Meaner Things (26 page)

I eased closer to the dimly lit room. Gradually the voices inside became more distinct.

“. . . that movie was complete crap.” Jeff D’s voice. I heard a faint click and the flickering light stopped.

“We missed the best part.”

“I need another can.”

Footsteps. I froze. A fridge was opened, the light in the room increased momentarily, then the door closed again, making a distinctive clumping sound as the rubber seals met.

“You’ve had enough of those extra strong ones.”

He let out a loud burp. “Can never hass . . . have too much beer.” There was a definite slur in his voice and I realised he’d had it earlier too. Now he was a can or two further on, and he was beginning to have difficulty stringing words together. But from my experience with him in the
faux
Irish bar, I knew he was a seasoned drinker and could hold his beer. No doubt his head was fuzzy, which explained why he’d abandoned the elevator mystery so readily, but he’d still have plenty of physical coordination and leg speed. He’d sober up pretty quick if he laid eyes on me.

I heard him flop down, pull the tab and take a drink, followed by more sounds that I couldn’t figure out.

“Hey, put the can down first.”

“OK. Just loosen up a little.”

“I’m still creeped out after all that stuff earlier.”

“Forget it, it was just the draught.”

“You’ve changed your tune.”

“I just want us to get cosy again.”

I could imagine exactly what Jeff meant by getting cosy. Reckoning his attention would now be fixed elsewhere, I inched closer to the doorway and peeped in.

They were side by side on a couch in the middle of the room, their backs to me. The TV was off, the only light in the room was a small table lamp in the far corner, and it was obvious what was on Jeff D.’s mind. To be fair, his squeeze wasn’t making much of a protest. Her head disappeared and I could tell Jeff D. was all over her.

Apart from my discomfort at playing Peeping Tom, this wasn’t getting me any closer to Emma. In fact, the scenario being enacted in front of me almost seemed to be judging me. Here was how two normal people did it. No complications; no ambiguities. No living in hopeless delusion. Well, I’d wasted enough time here, even put the success of the heist at risk. I turned to make my way down to the garage.

“Close the door first.” Her voice was muffled, but insistent.

“Why? Think some tenant’s going to walk in?” There was amusement in Jeff D.’s voice.

“You never know. I’m not doing it if you don’t lock the door.”

“Oh, alright.”

I pulled my head back out of view and pressed my back tight against the wall. Then I saw it and my heart stopped.

There was a hall light on the ceiling behind me and I was casting a shadow on the floor in front of the door.

Everything now depended on whether Jeff D. saw it or not. One thing I was certain of: if I moved I was doomed. He’d hear me and he’d probably see the shadow move too. There was no way that I could make it back to the staircase in time before he got a good long look at my retreating figure. He’d sober up pretty quickly after that.

I heard him approach as if in slow motion. My eyes never left the shadow I was making and I imagined his eyes fixed on it too, the puzzled expression on his face, then the slow withdrawal of the sidearm attached to his belt. Any second now I’d hear his command to stay where I was, to not even think of running. I’d see the gun first, then the puzzled expression on Jeff’s sweaty face as he realised it was someone he knew, quickly replaced by a grim expression as he figured out it was Mr. John Robie as he’d never seen him before. His mouth would tighten as he prepared to do his duty. There’d be the command to turn and face the wall, spread my legs and put my hands behind me. He’d press the gun in my back and click a pair of handcuffs around my wrists. A quick shout to his girlfriend to call the cops would finish it.

The door closed with a bang and I heard the click of the lock. The couch creaked noisily. I slid down the wall until I was hunkered down on my butt, my head between my knees, sure that I was about to faint.

I lost track of time, but I couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds. My head cleared and I became aware of someone shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes and a face came into focus.

25.

THE SEARCH

Emma’s face.

She put a finger to her lips and I remembered where I was. I got to my feet slowly, careful not to knock against the door. A variety of muffled grunts and moans came from inside the room, and I knew what was taking place. I smiled sheepishly at Emma and we fled down the corridor to the stairs.

Inside the stairwell, I reckoned it was safe to talk in a low voice.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Same place as you, only further up,” she replied. “I saw them come after you and knew there was nowhere to hide in the foyer.”

“I snuck into the security cubicle at the front door.”

“Smart. I ran to the nearest elevator and sent Samantha down as a diversion. I hope it worked.”

“You saved my skin,” I said.

“But I lost Samantha,” she replied.

I grinned at the pout she was trying to pretend was real. “I’ll buy you six more, life sized, once we’re outta here.”

“Thanks for coming to get me.”

“I wanted to give you every chance.”

She frowned, becoming serious. “What do you mean, ‘every chance’?”

I realised I’d said something wrong. “Nothing. Come on.”

“Every chance, eh? That sounds a bit judgemental?”

“Of course not; I just wanted to be fair. I never thought you’d run out on me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Yes you did. If that’s your idea of fairness.”

“Emma, this isn’t the time . . .”

