Coming up to an archway, he glanced into the kitchen. It was barren as an operating room and just as cozy, everything stainless steel and professional. Then again, it wasn’t like there were any family dinners happening. The Mr.’s original Mrs. and attendant offspring, generated prior to his making his first billion, had been jettisoned like a bad investment. No further use for cozy things.
Sleek and beautiful, cold and state-of-the-art.
Like the new wife, the new life.
Balz kept going. The dressing room had two entrances, one through the bedroom and one through a shallow hall for the servants. It seemed only polite to choose the latter considering he was committing a burglary on the premises, and he was surprised to find things locked. No problem. Taking out his picklock kit, he was in like Flynn in under a minute, and as he entered the Neiman-Marcus-worthy collection of suits, ties, dresses, and accessories, he breathed deep. Ah. So this was the source of the fragrance that permeated the upper floor, and yeah, if money had a scent, this would be it. Heady, strong enough to be noticed, yet not overpowering . . . flowery, but with the serious weight of sophisticated men’s cologne.
And shit, it was a wonder the Mr. and Mrs. had anything left in the bank considering all these threads.
Behind glass panes, just like the display cases downstairs, hanging rods were set at all levels, as if the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of clothes were perishable if left out to the open air. There was also a thirty-foot-long center aisle of double-sided bureaus, his and hers.
Party time.
Whistling through his front teeth, he tap-danced along as he zeroed in on the compartment holding the man of the condo’s array of tuxedos. Opening the glass, Balz pulled a Moses and Red Sea’d the shoulders of the fine silk jackets. The wall that was revealed was smooth—except for the square outline that, if you didn’t have vampire eyesight or the details of the safe’s location, you wouldn’t tweak to.
Outing a CPU the size of a venti latte, he typed a couple of commands on the BlackBerry-like keyboard. Then he put the unit against the wall. There was some whirring sounds, a clunk and a hiss . . . and then the panel retracted to reveal a three-by-three-foot safe face with an old school dial—which had been a nice surprise when he’d hacked into the alarm system to check on the how-many’s and where-are’s of its contacts.
He respected the analog choice. Because, hey, you couldn’t break into the damn thing over the web, and as he gave the dial a little spin, he acknowledged that he would have had a hard time getting inside even with a blowtorch and a couple of hours.
So yeah, it was time to fudge his rules.
As he triggered the non-copper lock with his mind, the easy capitulation of the internal bolts made him feel like he’d been sitting in a BarcaLounger eating Doritos for two nights straight: He felt bloated by the ease and dulled by the lack of challenge.
There would be other nights to be tested, he told himself.
When the safe door opened, a little light came on inside, and it illuminated the kinds of goodies he’d expected. The interior also had—wait for it—see-through shelves, and everything on them was separated into—surprise!—like kind: There was cash in stacks that were banded together, reminding him for some reason of bunk beds. There was a case full of watches rocking back and forth, jet-setters line-dancing to some unheard song. And there was a whole bunch of leather jewel cases.
Which was what he was here for.
On that note, he picked off the top one. The thing was bigger than his pretty damn big palm and covered with red leather embossed with a gold border. Digging into the release with his thumb, he popped the lid.
Balz smiled so wide his fangs made an appearance.
But the happy-happy-joy-joy didn’t last as he counted the cases still left inside. There were another six, and for some reason, that half dozen of further opportunity exhausted him. In another time in his life, he would have gone through each one and picked the most valuable. Now he just didn’t give a shit. Besides, what he had was Cartier, and the diamond weight was in the forty-to-fifty-carat range with superb cut, color, and clarity. Like he needed more?
And no, he wasn’t going to scoop them all. His rule was one thing, and one thing only, from any given infiltration. It could be an object, a bunch of things in a container, or a set that was somehow loosely, but tangibly, linked together.
Back in the Old Country, for example, he’d stolen a carriage with four perfectly matched grays under that little loophole.
So he was sticking with the Cartier, and leaving the rest behind.