“They’re all gone,” said Fuentes.
“What?” Sid said. He punched the speaker button on the phone so Ronnie could hear.
“The panthers. Mira Cepic isn’t the only one. We checked the names and billing addresses of the people who recently talked to Mira Cepic on their phones. We checked their names against the Interpol lists, and we’ve found five more that matched. We sent officers to their addresses with warrants. And now all of them are gone.”
“Gone how?” said Ronnie.
“The same way as Mira Cepic. Their beds weren’t slept in. The garbage is gone, the vacuum cleaner has been heavily used and then removed, and every scrap of paper is gone. Each house has been left so it looks occupied until you start to search the place. The lights and televisions and things are on timers. The ones that have alarm systems have them turned on.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I talked to one of the officers who went to serve the warrants.”
“Have they dusted for prints?” Sid asked.
“He said they’ve called in the crime scene people, but there hasn’t been anything useful yet.”
Ronnie said, “What’s the department’s theory about what’s going on?”
Fuentes said, “The people downtown all think this means the panthers are about to pull the robbery they’ve been planning. They think it must be today.”
“The panthers have been planning a robbery for three years?” said Sid. “One robbery?”
“Captain Albright says the bosses are convinced of it. Once the panthers moved out, they started the clock ticking. They can’t stand around on a street corner for the next week waiting for the right moment to pull their robbery. That’s the thinking, anyway.”
“So what’s the department doing about it that they weren’t doing before?” asked Ronnie.
“They’re sending lots of officers to the obvious places—major jewelry stores, the jewelry district. You can hardly walk down Hill Street without getting run over by a plain unit. Every parking lot must be full of cars with government plates.”
“How about Beverly Hills?”
“Beverly Hills has a hundred and twenty-seven cops on its force, spread over three shifts. There’s too much for them to cover alone, so we’re helping. The three hundred block of North Rodeo Drive has Van Cleef and Arpels at 300, Harry Winston at 310, and Cartier at 370. A crew of thieves could pick up the GDP of some countries without crossing a street. By now there are LAPD officers inside, outside, and on all the surrounding streets.”
“What are they trying to do—catch them in the act, or scare them away?” asked Ronnie.
Fuentes said, “The reason for all the officers is to keep the thieves from shooting somebody or taking hostages. The thinking is that it’s too late to be subtle. They’re already on the move.”
Sid said, “How about keeping them from getting away?”
“That’s a whole separate operation. The TSA and airport police have been reinforced by a whole lot of LAPD officers with lists of names, mug shots of the people we know are here, and so on. They’re even in the short-term parking lots and in the shuttle stations for the long-term lots. The sheriff’s deputies have been quadrupled in Union Station on the theory that Europeans are used to trains, and there are more deputies in every subway station in case they have to shut down the subways. The CHP is ready to close a freeway or two if they get the call.”
“If they pick up Mira Cepic, we’d love to hear what she has to say about James Ballantine,” said Sid.
“Me too,” said Fuentes. “I’m hoping if we get her I’ll be able to get her aside by herself and ask what she knows about him. I’ll let you know as soon as anything happens.”
“Thanks. We’ll be waiting.” Sid cut the connection and looked at Ronnie.
“I know,” she said. “It’s frustrating.”
“She’s the only one we’ve found, male or female, who strikes me as a possible suspect,” Sid said. “None of the people we’ve talked to had the right edge to them.”
“We don’t know if Mira Cepic does either.”
“No. If not, it could have been one of her male friends, who saw Ballantine as a rival for her. Or the killer could have been an enemy of hers. But for the first time, we’re talking about the sort of person who might shoot somebody in the head a couple of times and put his body in a storm sewer.”
The men and women of the group of thieves had no real name for their organization, or for the larger, older syndicate of diamond thieves the international police called the pink panthers. Most often in Europe they had spoken of their group by indirection, calling the others their friends, their circle, or just some people they knew. Going away from their home city of Belgrade to commit a robbery had been referred to as going on a vacation, or visiting a relative. Since they moved to Los Angeles, they had decided that it was safest not to see each other often, but each time there was trouble, they instinctively flocked together.
