Juliet's Gift

 

~ 1 ~

2018

Juliet Deacon was her name, but everybody called her Jules, and she was okay with that. 

Jules was thirteen when she discovered that she had a gift. 

She discovered it quite by accident one day in the spring. Jules lived on a farm in Wisconsin with her parents, Aaron and Dee, short for Deirdre, and her older brother, by four years, Will. Jules was light-skinned, thin but shapely with long light brown hair, hazel-coloured eyes, high cheekbones and just a hint of freckles. Jules and Will were being groomed to take over the farm, which consisted of more than three thousand acres of wheat and corn and, most recently, a couple hundred acres of hemp, which Aaron, as a lifelong farmer, believed would be the salvation of the planet.

 While Will was all for taking over the farm and becoming a hemp baron, Jules had no such intention. She had her eye on the big city, and by that, she didn’t mean Davenport, Minneapolis or even Kansas City. Her sights were set much higher than that, which was, of course, Chicago. And with the promise she showed as a student, she felt certain she could land a full-ride scholarship to a college there.

At the beginning of her senior year of high school, Jules started collecting information on the various universities in the greater Chicago area. 

Jules’s gift, which she discovered four years earlier, was the ability to break into any space that was protected by a keyless lock. It didn’t seem to matter what kind of lock it was, or at least that was the assumption that she, in her limited experience, had made.

Jules first discovered this gift at school. In a rush to get to class, she mistakenly took hold of the lock on the locker next to hers. When she did, her brain gave off a small burst of energy, which she didn’t understand at all. But what it left in her mind was the combination of the lock on Emily Fletcher’s locker. Out of curiosity, she dialled the numbers that were in her head and lo and behold, the locker opened. She let out a bit of a gasp, then realized what she had done. She looked around, but the halls were empty. She wanted to tell someone, but there was no one there to tell. And what the heck would she tell them that didn't make her seem a little crazy? So she just locked the locker back up, got her book out of her own locker and headed to class, trying hard not to think about what had just happened.

But Jules was a curious girl. Over the last semester of high school, she found she was also able to open her father’s gun safe, which was secured with a digital combination lock. Only her father and mother had the combination. And for safety reasons, Aaron changed the combination religiously once a month. Jules was also able to open virtually any locker in her school, which she did after swimming team practice, while she waited for either her brother or one of her parents to pick her up. 

Jules wasn’t sure what she would do with this gift until sometime later. So she kept her secret and worked very hard to resist the temptation to use her gift in the wrong way. Sadly for Jules, she could not think of any right way that this gift would be useful. And it played on her mind. It was always there, like a little devil on her shoulder, whispering to her. But Jules was a strong-willed girl with true midwestern Christian values, and did her best to resist the temptation. 

After high school, Jules was, on the basis of her stellar academic record, accepted on a full ride scholarship at Concordia University, right in the centre of Chicago. She planned to study political science and eventually work her way to Washington in some capacity that she had not yet figured out. Jules dreamed big. But mostly her dreams were powered by getting as far away from the farm as she could. She loved her parents and her brother, but this was her life and she coveted it ferociously.

~ 2 ~

2022

The previous two years had been hard on the farm. Prices had dropped significantly, and the hemp market the family was counting on had not yet materialized to the point of making it a profitable venture. 

To make ends meet in her final year at Concordia, and to reduce her dependence on financial care packages from home, Jules got an evening job in a pharmacy on West North Avenue, a fairly short walk from her dorm room. She worked almost every evening, from about four til she closed the store, at nine. 

At nine, Jules dropped off the day’s receipts at the bank two doors down, then went back to the pharmacy, made a sandwich, mostly peanut butter and jelly, and an instant coffee in the back room, then sat down at the pharmacist’s desk to study until about midnight or later. 

Like all pharmacies, there was a drug safe in the back. She knew that the pharmacist, a very nice Indian man named Seb, would change the combination every week. He did this because he stored all the narcotics in the safe, and you just could not be too careful. Once a week, after she knew Seb had changed the combination, she would go into the back and put her right hand over the combination lock of the safe, then open and immediately close the safe.  She did this more to see if she still had the gift, and she noted that it had not faded one bit. 

Over the years since Jules discovered this gift, as she called it, she thought she would come to understand where it came from. Or that maybe it wasn’t a gift at all, but some kind of curse, that put temptation in her way and forced her to keep on doing the right thing by not giving in to it.

Jules did not set the alarm in the pharmacy when she went to take the receipts to the bank. But she always kept the back door locked. The store was dark when she returned. A few minutes later, she was sitting at the pharmacist’s desk with only a small arc lamp for light when she heard a noise coming from the back of the room. Someone had picked the lock and entered. She took the 9 mm pistol out the small gun safe in the top drawer of Seb’s desk drawer and walked across the pharmacy to the storage room door. There she saw a man sitting on a stool staring at the screen of an iPhone. She cocked the gun, which she knew how to use because her dad had taught her when she was still in high school. “If you try and jump me or run, I’ll shoot you. I won’t kill you, but you will think about me with every step you take after that.” Jules said, trying to sound as menacing as possible.

Travis LaSalle looked up to see the pistol aimed at him, and he sensed that the girl holding it knew how to use it just from the stance she had taken. “Well, you win some and you lose some, I suppose.” he said.

“I guess so. Give me a good reason not to just shoot you right now.” Jules said. 

“I don’t rightly have one.” Travis said. 

As Jules looked at him, she realized he looked to be only a couple of years older than her. “But I have a feeling you don’t really want to shoot anyone.” he said.

“I wouldn’t bet the farm on that.” Jules said, as she sat down on the stool beside her and rested her elbow on her knee. 

“What’s your name, chere?” the stranger asked.

“Jules.”

“You’re a very beautiful young lady, Jules.” Travis said. 

“Yeah, I’ll bet you say that to all the girls holding a gun on you.”

Travis chuckled. “I will say this is a completely unique experience for me. Usually, there’s no one around.”

“Well, you blew it this time, didn’t you? What’s your name?”

“Travis. Travis LaSalle.”

“You’re from down south somewhere.”

“Yes, ma’am. Shreveport, Louisiana. You know where that is?”

“Down south.”

“Ever been that far south, chere?”

“Never been anywhere to speak of.”

“It’s nice down there…if you like heat and humidity and the odd hurricane.”

“Then what are you doin’ up here?” Jules had lowered the pistol.

“Kinda wore out my welcome down there. Thought I’d try the big city.”

“So you’re a career thief, Travis Lasalle?”

“More or less. And I assume you are a student of some sort.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Because beautiful girls like you don't sit around with books after they close the store unless they are students.  Nice quiet place to study, I suppose.”

Jules knew this Travis fellow was trying to charm his way out of the situation. And she had to admit, he was pretty charming. He had long dark hair and wore wireless glasses that made him look more like a high-fashion model than a burglar. He was wearing dark clothes but she could tell he was thin but not overly so.

“You’re right. I’m a senior at Concordia.” Jules didn’t know why she was telling him that, but for some strange reason, she didn’t care.

“Let me guess. Environmental Studies or Political Science?”

Jules said nothing for a long while. Then she said, “What am I supposed to do with you, Travis LaSalle?”

“Well, one option is that you could let me buy you a coffee and we could talk about this some more.”

A lot of thoughts went through Jules’s head at a mile a minute. But when she had calmed herself down, she found herself nodding. “You didn’t break the lock to get in here did you?”

“Hell no. I am technically competent, and trust me when I tell you that lock was no big deal.”

“OK. We’ll go out the front door. Jules walked to the back door, brushing by Travis and checked to make sure the lock was intact. Then she led him into the store, gathered up her stuff, locked the gun in its lock box, hid the key, and they left.

~ 3 ~

Jules had had a couple of boyfriends in high school and a couple of short-term affairs in college, but nothing that she could ever take seriously. She wasn’t jaded about boys, she simply hadn’t found the right one for her. But there was something about this Travis that intrigued her. Maybe it was the fact that she had not detected a single ounce of fear emanating from him. Not even in the first few seconds when she had announced herself to him. But what surprised her the most was that she wasn’t afraid of him either. There had to be something more to this, she thought. 

They sat in Starbucks talking for quite some time. Travis told her all about growing up in Louisiana, and she told him all about growing up in the middle of nowhere. It was obvious to both of them that they had clicked with each other and so Travis, politely, invited Jules to accompany him back to his place for breakfast and whatever would happen before that. 

Jules had learned to listen carefully to her inner voice, and her inner voice was telling her that everything was cool. So off they went.

Travis lived in a loft above a store about three blocks from the Starbucks. The loft itself was large and beautifully furnished. It looked like something out of Town and Country. There were paintings on the wall that looked very much like famous originals. It was an open space with everything nicely arranged including some workout equipment in one corner, beside the small bathroom.

They drank some wine and eventually ended up in bed, where they made love slowly and gently. Even though Jules was no virgin, it was the first time in her life that she felt she was being made love to, instead of just getting laid. There was a kind of magic to it and though she thought the whole idea of love at first sight was nothing but romantic horseshit, she could not deny what was going on in her own mind.

Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms. Jules had lost all sense of time and space. She was just floating. Then she said. “I have to ask. This place, it’s beautiful. You have incredible taste, and you’re obviously very good at whatever it is you do. So what the hell are you doing breaking into a small pharmacy to rob the safe?”

Travis propped himself up on one elbow. “I came for you, Jules.”

“You came for me? What does that mean?”

“It means one night I was in the pharmacy. I was just looking at some magazines and I saw you behind the counter and I said to myself, ‘Travis, you have to meet this girl’. The breaking-in was what they call in the movies, a ruse. I don’t rob pharmacies. Let’s just say I have bigger fish to fry.”

Jules smiled. “You did all this just to meet me?” 

“Yes ma’am, I did.”

“You could have just come up and said hello.”

“I suppose. Maybe I just have a flair for the dramatic.”

“So now we’ve met, what happens next?”

“Up to you, Jules. You can move in any time you like.”

Jules laughed. “Just like that?”

“You know, sometimes that’s just the way things happen.” Travis snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

~ 4 ~ 

2018

Travis LaSalle from Shreveport, Louisiana was not who he appeared to be. First of all, Travis LaSalle was not his real name. Nor was he from Shreveport, Louisiana. His real name was Clayton Underwood from Arlington, Texas, where his dad was an oil executive and his mother was a gynecologist. 

Clayton was an only child, and the older he grew the more he thought he might have been a mistake. His folks loved him, but since they were both busy professionals, they didn’t have a lot of time or any real interest in family life. Young Clayton was nurtured and taken care of by wonderful Mexican nannies until he entered high school, then was left pretty much to his own devices. 

Clayton ended up earning a Master’s degree in quantum mechanics from Texas Tech at the ripe old age of twenty-one. As it turned out, he was something of a wunderkind. Texas Tech offered him the sun and the moon to stay, get his PhD and join the staff.  But Clayton had other plans. Because Clayton Underwood, in addition to being brilliant with any sort of mechanics, was possessed of a criminal mind. All his life, he had dreamed about stealing really valuable things. And he very consciously gathered up all the skills he would need to make that his life’s work or at least part of it until he was rich enough to just say fuck it all. 

Almost immediately after leaving Texas Tech, Clayton got recruited by a large security firm in Houston. In addition to paying extremely well, the job also became his own self-study course and gave him everything he needed to further his criminal education, which included safe cracking, the picking of locks, and the dismantling of alarm systems of every variety. 

After two years of intensive on-the-job training and after-hours planning, he deemed himself ready to start his enterprise. So he cruised the dark web and found a world-class forger who made him a new identity, in return for the theft of, of all things, a miniature Schnauzer named Gustav, that the forger’s ex-wife had won in the divorce settlement.

