Crime Spells, page 29
“Thanks, Arlo.”
“My pleasure.”
After he called, he walked her to the door and rested his hand on her shoulder. There was a moment when she thought he would kiss her—and she wouldn’t have objected—but it passed.
Another road not taken.
Too bad, but that’s how life was. Sometimes, business had to come before pleasure.
Her taxi arrived. The night was warm, and she slid into the cab and gave the driver an address near a stop where she could catch a MAX train to a station near her place.
“Yes, madam,” the driver said. He looked to be about fifty, and from his accent, she guessed he was Indian or Pakistani.
It really was too bad about St. Johns.
The cabbie was chatty, going on about the warm weather and how the Bull Run Resevoir was low for this time of year. She responded politely, already thinking of how she was going to burgle St. Johns’s apartment. If the Glamor worked on voices, it would be a snap—she’d become St. Johns, tell the security guy she’d lost her key, and have him let her into the place. Take something the mark wouldn’t miss, and adios.
Too bad St. Johns wasn’t a mute—
Ah! Wait a second, hold on, she had something here . . .
“Beg pardon, Miss?” the cabbie said.
“Huh?” She looked at him.
“You made an exclamation? Are you in distress?”
She smiled. “Oh, oh, no, sorry. I was just thinking of something. I’m fine.”
The cabbie smiled and nodded.
Actually, she was better than fine. She had come up with a terrific idea. Why hadn’t it occurred to her years ago? It was so simple.
She paid the cabbie, gave him a nice tip—what the hell, she’d be flush again in a couple days, right? She walked to the MAX station. A light rail train arrived, and she got on, along with several others. She exited at the stop near her house. An old lady dressed in khaki slacks and a tie-dyed t-shirt and running shoes got off the train and set off at a fast walk ahead of her. The woman had long, steely-gray hair and a lot of smile wrinkles and was obviously in pretty good shape from the pace she set. You could do worse than to be somebody like that when you got old, Darla decided. But not for a real long time.
St. Johns needed to be out of the building, so she had to risk using her car. She parked near the exit to the garage early and waited to see St. Johns’ Caddy leave.
At about nine in the morning, the Escalade pulled out.
Okay, kid, here we go . . .
Darla approached the building’s street entrance. She put a hand on the doorman’s sleeve as she asked to see the security man on duty.
Inside, she was conducted to the security desk. The man behind it looked up.
“Help you, Miss?” He stood and moved to the counter.
“Yes, I saw a car parked out front, and there were two men in it who seemed to be watching the entrance,” she said. “Probably it’s nothing, but I thought I should say something about it.”
“Two men? What kind of car? They still there?”
She shrugged. “I’m not good with cars. Like a van, maybe an SUV? Dark, kind of old, muddy? But they left.”
“Uh-huh. You get get the license number, ma’am?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Ah. Well. Listen, we appreciate it. We’ll, uh, keep an eye out for it.” Probably thinking was a twit she was. Two men in a car, right.
She reached out and touched his arm. “Probably it’s nothing,” she said. “But these days, you can’t be too careful.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s true.”
Darla stepped into a doorway in the next building and lit the Glamor. Show time . . .
“Morning, Mr. St. Johns,” the doorman said. He opened the heavy glass door.
Darla smiled and nodded, knowing that her disguise was perfect.
She walked to the security desk.
“Mr. St. Johns. How may I help you sir?”
She shook her head and touched her throat. In a raspy voice as low as she could manage, Darla said, “Laryngitis.” She coughed.
“Oh, sorry to hear that.”
“Forgot my key,” she said. Her voice was a passable imitation of a sick frog.
“No problem, sir.” The guard opened a wide drawer, scanned the contents, and produced a door key. “Here you go. Drop it off whenever.”
Darla smiled, nodded, and coughed as she took the key.
Perfect. She didn’t have to sound like St. Johns; she had set it up that her—his—voice was gone. Very clever, if she said so herself.
People were coming and going, and the guard’s attention veered away from her.
There weren’t any cameras in the elevators, at least none she’d seen the night before, but she lingered until a couple other people arrived to ride up. They would see her as Darla, and if there was a hidden camera in the elevator, the guard would see three people in it. How much track would he be keeping?
So far, it ran like a Swiss watch.
She opened the door, stepped inside—it wouldn’t do for somebody to see her instead of St. Johns, though they might assume she was his special friend, since she had a key.
Inside, she shut the door and reached for the alarm pad, but she realized that it was green. He hadn’t even bothered to set it.
She shook her head. Man didn’t turn on his alarm? He deserved to have his stuff stolen. Lordy.
In the bedroom, it took all of ten seconds to find the jewelry box—it was leather, trimmed in brass, and it sat atop a dresser made of what looked like ebony.
Darla opened the box.
My. There were gold coins, loose gems—mostly diamonds, but a couple of emeralds—a diamond-studded money clip that held three thousand dollars in hundreds. There was a banded 5K stack of hundreds next to that, but the band was broken and two were missing. There were a dozen platinum coins and ten platinum one-ounce ingots, and several sets of cuff links and tiepins, done in assorted gems—rubies, emeralds, sapphires . . .
