Just Watch Me Page 3

  And it will be. Aside from the cutting-edge electronic measures, the jewels will be guarded night and day by a detachment of elite armed security guards from Black Hat Security. Every one of them is a retired SEAL, Green Beret, Force Recon—all former members of America’s elite Special Forces. And in case they fall asleep on the job, the Islamic Republic of Iran is sending a full platoon of the Revolutionary Guard.

  All of these security measures are totally serious and impressive. More than enough to persuade any sane thief that stealing the jewels is a really bad idea, unless your idea of a good time is getting shot.

  But America is the land of opportunity, and you can’t display the world’s richest collection of jewelry in Manhattan without somebody trying to steal it.

  And Somebody, most definitely, is going to try.

  More than try—Somebody will think of a way to get past all the lasers and sensors and infrared beams and who knows what else. And that Somebody will figure out how to get past the former SEALs and Rangers and Force Recon guys from Black Hat, and past the bearded, itchy-fingered wackos in the Revolutionary Guard. And that Somebody will get his own itchy fingers on one or two of the Iranian crown jewels, put them in his pocket, and get clean away with the greatest score anybody has ever made in the whole fucking history of heists.

  Think that’s crazy? Suicidal? Impossible? It is. Think it can’t be done?

  Watch me.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Manhattan has visitors all year long, even in a July as hot as this one was turning out to be. People come from all over the world to visit this great city. Tourists flood the streets, clog the restaurants, jam the subways and buses. For the most part, the natives shrug it off. It takes a lot more than a plague of tourists to shake a New Yorker. They are hardened to the sight of flocks of strangers gawking up at the tall buildings, and mostly they don’t mind. They’ve come to think of the tourists as strolling ATMs.

  The man who got out of the cab at Park Avenue and 62nd Street that Tuesday in July was clearly a tourist, and he would not attract any second looks—not in Manhattan, not on a brutally hot day like this. He was average height, average build, and had light brown hair of medium length. The clothes he wore were just what any summer tourist was wearing: lightweight cargo shorts, a bright Hawaiian shirt, and blue Nikes with white crew socks. He wore large sunglasses, of course, and a blue baseball cap that read “NYC” on the front, and he had a small nylon backpack over his shoulder. He paid the cabbie, carefully counting out a 10 percent tip, and then he turned and sauntered easily up the sidewalk toward 63rd Street.

  After crossing 63rd, he pulled a camera out of his pack and slung it around his neck—the first noteworthy thing about him, since cameras have become a relic of the past, almost totally replaced by cell phones. But this camera had a top-notch telephoto lens, and it soon became clear why this man preferred it over a cell phone. As he paused and took careful photos of the older and more interesting buildings along his way, concentrating on the decorative strips around windows and doors, it was obvious that he was an architecture buff. Perfectly natural—only a camera can capture detail the way this man wanted it.

  At 64th Street, he paused a bit longer and took quite a few shots of the unusual old building there. That was easy to understand, since this was a very rare building indeed. It had been designed by Beauford Harris Whittington, one of Stanford White’s lesser protégés, and although it had many of the features made famous by White—columns, an imposing facade, frenetic gingerbread around the roof’s edge—it lacked the flair of the buildings White had designed personally, like the Metropolitan Club. Instead, it was solid, a little imposing, with a look somewhere between a bank and a fortress. And that is exactly what the nineteenth-century robber baron had in mind when he commissioned it to house his growing collection of artwork. He demanded something that was not a mere building, but a fortress, a vault, a structure that would tell people there were treasures inside, but they were his, and they would stay that way, safe, secure, inviolate.

  His treasures were still there, still safe, and the robber baron’s descendants had carefully grown the art collection until it was one of the finest private collections anywhere. And the building that still kept them safe had become mildly famous, among a certain circle. So if the man with the camera took a lot of pictures, from many different angles, it was perfectly understandable. After all, what fan of nineteenth-century American architecture wouldn’t want to study the Eberhardt Museum?