Within two weeks of the dog theft, which was a dead easy lock pick while the ex was at work, Clayton had a new birth certificate, Louisiana driver’s licence, and even a Blue Cross card. For all intents and purposes, he was now Travis LaSalle of Shreveport, Louisiana.

The next step was to put himself on the market, which he did through a small classified ad on the dark web. The ad cost him $2000 a month to run on a site called Procureit.com. 

Toward the end of his first month, he got a serious bite. He texted an introduction and quickly received an address in Chicago along with a picture of the item in question, which looked like a Picasso and a likely time frame for when the house would be empty. He checked out the house on Google Maps and saw it was in an area of the city called Oak Park. After a little deliberation with himself and his recollections from several of the art theft fiction he voraciously consumed, he quoted the job at $300,000 with half up front and sent it along with a link to a Cayman Islands account he had opened about two months earlier in the name of Bryce Timmins, which was a nickname one of his crazy high school friends in Arlington gave him. 

Almost immediately, he received a ping from his Cayman Islands Bank, indicating that $150,000 US dollars had been deposited the account. So, after a farewell dinner with his busy parents, off he went to Chicago. He was driving a fairly new grey Toyota Corolla, which he had bought used for cash two weeks before and was insured under his Travis LaSalle name. He had about a week and a half before he had to make the hit, so he took his time coming north. In a town called Champaign, Illinois he paid an auto wrecker $500 for an Illinois licence plate, which he thought would come in handy. 

When he got to Chicago, he booked himself into a motel and then spent the rest of the week driving around the city to get a feel for it. Chicago was a big place, larger than even Houston, which he considered to be pretty damn big. On the second evening, he found the address he was given and settled in to watch the house, careful not to stay parked in any one place for too long. 

The house was a large Victorian-style brick place in a part of the city where there were a lot of them. It was pretty much an upscale looking area. The couple who lived in it were older, meaning in their forties, both drove high-end Mercedes and seemed to be homebodies, except for shopping, lunches and dinners out, which they did together.

On the third night of his surveillance, he left early, took a nap and went back to check things out after midnight. No joggers, no dog walkers, no late-night strollers. Most of the houses up and down the street were dark.

Then on the fourth day, right in line with the info he was given, an airport limo pulled up in front of the house, a driver hopped out and took their bags as the couple came out the front door of the house, dressed casually but expensively. The couple climbed into the limo, and they were off.  

Travis followed them to O’Hare airport, where they were delivered to the departures gate. He parked his car and entered the terminal building and saw them sitting in the first-class waiting area of a Pan Am flight to Paris. He got himself a coffee and loitered outside the lounge until their flight was called. Then he headed to the window to watch their plane take off. 

Travis then returned to his motel and slept until about 11 pm. He got his kit bag, where he kept his tools and devices, from the trunk and put it on the back seat of his car. He quickly detached the rear Texas licence plate and substituted it for his illegal Illinois plate. 

At about 1 AM, he cruised down the street and stopped at the bottom of the driveway of the target house. He then parked down the street and waited. He imagined that a lot of this career path he had chosen would be about waiting and he was psyched for that. Travis was a very patient young man.  

At about 2:15, he noticed a sedan with an Argus Security logo on the side door moving slowly down the street. It stopped in front of the target house. In it were two men in uniform shirts. The one on the passenger side shone a light on the house, up the driveway and across the front. Satisfied that nothing was out of the ordinary, they moved on down the block and turned the corner. 

Travis waited ten minutes and then slipped on a pair of surgical gloves, grabbed his kit bag, swiftly crept up the driveway to the back door of the house and picked the lock.

Once he was inside, he found the security panel and hooked his electronic counter to it. The counter, which he had appropriated from Texas Tech as a parting gift to himself, worked at blazing speed to find the six-digit code that de-activated the alarm system. It took, according to the timer, 4.8 seconds, which meant that it would raise no alarms in the security company’s office, since it would just appear that someone had come home and shut the security system off.

Travis got out his penlight and quickly moved through the house. He found the painting he was looking for in the main living room. It shared the room with three others that he reckoned would have been of equal or greater value. He snatched them up as well, placing each one in a separate hefty bag, which he then slipped into a larger soft canvas bag. 

He then headed upstairs and rifled through a jewelry case on the dresser of the master bedroom. He found several different diamond and pearl necklaces. On a smaller dresser, he found a Rolex and in the drawer of a dresser, a diamond-encrusted Tissot watch. Travis dumped it all in his bag, along with a couple of newer looking necklaces and rings. Jewelry, he knew, was a pain in the ass, but it was part of the instructions from his contact to make it look like a real robbery. Art and cash were much smoother sailing.

He went back downstairs and quickly searched the study. The large mahogany desk that dominated the room had a two-screen computer set up. Travis guessed that the husband was likely some sort of day trader or independent investment advisor. 

He picked the lock on the top drawer of the desk, which was more like a safe than a drawer, and hit the jackpot. Several stacks of thousand-dollar bills. Had to be at least half a million. He tossed it all into his bag. He then left the house as quickly as he had arrived, being careful to reactivate the alarm a few seconds before closing the back door behind him. 

Travis quickly moved up the driveway. He stashed his gear and his loot in the hedge that ran along the front of the house. He then jogged down the street, just another guy out for a late-night run, retrieved his car, came back up the street with no lights, quickly got out, grabbed both bags, tossed them in the backseat and drove off. 

When he got to the corner, he turned his lights on and headed back to his motel, where he switched the plates on the car, brought all his loot inside and then flopped down on the bed and conked out.

The next morning, he texted his client, who used the name Ava and told her he had completed the task. He received a text back and was given the address of a restaurant on South Pulaski Road, a description of her car and a time.  

At one o'clock that afternoon, he packed up all his gear and checked out of the motel. He drove to the address and found that it was a restaurant called Buffet City, which specialized in Cajun seafood. The car, a white Mercedes coupe, was sitting away from the other cars in the rear parking lot. A very attractive woman in a short skirt and a loose black linen top got out of the car after Travis had backed in beside it. She had an iPhone in her hand. She was about five-foot-six with long legs, and a face that said retired supermodel to Travis. But as she got closer, he noticed that there was a bit of hardness to her as well. 

Travis nodded to her and opened the back door of his car. He took out the Hefty bag with the Picasso in it and handed it to Ava. She went to the back of her car and opened the trunk. She then took the painting out of the bag and stared at it for a moment, then carefully put it back in the bag and left it in the trunk. She played with her phone a bit and then walked back to Travis who was leaning on his car.

“Call up your account. Bryce” she said. To her Travis was known as someone named Bryce Timmins.

Travis got out his phone and opened up his Cayman Islands account. There was a little wheel spinning. Finally, the phone dinged and indicated that another $150,000 had been deposited in his account.

“Are we good?” she asked.

“We’re just fine, darlin’.”

She chuckled. “You southern boys are something.” 

Ava then reached into her purse and pulled out a burner phone and handed it to Travis. 

“This is how we communicate from now on. No Internet. Just you and me. Period. My number is programmed into it. Yours is programmed into mine.”

“It’s your gig, Ava. Your rules too.”

She and Travis shook hands. Then she climbed into her car. “I’ll keep in touch.” she said. “We’ll have more work for you. Whereabouts in the country are you located?”

Travis just gestured to his car. “I came from the south. But I was thinkin’ I’d hang out here for a spell.” 

“Good. That’s perfect.” She waved goodbye in a toodle-oo kind of way and drove off.

 Travis watched her go and then looked at the restaurant. He moved his car around to the front, where he could keep an eye on it, then went in for lunch. On the way, he grabbed a Sun-Times newspaper and looked for a place to live while he ate some pretty decent Cajun seafood.

Travis found the loft on West North Avenue right away, saw it that afternoon and agreed to a one-year lease. The landlord said he would draw up the lease agreement and meet him the next day. He could move in once it was signed.

Before he got in his car, Travis walked up and down the street checking out the grocery store, a couple of restaurants, the local Starbucks, and the pharmacy where Jules worked at night. 

The next day, Travis signed a lease agreement and then went shopping. The place was surprisingly nicely furnished, but he mostly just needed a few small appliances, some paint, brushes and drop sheets and some workout equipment. He opened an account at a local Citibank and deposited an $82,400 money order, which emptied out his savings account in Houston. He also leased a medium-sized safe deposit box where he stashed most of the cash and bling from his score from a few days earlier. 

Travis spent the rest of the week painting the apartment, mainly in Burgundy and cream. Early in the evening, about a week later, Travis considered himself totally settled in and redecorated and walked down to the local Starbucks. He spent the next week or so exploring the city. He even went to a Cubs game and had himself one of their famous hot dogs.

A week after the Picasso theft, Travis started reading the newspapers, looking for any word on the robbery. But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find a single thing about it. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. But something told him that he may very well have ripped off someone who lived as far outside the law as he did.

~  5 ~

2022

Travis drove Jules back to her dorm the next evening after she had worked what was her last shift at the pharmacy. She had told him she was about a week away from graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in political science. 

She also told him that her plan was to go home to Wisconsin for the summer and try to figure out what she wanted to do next, which would depend on any results she got from applying for intern work in Washington, which had always been her dream. 

Travis said he would be happy to drive her home. Jules smiled and told him he didn’t have to do that. But he insisted, telling her it was a great way to see that part of the country, and since he’d never really been north of the Mason-Dixon Line, it would be educational to boot.

They saw each other almost every night during the following week. Jules was wined and dined at some wonderful restaurants that she never could have afforded. In just a week, they had fallen pretty much in love with each other, although Travis was all in from day one.

The next week, Travis attended Jules’s graduation. He hung around the campus while Jules said goodbye to all her friends and got herself packed. Travis was now driving a new Toyota 4-Runner. He kept the older Toyota with the fake plates in the trunk in a parking garage about three blocks from his loft. 

The drive to Wisconsin was a pretty straight shot along 90 to 94. They got into Eau Claire at about eight in the evening. They had dinner, then checked into a motel, where they stayed the night. 

The next morning, they pulled into the farm at around 11 am. Aaron and Will were just coming in from the field. Dee was waiting on the front porch. She greeted them warmly and was glad to see that Jules had found herself a handsome fellow. The men shook hands with Travis, and they all went into the house and sat down for an early lunch. 

“So, what is it you do over there in Chicago, Travis?” Aaron asked. 

“Well, sir, I work in security. I guess you could call me a consultant. I go into companies and see where their current security systems are vulnerable and suggest ways to correct them.”

  Aaron scratched his head. “So do you work for a company or are you on your own?”

“More or less on my own, sir. I have a Master's degree in quantum mechanics from Texas Tech. Security was my main area of interest.”

“So how do you get business?” Will asked.

“Mostly it’s word of mouth. Do a good job for someone, they invariably know someone else. And so it goes. I’ve been in Chicago for the past two years and so far it’s been pretty steady. I thought about expanding, but I like the idea of actually having a life.”

Aaron and Will both chuckled. “You should take up farming, son,” Aaron said. “You’ll get a whole damn winter off every year.”

“So, how did you two meet?” Dee asked.

“At the pharmacy, near my school.” Jules said.

“Turns out it was right in my neighbourhood.” Travis said.

They talked about this and that and ate sandwiches and some home-baked cookies. Then the men got up, shook hands with Travis and headed back out to the field.

Jules walked Travis back out to his car. 

“I’d love it if you came back with me.” he said.

“I think I’d love it too. But I need to have a little time to myself.”

“No pressure. I know we only just met. I’m pretty sure this is it for me. So I’ll hang in there for as long as it takes.”

“No pressure?” Jules said.

“Nope.” 