Quickly Darla decided what she could remove without it being immediately noticed. There were thirty-two gold coins, Eagles, and she took two of those. Nineteen loose stones, fourteen of which were one or two-carat, round-cut blue-white diamonds. She took one of the two-carat stones and one of the single carats. She took two hundreds from the money clip, three from the banded stack. One of the platinum coins, one of the ingots. She considered the tie tacks and cuff links and decided they were too easily missed.
Okay, a quick total: couple of gold Eagles, probably worth eight hundred each. The platinum eagle was worth fourteen, fifteen hundred, probably, the ingot a little less, say twelve hundred, and that was money in her pocket, since they didn’t have to be fenced. The diamonds were clean and clear, figure six, eight thousand on the smaller one, and at least twenty-five or thirty on the bigger one. Less Harry’s cut on those, so say they were worth twenty thousand to her total, if she was lucky. With the cash, she’d net about twenty-five grand total. Unless St. Johns did an inventory, he likely wouldn’t notice anything was gone, and she’d buy herself three or four months of lie-about time. Not nearly as good as what she had gotten from the widow’s place, but she had that laryngitis trick, and that would come in handy.
Once again, it was tempting to scoop it all into her pocket—there was enough here to keep her from having to score again for a couple-three years, maybe longer. But, no. Better to stick with what had kept her out of jail for all this time; greed was a killer. She sighed and closed the jewelry box.
As she turned to leave, she noticed the corner of a box jutting out from under the bed. A bed with black silk sheets on it, she also noticed, and neatly made.
She stopped, bent, and pulled the box from under the bed. It was long, wide, and fairly flat, as big as a large suitcase, if shallower. She opened the box.
It was full of thousand dollar bills, stacked in rows, fifteen across and eight down, and the bills were loose and mostly used.
Holy shit!
She picked up one stack, her breath coming faster, and counted it. Then another stack. A third. The first had thirty, the second twenty-eight, the third, thirty-three. Nonsequentially numbered.
She did some fast math. A hundred and twenty stacks, say thirty bills in each stack on average.
Three million six hundred thousand dollars.
Oh, man!
What was St. Johns doing with this much cash under his bed?
Darla stared at the cash. If she took one or two bills from each stack, he might not even notice! She could take a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, and unless he did a count, he wouldn’t be able to tell. And even if he did that, she was pretty sure this wasn’t money he wanted anybody to know about—it had the smell of something not quite legal.
Of course, she couldn’t just walk into a bank and plunk down a couple hundred thousand-dollar bills and expect that to fly without raising questions; but Harry knew people who could move big notes without batting an eye and he’d take ten or fifteen percent, no more than that.
Two bills from each stack. Two hunded and forty thousand dollars, she could give Harry the two-carat blue-white for his cut and—no, she decided, she’d put all that back. No point in risking this much for petty cash. With two hundred grand in her pocket, she could take a long damn time before she had to make another score.
Yes. That’s how she would do it. Put the coins and gems back, pack a quarter of a million into her pockets—no more carrying it in purses, thank you very much—and walk away with a big smile under her Glamor.
Darla drove toward her place, using a long and winding route, to make sure she wasn’t followed. She was almost home when she heard the sound of a police siren. She looked into the rearview mirror and saw a plain, tan Crown Victoria with a blue light flashing on the dashboard behind her.
“Oh, shit!” she said. An icy wave washed over her, as if she’d been drenched in liquid nitrogen, turning her stiff with fear.
She pulled to the curb. This wasn’t a traffic stop.
A tall, heavyset, balding man alighted from the car. He wore a cheap, badly wrinkled suit and brown shoes, and a tie that failed to reach his belt. Might as well have had a neon sign over his head flashing out the word “Cop!”
He walked to her driver’s door.
“Would you step out of the car, please?”
“What’s the trouble? Was I speeding?”
“No, lady, I’m a detective, I don’t do traffic tickets. Out here, please, and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Dead. She was dead. She had considered it over the years, what she would do if she was ever caught, but it had never seemed real to her, it had been so theoretical.
What was she going to do?
The Glamor.
Of course! In her panicked fear, she had forgotten she had a perfect weapon. She’d touch him, and when the moment was right, she’d distract him, change, and that would be that!
The woman? she’d say, when he turned around and saw an old man there, She went that way, she was running!
Okay, she’d be okay, she could do this. He’d have to pat her down, and that would be enough, his hands on her would be fine. A touch was a touch.
“Over on the sidewalk, please,” he said.
She obeyed.
“What did I do?” she asked.
“You don’t need me to tell you that. Step in there, please.”
He pointed to a gate that led to what looked like a small garden.
“Excuse me?”
“We don’t want to do this out here.”
“Do what out here?!”
The panic she’d felt came back. What was going on?
“Open the gate, please.”
She did. He shut the wrought iron behind them. “Wow, look at that,” he said.
She turned. “Wh-what?”
When she turned back to look at the cop, he was gone.
In his place was an old woman.
Darla frowned. She knew this woman from somewere . . . ah, it was the old lady on the MAX train . . .