  After walking all around the museum, taking pictures from every angle, the photographer moved on. He walked up to 66th Street, and before he crossed Park Avenue, he paused for one last long look at the Eberhardt, a look of distant calculation on his face. Then the light changed, and the man moved on, across Park and then across town.

  * * *

  —

  Most people who visited the Eberhardt Museum did not care about its architecture, of course. They actually went inside, for the paintings. The collection of Baroque and Renaissance masters was well-known, and for those interested in art of that period, the Eberhardt was a must-see. Six days a week, the museum attracted a crowd of art students and tourists. There was a modest admission fee—which would go up significantly when the jewels arrived—as well as a small café and, of course, a gift shop. There were benches, the galleries were long and cool, and the café had a pleasant shaded atrium. All these features added together made the museum an agreeable stop on a hot day, for the culturally inclined. Although the Eberhardt was far from being the most popular museum in Manhattan, most days saw a steady flow of visitors trickling through to admire the paintings, statues, and other artifacts on display.

  This Wednesday afternoon was no exception. The long gallery given over to Baroque masters had its usual sprinkle of art lovers. A young woman and a man of about the same age—obviously students by their clothing—huddled together on a marble bench in front of a Vermeer. The woman was sketching while her companion whispered urgently in her ear about the blue tones in the painting. A small group of Japanese tourists marched through, clustered around a tour guide with an upraised flag. An elderly couple held hands and gazed longingly at a small but exquisite Caravaggio. Other visitors moved past them in ones and twos, and no one paid any special attention to the rather fat man in a seersucker suit with an Atlanta Braves cap perched atop his round and sweating face. The fat man came slowly down the long room and paused, wheezing, by a large metal door bearing a sign that read, “EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY—ALARM WILL SOUND.”

  No one noticed, either, that he had paused and wheezed at every door and window inside the museum, or that the Braves logo on his cap had a very small pinhole hidden carefully in the middle of the bright red tomahawk logo—a pinhole that close examination might show contained a tiny dot that seemed to reflect light. But the pinhole was very small, and no one had any reason to stare or come closer. The fat man took his time, consulting a laminated map of the museum—only $14.95 in the gift shop—and looking carefully at several of the paintings before moving on to wheeze at the next window. After that, he stopped to lean on a marble pillar, next to one of the museum’s uniformed security guards. The guard looked up, took in the man’s size and his red and sweaty face.

  “Are you all right, sir?” the guard asked the fat man.

  “Oh, yes, yes, I’m gone be jest fine,” the man answered in a thick South Georgia accent. “I jest carryin’ around too much weight these days,” he said with a smile, patting his great wobbly belly. “’Specially in this heat! Got to catch my breath.”

  “Well, you take your time,” the guard told him.

  “Thank you kindly, sir.” After a minute the fat man’s breathing leveled off to a more normal pace. “Lovely collection you all have here,” he said at last. “Wonderful. But I guess it don’t hold a candle to those Persian jewels y’all are getting in.” He cocked his head. “You seen ’em yet?”
>
  The guard snorted. “No, and I’m not going to see ’em, neither—unless I pay my twenty-five bucks like everybody else. Which I won’t do—not to get into the place I work at for fifteen years.”

  “Pay your— Why, they surely won’t send all you guards home with a treasure like this on display?”

  “Yes, they will,” the guard said, obviously disgusted. “Because we aren’t good enough for the job. They’re bringing in a whole new crew from Black Hat.”

  “Black Hat—you mean they’re outlaws or somethin’?”

  The guard shook his head. “Naw. They’re professional soldiers—you know, mercenaries.”

  “Mercenaries!” the fat man exclaimed. “Well, I never heard tell of such a thing!”

  “Right? And me with six years in the Army, ten years a New York cop, and I ain’t good enough for the job.”

  “Well, bless your heart,” the fat man said. “Don’t seem right.”

