Thefts of Nick Velvet (2 page)

“I do my best work in the dark. Eleven o’clock—and come alone.”

“How will I know you?”

Nick smiled again. “I’ll know you,” he said and hung up. He always knew them. They always looked the same.

Gloria came in off the porch. “Who was it, Nicky?”

“A job. Be back around midnight.”

He picked up his jacket on the way out the door. Sometimes the nights were cool.

Nick Velvet was a product of New York’s Greenwich Village, in an era when the Italian-American population still dominated the section against the encroachment of the bohemians. He’d shortened his name from an original version that sounded like a cheese, and gone off to the wars with a good many other high school dropouts.

Somehow, over the years, his life’s work had begun to take shape, and now—nearing 40—he was an acknowledged expert. They phoned him now, and made trips to see him, because for certain jobs he had no equal in the world.

Nick Velvet was a thief. Of a special sort.

He never stole money as such, and never stole on his own. Rather, he stole on assignment, taking the things that were too big or too dangerous or too unusual for other thieves. He’d stolen from museums, from corporations, from governments. He’d stolen a statue of the Roman god Mercury from the top of a post office building, and a stained glass window from a museum of medieval art. Once he’d even stolen a complete baseball team, including manager, coaches, and equipment.

It wasn’t so much that he liked the work, or had planned it as a career. But when it happened he had voiced no complaints. The fees were substantial, and he worked only four or five times a year, for no more than a week or so at a time. He saw a good deal of the world, and he met some highly interesting people.

Harry Smith was not one of the most interesting.

He stood in the shadows by the fountain, looking for all the world like a gangster of the prohibition era waiting for the boat from Canada. Nick didn’t like his looks, and when he said his name was Smith, Nick didn’t like his name, either.

“A man in Chicago recommended you, Velvet,” Smith said, clipping off the words like an electric typewriter.

“Could be. What do you want?”

“Do we have to talk here? I have a hotel room.”

Nick Velvet smiled. “Hotel rooms can be bugged too easily. I don’t like tape recordings of my business deals.”

Harry Smith shrugged. “Hell, these days they can bug you anywhere. They could be aiming one of them long-range things at us right now.”

“That’s why we’re standing by the fountain. It’s quite effective for covering up conversations. Now get to the point.”

Harry Smith stepped into the circle of light cast by a tree-shrouded lamp overhead. He was a bulky man, built like a small gorilla, and both cheeks were pockmarked. “We want you to steal something,” he said.

“I assumed as much. My price is high.”

“How high?”

“Twenty thousand and up, depending on the job.”

Harry Smith took a step backward into the shadows. “We want you to steal a tiger from a zoo.”

Nick had learned a long time ago to control his reactions. He simply nodded and said, “Tell me about it.”

“It’s in the city—the Glen Park Zoo. Something called a ‘clouded’ tiger. Supposed to be rare.”

“How rare?”

The man shrugged, and Nick was somehow reminded of a gorilla again. “A Middle Eastern prince with a private zoo is willing to pay well for the beast. We can afford your twenty thousand.”

“Thirty for animals,” Nick told him. “There is more danger involved.”

“I’ll have to ask the others.”

“Do that. You know where to reach me.”

“Wait!” Harry Smith grabbed Nick’s shoulder. “We want to do this thing in three days—on Monday morning. We should decide tonight.”

“I’d have to look the zoo over first.”

“You’d have tomorrow and Sunday for that.”

“Thirty thousand?”

The man hesitated a moment longer. “All right. Five in advance.”

They shook hands on it, and Nick Velvet went back to Gloria’s to pack his bag. The night was hesitant with the beginnings of an overcast, and above his head the stars were gradually going out.

There were three of them—Harry Smith, and a tall slim Englishman named Cormick, and a youngish blonde girl who answered to Jeanie. The girl seemed to be with Cormick, and it was obvious that the Englishman was the brains of the operation. He ordered Harry Smith around in the flat monotone so often used for servants.

“I’ll need to look the place over,” Nick told them again.

Cormick shrugged his lean shoulders. “Look all you want.”

“Why does it have to be Monday morning?”

“You’re not paid to ask questions, Mr. Velvet.”

