Thief (3 page)

“Test,” Monarch murmured, glancing over at the Arsenaults waltzing.

“Loud and clear,” said Gloria Barnett. A tall, bookish, stoop-shouldered woman with wire-rimmed glasses and a shock of flame-red hair, she was staying about ten miles away at the Delamar Greenwich Harbor, a discreet five-star hotel.

The week before, Barnett had managed to pilfer a glass Arsenault had been using at a swank restaurant near his offices. But they'd found four different sets of fingerprints on the glass, which meant they had to be checked against the prints on the bourbon glass Monarch had just grabbed.

Monarch said, “Ready?

“Ready and waiting.”

The room burst into applause as the mogul and his wife finished their dance and Monarch eased over by one of the Christmas trees set against the ballroom walls, pulled out the bourbon glass, checked it for prints other than his own, and found four sharp ones. Getting out the iPhone, he glanced around. Attention was still focused on the band, which had broken into “Jingle Bell Rock.” Monarch used the macro lens to snap several close-up photos of the prints before setting the glass aside.

Monarch sent the pictures, and said, “You should have them.”

“Just in,” she said. “Give me a few seconds.”

“That's all we've got,” he replied.

As more guests took to the dance floor and others lined up to dig into the sumptuous buffet, Monarch waited, wondering if the macro lens had picked up the fingerprints, wondered if his night was done, finished, right there, and right—

“We have a match,” Barnett said. “It's number two. Repeat. Numeral two. Index, right hand.”

“Got it. Make your call.”

“Here we go then,” she replied. “Watch him.”

Monarch slid out from beside that Christmas tree, and located the Arsenaults still on the dance floor. The song came to a crescendo and then to an end. Arsenault had his hands overhead, cheering and clapping wildly along with his delighted guests before Monarch saw the posture of his head change by several sharp degrees. The mogul began to reach into his tux pocket, but his wife's bejeweled hand shot out and stopped him.

Monarch could almost hear Louisa scolding her husband for trying to take a business call during the party. The tycoon nodded, acted chastened, and then kissed his wife before heading off, looking as if he were going to mingle with his nondancing guests.

But Monarch knew better. Once he was out of his wife's sight, Arsenault would check the caller ID on the phone, his private phone, a number known to only a select few, and then used only rarely and for the most delicate of situations. The mogul exited the ballroom into a broad hallway that ran back toward the foyer. He got out the cell phone while still strolling along. Monarch watched from afar, saw Arsenault listen to the phone, and then jerk to a stop.

Knew that would get your attention, Monarch thought, suppressing a grin as he pivoted and looked back toward the stage where Knox was crooning “Santa Baby” and looking very sexy. Arsenault rushed past the thief, heading on a diagonal across the ballroom.

Who you going to for help, Big Beau? Monarch thought, scanning the crowd in front of the mogul, and then spotting his likely target.

With a rectangular build, military posture, and a short, tight haircut, the man had a bull's neck that looked garroted by his tux collar and tie. His name was Billy Saunders. A former Boston cop, FBI agent, and counterterror specialist, Saunders was among the best security experts that money could buy.

Arsenault gestured Saunders aside and murmured something in his ear. Saunders went on high alert and asked several sharp questions that the mogul answered with equal sharpness. Saunders hesitated, but then nodded and moved off quickly.

Monarch could tell Arsenault wanted to either chase Saunders or flee the ballroom entirely. But before the mogul could do either, a gaggle of fifty-something women with stretched skin surrounded him and began congratulating him on his wife's latest high-society victory.

Saunders was soon back, however, with a woman in tow. Late forties, ash blond, handsome rather than beautiful, and wearing a navy blue business suit, Meg Pratt oozed Harvard Business School competence. Pratt was Arsenault's personal attorney, a woman who had to know the closets where the mogul kept his skeletons. She and Saunders nodded at Arsenault as they hurried past him, heading for the only other way out of the ballroom.

“Fish on the hook,” Monarch murmured into the small microphone in the boutonniere pin. “Saunders and Pratt, too.”

“I can be very convincing,” Barnett said.

