Watch Your Back (27 page)

And so was the truck. Not like the hard–riding workhorses of yore, this one came equipped with air, soft bench seating, automatic shift, and even cruise control, though you wouldn’t use that so much in the city. But the rest was very nice.

They were southbound on Eleventh Avenue, within two blocks of the construction site where they would stash this very nice truck, continuing to admire its qualities, Stan saying he thought he might hold on to it for afterward since it contained this magic kryptonite stuff that robbed police forces of their power, when all at once a black Chrysler Consigliere cut in front of them so sharply that Stan had to hit the brakes, his horn, and the roof, all at once: “
Whatsamatterwithyou?
”

The Chrysler in front of them now stopped entirely, and all at once a Jeep Buccaneer was on their left, also stopping, and they were crowded against the parked cars on their right, unable to move.

Kelp said, “Stan, it’s a hijack!”

“I don’t
need
this,” Stan told the world, and something tapped the windowglass to his left. When he looked over there, what was tapping was the metal end of the sawed–off double–barreled shotgun the right front passenger in the Jeep was aiming his way. The guy had a whole lot of neck and nose, very little hair, and a smile meant for pulling wings off flies. This guy made up–up gestures with the shotgun barrel, and his meaning was perfectly clear: Get out of the vehicle.

Stan, not looking away from the shotgun and its bearer, said, “They want us out of the truck. I’d rather go out your door.”

Looking past Stan at their visitors, Kelp said, “Roger,” opened his door, and slid out to the sidewalk in the narrow space left by their nearness to the parked cars on their right.

As Stan followed, a guy very similar to the shotgun guy came trotting down from the Chrysler to get behind the wheel of the truck, and another one from the same litter came from somewhere behind the truck to brush Stan and Kelp aside and get up into the passenger seat. With no choice in the matter, Stan and Kelp made their way past the parked cars to the curb as the truck and its three escorting cars, all with Jersey plates, noisily rushed away from there.

Sounding more bitter than outraged, Stan said, “I never been hijacked before. Never once.”

Sirens screamed. The three cars and the truck, still at the other end of this block, stood on their brakes, red lights shining against the sun. Police cars came from everywhere, slamming to a stop, plainclothesmen and uniforms boiling out, armed to the teeth.

“Well, you couldn’t have picked a better time to have it happen to you,” Kelp commented.

“Holy shit,” Stan realized.

Two plains with their badges hanging down their shirt–fronts like yellow tongues paused to yell at Stan and Kelp: “Move along, move along, nothing to see here, get on to work, get on about your business, this is a crime scene here.”

“Oh, I hate those,” Kelp said. “Come along, Martha.”

Under their hardhats, they walked briskly away. Kelp, getting into the part, pretended he had a metal lunchbox under his left arm, and you could almost see it.

But when Alan Pinkleton burst open his bedroom door and cried, “Preston, wake up! You’ve been robbed!” Preston’s eyes snapped open like searchlights. He stared at Alan and, though barely conscious he was doing so, cried out, “Arnie Albright!”

This stopped Alan’s momentum. “What? Preston, burglars came —”

“He was right there.”

Preston struggled to a seated position, struggled to free his arms from the covers so he could point, then pointed at Alan and said, “He was right there, where you are.”

“Preston,” Alan said, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but the police are here, and you have to come out and see them.”

“Was it a dream?”

“Please, Preston.”

Preston shook his head, clearing some of the fog from his brain. “A dream, I dreamed —”

“Get dressed, Preston,” Alan said.

“Yes,” Preston agreed. “I’ll be right there.”

And ten minutes later he was, entering his stripped living room with a stunned stare at what was missing — oh, so many things — before even acknowledging what was present, which was a dozen police officers — only the two over by the elevators in uniform, but all clearly police.