“Well OK.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He got into the Toyota and drove off. Jules stood in the driveway until she couldn’t see him any longer. Then she took a deep breath and sighed. The little voice inside her was quiet. She turned and walked back to the house. Decisions, decisions, she thought. 

About two weeks after Travis got back from dropping Jules off he got a message from Ava. She wanted to meet the next day in the bar at the Hilton Chicago. Travis texted her back a thumbs up. Travis had done three scores for her since the Picasso job, but this was the first time she had wanted to meet in advance. The scores, so far, had netted him another $900,000 in fees, and another $630,000 in what he was sure was untraceable cash, some beautiful and valuable paintings, plus a bunch of other goodies he could eventually fence.

Travis sacked out early, watched a few episodes of The Blacklist on his laptop, and thought a bit about the kind of criminal mind it would take to write a show like that. 

He was up bright and early the next morning. He had a coffee and then did a workout. He had developed a very efficient workout routine, and in one corner of the loft, he had set up a mini gym, with a stationary bike, treadmill and sit-up board. He spent about 45 minutes on all that, then had a shower and headed out for breakfast. 

Jules spent the next three weeks emailing applications for internships to several different Federal departments, but the process turned out to be akin to watching paint dry. So in early July, she was sitting at home watching the wheat and the corn and the hemp grow. She was trying to be optimistic, but was slowly realizing that maybe a Bachelor’s degree from Concordia didn’t stand much of a chance in the greater scheme of things. 

The next day, Travis pulled up in front of the house in his black Toyota 4-Runner.

Jules ran out and hugged him and then they sat on the porch and Jules got to unload a lot of her frustration. Travis just listened and didn’t say anything until she was finished.

“From what I have been able to understand, Washington is nothing but a huge frat house. If you’re not Ivy League sealed and approved, well, you’re way down on the list. And while Concordia is a very well-respected college, it’s not one of those Ivy League joints.” Travis said.

“Yeah, I’m coming to the same conclusion.” There was more than a bit of bitterness in her voice.

“Listen, I’m about to hit the road heading east, and I came to invite you to come with me. It’s still summer. It’s a road trip. It’s me and you. Good food. Sights to see. What do you say? I’m sure your computer will let you know if you get a nibble.”

Jules closed her eyes and listened carefully for the little voice to scream at her. But all she felt was the warm breeze blowing across the porch. She opened her eyes and looked at Travis.

“Let’s do this.” she said and gave Travis a massive hug.

~ 6 ~

They left after dinner and got back to Chicago around 1 AM. They fooled around for a while and then both fell into a deep sleep. The next morning, Jules woke up to see Travis sitting at his computer.

He was checking something out on Google Maps. From his meeting with Ava, he had received two addresses, one in Pittsburgh, the other in a suburb of Detroit. 

Travis never asked Ava how she acquired all this intel, mainly because he didn’t care. He figured if Ava was smart enough to cook up a scheme like this, she’d surely have covered all her bases. And now that he had a contact who gave him good information, and paid him well for the work, he figured he could do this for ten years or so and have enough money to buy into a busy security company and spend the rest of his time protecting people from folks just like him.

Jules walked over and kissed Travis on the neck then went over to the kitchen area, made some coffee and sliced a couple of the bagels. She sat down at the table where Travis was working away. He turned the laptop and showed her the route they would be taking. 

“So I assume you’re going to tell me what all this travel is in aid of.” Jules said.

Travis took a sip of his coffee. “Yeah. Truth be told, I’ve been trying to think of some diplomatic way to explain this. But it’s just givin’ me a headache, so I’ll be flat out straight with you.”

“Okay. Honesty is the best policy, or so I’m told.”

“Yeah, it is. Okay. I’m a professional thief. I’ve wanted to be one since I was a kid. I read all kinds of books on burglary. I read biographies of some of the more famous thieves in history. I went to Texas Tech and got a degree in quantum mechanics and studied the designs of the world’s most elaborate security systems. I have been training to be a thief for like ever.”

Travis took a bite of his bagel and chewed it thoughtfully. Then he took a sip of coffee to wash it down.

 “When I finished school, I moved back home. We lived in a big house with a separate pool bungalow in the back which was my bedroom all through high school. So it was kinda like havin’ my own house. I got a job with a big security company and learned to design protection systems. I did that for two years, and also during that time I bought a new identity for myself.”

“So you’re not Travis LaSalle.”

“No. Well yes. I am now. I have bank accounts and credit cards in that name.”

“So what’s your real name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“No, I don’t mind. It’s Clayton Underwood. Of the Houston Underwoods,” he said with a smile.

Jules thought about that for a moment. “I like Travis LaSalle much better. So go on with the story.”

Travis took a deep breath. He was kind of relieved that Jules was not upset about any of this. A lot of people might have been.

“So when I felt I was ready to give it a try, I ran an ad on the dark web, on a site that catered to the kinds of things I wanted to do, and a few weeks later, I got a hit. It was a picture of a medium-sized Picasso here in Chicago. I sent back a price and…”

“How much?”

“Ummm…three hundred thousand.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I only had a rough frame of reference for pricing my services at that point. All the thieves I read about worked for themselves. But evidently, it was acceptable. They requested a deposit number on the account I had set up in the Cayman Islands. Half the fee was wired there almost instantly. So I left Houston. I did the job, here and eventually met my contact when I delivered the painting. 

“Over the last two years, I have done four more jobs for her, at an average of about $400,000 a job which included my fees and any cash I found. It’s all residential stuff, which is what I know best, and mostly very high-end paintings.”

“So who is this contact?” Jules asked.

“A stunning-looking blonde named Ava. That’s all I know about her. But I just met with her a couple of days ago, and she gave me this new job.”

“So you break into a house just to steal a painting?”

“Well yeah. But I take a bunch of other stuff too. If you only take the one thing, that gives the person who was robbed a clue as to who might be behind it. So you make it look like a break-in where they were taking anything that looked valuable. Jewelry, cash, watches, other paintings, that sort of thing.

Jules pointed to the three paintings on the wall of the loft. “So that explains the stuff on your walls.” 

Yeah. I suppose I could sell those too. But I kinda like them.

“What are they worth?”

“Aww jeez. I have no idea. Millions easily.”

“What about the jewelry and stuff?”

“I keep it all in a safe deposit box at my bank. Jewelry is tricky, because if you want to cash it in, you have to deal with some kind of fence, and that business is, at least from all I’ve read about it, just filled with crooks. Ava, advised me to sit on it for a long time, or take it to Canada or Mexico and unload it all there and get the hell out. But then you've got border issues to deal with, and that can be even worse than fencing the stuff in the US.” 

“Don’t you worry about the police at all?” 

“That’s the thing, Jules. I scour the newspapers after every score and never see anything. Never hear anything on the TV news either.”

“You must have a theory about why you never hear about anything.

Travis took a deep breath. “I think they are people who don't want anything to do with the law. Even if they acquired the paintings legally.”

“So you’re basically stealing stuff from crooks.”

“Sounds kind of amusing when you put it that way.” Travis said.

“What about this Ava lady? What’s your theory about her?”

“I think these people bought their paintings through someone Ava is connected to. Then she hired me to take them so she can re-sell them on the black market. Maybe over in Europe or the Middle East.” 

Jules sat down beside Travis, and sipped her coffee, “Do you ever think about getting caught?” she asked.

“All the time. But I’ve learned a lot in the last two years. And the key to all of this is doing your homework. Watching for security checks, knowing when the neighbours are in bed and asleep and the people aren’t at home.” 

“And this Ava person knows when they’re not going to be home?”

“Yeah. So far.” 

“How does that happen?”

“I never asked. She’s probably hacked their computers somehow. She would likely have had access to them via the emails that go back and forth while their art purchase was being made or whatever. I don't know for sure, but that’s what I would do. Attach the right kind of Trojan Horse to an email and you can go anywhere you want on their computers.”

“A Trojan Horse? I’ve heard of that. What is it exactly?”

“It’s a virus that gives the person who planted it access to whatever is on the target computer. It’s usually sent hidden in an email.”

Jules was spellbound. This was the closest she had ever come to a real underground industry, and she found it fascinating.

“What’s this Ava person like?”

“She’s a nice lady. Very beautiful. Very aloof. All business. A real pro. Beyond that, I have no clue. With someone like her, you don’t go asking questions.”

“Do you trust her?” 

“I trust her information, which has been pretty good so far.”

“So we’re going on the road together and you are gonna steal paintings wherever we go.” Jules said. 

“Yeah, that’s the plan. We’re only going to two different places. There was three but there was a change of plans somehow. The timings are all dictated by the information Ava gives me.”

Jules got up and poured them both another cup of coffee. She hadn’t touched her bagel.

“So that’s all of it.” Travis said.

“And you want me to come with you?”

“Yeah.”

“While you break into people's houses and steal priceless paintings from them?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess this wouldn't have anything to do with a couple raising a lot less suspicion than one guy by himself who blows into town stays for a couple of days and then splits.”

“You know, I hadn’t thought of that. But it’s a good point.”

“Why hadn’t you thought of it?” Jules asked. 

“Well, mainly because none of these scores have been reported. So there’s no police involved asking questions. No red flags. No nothing.”

That seemed to satisfy Jules, who leaned over and kissed Travis. 

“Eat your bagel and let’s hit the road, Clay.” 

On the way out of the city, in the grey Toyota, Travis made one more stop. He asked Jules to stay in the car while he went into a Starbucks on Calumet Avenue, explaining that it would be better for everyone if the guy he was going to meet didn’t see her. Jules was fine with that.

Travis came back five minutes later and started the car. They headed south out of the city. 

So who was this guy you went to see? Jules asked.

‘His name was Primo, he’s an information source and I needed to top up my account with him.”

“What does that mean, an information source?” Jules asked,

“Primo is a hacker. World class. Ex-CIA. He is a guy you contact when you want to find out stuff that you can’t find out without setting off alarm bells.”

“What kind of stuff?” Jules asked.

“Mostly I use him to find out who all lives in the houses I break into, and the kinds of protection they have that Ava may not have known about, since she mostly just knows when the houses are gonna be empty. He gives me a profile, a thousand bucks a pop.”

Jules was quiet for a bit while all this sank in. Her new boyfriend was a professional art thief. Normally, something like this would have scared the hell out of her. But she found it was quite the opposite.

 Jules was going to ask some more questions, but she thought better of it. And so far, not a peep from the little voice in her head.

~ 7 ~

They headed south from Gary on Route 65 into Indianapolis, where they picked up Interstate 70, which took them right into Pittsburgh around suppertime. They checked into a place called the Drury Inn & Suites. 

They found a nice Japanese restaurant close to the hotel and were back in their room by nine. They fooled around for a while then watched the local news, but turned it off when they realized that the news was kind of the same everywhere. 

They slept until about two AM, then got up and headed down to the Toyota. They drove north through the downtown core and eventually came to a neighbourhood where the houses were big and the trees were bigger. They turned onto a street called Saxonburg Road and came to a section where all that could be seen were the driveways and garages.

Travis, who had been studying his iPad while Jules drove, told her to go up a side street, then turn around and stop at the corner.

“Now comes the Zen part.”

“Oh, and what part is that, oh great Zen master?”

“We wait.”

“What are we waiting for?” 

“Whatever happens between now and dawn. Measure twice, cut once, little one.”

Jules got out her Kindle and opened up the Daniel Silva book she was reading. She had lost track of the number of his books she had read but she was seriously impressed with the way he was able to sustain his main character, an Israeli spy and assassin named Gabriel Allon.

“What are you reading?”

“I guess you could call it a spy story.” 

“Who’s the author?”

“Daniel Silva.”

“Oh yeah. Gabriel Allon.”

