the lot. So were a black Mercedes and a white Cadillac. I took the steps two at a time to the concrete loading dock.
“Hey, Carlos,” I greeted the guard. If he wasn’t collecting social security, it was only because he’d been paid under the table for the last thirty years. He was stubby and emaciated, with a narrow face that had run out of room for its fleshy nose. He wore a white shirt with epaulets, gray trousers with a black stripe, and a. 357 Magnum on his hip. The trousers kept sliding down from the weight of the handgun. He had white hair swept back, and a bushy white mustache tickled his oversize nose.
“Doctor Lassiter. El jefe is in the traffic office if you’re looking for him.”
“Thanks, Carlos.”
I walked straight through the open front door, which was the exact width of a tractor-trailer. The traffic office sat on an orange steel catwalk thirty feet off the floor of the warehouse. Metal stairs led from the floor to the catwalk. The traffic office was divided into two rooms. You walked into an open area with metal desks, old typewriters, and a couple of new computers. During the day, three or four clerical workers sat there, pushing paper, keeping track of inventory and shipments. A conference room with a walnut table and eight chairs was tucked inside. I had conducted my interviews there.
What appeared from the floor to be a mirrored wall of glass on the outside of the office was a window looking out from the conference room. I couldn’t see in, but whoever was inside could see out. I ducked into the first row, which was marked Foodstuffs. Canned tomato paste from Italy and pickles from Poland were stacked twice as high as an NBA center. From behind me, I heard a buzzing. A worker on a forklift whizzed by me into the next row, swinging the wheel hard. He deftly touched a lever, and the fork dropped to just a few inches off the floor. I watched the blade. Three-inch-thick steel at the base where it was bolted to the lift, tapering to maybe a quarter inch at the tip. The driver slid the blade under a pallet of fertilizer bags, shifted gears, backed the lift out, wheeled around, and whirred toward the loading dock and a waiting trailer.
I stayed put, wondering what to do now that I was here. Who was in the office overhead? Foley and Yagamata, el jefe, for sure. Why? Was the CIA buying a load of Polish pickles? The catwalk surrounded the office on three sides; the conference window only faced the front, but that ruled out going up the stairs. If I did, I would be in plain view from the office window. I needed to get to one of the sides.
I looked at the stack of containers on the side facing me. Not high enough. Even if I climbed to the top and stood on my tippy-toes, I’d be several feet too short.
Outside, an air horn tooted three times. The Second Avenue Bridge was going up over the Miami River. Inside, workmen were beginning to drift toward the dock, removing their gloves. I looked at my watch. Nine P.M. End of a shift. Twenty yards away, a forklift sat empty.
Why not?
When I turned the ignition, there was a whoosh of propane and the little motor jumped to life. How hard could it be? I fooled around with what looked like a gearshift and stepped on the pedal that should have been a clutch. I hit the gas, found myself in reverse, and crashed into a stack of hundred-pound dog food bags. I found the forward gear, hit the gas again, turned the wheel, and whirled three hundred sixty degrees like Dorothy Hamill on the ice. Damn thing steers with the rear wheels.
After a couple of minutes, I could drive semistraight. So there I was, an ex-football player, ex-public defender, ex-a-lot-of-things ricocheting a forklift around a corner and trying to get the blade into position to lift a ton of applesauce ten feet off the ground. After several tries, I figured it out. I slid the fork under the pallet and lifted it cleanly, locking the blade into place. Then I climbed up the pallet, and standing on top, reached the floor of the catwalk with my hands stretched over my head. I hoisted myself up, swinging first one leg then the other to the floor. In a moment, I was on the catwalk, out of view of the conference room window.
I looked down at the warehouse. No workmen were visible. I eased around the corner, ducked underneath the mirrored window, and made it to the front door. I listened for voices but heard none. Quietly, I turned the door handle. Inside, the outer office was dark. The door to the conference room was cracked open, the light spilling out. I duck-walked inside and closed the door behind me. A metal counter split the office in half, with clerks’ desks on either side.
