Stolen Prey

Morgan: “What?” He was not at all perturbed; just another workday.

“There’s the possibility that my client might be able to provide you with some information about an accomplice of the real criminal in this matter, Ivan Turicek,” Keisler said.

“If your client is innocent, he has the obligation to provide us with any information he has,” Morgan said.

“But not misinformation. Let me put it this way. This is more of a feeling than hard information, and while it includes a name, it’s possible that he would be implicating a completely innocent person. He wants to cooperate, and if he cooperates, and you guys, from some misplaced sense of vengeance, go after him, we want the court to know that he cooperated.”

After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, which took the best part of fifteen minutes, a name was spat out: Mohammed Ibriz.

Lucas: “This guy, Mohammed Ibriz, is an accomplice?”

“I can’t swear to it,” Kline said. “But I heard Ivan talking to the guy several times, when we were working down there in Systems. I was over on the other side of the computers, and you know how you listen to somebody when they’re trying to be confidential and quiet? I heard him call him Mohammed several times, and you know now, how you notice Islamic names because of all the trouble?”

“Where did the Ibriz guy come from?” Lucas asked.

“From Ivan’s cell phone. It was sitting on the work table, and it rang, and I looked down at it and it said, ‘Mohammed Ibriz’ on the display,” Kline said. He thought Ibriz might be an accomplice, he said, because the calls started just about the time the money was stolen, and continued off and on through the month.

“And you just remembered the name, like that?” Morgan asked.

“Well, I heard Mohammed a lot, so that was already in my head, and then Ibriz … I guess it just stuck,” Kline said. “Then Officer Davenport asked me these questions about some Syrian moving gold coins…. It popped into my head.”

“You wouldn’t know where we could find this guy, would you?” Lucas asked.

“Well, I know what I did, this morning,” Kline said.

“What was that?” Lucas asked.

“I looked in the phone book. There’s an office listing for a Mohammed Ibriz over in Galtier Plaza. How many Mohammed Ibrizes can there be?”

Galtier Plaza was maybe six blocks away.

There was more lawyer talk, but Morgan had agreed that no matter what happened, if there should be a prosecution, the court would be told of Kline’s cooperation … if, in fact, it turned out to be anything.

When they were gone, Lucas asked Morgan, “What do you think?”

“Keisler’s a dealer. That’s what he does. If he doesn’t want to deal, he probably thinks he’s got a strong case. And he’s smart enough to know strong from weak. His partner, the trial guy, could sell ice cubes to penguins. So, if I were you, I’d look into Mohammed.”

Lucas patted his pocket looking for his cell phone, and realized why he’d felt uneasy walking across the street to the courthouse: he’d left the phone in the car, on the car charger. He borrowed a phone, called Del, and said, “Meet me at Galtier Plaza in fifteen minutes. Bring the Turicek file. We need to talk to a guy.”

Lucas talked to Morgan for a few more minutes, then hurried off to Galtier, which was an office and apartment complex on the edge of an area called Lowertown. He’d once seen a woman get murdered in a park across the street, and never walked through the area without thinking about that day.

Flowers had been with him….

Flowers, he thought. “Goddamnit.” He should have stopped and gotten the phone. He’d never owned a cell phone until three years earlier, and now he felt naked without it.

Del was waiting outside Ficocello’s barbershop on the Skyway level. The Ficocello brothers were both cutting hair, and both took the time to raise a hand as Lucas went by. Del said, “He’s on nine.”

They went up in the elevator, found a blond-wood door with a sign that said ibriz property management, and went in. There were two offices: the outer office, with a secretary staring at a computer, and an inner office, where a tall thin man was reading the Pioneer Press. He took down the paper to watch them as they showed their IDs to the secretary, then stood up and came to the door and asked, “Is there a trouble?”

“We’re from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Lucas said. “We’re looking for a Mohammed Ibriz.”

The man said, “That is I. How can I help?”

“Do you know a man named Ivan Turicek?” Lucas asked.

Ibriz cocked his head and said, “No. I believe not.”

Lucas opened the file and took out an enlarged copy of Turicek’s passport photo and said, “This man?”

Ibriz looked at it for a moment, then said, “What has he done?”

“Do you know him?” Lucas asked.

“Not as this Ivan,” he said. Ibriz turned and went back to his desk and pulled out a long card file, looked down a list, then pulled out a card. “I rented an office near I-35E to a man named Carl Schmitz, a German, who is this man. This Turicek. This is the only time I see him.”

“When was this?” Lucas asked.

Ibriz looked back at the card. “July seventh. A one-year lease.”

“Do you have a key?” Lucas asked.

“Maybe I should have a warrant,” Ibriz said.

Lucas shook his head. “Turicek is dead. Murdered. His office may be a crime scene, so we don’t need a warrant.”

Ibriz nodded. “Okay. So I have a key. I’ll come with you.”

They took Del’s car, and followed Ibriz in his Mercedes north out of downtown on I-35E for five minutes. The office was in a long, low white-painted concrete block building with fake-stone accents, and perhaps ten offices. Each office had a big window covered with a white blind, all fronting on a narrow parking lot. There were a half dozen angled parking spaces for each office, but no more than a dozen cars in the entire lot: a start-up office complex, for start-up businesses.

Turicek paid nine hundred dollars a month in rent, Ibriz said, and had paid first and last, as well as a one- thousand-dollar deposit.

Ibriz unlocked the door and stood back: inside, they found a desk, an office chair, a computer that went back to the nineties, a big TV older than the computer, and some other miscellaneous junk. Everything looked spotless, and smelled of Windex.

“It’s been wiped,” Del said.

There was a door to the back: they looked into a back room, which was empty. There were two more doors, a bathroom and a coat closet, Ibriz said. Lucas looked in the bathroom, and then Del, who looked in the closet, said, “Here’s something … boxes.”

Inside the closet, dozens of small boxes were stacked nearly waist high. Lucas reached out with one hand to pull a box forward, but fumbled it because of the weight: it hit the floor with a solid thunk.

“What?” Del asked.

Lucas picked up another box, held it against his stomach, and asked, “You got a knife?”

Del had a switchblade and flicked it open and cut the packaging tape. Lucas reached inside and pulled out a translucent soft-plastic tube stuffed with yellow coins the size of poker chips.

“It’s the gold,” he said. “It’s the fucking gold.”

21

Lucas backed away from the pile of boxes and said, “Okay, this could be big trouble. We need to get some