  “Ah,” the guard said. “Those Black Hat guys? Bunch of trigger-happy assholes—but they sure as hell know what they’re doing.”

  “Do they now?”

  “Hell yes. They’re all ex–Special Forces guys. They get recruited right out the Rangers or SEALs, you know. Best-trained, best-equipped private army in the world. And if that ain’t enough—” The guard lowered his voice as if he were imparting confidential information. “There’s going to be a bunch of hotshot Iranian soldiers, too. The Revolutionary Guard.”

  “Why, I heard of those old boys!” the fat man said. “They supposed to be meaner than a bucket of copperheads.”

  “Damn straight,” the guard said. “Anybody tries to pull something funny, they’re just itching to shoot ’em.”

  “Well, well,” the fat man said. “I guess those jewels are gonna be pretty safe.”

  “You can bet your life on it,” the guard said. “Anybody tries anything, they’re gonna end up dead.”

  “Well, sir, I sure do wish I was going to be in town to come see those jewels when they get here. Yes, sir, that’s gone be somethin’ to see all right. Oh,” he said, holding up the laminated map. “Now where would I find that Leonardo da Vinci sketch y’all are so proud of?”

  “Next gallery over,” the guard said, pointing to the right. “Take it easy, buddy.”

  “Yes, thank you, I will,” the fat man said, and he wandered off slowly to find the Leonardo sketch—

  Except that as soon as he was around the corner, he turned left and went straight out the front door, climbed into a cab, and was gone.

  * * *

  —

  The next night, right after the night security staff came on duty, Freddy Lagerfeldt took his first trip around the outside perimeter. Freddy had been out of the Army for two years, and he loved this job. He even liked working the night shift since it paid fifty cents an hour more, and that wasn’t bad, times being what they were. New York at night didn’t scare him at all. He’d grown up in Queens—and after two tours of Afghanistan, the East Side of Manhattan at night was absolutely soothing.

  Freddy took his time, checking the doors, shining his flashlight into all the small dark spots, working his way around the building until he came to the back. An alley there led to the loading dock, and a large dumpster was pushed back to the wall opposite. Normally, Freddy would just shine the light, have a good look, and move on. The dumpster was filled with all the garbage from the café, among other fragrant items, and in this heat the smell tended to be overwhelming.

  But tonight, when Freddy shone his light down the alley, he saw something that hadn’t been there before: a battered shopping cart piled high with tightly wrapped bundles. Freddy was pretty sure it didn’t belong to the museum, and so it shouldn’t be there. It looked an awful lot like a homeless guy’s cart. Freddy had nothing against the homeless, but they could cause trouble sometimes, and it was his job to keep that from happening. He held his light high and stepped carefully down the alley for a closer look. As he approached the cart, he saw a figure wedged in between the shopping cart and the dumpster. He stopped and shone his light on it. “Hey there!” he called.

  The figure moved, squirming as if trying to wriggle its way into the wall to hide, and mumbled something Freddy couldn’t make out. “What’s that? Hey, are you all right?” He took a cautious step closer, shining his flashlight on the figure’s face. It was a man, scrawny, ragged, and incredibly filthy. He had a large and bushy black beard covering most of his face, and the rest of his features were hidden by a dark and greasy film of smudged filth. “Hey, buddy,” the guard said.

  “Veteran. I’m a veteran,” the figure said. “Let me be, let me be, I’m a veteran, please, I need a place to sleep, just let me be.”

  “Huh,” Freddy said, coming to a stop. After his own time in Afghanistan, he knew that a surprising number of his old Army buddies ended up like this, too torn up by memories to do anything but huddle in the dark and fight the demons of PTSD. “All right, buddy, take it easy,” Freddy said. “Nobody’s going to bother you tonight.”

  “Veteran. I’m a veteran,” the man mumbled, and scrunched back down again.

