“What do you think?” Lorie asked.
“Very nice,” Kate said. “I like it.”
“Living here will make life convenient for you,” Lorie said. “The rent is reasonable for this part of town, and everything you need for a growing family is within walking distance. The Guy-Concordia Metro stop, the Atwater Market, two parks, the Alexis Nihon Plaza shopping mall, and the best museums in Montreal are close by. And you can’t beat the view.”
She opened the French doors and stepped outside onto the balcony. Nick and Kate went out with her. The balcony overlooked Avenue Lincoln, giving them a clear view of the two-story Musée de Florentiny and the streets that bordered it. Rue Sherbrooke to the north, Rue du Fort to the west, and Rue Saint-Marc to the east.
From their high vantage point, Kate could see an IKEA truck parked on the corner of Rue du Fort and Avenue Lincoln with a banner across the cargo trailer that read FREE BOXES. A dozen people were lined up behind the truck and walking away with flattened cardboard boxes of various sizes emblazoned with IKEA’s distinctive logo.
“It’s perfect,” Nick said. “We’ll take it.”
“I’m so glad to hear it,” Lorie said. “I can see already that you’re going to be marvelous neighbors. We can go downstairs and start filling out the paperwork. When would you like to move in?”
“Tuesday,” Nick said.
“You can have the keys today, but if you have more than a suitcase, you might want to pick another day to move in.”
“Why?” Kate asked.
“See that?” Lorie gestured to the IKEA truck and the woman handing out boxes. The woman was Willie Owens in a yellow IKEA shirt that was one size too small for her and clung to her body like spandex. “Stores give away moving boxes at this time every year as a marketing gimmick. That’s because this Tuesday is the unofficial national moving day in Quebec. Trucks are reserved for six months in advance. It will be impossible to book a mover now.”
“Getting a truck won’t be a problem for us,” Kate said. “All our stuff has been in storage in the U.S. We’re bringing it in from there.”
“Even so,” Lorie said, “it’s going to be chaos on the streets on Tuesday.”
“We’ll just have to be crafty,” Nick said. “And steal a spot.”
“He’s good at that,” Kate said.
Harry and Dottie Prestin of Albany, New York, were in their sixties and had served their time as parents, raising two rosy-cheeked girls. For most of their adult lives, Harry had worked on an assembly line at an all-weather-floormat manufacturer, and Dottie had been a cashier at Kmart. Now they were ready to retire and experience true freedom, hitting the open road in a used RV to seek out the best all-you-can-eat buffets in America. They were calling it their “No Boundaries Tour” because from now on there would be no limits to where they could go or how much they could eat. So they sold their house, and on that last Saturday in June they put everything they owned up for sale on their front lawn.
Their stuff included four folding chairs, three TVs, his-and-hers matching vinyl recliners, two sets of dishes, 370 Harlequin romances, a dog bed, two stepladders, two worn-out couches, assorted lamps, a Hoover vacuum, a VCR, a wicker rocking chair, a birdbath, a lawn mower, a toaster oven, two hundred prerecorded movies on VHS, and almost all their clothing, with the exception of the matching NO BOUNDARIES T-shirts Dottie had made and that she and Harry were wearing. Whatever they didn’t sell over the weekend would go to Goodwill or the city dump.
Harry and Dottie were sitting in their recliners on the front lawn under the shade of their maple tree, sipping iced tea and bemoaning their lack of customers, when a Toyota Camry pulled up to the curb, followed by a large moving truck.
A man in a bright blue blazer got out of the car with a spring in his step, spoke briefly to the three men in the cab of the truck, then strode over to the Prestins with a toothy, overly friendly smile on his face. It made Harry brace himself for a sales pitch, but it got Dottie excited, thinking that maybe, just maybe, they’d finally won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. Maybe the Prize Patrol had arrived, ready to give them their million-dollar check.
Boyd Capwell would have been flattered to know what Dottie was thinking, because he was intentionally approaching his part like a game show host. In his mind, he wasn’t walking across a lawn cluttered with junk, he was striding into the studio audience to pick out a costumed contestant for Let’s Make a Deal.
