Collar Robber (3 page)

Chapter Six

Jay Davidovich

“I have some things to discuss with Mr. Rand.” Proxy said this to me as everyone was standing up and she was stowing her mobile phone in her attaché case. “Why don't you go to the hotel and get started on our trip report? I'll give you a call around six to talk about dinner plans.”

I took this as Proxyspeak for
see if you can figure out whether Szulz is really being followed
. Especially since she unobtrusively slipped the rental car fob into the left pocket of my windbreaker. That's why I left at the same time as Jakubek and Szulz. Figuring Jakubek had spotted the fob-pass, I decided to put it on the table as soon as our tight little group hit the sidewalk.

“If I can remember where we parked the Buick Avis rented to us, I'll be happy to give you a ride back to the Omni.”

“I wouldn't have a GM car, personally,” Szulz said. “After the way Comrade Obama shafted the bond-holders when he was ‘saving' General Motors, I'd feel like I was trafficking in stolen goods.”

“Thanks, but it's only a few blocks.” Jakubek said. “If we don't see you again, it's been real.”

If you don't see me again it'll be because I'm doing my job right.

I found the dark blue Ford Escape right where Proxy had parked it, just down a side-street called Stanwick that intersects on the diagonal with Liberty Avenue near the Museum's main entrance. I'd made the “Buick” crack so that I'd be the farthest thing from Szulz's mind if he happened to notice a Ford SUV making the same turns he was when he drove from the Omni to his next destination. I was betting they wouldn't take me up on my ride offer. If they had I would've come up with something to explain the Buick thing away, but I'm not sure what—so it's a good thing they didn't.

When it comes to following someone, I prefer heading to tailing. People associate being followed with having someone behind them, so the smoothest way to bring it off is to start from the front. You slip to the back if you have to along the way, then get in front again when you can.

The Escape's GPS wanted to route me along Liberty, but that's where Jakubek and Szulz were strolling toward Fifth at the moment, so I took a quick right on Fourth instead. That made the GPS scold but its illuminated map still worked fine. I managed a left on Smithfield after two blocks east on Fourth, and rode that to something called Oliver Avenue, between Fifth and Sixth. A right on Oliver and our hotel was almost staring me in the face.

Time to wait. I'd noticed by this time that downtown Pittsburgh is very hilly. No, let me rephrase that: hill-wise, Pittsburgh makes San Francisco look like Des Moines. That meant I'd have to wait closer to the intersection of Oliver and William Penn Place than I would have liked. The pale March sun would be in their eyes if Jakubek or Szulz happened to glance in my direction, though, so I figured I was probably okay.

I finally spotted them trooping by on the opposite side of William Penn Place maybe seven minutes later. I sat tight until they actually reached the hotel entrance. Then I eased into a right turn and found an almost-legal parking space that let me get a decent view of the hotel's front door in my side-view mirror. I was betting that Szulz would drive back in the direction of the Museum, which was the most direct route to his condo if the address in Proxy's cyber-packet and the Escape's sulky GPS were right. If he turned north instead of south I'd need to do some fancy wheel-work, but I decided to go with the odds.

By the time I had the parking brake on, Jakubek was already making her way on foot toward Sixth Avenue. I got a little gut-flutter because I couldn't see Szulz for a second, but then I spotted him in shadows north of the entrance, handing his claim check to a valet. Less than five minutes later a garnet-red Mercury Sable that had to be twelve years old pulled up front. A guy in a gray-with-red-trim hotel uniform got out of the car. Szulz slipped him something and climbed in.

He swung the Sable toward the southbound lane. Maybe thirty feet ahead of him I pulled into the outside driving lane, framed him in my rearview mirror, and got ready to turn onto Fifth ahead of him. Smooth as silk.

Then the gray Corolla I'd spotted on my earlier excursion to the hotel pulled out behind Szulz and got on his tail. Smooth as sandpaper.

Son of a bitch. Maybe Szulz really was being followed.

Szulz turned onto Fifth behind me, as I'd expected. I guessed that he'd take Smithfield rather than Wood south from Fifth, but he crossed me up. After turning left on Smithfield I picked up a quick flash of him continuing west on Fifth instead of making the same turn I had.

The only difference that made was that when I started following Szulz again it was from behind him instead of ahead. I'm not clairvoyant or anything, but if he was going home he had to be headed for the Fort/Pitt Bridge. A drive-time left turn at the major intersection of Liberty Avenue and Fifth figured to be a bitch, so the money play had to be to take a side-street south to Fort/Pitt Boulevard, head west, and then basically merge onto the bridge when he reached Liberty.

That's what Szulz did and that's what I did—and that's what the Corolla did. Driving west on Fort/Pitt Boulevard, I'd made it almost to Stanwick when Szulz tire-squealed onto Fort/Pitt from Wood, not quite a block behind me. I could have pulled out to stay in front of him but the Corolla must have spooked him because he was making tracks now. I decided to let him and the Corolla power past me and then slide elegantly and inconspicuously into their wake. I managed it. Before you knew it all three of us were making our way southwest over the gray, choppy Monongahela River.

