Steven Thomas - Criminal Carma

“All right, smart guy,” he said. “There are two ways we can go here. I think you got something in the trunk you shouldn’t have and I’m gonna find out what it is one way or the other. If you cooperate, I’ll make things easy for you. But if you give me a hard time I’ll nail your hide to the wall. Do you understand that?”

He glared at me, waiting for an answer.

I didn’t answer, just looked him in the eyes.

“We got a special cell down at the station for guys who don’t play along with us,” he said. “Guys walk into that room cocky but they crawl back out ready to kiss the ass of any cop who bends over. We make tough guys into sacred little schoolgirls in that room. Now, what’s it going to be? You gonna be smart or stupid?”

Alert to conflict, the other cop had come up behind his partner. He held our licenses in one hand. His other hand was on the butt of his gun. I glanced at Reggie. He was leaning against the rental car, a couple of feet from the doughnut eaters, his face as impassive as a cigar-store Indian’s.

“Why don’t you let us take a look in the backpacks, sir?” the black cop said. “If there’s nothing in them, you can be on your way. Save a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t want any trouble, Officer,” I said, addressing the black cop. “I know you guys are just doing your job. But I believe it is my obligation as a good citizen to protect my constitutional rights and I do not consent to any searches of my vehicle or my person. My friend and I aren’t doing anything wrong. If you think the fact that we put our backpacks in the trunk of our rental car gives you probable cause, then I guess you will search the car. But you don’t have my permission.”

The big cop was seething. He glanced around the parking lot to see if there were any witnesses. If he assaulted me and I fought back, he could arrest me for resisting, then search the car to his heart’s content. Bad luck for him, an elderly gentleman wearing cowboy boots and a straw cowboy hat had just come out of Norm’s and was walking across the parking lot toward us.

The black cop pulled the lurch back a couple of paces. Standing by the rear bumper of the squad car, they held a whispered conference.

“There are no warrants for either of them and the car is clean,” I heard the black cop say, warning in his voice. “There haven’t been any prowler calls or alarm trips within a mile of here tonight.”

“I know they are up to something, goddamn it!”

“Then we’ll get them next time.”

The black cop walked back over.

“Are we free to go, Officer?” I said politely, keeping the pressure on them.

“Can you establish your local address so we know where to find you if we need to?”

“Why would you need to find us, Officer?”

“Don’t push it,” he said. “You have a key or receipt or something that shows you’re staying at the Georgian?”

“Yes.” I took out the key card I’d kept since our stay there six weeks before and handed it to him.

“If I call over there, are they going to tell me you’re registered?”

“Absolutely. We have a suite on the top floor.” Suites at the Georgian went for $500 and up. We were getting more respectable by the minute. The cop looked at the front and the back of the card, flexed it, then shrugged and handed it back along with our licenses.

“I wouldn’t advise wandering around the city this time of night in the future,” he said, trying to come out on top psychologically.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “It’s probably a bad idea. Are we free to go?”

“Yeah, get out of here.”

“If you’re smart, you’ll keep right on going until you get back to Sacramento,” the lurch said in his menacing tone.

“Why’s that?”

“Just let me see you around here again in the middle of the night and you’ll find out why.”

“Yep,” Reggie said, nodding to himself, looking straight ahead out the windshield as we drove down Santa Monica toward the Pacific. “I picked the right partner.”

“Why’s that?”

“‘Why’s that?’” He swiveled his head to look at me. “Listen to this shit. You outfoxed that flatfoot like a flimflam man on a Sunday school teacher. You were smooth as a sixteen-year-old girl’s heinie, Robby, and you know it. ‘Why’s that?’ Shit!”

“Seemed like the way to play it.”

“How’d you know they wouldn’t just search the car anyway and claim they saw something that gave ‘em cause?”

“I didn’t. I was gambling that they would play by the rules. If the cops are out-and-out corrupt, asserting your rights doesn’t help. But if they are halfway honest, mentioning things like probable cause makes them stop and think. Even if they really want to stick it to you, even if they are really suspicious, they know they aren’t allowed to search you or your car unless they have some evidence that a crime has been committed. A strong hunch isn’t enough. If you know your rights, it makes them cautious. They wonder who they are dealing with and start thinking about getting bawled out by the district attorney, or being made a fool of on the witness stand by a good defense lawyer.”

“What would you have done if they pushed it?”

“Fought them.”

Reggie nodded. “I had that black cop measured.”

“I know you did,” I said. “That big prick had his legs too far apart for his own good. If the shit went down, he would have been singing soprano at the next smoker.”

I pulled into the alley behind the flophouse a few minutes before two, popped the trunk, and got out, leaving the engine running. Reggie slid over behind the wheel while I retrieved the loot.

“Park wherever you can find a spot,” I told him. “We’ll take the car back first thing tomorrow. Be sure to check the street-sweeping signs so we don’t get towed.”

The back door that opened into the kitchen was bolted from the inside. Walking to the front, I saw a glimmer of light in the derelict house where Ozone Pacific slept. I was surprised he was awake this late.

Upstairs, I emptied out the bag of gold and the envelope of bonds. There were seventy-three Krugers. If gold was at $300, the coins were worth twenty-two grand. If it was at $400, they would be worth nearly thirty. The unexpected windfall put helium in my heart, made it light. The grin I had worn earlier, when we opened the safe, came back from wherever it had gone during the cop encounter.

The face value of the bonds was $18,300. The oldest issues had passed their maturity dates, which made them worth much more than face value. The newest issue was from the previous summer. It would be worth a little more than half of its nominal. All together, there was probably $40,000 worth of government paper. I could lay them off for 20 percent of that, another eight grand.

I took the diamonds out and held them up to the light, marveling at their beauty. Folding the necklace in my hand so that a single rose-colored crystal protruded between my thumb and the side of my index finger, I scratched a crude OM symbol in the mirror, then put the jewels back in the blue velvet case.

Fahid would be very happy.

But not as happy as me.

The money was the main thing, of course. But I also felt a glow of professional pride-pride in a tricky, high-stakes heist well-planned and executed, a feeling like I used to get in the construction business when a new room was latched solidly onto an old house, electrical and plumbing work up to code, interior paint job perfect, siding and roofing materials buttoned tight to protect the structure from the elements.

I was glad to be hurting Baba, too. I didn’t like his yogic con game in the least. I didn’t like what he was doing to Evelyn. I hated him because of Mary.