As Gavrilo finished the work of preparing to leave, the members of the group began gathering at his house again. There had been times when Gavrilo wished he had not quit his life of robbery so soon. He had saved plenty of money, but if he had gone on for another year or two, he would certainly have had more, and more was better. He thought about these things while people arrived at his door, each of them carrying a pack or a valise or a shoulder bag.
They had all gone to their secret hiding places and taken out their valuables, preparing to leave the country. He knew from experience and observation that people who were extremely careful for years would often panic in an emergency. He had also learned that pickpockets would sometimes intentionally startle a victim to see which place on his body he touched to check for his wallet. When Gavrilo was a young man working alone in a village he had started a fire in a small hotel to see where the owner went to save his hoard of money.
But this was just a passing thought, like a reflex. He was not thinking seriously about robbing his friends, not forming a plan, anyway. He had already inherited most of the money and diamonds that Mira had brought with her in her pack, and he was pleased with that. He was good enough at appraising diamonds to know they were excellent stones. He was not good enough to assign prices to them, but he could count, and he’d counted two hundred stones in the five-to-ten-carat range, and seen lots of smaller stones. She’d also had quite a bit of American money with her, all in hundred-dollar bills, and some big stones set in cheap costume jewelry.
Gavrilo was distracted because he was a thief. He had not stopped being a thief just because he had left Europe, so he hadn’t stopped seeing ways to take things. The sound of the doorbell reminded him that he couldn’t stay upstairs packing while he had guests downstairs. As he descended the stairs, he thought about all of the members of the group. They were leaving the country, so they had gone to their banks to empty safe-deposit boxes, then gone to the most secret hiding places in their homes—pieces of hollowed-out furniture, the bodies of sculptures or toys, kitchen appliances, the bottoms of large potted plants. All of that wealth was now stuffed in shoulder bags and backpacks, being carried into his house.
When he reached the entry he was surprised at the number of people who were here. He didn’t feel up to the hugs and handshakes, so he simply waved at everyone and skirted the group to get into the living room.
The others followed in his wake, giving him little chance to breathe. They were all chattering at once, but he caught a few sentences.
“They have hundreds of police out searching for us. The airport is full of them!”
“They’re watching the trains and buses!”
“When I drove past my place there were police cars parked in front. They’re searching my house.”
When Gavrilo saw the alarm and worry in their eyes, he knew that the universe was presenting him with a test. “Come in, come in,” he called. “Don’t stand out there in the foyer, come and sit down. We’ll find a way to handle this. We can’t panic, or everything will be lost. They’ll search some houses and they’ll stand around in the airports. But they won’t find anything in our houses and they won’t find us in the airports. We just have to stay in a safe place to wait until they give up, and after a few days we’ll leave. Don’t worry. It’s a matter of simple patience.”
Tomislav said, “They showed pictures on television of the police breaking into my house. They had body armor and helmets, like soldiers. It didn’t look like America.”
“I’m sorry, Tomislav,” said Gavrilo. “They’ll be in everybody’s houses soon. Here too.” He raised his voice. “Everybody stay calm. We’ve done this before. We just have to wait long enough so the police think we already got away. Then we’ll split up and go quietly, one at a time.”
“But how can we do that in Los Angeles?” Jelena said. “And where? They’re already at our houses, and they’ll be here soon. So where can we all wait this out? Some of us have had our faces on television.”
“We’ve all been hunted before,” Todor said. “We just got used to living like rich people for a few years. We got soft. And I hope we will again. But for now, we have to go back to thinking like thieves—lean and smart. Is there anybody who knows a place where we can be safe for at least a few days?”
“We’ve got to get away from this house right away. That’s for sure,” Sonja said. “If the police come here and find those graves, they’ll think we killed our own people.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as men and women began to look at Gavrilo, holding him in the corners of their eyes. He wasn’t sure how to interpret their stares, but he knew he’d better get them thinking about something else. “Come on, everyone. Doesn’t anybody know a place where we can wait this out?”
Near the back of the group, Srdan’s hand came halfway up, and then drooped down by his side.
But Gavrilo was desperate for a distraction. “Srdan. I saw your hand. What are you thinking?”
“I have an idea, sort of.”