I heard voices now but couldn’t make out the words. In the movies, your Indiana Jones types are always sneaking up on the Nazis and eavesdropping from a hundred yards away. It doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to be within spitting distance to understand anything, unless you’re equipped with sophisticated gear like Lourdes Soto carries in her aluminum case. I didn’t even have a pencil. I waddled closer to the open door, keeping my back pressed to the counter. I tried to breathe slowly, my brain telling the rest of me not to sneeze, fart, or sing the national anthem. My various body parts obeyed, all except my right knee. Three feet from the door, it cra-cked, the sound of a dry twig snapping in two. I convinced myself that it sounded loud to me because, after all, it was my knee. I waited a moment to see if my elbow or ankle answered. Sometimes it happens that way, a symphony of sympathetic bones: snap, crackle, and pop. But they stayed quiet, and I held my breath, listening some more. I couldn’t see into the room, but now I could hear.
“… shameless exhibitionism. Carelessness. Inexcusable leaks.”
I recognized Robert Foley’s voice. He grew louder and angrier with each word. “What the hell is the Matisse doing in your-what the hell is it-your garage?”
“My study. You would not understand. To me, the painting is very symbolic.” A faint Cuban accent. Severo Soto. Oh, brother. What was going on here?
“Symbolic! Jesus H. Christ, we’re not talking art appreciation here. You guys are skimming. You’re treating the product as your own personal property. Security risks, both of you.”
Then another voice, at first too faint to understand. Then, “… but I take full responsibility. It was my decision.” A foreign accent, someone who had been taught the language by a Brit.
“And speaking of exhibitionism!” Foley again. “At a goddamn public party attended by half of Dade County, you showed off some goddamn gold train that wasn’t made by Lionel.”
“Lionel?” Matsuo Yagamata sounded puzzled.
“Never mind!” Foley shouted savagely. “If you two guys are the brains of this operation, I’d hate to see-”
“Please show me the rabbit again,” Yagamata said, quietly and politely.
It grew silent. I pictured them passing my little bunny around the table.
“An interesting piece from the House of Faberge, probably the work of Fedor Afanassiev or Henrik Wigstrom,” Yagamata said. “Not especially valuable. Perhaps inspired by an egg-shaped pendant worn by Catherine the Great and stored in the treasury of the Hermitage at the time Faberge’s artisans were at work there. So they could easily have been influenced-”
“Who gives a flying fuck! How did that shitbucket Crespo get his hands on it?”
No one spoke, and I imagined a series of shrugs. “See what I mean?” Foley continued. “We knew the Russians couldn’t keep records to save their ass. Completely incompetent. Give me the Germans, any day. Christ, they always knew where every bullet was stored. Great record keepers. But the Russians. Drunken, lazy bastards. It doesn’t matter if they’re commies or democrats or Rotarians. We expected inefficiency and pilferage at their end, not ours. It’s bad enough you guys are dipping into the trough, but now you got minimum-wage Marielito s running around with the crown jewels…”
Crespo’s not running anywhere, I thought.
“… Can you imagine the flak if Geraldo Rivera got hold of this? I gotta tell you, if word gets out, you guys are on your own. Common criminals. We wash our hands of the whole fucking lot of you.”
“A trinket, nothing more.” Yagamata again. “I have allowed various operatives to keep mementos of our successful activities.”
“Mementos!” Foley was screaming now. “ Evidence is more like it!”
“Why do you worry so much?” Yagamata asked, calmly. “We have other, more pressing concerns.”
“ El abogado, what about the lawyer?” Soto asked.
“He doesn’t know shit,” Foley said. “I told him the government is trying to help stop the theft of Russian artwork.”
I heard a laugh but couldn’t tell the source. “Isn’t that just like government everywhere?” Yagamata chortled. “A lie that is so close to the truth.”
“You have a problem with that?” Foley again.
