Smooth as oil on glass, no muss, no fuss, just like always, and she planned to sleep in until at least noon.
Life was good.
Darla strolled into her neighborhood Starbucks, next to Fred Meyer’s, and inhaled the fragrances of brewed coffee and freshly baked pastries. She was scouting for a fattening cherry turnover she figured she’d earned, when she bumped into a good-looking guy of about thirty who stopped suddenly ahead of her in the line.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, turning to steady her. “My fault.” He smiled. Nice teeth. Black hair, blue eyes, rugged features, pretty well built under a dark green t-shirt and snug jeans. Three or four years older than she was, but that was nothing.
“No problem,” she said. She returned the smile.
Ice cream, she thought, looking at him. To go with the pastry, hey…?
No… She couldn’t. Not today. She had to meet Harry at two, and she’d slept past noon, so Ice Cream here would have to wait. Business before pleasure.
There were plenty of other men in the pond, and she was going to have free time to do a little fishing, lots of time…
Nothing as obvious as running a pawn shop, Harry had a guitar store, a hole-in-the-wall place twenty minutes from Portland, in Beaverton. Beaverton was where Portlanders went to buy fast food and shop at the 7-Elevens, a bedroom community that had once been swamps and filbert orchards and beaver-dammed streams.
The guitars at Harry’s ran from a few hundred bucks up to ten or fifteen thousand on the high end, mostly acoustic and classicals, and the place actually did a pretty good business. Today being Sunday, the shop was closed, but Harry answered the bell at the back door. She waited while the four big and heavy locks snicked and clicked, bolts sliding back, and the door, made of thick steel plate, swung quietly open on oiled hinges. Trust a crook to know how to protect his own stuff.
The shop smelled of wood, and some kind of finish that was not unpleasant, a sharp, turpentiney scent.
“Layla. How nice to see you, as always.”
Even Harry didn’t get her real name. Darla was very careful.
“Harry. How business?”
“I can’t complain. Come in. Some tea?” He was seventy-five, bald, thin, and wore thick glasses that kept slipping down his nose. He thought she was hot, though he’d never made a move on her.
“Thanks.”
She sat at a table while Harry made tea. “Oolong today,” he said.
Eventually, he sat the steaming cup in front of her.
“So, kiddo, whaddya got for me?”
She produced the pin, opened the velvet wrapping.
“Ah.” He picked it up, pulled a loupe from his shirt pocket, held the pin up to the light. “Quality stones. Nice cuts, nothing outstanding. Say… fifty?”
“What, did I get stupid since you saw me last? Eighty,” she said.
He smiled. “Might go sixty, because I like you.”
“It’s a steal at eighty, Harry. Two and a quarter for the bigger stones, and maybe another ten or fifteen for the little ones. Plus seven, eight hundred for the platinum. Pushing a quarter million, and you can pocket half that.”
“Honey, we both know it’s a steal at any price, but since I’ll have to fly down to Miami to move the rocks, sixty is a gift. You know how I hate air travel.”
“Miami? What’s wrong with Seattle?”
He pulled the loupe off and put the piece onto the table. “Too warm for Seattle. Even broken up, thirty stones this close will have to moved a few at a time. Could take me months. Who has that kind of time at my age?”
“Warm? The, uh, previous owner doesn’t even know it’s gone.”
“Alas, dear girl, I’m afraid she does. Mrs. Bellingham, widow of the late Leo Bellingham, owner of steel mills and shipyards, right? Probably pays her boy toys more than this bauble is worth, but she has definitely missed it.”
Darla shook her head. “How could that happen? And how do you know it?”
He shrugged. “Maybe today was inventory day. Or it was a gift from a special friend with sentimental value. Who can say? All I know is, I talked to Benny the Nod this morning, and he said the Portland cops had come to call upon him early, waving a picture of this very item.” He tapped the pin.
“Sweet Jesus,” she said.
“I doubt He would have any part of this, hon, though you can tithe if you want. So, sixty?”
“Yeah, well, I guess. Sure.”
They drank more tea, and he prattled on about some new classical guitar he’d just bought, Osage Orange this, cedar that, Sloane tuners, a genuine Carruth, look at the little owl inlay here-it all flowed into one ear and out the other. How unlucky was this? That the old woman had discovered the theft within hours of it happening? That cost her at least twenty thousand dollars!
There was just no justice…
As Darla drove her British racing green Cooper Mini convertible along TV Highway back toward Portland, she relaxed a little. Yeah, okay, her latest theft had been discovered too quickly, but she was still sixty thousand dollars richer. Harry’s cash, in used hundreds, was tucked away in her purse right there on the passenger seat. Life was still good. The sun was shining, the top was down, it was a lovely June afternoon, and she was free to spend the next few months lazing about, doing whatever she damned well pleased. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, hey?
She stopped at the light next to the Chrysler dealership on Canyon Road, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel as the Beatles sang “Hey, Jude” on the oldies station.
A heavy-set teenaged boy in baggy shorts and a sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves, a brim-backward baseball cap pulled low, his feet shod in big, clonky, ugly basketball shoes, strutted across the road in front of her. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark shades he wore. Oh, please, kid! Who do you think you’re fooling?
When he was almost past, on the passenger side, he pointed behind her and said, “Holy shit! Look at that!”
Darla turned to see what had impressed this wannabe gansta kid.
She caught a blur in her peripheral vision and turned back just in time to see the kid snag her purse-
“Fuck-!”
Darla put the car into neutral, set the brake, and jumped out of the car. She chased the kid, but he had a head start, and he was a lot faster than he looked. He put on a burst of speed, and she lost him behind the car dealership.
And what what she have done if she’d caught him? Kick his ass? She didn’t know anything about martial arts. She had a nice folding knife, but unfortunately, that had been in her purse, too.
Son of a bitch!
By the time she got back to her car, there was a line of traffic piled up behind it. She stalked back to the car, gave the finger to the fool behind her laying on his horn.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
Sixty thousand dollars!
The hell of it was, she couldn’t do anything about it! She could hear the conversation with the cop in her head:
Ah, you say you had sixty thousand dollars in cash in your purse? What is it you do for a living again, Miss?
Shit!
So much for the idea of six or eight months of goofing off. She was going to have to find another score. And soon. She was pretty much tapped out. She’d been counting on last night’s job.
No fucking justice…
Darla remembered a line she’d heard somewhere, when some reporter was interviewing a famous robber. “So, Willie, why do you rob banks?” And his answer had been: “Because that’s where the money is.”
Probably never said that, but it made the point-you want to see who has the bling, you have to go where they flash it.
Which was why she was at a posh reception for some famous author at the Benton Hotel in Portland. Once she was past the gatekeeper, having him see her as somebody who showed up at these things that he knew by sight, she became herself again, but she had to look the part, so she had dressed up for it. Heels, a black, slinky dress, a simple strand of good black pearls, her short, dark hair nicely styled. Nobody inside would bother her, though the crowd was thick enough that somebody patted her on the ass as she squeezed through on her way to the bar. Apparently that cherry pastry hadn’t added enough weight to matter.