"It's perfect weather!" enthused Detective Ortiz. "All the precinct cops will be in the coop, and all the bums will be in cardboard cartons under a bridge somewhere."
"What's the setup, Terry?" Wenden asked.
"There is no setup. No security guards and no alarms that I could spot. The place is Swiss cheese. We go in through the front door. I could pick that lock with a hairpin. Then we're in the office. A back door leads to the warehouse. I got a quick look at that, and there's nothing but a push-bolt as far as I could see. Listen, we'll be in and out of that joint before you can finish whistling 'Dixie.'' "You got it all straight, Red?" Wenden said. "You drop us at Tenth Avenue and Fifty-fifth. Then drive around the block. Park as close to Stuttgart as you can get. If you have to double-park, that's okay, too. Give us two blasts of your horn if you see something that could be a problem. Okay?"
"A piece of cake," Dora said.
She was driving the Ford Escort. The two detectives, dressed in black, sat in the back. The windshield wipers were straining, and Dora leaned forward to peer through slanting rain, fierce flurries of sleet.
"If you guys are going to be so quick," she said, "maybe I better keep the motor running. I wouldn't care to stall out and have to call the Triple-A."
"Good idea," Terrible Terry said. "You got a full tank?"
"Of course," Dora said, offended. "This isn't my first criminal enterprise, you know."
"Love this woman," Ortiz said, "Love her!"
Traffic was practically nil. No buses. A few cabs. A civilian car now and then. They saw a snowplow heading up Eighth Avenue and a sander moving down Ninth. Dora pulled across Tenth Avenue on 55th Street and stopped.
"Have a good time," she said.
The two cops climbed out of the car.
"Twenty minutes," Ortiz said. "But if we're late, don't panic."
"I never panic," Dora said. "I'll be waiting for you."
She drove slowly around the block, being careful to stop for red lights. She found a parking space almost directly across the street from Stuttgart Precious Metals. She turned to watch the two men come plodding down 54th, bending against the wind but taking a good look around. Dora thought they must be freezing in their leather jackets. They were the only pedestrians, and no vehicles were moving.
She saw them pause, glance about casually, then saunter up to Stuttgart's front door. Both bent over the lock. Ortiz was true to his word; they were inside within a minute. The door closed behind them. Dora turned on the radio. She caught a weather forecast. It didn't sound good: rain and sleet turning to snow. Accumulations of up to two inches expected in the city, four inches in the suburbs. She lighted a cigarette and waited.
Nothing occurred and she was disappointed; a little high drama wouldn't have been amiss. Less than twenty minutes later, the two men came cautiously out of Stuttgart's front door. They paused a moment while Ortiz fiddled with the lock. Dora turned on her lights, and the cops came trotting across the street and climbed into the back of the Escort.
"]ee-sus!" Ortiz said. "It was cold in that dump."
Dora opened the glove compartment, took out a brown paper bag, handed it back to them. It contained a pint of California brandy.
"Something to chase the chill," she said.
"Did I tell you I love this woman?" Terrible Terry said to Wenden. "Love her!"
They opened the bottle and handed it back and forth as Dora pulled out and started back to the Bedlington.
"Not too fast, not too slow," Wenden warned.
"I know the drill," Dora said crossly. "How did you guys make out?"
"Drive now, talk later," he said.
She didn't offer another word on the trip back to the hotel. The two detectives conversed in low voices in the back, but she paid no attention. She was almost certain she knew what they had found at Stuttgart.
The cops had flashed their potsies and left John's heap in the No Parking zone in front of the hotel. Dora double-parked, cut the engine, lights, and windshield wipers. The snow was beginning, but it was a fat, lazy fall; the flakes looked like feathers in the streetlight's glare.
She turned sideways, looked back at them. "Find any drugs?" she asked.
"Not a gram," Ortiz said.
"Gold bars?"
Both detectives laughed.
"Oh yeah," John said, "we found stacks of gold bars. As a matter of fact, we even took shavings from one of them with my handy-dandy Boy Scout knife. Want to see?"
He dug a hand into his jacket pocket, then stuck an open palm forward for Dora's inspection. She saw what she expected to see: thin curls of a dull pewterish metal.
"What the hell is that?" she asked, all innocence.
"Lead," John said. "Starrett Fine Jewelry has been dealing in lead bars."
"Shit!" Terry said disgustedly. "You'd think a high-class outfit like Starrett would have the decency to coat their lead bars with genuine gold. But no, those bars were painted, with five-and-dime gilt. Can you believe it?"
"I don't get it," Dora said, willing to give them their moment of triumph. "Why are Starrett and Ramon Schnabl schlepping gold-painted lead bars all over the country?"
