Collar Robber (9 page)
Authors: Hillary Bell Locke
Cynthia Jakubek
We got the deal done at two in the afternoon my time, which meant that Shifcos was clocking some major overtime. We'd fenced a bit, mostly for pride's sake I think. Just before noon she'd written, “I need you to come off $170k,” so I knew we had it made. All we were arguing about now was bragging rights.
I phoned Willy's number and left a message wishing him safe travels. For the next twenty-two minutes I piddled around with my brief on the hopeless appeal for my Free-Man-Born-of-the-Soil Sovereign Citizen client. While doing that I fantasized about beads of sweat popping out on Shifcos' well-sculpted WASP brow. Then I replied to her email:
I've phoned my client. I can go to $168,500 for a deal today. I can't talk to him again until tomorrow at the earliest.
Regards,
Jakubek
Every statement in those three sentences was literally true. That took some work. I got Shifcos' reply three minutes later:
Done at $168.5k gross, $153.5k net of $15k already paid. Other terms of your draft accepted. Pls confirm, complete, and email duplicate original w/electronic signature. Pick-up 10:00 a.m. local time Monday. Your office or Pitt MCM? Pls advise. Send wire transfer instructions for your trust account. Payment to be completed within thirty minutes after verification document is in hand.
PVS
I responded that we'd deliver the document at my office and gave her my trust account wiring instructions. Then I sat back in my chair to bask for a minute or so in a warm, tingly feeling. Negotiations are like those baseball games for eight-year-olds where no one keeps score. You know whether you've accomplished your objective, but you don't know whether you've left money on the table. In pure competitive terms, you don't know whether you've won.
Except when you do. I'd won. I'd kicked her butt.
Cynthia Jakubek
I was still in full bask at seven-thirty the next morning when Amber called. Not the sunny, ditzy Amber I was used to but a guarded, pouty Amber whose petulantly disappointed tone asked why people just couldn't be
nice
. Her words had an ominous thickness to them. First thing I wondered was whether Willy had gotten home cranky and slapped her around. I really hoped not, because I liked Willy and I didn't want to stop liking him.
“Okay,” she said, “this is like a
strange
question. But Willy told me to ask you.”
“Shoot.”
“He said you'd told him a few months ago that he was legal owning a certain thing. He wants to know if you're for sure about that.”
And he thinks his line might be tapped. And he might be right
. I knew exactly what she was talking about.
“The answer is yes. I'm for sure about that.”
“Good. Thanks.” Click.
Okay.
Cynthia Jakubek
The fifteen-hundred bucks a month I pay to the Law Offices of Luis Gonzales to sublease nine hundred square feet of space includes a receptionist/rent-a-cop at a raised, square desk in the sixth-floor lobby outside the much more impressive quarters where Luis G and the seventeen people who work for him do their stuff. At nine-fifty-eight on Monday the receptionist buzzed me to say that “some gentlemen” were there to see me.
I strode out expecting Davidovich and Rand. Half right. I saw Davidovich and Barry Akin, a Pittsburgh cop I'd last encountered the week before on the stand in municipal court. Davidovich looked like he'd just gotten back from deer camp, sporting what I took to be a high-end zippered hunting vest from the yuppie edition of an Eddie Bauer catalogue. Akin, in a blue blazer over an open-necked dress shirt, came a little closer to urban office-building standards.
In his left hand Davidovich toted a brushed-steel attaché case with recessed locks that must have weighed a ton and looked like it could shrug off a point-blank shot from anything short of a .357 magnum. Under the left armpit of his blazer, Akin was packing heat without being shy about it. So whatever happened in Vienna had made someone classify this morning's pick-up as hazardous duty. That probably explained why Rand hadn't joined the party. Frankly, I saw his point.
“Hey, Barry, how's it going?” I shook hands with both of them.
“Holding aces and eights with my back to the door, what else?”
“Well, we're about two thousand miles from Deadwood so you should be okay.” Cops don't like lawyers, as a rule, but you can make it onto their not-a-total-asshole list if you understand cracks about the hand Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he got shot in the back during the last poker game he ever played.
I led them toward the heavy glass door to my office. What you see through the door isn't desks or chairs but waist-high area dividers made out of blond wood, with broad-leaved green plants on top of them. Cheap privacy until I can afford a bigger office with my own receptionist. I glanced over my left shoulder at Akin.
