Tinsel In A Tangle

This had to be the strangest encounter of her life. In the space of an hour, a professional thief had given her a new direction for reclaiming her life, announced that he was going to stop her from exposing Knoll, and turned her on so much that she was still jittery. Oh, and let’s not forget the blackmail.

At the thought of the blackmail, her temper kicked in. The nerve of him! To stalk her and blackmail her into providing information like she was just some cog in a little machine he created. Huh. She might not be some professional criminal, but she did have guts and a top-notch brain. Both of which were telling her that all she needed to shake loose of him was a little leverage of her own.

But what leverage? She thought all the way through both of their conversations, frustrated to realize he’d said almost nothing about himself at all.

Geoff grabbed the cash off the table. “At least he was a good tipper,” he muttered. “You done, Jessie? Ready for me to take your glass?”

Aha! Jess shot to her feet. Actions always spoke louder than words. Adam had picked up his bourbon glass and brought it to the bus tub even though it was on the bar for the staff, not patrons. If he was just overly courteous, he would have taken her glass as well. But he’d just removed his own...perhaps an automatic inclination for anyone who needed to protect their fingerprints?

She found Adam’s bourbon glass in the bus tub and smiled. She wondered how much he researched about her before he came a-calling tonight. Did he know, for instance, that her oldest brother was a cop? She hollered over to Geoff. “Can I borrow a ziplock bag?”

Chapter Five

Hidden in a corner plush booth of the bar at the Peninsula Hotel, Adam took out his burner phone and sent a quick text. Five seconds later, he heard the resulting ding from the cell phone in the pocket of a man nearby.

It was convenient that the Maurice Knoll situation had brought him home to Chicago for the spring, Adam reflected. It gave him a chance to finally go after the 1942 Rolex Chronograph owned by Keith Larsen. Only twelve of the watches were ever made. Larsen had procured his at a Christie’s auction for 1.16 million. Two years later, Adam would make at least that much from a very interested collector.

Larsen, one of the men directly responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, had managed to escape prison with the help of his attorneys. Fortunately for Adam, the experience hadn’t humbled the former big bank president. Larsen continued to parade around like one of the rulers of the free world, flaunting his wealth and power.

Tonight that arrogance was going to cost him.

In town from New York for hedge fund meetings, Larsen was traveling with a valet/bodyguard and staying at a suite in the Peninsula. It was the same pattern he followed whenever he had meetings outside of New York. Always the same bodyguard, always a Peninsula hotel. Here in Chicago, he not only stayed at the Peninsula on every trip, he always stayed in the same damn suite.

People were so stupid.

As Larsen smoked cigars with a hedge fund friend, his bodyguard’s eyes scanned the text message on his phone. The corners of his mouth turned up and he straightened in his seat. Inwardly, Adam grinned. Although he grumbled about the idiocy of predictability, he still loved it when a plan came together.

To be successful as a career thief of high-value items, you had to play the long game. One didn’t simply spy a rich dude on the street wearing a million-dollar Rolex and then steal it that night. At least one didn’t if he didn’t want to end up in jail for the rest of his life. To be successful, you needed a plan. You needed patience. You needed to work multiple projects at once.

Adam had been a full-time thief officially for twelve years, but his tutelage at Uncle Tony’s side started much earlier. He’d started as a generalist like Tony, taking art, cash, jewelry—anything he could easily fence. But in the last six years, he’d specialized in jewels, especially diamonds. If he were a motivational speaker, he could break down the secrets of his success into a defined five-step process.

Tonight, he was deep into Step Five with Larsen’s Rolex.

When he began his periodic surveillance of Larsen a year ago, he learned about the bodyguard’s two biggest weaknesses: poker games and redheaded call girls. Either would have provided an acceptable way in, but since the bodyguard didn’t always play nice with the girls, Adam decided on poker.

Over the past year, Adam and a few colleagues had posed as fellow poker enthusiasts with an exciting late-Saturday-night game in the Shanghai Terrace restaurant, which was on the second floor of the Peninsula. The bodyguard wasn’t supposed to leave Lars

en’s suite while the big boss was sleeping. But Adam and his crew had let the bodyguard win so many times that he almost always snuck away for an hour or two around 2:00 am.

Keith Larsen waved his cigar around, flashing a glimpse of the Rolex. Couldn’t resist wearing it, could you? The banker was inordinately proud of his rare timepiece, Adam had noticed. He wore it to all business meetings, despite the conventional—and correct—wisdom that one shouldn’t travel with valuables. This wouldn’t even be a challenge. If he was attempting to lift the watch from Larsen’s Connecticut mansion with its state of the art security system, that might be something. Hotel jobs—as long as you did your homework—were so much easier.

For the next fifteen minutes, Adam watched as Larsen and his friend finished their scotch and cigars. When the bartender brought over the tab, the bodyguard took advantage of Larsen’s distraction to quickly return Adam’s text. He was in for the game. Check. Adam left the bar and shot a message to his two-man crew to be in place at the restaurant by 1am.

Now, back to his own room at the Peninsula to freshen up his disguise and wait. There was a surprising amount of waiting involved in thievery.

As he left the bar, a woman with long platinum hair walked in. His breath caught in his throat—until she turned her head. It wasn’t her. Of course, it wasn’t her. For the hundredth time of the week, his thoughts returned to Monday night.To funny Jessica Hughes. Jess or Jessie to her friends. Not that she’d invited him to call her anything at all.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought about a woman so much. It wasn’t just her looks or their palpable chemistry, although she was going to figure prominently in his fantasies for a while. Hell, the woman made him hard just by laughing. But his thoughts about her weren’t solely focused on her face or body. It was more that she’d kept surprising him with her smarts and her humor and her toughness.

She hadn’t sent him the email about Knoll’s University activities yet. He’d been bluffing when he blackmailed her, of course. Sending her to prison did nothing to help him and it was certainly no place for an innocent woman. Blackmail and bluffing were simply other tools is his very large set.

Almost midnight. Time to add the finishing touches to the disguise he always wore around Larsen’s bodyguard. It was one of his least attractive and most uncomfortable disguises, not to mention one of the most time-consuming to put on. He’d been wearing it anytime he was outside of his hotel room over the past two days, and he was starting to loathe it.

The expensive wig made it look like he had black hair with a receding hairline. Dark contacts covered his usual bright eyes. The padding in his suit added an unflattering paunch to his midsection, which complimented his slouchy posture. Adam’s height was always the most difficult thing to hide, but poor posture and an awkward gait could do wonders. Cotton stuffed into his gum line added width and puffiness to his face. Theatrical makeup produced a set of moles along his left cheek.

If all went well tonight, he’d be retiring this disguise and its corresponding identity, a Mr. Abraham Whipple, forever. Fidgety, he pulled out his own room safe and verified that he could still break it open in under five seconds. Using a small metal tool, he popped the door open, bypassing the keypad altogether. Three seconds.

Larsen never used the hotel office safe when he stayed at the Peninsula, which made the odds fairly good that he stored the Rolex in the room safe while he was sleeping. Although room safes were not known for their tight security, Larsen probably figured it was secure enough while both he and the bodyguard were in the room.