The Freeport Robbery Read online

  “Okay, okay,” Bartholomew said. “What’s this about?”

  The leader smiled. “We work for Mr. Philips. I’m sure you know who he is. We just need to have a little chat.”

  A green Suburban pulled up, and they piled Bartholomew into the middle of the backseat.

  Ron and Nicole rolled slowly down their street, looking for anyone who might be watching their apartment. The streetlights were still the only real light. Most of the apartments were dark. The cars parked on both sides of the street were empty. Nicole turned into the alley next to their building. Ron got out. She continued down the alley to the next street.

  Ron used his key at the back door, padded quietly up the hall to the front, and stopped at the doorway to the front entry. All he could hear was his own breathing. He slowly stuck his head around the corner. There was no one there. He hurried up the stairs to the second floor and repeated the process. The hall to their apartment door was clear. He put his ear up against the door, straining to hear any sound at all, but he heard nothing. He put his key in the lock, turned it, and then carefully eased the door open.

  The living room was empty. The phone and the airport IDs were still on the side table by the door. He scooped them into his pockets and hurried back down the stairs and out the back. The night was dissipating, and the birds were beginning to chirp. He walked down the alley along a row of dumpsters, pulled the chip from the burner phone, tossed it and the phone into the closest dumpster, and continued to the next street, where he waited until he saw their Cadillac appear around the corner. He waved. Nicole stopped in the street, and he hopped into the car.

  “I got the IDs.”

  “What about the phone?”

  “Trashed it.”

  Philips’s men drove Bartholomew to the construction site of the new uptown parking ramp. Mitch, the white guy with the beer belly, hopped out and unlocked the chain-link gate. They continued onto the new concrete of the parking deck and drove down to the basement level, where the plywood forms were set to pour the footing for a stairwell. Jacob, the guy with the blond crew cut, and Charles, the black man with the goatee, pulled Bartholomew from the truck and pushed him over to the footing hole. “What the hell?” Bartholomew yelled.

  Mitch and Jermaine, a heavy-set black man wearing black-framed glasses, joined Jacob and Charles, each grabbing hold of Bartholomew’s arms and shoulders. Gary, the leader, pointed down into the hole at the cement-stained plywood and rusty rebar. “Unless you want this to be your final resting place, you’re going to answer my questions. You’re going to tell the truth. Where did Aaron Rickover go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re pouring concrete here in two hours.”

  “He didn’t tell me. He never does.”

  “No one will find you.” The men gripping Bartholomew leaned him over the hole. He bucked and strained, but they held him tight. Gary continued. “You’ll be under the slab. Your woman and your kid will think you ran off.”

  Bartholomew turned his head to look up at Gary. “You think I’d cover for Rickover? He’s caused me nothing but trouble. I don’t know where he is. I’d tell you if I did.”

  Gary stepped up close enough to feel Bartholomew’s breath on his face. “They’ll think you never loved them. They’ll remember you as the bastard who left them with a pile of bills and no money. Didn’t even say goodbye.”

  “I don’t know. I’m telling you, I don’t know where he went.”

  Gary looked hard in Bartholomew’s eyes. “You know, I think I believe you.” He turned to Jacob. “We’re done here.”

  Jacob patted Bartholomew on the shoulder and smiled. “See how easy that was?” Before Bartholomew could reply, he slipped a wire loop over Bartholomew’s head and pulled it tight around his neck. Bartholomew struggled and kicked, but the others forced him to his knees. Gary turned away. He took out his phone as he walked back to the Suburban. “Marty? Tell the boss that the redneck didn’t know anything, and we’re cleaning up as we go.”

  Ron and Nicole walked down a deserted hallway in the “employee only” area of the airport. The first set of early morning flights would be boarding soon, but the day staff wouldn’t be in the airport for a few more hours. The building plans showed a suite of manager offices just up the hall. Ron punched in the access code and opened the door.

  “Who are you?” A blue-uniformed custodian pushing a cleaning cart stood directly in front of them. He was wiry-looking black man with close-cropped gray hair.