“You can ignore the statutory notice.”
Six-by-eight inches, the framed sign at eye-level next to my office door is to let people know where I stand on the keep-and-bear-arms thing:
NO FIREARMS PERMITTED ON THESE PREMISES
DEFENSE DES FUSILS ET MITRAILETTES
ARMAS DE FUEGO PROHIBIDO
SCHUSSWAFFEN VERBOTEN
I'm not a gun wimp, but twenty-first century Pittsburgh isn't the Wild Westâand there are plenty of other lawyers around for clients who think it is.
I led them to my desk and gestured toward the two guest chairs. My safe is just a bottom file drawer with a combination lock, so it didn't take me long to pull out Willy's very expensive piece of paper and the authenticating declaration. I set it on my blotter with the bottom toward Davidovich so that he could see the faded, elaborate signatures and the embossed notary seal. Then I put the receipt I'd drafted next to it. Davidovich leaned toward the bill of sale for a few seconds.
“Can I get three copies of that?”
“For what Transoxana is paying for this thing you can get thirty.” I picked it up and turned toward the printer/copier parked beside my desk.
“On onion-skin.”
“Seriously?”
“Those are my instructions.” Davidovich shrugged as he unholstered his mobile phone.
“Can do.” My turn to shrug.
It took me two minutes to come up with onion-skin paper for the copier. By the time I had the duplicates made Davidovich was slipping his phone back into the plastic holder on his belt. He nodded at me.
“The wire should be on the way.”
“I'll get some coffee while we wait for confirmation of the payment.”
Interesting current of tension in our little group while we sipped Hill's Brothers from china mugs. (I don't do Starbucks and I don't do paper cups.) If this deal didn't fall apart in the next few minutes, I'd send Willy a bill at the end of the month and he'd pay it. That payment would guarantee that, sometime next month, I'd be able to pull the largest draw I would have allowed myself so far during my solo practice adventure. I had three thousand in mind. If I managed to pay myself three thousand a month for the next year, I'd be making about fifteen percent of what Calder & Bull would have paid me. Of course, I planned on making a lot more down the road. But that wasn't really the point. The point was that nothing I'd do for a quarter-million a year at C&B would generate anything remotely like the rush surging through me right this second.
About seven minutes into our chat, my computer pinged to tell me I had mail. I glanced at my inbox screen. Mellon Bank thought there was something I should know. One mouse-click gave me the news: Confirming deposit of $153,349.50 into the trust account of Cynthia Jakubek, Attorney at Law, net of the bank's tenth of a point for the trouble. Banks, like bookies, always get their piece.
“Okay. Transoxana just bought itself a piece of paper. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
Davidovich leaned forward, signed the receipt acknowledging that he'd gotten the document on today's date, and handed it to me. Then, balancing the attaché case on his knees, he snapped it open and took out two large brown envelopes, one with a white adhesive tag marked ORIGINAL and the other with a tag marked COPIES. He put the original of the bill of sale in the first envelope and the copies in the second. I guess insurance guys like to do it by the book. Closed the attaché case and snapped it shut, with substantial-sounding locks clicking into place.
“One more thing,” Davidovich said. “Men's room. 'Cause that was really good coffee.”
From my bottom drawer I fished out a key on a ring attached to a long, Lucite rectangle.
“To your left out the door, little corridor about fifteen feet down.”
“Got it. Oh, you don't validate parking tickets do you?”
I almost laughed out loud. He'd just dropped a hundred-and-a-half-and-change on me and he was sweating a six-dollar parking fee.
“Sorry. Only for clients.”
I figured I had at least five minutes before he and Akin waltzed back with the key, so I called Willy and left the good news on his voice-mail. The likable little hustler had pulled off another one.
Jay Davidovich
Ten feet or so down the sidewalk, Akin and I climbed into an illegally parked white Ford Crown Victoria with police department license plates. No ticket, of courseânot that either Akin or I would have paid it if there had been.
“So,” he said as he pulled into the street, “we deliver the document and you go kill some ducks, right?”