“Hello, folks, how are you both today?” Boyd asked.
“We’re selling,” Harry said. “Not buying.”
“Indeed you are,” Boyd said. “You have an amazing assortment of Americana. How much do you want for it?”
Harry glanced at Dottie, and Dottie shrugged. She had no idea what Boyd was talking about either.
“You’ll have to bring the Americana over and let me take a look at it so I can give you a price,” Harry said.
“I’m talking about everything that’s out here, my friend. From your bowling ball to that delightful ironing board.” Boyd reached into his pocket, pulled out a thick wad of cash, and started peeling off hundred-dollar bills. “Will four thousand dollars cash cover it?”
Harry stared dumbfounded at the money. He’d never seen so much cash in someone’s hand before, and he didn’t know how to put a price on all the belongings he’d spent a lifetime accumulating.
“You drive a hard bargain,” Boyd said. “Five thousand, but that’s my final offer.”
Dottie jumped out of her seat. “Sold!” It wasn’t a million-dollar check, but it still felt like the Prize Patrol had shown up at their door.
“I’m delighted,” Boyd said, and began counting the money out into her open palm.
With each bill that Boyd laid in Dottie’s hand, the more excited she got, bouncing on her feet and letting out little shrieks, just like a game show contestant should. Harry, though, wasn’t sharing her excitement. It had cost a lot more than five grand to acquire all of that stuff over the last thirty years, and even figuring for depreciation, wear-and-tear, and obsolescence, he still wasn’t sure they were getting a fair deal, not that it mattered now. Dottie had already taken the cash and stuffed it into her cleavage alongside her Kleenex. It might as well have been deposited in Fort Knox.
“If you don’t mind,” Boyd said, “we’d like to box this all up and take it away right now.”
“Help yourself,” Dottie said. “Would you like some iced tea?”
“That would be marvelous.” Boyd smiled and waved to the three movers, who’d already opened the back of the truck and came over carrying IKEA boxes and packing tape. This was the third garage sale Boyd had bought out that morning, having arrived at each one with a different moving company and plenty of IKEA boxes. He patted one of the movers on the back. “Pack it all up. No need to waste time wrapping anything. I’m not concerned about any damage.”
“Are you sure?” the mover asked.
“It adds character,” Boyd said, and headed back toward his car. “See you in Montreal on Tuesday. Apartment 1007 in the Château Florentiny on Avenue Lincoln. You can’t miss it.”
The Montreal Metro trains, many of them dating back to the 1960s, were the oldest still operating in North America. They were painted blue with a white stripe running down their sides, just like the baggy tracksuit on the old man who was riding the Orange Line into the city that Monday morning. It was one of the ways the old man tried to blend into the background like a chameleon.
The old man had a scarred face covered with little scabs from shaving with a dull razor held in a shaky hand. His palsy wasn’t so much a physical condition as it was a psychological one. That’s because he was a war criminal. Every time he looked in the mirror, he saw all the women and children he’d massacred in Serbia staring back at him. At least that’s what Ralph Dennis imagined as he studied the old man surreptitiously from amid the crush of people in the aisle. The real story was far less colorful. The old man was actually a retired accountant going
into town to see his dermatologist to have some skin tags removed.
Ralph wasn’t interested in the reality. Creating lives for subway riders was how he kept his imagination sharp on his way into work as a security guard at the Musée de Florentiny. He had to keep the creative juices flowing during his day job if he ever wanted to make any progress writing his novel at night. If he didn’t, his day job, which he’d had for thirteen years, would become his life, which was too depressing for the thirty-eight-year-old to even contemplate. So he focused his thoughts instead on the beautiful blue-eyed woman who was standing right in front of him, her open newspaper brushing against his dark sportcoat.
She had a dancer’s lithe body, slim and sexy in a sensible pantsuit, her white blouse open to show a hint of cleavage. She was reading an article about an American spy satellite that had fallen in Halifax. The article was of special interest to her because she was an American spy, sent to Canada to retrieve a microchip from the satellite. She was in a race against time because spies from all over the world were converging on the crash site to recover the chip. One of the spies would undoubtedly be Sergei Blok, her former lover, a man she now had orders to kill on sight. But could she do it? That was the question that tormented her.
