Carnal Curiosity (24 page)

“Cheap at the price. What do we do now?”

“Come on home, and we’ll live as usual, except we can’t pull any jobs, and we can’t sell any of the stuff still in the shop. It’s been inventoried and tagged, so we can’t sneak anything out.”

“Bill, this sounds almost too good to be true. Are you sure it’s real?”

“I’m out, aren’t I? Come on home.”

“I’ll stay the night and come home in the morning. I don’t want to have to deal with rush hour traffic.”

“Oh, I got my bike back. It’s still in the van. We can sell it if we need cash.”

“I’ve got the thirteen grand that that guy Jim paid me for the two pictures, so we’re afloat for a while.”

“Yeah, after we get clear of this thing, we’ll relocate and start over.”

“Where do you think?”

“Somewhere out of the tristate area, I guess. L.A.? San Francisco?”

“That sounds inviting. How long do you think it will take to get clear?”

“The bust will be real soon. I’ll have to testify, of course, but if they bag the big guy, they won’t need me. We could be out of here before the end of the month, and with our money!”

“Okay, baby, I’ll be there by noon tomorrow. Berta sends love and kisses.”

“Yeah, sure!” They both hung up.

Murphy went to the van and drove around the corner to their garage. He parked it, then unloaded his motorcycle.

“Hey, Murphy!”

He turned around and saw another bike owner coming.

“Yeah?”

“Something funny happened. Suddenly, my license place is gone and my bike is wearing your girlfriend’s plate. She must be wearing mine!”

“I’m sorry, we had a little thing, and she must have panicked. She’ll be home midday tomorrow, and I’ll see that the plates are switched back.”

“Do that, or I’ll call the cops on her.”

“Don’t worry.”

Murphy went back to the shop and began to go through the inventory, looking for something that didn’t have a tag on it. He found three pretty good pieces that could bring a buck at the weekend flea market and set them aside.

San Francisco, he was thinking. Maybe even Carmel or Santa Barbara. That would be rich pickings, and they could sell the stuff in Frisco!

53

S
tone, Dino, and Mike Freeman sat in Stone’s study and sipped their drinks.

“Okay, Mike,” Dino said, “tell us what the setup is for your jewelry show.”

Mike unrolled a set of plans for the floor where the show would be held, spread them on the coffee table, and began pointing out things. “Sellers are in the suites around the exterior of the building. They wanted privacy to make their sales, instead of a large showroom. There’s a central lounge on the north side of the building, where there’s a bar set up. That takes up about a third of the floor. The rest are suites. We’ll have a plainclothes guard in each suite, and there’ll also be a uniformed policeman with body armor and a shotgun concealed in the entryway closet. There’ll be guards downstairs at the elevator banks and upstairs outside the elevator. To secure the roof and helicopter pad we’ll have twelve men with full body armor and shotguns, hidden in the building on the roof, here, that
houses the heating, air-conditioning, and telephone systems. It’s a tight fit, but it will work.

“If the robbers arrive by helicopter, as we think they will, we’ll allow them to get down the stairwell, where they’ll be confronted by our people on the floor. The team on the roof will follow them down very quickly for backup. We’ll round them all up, cuff them, read them their rights, then take them down in elevators to the garage, where there will be three paddy wagons waiting for them.”

“That looks pretty much like the same plan that Crane Hart was overseeing,” Dino said.

“It’s exactly the same plan,” Mike replied.

“So what’s the real plan?”

“The real plan is this plan, but it happens a day earlier. The organizers have brought forward the show date by a day, and sworn both sellers and buyers to secrecy, and Crane doesn’t know that. I’ll send her out on a different job that will occupy her all day on the day. The next day is when the robbers will arrive, and there won’t be any sellers or buyers there to get hurt, if there’s shooting. And we don’t have to make a new plan. Even if we did, it would look a hell of a lot like this one.”

Dino and Stone sat quietly and thought about it.

“I can’t think of any reason that wouldn’t work,” Dino said finally.

“Neither can I,” Stone said.

“Oh,” Dino said, “something new. Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Sutton are back from Israel. They got in last night, and Jake is back at work at the diamond center today.”