“Travel vest,” I said, picking up the josh about my North Slope insulated outerwear. “Has a separate pouch for anything you might have in your pockets, plus your belt and mobile phone. Stuff whatever you're carrying into it as you approach airport security, drop it into a bin with your shoes, and you're ready for the scanner in five seconds flat. Once you're through, slip back into your loafers, pick up the vest, and before you know it you're halfway to the bar, passing two sales reps and a lawyer still digging car keys out of plastic bowls on the way.”
“Travel vest.” Akin slapped the heel of his right hand on the steering wheel and shook his head. “Shoulda thought of that. Coulda made a million bucks.”
“Maybe next time.”
“By the way, what was that bullshit about validating your parking ticket?” Akin's eyes moved constantly, in a steady survey of everything around us. Cops' eyes do that a lot, except on TV.
“Jakubek is going to call her client to tell him how things went. If he happens to fish for dope about how we're getting to the Pitt MCM and she happens to drop a hint or two, I'd rather have him looking for us at the exit from the parking ramp than here.”
“She's actually not bad for a lawyerâespecially a lawyer in a skirt. You think she's bent?”
“No, I don't.”
What I think is that her client was in Vienna when a guy with a different agenda got dead.
“But stuff happens.”
Our drive would cover less than a mile. I almost felt sheepish about not walking, but loss-prevention specialists don't get paid to tempt fate. The State Department's Embassy Security Directorate has produced studies showing that you're actually more vulnerable to an ambush if you're in a car than if you're on foot. Well, I've been ambushed on foot and I've been ambushed in a car, and I'd rather be in a car.
We made it to the Museum without incident. Akin parked his Crown Vic directly under a sign saying NO PARKING HERE TO CORNER. At least it wasn't a handicap spot. We saw Rand waiting for us at the reception desk as we walked in the front door. All smiles and not quite as blasé as at our first meeting. Kind of peppy, in fact, with a little bounce to his step.
“We'll do the handoff in Ms. Huggens' office,” he said as he led us toward a dimly lighted corridor on the opposite side of the reception area from the one that led to the conference room. “You'll want her to sign the receipt, and it will go faster there than assembling in the conference room and calling her down.”
I shrugged. I didn't care if we did it in the employee lounge, as long as we got it done.
The corridor led to an inconspicuous elevator clearly not designed for use by busloads of school kids on field trips. Small, but sleek and freshly spruced up, with a tasteful STAFF ONLY PLEASE sign just above the call buttons. After we all got in, Rand flashed a card at a black screen and touched 4 on the digital keypad that appeared.
We'd made about a floor-and-a-half when the lights went out.
Metal-shearing screech punctuating the sudden darkness. Abrupt CLANG! that made my ears ring. I pitched toward the door as Newton's Second Law of Motion did its thing. Judging from the grunts and expletives around me in the inky blackness, the other two had the same kind of experience. A blinding light from just above the ceiling immediately hit us with what felt like physical force. I threw my left forearm across my stinging eyes to shield them from the fiercely painful beam.
I sensed rather than saw Akin reaching under his blazer toward his left armpit. “DON'T!” was just about to spurt from my throat when I heard a sound sort of like an air-wrench makes when a grease-monkey uses it to unfasten lug nuts. A high-pitched
WHINE-pfft
kind of thing. Akin let out a short, strangled scream and slammed backward to the floor, arms and legs flailing spastically.
Tasered. Shit. This was damned serious.
I dropped to one knee to check him out. A voice from behind the light stopped me cold.
“Freeze! Or you'll get one too.”
I froze.
“Give the case and the keys to gramps so he can hand it up here.” Whoever gave these orders had done something to distort his voice.
“Okay.” It took every particle of will I could muster to keep my voice calm.
“DO IT! DO IT RIGHT FUCKING NOW! DON'T FUCK WITH ME!”
“I'm doing it. I'm sliding the case across the floor to Rand.” Unhurried, no-drama voice. The guy could see me doing exactly what I said I was doing, but a soothing narrative can supposedly calm down someone in a confrontation. “The keys to the case are in my right trouser pocket. I'm going to reach into that pocket with my right hand.”
“JUST DO IT!”
“I'm doing it. I'm taking the keys out. I'm going to transfer them to my left hand, and then give them to Rand.” You carefully explain everything you do in a situation like this. At all costs you want to avoid surprising the guy.