  “Security consultants.” Ron said. “Who are you?”

  “This is my floor. This one and the two below. Nobody told me about any consultants.”

  “Wouldn’t be a surprise if everyone had a chance to put away all the stuff they’re not supposed to leave out, would it?”

  “Doesn’t seem right to me.”

  Ron pointed to the ID clipped on his jacket. “Would we have these full-access credentials if we weren’t supposed to be here?”

  The custodian glanced at the ID and then at Ron. “You’re right. That makes sense. Not trying to cause trouble.”

  “I understand. You’re just trying to do your job. Make sure there’s no unauthorized people inside the security envelope.”

  Ron and Nicole stepped around the cart and into the room, which contained four cubicles, all in a row along the windows. Then they split up, each examining the desktops as if looking for security breaches. The custodian pushed his cart out of the office. The door closed behind him. Nicole slipped up to the door, turned the handle slowly, and then cracked the door open, being careful not to make a sound. She watched the custodian push his cart down the hall to another door on the opposite side of the hallway, punch in an access code, and push his cart in. She turned to Ron. “All clear.”

  They put on latex gloves and started going through the desks, looking for computer passwords. On a post-it in a pencil tray, Ron found a likely candidate, a sequence of ten letters and numbers. He turned on the computer. Nicole came over to watch. He keyed in the sequence on the password page. Nothing. He opened the side drawers: a stapler, file folders, bits of junk. A paperweight of a snowman that looked like it was made in an elementary school art class sat on the corner of the desk. Nicole picked it up. A post-it was stuck to the bottom. Another sequence of numbers and letters. Ron keyed it in. The home page appeared.

  Ron stood up and Nicole sat down. She clicked on the security icon from the row at the bottom of the screen, chose “surveillance” from the menu, the date of the robbery, and started looking at footage from the TSA screening point starting at 10:00 p.m. Passengers trickled through. At 10:32 p.m., Aaron Rickover appeared. He walked right through the scanner. No carry-on luggage. He walked out of range. Nicole switched to the next camera. A few frames later, he turned up again. She followed him down the hallways, camera by camera, past a coffee shop, in and out of a men’s room, into a knickknack shop where he bought a bottle of water, and down to gate C 31, where boarding was already in progress. She opened another screen to check the scheduled departures. Nohamay Nation Holiday Getaway.

  She looked at Ron. “Good or bad?”

  He shrugged. “Casino, I think. Google them up.”

  She opened a new window, typed in “Nohamay Casino,” and clicked on the link. “Here we go,” she said. They read the entry.

  “Jesus,” Ron said. “Nohamay City. Casino, alternative medicine hospital, and freeport. Bet they’re making bank. Upside, the place is run by the NewTrust Corporation, so it’s probably all private security. Downside, the freeport vault is in a tunnel cut into the side of a mesa. It was originally going to be a nuclear waste dump, so its power grid is isolated. If the casket is in there, it will be hell getting it out. Click on the map.”

  She pulled up the map of the city. He pointed at the screen. “There’s only one road out. So it’s fly or drive across the desert.”

  “But is he still there, or was he just using it for a connecting flight?”

  “I
guess we’re going to find out.”

  “We could still give up and run.”

  “I’m not running empty-handed. Aaron is out there with our money. He’s just not that smart. Besides, I think we can still return the casket and get in the clear. The odds are moving against us, but we’ve still got some time. We just need our breaks to come a little faster.”

  It was daylight by the time they got back to their neighborhood. They circled the block slowly, twice, looking for the men wearing the chinos and golf shirts or for anyone else who didn’t belong. There were the usual neighbors waiting at the bus stop—moms and dads waiting with kids for the school bus, a painter’s van in front of the building that was being remodeled, but no strangers. “I wonder why they’re gone. Maybe they weren’t here for us,” Nicole said.

  “If not us, then who? All the neighbors are squeaky clean. And they looked like they belonged to the same crew as the two guys watching Aaron’s apartment.” Ron pulled into an empty spot on the street between a Prius and old Ford Focus. “I admire your optimism, but let’s not take any chances. Let’s pack and get out of here. No dawdling, no showers.”

