CHAPTER 24
DRIVING BACK TO THE institution, Ursula glanced over at Abe. He was sitting back, head leaned back, eyes closed, obviously wiped out by the whole affair.
“I can feel you looking at me,” Abe murmured without opening his eyes.
“Sorry. Just wondering how you were doing.”
“I wish I was going back home, instead of there.”
“I know. We’ll get you home soon. Agent Lovett doesn’t think that the contractor is going to send anyone after you. He thinks that you’re safe now.”
“He didn’t think that the inside man would come after me either. Victor proved him wrong on that count.”
“I suppose.”
“How am I supposed to figure out who hired the thieves? I don’t live in that world. I’ve done lots of searching and investigating, but it could be anyone. It’s always the men on the ground who get caught, the guy that hired them always just stays in the background, waiting until next time.”
“He must have made an awful lot of money on this. Do you really think there will be a next time?”
“Guys like this don’t stop. There’s always a next time. Always a bigger score. It isn’t even about the money.”
“Have you come across any clues as to who the contractor is? Anything at all?”
“I have a whole storage locker full of clues,” Abe pointed out.
“Well, I know that. But I mean… something that I could use. Something that would point Lovett in the right direction.”
“I don’t know anymore, Urs. I don’t know any more what is real and what I just imagined. I have all of these possibilities in my head, like a big wiki where everything references everything else. To me, it all makes sense. But if any of it isn’t real… then none of it is real… it doesn’t work anymore.”
“Well, we know the phone call was real.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s how you got Mary Margaret’s name. And Mary Margaret it real, and was a real part of this. Lovett’s arrested her. So the phone call must have been real.”
Abe opened his eyes and looked at her.
“Are you sure?” he questioned, restraining hope.
Ursula nodded.
“That’s where you got Mary Margaret’s name. So that has to be real.”
“But what if I just read it somewhere else, and imagined the phone call?”
“We have to assume that you didn’t. You couldn’t just pluck her name out of the air without knowing that she was connected. Somehow you knew. So whether it was real or imagined, everything about that call is important and could be a clue.”
“Okay,” Abe said readily. “So how do we figure it out?”
Ursula stared straight ahead at traffic, focusing on the problem. She tapped the steering wheel with her nail tips.
“Tell me everything you remember they said.”
“They said… that I kept getting in the way. That I was there every time he turned around.”
“Right. And we know that’s true, because Victor said the same thing. You kept getting in the way, you kept digging things up.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Abe said smugly.
She gave him a gentle nudge of reprimand.
“That’s not good,” she remonstrated. “You nearly got yourself killed.”
“I suppose.”
“What else did they say?”
“The one wanted me to be ‘taken care of’. The other said that the first one wasn’t in charge, and that he would have to talk to Mary Margaret to decide what to do about me.”
“Did it sound like he was talking to Victor?” Ursula questioned. "Was he the other person?”
Abe considered, closing his eyes and trying to hear the voices clearly again.
“No,” he said doubtfully. “I don’t think so.”
“You’ve got to think, Abe,” Ursula insisted. "He couldn’t have pocket dialed you unless your number was already on his phone. You’re on his speed dial. Whose speed dial are you on?”
Abe shrugged widely.
“I don’t know. Friends, family, clients. Probably a lot of people.”
“You said that whoever hired the thieves was probably already rich. You can’t hire an elite group like that without a lot of cash, can you? You said he’ll lie low and then move onto a bigger score. So who do you know that would have that kind of money? Who would have those kind of connections.”
Abe’s brow furrowed.
“A lot of the companies I work for are big and wealthy. Look at the airline-”
“The airline didn’t hire thieves to steal jewels off of their own plane, did they?” Ursula demanded. “Lovett would have found a connection if that was true. It was somebody outside.”
“The only person that I know has criminal connections…” Abe said slowly, hesitant to voice any suspicion.
“Banducci!” Ursula breathed. “It has to be!”
Abe looked confused. He put his fingers to his temple, as if trying to squeeze the memory of the phone call out of his subconscious.
