had the deeper stress of almost two months of covert research – espionage really – at the Zheng Building. The novelty of dressing up and going downtown every weekday had long since worn off. What had kept me going was the search for more pieces of the puzzle and the ongoing satisfaction of slotting each one into place as we developed solutions. As well as forming the overall plan, I’d done most of the problem solving, with Charlie’s inventive, geeky genius on one hand and Emma’s encouragement, and financial backing, on the other.

I walked the concrete path, cyclists rolling past me on my left, and went over the heist in my mind. By now I was as well prepared as I’d ever be. I had a stack of notebooks, sketches and diagrams. I had each and every aspect of the heist figured out, planned for, tooled up and sequenced. All the prep was done.

Research could only take me so far. I was at the same point now as I had been on the scaffolding of the Orthodox church downtown ten years ago. So far I hadn’t done very much that was criminal, beyond pretending to be someone I wasn’t. From here on, that changed.

The next steps involved illegal activities that would get me into serious trouble if I was caught. I still had to decipher the garage door code, from which Charlie would make a remote control to open it. That had to be done on site, and I dare not get caught doing it. More worrying, I still hadn’t got footage of the vault combination. The video image had to be taken from directly overhead, looking down over Jeff D.’s shoulder as he turned the dial. In other words, a precision job. In theory it should be straightforward enough, but in practice would it work out? Reflecting on the mess I’d initially made of the man purse camerawork, I wasn’t confident.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised I needed Charlie’s help to set things up inside the building before the heist itself. Somehow or other I had to smuggle him in and out again. I crossed a boardwalk section of the Seawall, noting a small sailboat close into shore on my right. There was peacefulness about this place that helped me think. I came up with an idea and filed it away.

Then there was the timing. Labour Day was less than two weeks away. Lots of people went away for the long weekend, the downtown business area was quiet, and it was the closing weekend of the PNE Fair at Hastings and Renfrew. Unusually, there was also a massive fireworks display in English Bay, expected to attract up to four hundred thousand people, on the evening of Saturday 30th. This made it the optimum date for the heist. To make it happen then I would have to move fast.

*

When I entered the Zheng Building the following morning, Boylan was waiting for me. I’d just said a cheery good morning to ‘Roger G.’ and received his usual guttural grunt in reply. As soon as I turned away from him I spotted Boylan in the foyer ahead of me, hands clasped behind his back, staring in my direction. He seemed to have been keeping a beady eye on who was coming in. I couldn’t explain how I knew that it was me he was after, but I would have sworn my life on it.

Something tightened and hardened in my chest; the fear inside me coagulating into stone. There was something in Boylan’s tight-lipped expression that told me I wouldn’t easily bluff my way out of this one. Mentally, I switched into damage limitation mode.