“Or this?” the old woman said, in a decidedly masculine voice.
The woman shimmered, and in a moment, Darla found herself looking at the cab driver who had taken her home from St. Johns—
And then, like a strobe light blinking on and off, the cab driver became the teenager who had stolen her purse, the good-looking guy she’d seen in Starbucks, and finally, St. Johns.
Blink, blink, blink.
Darla was too stunned to speak.
“Are we having fun yet?” he asked.
She realized her mouth was open. She closed it.
He chuckled. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”
The meaning of it hit her. “You—you’re like me,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Yep. What you see isn’t what you get, necessarily.”
He laughed again. “I don’t rob houses. My ambition is a little bigger than that, but I do okay. As you noticed when you spotted my cash box. How much did you take, by the way?”
“Two bills from each stack.”
“Smart. I like bright women.”
“Why are you—what—?”
“Well, I’ve been watching you for a while, Darla. Far as I can tell, you and I are the only two of our kind. I’d propose a . . . partnership.”
“Partnership?”
“Well, more than that, maybe. I mean, you are gorgeous and careful and clever, but there there are some advantages to what we can do together. Between the two of us, we could do bigger and better things than either of us can do alone. Imagine how much easier it would be be if we could be a couple that looked like anybody we wanted?”
She considered it. Yes. That would be something.
“Plus, there are some other perks.”
He shimmered and turned into a studly young movie star that Darla much admired.
“Or maybe . . . this?” He morphed into another young man, this one a match to a well-known rock star.
“We have a world of choice to offer each other, don’t we?” He shimmered again and reclaimed St. Johns. “Not that I think I would get bored with you as you stand. You are stunning, you know, but you also have a kind of variety to offer no other woman does.”
She smiled back at him. “Even though I stole your money?”
“Because you stole my money. What do you think?”
She found herself nodding. Yes. There was an attraction, no question, and if she got tired of looking at him?
Well, he could fix that in an instant.
Because nobody was immune to Glamor . . .
About the Authors
Ilsa J. Bick is a psychiatrist as well as the author of award-winning stories, e-books, and novellas and bestselling novels set in the Star Trek and MechWarrior: Dark Age universes. The Jason Saunders companion story, “The Key,” first appeared on SCIFI.Com (http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/bick3/bick31.html) and was selected as a Distinguished Mystery Story in The Best American Mystery Stories, 2005, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. She is currently at work on the paranormal thriller Satan’s Skin and an as-yet untitled paranormal featuring the continuing adventures of Detective Jason Saunders and Dr. Sarah Wylde. She lives in Wisconsin with her family and other assorted vermin.
Randall N. Bills has worked as the line developer and continuity editor for the Classic BattleTech/MechWarrior universe for ten years. In addition to writing eight novels set in this universe, he’s led the publication of over fifty products. He’s also published in the Star Fleet Corps of Engineers: Aftermath anthology, as well as a new line of young adult fiction under the Adventure Boys brand. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, three children, and a snake, and when he’s not writing or developing rules, he’s playing board games with friends and family, listening to music, reading, or blowing things up on the Xbox.
Once there was a guy named Joe Edwards who really wanted to write. He followed his stories to the page, and here he is now. When he’s not writing, Edwards raises Irish wolfhounds and restores antique shotguns somewhere in the Rocky Mountain states.
Robert T. Jeschonek has written science fiction and fantasy stories for Postscripts, Abyss & Apex, Loyalhanna Review, and other publications. His Star Trek fiction has appeared in New Frontier: No Limits, S.C.E.: The Cleanup, Voyager: Distant Shores, and Strange New Worlds, volumes III, V, and VI. His story “Our Million-Year Mission” won the grand prize in the Strange New Worlds VI contest. Robert has also written for War, Commercial Suicide, Dead by Dawn Quarterly, and other comic books. Visit him on line at www.robertjeschonek.com.
Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His recent novels are Madness of Flowers from Night Shade Books and Escapement from Tor Books. Jay is the winner of the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. Jay can be reached through his blog at jlake.com.
Steven Mohan, Jr., lives in Pueblo, Colorado, with his wife and three children and, surprisingly, no cats. When not writing he works as a manufacturing engineer. His fiction has appeared in Interzone, Polyphony , and Paradox, among other places. His short stories have won honorable mention in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Devon Monk lives in Oregon with her husband, two sons, and a dog named Mojo. Her first novel, Magic to the Bone, is out now, and her short stories can be found in a variety of genre magazines and anthologies, including Rotten Relations, Maiden, Matron, Crone, Fantasy Gone Wrong, Year’s Best Fantasy #2, and Better Off Undead. When not writing, she is either drinking coffee, knitting toys, or wondering why the dog is looking at her so strangely. For more on Devon, go to www.devonmonk.com.
Peter Orullian has recently been published in other fine DAW anthologies, as well as Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. For grocery money, he works at Microsoft in the Xbox division. And while he desperately hopes to make a living writing, his other abiding passion is music; Peter recently returned from a European tour with a successful hard rock band. He has a New York agent currently shopping one of his novels, which he hopes allows him to retire from Microsoft and sing and write until everything bleeds.