“Well done,” Monarch replied, taking a glass of champagne off the tray from a waitress who was happening by.

Arsenault, meanwhile, watched his retreating attorney and security chief, and then pleasantly excused himself from the gaggle of stretched-skin women.

Monarch glanced at his watch. It was 7:55
P.M.

Trailing the tycoon and his aides out into a hallway lined with maple wainscoting and forest green and gold wallpaper, he saw the trio pause near the far end of the passage before disappearing through a doorway on the left.

“Looks like our instincts were spot on,” Monarch murmured, heading for the nearest toilet, two doors down on the right. “They're going downstairs.”

“Still the three?” Barnett asked as he entered the powder room, shut the door, and locked it.

“Unless there are guards down there,” he said, turning and taking in the room at a glance, registering the fact that every inch of floor, wall, and ceiling was covered in beautiful Italian black-and-white glass tiles save a bank of mirrors, a tile vanity, and a black toilet.

Fishing in his left pocket, Monarch came up with and put on ultra-sheer latex gloves. Then he got that pack of Rothman cigarettes from his breast pocket, tore off the cellophane wrapper, and stuffed it in his pants pocket.

Carefully, he opened the box, revealing six cigarettes spaced neatly inside, two on each end, and two in the middle. Gaps between the cigarettes held four tiny darts, with slender shafts as sharp as acupuncture needles. Three were fitted with miniscule blue fins. The fins of the fourth were tan. A tube cut and painted to mimic a cigarette was nestled beside them.

Monarch slid one blue dart into that stubby tube taped to his right wrist. The lone tan dart went into the tube on his left wrist. A second blue dart dropped snuggly into the fake cigarette. Setting it down, he pushed aside a small loaded syringe in the cigarette pack to remove a small container of breath strips.

Opening it, he spilled the contents on the counter. Four rectangular plastic strips came out, each carrying a numeral on its paper backing. Finding number two, which matched Arsenault's right index finger, he peeled back that paper layer, revealing a mild adhesive. As careful as a jeweler, Monarch laid the print replica across the latex-covered pad of his index finger. He swept the others up and pocketed them.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Be right out,” he called in a slight slur.

Looking in the mirror, Monarch sagged the muscles of his face, and slid the glasses slightly down his nose while opening his eyes wide as if he were having trouble understanding his predicament. Then he put the Rothman pack in his breast pocket, turned his bow tie slightly askew, and snatched up the fake cigarette and the flute of champagne.

A bosomy blond woman spilling out of a tight, shimmering dress looked at Monarch with a New Yorker's sense of disgusted superiority, and said, “Thought you'd died in there.”

“Sorry,” the thief slurred, and staggered slightly, moving past her.

“Hope you're not driving,” she called after him.

Without turning back to her, he waved his right hand, still palming the fake cigarette and proceeded not toward the ballroom, but to that door Arsenault and his handlers had gone through. He weaved down the hallway, acting like a man toying with the limits of alcohol consumption.

Abreast of the door, Monarch spotted the optical reading device set at handle height, slowed to a wobbly stop, and pivoted as if he'd realized he was heading in the wrong direction. The hallway behind him was empty except for two women waiting to use the powder room, and chatting about which sixty-grand-a-year kindergarten was necessary if their grandkids were to have any hope in life.

Taking a shaky step, Monarch reached out as if to catch his balance, and stabbed his index finger into the reader. Even though Barnett had made an exact copy of Arsenault's print, he had a moment's worry before hearing a click.

The door sagged.

“In,” Monarch said, pushing it open.

“Godspeed, John Glenn,” she whispered.

 

5

“FUNNY,” MONARCH MUTTERED AS
he stepped onto a landing atop a carpeted staircase, and eased shut the door behind him.

Muffled voices came to the thief, two males, one woman, obviously under pressure. He crept down the staircase to the edge of a game room filled with a dozen or more arcade games. Though the machines glowed, there was no one in the room. The door directly opposite the stairs was open into a dim hallway bisected by a shaft of light about halfway down.

Monarch went into the narrow passage, hearing the voices clearly now as he padded toward them, ready to shift personae in an instant.

