“I know how I’d have done it,” Felicity said in a soft tone. “It’s easy with a rope and pulley system, but I don’t see any signs of the clamps that would have held the system in place.”
“He could have rappelled” Morgan said. “If you’re good, it can get you down real fast.”
“True enough, but it doesn’t seem likely he could have slipped down from this window without being seen, especially if he took the time to retrieve his rope.” Morgan looked into her eyes and thought for a moment that he could see her mind working the situation. When she took his arm he let her ease him back away from the window. She turned toward him and leaned toward his ear.
“You know, if I was stealing something in this kind of situation, I wouldn’t be down there,” she mumbled for his hearing alone. “I’d be up here somewhere.” With a wink, she headed downstairs.
Morgan waited a moment before starting down the stairs, to avoid looking like he had a plan. When he reached them he walked down six steps, turned quietly, and lay down on the stairs. He could just see over the top step.
He had only a two minute wait before the sniper appeared from his hiding place and looked over the rail to make sure he could leave unseen. He looked at his rifle like it was an old friend, and stared to reach for it.
“Don’t try it.” Morgan stood with his gun drawn. The sniper hesitated, then turned and ran for the stairs at the opposite end of the mezzanine. Morgan slid his pistol back into its holster and ran after him. He had hoped to bluff the sniper, but a shot now would surely bring the police and he did not want that kind of involvement.
The sniper had a lead, and desperation helped him widen it. Morgan moved as quickly as he could but he was still on the stairs when the sniper reached the bottom and sprinted across the right side of the reading room toward the door. Morgan followed, but he knew he had no chance of catching the sniper before he went out the door and disappeared.
Felicity surprised him when she emerged from under the left end of one of the last tables and shoved with all her strength. The table slid out, blocking the path. The sniper, running full tilt, smashed his thighs into the table and flew over it, landing hard on the other side. Morgan leaped over the table and was on him in a second, pressing a knee into his chest. It was unnecessary. He felt a damp spot at the back of the sniper’s head, and his hand came away red. The fall had put his head into the floor hard enough to knock him unconscious.
“Leave him.” Felicity pulled on Morgan’s sleeve.
“They’ll find him, and his fingerprints will tie him nicely to the rifle. We need to get to a secondary exit. I don’t want any complications with the police.”
“We’re on the same sheet of music there, but you need to go back and get those diagrams, or this was all for nothing.”
“Right,” she said, recovering her package. “This has got to stop, Morgan. I can’t live like this, with people gunning for me every minute. It’s time to take some kind of action for sure.”
27
Steaming mugs of coffee, flavored with amaretto, flanked a set of blueprints on the oak cube in Felicity’s living room when she and Morgan sat down to make their evening plans. One of Bach’s organ works filled the room. Morgan stretched forward from the right side easy chair to pick up his coffee, savoring the almond smell of the liquor in it while he listened to Felicity.
“Here’s where the brooch, and its present owner live.” Felicity, kneeling on the sofa, leaned forward to point at the diagram. “This particular building’s inhabited by a variety of limiteds, private companies with obscure names. A lot of them are holding companies and shell operations or dummy corporations assembled for tax purposes. A couple of them are mail order fronts. The top five stories belong to Seagrave Incorporated, a closely held corporation whose patriarch is one Adrian T. Seagrave. He and his wife Marlene were the stars of that newspaper photograph I showed you. Officially his business is import and export. He is also heavily invested in the commodities market, and street talk has it that he has taken some extreme measures to influence the market.”
“Extreme measures,” Morgan said, sipping his coffee. “Like maybe having foreign officials assassinated. Nice guy. So I take it you intend to go in and get your jewelry. What’s security like?”
“Well, the building’s top floor is a warehouse,” Felicity said. “Why he’d store whatever he’s importing and exporting on the top floor is kind of a good question, but there it is and it looks to be pretty well guarded. Right beneath that is Seagrave’s luxury flat.”
“How do you move stuff in and out of a that top floor warehouse?” Morgan asked. “I’ll bet you money that top floor’s empty. It’s just an excuse to maintain security up there. Our boy’s too nervous to enjoy the penthouse suite.”
“Perhaps, and he likes to be insulated too,” Felicity said. “The next three stories down hold his administrative offices, and that lowest level is also pretty heavily guarded.”
Morgan nodded slowly. “Are we talking electric eyes and stuff?”
“Not a lot of electronics, but that’s understandable. In these older buildings, rewiring is expensive. Instead, he’s got a pretty hefty staff of human guards. I’ve marked on the blueprint where they are. Or at least, where my information says they patrol.”
Morgan rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “He’s not worried about getting robbed. That’s a setup for personal protection. Either the man’s made some nasty enemies before, or he’s a raving paranoid. You got all this background stuff out of just three phone calls?”
“Most of it,” Felicity said, picking up a piece of biscotti and handing another to Morgan. “The rest is public knowledge, all down in the hall of records. Now look. According to the building plans filed with the city, the main elevator only stops at the lower forty-one floors, those below Seagrave’s block of offices. See, a second elevator serves the top five floors, and you need a computerized pass card to make it work. The stairs are blocked off at the forty-first floor with a door that takes the same kind of card. Pretty good security, as far as it goes.”
“Sounds pretty solid to me,” Morgan said, dunking his biscotti. “But you don’t sound like you think so. So where’s the flaw?”
“The flaw, my boy, is that little housing right there on the roof. Fire stairs, lad. The stairs were blocked off at the forty-first level, in violation of all fire safety codes I might add, but they look to be clear above that. I don’t see any problem with just going in from the roof, going down the stairs and right into any of Seagrave’s levels.”
Morgan smiled broadly, like a ball player anticipating a good game. “If this drawing is right, the building on the right’s only separated by a narrow alley, about five feet from his. And it’s the same number of stories, although this makes it look a few feet taller.”
“Now you’re getting it,” Felicity said. “That one’s also got stairs to the roof. No guards posted there, I’m betting. See what that leaves us?”
“Yeah, a very simple operation,” Morgan said. “You walk up next door, jump over, take the roof door to the stairs to get in, get your objective, and get out the same way.” He munched his biscotti, also almond flavored.
“Yes,” Felicity said, leaning back and sipping her coffee. “And if you can be quiet about it, I’ll even let you come along.”
That led them, by nine o’clock that evening, to the building next door to Seagrave’s. A uniformed security guard sat at an imposing desk just inside the main door. After Felicity parked, Morgan got out of the car and closed the door as quietly as he could. He was a little nervous about entering.
“I don’t know, Red. If I saw people dressed like us coming, I wouldn’t let us in.”
He wore all black: jeans, boots, and a windbreaker over a pullover. Thin black leather gloves completed the outfit. Felicity wore identical clothes, except for the modified carpenter’s tool belt around her waist. It was smaller than most, and, naturally, dyed black. Her hair was banded back with a wide, dark green ribbon. So it swayed back and forth across the back of her pullover. Unlike Morgan, she wore no windbreaker.