Murder Miscalculated (5 page)

“Miss Quist, if you had been a little more careful in your appraisal of my bookstore,” I made certain to emphasize the fact that the store was mine, “you would have noticed that the bookshelves in the middle of the store are on wheels. We move them to the back room when we host events. Second, if you had bothered to ask, I would have told you that we have twenty-five folding chairs, more if needed, coming over from St. Timothy’s down the street.” She started to protest, but I raised my hand. “Finally, if your firm would like to cancel the book signing, that’s fine with me. We’ll simply send back all the copies of Max Carson’s book that we ordered.” I pointed to the display behind her. “It’s completely up to you.”

Miss Quist studied the display. It was stacked with hardcover editions of Max Carson’s epic new novel,
Death & Deception at Donner Pass
. Her face grew pale, and she gulped. “No, I’m certain we can work with you on this to make it a success.” She gave me a tentative smile. “I’m sorry if I was a bit of a bitch. Working for Max can do that. Actually, this is my first assignment. I only started with Dunham a month ago.”

I did another quick calculation. “Let me guess, you graduated with your MFA this past June?”

She nodded.

“City College of Arts?”

She smiled and nodded again. “Yes. I’m lucky I found this job so quickly. Most of my class is still looking.” Miss Quist lowered her voice as though imparting a book industry secret. “Though I’m beginning to suspect that the reason the job was open is because Max is such a pill to work for. He calls me at least five times a day.”

A buzzing sound came from her Klug purse, an attractive, though modestly priced, style. It’s not that I’m into fashion, but in my former line of work it was important for me to know what kind of clasps and fasteners different brands of purses used, and the best ways to open them without being noticed. The Klug line, though stylish, was child’s play. Miss Quist took out a cell phone, and walked a few steps away from the counter.

“Yes, Max, what do you need?” She listened. “Yes, I’m at The Book Nook now, talking with the owner.” The tone of her voice was like that of an adult to a troublesome child. “Yes, it looks like everything is fine. Yes, I understand. No, I haven’t, but I’m still working on that. I will. Goodbye, Max.” She returned to the counter.

“You see what I mean?” She gestured with the cell phone. “I had no idea a successful writer like Max Carson could be so insecure.” She returned the cell phone to her purse and glanced at her watch.

“Darn. I need to run. If it’s okay with you, I’ll stop in again tomorrow afternoon to go over the details? I need to find Max a hotel room. The one I booked for him isn’t up to his standards.”

“Is he already in town?”

“No, not until Thursday, but apparently he looked up reviews of the hotel on the itinerary I sent him and decided it wasn’t good enough.” She sighed. “Nothing I studied in grad school covered the care and feeding of temperamental authors.”

“You might have trouble finding something at this late date. There are several conventions in town.”

She headed for the door, unsteady in her high-heeled boots. I figured she was still trying to make the transition from comfortable college clothes to dress-for-success attire. She clopped her way to the front door. “Then I’d better get hustling. See you tomorrow afternoon.”

A little bell on a thread jingled, and that tiny sound caused me to sigh. “Try again.”

Cochran walked away from me, reached the wall and turned. He must have been as tired as I was of this exercise, but he made up in determination what he lacked in dexterity. “Let’s go,” he said, game as ever.

I turned away from him and stood with a newspaper in front of me, pretending to be engrossed in the sports scores. Cochran appeared next to me on my left. With my peripheral vision I could see that he, too, was holding a newspaper. His paper was folded, and he held it with both hands. He gave the paper a shake and flipped it over the way commuters do, with practiced, bored movements. So far, so good. The next few seconds would tell.

That damned little bell gave out its musical tinkle again. It was Cochran’s turn to sigh.

“Darn, I thought I had it that time.”

I put my hand inside my coat. My billfold was halfway out of the inside pocket. “What happened?” I put it back in place and faced Cochran.

“I had it in the scissors grasp, but it slipped sidewise as I pulled it out.”

I held my coat open. “Show me.”

Cochran reached with his left hand and dipped into the coat pocket. He began drawing my billfold out and, just as he said, halfway out it slipped and turned within his fingers. The little bell, one of many suspended by tiny threads across the inside of my jacket, tinkled as the slim wallet brushed against it.

