Джеймс Паттерсон - The 19th Christmas

“What I heard is that he hires guys for a job or two. They’re dispensable. My guess, that’s how Loman stays invisible. And I’ll tell you something else. A hunch, really.”

“Go on.”

Swanson grinned. “He doesn’t make mistakes. Given the bodies he’s left behind, that’s almost impossible. Yet it’s apparently true.”

“Okay, Swanson. You’ve given me nothing I didn’t know.”

Jacobi got up, banged on the door, and called for the guard. Swanson swiveled in his seat and said, “What about our deal, Jacobi?”

Jacobi scoffed. “When you have something I can use, get in touch.”

Guards opened the door for Jacobi.

“Have a heart, Chief. Costs you nothing. Come on. Be a person.”

Jacobi’s mind filled with furious retorts concerning Swanson’s legendary crime spree, but he stifled them. He needed to get out of this prison and away from Swanson, the sick son of a bitch.

When he got outside, he called Boxer and then drove to the de Young Museum.

Chapter 33

William Lomachenko was washing his car in the driveway when his wife, Imogene, came to the front door and called out to him.

“Willy. Phone.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Dick. Should I tell him you’ll call him back?”

“I’ll be right there.”

Lomachenko hosed the soap off the car, moved the bucket out of the way, dried his hands on his pants, and trotted up the steps to his brick two-story house on Avila Street.

Imogene handed him the phone, said, “Give me those.”

She took his eyeglasses to the kitchen and cleaned them with Windex. When she returned to her husband, he said, “Dick wants to meet for lunch. I’m going to change.”

“Bring back a package of egg noodles. You know the kind. And a cabbage.”

Dick Russell was waiting for Loman at a back booth in Danny G.’s, on Van Ness, not far from his house. He lifted his hand in greeting, and Loman walked through the dark bar and luncheonette to the table. He hung up his jacket and cap on a hook and slid into the seat.

“We’ve got a problem?” Loman asked his number two.

“None that I can see. We’re at T minus forty-eight hours. I want to review.”

Loman and Dick Russell had known each other for twenty years. They had done half a dozen major jobs together and had never been caught or even brought in for questioning.

Russell was a gambler with a deep knowledge of mathematics and physics and a PhD in engineering from MIT. He was a numbers nerd, could figure out timing and angles and do scientific calculations that were incomprehensible to Loman.

But Russell was also a player—the markets, the ponies, questionable women. He relied on Loman for the planning, then designed the execution from there.

Loman was nothing like Russell.

He saw the big picture and had leadership skills. His cover was selling a line of gold chains to jewelry stores. He kept his head down and put his earnings in gold bullion that was stored in vaults overseas. This he could convert to any one of eight currencies with a couple of keystrokes. And any or all of it could be put on a debit card. Hell of an escape plan.

The two men gave their orders to the waitress. Loman asked for a heart-healthy salad; Russell went with the fried chicken basket, extra fries. Always the gambler. The waitress stood next to Russell, cocked a hip, played with her hair. When she’d gone, Russell opened his tablet and started at the top.

He listed the first distraction: Lambert’s grab-and-dash, leading the cops to Dietz.

The second distraction was Dietz’s suicide-by-cop, a good deal all around.

Distraction three was the clue Dietz had left for the cops on his phone, and distraction four was putting out the idea that Mayor Caputo could be hit.

Along with that rumor were the innumerable random tips about a big heist that they had paid bums, snitches, and ex-cons to leak to cops.

Russell said, “The next head fake is set for tonight, Willy. The cops are frustrated and working overtime. This will throw them over the edge.”

Loman said, “Oh, no. Let me get out my tiny violin.”

Russell laughed and Loman joined him.

Loman pulled his new burner phone out of his pocket and dialed, said into the phone, “Yeah, it’s Loman. Go ahead and drop the next bread crumb.” He listened, then said, “Right. That’s all you have to say. I’ll be in touch.”

He clicked off, smiled at Russell. He was enjoying his little shell game. “Distraction number five is in play.”

Russell smiled back and said, “We are good.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

They clinked water glasses. Lunch arrived and the two men dug into their meals.

Were they friends? Not really. But they enjoyed the benefits of good partnership based on history and results. Loman had made Russell rich. And Russell allowed him his little slaughters.

Loman stabbed a tomato wedge, thinking how in two days they would be so loaded, neither would have to work again.

Loman had designed the smoke screen of chaos and terror that would settle an old debt and allow him to pull off a job that could net him a billion dollars, easy. It would be the job of his life.

Chapter 34

Conklin and I were still at the de Young Museum going over the blueprints and security systems with James Karp, head of security, when news alerts about a possible large-scale armed robbery hit my phone.

The press now had the story.

In minutes 911 and the tip lines would be flooded with unconfirmed reports, adding to the mass confusion surrounding the ID of Loman’s robbery target.

Jacobi found us in Karp’s office, greeted his old friend with a hug, then filled us in about his meeting with Swanson.

“I didn’t punch him,” Jacobi said. “I wanted to.”

I nodded my understanding. Jacobi went on.

“Swanson theorized that Loman’s jobs come with a high number of fatalities intentionally, because dead people don’t talk. This is why Loman is a cipher. A ghost. No record, which explains why we don’t know who the hell he is.”

As Conklin, Jacobi, and I knew, Swanson’s own six-month-long robbery spree had left eighteen dead, so his opinion actually had weight. I touched my gun belt reflexively, hoping to hell I could finish my shift without firing a shot.

Jacobi offered to stay with Karp and drill the security team that would be working in the museum overnight. Conklin and I left them to it.

On the way out to the car, I asked Rich what he thought of the museum’s security.

“Better than I expected.”

“Agreed,” I said. “If a gang of robbers come to the door with cop badges and duct tape, they won’t get in. But…”

“But what if Loman has a bigger idea?”

“Explosives,” I said. “There’s so much glass.”

“Helicopter,” Conklin said. He was exploring that idea out loud, how explosives could be dropped, men coming down ropes, when my phone buzzed.

Brady said, “Boxer, two things. A wallet with Julian Lambert’s ID was found on China Beach near the Golden Gate.”

“What? Just his wallet? No body?”

“No body. Just the wallet with his driver license, some receipts, and a few business cards. Your card was in there. That’s how this piece of news got to us.”

I thought about the lightweight thief in the red puffy coat who had led us on a chase that ended with the firefight at the Anthony Hotel.

“Are people searching the area?”

“He could have lost the wallet, Boxer, or it could have been stolen or thrown there to make us think that Lambert was dead.”

“Or he was murdered and his body is out there somewhere.”

“I sent out a notification request,” Brady said. “If a body shows up that matches his photo, we’ll hear about it. We don’t have anyone to go on a body search right now.”