27. Erica
ERICA
Chapter playlist:
I Did Something Bad — Taylor Swift
These Boots Are Made for Walking — Loni Lovato
When I was a kid, my dad used to watch the show called the A-Team, and at the end of every episode, the guy with the cigar would always say something like, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
I feel like the man with a cigar right now.
After Zoe and I took a couple days to hang low in the safehouse, I took a day trip to Brooklyn to pay Sal a visit.
He was, of course, expecting me.
He listened while I got everything off my chest, briefed him on the job… about the execution of all of it. And then I got to the part about the Jackdaw. How the necklace was switched before we even got to it, and the four numbers stamped on the playing card left at our door.
I asked him if he knew anything about who the Jackdaw is. If anybody in his network knew.
He said he had only heard stories, as if the Jackdaw was some sort of legend, always leaving behind a bespoke jack of spades as his calling card.
But he (or she) was a ghost. Nobody knew who the Jackdaw really was.
Then Sal reached into his back pocket for his wallet, opened the billfold and produced a small folded piece of paper.
“This was waiting for me on my table the other day,” he’d said. “Donna told me it was already here in an envelope with my name on it before the diner opened. A jack of spades attached to it. She’d asked the night shift if it had been there when they closed the night before. It had not.”
Sal slid the paper across the table and told me to read it.
It was more numbers, but they didn’t make any sense to me.
Then below the Jackdaw’s signature, in fine print, it said:
DO WITH IT WHAT YOU WILL.
I’d looked up at Sal. Confused and a little worried.
“The numbers are coordinates,” he’d said. “I checked them myself. The longitude and latitude point to a bank in Lexington, Kentucky. I had one of my buddies call the bank and they confirmed a safety deposit box set up for one America Armitage. All you have to do is show your government ID.”
“Sounds like a trap,” I said.
Sal gave me one of those East Coast full-body shrugs and said "Eh, could be. You'll never know."
From DC to Brooklyn to Lexington. The Jackdaw is using the United States as their own personal poker game.
The question is, who are they and why are they helping me?
I suppose I’ll learn that when I pay them a visit in Lexington because I have a feeling they’re waiting for me there.
I’ll go right after I’m done here in Dennis Hobbs's office. It was ridiculously easy to sneak in here and sink into his cushy leather chair.
My Wonder Woman boots are already up on Dennis's desk when the door opens.
He stops two steps in, keys still in his hand, like he can’t decide if he should call security or double check he’s in the right office.
He drops his keys, and they clatter hard against the wood of his mahogany desk.
“Get your feet off my desk.”
I don’t move.
“Where’s my necklace, Erica?”
“How should I know?”
“Because you took it.”
“Moi? Somebody stole something from under your nose, and you think it’s me?”
His jaw ticks. “Who else would it be?”
I hold his eyes. No sarcasm this time.
“I swear on my dad’s honor, I’ve never laid hands on it.”
It’s true. I just don’t mention who I think did it, or why they leave playing cards behind like souvenirs.
“I could call security right now and have you arrested for breaking and entering.”
I shrug. “A little bird sent me a tip. It actually led me straight to your own surveillance system. Funny thing, technology. Records everything, even the stuff you’d rather it didn’t.”
I pull out my phone, thumb the video open, and turn the screen toward him.
It’s a recording of him in the private viewing room the day Ivy, Rue, and Suri met with him to inspect the Friendship Jewel. Except in this version, Zoe completely erased everyone but Hobbs from the footage.
It shows him taking the necklace out of its case and placing it on the velvet tray. Then he opens the cigar box. But it’s not filled with cigars. Instead, it contains the forged necklace, and clear as day, he removes it from the cigar box, putting it in the display case.
In short, it proves Dennis Hobbs stole the Friendship Jewel and replaced it with a forgery.
“This is fabricated.” He’s already reaching for calm and missing it by a mile. “Some kind of deepfake garbage.”
“It’s real footage, Dennis. Pulled straight off your own server. Forensics will back it up any day you want to test that theory.”
Zoe encrypted the footage with the museum's own feed architecture and matched BMAH's timestamps down to the millisecond. My girl is a bonafide genius.
“Sorry but this is you switching out the Friendship Jewel before it even got to the gala.”
I tap the screen once more before I pocket it.