“Okay, I think I see the problem.” My hand replaced his. “Watch my hand,” I commanded.

I slid my hand sideways into my coat pocket, and keeping my fingers straight and stiff, took hold of the billfold by slipping it between my index and ring fingers. “Now, watch, see how I lift it straight up and how well I’ve got hold of it. It takes the full length of your fingers to hold it. You have to account for the depth of the jacket pocket. The average suit coat inside pocket is at least six inches deep.” I pulled the billfold all the way out. No bells tinkled. “See, no movement to give you away.”

Cochran dutifully nodded.

“Let’s take a break,” I suggested. We went over to a couple of chairs by the wall and sat down, both of us extending our legs out straight.

We’d been at it for over an hour that morning, the fourth day of my tutorial for Cochran on the fine and ancient art of pickpocketing. I wish I could say I was encouraged by his progress, but I wasn’t. The small exercise room upstairs at Wykowski’s Gym had no windows, and the air was stuffy. An overhead fluorescent fixture washed everything in a sterile light. The smell of decades of sweat had permeated the walls, ceiling and floor.

The bells were my latest effort and illustrated how frustrated I’d become. I’m not a graduate of The School of Seven Bells, nor have I ever met anyone who was, or at least admitted to it. It’s a legendary school for pickpockets located somewhere high in the Andes Mountains in South America. Heck, I’m not even certain that it still exists, if it ever really did. Still, most of us in the pickpocketing business know about it and the techniques said to be taught there, first and foremost of which is the use of little bells on strings. Students are tested on their ability to slip a wallet out of a pocket without causing a bell to ring.

“I’m not picking it up very fast, am I?”

I could hear the discouragement in his voice. “No,” I admitted, “you aren’t, but we have three weeks to go, so let’s not give up yet.”

“I won’t, but I’m going to have to warn Talbot that we’ll need a backup plan if I’m not ready in time.”

I wondered what kind of plan that would be. Whatever it was, I was determined to have nothing to do with it.

“You know, Greg, you’re a dying breed.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I don’t mean any offense, but it’s a simple fact. Pickpockets are disappearing from the US crime scene.”

“How do you mean?” I have to admit, loner that I am, I never paid much attention to how many of my brethren there were. My former brethren, that is.

“Over the past twenty years the number of pickpockets working the streets has dropped by seventy percent, at least based on arrest stats. People don’t carry as much cash as they used to.”

“Yes, but the credit cards are still worth something.”

“You have to have a good fence for those.”

I thought back to my old fence, Sammie the Louse. “You have a point,” I conceded.

“And another thing, there’s no next generation of pickpockets. The young street kids aren’t interested in spending the hundreds of hours you did learning the trade. Instead, they prefer to stick people up with a knife or a gun or grab a purse and run. The old techniques are disappearing. In a few years almost no one will know how to do what you do.”

I laughed. “Gee, Cochran, you sound almost nostalgic for my old and wicked, wicked ways.”

He smiled. “No, at least don’t let Talbot get that idea. But …” he grew silent.

“But?”

“Ask any cop on the street in a large city, and they’ll tell you they miss the days of the nonviolent sneak thief. There was a certain mutual respect between cop and pickpocket years ago, and that’s pretty much gone now.”

“Guess it’s good I got out when I did.”

“Yeah, I’d have to agree.”

I checked the clock on the wall. “Speaking of which, I’d better get going. Miss Quist is dropping by again this afternoon.”

“Max Carson’s advance woman?” I’d told Cochran about our upcoming big author event and how Miss April Quist was fixating on every detail prior to the arrival of the Big Author himself.

“Yep. Today she wants to go over to St. Timothy’s to check the quality of the folding chairs they are lending us.” I got up. Cochran did so, as well, but put out a hand as I turned to leave.

“Before you go, take a look at these photos, will you?” He reached into his coat and brought out a small envelope. He opened it and removed several small photos and gave them to me. “This is Zager, the courier whose pocket I have to pick.”

