“That was a good night’s work,” the pawnbroker told Wally Gruber when Wally brought in his haul from the Scott home burglary. “You sure know how to pick them.”
Wally beamed in agreement. Forty years old, short of stature, balding, with a somewhat bulky frame and an engaging smile that warmed the unsuspecting recipient, he had a long list of unsolved burglaries to his credit. Only one time had he been caught, and he had served a year in prison. Now he was employed as an attendant in a parking garage on West 52nd Street in Manhattan.
My day job, he would think sardonically—Wally had found a new and much safer way to engage in criminal activity without attracting the attention of the police.
The scheme he had dreamed up was to place tracking devices under the cars of people whose homes he might consider burglarizing, then follow the movements of those cars on his laptop computer.
He never did it to a regular patron of the garage, only the occasional customers who would come in just for an evening. The way he chose his victims was often by the jewelry the wife was wearing. In late July he had put a tracer on the Mercedes-Benz of a guy who was dressed for a black-tie dinner. The wife was a knockout even though she was fiftyish, but the emeralds she was wearing caught Wally’s eye. Dangling emerald-and-diamond earrings, a diamond-and-emerald necklace, a bracelet that jumped out at you, a ring that must have been seven carats. Willy had to force his eyes from feasting on the sight.
Surprise, surprise, he thought when Lloyd Scott handed him a five-dollar tip at the end of the evening. You don’t know what a gift you just gave me.
He had driven out to Mahwah, New Jersey, the next night and passed by the Scott home. It had been well lighted both inside and out and he had been able to read the name of the security system. A pretty good one, he thought admiringly. Hard to get around for most people, but not me.
The Mercedes had gone back and forth to the city for the next week. Wally bided his time. Then one week passed and the car had not moved. Wally drove out again to check the site. The house was lit up in one downstairs room and in an upstairs bedroom.
The usual, he thought. Lights on timers, make people believe you’re home. Then last Monday evening he’d made his move. Using stolen plates on his own car and with a “borrowed” E-ZPass from one of the cars in the garage, he had driven to Mahwah and parked down the block, where the neighbors were obviously having a gathering. Six or seven cars were lining the street. Wally easily bypassed the alarm, got into the house, and had just finished cleaning out the safe when he heard a shot and rushed to the window, getting there in time to see someone running from the house next door.
He watched as a hand reached up and pulled down a scarf or handkerchief just as the figure passed the overhead light on the cobblestone path to the sidewalk, then turned and disappeared down the block.
Wally saw the face clearly and in that instant it seared into his mind. Maybe someday he would find that memory useful.
He’d wondered if anyone else had heard the shot and if there might be someone in the house who was calling the police now. Grabbing his booty, Wally rushed from the house, but even in his haste he did not forget to lock the safe and reset the alarm. He got to his car and drove away, his heart pounding. It was only when he was safely back in Manhattan that he realized he had forgotten one very important detail. He had left the tracking device on the Mercedes-Benz, which was parked in the garage of the house he had burglarized.
Would it be found? When would it be found? He had been careful, but could he have left a fingerprint on it? Because if he had, his fingerprints were on file with the cops. It was a disquieting thought. Wally did not want to go back to prison. He had read with avid interest about the murder of Dr. Jonathan Lyons and could tell that the cops thought his wife, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, was the one who had done it.
I know better, Willy thought. The one comfort he hugged to himself was that now if the cops did trace the tracking device back to him, he could trade his description of the killer for a light sentence on the jewelry heist, or maybe even immunity.
Or maybe I’ll really get lucky. They’ll go to some fancy party around here and park in my garage again.
As worried as he was, he realized it was too dangerous now to try to sneak back into that garage and get the tracker off the Mercedes.