“Yeah. Have you read any of his books? 

“Only all of them. Dude is amazing.”

“Who, Silva or Allon?”

“Both.” 

They chatted for a while about spy books and discovered another thing they shared. After about an hour, they noticed a set of headlights moving slowly up the street. The car stopped in front of their target house and flashed a powerful beam across the yard and down the driveway. Then, a few seconds later it was gone.

“Three fourteen.” Travis said to himself.

Ten minutes later he closed up his iPad and tossed it in the backseat. “Okay, I’m gonna scope this out. Just drive up a few miles then turn around and come back. Turn your lights off when you get close to the house  This should only take a few minutes. From what I can tell there are no visible neighbours to deal with. I just want to check out the best way to gain entry.”

Travis got out of the car and jogged up the street. He had gone about two hundred yards, he reckoned, when the house came into view. It was very large and very modern-looking. He stood at the edge of what he thought would be the property line and stared at the house. There were a couple of lights on the higher floor, but they looked more like night lights than room lights. There was one car which looked like a Lexus, parked in the driveway, in front of the doors of a three-car garage. 

Travis walked toward the back end of the garage, then down the length of it and then peered around the corner. He could see the backyard of the house. There was a large pool, which was covered and several lounge chairs scattered around. There was also a long metal table and chairs, with an umbrella in the centre, and a large barbecue with counters on either side. He quickly crossed the driveway to the corner of the house and peeked around. There was no one anywhere to be seen. He inched his way along the back wall of the house until he came to a sliding glass door. He looked in. It was what looked to be a large recreation room with a pool table on one side, a pair of overstuffed recliners, a sofa and a whole entertainment centre on the other side. Up three steps was what looked to be a large kitchen.

Travis got out a small penlight and shone it around the outside of the sliding glass door frame. He saw nothing to indicate the presence of an alarm. And the lock looked dead easy to pick. 

What is it with rich people? he thought. Then suddenly, the answer presented itself in the appearance of a gigantic Bull Mastiff. The dog didn’t bark which, to Travis, indicated that he was well-trained and, quite possibly, a lethal weapon. The dog looked up at him with the curious head tilt of an animal trying to figure out what was going on. 

Travis slowly backed away from the door and headed to the perimeter of the property. He hid behind a tree until he saw Jules driving up the street. He quickly crossed over and got into the passenger side.

“Find what you were looking for?”

“Yeah, there’s no electronic surveillance that I could see. But there’s a bad-ass-looking watchdog. A Mastiff. Very big. Very black.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“We just have to knock him out. But first I want to find out who lives here.”

“How do we do that?”

“Primo.”

“Right. Of course.”

They slept until about one in the afternoon, then went downstairs and across the street to a place called Waffle World and had waffles with bacon and lots of coffee. While they were eating, Travis punched a number on his phone. “Hey, it’s Bryce. How’s it hanging? Good, good. Listen I need a name and whatever else you find. Yeah, 1680 Saxonburg Road, Pittsburgh PA….Yeah…Text it to me when you have it.”

Travis disconnected and put his phone on the table. 

“The dog was not in my info package from Ava. So I want to know if it’s their dog or if he belongs to someone who is house-sitting. The pool was covered, so there’s probably not a house-sitter. It’s all about knowledge is power. So far, I've been pretty lucky.” 

Jules chuckled. “What a strange world you live in.”

“Yeah, well, the game is keeping the real strangeness under control.”

Jules took a sip of her coffee. She looked at Travis for a moment, then said. “I want to show you something.”

“Oh yeah? And what would that be?”

“Log out and turn off your phone.”

Travis reached for his phone and shut it down. He put it down on the table.

Jules slid the phone over to her side of the table and turned it around. She then turned it on.

The password request panel appeared on the screen. “Okay, So I don’t know your password.”

“I don’t imagine you do. Mainly because I keep my phone open almost all the time.”

“Right. So here’s the thing…” Jules laid her right hand over the phone’s screen and held it there for about fifteen seconds. She then punched in a nine-number sequence and opened the phone.

Travis looked at the phone, and then up at Jules. “Holy shit, Jules, how the hell did you do that?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Jules said, shaking her head slowly.

“That’s quite the trick.”

“You’re the only person I've ever told about this.”

“So what other kinds of things can you open?”

“Well, some lockers at school were the first things, when I was in high school…My dad’s gun safe. The drug safe at the pharmacy. I even went to a car dealership in Chicago one time and unlocked a couple of high-end Mercedes cars.” 

“So you put your hand over the keypad and it just kind of comes to you?”

“Yeah. It just comes to me and I know the right sequence of buttons to push.”

Travis leaned back on his chair. “Well, this is really something.”

“It is, you know. And I was thinking that I could use it to help you out from time to time.” 

Travis’s first instinct was to flat-out refuse. But the more he thought about it, and the more Jules talked about it, the more he started to feel that she really needed to do this and that maybe this was the reason she had this gift. It sounded kind of crazy, but then it was a crazy world. 

Travis didn't say anything right away. 

“So, is this something that could be useful to us going forward?” Jules asked earnestly.

“I don't know. Truth is, I’m conflicted. Part of me wants to say, yeah, okay. But another part of me wants to keep you as far away from this as I can.”

“That’s sweet,” Jules said. “But did it ever occur to you that this might be the way things were intended to be? Why we met? Where we’re going? What we can do together?”

“Come on Jules. Call it chauvinistic, but this can be dangerous work sometimes and I don’t want to take any chances.”

Jules thought about that for a bit. Then she said, “You're right.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, it sounded quite chauvinistic. I’m a big girl now, Travis. I got into this relationship with my eyes wide open. I could have just said thanks but no thanks when you told me your story. But I didn’t.” 

Travis took a deep breath. “Okay, darlin’. Let’s see how it goes.”

Jules smiled. But the little voice in her head felt like screaming ‘hallelujah!’ because she had finally found the place where her gift would be the most useful. Helping this crazy art thief, whom she loved, commit more crimes. What a world, she thought.

~ 8 ~

By the time they got back to their hotel, Primo the information broker had gotten back to Travis with a name. It was Thornton Getty, a highly ranked Republican Senator, who was currently, along with his wife Olivia, attending an economic trade forum in Brussels, Belgium. There was also a picture of Getty sitting with his faithful gigantic dog, whose name was Brutus, of course.

 Travis texted back a thumbs up and sat down on the bed with his computer. “Dude is a very rich US Senator,” he said. “A Getty no less. No telling what kind of goodies he would have hangin’ around.”

The plan was to go very early the next morning, then head out of town as fast as they could and make it to Akron Ohio in time for breakfast, lay low and sleep at a nice motel for the rest of the day, go visit the Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland then head on to Dearborn, Michigan for their second score.

The patrol was ten minutes later than usual, so at about 3:30 am, Travis crept up the property line and headed to the back door. Once he had the lock on the sliding door picked. He dug around in his bag for his tranquillizer gun. 

He then called Jules and told her to back the car into the driveway with lights off, park close to the house, jump out and ring the front doorbell, then get back in the car and head up the road. This would, he was pretty certain, attract the dog to the front of the house and also let him know if there was a house sitter or not. 

About thirty seconds later, Jules pulled into the driveway got out and ran to the front door and pushed the bell. Sure enough, it attracted the dog, who bounded up the steps and down the long hall to the front door. 

Travis then picked the lock and cracked the door just wide enough to be able to draw a bead with the tranquillizer gun. Then he sat and waited. After several seconds he saw the dog at the top of the stairs. The dog moved down the stairs and walked slowly toward Travis. When he was about fifteen feet away the dog stopped and sat down.  Travis fired the dart and hit the dog squarely in his chest. 

The dog yelped a bit. Travis waited patiently. It was a big dog, and he thought about putting another dart into it, but about fifteen seconds later, the dog slowly collapsed on the floor. Travis waited another minute or so before sliding the door open. He walked over to the dog, whose breathing was quite shallow, and removed the spent dart. He would have about an hour or so he reckoned. He had his phone in his breast pocket and talked to Jules as he moved through the house. 

Travis’ experience taught him that people who don't have alarm systems are either stupid or smart. The smart people, if they are out of town for any length of time, will have some sort of safe room where they put all their precious goodies. The Senator fell into that category. He could tell from all the blank spaces on the walls of the rooms he walked through. 

After quickly going through the first and second floors, he headed to the basement. Sure enough, in the far corner, next to the washer and dryer, sat a rather substantial vault. This had to have been a new addition because it was never mentioned to him by Ava. It was a state-of-the-art Chubb vault, which meant he would only have three cracks at punching the code. At that point, the authorities would be alerted and be on top of them within ten minutes at the most. 

He was ready to just call it quits when the thought hit him. He then made a decision and told Jules to stash the car and come around to the back of the house and down into the basement.

About three minutes later, she was standing beside Travis looking at the safe. “You were right about the dog.’ she said. “He’s big and black.” 

“That he is… Look, I didn't want to take any chances with this safe. It’s a newer model and it has a lot of features that the Senator may or may not have added to it.”

Without saying anything, Jules held her right hand over the keypad without actually making contact with it, then slipped on a pair of surgical gloves. Jules and Travis put on ski masks, just in case there was a camera in the safe. Jules punched in the code, then got herself as far to the left of the safe’s door as she could, as Travis pulled the safe open. There was no camera that Travis could discern. So he walked in. He saw several framed pictures on the floor and a couple of small sculptures and a shelf filled with expensive jewelry. 

Travis opened up his large nylon bag and rifled through the paintings. until he found the Rembrandt he was looking for. He then slipped it into the bag, along with a Remington and two smaller Gustav Klimts. He picked through the jewelry and took anything that looked like it might not have sentimental value, a couple of necklaces, two Rolex watches and a small bag with what felt like two dozen or so diamonds.

On a shelf on the other side, was a steel box. But it had no lock on it. He opened it up and saw there was at least a couple hundred thousand in cash and a stack of bearer bonds. The bearer bonds were something he had never encountered before. So he took the cash and the entire stack, of what felt like about fifty or sixty bond certificates, each in the amount of $100,000.

Travis then closed up the safe, which locked automatically, and they got the hell out of there. On the way out the back door, Jules looked down at the sleeping dog. “Is he gonna be all right?” 

“Sure, in a couple of hours,” Then Travis shone his light around and found the dog’s water bowl. He picked it up and walked over to the sink behind the bar and filled the bowl, with fresh water, returning it to its original place.

“He’ll be thirsty when he wakes up,” Travis said as he relocked the sliding door. “He'll wake up and be a little groggy, but by the time whoever gets here to feed him, he’ll be fine and the Senator won’t know anything until he gets home, whenever that is.”

 They scooted over to the side of the garage and followed the property line to the road. Travis stayed in the trees while Jules jogged along the road to the side street where she had parked the car. On the windshield, she saw something that gave her a fright. It was a parking ticket. She was pretty hyped up already and this scared the hell out of her.

She jumped in the car, and tossed the ticket on the front seat and drove to the driveway where Travis was waiting. She popped the trunk as he approached. He put everything in the and covered it all with a blanket and the heavy nylon road kit bag. As he got into the car he picked up the ticket.

“I’m so sorry, Travis,” Jules said. “I should have looked at the signs.”

“It’s OK, Jules,” Travis said. “Guess you forgot that we're using the plate I bought in Indiana.”

Jules breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Yes, I did forget that. Guess I’m just nervous as hell.”

Travis just chuckled. He reached out and caressed her cheek. “You did well tonight, darlin’. This is our biggest score by a long shot.” And they drove on, heading to their next job in Detroit.