Strictly speaking, I already had what I wanted. I knew that someone really was following Szulz. I had the Corolla's license number, I could tell that it was a Pennsylvania registration and wasn't a rental, and I had a halfway decent description of the driver. Plus, it looked to me like the driver was either a rank amateur or he wanted to make damn good and sure Szulz knew he was being followed. I found both alternatives intriguing. No real reason I couldn't just look for the first chance after the bridge to do a U-turn and retrace my steps.

Except what if Willy Szulz ended up dead or with a concussion and someone had noticed a Ford Escape rented by Proxy and driven by me following him? Or what if Szulz and the Corolla driver were co-stars in a little community theater production ginned up to make us think there really was someone else interested in Szulz's bill of sale, implying that our price should go up? I decided I might as well stay on the tail until Szulz got to his condo, and see what the Corolla did then.

The Corolla mooted that question about thirty seconds after we reached the other side of the bridge. No sooner had we put the river behind us than the Corolla's driver grabbed his mobile phone for a five-second conversation. The instant he put the phone down he swerved into the inside lane, looking to me like a guy very anxious to head back the way he had come. I stayed with him for the half-mile he needed to reach a gap in the parkway separating the southbound and northbound lanes, and followed the Corolla through it to head back toward the bridge. Two drivers sat on their horns, and I couldn't blame them a bit.

The Corolla slowed down, as if daring me to confirm that I was following by slowing down myself. No thanks. Headed northeast in heavy traffic, with Szulz moving at a decent clip in the opposite direction, there were only two places the Corolla could go. One was the William Penn Omni, and the other one wasn't. I only cared about the first. I swept past the Corolla like it was standing still and set course for the hotel.

I made a lot better time than the Corolla did, maybe because the driver was trying to hang back out of my sight. I'd already jumped out of the rental and traded the fob and two singles to the valet for a claim check when I spotted the Corolla waiting to make a left from Fifth onto William Penn Place.

And because I was looking intently in that direction, I also spotted something else: the guy who'd panhandled Jakubek and me not quite two hours before. Instead of a ragged hoodie, he now wore a North Face three-in-one jacket—but he still had those shiny Air Jordan Six-Rings on his feet. More important, he was carrying a maroon leather attaché case that looked a lot like Proxy's. He was hustling toward the corner, which is what I'd be doing if I wanted a pick-up from the Corolla.

I went tearing after him just as the Corolla turned the corner. When he glanced over his shoulder I could tell he wasn't happy to see me. I had closed to within about ten feet by the time the Corolla completed the turn. Three more seconds and I'd have him. No way the Corolla could get there by then, and the ex-hoodie wasn't going to outrun me unless those Air Jordans had jetpacks

He did the only thing he could have done to keep me from tackling him. He stopped, turned, and faced me with angry indignation scrawled across his face. I pulled up just in time to avoid a collision.

“What you doing?” I picked up a faint Middle Eastern accent that I hadn't noticed when he was begging. “Why you trying to mug me? Leave me alone!”

I probably should have just carried my charge through and knocked him over without any conversation. That really would have looked like a mugging, though, and if there were any cops in the neighborhood I could have wound up in handcuffs while Junior here took Proxy's case for a ride. So I stopped nimbly (for me), maybe three feet from him.

“I'm looking for my colleague's attaché case, which suddenly went missing not long ago. If you're taking it to lost-and-found, you're going in the wrong direction.”

By now the Corolla had screeched to a stop beside us. Its front passenger door swung open.

“You're crazy! This is mine!”

I'd already pulled out my mobile phone. Now I punched the speed-dial for Proxy's number. Two seconds later the first three bars of
A Little Night Music
sounded from inside the attaché case. Proxy's ringtone.

The guy only looked non-plussed for half a second or so, because that's all the time I needed to park a decent left jab in the neighborhood of his right temple. Without letting go of the case in his right hand, he grunted as he planted a solid left on my sternum. An inch lower and it might have done some real damage, but it landed where it landed and all it did was hurt.

Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed the Corolla's driver clambering across the front seats and levering himself out of the passenger side. I put my right elbow right between his eyes with some authority behind it. This discouraged him, at least for the moment. Unfortunately, the distraction gave the other guy a chance to start scampering around the back of the car. I slid across the trunk lid in a head-first horizontal dive, with designs on grabbing his pricey jacket somewhere. He managed to elude me by swiveling away from the car, but the evasion cost him a precious second or two. Landing hard on the street, I popped up from the pavement with skinned knees and plenty of time to reach the driver-side door before he could.

All at once, from maybe three feet away, he brought the attaché case up with his right hand, more or less horizontally over his left shoulder. He swung it at me sideways. It caught me right in the puss. The top edge smashed the bridge of my nose, and the lower edge split my upper lip. By sheer reflex I got a grip on the case with both hands as it creamed me. My fanny smacked the pavement hard, but the case came with me. The momentum of my tumble tore the handle out his grasp.

