Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

Diamonds have always been Lucovic’s specialty, from his first jewelry store smash-and-grab as a teenager in Zagreb, to his days running conflict stones into Western Europe. Diamond money bought him his ticket to the States, his house in River Oaks, his condos in Vegas and L.A., and the nut to start Portrait Capital. Diamond money is what he launders, month in and month out, through Portrait’s several bank accounts, and diamonds are what Carr and Bobby and Latin Mike have come to carry off.

Bobby cuts through the wallboard into Portrait Capital’s utility closet-another neat two-by-three-foot section-gets down on all fours, and crawls through. Mike is next, pushing the computer boxes and tool bags, and Carr is last.

This closet is three times the size of Jerry Molloy’s, a small room really, and the beams of Bobby’s and Mike’s utility lanterns cast heavy shadows in the corners. Carr brushes off his pants and joins Mike and Bobby in gazing at the security unit-a large black box, forbiddingly blank but for the name, Ten Argus, in yellow.

Bobby wipes his face on his sleeve and kneels beside the processor. He runs his hand along the bottom edge of the black box, finds a latch, and opens the cover. Inside is an array of densely packed circuit boards, banks of status lights, and three cooling fans. Cables from the sensors installed throughout the office suite feed in through a conduit at the back of the box, along with two dedicated telephone lines and the power supply. Two gray bricks sit at the bottom of the box-backup batteries. Bobby trains his light on it all and stares, as if searching a crowd for a familiar face. He shakes his head.

“It looks different,” Bobby says softly. He reaches into a bag and pulls out several sheets of circuit diagrams and starts to hum. He studies the diagrams, while Mike unpacks one of the Dell boxes-Styrofoam, a laptop, a bulky antistatic bag, and cables. Carr gives in to the engine racing in his chest, and paces the little room-four paces by three. He walks to the door, puts his hand on the knob, and imagines what would happen if he opened it and walked across a pressure sensor or stepped into a crossfire of infrared beams. No Klaxons or cruisers, Carr knows-Lucovic doesn’t welcome attention, and especially not from the police-but a fast, armed response, the security company guards first, followed closely by Lucovic’s own men.

“Okay,” Bobby says to no one. He’s found what he’s looking for in the thicket of chips, and he folds his diagrams away. Mike powers up the laptop. Bobby opens the antistatic bag and pulls out a large circuit board. He sets the board beside the security system and cables it to the laptop. Carr can see, in the dense mosaic of chips on the board, two large chips with the TEN ARGUS label. Bobby kneels over the laptop and starts typing.

Bobby calls it the Ten Zombie, and he and Dennis built it with specs and components they pinched from a dealer in Sugar Land, whose own offices were scandalously insecure. Zombie because, once connected, it will look to the monitoring units on the other end of the dedicated phone line just like the Ten Argus unit installed in the humid little room at Portrait Capital, though in fact it is a hollowed out version of that system, receiving input from no sensors, and reporting only what Bobby instructs it to report. And Bobby has directed it to murmur incessantly that everything is perfectly fine.

Connecting it-swapping the Zombie for the real thing-is the tricky part: the monitor software makes allowances for power surges and line glitches, and that’s what Bobby wants the swap to look like, but his window is only seven seconds wide. Latin Mike and Bobby stand by the black box, Mike’s hands poised over the phone jacks, Bobby’s over the power lines. Carr holds the laptop and the Zombie board, and keeps his eye on his watch. They’ve practiced this a hundred times or more.

“On three,” Bobby says.

They finish with two seconds to spare, not their best time but close. Bobby checks and rechecks the laptop screen, watching the back-and-forth over the phone lines. He gives a thumbs-up and closes the laptop, and Carr gives up an ancient breath. Mike shakes the tension from his arms and shoulders. Their shirts are dark with sweat.

Bobby and Mike pick up the tools and the boxes, and Carr opens the door. The air in the corridor is ten degrees cooler. He blinks in the light, wipes his eyes, and touches his headset.

“We’re in,” he says.

“Making good time,” Valerie answers.

“Things okay down there?”

“It’s a fucking swamp,” she says.

The office suite is done up in leather and dark wood, someone’s notion of staid and bankerly, as gleaned from watching old TV shows. It reminds Carr of a funeral home. Carr leads the way to Lucovic’s office, skirting the reception area where the video cameras stand watch. They pass a floor safe, a glossy, black monster with a handle like a ship’s wheel, and the name of a long-defunct bank in gold leaf across the front. It’s empty, they know, but Mike gives it an affectionate pat.

Lucovic’s office is locked, but not seriously, and once Carr opens it, Mike and Bobby make space. Lucovic’s leather chair goes to one side of the room, and his mahogany desk goes to the other, which leaves a wide patch of gray carpet in front of the mahogany credenza that stretches across the back wall. There are bookshelves on top of it and file drawers beneath, and behind one set of drawers-the false ones-is the safe.

It’s a Guard-Rite T2100, with steel skin, six thick bolts that anchor it firmly to the floor, and room enough inside to accommodate four bowling balls. Mike spins the combination dial. It’s an Ames and Landrieu R720 lock package, and he’s drilled ten of them in the past two weeks. Today will make eleven. He opens the other Dell box and unpacks his tools.

Carr watches Mike assemble the drill rig, and Bobby lay out the bits and the borescope. He’s pacing again, and Mike doesn’t like it.

“You’re fucking up my rhythm, cabron. How ’bout you do that someplace else?”

Carr walks his fear and boredom into the hall. He studies the door to Lucovic’s office, and the door frame, and the floor, looking for an unseen contact switch, a pressure plate, some other hidden, independent alarm-something Valerie might’ve missed during her two-week stint emptying trash cans with the cleaning crew. He strains to hear heavy footsteps approaching, even as he tells himself that Valerie doesn’t miss those kinds of things.

And then it’s Delcan’s voice he’s hearing again, back in Mexico City, making his pitch at a table by the kitchen. Declan had not hemmed or hawed, but jumped right in.

“I’m a robber, Mr. Carr, a robber plain and simple-cash and highly liquid items only. No art, no stocks, no bonds unless they’re the bearer variety, no finished jewels, no cars or boats or fancy stamp collections. Just cash and its closest cousins.”

Carr squinted, convinced that Declan was drunk and that this was a joke whose reeling logic eluded him. “A bank robber?” he asked eventually. “Teddy said you were a consultant.”

“Not a consultant.” Declan laughed. “And I don’t touch banks. I don’t touch payrolls or cambios either, nor armored cars nor safe deposit boxes-no official money for me. Too much official firepower looking after that stuff, and anyway, who wants to crawl into bed at night with images of sobbing widows in his head, and big-eyed orphans turned out in the cold? Takes the joy from living, don’t it? So it’s black money only I go for. There’s plenty of that lying about, and it leaves you with a nice clean conscience afterward.”

Carr peered at Declan through smoke and his own drunken haze, still waiting for the punch line. “So, you rob from the rich and give to…?”