Three days later, they arrived back in Chicago, none the worse for wear. The Detroit score had gone off without a hitch. Seemed like all these rich people had pretty run-of-the-mill security. In Detroit, he got an almost priceless Modigliani religious painting, several rare first-edition books and a good-sized tray of gold coins in superb condition.

~ 9 ~

When they got home, they inventoried their loot. The bearer bonds totalled up to six point one million, plus the hundred grand in cash, the gold coins which were, according to the Internet, worth roughly three thousand each and there were a hundred, so another three hundred grand. He didn't know anything about diamonds but there were thirty-one of them and they were small and quite exquisitely cut. And the books. He’d have to do a little research to figure that out. Finally, there was the six hundred grand in fees for the scores from Ava. It all added up to a little more than seven million not counting the diamonds and the books. 

He was going to keep the Remington and planned to give the two smaller Klimts to Ava as a thank-you gift. He wasn't sure how she would feel about that but he was genuinely grateful because thanks to her, they were now pretty damn rich.

 The next day Travis went to the bank and dropped off the cash, bearer bonds, diamonds and jewelry. Then he headed to the south side to meet up with Ava at the same restaurant he met her the first time, and give her the paintings. To his surprise, she was quite moved by the gesture, and to show her appreciation she added an extra one hundred and fifty thousand to the balance she owed him.

“We’re gonna take a bit of a break.” Ava said. “I’m off to talk to some buyers and go to a couple of auctions. I’ll be gone for two weeks or so. I know the Senator Getty job was a lot more challenging. But I’m sure it was worth it.”

“Yes indeed. Also, you should know that we’re planning to leave Chicago and move to someplace smaller and warmer. I’m not a big fan of the winters up here.

“There’s a we? Well, good for you, Bryce.”

“Yeah, good for me is right. I’ll still be able to meet you here. I don’t mind the driving and neither does she. We get to see a lot of the country that way.”

“I know what you mean. I always rent a car whenever I go anywhere.” Ava said. “Have you ever been to Europe?”

“Not yet. But it's on the bucket list.”

“The food is fantastic and the people are cool.” Then Ava got into her car.

This was the first time Travis had heard Ava talk like this. He felt good about it, like she now trusted him enough to have a sort of personal conversation.

“Okay, well, have a good trip. Text me a postcard.”

Ava drove off and gave him her customary toodle-oo. Travis drove around to the front of the restaurant and parked. He waved to Jules who was sitting at a table by the window. She had ordered a beer for him, and it was just being set on the table as he arrived. 

“So was that her in the white Mercedes?” Jules asked.

“Yeah. She’s heading off to somewhere for a month or so. Probably to unload all the paintings. So we have some thinking to do.”

“About what?” 

“About where we want to live for one thing.”

Jules didn't say anything for a few seconds. “You mean move to somewhere else?”

“Yeah. We can live anywhere we want.” Travis said.

“Ummm, okay.” Jules laughed a quiet laugh. “I just never really thought about that before. But I guess you're right. What were you thinking?” 

“Well, we both know that the winters here are hellish. So I was thinking about somewhere where that wasn't the case.” Travis said.

“Somewhere like where, for example?”

“Somewhere like coastal Virginia. It’s right on the Atlantic Ocean. Winters are really mild. Summers are not usually screamin’ hot. I could eventually buy into a security business in any one of the big cities over there. And you could do whatever you wanted.”

Jules was a bit overwhelmed by all of this. But she also had a spirit of adventure. “Well, I am definitely no fan of winters and I could see why you wouldn’t be either. So I’d be willing to give it a shot. And I like the ocean part for sure.”

So it was decided, more or less. Travis talked to his landlord who took a look at what he had done with the place and immediately saw that he could get more in rental fees than Travis was paying. So he was fine with ending Travis’s lease with no penalty. Travis also met up with Primo at a Starbucks on South Halstead Street in Englewood. He gave him five thousand dollars in one-thousand-dollar bills, to be applied to the further searches.

After that, he headed back downtown to stash his grey car out behind a gas station for a hundred bucks a month. Then they got packed for the trip east.

~ 10 ~

Thornton Getty and his wife, Olivia, arrived home from Europe to find that their house had been robbed. 

They didn't notice it at first. Because there was nothing to indicate that anything had taken place until they opened their vault to get out the artwork and Olivia’s jewelry. The dog, Brutus, seemed to be happy to see them. They checked the doors and nothing looked jimmied. They called their daughter who lived in the north end and whose job it was to feed and walk the dog and she said everything was fine. They called the security company and they reported no suspicious activity.

The entire thing was a complete mystery. Olivia looked through the jewellery and noted none of the older pieces were taken. Olivia urged Thornton to call the police. And that’s when Thornton quickly thought through the negative political ramifications of doing that and then explained it to his wife. 

Thornton Getty was already a billionaire several times over and was able to buy his way into politics. But the last thing he wanted to do was to add wood to the fire that was already burning under the Republican party.

He spent the better part of that night wondering just how the thieves were able to get past Brutus who had been professionally trained. Whoever it was who committed this crime had his grudging respect. But he also knew that they must have had some inside knowledge of his life. Of course, being a public figure, his life, like the lives of every public figure in America, was kind of an open book. 

He talked about it with Olivia over breakfast the next day. She understood the political aspect of the situation but expressed her regret that what little privacy they had left had been violated, and expertly so. Now she would worry every time they left the house. Thornton told Olivia that the best way to handle this was privately because the last thing they wanted was for any news of this burglary to go anywhere. He’d seen enough scandal in Washington to know that if the press ever got hold of it, they would ride it till the last dog died.

That evening, after Olivia had gone upstairs to call her sister, Getty called Jay Ferguson. 

The next morning, Ferguson showed up at the door. Hilda, the housekeeper showed him into the study where Getty was sitting at his desk, reading over a white paper from a small stack of them. The two men shook hands.

Jay Ferguson was one of those invaluable people in Washington. He was the guy who got politicians out of whatever hot water they managed to get themselves in. It ran the gamut from infidelity scandals to insider trading and everything in between. It was one of the unwritten laws in Washington that all personal scandals, Republican or Democrat, were swept under the rug as quickly as possible. 

Jay Ferguson was one of the guys with a broom. He was about six-one and handsome, extremely well-dressed, a native of Lexington, Kentucky, and a former Secret Service Agent and Lexington police Detective. Jay was a born sleuth and while the Secret Service was interesting, it simply wasn’t three-dimensional enough for him. So he resigned after a year and for the next few months, planned his next move, soldering and creating new connections and finally, using the network he had built up to float himself out there as a fixer. 

 He started small. Mostly paying hush money to ex-lovers and dealing with various other political people who invaded or got invaded by the outside world. Gradually, He broadened his scope of activities and was now, six years later, was one of the few go-to guys for polishing up tarnished images and generally keeping the press in line about certain controversial issues.

Jay had made himself one of the most well-connected people in all of Washington and right now, Thornton Getty needed to rent Jay for a while.

After the small talk segment, Getty got right down to it. “You know, Olivia and I just celebrated our thirtieth anniversary. After the economic summit, in Brussels, I took her to Italy, which is where we went on our honeymoon.”

“That sounds romantic as all get out, Senator.” Jay said.

“Yeah, it was. But when we got home, we were presented with a bit of a mystery. It seemed that someone had broken into the house, got past my dog, a trained killer, cracked my uncrackable safe and made off with a bunch of very valuable stuff. 

“What kind of stuff are we talkin’ about?”

Getty took a deep breath. “Well, there was some cash and jewelry, some diamonds, some bearer bonds that my dad left me, about six million dollars worth give or take, redeemable by anyone, and four extremely valuable paintings plus the certificates of authenticity for all of them.”

Ferguson leaned back in his chair. “And the paintings, what’s the value?”

“They are priceless, son. There was a Rembrandt, a Remington and two smaller paintings by Gustav Klimt, a very famous Austrian painter. If you were auctioning these off anywhere in the world they would each be worth tens of millions easily.”

“And the diamonds? What’s the story there?”

“There were thirty-four stones all expertly cut, two and four carats each in weight and one at 5 carats. I was planning to have them made into a necklace for Olivia. But I wanted to show her the diamonds and let her decide how she would want them to be mounted.”

“Well, the jewelry, that’s gonna be tough because a lot of times the people who fence this stuff sell it to jewellers who turn it into other items. The diamonds would also be hard to trace, especially if the thieves know what they were doing. They’d smuggle them into Canada, Mexico or Europe and sell them there.”

“So are you saying there’s no hope here?”

“Not a hell of a lot, sir. We could start with the paintings. How did you acquire them?”

Getty hesitated for a couple of beats. Then he said, “From a gallery in New Orleans,” he paused again then closed his eyes briefly, “The Deschanel Gallery.”

Ferguson wrote down the name on his iPhone. “And you’re sure about the authenticity?”

“Oh yes,  Olivia is on the board at Sotheby’s, and we had one of their people look over all the paintings and documentation.”

“I can follow up on this Deschanel place and see what shakes out. Right now, it’s the only valid clue in the game. But if we can find the thieves, there’s always a good chance that they could be sitting on the jewelry, ‘cause fencing in this country is risky business.

Getty then showed Ferguson the safe. It was a beast all right, as was the huge black Mastiff who followed them down into the basement. 

Ferguson then advised Getty to invest in some state-of-the-art home security and cameras, which Getty told him was already in the works. He left, promising to send Getty an estimate for his time once he got back from New Orleans and had checked out this Deschanel Gallery. He would have a better idea of how far he could go after that.

As Getty walked Ferguson to the door, he said. “I'm not fussed about what they stole, so much as I am curious about how they did it.” Getty said.

“I’ll make sure and ask them when and if I find them, sir.”

~ 11 ~

Jules and Travis, in the Toyota 4Runner, got to Virginia Beach mid-morning of their second day on the road.

The first thing they did in Virginia Beach was find a BankAmerica where Travis rented a large safety deposit box. They stashed Travis’ cash, diamonds, books and bearer bonds, along with his four paintings. He had left the jewelry in his safe deposit box in Chicago. Then they checked into the Hilton, where they had booked a small suite overlooking the beach. The Hilton looked to be the nicest of all the hotels they scoped out before leaving Chicago. 

They were so beat by the time they got unpacked that they just laid down and slept until about nine that night, then went out driving around to look for a good place to eat.

The next morning, they sat out on their balcony drinking coffee, munched on room service bagels and stared out at the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. 

“According to Google Maps, if we go down to the beach and head south, we will come to a whole line of beach houses. We can walk back on the road and see if there’s anything for rent that we might like.” Travis said.

 Sounds like a plan.” Jules said. For a girl who grew up about as far from the ocean as you can get in America, she found herself feeling right at home here. “You know, when you first mentioned coming out here, I thought, wow, that’s a long way from what I’m used to. But now that I’m here, it just feels…I don't know…. comfortable.”

“I feel the same way, Jules. Although when I was still at home, we did have the Gulf, and I remember going down there a few times when I was a kid. I was more thinkin’ about latitude. It doesn’t get godawful cold here like it does up north. That was the hardest thing for me to adjust to in Chicago.”

Jules chuckled. “Yeah, it’s even worse the further west you go.”

~ 12 ~

Jay Ferguson got into New Orleans in the early afternoon. He got his rental car at the airport and drove directly into the city. He found Roland Deschanel’s gallery, simply called The Deschanel Gallery, about half a block off Bourbon Street, which was bustling with tourism.

The gallery was small and tasteful, displaying mostly oils but with a modern attitude. Roland Deschanel, the owner, was a small man who, Jay surmised, was his early fifties. He was casually but elegantly dressed in light clothing. His hair was long but well-groomed. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a large Rolex on his wrist. His eyes were dark and curious and he watched Ferguson move around taking in the paintings. He said nothing until Ferguson came to the counter and sat down. 

