Thief (19 page)

There was Samba music playing everywhere, and people dancing all around him. The thief stayed focused, made his way to a narrow, cobble-stoned street in Lapa.

He found the Scala Samba Club, the roll up doors of which were flung open. The place was packed and guarded by security guys checking invitations and I.D.s.

Monarch backed off, and then swooped when he saw a young couple heading toward the bouncers. The thief bumped them from behind.

“Sorry,” Monarch said, palming the invitation he'd plucked from the man's back pocket.

“No worries,” the man, an Australian said.

He slipped off, and watched from out in the crowd as the young man tried to find his invitation. In the end, his name was on a list because they let him and his date in. Monarch followed them inside five minutes later.

Despite the raucous crowd, Monarch soon spotted the scientist. In that dress, with her athletic figure, bronze skin, and dark mahogany hair tugged back tightly against her head, she might have been the most beautiful woman the thief had ever seen. For several long moments he couldn't take his eyes off her. When he did, he saw that all the men in her vicinity were taking furtive glances at her and the unlikely object of her attention.

He was a much older guy, bald with a hunch to his back, and dressed in a fine linen suit. He seemed unimpressed by her beauty, but was listening closely to her as she spoke into his ear. When she drew back, he stared off thoughtfully, took her in at a long glance, and then shook his head. Santos used pleading hand gestures, but the result was the same, a resolute shake of the head. The scientist tried one more time, and then shrugged, shook the older man's hand and moved off.

This dance of Santos isolating some man or well-dressed woman, or groups of men and women, was repeated five or six times throughout the following two hours as Monarch observed the scientist discreetly and from a distance, noting that with every shake of the head, her shoulders dropped a bit more.

When she left the club, Santos bore all the signs of defeat. Bent slightly forward, hugging herself, she walked, searching for a cab, but they were all full. There were still thousands of revelers in the streets, which made Monarch's job easy. He followed her at a distance as she wandered along, lost in thought. She crossed a square by the arches of a white aqueduct, and into narrow streets, which quickly took on a seedy tone.

Where's she going? Monarch thought.

A blue van shot by and skidded to a halt by the scientist.

A door flew back. Three men jumped out. The biggest one wore a hood. Santos saw them coming, and started to run. The three men chased her down the sidewalk. One caught her by her hair and wrenched her to a halt. The other two put her arms in joint locks, and turned to drag her screaming toward the van.

The one who'd grabbed her by the hair felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned around only to take Monarch's fist to his eye. It made a crunching sound. He dropped.

The thief was already past the first man, heading for the big one with the hood, who reacted by dropping low and kicking in a long horizontal arc, trying to sweep Monarch's feet. It was a classic move in capoeira, Brazil's traditional martial art, but the thief easily jumped the kick, and returned the favor. He drove a knee into the side of the man's head, saw him sandbag, and spin around.

The third guy released Santos, dropped into a fighting crouch, and came up with a knife that he held like an ice pick. Such a hold is used to chop and slash. This guy knew what he was doing with a blade. Monarch, however, had spent years perfecting his own knife-fighting abilities.

“Run,” Monarch barked at Santos.

The man twisted slightly left, faked high, and then chopped backhand and low.

Monarch spun backward off his front foot, moving just a few degrees off the arcing line of the blade. The thief's left hand darted out and grabbed across the top of the hooded guy's right wrist, got his fingers around the meat of his thumb, and drove his own thumb below the man's ring finger knuckle.

Monarch spun again to the rear, hauling the knife wielder around, and yanking him off balance. Then he pivoted his hips and torso powerfully back the other way, and used that sudden reversal of forces to viciously twist his bad guy's knife hand inward, over, and diagonally down until there was a splintering noise as the wrist spiral fractured.

He fell howling in pain, dropped the knife.

Santos screamed, “Help!”

