Chief Thief

Chapter Three-1

Chapter Three

Thief

All the way back to my house I kept thinking about her: slim, sensuous, sexy, a fetishist, and a terrific f**k! All the years I’d worked under her reign I’d known that she was good-looking, but I’d never imagined that she kept so much passion inside of her. It was easy to see why Mike McCarthy had married her. She was hotter than a Mexican chili pepper, and combined with her need for leather and punishment, anyone would be a fool to set her aside.

Mayor Mike was worse than a fool, he was a contemptuous fool. He’d stripped her and whipped her, and left her barren to further his own political fortunes. I’d overheard him say that Nancy Harding was backing him in the governor’s race, which was unsurprising. I’d seen the two of them together over the last year at all the hot spots. They were at all the right events, cutting the same ribbons, appearing at civic functions at the same time; they usually made the evening news at the same time. They were both on the way up the social ladder, so an alliance made sense.

The fact that the Chief hadn’t seen it coming was puzzling. Something else must have taken up most of her time. I wondered what it was.

Nancy Harding was old money, too. Her family owned dozens of apartment houses all over California and lived quite handsomely on the rents. With that money she had made down payments on expensive properties and built shopping centers, retirement homes, and how the money rolled in! It was said that anyone who had ever lived in an apartment or managed-care facility in California had lived in a Harding Hotel.

If Mrs. Harding (her husband was two years in his grave) was bankrolling Mayor Mike then she needed him for something bigger than she could handle. She was ruthless and ambitious, but she gave nothing away for free. The mayor must have known that she was going to use him for something, but he obviously didn’t care, as long as he got to the state capital as the number one man in town. Of course, he was a leather freak, so he was used to getting screwed by avaricious women!

As for Sibyl McCarthy, she had nothing but her job, her apartment…and me. I took a breath and let it out slowly. Telling her that I would help her strike back against her ex-husband had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. She had already been blackmailed by Mike; the thought of somebody else doing it to her would—I thought—have tipped her over the edge into fatalism. She could have lashed out and tried even harder to catch me, and damn her career or her image. Only by appearing to be on her side and appealing to her need for vengeance could I make use of her. But then she’d sweetened the deal by offering herself, and after months of no p***y at all how could I say no?

Damn she was good! I couldn’t believe how hot she was. She loved to do it, and she loved to be subdued and forced to obey. Oh, if only I could have her in my bed all the time! But how could I do that when I was breaking the law three nights out of the week? This was going to take some time to figure out. But, that was part of my signature style: plan ahead, and do the job right the first time.

I hit the garage door opener, and rolled my white, nondescript van in, and then shut the door behind me. I killed the motor and climbed out of the cab, and pulled my duffel bag off the passenger seat. Inside were my evening’s takings: nine thousand four hundred dollars in cash, and thirty thousand dollars in negotiable bearer bonds. If I added tonight’s take to the money I had already stolen, it totaled up to better than $1.5 million in less than a year’s worth of work, and I still had quite a ways to go.

Tomorrow night I would head to Commercial Banking and Brokerage International; CBBI didn’t care where the money came from, and would make my deposit under the radar. Then, per my standing instructions, they would wire it to the Cayman Islands and into a series of separate accounts and shell corporations. The money couldn’t sit idle, because I had need for it down the road. But it had to appear to be either the personal funds of a couple of outsiders, including that of a holding company. This was vital to my long-term plans.

Yes, I planned ahead. I was a thief with a goal in mind.

My goal was a flat ten million; then I could retire and pursue my lifelong dream of running a microbrewery. I had won gold, silver and bronze medals for my work as a brewer in contests and beer exhibitions all over the West Coast. Of course, I had more plans in mind than just brewing beer and being a bartender; big plans!

Ten years earlier, my brother Tracy had talked about opening a brew-pub in Berkeley, not far from the U.C. campus. He had taken me to the site, and outlined the entire concept, and showed me the plans. They looked solid, and Tracy had insisted that once his enlistment was up he was going to line up the financing and begin the construction. Unfortunately, an IED in Afghanistan had blown Tracy and his dream to smithereens, but I still had the plans and the blueprints. It still looked like a great idea, and I knew that the site in question was still open.

Ten Tanks Tavern, he’d planned to call it, or T-Cubed; named for the ten different kinds of beer he was going to brew: Pilsner, Porter, Stout, Ale, Amber, Lambic, Wheat, Cider, Mead, and Bock. In his honor I would call it Tracy’s Ten Tanks. I had looked over the business plans and then got a pencil from my desk and began making lists of the things that I would need: tables, chairs, flat-screen TV’s for sports games; taps, chairs, and a hundred other things. I knew that a lot of such things I could pick up used, but I needed to draw up a list of prices and expected expenses. That would be my goal: the expected cost, plus a cushion to survive for the first few years. I was a pretty good brew-meister myself, and had done plenty of short-term bartending jobs. But a part-time barkeeper would never be qualified enough to be worthy of a bank loan, no matter how good his business plan was. Nine separate banks had told me so; theft had been my only option.