“Mr Deschanel? Roland Deschanel?”

“Yes sir. How may I help you?”

“My name is Jay Ferguson. I work for Senator Thornton Getty, whom you may know.”

“Getty? No, I’m sorry sir, I am unfamiliar with that name.”

“Well, he knows you, sir. I believe he purchased paintings from you.”

“How long ago was this purchase made.”

“He told me he’s had the paintings for about four years.”

And he mentioned me by name?

“No sir, just the name of the gallery.”

Ferguson reached into his pocket and pulled out photos of the paintings and handed them over to Deschanel, who studied them intensely. While he was doing that, Ferguson slipped a small disk out of his pocket and attached it to the underside of the tabletop that served as Deschanel’s counter.

“Ahh. Well of course I didn’t remember the name but yes, we sold these paintings in a small lot about four years ago. I didn't put the name together with the pieces until you showed them to me. Yes, he was definitely my partner’s client.”

“And who is your partner? 

“Yes, her name is Ava Fairburn.”

“And how would I get hold of her, sir?”

Deschanel grabbed a pen and a small pad of Post-it notes and wrote down a name and number, and handed it to Ferguson. 

“Do you mind telling me what this enquiry is in aid of?” Deschanel asked.

“That’s confidential. I just wanted to make sure I was talking to the right person here, and it seems that Ms. Fairburn would be that person.”

“And what exactly is it that you do for the Senator, sir?”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential as well.”

Ferguson then reached into his pocket and pulled out his business card. He handed it to Deschanel. “I trust you appreciate the sensitivities involved here, and I assure you, this is not part of any criminal investigation of your gallery. It’s strictly a private matter.” he said.

“I understand,” Deschanel said and handed Ferguson a card of his own. “But as you can well imagine, our business is built on absolute confidentiality. And I assume you are not with any authorized branch of law enforcement or you would not be asking so politely.”

“You’re right. I’m a private investigator. Just one last question? I’m not an art expert, but I understand that there is something called provenance, which gives the paintings their value.” 

“That’s correct. But I don't hear a question.”

“Just wondering if it’s possible to fake this provenance. You know, say if these paintings were stolen somehow.”

“That would depend on the buyer. Great wealth and great intelligence do not often go hand-in-hand in America. From my own experience, around half of my buyers, for example, ever bother to have third-party confirmation. They look over the documentation and generally just nod. Remember sir, most buyers are not buying the art for the purpose of re-selling it. We call them hoarders. So if you know how to forge the provenance documentation, even poorly, re-selling paintings with fake provenance documentation would not be difficult at all.”

“And would someone like yourself, for instance, be able to create a good forged provenance document?”

“That’s an interesting question, sir. I’ve never been asked to do that, although I suppose if I had the original documentation, it would be a fairly simple thing. But, of course, if you have the original documentation, why would you need to?”

“Good point.” Ferguson replied. He had floated the question to Deschanel to see if he would let anything slip out that he perhaps didn't want to say. He didn’t.

“So has the Senator had these paintings stolen?” Deschanel asked. “I mean your questions would tend to lead one to that conclusion.”

Ferguson just smiled and got to his feet. “Thank you very much for your help, Mr. Deschanel.”

Ferguson left the gallery. As he was walking down the street, he took out his phone and activated an app called Hear-Say, which picked up and recorded anything that was overheard by the remote microphone he had discreetly attached to the underside of Deschanel’s table.

About thirty seconds after he left the gallery, Deschanel was on the phone. He punched in a series of beeps, which Ferguson’s phone decoded into numbers that displayed in the text window of the app. He quickly put on his headphones.

“Rolly, hi.” said a female voice.

“Hello, my dear. Where are you?”

“At my apartment. Just packing things up. Then I will be off to Europe.”

“Well, I wanted to inform you that a man named Jay Ferguson just paid me a visit. He’s evidently working for a Senator Getty.”

“That’s interesting.” 

“Indeed.” 

“What exactly did he want?”

“I think he was on what the bad detective shows call a fishing expedition.”

“Hmmm.” 

“I gave him your number, so I assume he will be calling you shortly.”

“That’s good.” Ava said.

“Just so you know, my impression of Mr. Ferguson is one of a man who is much more than meets the eye.” 

“Well, we shall see what we shall see. I’m going to call Jonas before I leave.” 

“Okay.” Roland said, immediately on his guard. “Do have a safe flight.”

“Thanks, Rolly. Stay in touch.”

The call disconnected. Ferguson walked to a coffee shop, ordered a latte and sat down at a table in the front of the shop. He pulled his laptop out of his bag and started it up while he sipped his coffee. He then did a Google search for Ava Fairburn and came up with several different results. But as he scrolled down he saw Ava, who was a partner in the Deschanel gallery.

He spent the next few minutes looking through Ava’s profile on the Deschanel Gallery’s website and her business profile on LinkedIn. ‘Gotta love the Internet,’ he thought. ‘Takes away everybody’s privacy and makes’em dead easy to find if you’re looking for them.’

As Ferguson was drinking his coffee, he called Ava’s phone. Ava did a pretty good job of sounding surprised to hear from Ferguson, which immediately told him something.

He explained that he would be heading back north later in the afternoon but could meet with her any time before five PM. They set a time and a location at the airport.

After she disconnected, Ava immediately dialled another number. A Cajun-sounding voice answered. 

“This is Jonas.”

“Jonas, it’s Ava”

“Hello chere, what can I do for you?”

“Sometime today, sooner rather than later, I’d like you to go over to the gallery and do a sweep for bugs. We’ve had a visitor I don't trust.”

“Will do. Should I call Roland?”

“No. Just get over as fast as you can.”

“Consider it done, my dear.”

She called Roland back and told him to expect a visit from Jonas.

She disconnected and then took out her other phone and punched in Travis’s Bryce number.

“Hi Ava.”

“Hi Bryce.”

“How are you?”

“I’m good. How are you?”

“Fine. I thought we were taking a break.”

“We are. I just wanted to let you know something.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a guy. His name is Jay Ferguson. He’s some sort of private investigator. He’s working for the Senator.”

“Okay.”

“You’re three steps removed from where he’s looking right now, and I’m assuming I don’t know your real name.”

“That’s a valid assumption. Can’t be too careful in this business.”

“Just a heads up.”

“Well okay. There’s nothing I can think of that would get him as far as me.”

“I know. It’s just the way the world is now, information is easy to come by if you know how to look for it.” Ava said.

“I hear you.”

“This will probably blow over, so I wouldn’t worry about it. But forewarned is forearmed.”

“All right. Well, have a good trip.”

“Thanks. Have you found a new place yet?”

“Not yet, but we're actively searching.”

“Well, good luck. I’ll be in touch.”

“Okay.”

Travis disconnected and put the phone down on the table, between the chairs he and Jules were sitting in on the balcony of their hotel room.

“Who was that?” Jules asked.

“That was Ava. She was just checkin’ in to see how I was doin’.”

“Is something happening I should know about?”

Travis took a deep breath. “The Senator, the job we did in Philly, he’s got a detective snoopin’ around.”

“Is that something we should be worried about?” 

“Naa. Ava doesn't even know my real name. And she sure as hell doesn't know any more about me than that I’m very capable.”

While the news did not frighten Travis, it did underline the seriousness of what he was doing and got him resolved to be even more diligent as they moved forward. 

~ 13 ~

Jay Ferguson was already sitting in the lounge at the Hilton across the highway from the Louis Armstrong International Airport. 

Ava entered the hotel and looked over at the lounge, which was nearly deserted and saw the man she thought was Ferguson sitting at the bar staring at his phone.

She stopped just outside the entrance to the bar and called Jonas.

“I’m at the coffee shop with Roland” Jonas said. “We found something beneath the counter where he talked with Ferguson.”

“Good work, Jonas. What does it look like?”

“It’s a disc, roughly the size of a silver dollar. Looks like it's fastened with some form of adhesive .” 

OK, so I want you to go back and pry it loose and put it in a Faraday pouch. But be careful not to touch the bottom side. There may be a fingerprint.” 

“Gotcha.”

“Then take it back to your place and stash it in your safe.”

“Will do.”

“Let me have Rollie.”

“I’m here,” Roland said.

“Jonas is going to remove the bug and stash it. I’m meeting with Mr. Ferguson now. I’ll see if I can’t short-circuit all of this.”

“He’s a bulldog, cher. He won't go quietly.”

“He not the first bulldog we’ve dealt with. Probably won't be the last either.”

Ava disconnected. She had built her business with solid firewalls, courtesy of Jonas, who was Roland’s life partner and a programming genius, a smart business partner in Roland, and several other trusted associates, which she kept at arm’s length from each other. She was confident that she could get rid of this Ferguson like she had a few others in the past.

The bar at the Hilton was more like a sports bar. It was ringed with large screen TVs showing mostly news channels since it was a weekday afternoon. Ferguson sat perched on a high seat at the bar. Ava entered the bar and stood looking over the tables, when she scanned the bar, he put up an arm and she walked over and took a seat next to him.

“Jay Ferguson, ma’am.” He said and extended his hand. Ava reached out and gently shook it. It felt rough like he did stuff with his hands when he wasn’t doing whatever else he did.

“Ava Fairburn.” Ava said.

The bartender came over and Ava ordered a glass of white wine. 

“So I understand that Senator Getty has had some paintings stolen from his home.”

“No flies on you.”

“Well, nobody sends a detective and political fixer all the way to New Orleans for anything less.”

“You’re familiar with art theft?”

“We sell art, Mr. Ferguson. We’re always on the usual suspects list whenever anything like this happens.”

“So this happens often?”

“Not very. But it has happened to a few of our clients over the years?”

“You don’t say.”

“Usually, the victims call the police. But instead, here you are.”

“The Senator is a Republican. Things need to be kept out of the media. I’m sure you’re smart enough to understand that.”

“Yes, there are more than enough Republican scandals to go around. What I am not smart enough to understand is why you would be investigating the Deschanel Gallery. Our business is quite legitimate.”

“To tell you the truth, it’s the only avenue of inquiry we have.”

“And this entitled you to plant a listening device in my gallery?”

Ferguson said nothing as Ava’s wine glass was put down in front of her and she took a small sip.

“I had it carefully removed, Ava said, “And I’m led to believe that there is a partial print on the surface of the device. I’d hate to think about the political ramifications if it were your print and that little tidbit became public, you know.”

“If I had planted this device, you can rest assured that there would be no fingerprints on it. This is not my first rodeo, Ms. Fairburn. That device could have been planted by anyone.”But in the back of his mind, he was wondering if he hadn’t actually fucked up.

Ava took a sip of her drink and chuckled. “Be that as it may, you know the media in this country, reality is no longer factored into a story. And this one is pretty juicy.”

Ferguson stared at Ava and every nerve in his body told him that this was one vicious woman.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” he said. “But, as I said, this was the only lead we had. Whoever did the break-in at the Senator’s house had to get past a pretty lethal guard dog and open a safe that had a twelve digit access code. They came and went like ghosts.”

“And you think that part of my business is stealing paintings we have sold, quite legitimately, to re-sell them?”

“Well, you have to admit, that could be a very lucrative business.”

Ava chuckled. “Obviously you have no idea how lucrative the legitimate side of this business is.”

“No, I don’t know much about the art world. But I’m learning a little more every day.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. But your bug has been captured, and the Senator has my deepest sympathy. And I suggest that you pursue another avenue of enquiry because, as I understand it, these investigations are powered by evidence, of which you, Mr Ferguson, have none.”

Ava got to her feet and offered her hand, which Ferguson shook without saying a thing. He was too busy computing the downside risk of continuing on this avenue of enquiry.