Monarch looked up to see the scientist well down the block with the van in hot pursuit. He snagged the knife, took off, and caught up to her as the driver, a big guy, was opening the door. He saw Monarch, thought better of it, and threw the vehicle in reverse toward his fallen comrades.

“Are you all right?” Monarch demanded.

The scientist looked terrified, but nodded.

He glanced back down the street, and saw the other hooded men stumbling toward the van, said, “Let's get you out of here.”

When he reached out to her, she shrank, said, “Who are you?”

“A Good Samaritan,” Monarch replied. “Now let's go.”

Santos looked uncertain, but then fell in beside him, trembling and starting to tear up. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I just feel so weak all of a sudden.”

“It's the adrenaline,” Monarch said. “Here, hold on to my arm.”

The scientist hesitated, and then did, glancing back over her shoulder. “They're going the other way now.”

“Good,” Monarch said. “Who were they?”

“I don't know.”

“Word of advice? Don't dress like that and walk around lonely streets.”

“I know, I … I didn't even know where I was … I … Where'd you learn to fight like that?”

“Here and there,” he said.

Skeptical, she slowed, said, “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn't,” the thief said, paused, and for some reason decided not to stay with a cover. “I'm Robin, Robin Monarch.”

“Estella Santos,” she said.

“Pretty name for a pretty lady,” Monarch said.

The scientist smiled, glanced away. “So what do you do, Robin Monarch, besides saving damsels in distress?”

“This and that,” he said.

“C'mon.”

“I'm in the private security business.”

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky you,” Monarch agreed before he spotted a cab and hailed it.

He opened the back door, let her climb in, and acted like he was about to close it before leaning in. “Any idea why someone would want to kidnap you?”

Santos dropped her gaze, said, “Not for money, that's for sure.”

“No bad blood between you and anyone?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Not that I'm aware of anyway.”

“Where are you going now?”

“My offices. And then home.”

Monarch acted hesitant, and then climbed in beside her. “It will make me feel better if I make sure you're safe.”

The scientist frowned. “That's not—”

The thief cut her off, said, “Call it pro-bono work, and afterward I promise not to bother you again.”

“Well,” she said. “You weren't bothering me at all.”

Monarch looked at her, smiled. “That's good to hear.”

Santos smiled softly, looked at her lap. “Are you here on business, Mr. Monarch?”

“Call me Robin, and actually I came in for Carnival,” he replied. “It's been on my bucket list, and I was between projects, so here I am.”

“You're kind of young for a bucket list.”

“Deep bucket. What do you do?”

“I'm a researcher. At the university.”

“And what do you research?”

She hesitated, and then said, “This and that.”

Monarch grinned. “I suppose I deserved that.”

“You did,” the scientist said.

The thief fought the urge to press her, and stayed silent.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“Here and there,” he said, and laughed. “No, really, I have a ranch in Patagonia, but I'm on the road much of the time.”

“You have a ranch in Patagonia?”

“Doesn't everyone?”

She looked out the window, said, “I gather you're quite successful with your private security business then?”

“I'm lucky enough. Money is not an issue, and I have to turn away work.”

Santos seemed conflicted. He let her be conflicted. If this was to work, she had to believe it was her idea in the first place.

“That's our offices on the right,” the scientist said, gesturing to the cabbie.

“Should I have him wait?” Monarch asked.

“No,” she said. “Taxis are fairly regular here.”

They got out. Monarch paid. The scientist had already opened the front door to the office building and went to a keypad in the lobby. She punched a number, said, “That's weird.”

“What's that?” Monarch asked.

“It's blinking, something about reset,” she said.

He looked at it with interest, said, “Probably a loose circuit somewhere.”

“You'd know,” Santos said, and climbed the stairs.

Monarch followed her to the suite of offices. When she turned on the light in the outer room, she said, “Sorry about the squeeze. There are six of us working here, and we're busting at the seams.”

Six? Monarch thought. Who were the other three? He thought of that door opposite Santos's office, the one that had been locked.