They’d left the hotel room and were sitting now in a little house trailer hooked on behind a new black convertible. The car and trailer, like the girl, belonged to Cormick.

“Tell me something about the tiger,” Nick said, sipping a glass of warm Scotch.

Cormick might have been lecturing a class in Zoology I. “Though the ordinary tiger is quite common in zoos, there are a number of rare specimens that are highly valued. The great heavy-coated Siberian tiger is an extremely rare zoo specimen, as is the albino tiger, and the blue-gray tiger known to parts of China. But the so-called ‘clouded’ tiger—a strangely mottled beast long thought to be legendary—is perhaps the rarest of all. This specimen was captured near the Sino-Indian border a few years ago and donated to the Glen Park Zoo. It may be the only one in captivity, and our prince will pay dearly for it.”

“I’ll need some equipment.”

The Englishman nodded. “We have a small closed pickup truck, and Jeanie can be your driver. The job is to get the tiger out of its cage and into the truck, and then to get the truck away from the zoo.”

Nick lit a cigarette. “Is the zoo guarded?”

Cormick nodded. “They’ve got a squad of private patrolmen, mainly to keep the teenagers in line. I understand they had some trouble last year with the animals being annoyed.”

“Protecting the animals from the people.” Nick chuckled for the first time and began to relax. The old feeling of success was beginning to course through his veins. He never liked them to seem too easy. Then, as if he’d just thought of it, he said, “I’d better take Jeanie with me in the morning. A man alone at the zoo might look suspicious.”

Cormick hesitated only a moment before indicating his approval with a wave of his hand. “If you wish. It might be a good idea, since she’ll be with you Monday.”

“Where will you two be?” Nick asked.

“Here in the trailer, waiting for you. We have a plane waiting to fly the beast to Canada and then on to the Middle East.”

“You’ll have trouble getting a tiger out of the country,” Nick said. “How are you planning to do it?”

Cormick merely smiled. “Do I ask you how you plan to steal him in the first place?”

Nick took out another cigarette. “I’m glad you don’t. At this point I have no idea how I’m going to do it.”

Saturday morning was breezy, with high white clouds that glided swiftly across the sun in irregular formation. Nick helped Jeanie from her car and guided her around a puddle left over from an early morning shower. It was a day for the zoo, and even this early the parking lot was beginning to fill.

Nick dropped two quarters in the turnstile and they passed through. “I can remember when city zoos were free,” he commented.

“They still are, in smaller cities. Here they have to pay for guards.” She motioned toward a uniformed man standing near the polar bears. There was a revolver on his hip, and he wore the square silver badge of a local security service.

“Do they need to carry those guns?”

Jeanie shrugged. “Probably not loaded.”

“We’ll assume they are. Where’s this clouded tiger?”

“Down this way. Let’s stop in the monkey house first, in case the guard is watching.”

She was a smart girl, with brains that even showed through the blonde hair and the long-legged fullness of her body. He liked being with her, even at the zoo. Even in the monkey house.

After a time they drifted toward the big cats, while Nick carefully observed the zoo’s routine—a truckful of dirt coming through a service gate in the fence, a keeper hosing down the concrete near the seals, an aging vendor inflating balloons from a tank of gas. Something back near the front gate caught Nick’s eye and he asked, “What’s the armored car for?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Picking up yesterday’s haul of quarters.”

“Quarters are money.”

“Forget it. On a good weekend they’re lucky to get two or three thousand dollars. We’re after big game.”

He paused in front of the cage they sought. “It’s big, all right.”

The clouded tiger was a massive, mocking beast with mottled fur unlike anything Nick had ever seen. The animal paced its cage with a vibrant stride that seemed to shout its superiority, even over the lion and the more orthodox tiger in the adjoining cages. It was not a beast to meet on a dark night near the Sino-Indian border; it was not even a beast to meet on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the zoo.

“I don’t like him.” Jeanie shuddered. “He looks as if he could pounce right through those bars.”

“Maybe he could. My job is to get him through, somehow.”

“Cormick is crazy! Who ever heard of stealing a tiger from a zoo?”