Ralph would have been shocked to know how close his imaginary backstory was to Kate O’Hare’s real background, and how the romantic dilemma he’d come up with oddly paralleled her unusual relationship with Nick Fox. Ralph would also have been shocked to know that Fox was standing close behind him, preparing to pick his pocket.
The train rocked around a turn. Ralph was jostled from behind and briefly pushed up against Kate, crumpling her newspaper between them. He pretended not to notice, and so did she, a common courtesy all subway riders routinely performed to get past the awkwardness of being pressed up against one another in cramped trains. That courtesy made it easy for even the clumsiest pickpocket to snatch wallets and cell phones from subway riders, much the same way that Nick had just stolen Ralph’s encrypted electronic identification card from his front pants pocket.
Of course, Nick had some help. What Kate had done was known among pickpockets as “fronting the mark” and “shading the duke,” using her newspaper to block Ralph and everyone else from seeing what Nick was doing. Nick had hooked a finger into the lip of Ralph’s pocket, snagged the pleat, and pulled on the lining, bunching it up under the card and lifting the lining out for easy plucking. It all happened in a few seconds.
Once the snatch was complete, Kate turned her back to Ralph, who shifted his creative attention to a black man with shoulder-length dreadlocks who was intensely texting someone. Before Ralph could begin crafting a compelling story, the train arrived at Atwater station, a big transfer point, and he had to make his way to the door.
Ralph was carried with the flow of commuters out of the train and to the escalator. He looked up to see a bleached blonde on the next step. She was in skinny jeans and a flimsy tank top that could barely contain her huge breasts.
It was as if the breasts were magnetized and Ralph’s eyeballs were made of steel. He couldn’t stop staring at the breasts, not that he was trying very hard. He was so entranced by Willie that he didn’t feel his security card being placed back into his pocket, and didn’t realize the escalator had crested at the upper floor until he stumbled over the metal plate.
He regained his balance, and when he looked up again the woman was already lost in the crowd. He continued on through the turnstiles and out onto Avenue Atwater, then went to his left toward Avenue Lincoln and the Musée de Florentiny. He was totally unaware that his security card had briefly left his possession. Behind him, Kate, Nick, and Willie regrouped outside the station and headed in the opposite direction, down Atwater to Boulevard de Maisonneuve, which ran parallel to Lincoln. They were on their way back to the Château Florentiny apartment, which they were using as base camp until the robbery.
“Did you get it?” Kate asked Nick as they walked away.
He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his iPhone, which had what looked like a credit card reader attached to it. He examined the display screen. It was solid green. That meant the app had successfully captured the encryption code from Ralph’s security card when Nick had swiped it through the reader. Now the device could embed the same code onto a blank card.
Nick smiled. “We’re in.”
At 8 A.M. on Tuesday, July 1, Willie Owens parked a stolen United Van Lines moving truck behind the Musée de Florentiny. Joe Morey sat beside her in the cab, a MacBook on his lap. They were wearing matching moving-company overalls. And like the rest of the team, they were wearing tiny, barely detectable communications devices in their ears.
They weren’t the only ones in the neighborhood getting an early start. Another moving truck was parked right in front of them, and three more were across the street. People were already out loading and unloading furniture and boxes and piling them on the sidewalks while they worked. Willie was pleased to see lots of IKEA boxes in play. The chaos was slowly building, which could only help them if things went tits up, as her mother used to say.
There were also lots of families walking down the cross streets on their way to get good seats for the Canada Day Parade. The parade was to begin at 11 A.M. and run along Rue Sainte-Catherine, parallel to Avenue Lincoln. The festivities would create a long wall of humanity, cars, and barricades that would slow any police cars attempting to respond to an alarm at the Musée de Florentiny.