But as a former cop, I knew that to be a successful thief you couldn’t just walk into a*****e, brandish a gun, and expect the money to roll right in. That was stupid, and all stupid crooks got caught. Professional burglars, on the other hand, were patient, picked their targets, always worked in utter silence, and most of them did quite well. I had studied, researched, and spoken to the best of the best, and in the end I had come up with a manifesto for successful crime.

I must never take notes, never wear bright or flashy clothing, my shoes must be good for running, and I should always carry cash, but never a lot of it; less than five hundred bucks. I knew what tools I could carry that would not attract attention: a metal ruler or pry bar, a coat hanger, a pencil, and a bundle of keys; innocent-enough items, but in the right hands indispensable, or deadly.

My clothes were utterly nondescript. On TV you see the burglars wearing black pajamas like a Viet-Cong soldier, but that’s just Hollywood. A professional wears dark clothing, yes, but it’s also something that appears completely natural. The cardinal rule for a criminal is that he has to be able to fade into a crowd. Even the things in one’s pockets must seem natural; I carried a Swiss Army knife, but never a gun. I never spoke unless absolutely necessary, and then my words were roughened; a hint of a New York accent to deflect attention. I was commanding, and demanded respect.

I never left a trail; never left a calling card or a ridiculous moniker. Law-enforcement was always on the lookout for things which made a person stand out. I was of average height with black hair, blue eyes, and wore jeans and gray T-shirt. I could fade into a crowd and you’d never find me. The media had taken to calling me Blink, but that was their doing. I never asked for the moniker, and did nothing to encourage it. My use of it on Chief McCarthy was just for her benefit; something for her to grasp onto. I could just as easily have used the name Tom, d**k, or Harry. It would have been the same to me.

I never took things that stood out. What was taken had to be converted to cash right away. Jewelry could be broken down and sold piecemeal; sports memorabilia is too flashy. Cash was best; all of my targets had lots of cash on hand. The targets were researched and in many cases I got the lay of the building ahead of time.

My areas of operation were far away from where I lived, for I never wanted to run the risk of being recognized. I always worked at night. If someone spotted me on the street, my cover story was that I couldn’t sleep, so I was out for a walk. No one ever asked for details.

My car was always parked several blocks away; sometimes as far as a mile or two distant. Another Hollywood cliché was that crooks rush into cars and take off in a squeal of rubber. No way! After I hit a place, I sometimes stashed my loot in a grove of bushes and then just strolled back to wherever my vehicle was, if I had driven there at all. A lot of time I used public transportation. If necessary, my stuff was picked up much later when the heat was off.

When possible, I cut the lines supplying power to the burglar alarms. I had familiarized myself with most of the models on the market, and I knew how to disable them without leaving a trace.

Like any cop, I was always aware of my surroundings. The worst mistake a burglar can make is to think or act on a linear basis. Theft requires a three hundred sixty degree awareness at all times. In a sense, a good burglary was like a commando raid: penetrate the enemy perimeter, strike, and then fade away. In many cases it was days, sometimes weeks later when a mark realized that he’d been robbed. That was preferable, of course. By the time the theft was reported I was miles away working on another job.

Patience was an absolute must. If necessary, I had to be prepared to wait several hours to strike. That was why sitting for so long in that closet was as nothing to me. I could have waited all night to get out of that apartment. My van had been in a garage five blocks away. All that meant was that my parking fee would have been a bit high. No matter; I had the money.

All of my stolen goods went to a reliable fence which was willing to give me at least twenty percent of the item’s value. My fence had ties to the Mob, so I knew that it was a reliable operation. Best of all, if I couldn’t get my stuff to the fence within a few hours, I simply sent the goods by mail or via UPS. My contact always accepted the packages and they even deposited my share to my bank account if I wasn’t there to collect. I was a good supplier, and they worked with me in every sense of the word.

I always carried cash for bribes. It was surprising how many people accepted bribes, even cops.

These were the ground rules that I worked with, and they’d saved my butt more than once. Besides being the product of my research and experience, they’d also been given to me by a successful thief that I had met years before in Las Vegas. He’d spotted me as a cop, but also knew that I was a stranger. He’d been utterly unapologetic, and said that the worst crime in the world was being beaten by life. Everything he’d told me about the system of successful crime was straightforward and simple. In thirty years he had never used a gun, preferring instead to work through guile and preparation. Now, I did the same, until I could get my project on wheels. After that, I would retire from crime to tend bar, and do so for the rest of my life.

The worst thing in the world that a thief can do is to get addicted to a life of crime.