Nightwork, page 10
“A son takes care of his mama or he ain’t no son. She get better?”
Silas shook his head. “She got better, then got sick again, and better again, and sick again. She died last year.”
Sebastien made the sign of the cross, laid a hand on his heart. “I’ll light a candle for her in church.”
“You go to church?”
“Sometimes I go to church, sometimes the bayou’s my church. Angels are everywhere if you look. How’d you start? You lift the locks?”
“Picking pockets.”
“Hah. You good at that?”
“Yeah.”
“No skill there, me. Locks for me.” He patted his narrow chest. “I can sweet-talk any lock to fall for me. They got the digital now, but they don’t stop me. This man, with the painting, he lives in a big old plantation house, got him servants and people come to mow the lawn and all of that. Doesn’t treat them fine and fair, I tell you this. Cheats on his wife. I had me three wives and never did I step out on any of them. You love women, you have respect. A cheating man’s no man.”
“Does it matter to you if the mark’s a good person or not?”
Sebastien shrugged skinny shoulders. “Job is what it is. But it’s lagniappe when they a cheating bastard.”
“A little something extra.”
“Mais oui. You dance, garçon?”
“Dance. Yeah. Why?”
“The ladies, they like a man can dance—that’s one. Dance? It’s grace and rhythm and balance. Tu saisis?”
“Oui.”
Sebastien tapped his boot. “With this, I don’t dance, and such a job needs the grace and rhythm and balance. I clomp, not glide with this. This man who cheats on his woman and is hard to those who work for him has a house with many doors and windows. Many locks and all wired, tu vois.”
“If I know what kind of system, I can beat it.”
“It’s a very fine system, but none, as we know, are perfect. Mais, inside, this room where he keeps the painting—and other things precious—this is also protected. Like a vault it is inside the office he has there, a big room, also kept locked, opened that office only for cleaning. And this he changes the code for every day—so it’s told to me.”
“So it’s in steps. The house alarm—cameras?”
“Bien sûr.”
“Okay. The house system, then the room, then the vault. Then retrace.”
“Retrace?”
“I leave everything, put everything back the way it was. Reset the systems. Why let them know straight off you’ve been in there?”
Sebastien sat back. “This is a clever way. Takes more time, yes, but gains time maybe. All is as it was, except one thing. The painting is on its journey.” Then with a nod, he rose. “Come, I’ll show you what we have.”
He led the way down a short hall and into a bedroom. Since it held two beds—a human one with metal head- and footboards and a dog one—Silas concluded it was Sebastien’s.
The cypress walls displayed more pencil art—bayou scenes and female figures. A wooden chair sat in a corner with a pole lamp. Shelves held books and trinkets.
Sebastien went to a sketch of a full-figured woman standing under the lace of Spanish moss. He slipped a finger behind the frame. And the wall slid into the wall.
“Pocket door. You wouldn’t see the joint unless you knew where to look.”
Impressed, Silas stepped forward to study the space, about two feet by twelve.
A narrow desk held a top-of-the-line computer. A board hung behind it, covered with what Silas assumed were schematics for the current job, a blueprint of the house, timetables, names, dates, a photo of the painting, others of the plantation house and grounds with outbuildings. And, most intriguing, one of a vault door.
“How did you get a picture of the vault?”
“This is not his, but one of the same model.”
“I’ve never worked on one of those.”
“There must always be a first.”
He stepped in farther and noted the shelves on the bedroom wall inside the hidden space held tools of their trade. The lock picks, drills, stethoscopes, remotes, and cell phones that could be—or already were—converted for use on digital systems.
Gloves, paper booties, ski masks. A freaking grappling hook. Nylon rope, glass cutters.
“Catch me that chair,” Sebastien said as he booted up the computer. “Stood too long on this damn foot already.”
As Silas went to get the wooden chair, Bluto walked in, went straight to his dog bed. He sat in it and gave Silas his death stare.
“Dogs usually like me.”
“He like you fine, else he’d be making a rumble in his throat. He’s just showing you who’s top dog ’round here. Every place has a weak spot,” he began.
To Silas’s astonishment, he brought up the house and, using the mouse, took the image on a slow revolve.
“That is seriously cool.”
“World changes, you gotta change with it. This here?” He tapped a set of glass patio doors with his finger. “That’s where you go in.”
They spent an hour on the basics before Sebastien said it was time for a coffee and sunset break on the veranda.
Though he wasn’t much for coffee, Silas enjoyed that slow bleed of red and gold light over the river, through the cypress.
Owls hooted, insects sang, frogs croaked, something splashed in the water.
“Bayou, she makes music all night long.”
A strange but appealing sort of music for a city boy, Silas admitted. “You don’t have much security here.”
“I got me this fierce beast,” he pointed out as Bluto snored at his feet. “Got Pierre and his family over there. And that little bump you might’ve noticed coming back here? That’s a pressure alarm. I know when someone’s coming to my place. But I was born and raised here, my family’s here, and people know me. Ain’t nobody on the bayou gonna mess with me. And the po-po, they got no reason to nose around here either. If they do, they got nothing to see. Just a man and his dog, living off the land, doing some odd jobs here and there. Never do I break in, me, to a house I work on.”
