“We know damn well they think that. But Yana’s already marime. It’s about what they’d expect from her.” He paused. “I wonder if the rest of the Gypsies know Staley, Lulu, and Rudolph are looking for Yana?”
“You mean like perhaps what they are really after is the money and stuff Poteet hid in the light fixture?”
“Something like that. Looking for Yana on the sly. I’d sure as hell hate to turn her up for them and find out they plan to sell her to the cops for money or something.”
“They wouldn’t...” Giselle ran down. She said slowly, “They didn’t tell us about Ephrem picking pockets at Marine World, did they?”
Art Gallery A was on Xanadu’s first floor. Kearny was no connoisseur, but even from the doorway he recognized the quality of the tapestries that covered the temperature-controlled walls. Knottnerus-Meyer was staring at one depicting the Christ child in his mother’s arms, holding a chalice made of gold thread crusted with woven jewels. In the background a covey of winged angels strummed away on harps and mandolins.
“De real Flemish Mystic Vine tapestry. Priceless. Dere iss an inferior copy in vun uff de Apostolic Palaces in Rome.” The Baron checked the edges of the tapestries and around the bases of the sculptures carefully displayed on their pedestals. “Bernini’s terra-cotta Charity mit Four Children, Algardi’s Baptism uff Christ.” He turned to snap at R.K. Robinson, “Dere iss no individual security on any uff dese treasures.”
“None needed,” said R.K. with a smirk. He gestured them out, then passed his hand up and down in the open doorway. “Nothing, see?” He took his cell phone off his belt, told it, “Activate Security Circuit One for Art Gallery A.” He turned to the Baron. “Now you try it.”
Knottnerus-Meyer passed his hand up and down in the open doorway. Immediately the alarm bells sounded.
State-of-the-art, thought Kearny. Invisible light beams from sensors in the door frame, three across and two vertical. Nobody could slip through them.
Knottnerus-Meyer nodded thoughtfully. “Goot,” he said.
The works in Art Gallery B were much more ancient than in the first one. Kearny stopped, caught by a frieze of a woman’s head and a bull’s head displayed side by side.
“A double herm uff de goddess Isis unt her offspring de Apis Bull,” said the Baron. “Early Dynasty Egyptian. Unt dese...” He indicated display cases of pitchers and urns and vases with ears. “Oinochoe, olpe, krater, amphora, kylix, hydria. Greek. Classical Period. Again, priceless.”
As they started out, R.K. said, “Here’s what I didn’t show you in Art Gallery A.” He told his cell phone, “Activate Security Circuit Two for Art Gallery B,” then said to the Baron, “You got a ballpoint pen?”
The Baron removed a pen from one of the pockets of his shooting jacket. “Uff course. But vut—”
“Just toss it into the room, Baron, if you would.”
When the pen hit the floor, an alarm sounded raucously.
“Deactivate,” said R.K. to his cell phone. The alarm fell silent. He said to the Baron, “The same in every room. Pressure-sensitive floor-plates. A mouse would set ’em off.”
Knottnerus-Meyer reacted predictably.
“But vut if vermin vere to get into dis facility?”
Bart Heslip picked up a rental car at the Burbank airport, then called Giselle up in San Francisco.
“I just remembered — when Dan braced Poteet for information down here during the Cadillac caper, he was picking pockets at Universal Studios.”
“In a series of disguises,” exclaimed Giselle with sudden excitement. “A cowboy, a country singer, a southern colonel... No gorilla, but...”
It took Bart nearly an hour just to get through Universal’s maze of interlocking bureaucracies to the head of security in a third-floor office overlooking the wet and wild Jurassic Park ride. His name was Jonathan James and he was almost as black as Bart, tall and lanky and wearing horn-rims. Unlike Bruckner at Marine World, he was curt, on the edge of hostility.
“My kid has soccer practice in forty minutes,” he said.
“I’ll only take ten,” promised Bart.
James looked over Bart’s I.D. “Private eye, huh?” He gave a thin-lipped chuckle. “We’re fresh out of Maltese falcons.”
“How about a gorilla who’s also a dip?” asked Bart. “This guy always dresses up as somebody else — a cowboy in a ten-gallon hat, a sort of rockabilly character with a guitar—”
“Son of a bitch!” James came forward in his chair. “Southern colonel, too! I remember all of them! But—”
“They were all our boy,” said Bart. “And we think he’s back down here again from the Bay Area.” He figured James wouldn’t waste his time on Poteet if he knew the man was dead and no longer a threat to Universal. “You have a lot of pockets picked about a month ago?”
“Jesus, yeah, we did. But no gorilla. We thought it was an organized gang that hit us hard and then moved on. Had no idea it was just one guy.” As James worked his computer, he added, “We had a Smokey the Bear on staff, entertaining the kids in the tram lines... Hey! No employment records for Smokey...”
“That would have been him, all right,” said Bart.
James forgot all about his son’s soccer practice. He even scanned Ephrem Poteet’s picture into their security system for future reference. Bart pressed him further.
“We think he’s been living somewhere in the Silver Lake district and probably handed everything off to someone between here and there. You got any ideas?”
James drummed thoughtful fingers on his computer table.
“Some of the unmarried grips and P.A.’s like to drink at a raunchy bar called the Hurly Burly on North Whitley in Hollywood. A guy looking to score at Universal might get a lot of hot tips there just by hanging around and listening to them gossip. And the bartender looks like a Gypsy to me.” He suddenly laughed. “Yeah, I know — racial stereotyping.”
“Don’t we all?” said Bart.
He shook James’s hand and departed. Later for the Hurly Burly. First, Etty Mae Walston, Ephrem’s snoopy ex-neighbor.
Thirty-seven
Knottnerus-Meyer insisted on examining every room, even though security was the same in each. Finally, R.K. led them to the second-floor stairs past strategically placed hallway-scanning cameras.
“Live feed twenty-four/seven to Security Control Center.”
On the second floor, he stopped in front of a solid steel door without a knob. There was an I.D. card-reader slot in a shiny stainless-steel panel beside it.
“Security Control Center,” said R.K. in hushed tones.
Getting into the spirit of the thing, Dan asked innocently, “No fingerprint match? No retinal scan?”
R.K. slid a stiff plastic I.D. card into the reader slot.
“No need for either one of ’em. The operator freezes the door if he sees anyone suspicious trying to come at him.”
The door popped open a scant two inches, shut itself behind them with a slight POOF of air.
It was the damnedest security setup Kearny had ever seen. More complex than the skyrooms above the Vegas casinos, if not quite so state-of-the-art. Banks of monitors, rows of lights, buttons and switches for each of the pressure pads and interlocking invisible laser beams inside the various galleries, and for the infrared heat and motion detectors outside.
Seated at the control module was the duty officer, a uniformed cipher with a rice-pudding face and raisin eyes. He demonstrated with his joystick, zooming in on a monitor screen, slowing down, speeding up, and freezing the action. Dan Kearny turned to R.K.