Thief (12 page)

“Claudio?” she replied. “Why?”

“It will just make me feel better,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek. “In the meantime, I'd love to have breakfast with you and the kids.”

Sister Rachel studied him as a loving mother might her grown son, and then slipped her arm through his, and said, “I think the children would love that.”

*   *   *

Later that morning, Monarch returned to Claudio's apartment, found his old friend working on a painting of yellow flowers trembling in a breeze, and told him who he'd seen in the almond grove by the orphanage.

“Hector Vargas?” Claudio said, setting his brush down. “I thought he was dead.”

“So did I,” Monarch said. “But there was no mistaking that ear. Even now.”

“What was Hector doing there?”

“I didn't get the chance to ask him.”

“If he knew you had been staying at the Hogar, it is not a good thing.”

“I'm aware of that. But why now? After all these years?”

“The man always bore a grudge,” Claudio said.

“In any case, I need you to spend the next couple of nights there. Check out that almond grove at dawn.”

“Where are you going to be?”

“London,” Monarch said. “A job interview.”

Claudio arched his brow. “You think you're ready for work?”

“Enough to entertain an offer,” Monarch said.

“What's the job?”

“I don't know. But it's big money. Thirty-million-dollar take by my estimation.”

Claudio whistled. “Source?”

“Unclear at the moment, but I'm going to get Barnett working on it,” Monarch replied. “Take me to the airport in a couple of hours?”

Claudio glanced at his unfinished painting, said, “Sure. That will make two times this week I'll make that shitty drive.”

“How's that?”

“Chanel is coming in tomorrow evening,” he said.

“What about her sister?”

“She's rallied and wanted her to come.”

“That will be good,” Monarch said. “You going to finally ask her?”

“What are you, her older brother?”

“Sort of.”

“Then the answer is … yes!”

“Yes?”

Claudio broke into a huge grin. “I already bought the ring.”

Overjoyed, Monarch hugged his old friend and pounded him on the back, said, Then the answer Then the answer “I never thought I'd see the old dog on a leash.”

“Don't tell anyone. I want it to be a surprise.”

“Of course. How are you going to ask her?”

Claudio sobered, said, “I hadn't gotten that far yet.”

“You'll figure it out,” Monarch said, and hugged him again.

The thief went to his room to pack. Barnett called on FaceTime.

“You're all set,” she said by way of greeting. “I'm forwarding your flight and hotel details to you now. These guys are deep pockets. They're sending a private jet and putting you up at One Aldwych.”

“Who rented the plane?” he asked.

“I was about to look into that,” she said.

“While you're at it, check into a guy named Hector Vargas. He's Argentine, mid-forties, has long rap sheet, and is supposed to be dead.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “What makes you think he's alive?”

“I saw him this morning under unusual circumstances.”

“And who's this Vargas to you?”

“One of the ten people most likely to try to kill me on any given day.”

“Oh. In that case, I'll get right on it.”

“Appreciate that,” he said.

“I'm here to please,” she said, and signed off.

*   *   *

At three that afternoon, Monarch and Claudio left the apartment and got in the artist's ancient white Toyota Land Cruiser.

“When are you going to join the twenty-first century and get something with a little fury under the hood,” Monarch asked as they pulled out into traffic heading toward Avenue Bartolomé Mitre.

Claudio sniffed in his general direction after making the left-hand turn onto the wide avenue, heading north. “Who needs fury in a car? I just need it to go anywhere I need it to go. This fills the need, and will always—”

A black BMW came screaming up alongside the Land Cruiser, Monarch's side.

The thief glanced right, and saw the ventilated barrel and hooded front sight of an automatic weapon swing out the rear left passenger window

The man moving the gun had a shaved head and a deformed ear.

Hector Vargas in the flesh.

 

16

BEFORE VARGAS COULD PULL
the trigger, Monarch reached over, grabbed the steering wheel of the Land Cruiser, and wrenched it hard toward him.