As she was turning to leave, Ferguson said, “Do you mind if I call you if I have any more questions?”

“As long as they don’t involve ridiculous allegations, certainly.”

Ava walked away thinking, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’

Jay Ferguson’s innate skill of judging character was screaming at him that this lady was running a hell of a game. As he finished off his beer, he wondered just how many other people had been her victims. And that went round and round in his head because he couldn’t really figure out a way to find out definitively. This brought him right back around to Senator Getty and why the Senator had called him and not the police or the FBI. Guys like Getty could have bought as much radio silence as they needed.

The next morning, Ferguson got hold of the Senator and set up a meeting with him at his home in Philadelphia.

Later that day, Travis and Jules were being shown through a beach house on a street called Ocean Front Avenue. It was the third property they had looked at and it was far and away the nicest. 

The next day, Travis signed a one-year lease and that night they were ensconced in a beautiful, fully furnished three-bedroom house with an almost total glass wall facing the ocean. At $3300 a month, it wasn’t the most expensive property they had seen, but it had central air and wifi as part of the package, as well as the most comfortable furniture and the best back deck.

That night, they picked up a pizza and a bottle of red wine and sat out on their new deck, looking at the waves breaking and thinking that they really had made the right decision. 

The next day, as Jules took the car out early to do some shopping, Travis started putting the wheels in motion to get rid of his loot. He started by texting Primo the finder with a request for a trustworthy fence with deep pockets on the east coast of the United States.

An hour later, he received a list with three names and numbers, along with a note. ‘These guys are all good, but the Italian guy is probably the most well-connected. Texts only from a new burner. You can be as explicit are you like. These guys all have clean phones.’

The names on this list were Alberto Castellano, Thomas Fry, and Jacob Allen. He decided to try these one at a time to limit the amount of exposure he would be pulling. 

So, on Primo’s recommendation, he composed a text to Alberto Castellano on a burner phone he had purchased somewhere in Pennsylvania on their way east.

<<Hello. You came recommended by Primo in Chi-Town. I have several items that you might be interested in. Three rare first edition books, 30 rare gold coins in excellent condition, 31 cut diamonds one and two carats plus one bigger one, at five carats and $6.1 million in $100K bearer bonds. If you would like to meet up and check out this material out, I will be happy to meet you in any public place of your choosing. If this works out to our mutual benefit, I will be happy to have it become an ongoing relationship.

Bryce Timmins >>

Travis sent the text off, then deleted it. He then walked back out onto the deck where Jules and her Kindle had pretty much taken up permanent residence. 

“So I got some names from Gianni and texted one of them to set up a meeting. So we can take a little road trip.”

“Where to?” 

“New York City.”

“Sounds like fun.” 

“Could be.” 

Two hours later, Travis received a return text. 

<< Roger that. I’m in NYC. Can meet you Thursday 2:00 PM at the 59th Street entrance to Central Park. We can find a quiet spot in the park. P.S. Not interested in the paper, but will give you some advice. Berto.>>

Travis texted back an acknowledgement. He then grabbed his laptop and headed out to the deck to sit on the steps with Jules and start searching for things to do in New York City

~ 14 ~

Ava drove down to the harbour in New Orleans late that night. There were several cargo ships anchored there, about a quarter of a mile out. In the trunk of her car was an oversized aluminum case. In it were the twelve paintings that Travis had stolen from the houses up north. 

She drove along the deserted dock until she found the spot she was looking for, then backed the Mercedes up to about four feet from the edge of the pier. She got out and leaned on the trunk. She was waiting for the captain of one of the large cargo ships in the bay. His name was Antonovich Petrov. He would deliver the package to a hotel in southern Spain. One or two days later, he would find his Swiss bank account would be $500,000 fatter. He knew the pretty blonde lady would hold up her end, just as she had twice before.  

Ava got the auction idea four years earlier. Her total overhead was relatively small price to pay for the kind of profitability that came with the reselling of valuable paintings.

A few minutes later, a small open outboard pulled up to the pier. Ava hauled the aluminum case out of the trunk of her car and lowered it down into the waiting arms of Captain Petrov. 

“Five days, blondie.” Petrov said.

“Five days is fine.” Ava said as she watched him motor off into the black night.

Although she was a business owner in the US, Ava was actually Canadian. She was the eldest daughter of Lucas Fairburn, who was the CEO of Fairburn Enterprises which made, among other things, guidance systems for commercial and military aircraft. Not wanting to have anything to do with a business as outright sexist as engineering, she took her endowment of $5 million, which she received upon completion of her degree in art history at the University of Toronto, and headed south.

Almost immediately upon arriving in New Orleans, she happened upon a small gallery just on the edge of the French Quarter. It was a sleepy little shop that specialized in European Renaissance art. The owner was Roland Deschanel, whom Ava got to know over the course of a few visits. Ava had already figured out exactly what she was going to do to make her fortune and the Deschanel Gallery was the perfect vehicle for that. 

For $2 million she purchased a full partnership in the gallery. She then invested another $50,000 in re-developing the Deschanel website. The process of gaining knowledge and developing a reputation in the business took a sustained effort for the better part of two years, starting small and working her way up as the list of satisfied clients grew. Ava’s diligent efforts started to pay off, mainly because her follow-through with the people was quick and professional. Coming from a rich family herself, Ava knew that rich people preferred to associate with other rich people, so once the ice was broken with the first dozen or so acquisitions, new clients, mainly from referrals, started coming.

Roland’s depth of art knowledge and Ava’s good looks and outstanding upper-class salesmanship transformed the Deschanel gallery into one of the better-kept secrets in the North American art world. Roland Deschanel was the perfect frontman. Cultured, upper-crust and extremely knowledgeable. He treated the clientele with the combination of affability and arrogance they naturally expected. 

But Ava was the real engine of the operation. She scoured the estate sales and travelled extensively, paid fair prices for the paintings and she and Roland skillfully and profitably negotiated the resales. While she was travelling, she wrote all of the posts that appeared on the Deschanel Gallery blog as, and as her experience and expertise grew, she also wrote articles for several high-end art and architectural publications. 

At the end of the fourth year, the Dechanel Gallery was a multi-million-dollar enterprise. One evening, Ava took Roland and his partner Jonas Dupree, who managed the website, out for dinner to celebrate their anniversary together and she revealed to them what she referred to as the next level of activity. 

With some help from Jonas, who was also an inveterate hacker with several connections in the criminal underworld, Ava had put together a plan to re-acquire some of the paintings they had sold over the past few years. 

This was doable because, according to Jonas, all he really needed was an email address. Ava had a rather substantial email database of Deschanel clients that she used to keep them updated on things of interest in the art world. 

Jonas told her that he could embed her email program with a Trojan Horse, which would give Ava access to the email programs in whatever computers she sent it to. 

This way, Ava could keep track of the comings and goings of her present and former customers, the majority of whom had not chosen to discontinue her email newsletters.

After the bug was planted, Ava ran this entire surveillance program from a MacBook Pro computer that she would use at any Starbucks or local coffee shop. Since the MacBook was not linked to the Deschanel network, it simply floated free in the ether, almost totally undetectable. Just another computer in a world of millions.

Once Ava’s access was established, she went about the task of finding someone who would do the breaking and entering for her. Jonas Dupree told her that he knew someone who would fit the bill. Two days later, she met with Dallas Taylor, an old school friend of Jonas’s, who had driven down from Atlanta, where he lived, or at least that’s what he told Ava. 

Ava had become an excellent judge of character, and she saw in Dallas Taylor both the quality and depth of experience she would need. She provided him with the basic information and gave him a burner phone with one number in it, which was a burner of her own. This is how they would communicate for the next two years, while Dallas went methodically about the task of retrieving fifteen paintings in all. The tasks were made possible because of Ava’s careful monitoring of the emails of her clients. She became very adept at this analysis and was able to provide Dallas with almost flawless timing information.

Because Ava had customers and referrals from all over the country, she decided to divide the country into quarters. So their starting quarter was the southeast. This meant that Dallas was never really much more than a day’s drive from any given target. They mined the southeast for two years, then Dallas relocated to Phoenix, Arizona and they focused on the southwest quadrant. 

At the end of Dallas’s fourth year, he was more than well enough off to retire, He had gotten to like the dry heat that Arizona offered and had also met a woman there. So he delivered his last paintings and announced his intentions. Ava had no problem with that because she knew that once somebody took their head out of the game, disaster would surely follow.

Less than a quarter of the thefts were reported, simply because the rich people who owned the paintings had neither the time nor the inclination to deal with the police. Also, there were enough thefts from people who weren’t Deschanel clients but were on Ava’s mailing list to divert a good deal of suspicion.

The people who did call the police usually ended up regretting the huge time suck that it turned out to be, which, for them, was time away from making money. As a result, most of them simply withdrew their complaints. The few calls the gallery received were from bored detectives asking routine questions, which Roland had been expertly coached to answer politely and provide no insight. 

In short, Ava had devised the mechanics of as perfect a crime as these things could be. She was also surprised at the scrupulous honesty possessed by the people she had to deal with to keep her underground enterprise afloat. Honour among thieves was more than just a cliche. It was, in fact, part of Ava’s reality.

Three months and two overseas auctions later, she spotted the ad from Travis and their relationship had begin shortly she had Jonas check out ad for authenticity, because Ava knew that the police were pretty much as devious as the criminals they tied to catch. But Travis’s ad checked out and their relationship began.

~ 15 ~

Jay Ferguson was shown into the study of Getty’s home in Philadelphia. The Senator was on the phone and motioned for Ferguson to take a seat, which he did across the large oak desk.

After a minute or so, Getty disconnected and turned to face Ferguson.

“Good to see you, Jay.” Getty said.

“Same here sir.”

“So I got your report. Tough nut to crack.”

“Yeah, well, these people, whoever they are, are the real deal. But I finally got to meet up with Miz Fairburn. She’s quite a piece of work.”

“Quite a looker too, as I recall.”

“Indeed, she is.”

“So is she still a person of interest, or not?”

“Well sir, my gut tells me she still is. But there’s not much to go on. I tried bugging the gallery, but she caught onto that right quick.”

“You’re not in any trouble?”

“Not that I know of, sir. But I would like to dig a little deeper. I’m quite interested in just how she would know that you’d be out of the country. I mean this was not something that was general knowledge.”

Getty leaned back in his chair. “You know, I was thinkin’ the same thing myself. Do you think that she could have somehow tapped my phone?”

Ferguson thought about that for a long while. “Tell me, Senator, have you had any occasion to contact the gallery since you bought the paintings?”

“No. But I do get a regular email newsletter from them. I actually asked for that when I bought the paintings, you know, in case they came across anything interesting.”

“And what computer does that newsletter go to?”

Getty got up and walked over to a side table. He took a MacBook computer from it and brought it over to his desk.

“This is separate from my main computer. National security and all. I mostly just use it to watch baseball games, and my wife and I use it for our family correspondence and other personal stuff.”

“Can you open it for me, sir?”

 Getty opened it up and started the computer. He turned it around so Ferguson could take a look at it. “So you do all of your family stuff with this. Like ordering plane tickets, reserving hotels, that sort of thing.” 

“Yeah. Personal travel on the government’s dime is frowned upon, as you can well imagine. So we keep our private lives completely separate.”

“Well, if I were going to hack your computer, the best way to do it without actually sitting in front of it would be through your email program. Somebody sends you an email with an invisible little virus. Once you open the email, the virus just sneaks in and opens up a link back to whoever sent it.” 

“That’s pretty devious.” 

“It’s also very clever, because you would never really know it.”

“So what do we do?” the Senator asked.