“Suppose Sutton hears about the sale and calls Don Dugan,” Stone said.

“Jake isn’t invited to participate. He’ll know about it, but, like Crane, he won’t know the new date,” Dino said.

“Have you heard anything from Bill Murphy about doing the job?” Stone asked.

“Who’s Bill Murphy?” Mike asked.

Dino explained it to him. “We’re talking to Murphy every day. We’ll know as soon as he knows. Anyway, he’s just backup, in case we don’t bag everybody on the day.”

“It would be nice to know who we’re dealing with,” Mike said.

“It’s Don Dugan, the Drago brothers, and their cousin Jerry Kowalski—on his mother’s side,” Dino said. “Probably plus two or three other guys. We know all that, we just can’t prove it until they’re either busted on the day, or until Murphy is in a position to rat them out.”

“It would be nice if you could bag Jake Sutton on the same day,” Stone said.

“We’ll have four guys on him,” Dino replied. “If he makes a move, we’ll be all over him. We’ve tapped his phone lines at home, in his booth, and in his office, too. And don’t worry, we have the warrants.”

“We’re listening to Crane’s office extension, too,” Mike said. “We don’t need a warrant to tap our own phones or wire our own offices.”

“What about Bill Murphy and Anita Mays’s shop and apartment?” Stone asked.

“Everything’s wired. We can listen to their cell phones when they’re on the premises, too. When Murphy got home, the first thing he did was to buy a throwaway and call her. Turns out she’s at her sister’s house in Connecticut. She’s coming back tomorrow.”

“You think Anita’s on board with this?”

“She bought everything he had to say in their phone conversation,” Dino said. “They’re already talking about moving their operation to California when he’s clear here.”

“Will he get his money back?” Stone asked.

“I’m a little unclear on that,” Dino said. “If we drop the charges, do we have a basis for confiscating the money? I mean, confiscating all the stolen goods, sure, but the money? Without charges? What’s your legal opinion, Stone?”

“My opinion is that I’m glad the DA’s office will have to make that distinction and that decision.”

Dino snorted. “You can never get a legal opinion out of a lawyer when you need one,” he said.

54

B
ill Murphy walked into the bar on Bleecker Street and spotted Jerry Kowalski. He bought two beers at the bar and took them over to the table where Jerry was waiting.

“How’s it going?” Murphy asked.

“It’s going just great,” Kowalski replied. “You still up for the job?”

“I sure am. Tell me all.”

“First thing is, we need one more guy to cover the ground. You know somebody who can handle it?”

“I know just the guy, but it’s not a guy. It’s my girl, Anita. You’ve met her.”

“Well, she’s a looker, but how is she with a shotgun in her hand?”

“She’s smart as a whip, tough as nails, and she has ice water in her veins. You want to talk to her? I’ll call her now.”

Kowalski nodded.

Murphy called Anita’s new cell number and got her. “Where are you?”

“I just got to the house,” she said.

“You know that bar where we heard the guitarist?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m there now with a buddy, and he’s got something for us. Come straight over.”

“I’m on my way.”

“How long you know her?” Kowalski asked.

“Going on five years. We’ve done very well together, and she’s never once dropped the ball.”

“The big guy has a girl in on this, too, so maybe he’ll go for it.”

They sipped their beer and waited for Anita. She spotted them immediately, picked up three beers at the bar, and came over.

“Nita, you remember Jerry.”

“Sure.”

“I’m helping to set up a job, and Bill tells me you can handle yourself.”

“I beat him up all the time,” she said.

“You think she’s kidding?” Murphy laughed.

“Okay, here’s the deal: we’re hitting a jewelry show at a big hotel. The big guy has all the inside info, and he’s got the scene tapped, plans and everything. It’s going to run like clockwork.”

“When?” Nita asked.

“Pretty soon. You won’t get any notice. I’ll come get you, we’ll go to a place where everything is set up. Everything’s provided: clothes, weapons, masks, transportation. You sit down with the big guy, he runs us through it, we do some practicing.
We sleep over, next day we walk in, point guns at people, take out the security, and walk out with a couple of duffels full of high-end diamond jewelry.”