  They went up into their apartment. Ron unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly. The living room was empty. Sunlight washed into the kitchenette through the windows that faced the street. He turned on the lights. Everything appeared to be just as it was when they left yesterday. Two coffee cups sat on the counter over the dishwasher. Old newspapers lay on the glass-topped coffee table next to the TV remote. A pair of Nicole’s high heels lay just to the right of the doorway to the hall where she had kicked them off. They went into their bedroom, pulled carry-on suitcases from the closet shelf, and started packing a week’s worth of clothes, as if they were going on an upscale vacation. While Ron was in the bathroom collecting his shaving kit, the doorbell rang. “Nicole.”

  She came out of the bedroom and stood waiting in the hall. Ron looked out the peephole in the front door. “Who is it?”

  A police badge filled his line of vision. “Police. Can we have a word with you?”

  Ron opened the door. Two middle-aged men in suits stood in the hallway. One wore an old-school flattop haircut and steel-rim glasses. He was clipping his badge back on his belt. “What’s this about?” Ron asked.

  The other cop was a Latino with dark, gray-streaked hair and a cleft chin. “Can we come in? There’s no reason to tell your business to the neighbors.”

  Ron shrugged and motioned them in. Nicole stepped in from the hall to the bedroom. The cop with the glasses said, “Is there anyone else here?”

  “No,” Ron said.

  Nicole smiled. “Would you like to sit down? Can I get you a glass of water or a cup of coffee?”

  “We’re fine,” the Latino said.

  “So why are you here?” Ron asked.

  “Do you own a gun, Mr. Sherman?” the Latino continued.

  “Do you have a valid carry permit?” the other cop asked.

  “Let me show you.” Ron took out his wallet and handed the Latino cop a concealed carry permit in the name of Martin Sherman. The cop examined it carefully.

  “Do you have another form of ID?”

  Ron handed him a driver’s license in the name of Martin Sherman. “So what is this about?”

  “A man accused you of threatening him with a gun at the Deal’s Motel.”

  Ron opened his mouth to speak, but the other cop cut him off. “It’s on the motel cameras.”

  Ron continued. “Then you saw that lecher threatened my wife. He was outside in his underwear, grabbed at her. He was acting crazy.”

  The cop wearing the glasses smiled. “We saw what we saw. Everybody’s got a storyline to go with the pictures. Bottom line: stay away from that man. We’re not putting up with any stand-your-ground bullshit. You’ve been warned.”

  The Latino cop nodded. “We’re watching you.”

  “We done here?”

  The Latino cop handed Ron the driver’s license and the carry permit. “Don’t screw this up, Mr. Sherman. You don’t want us looking into you.”

  The cops left. Ron locked the door behind them. “The nerve of that bastard. Calling the cops on us after what he did.”

  “They sure found us fast.”

  “They just wanted us to know they could bring pressure to bear. McCall must have picked me out from the concealed-carry database.”

  “At least now we know the permit is still good.”

  “Zeb is always reliable when it comes to documents.”

  “Which guns are registered to Sherman?”

  “The two Glocks and the Smith & Wesson .38. Guess I’ll be buying airline tickets as Martin Sherman. Hard to buy guns on the street in a controlled environment like Nohamay City. They’ll have to travel in checked baggage, but at least we’ll have them when we get there.”

  They started walking back toward the bedroom. “How much longer to pack?” he asked.

  “Maybe ten minutes.”

  “Me too. Still got to get my shaving kit and another pair of shoes. And I’m grabbing all the passports, just in case.”

  At 10:00 a.m., Aaron Rickover stood at a marble-topped counter in a viewing room in the Nohamay Mountain Vault, located in the freeport at Nohamay City. His hands were sweaty, and his wire-rim glasses didn’t seem to want to stay up on his nose. Across from him stood James Denison, a trust-fund millionaire. He was tall and thin with short gray hair and a tightly trimmed beard. He wore snake-skin cowboy boots, dark blue jeans, and a red golf shirt under a white linen sports coat. The Cellini casket sat on the counter between them.