At 8:30, Ralph Dennis walked past Willie and Joe’s stolen moving truck on his way to the museum’s employee entrance on Rue Saint-Marc to begin his shift.
“Go,” Joe said, feeding his voice into everyone’s earpiece.
The rear door of the stolen truck slid open, and Nick and Kate emerged, also in matching mover’s overalls. Kate carried several unassembled IKEA boxes under her arms and against her sides. Nick carried a gym bag. They walked down Avenue Lincoln a few steps behind Ralph.
Joe lifted the top of his MacBook, and his screen lit up with a dozen live video feeds from the museum’s security cameras.
“I’m in,” he said to Nick and Kate.
Ralph turned the corner onto Rue Saint-Marc and walked up to the museum’s side door, smiled at the cameras, and ran his security card over the reader on the wall. The door unlocked and he went inside. The instant the door closed, Joe tapped into the camera feed and replaced the live image with one he’d recorded moments before Ralph walked up. The replay showed nobody at the door.
“You’re clear,” Joe said to Nick and Kate.
They went up to the door. Nick took a white plastic card out of his pocket, wiped it over the reader, and unlocked the door. Nick opened the door, and he and Kate stepped into a corridor. The alarms in that section of the building had been deactivated for Ralph and wouldn’t be turned on again until the officer he was replacing on the shift walked out. They had maybe one minute to act.
Kate set the boxes down, and Nick opened the gym bag. They took ski masks out of the bag, pulled them over their faces, and each picked up a Glock. The guns weren’t loaded, but Kate’s stomach still rolled. She’d sworn to uphold the law, and here she was all dressed up like a criminal, getting ready to rob a museum. It would be satisfying to take down Carter Grove, but truth is, she probably wouldn’t be doing this if her family’s safety wasn’t at stake.
Nick grabbed the gym bag and Kate led the way down the corridor to the security station, stepping into the windowless room in a firing stance. There were six flat-screen surveillance monitors on the far wall, mounted over a broad alarm console, an array of switches, dials, and keyboards. Two guards, about the same age as Ralph, sat at the console, facing the screens. Ralph stood beside the men, talking about a soccer game. None of them were aware of Kate and Nick until Kate spoke up.
“Good morning,” she said.
The startled men whirled around and went wide-eyed when they saw the two hooded figures standing in the doorway, holding guns.
“Please do as you’re told because we really don’t want to hurt you. We’d like this to be a relaxed, stress-free robbery for everyone. Sound good?” she asked.
The guards nodded.
“Great. What we’d like you to do is get up very slowly, face the wall, and assume the position of someone under arrest.”
The guards did as they were told, put their hands against the walls, and spread their legs.
“Perfect. Now we’re going to search you for weapons and zip-tie your hands behind your backs,” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”
Nick put his gun in his pocket, went up to the men, and patted them down, taking their wallets and cell phones, which he placed in his gym bag. He bound their hands behind their backs with zip ties, stepped back beside Kate, and drew his weapon again.
“Don’t worry about your stuff,” Kate said. “We’ll leave your things at the door before we leave. Now turn around, put your backs against the wall, and slide down into a seated position on the floor with your ankles crossed. What’s going to happen now is that we’re going to bind your ankles with zip ties, cover your mouths with duct tape, and then steal some paintings.”
Once Nick was finished taping and tying the guards, he went to the console and switched off the alarm system throughout the museum.
The employee restrooms weren’t protected by any alarm systems, and as all the guards were men, no one ever went into the women’s bathroom when the museum was closed. That mundane fact, combined with an obscure bit of Montreal criminal history, was the key element of Huck Moseby’s elaborately conceived plot to rob the Musée de Florentiny.
Twenty-two years ago, a team of thieves had plotted to break into the basement cash room of the Bank of Montreal by tunneling in from the city’s sewer system. They’d spent months digging tunnels and were only seven centimeters away from breaking through the bank’s floor when, the day before the heist was to go down, a huge tree fell onto the street. The tree collapsed the tunnel and exposed their work. The would-be thieves were never caught, and if not for the fallen tree they might have succeeded in pulling off the crime of the century.