Nick smiled. “I’ve stolen stranger things—ten tons of slot machines, once.” But his eyes were busy. The cages all had connecting gates, but the ones on either side of the clouded tiger were heavily bolted. A door in the rear wall led into the beast’s den, and the only other exit was a small gate at the front of the cage, for feeding and cleaning purposes. He studied the padlocked chain on the gate and decided it would present no problem.

“Seen enough, Nick?” she asked him finally.

“I guess so.”

They strolled down by the camels and then stood for a time watching a shaggy old bison who almost seemed to realize it was one of the last. The animal depressed Nick, and he was glad to get back to the car.

Cormick was pouring drinks when they returned to the trailer. He smiled and held out a glass for Nick. “I thought you might have the tiger with you.”

“I thought you wanted it on Monday.”

Harry Smith settled into a chair. “That’s right—Monday morning at a quarter to ten.”

“Why such close timing?”

The Englishman sipped his drink. “We’ve made arrangements for the plane at that time. Can you get the tiger then?”

“It would be easier at night,” Nick said.

“Not with those guards around. You’d never get by the front entrance. At least in the daytime you can walk right up to the cage without attracting attention.”

Nick leaned against the wall, eyeing Jeanie’s long legs as she settled into a chair. “Sometimes it isn’t all bad, attracting attention. Now tell me your plans for after I get the tiger.”

“Jeanie will be driving the pickup truck,” Cormick said. “She’ll follow your orders until you’re away from the zoo, then she’ll drive you to the meeting place. We’ll pay you the rest of the money there and take over the truck. It’s our job to get the animal on the plane for Canada.”

“Will that truck hold the tiger?”

“Steel sheeting with a few air holes. It will hold him.”

Nick Velvet nodded. “I have to pick up a few things. Be back before dark.”

He borrowed Jeanie’s car and drove to the city—to a laboratory supply house that happened to be open on a Saturday afternoon. There he’ purchased an ugly-looking pellet gun that fired tranquilizing darts. Just in case the tiger got nasty about its kidnaping …

On Sunday afternoon Nick went back to the zoo with Jeanie because he wanted to study the keepers’ uniforms. And, incidentally, because he wanted to study Jeanie. “How did you meet Cormick?” he asked as they strolled near the reptile house.

“How do those things ever happen? I was a dancer in a little off-Broadway musical, with dreams of doing my own choreography some day. He said he’d help—invest some money.”

“Did he?”

“After this job, he says. It’s always after just one more job. But he’s not a bad guy. He keeps Harry in his place.”

“How long have the three of you been together?”

“About a year. Harry had a girl for a while, but she took off. He used to beat her, and she didn’t like it.”

“How did Cormick hear about me?”

She turned to smile at him. “You’re famous in certain circles, Nick Velvet. But I never thought you’d be so handsome.”

Nick was no matinee idol and he knew it. He stopped looking at her legs and started to worry. “Let’s go back,” he suggested.

On the way out he stopped at the balloon vendor’s stand and purchased two balloons, a blue one and a red one. The blue one he gave to Jeanie, but he released the red one and watched its progress as it rose with the slight breeze. He watched it for quite a long time, and then they left.

Monday dawned rainy, and Nick cursed his luck. He was about to suggest a postponement, but by eight o’clock the sky was beginning to brighten and the rain had settled into a drizzle.

They met for a final conference in the trailer and Cormick shook his hand.

“Good luck, Nick. The rest of the money will be waiting for you.”

“Can’t you tell me where you’ll be?”

“Jeanie knows. We’ll see you this afternoon.”

Nick dressed quickly in a close approximation of the work clothes worn by the keepers. Then he followed Jeanie in the truck while she parked her car at a suburban shopping center.

“All right, boss,” she said, getting behind the wheel of the truck. “What are my orders?”

“The service gate will be open. We’ll drive in there and then I’ll leave you. From there you can see the tiger’s cage, and as soon as I reach it you start driving toward it, slowly. You’ll have to turn the truck around and back up to the railing outside the cage. That’ll be the tricky part.”

“What will the guards be doing all this time?”

He told her.

“You’re quite a guy, Nick Velvet. Will it work?”

“If it doesn’t, I’ll have a lapful of clouded tiger.”

“Should we buy another balloon, just to make sure?”