"It's a be-yooti- ful scam," John said. "Here's how we figure it works: Cash from Schnabl's drug deals is carried by courier to cities where Starrett has branch stores and delivered to the managers. They buy gold from Starrett in New York and pay with the drug money. Starrett headquarters, in turn, transfers the money electronically to their overseas gold suppliers, all owned by Schnabl."
"But there is actually no gold at all," Dora said. "Just lead bars they keep moving back and forth to get apparently legal documentation in the form of bills of lading, shipping invoices, warehouse receipts, and so forth."
"You've got it, Red," Wenden said. "The whole thing is just a scheme to launder drug money, get it out of the country in what appear to be legitimate business transactions."
"But what's the reason for Felix Brothers Classic Jewelry in Boston," Dora asked, "and all those other little jewelry shops?"
"Fronts," Ortiz said. "Set up by Schnabl so, on paper, the Starrett branch stores can show they have legit customers for all that gold they're buying from New York. And maybe some of those holes-in-the-wall are also banks for local drug deals."
Dora thought a moment. "Clayton Starrett must be in on it."
"You better believe it," John said. "Up to his eyeballs. And the branch managers hired a couple of years ago. And probably the guy running Starrett's Brooklyn vault. They're all involved and getting a piece of the action. Solomon Guthrie was too honest to turn. But he knew something was going on that wasn't kosher, so he got whacked. By Schnabl's hatchets."
Dora shook her head. "You've got to admit it's slick. I wonder who dreamed it up."
Wenden said, "My leading candidate is Turner Pierce, the computer genius. It would need computers to keep track of purchases, sales, expenses, and then come up with a bottom line every week or so."
"If it really was Turner Pierce," Dora said slowly, "you think his sister knew about it?"
"Helene? Of course she knew. Had to. And she's going to marry Clayton Starrett, isn't she? That keeps the fraud a family secret; no outsiders allowed."
"John," Ortiz said, "we'll have to bring the federates in on this."
Wenden slumped. "Say it ain't so, Terry."
"It is so. This caper is interstate and international with the electronic movement of big money. It's going to take an army of bank examiners, lawyers, accountants, and computer experts to sort it out and make a case. We just don't have enough warm bodies. We'll have to notify Treasury, the DEA and FBI."
"Aw, shit," Wenden said, "I guess you're right. But make sure that Red here gets the credit." He smiled and leaned forward to pat Dora's arm. "There wouldn't be any case at all if she hadn't started snooping."
"There's enough glory to go around," Dora said. "What's your next move, John?"
"Go back to the office, alert the Feds, and start the wheels turning. But before they get their act together, maybe I'll look up Turner Pierce and have a cozy little chat."
"I think I'll come along," Terry said. "If we lean hard on him, he might rat on Ramon Schnabl. I want to see that bastardo in Leavenworth, playing Pick-Up-the-Soap in the shower."
"I know why Guthrie was capped," Wenden continued, "but I'd like to find out why Lewis Starrett and Sid Loftus were put down. It all connects somehow to the gold trading plot and laundering of drug money."
Dora made no response.
"Listen," Terrible Terry Ortiz said to her, "maybe I never see you again, which is a big sorrow for me. I just want you to know you are one lovely lady, and it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance." He leaned forward to kiss her hand. "And take care of mi amigo," he added, jerking a thumb toward Wenden. "He deserves a break."
Dora nodded, but said nothing as they climbed out of the Ford, got into John's clunker, and drove away. She maneuvered her car into the spot they had just vacated in the No Parking zone. Then she went into the Bedlington, told the night clerk what she had done, and asked if the doorman would take care of the Escort when he came on duty.
The clerk assured her that her car was okay right where it was and handed her two messages, both from Gregor Pinchik. Please call him as soon as possible, at any hour of the day or night. But it was then close to 2:30 in the morning, and all Dora wanted was to hit the sack and grab some Z's.
Upstairs, she made herself a warm milk. She sipped it slowly while she reflected on the night's events and how they might or might not affect the insurance claim she was supposed to be investigating. She felt like someone in search of honey who finds herself enveloped in a swarm of buzzing and ferocious bees. But she could not flee; that would be unprofessional.
She wondered if she stuck to this case, to all her assignments, because of the raw human emotions they revealed. Perhaps her own personal life was so staid and commonplace that she needed to share the excitement of other people's travails, just as poor Felicia Starrett needed a periodic fix. And maybe that, after all, was why the possibility of an affair with John Wenden had not been instantly and automatically rejected. She yearned for something grand in her life, something that might shake her up, even if it left her frustrated and tormented.
She felt a terrible temptation to dare.