“It was the same with me when I was cleaning them.”
After the break, they worked till midnight, going over the steps, the systems, the household habits. They didn’t have a dog—always a plus—but a cat. Or a minou, as Sebastien called it.
In addition to the cat, the man, his wife, two kids—boy, age twelve; girl, age eight—they had a live-in housekeeper and her husband.
By the time he drove home, his brain and eyes wide open from the single cup of café noir Sebastien had pushed on him, Silas knew every name and location of the household occupants, the distance from the entry point to the locked office, and the distance from that door to the vault.
He knew the house security system, and since he’d worked with one like it, felt confident there. The locked office door didn’t worry him overmuch.
But the vault? That was new and fresh and complex. And he only had a matter of days to learn its intricacies and secrets.
Pumped from the coffee, he worked another two hours in his apartment, making his own notes, timeline, practicing with the doctored remote Sebastien had lent him. And practicing with his combination lock.
The vault’s had a nine-number combination max, and he agreed with Sebastien the mark would use all nine.
Time-consuming.
He could do a three-combo in under fifteen minutes now on most jobs. A nine wouldn’t just triple that, he knew. The complexity would add at least an hour more, most likely. Unless he got really, really lucky.
He banked on two hours to break the vault.
In and out, he calculated, in three—three and a half to be safe and sure.
Longer than he’d ever risked, but then the biggest payday he’d ever gone after.
When he finally climbed into bed, he dreamed of endless combinations, and the satisfying click, click of tumblers.
* * *
He skipped his weekly French lesson and the possibility of sex with Dauphine and focused on improving his time. He settled for frozen pizza in a city where food was a religion to cut down on any distractions.
With scrap metal picked up in a junkyard he built a low-rent mock-up of the vault door, then spent hours setting and resetting a combination lock. After two nights, he shaved his average time to sixty-seven minutes, twelve seconds.
He determined to do better.
He munched on Doritos and studied the security schematics.
He lifted weights, drank Gatorade, and played every step, every movement in his mind.
When the night came, he told himself he was ready. He reminded himself a job was a job, a series of steps after careful, focused preparation.
He left his car at Sebastien’s cottage and climbed into the pickup, along with the dog.
“I drop you where I showed you on the drive-by, and you hotfoot it from there. Ain’t nobody much travel that road this time of night, but you see a car coming—”
“I move off the road,” Silas finished. “When I’m clear, I turn my phone back on, text you, and you pick me up where you dropped me off.”
“You got a cool head, mon ami?”
“I’m cool. I’ve got it,” he added. “If we run through it too many times, I’m overprepared. I’ve got it.”
The steamy, moonless night worked in his favor. There’d be security lights on the grounds, but easy to avoid. Windows closed against the heat, the hum of the AC, both little advantages as he saw it.
At one in the morning on a heavy summer night the household should be fast asleep. If not, he’d just have to avoid any insomniacs. If he could hit his best practice time, he’d be in and out inside of two hours. Any complications, he’d still be back in the pickup before even an early riser stirred.
They didn’t pass another car on the tree-lined road.
When Sebastien pulled over, he gave Silas one last long look. “Bonne chance.”
With a nod, Silas got out, checked the time. And ran.
Tall, lanky, dressed in black, he covered the quarter mile quickly, then stopped in the cover of trees to study the house.
The expected security lights illuminated the lush lawns, silvered the dripping moss. The carriage lights that flanked the wide front door gleamed over the long veranda with its thick columns.
But the many windows, every one, remained dark.
Using the trees, the shrubs, he kept an eye on those windows for any movement as he circled around to the side of the house and Sebastien’s declared weak spot.
Roses, lilies, and the summer scent of green perfumed the air as he dealt with the simple lock on the ornate iron handset. Inside what he guessed they called a morning room or sitting room, he went straight to the alarm pad.
First test, he thought, to see if Sebastien knew what the hell he was doing with the homemade reader.
The seconds ticked off as the numbers flashed by on the display. Worst case, he ran.
But the code flashed green.
He closed the door again, quietly.
The air here held perfume as well. Flowers and lemons. And that air held still as he stood, eyes closed, to boost his sense of hearing.
With the blueprints in his head, he moved out of the room, took a short jog to the right and across the massive entranceway with its graceful central staircase.
Another jog, this time left, moving quick and quiet, past another parlor, the billiard room, and to the locked door of the office.
As he got out his picks, something swished against his legs and nearly shot him out of his Chucks.
The orange tabby said, “Meow.”
Though it had a sweet face, Silas didn’t touch it. He gave himself ten seconds to settle, then dealt with the lock.
The cat slipped in before he could stop it, and pranced over to leap up and perch on the wide arm of a port-wine leather sofa. If he put it out, it might meow more, scratch at the door, or do something else to wake someone up.
Silas closed the door, and faced the vault.