  “This is really beautiful,” Denison said.

  Rickover pointed with the eraser end of a pencil at the edges of the lid and the box. “Look at the quality of these engravings. Imagine: he did this work freehand with only rudimentary magnification.”

  Denison pointed at a cluster of indentations on the top. “Looks like there used to be jewels here.”

  “According to the Gould and Sons 1863 description, there were three large white pearls and two rubies. They were removed sometime before World War One.” Rickover looked up at Denison. “Does it meet your expectations?”

  “This is definitely a Cellini?”

  “As I told you, Mr. Denison, there used to be some question of authenticity, as there often is in these cases, but the consensus of the top scholars says yes.”

  Denison smiled. “My wife will love it.”

  “So it’s a deal?”

  “I just don’t understand how it can be so—.”

  “Inexpensive?”

  “Yeah. Cellini’s salt cellar, which is about this size, is way out of my reach.”

  Rickover smiled. This was where he had to choose his words carefully. “That’s a special piece with a special history. And it’s not for sale. As I explained on the phone, the current owner of the casket doesn’t want anyone to know that they had to sell. That’s why you had to stipulate that you would keep this sale quiet. What can I say? It’s a vanity thing. If this jewelry casket went to auction, it would probably get more than one and a half million.”

  “So I give you one hundred thousand as a down payment, and I can keep the casket in my locker until I have a chance to show it to my wife?”

  “Absolutely. You just can’t remove it from this facility.”

  “It may be a while.”

  “No problem. So long as you can come to a decision in the next two weeks.”

  Denison pushed a brown accordion envelope across the marble counter. “You specified cash, right?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Denison.” Rickover’s hands were shaking. He glanced at the bundles of hundred-dollar bills in the envelope and then tucked the envelope into his briefcase. “I’ll leave you with it.”

  Rickover closed the door as he left the viewing room. The lobby had marble walls and plush carpeting, although the twelve-foot ceiling still bore excavation scars and was reinforced by roof bolts. The only natural light that entered the sp
ace poured in through the front wall, which was bulletproof glass. He hurried across the lobby, glancing nonchalantly at the business representatives sitting at their desks dealing with clients, and pushed out the heavy glass doors on the other side of the security scanners.

  Outside, beyond the parking lot, the scrub desert continued uninterrupted all the way back to the low, brown mountains in the distance. The day was already oppressively hot. He mopped his face with his handkerchief. Now that he had Denison’s $100,000, nothing could stop him. He’d give the money to Philips, have Grace arrest him for involvement in art theft, get the warrant to search Philips’s locker, and voila, he’d get his promotion. There would be no one to contradict his story about how the theft of the casket took place. He patted the bulge of the accordion envelope in his briefcase and smiled to himself. It was just a matter of days now. He’d show them all what he was capable of—his ex, Philips, his bosses, even Grace. None of them would ever underestimate him again.

  That afternoon, after Mosley checked into her cover-story room at the Great Circle Casino and Convention Center in Nohamay City and hung her FBI clothes in the closet, she took a taxi to a row of stucco one-story condos in a residential area five blocks away. The taxi driver set her carry-on bag on the curb. She pulled out the telescoping handle on her bag and rolled it up the short sidewalk to a nearby front door. She opened the door with a key and lifted her bag over the threshold. A busty blonde in her midthirties, softly round in her hips and shoulders, her long hair held back in a loose ponytail, looked up from the cooktop built into the granite-topped island of the kitchenette.

  Mosley smiled. “Miss me, Clare?”

  Clare came around the island. She was wearing sandals, faded jeans, and a pink cotton cardigan sweater whose sleeves were pushed up her forearms. “You should have called. I would have met you at the airport.”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  They met in the middle of the living room between the sofa and the flat-screen TV, held each other for a moment, and kissed. Mosley continued, “You wanted me to come back, didn’t you?”