I studied the photos. There were three, each showing the same man. The first caught him as he approached the photographer, the second as he passed. The third photo showed Zager standing on a sidewalk, talking with another man. Zager was of medium height, medium build, with medium length hair and a face that most people would forget five minutes after meeting him. It was the perfect combination for a courier of clandestine content.

The man he was talking with was the physical opposite of Zager. He was tall, with a lean, aristocratic face. From his and Zager’s postures there was no doubt of who was the master and who was the servant.

“Is this John Wolfe?” I asked, pointing to the other man.

Cochran shook his head. “No, that’s Dennis Metcalf, Wolfe’s lawyer here in the states.”

“This is the guy your boss says is off limits?”

“That’s right. I suggested that I could go and interview him, just for background information, a few weeks back, but Talbot turned me down.” He reached for the photographs.

I took a last look at the photos before handing them back. Something had caught my eye. I scanned each again. I tapped the first photo, the one showing Zager walking toward the camera. “See this guy?” I pointed to a man trailing Zager.

“That’s a local hood,” answered Cochran. “Strictly muscle, hired to provide a little added protection. Why?”

“I know him. His name is,” I searched my memory. I only thought of him, when I thought of him at all, as Donnie’s guy. “His name is Joey. He works for Donnie at the Pink Poodle.”

“Used to work for him. Now he works for Dominic DeMarco. DeMarco runs a sort of rent-a-tough operation for people visiting from out of town.”

I shook my head. “Well, I hope they’re not paying too much for Joey. He’s not exactly top of the line in the smarts department.”

Soon after that we parted ways, Cochran to head back to the undercover life he was living and me to what I thought of as my real life. The life where I have a wife, a bookstore, an anal-retentive author’s public relations woman hounding me about folding chairs, and only a distant memory of being a pickpocket.

“Next week? That’s impossible!” I slammed my hand on the table. The plastic tumblers of ice water jumped. Talbot reached over and moved them closer to where he sat opposite me. He glanced from left to right, but the tables on either side of us in the little diner were empty.

“Mr. Smith, why don’t we let Agent Cochran say whether or not he thinks he’s ready?” I looked over at Cochran sitting at my side. He was trying to flip a spoon between his fingers the way I taught him. Just then the spoon slipped out of his grasp and clattered to the tabletop. He made a face and shook his head.

“Greg’s right, Talbot. There’s no way I can be ready by next week. Heck, I don’t know if I’ll ever get the hang of it. We need to develop an alternative plan.”

The waitress came over with our coffees, and we stopped talking as she placed them on the table along with a small bowl of creamer packets and a wicker basket filled with real and artificial sugar packets. I picked up my coffee and took a sip. It was dark and bitter, just like my mood.

Late Friday morning Cochran and I had finished our session at the gym when his cell phone rang. It was Talbot, asking the two of us to meet him at a diner down the street. That’s where he dropped the bombshell on us. The plans had changed. Zager, the courier whose pocket it was so important for Cochran to pick, was arriving on Wednesday of next week, not three weeks later.

“There,” I said to Talbot. “Cochran agrees with me. You’ll just have to find a different plan.”

Talbot leaned back. “I’m sorry to hear that. Having Agent Cochran perform the task would have been preferable, but we’ll simply have to have someone else do it.”

A chill came over me. “Wait a minute, Talbot.”

“Yes, Mr. Smith?” The bastard’s smooth voice matched his face.

“You are not getting me to do it.” I stabbed my finger on the table with each word. “There is no way I’m getting involved in your scheme.”

“Well, let’s see about that, shall we?” Talbot opened a portfolio, withdrew an envelope and placed it on the table in front of him.

Cochran lifted his hands in protest. “Don’t look at me, Greg. I have no idea what he’s up to.”

I turned back to Talbot. He smiled and slipped a paper folded lengthwise part way from the envelope. The paper was a heavy stock, and there was large printing near the top that read Arrest Warrant.

I leaned back and shook my head. “No. No way. You can’t arrest me. I have a clean record. Riley arranged it. You tried this before, remember?” I turned to Cochran. “I don’t know how you ended up working for this guy, Cochran, but I feel sorry for you. He doesn’t seem to catch on too well.” I started to get up.