“What the—!” Claudio roared just before the front right bumper of the heavy Toyota slammed into the side of the BMW, hurling it off course.

The gunman opened fire.

A two-second burst raked the rear passenger window and blew out through the ceiling and roof before the BMW smacked sideways off a parked car. It caromed. Its rear end slung out into the road.

“Get us the hell out of here!” Monarch roared. “It's Hector!”

Claudio stomped on the gas, started to weave violently and expertly through traffic. “There's a forty-five under your seat,” he grunted. “Use it.”

Monarch reached under the seat just as Vargas opened fire again, blowing out the rear window and spraying the interior with glass. The thief got the pistol, an old Remington 1911, flipped the safety, and spun around and up onto his knees in the passenger seat. The moment the BMW's windshield came up in his sights, he touched off two shots. The bullets threw spiderwebs dead center of the windshield and caused the driver to swerve hard to his left.

Claudio dodged across traffic as the road passed under the elevated highway. The BMW lurched back, got sideswiped, but managed to hold the road. Monarch saw Vargas trying to get his gun out the rear right passenger window. The thief fired another two shots, driving the gunman back inside.

Downshifting, Claudio blew through a red light and drifted them hard left through the intersection with Manuel Esteban. The BMW tried the same move and almost pulled it off before Monarch shot a fifth time, hitting the front right tire.

Vargas's car spun off the road, through a bank of newspaper boxes and across a sidewalk before striking the front of a cheese shop and shattering the front window.

Looking out the gaping hole where the rear window used to be, seeing Vargas and one of his men struggling from the vehicle, Monarch said, “Go back.”

“Not a chance,” Claudio snapped and hit the gas. “We want to be long gone when the cops come.”

The thief wanted to argue, but then agreed when he saw two police cars skid to a halt and train guns on Vargas and his men.

“Cops got them,” he said as his vision of the scene was lost.

“Good,” Claudio said. “They'll fingerprint Hector, figure out he's not dead, and send him to prison. No longer a threat.”

But Monarch's gut told him otherwise.

“Why the hell is he here?”

“Maybe he wants to kill us after all these years?” Claudio said. “Who knows? He was always a crazy mother.”

The painter looked around at the damage to his Land Cruiser. “Goddamned Hector. He destroyed my baby.”

They passed the rest of the way to the private jet terminal at Ministro Pistarini Airport in silence though every once in a while Claudio would look around at the wreck of his beloved truck and groan.

At the private jet terminal, Monarch got out, but then leaned back inside.

“Hector hated Sister as much as he did us,” the thief said. “I want the refuge and the clinic in Villa Miserie under armed watch twenty-four seven until I return.”

“Done,” Claudio said, and drove off.

The thief found the pilot of the Gulfstream and customs and immigration officials waiting for him. He showed them a fake passport that identified him as Alexander Fischer, a German textile manufacturer bound for a meeting in London before returning home to Düsseldorf. His accent was perfect, and they waved him through in short order.

Crossing the tarmac, Monarch made note of the jet's ID and texted it to Barnett. He climbed aboard, accepted the stewardess's offer of a drink and ordered a double Moscow mule. Just before they took off, Barnett called, told him the jet was chartered out of São Paulo. The client was unknown at that point, but she was going to have Zullo try to hack his way in after hours.

“Anything on Vargas?”

“He's dead.”

“Then his ghost just tried to kill me and Claudio before the police showed up.”

“You're saying he's in custody?”

“I'm assuming so.”

“I'll make sure.”

“Smart,” he said, thanked her, and hung up.

He downed the Moscow mule as they lifted off and banked northeast out over the Atlantic. The sun was low on the horizon, backlighting the steep hills and mountains west of Buenos Aires in a golden glow that soon faded into pastel smudges and then nothing but the sea.

Monarch finished the drink, ordered another. He drank it in short order, turned down the offer of food, and adjusted the chair, He asked the stewardess to lower the cabin lights so he might sleep.