“You wanted to be sure; to get rid of your last little bit of uncertainty. Then you could get all righteous and condemn me forever after. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“No!”

“I don’t believe you.”

Where the hell had all this come from? Suddenly I felt dizzy again and had to grab the handrail, my eyes tight shut.

I felt her palm against my cheek and sensed her anger was gone.

“Are you OK?” she said.

“I think so. I felt like fainting again, that’s all.”

“It’s the stress of carrying this whole thing on your shoulders.”

We stood there, silent, for a minute. She was stressed too, but she had a point.

“I screwed up,” I said. “You’re right, I misjudged you. I’m sorry.”

“Come on, let’s go,” she said, and I knew I was forgiven.

We rushed down the stairs and back to the vault. When we got there Charlie was still hard at it, busting the door of one of the biggest boxes, his shirt now soaked with sweat. Like a child fully concentrated on ripping open his packages on Christmas morning, he didn’t even notice us arrive. I felt like creeping up behind him and shouting ‘Stop, police!’ into his ear.

Instead I rattled the day gate. He turned and saw us both.

“So she didn’t quit on us after all?” he said.

“Button it, Charlie,” I replied. I wanted to set him right about Emma, but there wasn’t time to get into it. “Looks like you’ve been exerting yourself,” I said, changing the subject. Wisps of hair stuck to his gleaming forehead and there was a wild look in his eyes.

“I’m riding the adrenaline surge,” he said.

“You need a rest. I’ll finish this one.” He nodded and we swapped places. While he guzzled down a bottle of water I attached the pulling device. It seemed different somehow.

“Is this a new one?” I asked him.

He pointed to a small pile of what looked like headless nails lying on the floor. “Some of the pins broke.”

“WHAT?” I said. “How many?”

“Seven.”

“I knew we should have brought more spares.”

He shrugged. “We did, just maybe not enough.”

“How many do we have left?”

“Five.”

I looked at the five or six zipped-up canvas bags we’d already filled with loot. “Should be plenty.”

I gave the handle a couple of turns to get an idea of how far along it was and reckoned the door was close to popping. “First, you two push the vault door over,” I said. “Leave just enough room to get in and out. Should stop the bursting noises from travelling to other floors.”

When they squeezed back in, the vault seemed claustrophobic. For a second I imagined what it would be like to be locked in here, trapped overnight or for several days. I recalled an old Edgar Allan Poe story I’d read years ago and shivered involuntarily.

I dispelled the image and got down to work. It only took a few more twists of Charlie’s device before I heard the loud crack of the rear faceplate breaking, followed by the even louder bang of the deadbolt exploding out of its housing.

This box contained nothing but diamonds. There must have been over two hundred of them, poured into a plain cloth bag like pea gravel in a sack. They went straight into one of our tote bags. I carried on and did the next box too. This one burst open to reveal fat bundles of cash: large denomination bank notes from various countries, including American and Canadian dollars, British pounds, and European euros.

“Obviously he doesn’t believe in declaring his income,” was Charlie’s wry remark.

“I’ll do another.” I picked a big one this time, down at floor level. It took longer, but when I finally got the door open I was disappointed.

“What are these?” I said, rifling through a thick wad of papers. They resembled the sort of ‘Third in Class’ awards I’d won in high school. I held a bundle up for inspection.

Emma took them out of my hands. “Stock certificates, you dummy,” she said. “Worth a fortune by the looks of it.” She added them to our bags, then took a turn at box-busting herself, choosing one of the smaller, shoebox-sized ones in the middle.

It didn’t take her long to get the hang of it and soon the door shot back, displaying the contents. This one was a mixture of antique items including more gold coins, gold chains and pendants, a long string of pearls, a gold tie pin inlaid with a ruby, and a brooch studded with emeralds.

“Not bad,” I said, adding it to our now burgeoning stash. I checked my watch. “Three thirty. We’ll soon need to get going.”

“Not yet,” Emma replied, “Let me do another one.”

She picked the box immediately to the right of the one she’d just opened and attached the device. In a few minutes the door exploded open. She reached in with both hands and lifted out an armful of small boxes. I took them from her and went through them one by one, emptying their contents into our bags, tossing the empty boxes on the floor.

“Hey, those are velvet-lined jewellery boxes,” Emma protested.

“They take up too much room,” I said, “We only have space for the jewellery itself.” By now the floor was littered with silk bags, leather pouches,
moiré
ring cases, small canvas bags, and even a Tupperware container. I scooped the empty boxes into a pile, separating them from our bags.

“We have enough,” I said, looking at my watch again. I was keenly aware that the longer we remained here the more chance there was of getting caught. Jeff D. was probably snoring loudly on the couch after his recent amorous exertions, but I couldn’t be sure of that.

“No, we need more,” Emma said.

I had expected this response from Charlie, who was now getting his second wind and about to attach the opening device to another deposit box, but I was surprised to hear it from Emma.

