Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Fingered
CLIFF
Any good thief will tell you there is no room for surprises on a heist. Surprises are what take you down.
Your job as a yegg, an old English word for safecracker and thief, is to consider every possible scenario, be aware of every single thing that could go wrong and plan for it.
A bank updates the safe? You’ve studied the latest models in every case and you know how to crack them.
Nightly security patrol decides to break up his usual pattern and let his girlfriend inside the building for a little late-night slap ’n’ tickle?
You already know where they do the deed and exactly how long it takes.
New cameras on corners of a building? You’ve already calculated the blind spots.
There isn’t just plan B, there’s plan C, D, E, F, and so on. Variables always play a part.
Cliff also had to study human behavior, know how most people act in any given scenario.
People are more alike than not. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they act the same way you’d expect them to.
Mastering those predictions can save you from getting caught.
It’s good business, having a plan for everything.
But the one thing you can’t plan for is the wild card. The one you don’t see coming. The one that blindsides you. And for Cliff, that was Jamie Frisco.
He had no intention of running into the mysterious cloud of beauty, warmth, and knock-your-socks-off chemistry that he had with Jamie.
Her intelligence, keen insight, her taste in books, her snap-crackle sense of humor, her piercing blue eyes, and her smelling like honeysuckle on a summer breeze. It brought him to his knees.
So, it was with more than a little sadness that he sat in the back of a cop car, thinking about what an opportunity he’d missed.
He should have come clean from the beginning with her.
Sure, he was a crack security expert, but it was a direct consequence of being a world-class thief.
He would have loved to explain that to her over dinner, instead of yelling it in front of a SWAT team.
He was not on the same level as a criminal like Melvyn Ott.
But it didn’t matter. Once people made up their minds about you, there’s really nothing you can do to change it.
Scumbag. The term clattered around in his brain, trying to land, always trying to land.
Cliff had to accept that he was a thief to his core.
The kind you swear about after they steal your bike and say, “I hate fucking thieves.” In the beginning, he and his father stole other people’s bits and baubles, their heirloom jewelry, their precious gems to pay for thier threadbare life where they could rent a sailboat or short-term rental or whatever cash-only arrangement his dad could manage until the next gig came up.
It was glamorous when his father explained how he boosted some of his wealthy friends’ valuables, made it almost romantic, almost like they were the wily duo of Robin Hood and Little John stealing baubles from people who could afford it.
It worked on Cliff’s young mind. Back when the thrill was almost worth more than the take.
Back when he felt like he was in on a secret no one else knew.
Back before he knew the stink of someone else’s shit in a shared toilet in a twelve-by-twelve–foot cell in a California State Prison.
But it hit different at forty-four. When other men his age were settling down, signing up for mortgages, placing rings on polished fingers, and sharing the joy of a positive pregnancy test, Cliff emerged from prison with a plastic bag of his belongings and a criminal record that would follow him wherever he went.
He knew nothing of a normal life. How did he ever think he could belong out here?
As bad luck can turn most men bitter at the sheer ferocity of life, Cliff remained hopeful beyond all logic. He had a few precious memories of his mother, and it was enough to sustain him in the belief that love was enough. In the belief that people were redeemable. Maybe even him.
So, he couldn’t exactly blame Jamie for fingering him once she figured out who he really was.
People rarely change. It was a hard lesson.
What stung, however, was watching her opinion of him change right before his eyes.
He went from watching the light in her eyes dance when she looked at him to watching that light dim and then disappear. He would have to live with that loss.
As he sat in the back of the cop car, the back door still ajar, the question that kept coming back to him was: How and why did this happen tonight? Of all nights?
The CB radio in the cop car crackled to life. “Johnson, are you there? Over.”
The young cop sat up and replied, “Copy that, yes sir, suspect secure in the back seat.”
“Get over to Ocean and Fourteenth. We are in pursuit of another suspect on foot. Short. Stocky. Dressed in all black. He’s traveling south down the alley behind Piccolo.”
“Copy that, on my way.”
Cliff felt a chill go down his spine.
The voice crackled over the radio again. “He’s armed and considered dangerous.”
The young cop nervously dropped the CB, fumbled for it on the floor of the driver’s side, and started the car. By the time he looked in the back seat, Cliff was gone.