I was blinded for just an instant. My vision cleared in time for me to see him hesitating between the open car door and the top of the chassis, wondering if he could grab the case back. My blood was up and I kind of hoped he'd try.

He didn't. He had the sense to duck into the car and concede the attaché case to me.
You keep the case and let us get away. Last, best, and final offer.
I took it.

Chapter Seven

Jay Davidovich

Maybe I could have stopped him if I'd dropped the case, but I had two more important things to worry about. The attaché case was only the second. I climbed gingerly to my feet with it firmly in hand as the car roared away.

The afternoon's events fell into a clear pattern in my throbbing head. The two dudes I'd just scrimmaged with had no way of knowing that Proxy would check in while Szulz was headed home with the Corolla on his tail. When she got to the hotel the phony panhandler had grabbed her attaché case after urgently summoning the Corolla to scurry back and pick him up. Proxy hadn't been in the vicinity when I'd spotted him, which meant he hadn't just pulled a snatch-and-grab. He must have done something to incapacitate her. That made finding her Job-one.

Blood streaming from my nose and oozing from my lip, I hustled toward the Omni's main entrance. The parking valet seemed to be bracing himself behind his little portable counter to the right of the front door as he put down a phone.

“I need to talk to hotel security, fast!”

“I think you can count on it, buddy.”

He nodded toward the door, where a black guy almost as tall as I am and with similar musculature was coming out in a hurry. His left hand held a two-way radio, and his right was parked underneath his gray sport coat.

“Sir, may I see some—?”

“Jay Davidovich, Transoxana Insurance.” I slapped a business card and my old military ID on the counter and held up the attaché case. “That weasel slapping me around on the street just now stole this from my colleague, Proxy Shifcos. Must've jumped her while she was going into her room after checking in. We need to find her pronto. If he conked her head, we don't have any time to waste.”

He glanced at my ID and then, mouth slightly open, turned dark brown eyes with gold rims around the irises toward me.

“You said her name is what, now?”

I bit back frustrated epithets and fought the urge to yell at him.

“Shifcos, Proxeine Violet.” I spelled
Shifcos
for him. “Probably checked in within the last half-hour.”'

Raising the radio to his lips, he nodded slightly to me while he spoke into it. He had to go back and forth twice with whoever was on the other end, but he finally got something that apparently verified Proxy's check-in. Lowering the radio, he turned his steady gaze on the valet parker.

“Call Mr. Blue in Guest Relations and give him a status report.”

“Roger that,” the valet said, as if he'd just joined Seal Team Six.

“All right.” The security guy's head turned back toward me. “Let's go.”

He opened the door for me because no way was he letting me get behind him. I followed his discreetly whispered directions to the middle bank of elevators by a route that wouldn't show my bloody face to too many conventioneers and visiting software salesmen. He took it from there, getting us onto a car and pushing the button for the eighth floor. Once we got there he picked up the pace. We were downright sprinting by the time we reached Room 821.

No one home
was
the first thing I thought after the security guy used his master-key and pushed the door open. Just to the right of the door I saw Proxy's electric-blue roller suitcase knocked over on its side with its handle still fully extended—but no Proxy. Then I heard an urgent and indignant “UHMPF! UMPH!” from between the twin beds.

I got there in two good strides, tossing the attaché case on the bed as I went so that she'd know I'd recovered it. I saw Proxy, gagged with a white gym sock knotted crudely behind her head and hog-tied with thin electrical cord. “Hog-tied” as in trussed like a stoat on the first stage of his way to a
goyim
breakfast. Lying on her stomach, she had her hands and arms pulled behind her back and the lower half of her legs up and pulled as far toward her waist as they'd go. The electrical cord tied her wrists and ankles together and to each other. The guy who'd tied her up wasn't any sailor, that's for sure. The knots he'd managed were ugly blobs without a trace of rope-craft to them.

As Proxy twisted her head over her shoulder at my approach, I read blind fury in her eyes. She'd been humiliated, degraded, and (worst of all in her eyes) deprived of control over her situation. The way she looked at things, my coming across her like this was way worse than surprising her stark naked. She figured to be one pissed-off lady.

“Knife!” I barked at the security guy.

He produced a folding Buck knife at least four inches long and slapped it into my palm. I pulled the blade out and felt it lock into place, but before I went to work on the restraints I began loosening the gag between Proxy's teeth as gently as I could. I really wanted to hear the first words out of her mouth. Proxy doesn't do spontaneous cussing. She might let loose with an occasional, carefully calculated “bullshit” during a meeting when it will get maximum attention, but I've never heard her use off-color language in an angry outburst. If it was ever going to happen, I thought, today would be the day.

“Steady, soldier,” I told her soothingly as I unknotted the sock and began tugging it from between her teeth. “Police are already on their way.” I figured that the security guard's “Mr. Blue” instruction to the parking valet was code for, “Call the cops.” I pulled the sock out without taking any of her dental work along with it and braced myself for her reaction to being mugged and left tied up like a bondage freak. Her face contorted in barely controlled wrath and the words came.

“Davidovich! You're hurt!”