It looked more impressive in person, three feet wide, eight feet tall, gunmetal gray. He knew from the schematics it was nearly thirty years old.
He approached it, laid one gloved hand on its cool metal surface.
Then, clicking on his stopwatch, got to work.
Behind him, the cat watched and purred. He’d gauged the distance to the window—his single escape route if someone decided to come in.
Then he blocked everything out.
He worked meticulously, as he had on his very first—and, in retrospect, incredibly simple—safe job. As each tumbler fell, he felt a quiet ping of satisfaction.
He’d trained himself to make the graph in his head, did his calculations, and moved on.
He stopped once when he heard a creak. Waited, waited, but it didn’t come again. Old houses, he knew, had their night voices.
When he gripped the lever, he held his breath. Math never lied, but more than sometimes human calculation could go off.
The lever moved smoothly, and with a long, strong pull, the vault door opened.
He clicked the stopwatch. Fifty minutes flat.
Later, he promised himself, he’d celebrate that personal best.
Still using only the penlight, he swept the room. Twice as wide as the door, he noted, and outfitted with a leather chair, a commode table—looked antique. A crystal decanter and glass sat on the table.
In a room, he saw, decorated with statues—bronzes, marbles, stone—on pedestals. Wide shelves held smaller ones, and displays of gemstones, what he thought might be a moon rock. A fancy egg—possibly Fabergé—a pair of dueling pistols.
Paintings graced the walls. A portrait of a young woman in profile, a landscape of rolling hills and trees painted with autumn glory, a watercolor, an abstract that made no sense to him.
And the Turner, the small jewel of golds and reds and hints of blue.
It was nothing like the photos he’d studied. It was so much more.
It lived, it moved, it breathed. He could feel the sun exploding to life over the city, over the river, and vowed he’d go there one day and see it for himself.
It seemed to him the painting glowed as he lifted it carefully—reverently—from the wall.
He was supposed to cut it out of the frame, roll up the canvas, and get out.
But he couldn’t do it, not when he could see the brushstrokes, feel the brilliance. Since he didn’t know exactly how to get it out of the frame, didn’t have time to try to figure it out, he decided to take it with him as it was.
Though he wanted—had the envie—to take a closer look at the other treasures in the room, he resisted. He stepped out, started to close the vault door.
And saw that the cat was no longer perched on the couch.
“Fuck.”
He started to search, then heard the purr. The cat had made himself at home in the master’s chair in his private museum.
Silas tucked the painting under one arm, the cat under the other.
He closed the vault, spun the lock, then set it back on the number where he’d found it.
He set the cat down outside the office, closed the door before it could slither back in. Relocked it. It meowed after him, a little forlornly, when he retraced his steps.
He reset the house alarm, closed and locked the side door, and jogged to the road and into the trees before he stopped to text Sebastien, then jogged back to the pickup spot.
He checked the time, smiled slowly. In and out in seventy-two minutes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He knew the sound of Sebastien’s pickup, but kept to the shadows until he saw it pull up and stop.
“Fast work,” Sebastien began when Silas opened the passenger door. “What you do? Bring it in the frame?”
“No way I was putting a blade to any part of this canvas. Man, just look at it.”
Sebastien rolled his eyes. “We look later. And we better hope no po-po decide to cruise by and want to have a chat while you got that on your lap.”
He glanced over as he pulled out onto the road, and Silas stared down at the painting.
“Don’t you go falling in love. That belongs to the client now.”
“I can fall in love and still do the job.”
“Any trouble in there?”
“I met the cat. I nearly shut him in the vault before I realized he’d walked in there. Nice cat.” He shifted a little as Bluto—obviously scenting cat—snuffled all over him.
“Other than that, nothing. You were right about the side door. I probably could’ve gotten through with a celluloid strip, and your reader’s solid. You need to teach me how to make my own.”
“Do I, now?”
“Yeah, you do. I could figure it out now that I have some time, but you already know. I’m going to take more courses with electronics, IT stuff. I can do basic hacking, but I need to expand that.”
“How long it take you to break that vault?”
“Fifty flat. I’m going to get better there. Sebastien, he has a room behind it full of art and gems and antiques. He’s got a big leather chair in there so he can sit and admire all of it. Locked away, just for him.”
“People like that, they keep us in business.”
“If I ever get myself something like this, the real deal? I’m hanging it on the wall, in the open. This client, does he have a room like this?”
“I say this one, he got himself a room make what you saw look like my broom closet.”
“I don’t get why people like that want to have something so beautiful no one can see but them.”
“Don’t have to get. Like I said, they keep us in business.” But as he turned into the bayou, he sent Silas another glance. “They got no soul, tu saisis? They don’t see what you see when you look at that. They just want, c’est tout. Like you fuck a woman in the dark without knowing her, or seeing her, or feeling her, or having a care. It’s just the want, and no soul.”
He pulled up at the cottage. “All the money in this world—and they got the most of it—won’t buy them that soul. Mais, they just gonna want the next thing, ’cause they never gonna see what you see when you look.”