“Anybody going to get hurt?” Murphy asked.

“Only if there’s opposition. The plan is so good they won’t see us coming. We’re in, we’re out.”

“Nita and I are in,” Murphy said.

“Lemme make a call,” Kowalski said. He went outside for five minutes, then came back, tucking his cell phone into his pocket. “Okay,” he said, “the big guy has bought you both.”

“What’s the money?”

“Fifty grand five days after the job, another fifty after the stuff is fenced—couple of weeks.”

“That’s a hundred grand each?”

“Right. We all get the same.”

Murphy and Anita looked at each other and nodded. “We’re up for it.” Murphy gave him their new cell numbers.

Kowalski made notes about their clothing and shoe sizes. “Here’s how it will go,” he said. “I’ll call you and say, ‘We’re on.’ No conversation. Exactly one hour after the call you’re standing in front of Washington Square Arch, and I’ll pick you up in a black van. Bring a small overnight bag and a change of clothes. No guns, knives, or other weapons. And no cell phones. You’ll be thoroughly searched, then equipped. We rehearse that day. The next day the job goes down. You’ll be delivered well away from the job, you go home and wait. Five days later you’ll get a call from me again. I meet you at Washington Square, you get your money, I drop you off. Any questions?”

“Who’s the big guy?” Anita asked.

“You’ll meet him. You won’t know his name. You don’t want
to know his name or anything about him, believe me. You perform, you get paid, that’s it.”

“So we’re trusting you,” Murphy said.

“Remember what the big guy said? You don’t get paid, you can kill me?”

“So that’s how it is.”

“That’s how it is. You still in?”

“We are,” they both said simultaneously.

Kowalski got up and left, and Murphy and Anita ordered a burger.

“You really think it’s going to go the way he says?” she asked.

“Kowalski is a standup guy. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.”

“Well,” she said, “if it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.”

“After lunch, we need to call the cops,” Murphy said.

“Do we?” she asked. “Do we really need to?”

55

M
ike Freeman was at his desk, his office door open, then there was a soft rap on the jamb. He looked up to find Crane Hart, fetching in a white dress that was fitted tightly across her breasts. His breath quickened a little, and he felt himself growing tumescent. “Hi,” he breathed.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

“Come in.”

Mike worked in a soft chair at a coffee table, and she took a chair across from him and crossed her legs. He didn’t see much, but he knew she only rarely wore underwear, so his carnal tension went up a notch. “What’s up?”

“I came to protest,” she said.

“Really? About what?”

“You’re shipping me off to Atlanta just when the big event I planned comes off. I want to be here for that.”

Mike shook his head. “There would be nothing for you to do,” he said. “The plan and the date are fixed. You’ve done your
work, now it gets turned over to operations and they make it happen. They don’t need you to hold a shotgun and look threatening.”

“I know, I know, it’s just that this is the first operation I’ve planned, and I want to see it work.”

“You’d be a liability to operations. They’d be worried about protecting you, and they have more than enough to protect.”

“Come on, Mike,” she said, in that inviting way she had. “Please.”

“Nope.”

“How about if I come around this coffee table, kneel in front of you, unzip your trousers, and take you in my mouth?”

Mike’s heart skipped a beat. “People might talk,” he said.

“I know, but I want to do it so much.”

“As soon as you get back from Atlanta,” he said, “it will be all yours.”

“Yum,” she said, getting to her feet. “You certainly know how to turn a girl on.”

“You’re not so bad at that yourself,” he said.

“At turning a girl on? I didn’t know you were interested in a threesome. Perhaps I can arrange one for us.”

Jesus, he thought. She could make me come right now, without even moving.

“
Immediately
after Atlanta,” he said. If he had his way, she’d have plenty of girls to choose from at Rikers Island’s Singer Center, the women’s jail.

She made a disappointed face. “All right,” she said, “I’ll let you make it up to me. You’ll have to do all the work.”

“Love to,” Mike replied.

—

M
urphy and Anita rode their separate bikes back to the garage and parked them.

“Just a minute,” he said, taking a screwdriver from his saddlebag and handing it to her. “The guy next door would like his license plate back.”