“You should return to the party, Beau,” the attorney, Pratt, was saying. “We'll take care of this.”

“Two people cannot move all of this,” Arsenault protested. “Certainly not in one night. My God, Meg, why would they come on a Saturday?”

“To make a statement,” Saunders, the security chief, said. “Feds love doing that, especially Treasury agents and FBI.”

“Has Estes called you back?” the mogul asked.

“Not yet,” said Pratt. “But the woman you spoke with, she definitely used the word ‘Exodus'?”

“Three times,” Arsenault said. “Three.”

“Then we don't take chances and we move,” Saunders said. “Now.”

By then the thief was almost to the light shining across the hallway. Taking a deep, calming breath he acted completely shit-faced as he stumbled around the corner into view, drunken bemusement spilling out every pore.

“
El bano
,
senors y senora
?” Monarch said in a slurred Spanish tone, waving the champagne flute at the trio.

They stood on the brick floor of the wine cellar, Arsenault, his attorney, and security chief, all looking at the thief in shock. A massive oaken wine rack behind them had been pulled out from the wall, revealing the face of a large closed safe with a green glowing digital mechanism.

“Sir,” Saunders said, moving toward Monarch as he staggered into the wine cellar. “You're not supposed to be…”

The thief reached for the security chief as if he might collapse. As he did, he snapped his right hand back, super-arching his wrist. Monarch felt his forearm flex before hearing the dull thud of the air gun going off. The blue dart hit Saunders just above his cummerbund.

The security chief reacted as if he'd been stung by a wasp and slapped at it, shifting his attention just long enough for Monarch to veer off and shoot Arsenault at closer range, the tan-finned dart embedding dead center of his stomach.

“Damn it!” the tycoon shouted, slapping at his belly. “What was that? Are there bugs in here, Billy? And who are you…”

Saunders didn't answer, and neither did the thief as he went blowzily toward the confused attorney, the fake cigarette in his lips, and his hands patting his pockets as if for a lighter before expelling air hard and right at her from less than ten inches away. The second blue dart caught her in the right cheek. Pratt jumped back and howled.

“Stop right there,” Saunders said behind Monarch in an unsure tone.

Still acting hammered Monarch looked over as if he were seeing Saunders in triplicate. The security chief was carrying a Glock pistol and aiming it at the thief. Monarch could see the green laser beaming out of the aftermarket sight, and coursing all over his chest. He could also see Saunders's eyes, how they were wandering looser than they should have been.

“Hey, hey, no, senor,” Monarch said in that slurred Spanish accent. “No need for guns. Carlos Munoz comes in peace man. Just need to pee. Too much champagne.”

The security chief tried to get angry, but that emotion was quickly overwhelmed by puzzlement. He seemed to kiss the air before the pistol fell from his hand, clanked, and skittered on the bricks. Saunders reached out toward one of the wine bays along the near wall and missed it by a good six inches before crashing facedown on the floor.

“Billy, what's…?” Arsenault said. “What's…? Call…?”

The mogul stood there, shaking his head like a man who'd forgotten his own name. His attorney looked dizzy before she sat down hard and fell over on her side, out cold.

Moving quickly to shut the wine cellar door, Monarch said, “Very effective stuff that diluted rhino tranquilizer.”

“Told you carfentanil would do the trick,” Barnett said in his ear.

“Anybody ever tell you you're the best?” Monarch said, turning back toward Arsenault who had gotten a different drug than his lawyer and security chief. The mogul was still upright, but acting like someone in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's.

“Whaaa?” the tycoon said.

“Senor Arsenault?” the thief said, affecting concern as he moved to the mogul, took his elbow, and led him to one of the chairs at the wine-tasting table. “Please. For you, the best seat in the house.”

Arsenault blinked, nodded, but didn't seem to understand why. Then he looked up at Monarch blearily, cocked his head as if in some recognition, and said, “I know … You are…”

“Your friend,” Monarch said. “The safe senor. You wish it open, yes?”

The tycoon started to shake his head, but then nodded. “IRS coming.”

“Got to clear it out,” the thief said.