Only then did he allow his thoughts to return to Hector Vargas. Why would he try to take us out now, after so many years? He could see the guy carrying a grudge. That was not hard to imagine. But why he would decide now, after more than twenty years, to exact his revenge?

Monarch had no easy answers. As he faded into unconsciousness, his mind sought out the last time he'd seen the man before today.

*   *   *

Almost staggering under the weight of what Sister Rachel had told him to do, Robin walked to the ramshackle building that served as the headquarters of the Brotherhood of Thieves deep inside the Village of Misery.

Nothing is impossible.

Repeating that over and over, Robin climbed the stoop and opened the door without knocking. He entered a narrow hallway amid the din of a party, having flashbacks to the celebration that preceded his knife fight with Julio.

But now there were girls inside the house, many of them, several dancing up the hallway from the kitchen, holding beers or drinks. Laughing at the top of his lungs, Claudio carried a pint bottle of rum and danced after the girls as if they were the only things in the world he would ever care about. Then his oldest friend spotted him, and gazed at Robin the way he often had when casing a possible burglary target, with calculating indifference.

“Claudio,” Robin said.

“You remember my name?”

“We need to talk.”

“No explanation about why you disappear for six months, and you just walk in here and want to talk, bro?”

“I was hurt bad and that doctor, Sister Rachel, said I needed to go away to fully recover. When she said I was up to it, I came.”

“That's bullshit, Claudio,” one of the girls yelled. “Everything he says is bullshit. You said so yourself.”

That hurt, but Robin did not take his eyes off his friend. “I want to talk to you and the entire brotherhood. Now.”

“Who do you think you are?
Jefe
? That boat's sailed,” Claudio said.

“You?” Robin asked with a growing smile.

He shook his head. “Hector.”

Robin almost said, Where's Hector? But then Vargas appeared behind Claudio. A tank of a man, mid-twenties, with a shaved head, that deformed ear, and a nose that had been broken too many times to count, Vargas had been one of Julio's top lieutenants.

“Robin,” Hector said with a hard edge in his voice.

Robin dropped his chin, said, “
Jefe
.”

Hector smiled. “You're not here to contest the vote, then?”

“Furthest thing from my mind,” Robin replied, and meant it.

Claudio said, “He wants to talk to the brothers.”

“About?” Hector said.

Robin glanced at the girls who were almost all glaring at him, and said, “Inked members only.”

The new head of
la fraternidad
studied him several seconds, then said, “All you bitches and wannabes out of here. Party's over.”

The girls grumbled and complained until Hector shouted, “I said out!”

They grabbed their purses and hurried by Robin, giving him hateful glances, while the gang's recruits sullenly avoided his gaze, and slammed the door behind them.

“Where you want to explain your proposal?” Hector asked.

“Where else?” Robin asked.

The new
jefe
turned and headed back down the hall toward a door and a set of steep stairs that led down into the basement. In the glare of bare lightbulbs, wooden benches had been set up in rows with several chairs up front facing them. Robin was almost overwhelmed by memories of the night he fought Julio there, how they'd cleared the benches away and the basement floor had become a killing ground.

One by one the members of the brotherhood filed down the stairs. Some of the thieves were happy to see him. Others regarded him skeptically. But each and every one of them seemed curious to hear what he had to say.

“What are you up to?” Claudio whispered in Robin's ear.

“Just hear me out,” he replied as the meeting was called to order.

“Robin wants to say something,” Hector said, and left it at that.

But now that Robin was up in front of his brothers, he felt like an elephant had reared up on its hind legs and dropped its front feet on his back. For several beats, he honestly had no idea what to tell them, but then the pain where Julio's blade had punctured his chest suddenly came back, like some blowtorch licking at his ribs, eager for his lung.

He thought about that, decided it was as good a place as any to start, and said, “I almost died here in this room six months ago. You all saw it.”