“Banducci,” he repeated. “Was it Banducci? Could it have been…?”
“Prisoners aren’t allowed cell phones, are they?” Ursula said suddenly, her voice disappointed. “They’re only allowed to place calls through the prison phones.”
“Except Banducci,” Abe said, shaking his head. “He can’t get out of his cell on his own. They let him have his own phone.”
“And he would have you on speed dial. He’s always calling you to complain.”
Abe nodded.
“It could have been him,” he said, warming up to the idea. “And who was the other man… maybe his lawyer? Or was it one of the thieves? Or maybe just someone else in his organization that was a liaison with the thieves…”
“How are we going to prove it?” Ursula questioned, stopping him short. “We have to be able to prove it to Lovett. He can’t act without evidence.”
“We’ll see whether he was the one who pocket-dialed me. Look at the phone records.”
“But you don’t know exactly which day it was you got the call. Lovett already looked at the records. All that the phone records will say is that he called you, you can’t prove what about, whether it was just a regular call that day to complain about the food.”
“We need something that ties him to the jewel heist. But it’s not like he was there. And none of his people are going to admit to helping him to arrange it.”
“Maybe Lovett can subpoena his financial records. He has to have paid the thieves, and put the gems or the money from the gems somewhere.”
“He doesn’t have any evidence to subpoena them on. And Banducci will know how to hide transactions and launder the gems; he’s been doing it for years. The only way to find anything out is to go there, talk to him, see if there’s something in his cell that will incriminate him…”
“He wouldn’t have anything there to incriminate himself,” Ursula argued. “He’s too experienced for that, too smart.”
Abe shook his head.
“You don’t know what he’s like. The hubris… he thinks he’s smarter and more powerful than anyone else. He can get or do whatever he wants. That’s always the downfall of the villain, didn’t you know that? His huge ego, and thinking that only he is smart enough to stay ahead of everyone else.”
“In books and movies, maybe,” Ursula said, "but in real life?”
“He’s in prison,” Abe said. "He’s not infallible, or he wouldn’t be there. Somebody else caught him, and we can too. It’s just a matter of getting one step ahead of him.”
Abe passed his ID through the slot and the guard gave it a cursory glance. He already knew Abe by sight, so he wasn’t worried about verifying it.
“Through the metal detector, please,” the guard instructed.
Abe put his keys in the tray beside the metal detector and walked through. It beeped, and he walked back, checking his pockets again. He pulled out a small metal tin of breath mints and put it in t
he tray, then walked through. This time there was no alarm. The guard pulled the tray over and handed the items back to Abe to put in his pockets. Abe turned around and watched Ursula go through the same procedure. The guard checked her ID more carefully, since he hadn’t ever met her before.
“You’re Abe’s wife?” he questioned.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Step through the metal detector, please. Put any keys or change or metal items in the tray.”
Ursula obeyed, and got through the detector with no alarm the first time. She joined Abe on the other side and was handed back her keys and change. She squeezed Abe’s hand nervously, looking around. He was used to coming and going to the prison, but this was a first for her, and she tried to take everything in. Another guard joined them, and escorted them to Banducci’s cell.
Banducci looked at Abe through hooded eyes, not changing his position on the bed. His eyes turned to Ursula, and widened slightly.
“This is your wife, Abe?”
“Yes. This is Ursula. Ursula, Mr. Bob Banducci.”
“Charming,” Banducci said, looking her over.
Ursula had seen pictures of Banducci before, but they didn’t do him justice. Seeing his massive, overflowing body in person was totally different than seeing a picture beside a newspaper article.
“Nice to meet you,” she greeted.
“So why did you bring her?” Banducci questioned. “Why are you even here, for that matter? I didn’t ask for you.”
“No, I wanted to see you. To ask you about Mary Margaret.”
Both were watching for any change in his facial expression. Banducci merely raised an eyebrow.
“And who, may I ask, is Mary Margaret?”