I passed the keys, first to my left hand and then to Rand. I did it slowly and none too smoothly, expecting any second to get jolted with a Taser-slug worth of juice that would lay me on the floor next to Akin and play hell with my central nervous system in the process.
“Okay, gramps,” the voice said, “now stick one of the keys in the lock.”
Rand managed that. I wouldn't have blamed him if he'd fumbled a bit, but he got a key in on the first try.
“Now stand up and push the far end into the black space around the light.”
Rand made it to his feet. A little shaky, and who wouldn't be? His hands slipped awkwardly around the case as he braced it against his chest and then finally got it moving toward the opening. I held my breath. The far end of the case disappeared. Then someone out of sight grabbed it and pulled it free of Rand's grip. A couple of seconds later I heard the locks snap.
I couldn't stop the thought going through my head as I imagined the guy checking the case's contents.
One second to reach Akin's gun. Two seconds to pull it from its holster. One second to raise it and start firing through that opening. Unless Akin had the safety onâwhich he probably would because he's a cop and cops obey the rules on gun-stuff. So add half-a-second to find the safety and click it off.
I heard paper tearing. The bad guy was opening one of the envelopes. Probably a two-handed job. Couldn't be doing that and paying a lot of attention to us at the same time.
Without moving my head, I shifted my eyes down and to my right at the bulge under Akin's blazer. Five seconds. Suppose I did some nifty little shoulder roll thing. Could the guy glimpse my movement, grab the Taser, aim at me, and puncture my hide with a couple of mega-watt prongs in less than five seconds?
Yeah, he sure as hell could. I sighed. Dumb question. Dumb,
dumb
question. Academic to boot. You have to go with your gut, and thinking about something like that is your gut saying no.
The light snapped off. Blackness surrounded us again. Hissing sound, thud on the floor, gas smell.
Please be tear gas and not something worse.
The ceiling panel slapped back into place.
Cursing under my breath, I fought the urge to squeeze my eyes shut. The sergeant who trained my National Guard unit had insisted that if you could keep your eyes open during the first five seconds of exposure to tear gas, a film would form over the pupils, protecting them from the gas. Guess a West Pointer came up with that one. Hadn't worked in training, but what did I have to lose?
Jumping straight up I punched as hard as I could at my best guess about where the loose ceiling panel was. Busted my knuckles doing it, but the son of a bitch moved. Not out of the way, just up half an inch at one edge and then back into placeâbut it moved. So the presumably escaping bad guy had something on top of it but he hadn't re-secured it.
I heard ragged, scary coughs and realized that a third of them were coming from me. I wouldn't call my next idea inspired, exactly, but it sure beat what came in second, which was nothing. Backed off to the far corner of the elevator car as the gas cloud floated thickly toward the ceiling. One springing diagonal stride forward on my left foot, then a leap, kicking my right foot out and up while throwing my head and shoulders back, like I was trying to do a bicycle kick in a soccer match. Smashed the ceiling panel with the ball of my right foot. Hoped the
crack!
I heard was the panel and not one of the bones in my foot, because from the searing pain running through my instep and up my shin it sure could have been.
I felt something substantial hit my leg as my shoulders crashed into the floor. The sudden updraft sucking gas out of the car meant the something was a chunk of the ceiling panel. A clanging alarm bell started insistently ringing. A muffled voice over a speaker somewhere in the elevator asked what our emergency was. Rand started coughing a response. I decided to leave that to him. At the moment, hurting in at least three places and getting ready to retch my guts up struck me as a full-time job.
I lay there on the floor, grateful for the pure air that started to circulate as the draft pulled tear gas up the elevator shaft. Still in the dark. At least eighty percent blind even if we'd had light to see anything by. Throbbing pain in my knuckles, shoulders, and foot. At least one serious casualty in the form of off-duty police officer Barry Akin. Missing one brushed steel attaché case. But at least we had help on the way, so lying there on the floor struck me as a Grade A strategy.
Did I think about hoisting myself up into the elevator shaft to go after the escaping bad guy? I did not. In the first place, he had at least a forty-five-second head start, so he'd have to be the Stephen Hawking of thugs not to be well away by now. In the second place, I had him right where I wanted him. Or thought I did.