Alex Ames - Calendar Moonstone 02 - Brilliant Actors (29 page)

“Shit, everything,” the Mountain rumbled and crossed his arms to underline his opinion. Those were the most consecutive words I had ever heard emerge from his mouth.

Mick rubbed his eyes, then rubbed his fingers, shaking his head. “This is a lot of fireworks, and we have to make sure that no one gets hurt.”

Bernie added, “And that no one gets caught.”

I deflected that one. “In the end, it is mostly insurance damage. And the one most exposed is little old me. You guys will have all the fun and get away clean in the meanwhile. Had you come up with a better plan, we could have followed that one, but it would probably have involved masked men, a shooting spree, and fast motorcycles in the back alley.”

“But, I mean, isn’t your plan a little bit crude?” Bernie tried one more time.

I raised my left eyebrow and said, “Are you in, or are you in?”

The preparation took the night and some of the next morning. I took that trip to a department store and a supermarket and brought some clothes that were as far away from my personal style as possible: a wide plaid skirt with black stockings, pumps, a flower shirt in beige, worthy of a sixty-year-old lady. Plus a fancy summer straw hat. To buy a wig was the most difficult thing because I would most likely be remembered as a buyer. Finally, I simply put on my new disguise and stole a wig in another department store that turned me into a curly, black-haired thing. A little dye and some cheap reading glasses on top of my nose turned me into an old spinster. Around noon, Bernie called from the lobby. When I came down, I walked past him, selected a Van Nuys city brochure from a stand right beside him, and asked him for the time. He irritatingly gave it to me, his eyes searching the lobby for me. After I stood up close to him, he looked a little unsure—no sane person would ever think about standing that close to a hard core, middle-aged rocker.

“Would you consider having sex with an old lady?” I croaked, barely keeping my urge to laugh out loud to myself.

The old rocker grew beet red and took a step back. Then he recognized me and took another step back.

“Holy. Shit.”

“Admit it, you almost said yes.”

“You are a scary piece, niece!” Bernie said.

The odd couple left the lobby.
 

We had decided to use the afternoon to pull the stunt because the long shift of the morning guy ended at four and he probably was dead bored by then and not that motivated anymore. Plus, business was pretty slow in the early afternoon.
 

We had a last lunch meeting at the diner. Mick and the Mountain were stupefied when they saw my disguise and for the first time showed some spirit of success. Our diner booth looked like a cross between the
Golden Girls
and
Reservoir Dogs.

“The cars are ready?”

“Ready as you are, lady!” Mick grinned.

“Remember the timing, and take into consideration that the second stage may need a few seconds to go off. It is crucial that it is timed seamlessly to give me the most of my time.”

“What about Rip?” Mick asked Bernie.

“He just left for his gym. Two-thirty, so he will be probably tied up there for an hour at least. Free rein.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Showtime

The middle-aged lady walked into the mailbox store at three o’clock sharp. She stopped to check the community board near the entrance, holding her almost-empty brown leather handbag close to her. The clerk of the mailbox store was sitting bored behind his counter; another customer was just checking his box, browsing through his mail first before closing the box again and leaving the store without a second look at the aged, gray-haired lady in a hideous, unfashionable dress. The aged lady left the community board; a quick glance to the shop door assured her that no other customer was entering the store. She had a slow gait, like the first signs of arthritis were beginning to settle in.
 

The lady reached the left row of mailboxes and searched her handbag for the mailbox key just as the first car, a large SUV vehicle stolen ten minutes earlier from a shopping mall parking lot, drove into the shop next door. First there was the loud revving of the engine, the thud as the front wheels hit the pavement step, then a large bang, and the breaking of glass.

The whole shopping strip shook with the impact. All that could be heard was still the revved-up engine screaming loudly, howling in the highest gear, crunching deeper into the shop, but it got stuck in the frames of the shopping window.
 

The lady took a look around and saw the clerk hurrying out from his back office, the handset of his phone in hand. He closed the steel door behind him and ran to the door to watch the damage. Twenty seconds and counting.
 

The lady didn’t produce a key from her handbag but a set of picking locks. She positioned herself so that the clerk couldn’t see her doings from the shop door and started to work on the lock of Rip Delaware’s mailbox. Outside, people started gathering around the SUV stuck in the shop and inspected the damage. The lady could hear voices and shouts to call the police. Was someone hurt? Could someone reach in and shut down the motor, please? The clerk stepped out of the shop for a second and started dialing 911. Ten seconds.
 

The lock was harder than expected. The first two tries failed miserably.
Breathe in, get calm for the third try.
Twenty seconds were up, and the clerk was still on the phone. Someone had actually managed to kill the motor; the silence was deafening, and the lady feared that the clicking of the picking tool was giving her away. The clerk ended the call to the police and was just in the process of checking up on his store when an explosion, followed by a fireball, shook the far end of the parking lot. An old Ford Escort went in a blaze of fuel-induced glory. Everyone stared but the lady in the store. She imagined that she could feel the heat wave radiating at her through the walls; maybe it was sweat, running down her spine under the cheap beige flower blouse.

Fifth try, success, the mailbox was open. A small brown parcel wrapped in brown paper waited for the lady. She took it out, slipped it into her handbag, and produced a similar-looking parcel and put it inside, positioning it the same way as the first package. Forty seconds gone. The clerk had picked up the phone and had called 911 again, shouting for the fire truck.
 