“She’s the head of the jewel thieves.”
“Jewel thieves. Oh yes, the ones that you asked me if I knew before. As if,” he said in a lofty voice. "I would have anything to do with jewel thieves.”
“Maybe not directly,” Abe said. "Maybe you deal with them through a lawyer or some other intermediary, but you did have something to do with these jewel thieves.”
Banducci shook his head.
“You are crazy, VanRam,” he snapped.
Ursula hated it when people used that word. It always made her wince. Abe didn’t even appear to notice.
“You were very careful,” Abe said. “You were careful not to implicate yourself, to give yourself away. But I finally figured it out.”
“I’m tired of your threats. If you have something to say, why don’t you just say it straight out, without all of these hints and innuendos?” Banducci demanded. “What is it?”
“You hired the jewel thieves. And then when you thought I was already onto their connection with you, you ordered me scared off. When that didn’t work, you ordered me killed. And you almost succeeded,” Abe touched his still-painful chest, "but you didn’t. The assassin muffed it up.”
“Well, aren’t you lucky,” Banducci sneered. “But you still don’t have any proof that I had anything to do with it.”
Abe pulled the mint box out of his pants pocket. He gave it a little shake.
“Want one?” he questioned, holding it toward Banducci.
Banducci’s eyes darted to the side, to his own breath mints sitting on the sparse table beside his bed.
“No, thank you,” he said politely. “I have my own.”
“Oh, I think you’d find mine much more interesting than yours,” Abe said, smiling. He slid the top open, revealing a small cache of glittering gemstones. “Aren’t those much more interesting than yours?” he questioned. He snatched Banducci’s tin off of the side table before the big man had a chance to roll his ponderous body over to grab at it. Abe gave the box a little shake, like he had with his own, and slid the lid back. With a smile, he showed it to Ursula.
“Would you look at that?” he said. “Neat trick.”
Banducci’s box was also filled with gemstones. But these ones, Ursula suspected, were the real thing.
“Give that back!” Banducci shouted, his eyes wide with horror, and he struggled to get out of the bed. “That’s my personal property, you give it back to me!”
“I don’t think so,” Abe said. "I think my good friend Agent Lovett is going to want to see these.”
“I’ll kill you!” Banducci screamed. “You should already be dead, if that idiot Barry hadn’t screwed up! I’ll kill you with my own hands. You think I don’t have the strength for it? Lifting this weight around every day?” he pushed up from the bed, grabbing for Abe, who stepped back carefully to avoid him. “I’m gonna kill you, you stupid, interfering, head-case! Any sane person would have given up long ago! Any sensible person would have stopped when his career was threatened! When his family was threatened! When he was shot in the bloody chest!”
Banducci advanced, but didn’t get far, as Abe stepped out of the way and swung the barred door shut. A guard appeared and looked in, in no great hurry. Lovett arrived at the cell a few minutes later.
“Well, that was entertaining,” he commented.
“You got it all?” Abe questioned.
Lovett motioned to the surveillance cameras.
“Every word,” he agreed.
Banducci continued to curse, out of breath, and sat back down on his bed disconsolately.
“I want my diamonds back,” he said bitterly.
“One of the things about jewel heists,” Lovett commented, "is how rarely you actually recover any of the jewels. Even if you can catch the thieves, the jewels are usually long gone. Already sold and laundered. Never seen again.”
He took the little tin from Abe and slid open the top to look at the gems.
“Just like my breath mints tin,” he observed.
“That’s what made me think of it,” Abe said. “But it took me a while to figure it out.”
“I still don’t know how you did,” Ursula said. "What made you think that he would even have any of the gems here? It’s incredibly dangerous to bring something like that into the prison, where your possessions can be searched at any time.”
“Peppermint gives him heartburn,” Abe said simply. “So why would he have peppermint breath mints by his bed?”
“But how did you know it was diamonds? It could have been anything.”
“I told you before. Hubris. He had to prove that he was smarter than everybody else. That he could have them, in his own hand, right under their noses.”