“So what do you study besides this and that?” he asked.

Santos was at the mouth of the hallway. She looked back and said, “I study the science and culture of longevity.”

Monarch acted surprised. “Interesting field.”

“I like to think so…” she began as she headed toward her office, but then said, “Now who's here? Edouard? Graciella? Lourdes, are you there?”

The scientist stopped in front of the door opposite her office, and Monarch saw that a light shone beneath. Santos knocked, said, “Hello?”

There was no answer. She twisted the handle, pushed the door open, gaped in horror, and then broke into sobs, “No, Lourdes! Oh, my God, no!”

 

25

LOURDES MARTINEZ, SANTOS'S RESEARCH
assistant, was naked, and sprawled on her back on one of three desks crammed together at the center of the small space. An electrical extension cord fit snuggly in grooves it had dug around the perimeter of her neck. Her tongue showed a blue shade, and her eyes were wide and red as bleeding.

Santos went hysterical and tried to go to the young woman, but Monarch restrained her. He didn't want the police involved, especially because he was involved, but he had no choice, and kicked himself for revealing his real name to the scientist. He could easily have used the Fischer cover and pulled it off flawlessly. Why had it been so important she knew his name?

“We need to call the police,” the scientist said at last.

She broke down again. Monarch held her, and said, “I'll call. Is there somewhere you can sit down?”

Santos nodded through her tears, fumbled for keys, and opened the door to her office. It looked exactly the way he remembered it. Nothing out of place, not even the position of the safe dial, which he checked after getting her seated on the couch.

Monarch used the office phone to report the murder. Done, he crossed back to the scientist, who was daubing at her mascara-streaked cheeks, said, “Tell me about her.”

“Lourdes?” the scientist said. “Very bright, very driven. She came to me from Harvard and was easily the best graduate assistant I've ever had. Compassionate, loyal, and strong. She has … had integrity.”

“Boyfriends?”

“A few,” she allowed. “But she was like me. She never let relationships get in the way of her work.”

Santos said the same thing to Luis Neves, the homicide detective who showed up twenty minutes later.

Neves was in his mid-forties, with big bags under his eyes, a pushed-in face and fleshy cheeks. With the deep tan, black pompadour, and mutton chop sideburns he put Monarch in mind of a bulldog doing an Elvis impersonation. But the detective's line of questioning was far from comical.

The thief thought it was thorough, and smart. Neves put together timelines for both the scientist and Monarch. Santos said she'd last seen her graduate student around noon when she and two other Ph.D. candidates who worked at the Institute left to join the Carnival celebration.

The scientist said that she, Philippe Rousseau, and Todd Santos had gone out for an early dinner, before returning briefly to the offices around half past seven, where she changed into her dress and headed to the Bola Preta Ball.

“No one else was here?” Neves asked. “Just you three?”

“Here? In the offices? Absolutely.”

Then the detective turned to Monarch, who spun the story of the international security expert in Rio for some R & R.

“You two hook up at Scala?” Neves asked.

“No,” Monarch said. “Some guys attacked her beyond the aqueduct in Lapa. They tried to force her in a van. I stopped it.”

“You report it?”

“I was about to when we found the body.”

“It's true,” Santos said, when the detective looked unconvinced.

“You got a card, Mr. Expert Ninja?” Neves asked.

“I do,” Monarch said, and handed him a business card Barnett had designed that identified him by name as the principal at RMA Security Consultants, with offices in Washington D.C., London, and Miami.

In actuality, they were all postal boxes and the phone numbers automatically forwarded to Barnett, but it worked.

“So,” the detective said. “You offer to come back with Ms. Santos to make sure she's safe after she's attacked, and you find Ms. Martinez's body?”

“Correct,” Monarch said.

“You think they're connected?”

“Two violent acts in one night.”

“Yeah, what's with that?” Neves asked, patting the top of his pompadour, and looking at Santos.