The lady was at the mailbox with her tools, this time trying to lock the box again. The tools slipped for a second time, and a small curse escaped her lips. The clerk had finished his next call, and the Escort burned and burned, the interest fading fast. The clerk gave a look back into his shop and saw the middle-aged lady still fiddling with her box. She didn’t look suspicious, but her manner was strange because she wasn’t watching the unfolding of the two little catastrophes in the neighborhood. The clerk was suspicious by nature—it was in his job description—and he gave the lady a second look.
 

The minute was up, the game would be up any second, and I couldn’t get my tools into the right position to lock the box. If I abandoned the mission, the box would remain open, someone would notice, and Rip would be notified of the break-in attempt. The box had to be locked! I almost stomped on the floor from frustration and tried again. I didn’t dare to look over my shoulder; maybe the clerk was just glancing in my direction. I could hear his steps; his shoes made crunching noises of glass shards his soles had picked up from the mess next door. If he got a little closer to me or his back office door, he would see what I was doing. His steps were getting closer.
 

Just when I had decided to slip the tools back into my handbag and abandon the proper closing of the box, the Mountain entered the shop and growled, “Can I rent a fucking mailbox, dude?”
 

The Mountain’s appearance surprised the clerk and me. We both turned around, and I immediately knew that the clerk wouldn’t mind me for the next thirty seconds. The Mountain had to duck to get through the shop door, a giant in a puppet’s house. Together with his black leather coat, his burning eyes, and the long, unkempt beard, he looked like a bat out of hell. Or maybe an albatross out of hell.

I forced myself away from his spectacle and continued my box-locking activity while the Mountain scared the clerk by repeating his inquiry in his natural, booming voice. “Is this location actually safe? Reminds me of my old Beirut neighborhood.”

The clerk found words and told him to stay where he was, while he moved backward toward his safe back office. He never even glanced over to me, my lock pick tools in plain view now. The Mountain even waved with his hands for effect, and finally my lock clicked into place. I slipped the tool into the handbag and walked briskly out of the mailbox office past the Mountain, my role as an arthritic old spinster forgotten. No one noticed anyway.

CHAPTER FORTY

Rip Ripped

“Well, at least it is half a victory,” Bernie attempted to cheer us up.

The Acura was sparkling its million dollars’ worth of beauty in the cheap diner’s light between us, capturing and enchanting Mick, Bernie, the Mountain, and me. No one was allowed to touch it due to fingerprints; only Mick wore surgeon’s latex gloves to unwrap the parcel and transfer the Acura to its new wrapping.

“Now I understand that this one is not easy to hide, like swallowing…,” Bernie said. The Acura was the size of a small egg and had a cut that probably didn’t do your intestines well as the circumference of the diamond looked pretty sharp. “And I see now why Rip Delaware had to finger you to the police.”

I yawned. “And you know what’s so stupid? I could have called his bluff when he told the police. If I had kept my cool, I could have raised a stink, fingered Rip himself, and at least have had the police search him. But no, I had to panic and play the little poor victim!”

“In the Jody Foster version of your life story, we will make sure that she does it differently!” Bernie said dryly.

“Everyone done with marveling?” Mick asked around, then put the stone into the wrapping material that until recently had held the Propers’ family treasures.
 

I showed some dissatisfaction. “The Acura is fine, but where is the Metro Imperial?”
 

“Maybe Rip had two different clients for the stones. The Metro is already in new loving hands, and the Acura is still waiting for its new home,” Mick said.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, playing cranky.

“Are you sure you want to risk this? Again?” Cousin Mick inquired.
 

“That is part of the plan, and the plan only works this way,” I assured him, determined and fearless on the outside but dead tired. We were parked on a side street of Rip’s housing community, and this time I had come prepared to get under water.
 

Mick sighed and shook his head, and we left the car. He studied the sign to make sure that we had parked legally and then came jogging back. I was dressed in wide orange cotton trousers and a long-sleeved, baggy, fashionable t-shirt, and Mick was in jeans and a dark blue polo shirt. He had tied back his hair into a ponytail, and we basically gave the image of a good couple strolling through the neighborhood. Rip was gone for the evening; that’s what Bernie’s scouts had signaled.
 

Mick and I made our way behind some of the apartment houses. A quick check around revealed no spotters or late-night dog owners, and we vanished into the bushes along the hillside. Ten minutes later, we were underneath Rip’s terrace. I quickly took off the fashionable upper layer of my clothes. Underneath, I wore tight black gym clothes. I got into my basic gear of dark light sport shoes that enabled me to climb best and allowed me to dive, and put on my light black cotton mask and the dark latex gloves. Mick looked around and up nervously several times. I didn’t wait for another word from him and climbed up silently.
 

No one was around, as expected. A quick look around the terrace showed no new additional alarms or else; a brief glimpse into the dark interior of the living room revealed no dangers here tonight. I lightly tip-toed to the edge of the pool and let myself slip in. I got out my little swim-goggles, a better suited piece of pliers, and the underwater Maglite, took a deep breath, and went down to the outlet from which I had retrieved the Propers’ gems. As Rip acted perfectly normal and had gone out again with his current girlfriend, I assumed that he had not found the gems missing from the hidey-hole, yet.