  “So am I, buddy. You rest easy here for tonight, okay?” The figure just mumbled. Freddy moved a little closer and crouched down. “I did two tours in the sandbox, pal,” Freddy said. “I know what you’re going through. I’ll make sure nobody bothers you tonight. But just tonight, okay? In the morning you got to move on.”

  “I’ll go, I’ll move, I have to, I—I can’t stay, not anywhere, because, you gotta know, it gets so loud and I—please, okay, I’m a veteran—”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Freddy said. He stood up. “You just take it easy. You’ll be safe here tonight.” He looked down at the filthy, scrunched-down figure, and then, thinking it could have been him instead of this guy, he added, “Don’t worry ’bout nothin’. You just get some sleep.” And he turned away and out of the alley.

  When he was gone, the filthy figure got to his feet, watched the mouth of the alley for a moment, and then ran straight up the side of the building to the roof.

  * * *

  —

  For many years there have been rumors, even urban folk tales, about hidden Things under the streets in Manhattan. There are stories of unknown and unexplored tunnel networks, vast caverns, elaborate Victorian train stations that were somehow forgotten—or deliberately hidden, if your tastes bend toward sinister conspiracies. With these stories go tales of mysterious tribes of pale subterranean humans who never see the light of day. There are tales, too, of tribes of creatures that are not quite human—the Mole People, who have been spoken of in frightened whispers since the 1800s.

  And who knows? Some of these stories may well be true. But there is no doubt at all that if the Mole People or any other strange population is really there under the streets of New York, they live in the long stretches of abandoned tunnels that branch off from the main subway arteries that service the city.

  Andres Maldonado had heard these stories. He could hardly avoid them—he’d been working for the MTA for twenty-three years now, and the last fifteen he’d been driving the Lexington Avenue local, which was a route that had plenty of history all its own. People said some crazy stuff about this route, like about the old City Hall station, which was closed but still there. He hadn’t seen anything in that area himself, but who could say these people were wrong?

  Andres knew there were several other spots along the route that looked like hastily blocked side tunnels. He asked about them, and he heard more stories—about the Mole People, the Homeless Army, the Lizard People, and some that were even less believable. He’d never seen any signs that these tales might be true, but who knew? He was old enough to understand that there’s plenty of weird shit in the world that nobody really knows about. His uncle back in Puerto Rico had seen chupacabras, many times, but nobody wanted to believe him. Andres believed; it was his
uncle, after all. But he was smart enough to know that, for the most part, nobody wants to admit things like that are real.

  So as he slowed for the 59th Street station, he was not terribly surprised to see a figure up ahead in a dark jumpsuit and a helmet with a light on the front caught in the glare of the train’s headlight. Andres swore and felt the sweat pop out on his face. There was nothing he could do; he was too close to stop now. He was going to hit this pendejo.

  The guy looked up—it was definitely just a guy, so Andres could tell that at least it wasn’t one of the Lizard People. For half a second the guy stood there, frozen. Then he scrambled frantically up and into one of those blocked tunnels, pulling a duffel bag after him.

  The train roared past the spot just as the guy vanished into the hole, and Andres blew out a breath and shook his head. What the hell; that had been way too close. And what was that hijo de puta doing there anyway? Probably just some goofy Millennial asshole trying to explore and write a book about Underground New York. No—not a book, a website. That’s what they did nowadays, websites. And he’d sell T-shirts or something, too.

  Whatever; he hadn’t hit the dumbfuck pendejo, so it was none of his business. Andres put it out of his head and brought the train into the station.

  As he did, the guy in the jumpsuit was catching his breath just inside the opening he’d made. He’d planned on making it a little bigger, but the oncoming train had forced him to crawl through before he cleared the passage. It had been sealed for a lot of years, and unsealing it had been tougher than he’d expected. He took a deep breath and listened as the train rattled past. That had been way closer than it should have been. But one of the crossbeams blocking the hole had been replaced with steel rebar and anchored in concrete. He hadn’t planned on that, and it had taken him much too long to remove it.