“We have millions of dollars in these bags already,” I said. “Let’s get out of here while the coast is clear.”

Emma shook her head. “We still don’t have proof against him,” she said.

She was right. In the excitement, I’d forgotten that one of the main items we were looking for was hard evidence of Zheng’s illegal activities. We needed documentation to nail him, to protect ourselves, and for Emma to get the quick divorce settlement she wanted from him. So far we’d come across banknotes, stock certificates and blank white diamond papers, but not a single scrap of company-related material.

I thought for a few seconds. “Alright, let’s fix that,” I said. “Charlie, we have more of these box busters, right?”

“Two complete spares.”

“And five pins in total. OK, each of us take a box opener and search until we find what we need.”

“You gotta be kidding,” Charlie moaned.

I turned angrily. “You want Zheng coming after us?” I almost shouted it at him. “Anyway, you can add any diamonds or cash you find to the stash.”

That perked him up and he began to assemble the two spare pulling devices. My eyes darted from his rapidly moving fingers to the stark, stationary vault door and back again. We could be out of the building and clean away in ten minutes flat. Staying any longer was madness; each extra minute might get us caught.

But we had to do it.

*

Charlie assembled the two extra box busters in record time. Emma and I each chose a locker-sized box and Charlie started on a shoebox-sized box higher up. We burst them open within a couple of minutes of each other. Charlie’s contained more jewellery, including gold cigarette cases, a box of rings, a hairclip embedded with what looked like emeralds, and a silk pouch of coloured diamonds, known as ‘fancies’ in the trade. They all went into our now bulging bags, the containers tossed aside.

Emma’s box contained nothing but diamonds. I reckoned there were over a hundred of them, huge and uncut.

“Rough diamonds,” I said, “Big enough to use as skipping stones.”

“De Beers specials,” Charlie said. “We have to take them.”

I nodded and went over to our bags. After a moment’s thought I took out the fat wad of stock certificates and replaced them with the smaller sack of diamonds.

My box also had loose stones, these ones cut. There was a label tied to the bag stating ‘Four hundred and seventy-five carats’. I stuffed them in beside Emma’s roughies.

“This is getting crazy,” I said, “We just can’t take any more. Find the documentation and let’s get the hell out of here.”

We each picked another box. The palm of my hand was beginning to ache again, the short handle of the device cutting into the muscle. I kept glancing at the almost closed vault door, desperately wanting to get out of the vault and out of the building. We were tempting fate in a big way and fate was going to bite back. I was sure of it.

I built up pressure on the deposit box door and felt it begin to pull away from its moorings. Suddenly there was a high-pitched PING and the handle on the device went slack. Turning it was now no problem at all.

“I think this one’s gone,” I said.

Charlie came over, detached the steel prong and threw it in the pile of broken ones. “The pin breaks exactly in half,” he explained. “Always the same place. I’ll fix that in Mark II.”

“As if there’s ever going to be a Mark II,” I replied.

“There has to be documentation here somewhere,” Emma said. “Keep looking.”

We did. Emma opened another of the larger boxes. This one held a foolscap-size cardboard box, but when we opened it all it contained was more stock certificates. I threw them across the room in frustration, watching them scatter and skim across the floor.

Charlie’s next box proved expensive. He was nearly there when I heard another PING and a few of Charlie’s favourite cuss words.

He threw the broken pin aside and attached another. “Three left,” he said.

I nodded. “One each.”

Charlie finished opening the box. It held a cache of white diamonds weighing about a hundred carats. He insisted on cramming them into one of our bags.

But, no documents. I could picture us still searching for them while the cops gathered around us, pulling out their handcuffs. So far we’d chosen boxes at random, like a lucky dip. Perhaps a more systematic approach would help. Anything was worth a try.

“Let’s do it different,” I said. “Charlie, you take the far end. I’ll take the middle; Emma can take the end nearest the door. Get to it.”

We opened three more boxes. The pulling tool required a lot of exertion and I could tell that Emma was tiring fast. It was testimony to how badly she wanted to find incriminating evidence that she kept going at all.

Emma’s box held blister packs of small whites; Charlie’s was full of gleaming rings, necklaces and earrings. I uncovered a gold Cartier bracelet, a diamond-studded cigarette lighter, and a Patek Philippe wristwatch of stunning beauty, with roman numerals on a blue face in an engraved white gold casing. The bracelet and lighter went in a bag and the watch went around my wrist. I’d read about these watches and knew I was now carrying at least a million dollars on my arm.

Charlie did even better with his next box. It contained an enormous sack of cut diamonds, none of them very large, but he reckoned the total weight must be over three thousand carats. That’s when I finally got rid of the gold bar he’d found earlier. I fished it out of the bottom of a bag and replaced it with the diamonds.

My box held a smaller sack, but when I pulled open the drawstring and looked inside I discovered the diamonds it contained were all large, high quality fancies – coloured diamonds of great rarity. Also in the bag was a small notebook full of handwritten Chinese script.