They hadn’t noticed him yet, all busy together at the crime scene, Preston having entered with such astounded silence, but then Preston, in awe, said, “I’ve been robbed. I
have
been robbed,” and they all turned toward him, everybody speaking at once and then all of them shutting up except one, a white–haired, bulky man in a short–sleeved white dress shirt, maroon tie, black pants, and badge attached to a strip of leather that dangled from the shirt pocket. This man said, “Preston Fareweather?”

“Yes, of course. How did this — It wasn’t like this last night.”

“I’m Detective Mark Radik,” the white–haired man said, and gestured at the eight–foot long golden sofa. “Let’s sit down together a minute.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’m still stunned.”

“Sure you are, anybody would be. Sit down.”

Preston sat, and Alan appeared, to say, “Some coffee?”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you, Alan, that would be …”

Alan left, and Detective Radik, sitting next to Preston on the sofa, said, “Mr. Pinkleton says you had a dream, or possibly saw one of the burglars?”

“I’m not sure,” Preston said. It was so hard trying to think back into that sleep–drugged state. “I thought I woke up, and this fellow Albright was standing in my bedroom doorway. I’d met him a while back at a Club Med, he’s from New York and I’d always had an impression of him as some sort of crook, I don’t know exactly why. I mean, I just thought of him that way.”

Alan appeared again to put a cup of coffee silently on the table beside Preston, who said, “Thank you, Alan.”

“It would be nice,” Detective Radik said, “to know which it was: a dream or the real thing. It’s possible, in your sleep, you heard the burglars and put the face of this fellow you think of as a crook on it, but it’s just as possible you really did see him. He might have been in that Club Med particularly to help background you for this eventual burglary. I take it he wouldn’t have known you were coming back yesterday.”

“No one knew it. Until yesterday, I didn’t know it myself.” Preston looked around the room. The astonishment didn’t let up. “They took everything.”

“Well,” Detective Radik said, “give me this fellow’s name, and we’ll see if we can track him down. It could be a lead, Mr. Fareweather, so we’ll certainly follow through on it.”

“His name is Arnie Albright,” Preston said. “One ‘L’, I think. I know he lives somewhere in Manhattan, the west side, I think.”

Through all this, the other police in the room had been moving around, talking together, taking still pictures and videos, taking measurements, talking into telephones and radios, and now one of them came over to say, “Sir, they got them.”

Detective Radik smiled. “That was quick.”

“Two members of the security staff here,” the other cop said, “saw their truck leaving, and recognized Mr. Fareweather’s car’s license plate on the truck.”

Preston cried, “What! My license plate? My car? Is my
car
gone?”

“We’ll soon find out, sir,” Detective Radik said, and to the cop he said, “Have you ID’d any of the perps? Is there an Arnie Albright among them?”

“No, sir,” the cop said. “They were apprehended on Eleventh Avenue, with three escort cars. There were six guys, it turns out, they’re all New Jersey mobsters.”

“New Jersey?”

“All members of the Howie Carbine crew. They’re not supposed to operate in New York.”

Detective Radik offered a humorless brief laugh. “So they’re not only in trouble with us,” he said, “they’re in trouble with the New York families. Good.”

“The truck is being taken to the Fifty–seventh Street police garage.”

“Sir,” Detective Radik said to Preston, “after you’ve had some breakfast, I’d like you to come along and identify the contents of the truck. There’ll have to be an inventory, and you can help us there, if you would.”

“Of course,” Preston said. “Just think, mobsters from New Jersey. Not Arnie Albright after all.” Chuckling, Preston said, “I might have made some trouble for that poor man. I feel I owe him an apology.”

“Fine,” J.C. said. “See you then.”

That’s the way to lie, Judson told himself as he left the office. Casual, straightforward, confident.

He walked up Fifth Avenue as far as Sixty–seventh Street, but then, not wanting to go past the building up at Sixty–eighth, because he couldn’t be sure what was going on there, he turned right, went over to Madison and up a block, then came to the building along the Sixty–eighth Street side.