“Okay, I see what game you’re playing. You think you’re soooo clever.” He slow claps. “I really gotta hand it to you. This flair for theatrics would be entertaining if you weren’t so pathetic.”
“I wonder if the museum board will think it’s entertaining when they review you for the director candidacy.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I? I’m just an anonymous concerned citizen who happened upon this footage on social media.”
I toss a card on the desk with Heath Kane’s name facing up.
Dennis scoffs. “That man is a clown. Disgraced by his own family.”
I shrug. “Maybe you’re right. He only has archived copies of you stealing the Friendship Jewel in a private viewing room.”
“Did he put you up to this?”
“No. But he took a shining to me and told me a really interesting story. How he found Eleanor Armitage’s diary among his grandfather’s private records.
How there were letters from Mary Todd Lincoln to her traveling companion tucked within the pages.
How he held onto them because he knew the historical significance.
He knew their worth. You know how that goes, don’t you, Dennis? The value of leverage?”
I reach into my jacket and slide a folded document across the desk. He doesn’t want to touch it. I watch him lose that particular battle with his own curiosity in under three seconds.
“It’s a notarized statement by Heath Kane about how he made a deal with you. The diary and letters in exchange for your part in exposing the corruption of his family.”
Dennis sinks into the chair across from his own desk like his legs stopped being consulted on the decision.
“He had a lot to say, actually. Fun guy. You see, after his dispute with his father and getting squeezed out of his inheritance, he was ready to take down Whitfield & Kane Trust by proving the fraudulent and predatory loans over several decades. How easy it would have been for someone who, let’s say…
someone who worked in the museum to stumble across the diary and expose the truth about the secret donor.
Are you writing this down? Because here’s the crazy part.
Walter Kane had held onto the Friendship Jewel for twenty years.
But because of the historical significance, he couldn’t just sell it. So he donated it for clout.”
Dennis's lips quiver in a hard line.
“Of course, you probably already knew this. Because instead of following through on your deal with Heath, you turned around and leveraged your new diary to press your advantage. A recommendation here, commendation there. Certain influential players bounce your name around the DC circuit. And suddenly, you’re up for director and maybe a future in politics.
I mean, this is some crazy Hollywood material. ”
Dennis is silent for a long while, just staring at me, chewing his inner cheek.
At length, he puts on a smug facade. “You really think this gives you the upper hand? You are a criminal. You were at the gala.”
“I didn’t go within twenty feet of that necklace and I can prove it. But you…” I glance at my fingernails. “You’ve been hiding the fact there’s a fake on the museum floor ever since you quietly commissioned your own off-books authentication.”
His pupils dilate a fraction and I can tell he’s panicking now.
“All those people paying good money to visit the museum don’t even know they’re looking at a forgery. And the funniest part is that you’re too paranoid and cowardly to alert your superiors.”
He swallows hard and I know I’ve got him. I take out my phone again, letting Zoe’s altered footage light up the screen.
“Here’s the deal. You hand me the diary and the letters, and this footage never sees daylight. Gone. Like it never existed.”
“This is blackmail,” Dennis says.
“Funny word, coming from you. You didn’t call it blackmail when you were cutting a deal with the Kanes.”
He narrows his eyes at me. Calculating. But he’s trapped. There’s no scenario where he can talk his way out of this one.
He drags a hand down his face. “Fine.” He says it like it costs him a rib. “But I need to know that footage is gone for good. Not sitting on some hard drive somewhere waiting to resurface. And I want the real necklace back on that pedestal before the board notices it’s missing.”
“The footage disappears. You have my word on that.”
“And the necklace.”
“The necklace, I don’t control.” Not entirely a lie either. “I don’t know who lifted the necklace, but whoever did, can return it just as easily as they took it. Without getting caught. I might know someone who can get in touch.”
That person is me. I can get in touch. The Jackdaw is watching how I work the angle. What I might do with this leverage.
DO WITH IT WHAT YOU WILL.
That sounds lovely, thank you very much. I have a feeling that I’ve made myself a new friend. One that leaves playing cards with birds drawn on them. I suppose everybody needs a hobby.
Dennis gets up and crosses to a painting I’d bet good money he picked up at a yard sale because he doesn’t have an ounce of taste. He swings it aside, and works a combination.
The safe door swings open. Inside sits a flat archival case, sealed tight enough that when he cracks it, I hear the little hiss of air that’s been locked in there.
He lifts the lid.