Yes, there was the garage door, and there was the alarm he’d fixed. From what little they’d told him, and from what more he’d guessed, their object was the penthouse atop the corner building, and this garage would lead to a special elevator up to it.

Were they in there now? Or maybe they hadn’t gotten here yet. Of course, if they’d already come and gone, then there was no point in his being here. But if it was such a big thing they were doing, it wouldn’t be over by lunchtime, would it? In any case, he couldn’t get here before now, because he didn’t have a cover story to give J.C.

The point of what he’d done to the alarm system was to make it possible for them to unlock the garage door and then open it whenever they wanted to. Was it still unlocked? Had they been here? Were they here now? Had they not yet arrived? Judson took a quick look left and right, saw no one paying him any particular attention, tugged on the door, and it lifted.

Oh. Should he do this?

Too late; he was doing it. He pulled the bottom of the door up to waist height, slipped in underneath, and pushed it down again.

The place was empty. That’s where the car would usually stand; you could see ghost tire treads on the dusty floor, but it was gone now. And there was still nobody around.

There were no windows in here, but an overhead light had come on when he’d opened the door, and by it he saw what had to be the door to the elevator. He went over there, pulled on that door handle, and another light went on, this one inside the elevator, which was right here.

Should he take it? He was in here now; there was nobody around; the penthouse up there was guaranteed to be empty, so why not?

Stepping into the elevator, he pressed the
Top
button and felt a moment of uneasiness as the elevator slid upward. But there was nobody around; there was nothing to worry about. Up there, he should be able to tell if the others had been through already or not. If they had, he’d just leave. If not, he’d wait for them, surprise them when they arrived, tell them he was just here to help carry stuff. If he was already in, they wouldn’t throw him out, would they?

The elevator slowed, and stopped. Judson waited for the door to open, but it didn’t, so he finally realized he’d have to push it open himself. As he did so (although he didn’t know this), the elevator at the front of the penthouse was just closing on the last of the police as they vacated the crime scene.

Judson walked through the place, admiring the furniture, the carpets, the view. The living room was fantastic.

But it was also very empty. The walls were dotted with hooks where paintings once had hung. Pedestals stood around with nothing on top of them.

The gang had been here. They were so efficient, they’d walked right in and cleaned out everything they wanted and gone away again, and all before lunch.

They don’t have to know I was here, Judson assured himself. I don’t want to be some pest hanging around, like some little kid yelling, “Wait for
meee!
” So I’ll just leave, and they’ll never know I was here. But those guys are good, aren’t they?

Walking back down the hall, he noticed they hadn’t taken any of the few pictures hanging along here. They’d only taken things from the living room and dining room, probably figuring this stuff back here was less important.

One of the pictures attracted his attention, though it was kind of dark and small, less than a foot wide and maybe eight inches high. But for its size, it had a lot of detail. It was kind of medieval, with two guys his own age, in peasant clothes, and they were carrying a pig hung on a long pole, each of the guys having an end of the pole on his shoulder. They were walking on a path on a hillside with woods around them, and down the hill you could see what looked like a lake, with a few very rustic houses and wagons beside it, and a few people chopping wood and stuff like that.

What drew Judson’s eye to this picture was the expressions on the two young guys’ faces. They had, like, goofy grins on, as though they were getting away with something and couldn’t help laughing about it.

Judson looked at the guys and their mischievous eyes and goofy grins, and he felt a kinship. He’d be one of those two, if he had lived then.

And all at once he got it: they’d stolen the pig.

Judson took the picture down off its hook on the wall, and studied it more closely. It was old, all right, done when those clothes were what you wore. It was painted on wood, and it was signed in the lower right with a signature he couldn’t figure out.

The painting was in an elaborate gilded frame that didn’t seem right for those two guys. There was also a sheet of non–reflective glass. Once Judson removed the picture from the frame, it wasn’t heavy. It wasn’t big. He liked it. He slid it under his shirt, tucked into the front of his pants, and headed for the elevator.