“Well, first of all, we need to confirm that that could be the case. It’s just a semi-educated guess at the moment. I’d like to bring someone in to have a look at it.”

“Take it with you, Jay. Save you a lot of back and forth. There’s nothing on there that I really need. And once you figure it out, get them to clean the computer.”

“Well, first things first, sir. Let’s find out if my guess is right or not.”

“Fair enough. So I suppose you’ll be staying on the case for a while longer. 

“Yes sir. I’d like to. This could be the break I’ve been looking for.”

“Go get’em son.” 

Getty got pulled the power cord for the computer out of his desk and put it on top of the laptop, which he then slid across the table to Ferguson. “There’s no password, so you can just open it right up.” Getty said.

“Sir, I need to ask you a question.” Ferguson said.

“Ask away son.”

“You’re one of the richer people in America. I guess I’m just wondering why it is you are so determined to find these people.”

“That’s a good question, Jay.” Getty leaned back in his chair. “Whoever did this obviously has either some incredible skills, or is getting inside information. The code for my vault downstairs is twelve digits. Hell, I have to use a piece of paper with the password on it to open it myself. If it turns out that someone in my sphere provided them with that information, I want to know about it so I can plug that leak. But what interests me more is if they have the kind of talent to crack a code like that, I think they could be very useful to us, meaning the US government.” 

“So you want me to find them so you can recruit them.”

“That’s one way of puttin’ it.”

“Okay, well, I’ll keep sniffin’ around, sir.”

“You have carte blanche, Jay. Just find these folks and bring’em to me, if that’s at all possible.”

Ferguson picked up the computer and shook hands with the Senator. As he was driving back to DC he was thinking a lot about Ava Fairburn, the game she was playing and the players she had helping her win at it.

~ 16 ~

Two days before they were to leave for New York, Travis bought a new BMW sedan. It was sleek and black and felt like driving on a cushion of air. 

On the day they were set to leave for New York, they headed north right after breakfast and drove pretty much nonstop, pulling into the Pierre Hotel in mid-town Manhattan, where they had made a reservation, at about 6 PM. They ordered room service and watched a bit of the news. Then they went for a walk down Broadway, but they didn’t stay out too long. Travis wanted to have his wits about him when he met with Alberto the next day.

The next morning, they slept in and had an early lunch at a little trattoria they found a couple blocks from the hotel.

They then walked down 59th Street to the southern entrance to the park. Travis told Jules to hang back and keep an eye on things and call him if she saw anything suspicious. Jules wasn't quite sure what suspicious meant to Travis, so she just nodded and walked away.

Travis hung out at the entrance. Jules got a coffee from a street vendor and sat down on the wall across the entranceway and did some people watching.

A few minutes later, a man in a nicely tailored suit appeared. He stopped and looked around until he saw Travis. He walked over to him and he spread his arms. “Gimme a hug like we’re old friends from the neighbourhood.” Travis hugged the man, who was about his height. He filled out the suit quite nicely. His hair was long and black and his skin was dark, which Travis assumed would make him Sicilian. 

“Let’s walk.” Alberto said. And he and Travis started to walk into the park.

“What do I call you? Bryce?”

“Yeah, that’ll do just fine. And what about you? ” 

“Berto. Short for Alberto.” He pronounced it ‘Bear toe’. 

They walked along for a while, saying nothing. 

“You sound like you’re from somewhere down south.” Berto said.

“Louisana.”

“Southern boy. So, how long you been in the business?”

“A few years.”

“So from the sounds of your message, you’re takin’ down some pretty lucrative scores.”

“Yeah well, it’s got its ups and downs.” Travis said, not wanting to give away too much. 

“So we’ll get some coffee, then find a nice quiet table and I’ll see what you got.”

“Sounds like a plan.” 

“Alright.”

They spied a coffee vendor and Berto ordered them two expressos. They walked a little farther and found a small area with picnic benches. They moved to the outside edge, which was almost totally enclosed by thick bushes.

“So let me have a look at the merch.” Berto said.

Travis took out his phone and opened the photo program. He had meticulously photographed all the items.

“The books are all very rare, signed first editions. Mint condition. Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice and Gone With The Wind.” Travis said.

Berto flipped to the coins. 

“Fifty-six, two-dollar gold pieces. Very rare. Again, mint condition.”

Berto flipped to the gemstones. 

“All flawless round cuts.” Travis said. “Thirty-one in all. One is five carats, then there are fifteen at one carat and another fifteen at two carats. I had them appraised a while ago.” 

“So the jeweller who appraised them, he didn't want to buy them?” 

“Sure he did but, I only showed him one of each and told him they were an inheritance and I wanted to do something with them for my wife. The last thing I wanted to tell him was that I had thirty-one of them.”

“He give you a price for the stones?” Berto asked.

“No. Told me they were very high end stones and their exact value would depend on the buyer and what they would use the diamonds for. Could be anywhere from six to twenty thousand. 

“And they’re not lab-grown?” 

Travis had no idea what Berto meant by that, since all he knew about these diamonds was what he got from the Internet in a cursory search. “He didn’t say one way or the other. Why?”

“No reason. Just curious.” But Berto knew that lab-grown diamonds were worth quite a bit more than mined cut diamonds. He also knew that the guy sitting across the table from him didn't know squat about diamonds. But he was obviously a damn good thief.

“OK. Text me all these pictures and I’ll figure out an offer for you. It may take a couple of days because I want to make sure I have interested parties on my end.” Berto said as he handed back the phone to Travis. 

“You also mentioned some paper? Can you show it to me?” Berto asked.

Travis reached into his bag and pulled out one of the bearer bonds, which he had rolled up. Berto unrolled the bond and stared at it for about thirty seconds. Then he looked up at Travis. “How many of these have you got?”

“Sixty one.”

“Jesus Christ. All a hundred Gs?”

“Yeah.”

“And nobody’s looking for these?”

“Not so far.”

Berto took a deep breath. “You know paper…it’s a little out of my line. But these are as good as cash, my friend. If I were you, I would find myself an investment guy. You know, a private individual, not a company, give him everything and let him put it all in an investment account with whoever his traders work with and put your money to work in the market. You draw a quarterly dividend and just sit back and let that money make you more. They take about ten percent.

“You know anybody like that?”

Berto nodded his head.“I know a guy.”

“Where is he located?”

“Don't matter, except for the physical turnover, it’s all done online or by phone. I assume you have an offshore account.”

“Yeah, in the Caymans.”

“Alright. Tell you what. I will give you my best price and then you discount it another 10% and I’ll hook you up.”

Travis thought about it for a few seconds, then he held out his hand. “Deal.”

“Good man.” Berto said, as he shook Travis’ hand. “I will not fuck you over, Bryce. Because that would be, what’s the expression, cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“It never crossed my mind.” Travis said, but he was definitely thinking something else.

Travis rolled up the bond and slipped it back into his bag. The two men got to their feet.

“I’ve got some other merchandise. Watches and jewellery mostly. The advice I got was to sit on it for a while.”

“That’s good advice. A lot of that stuff is easy to trace and the pawn shops all score points with the cops by rattin’ out people left and right.”

“So would you handle any of that type of merchandise?”

“Text me some pics and I’ll let you know. Nothing antique and nothing less than high-end Rolex or Cartier watches, that sort of thing.”

“I have that stuff all stashed somewhere at the moment. But I’ll be heading over there at some point.”

“No rush. What you showed me, that’s all cream.”

They chatted some more as they walked back to 59th Street, mostly about New York. Berto grew up in Brooklyn and still lived there, but in a whole lot nicer neighbourhood than where he was raised. He wasn't crazy about Manhattan. Too many cops, he told Travis, although Travis had to admit he hadn’t really seen any since they arrived. 

Berto left Travis at the park entrance where they met and took off down 59th Street. Travis waited for Jules to catch up to him, and they headed on back to their hotel.

They spent the next few days seeing the sights and eating in really cool restaurants. But by the time Travis had his final meeting with Berto, two mornings later, they were pretty much big citied out.

They did the deal late in the morning at a Starbucks on Fifth Avenue. Berto transferred the money, $325,000 from his investment account to Travis’s Cayman Islands numbered account. They then shook on it and the deal was done. Travis had everything in a briefcase, which he gave to Berto, who checked things out quickly.

Berto took a sip of his coffee and he leaned back in his chair.

“Okay, the financial guy’s name is Franklin James. He’s someone I met in high school. He’s from a well-off WASPY family that insisted he go to a public high school. Go figure. Talk about a fish out of water. But I liked the guy. He was real smart, especially with math. I guess you could say I kinda became his protector all through high school. No shortage of crazies in my old neighbourhood. A lot of guys thought that Franklin, with his expensive clothes and his big brain, was just beggin’ to be taught a lesson. I was able to keep the wolves at bay, so to speak. 

“After high school, Franklin went to Columbia and eventually got his master's degree in Business or Finance or something to do with math. Then after college, he moved back into the neighbourhood and we started hanging out again. I introduced him to a couple guys I knew who were pulling in a lot of cash from…nefarious activities. Franklin started his financial consulting business with a good deal of that cash. I ended up as his associate slash bodyguard.

“The guy was incredible. Had a couple of investment guys that he went to school with and together they would wash the money and pump it into the market. These guys, I met’em once, they were all about the Benjamins. Pretty soon Franklin was tearin’ it up and attracting more big fish from the outlaw world. Guys were making fifteen to twenty percent on their money and Franklin was gettin’ rich too. I started fencing about eight years ago now and gave as much as I could to Franklin to play with. It’s been nothing but gravy ever since.

“But Franklin was smart and he knew that being too close to some of the people he was dealing with posed a lot of risk. So one day, he just disappeared himself. The business stayed the same because with wire transfers and video conferencing, it didn’t matter where he was.” 

“So how do I get hold of this guy? Because I will have to physically give him this paper.”

Berto just shrugged. “I gave him your number. He either calls or he doesn’t. But I think he probably will, ‘cause I told him you were all right.” 

Travis and Berto finished up their coffee and Travis promised to send him some pics of the bling as soon as he could get to it. 

Instead of staying in New York another day, they checked out at noon and headed back home with another $325,000 in the Cayman Islands account and the name of a financial advisor who might or might not call.

~ 17 ~

Four days later, Ava took a United Airlines flight from New Orleans to Lisbon, Portugal. There, she rented a Volkswagen Golf and drove down the southern part of the coast on the N-120 to the A-22 that took her east to the border, where the same road turned into the A-49 as she crossed the Guadiana Bridge into Spain. She continued on for a few kilometres and then headed south again toward the coast. Half an hour later, she drove into a 4-star resort hotel called Barceló Isla Canela. 

A handsome young Spaniard took her bag, and another one parked her car for her. She entered the lobby of the hotel and walked to the counter. There she was greeted by a man named Fernando Lopez, who smiled and kissed her hand. He then handed Ava the aluminum case she had given to Captain Petrov five days earlier. 

She thanked Fernando and slipped him an envelope containing 5000 Euros. The money took care of all the people who took care of her and made Fernando her watchdog. Any suspicious activity would be reported to her immediately. Ava had learned from trial and error that you can never be too careful. She was then shown to her suite, which was a very spacious one-bedroom overlooking the Gulf of Cadiz. 

Ava checked out the paintings to make sure they were all there, and then she opened up her Cayman Islands account and transferred $500,000 US dollars into Petrov’s numbered Swiss account. The transaction took all of 30 seconds to complete. 

Ava laid down on the king-size bed and dozed off almost immediately. She woke a few hours later, showered and headed down to the dining area and had some dinner. Her first appointment wasn’t until later the next day, so she took full advantage of her leisure time. She ate slowly, drank a little, swam for a while before retiring and slept late to catch up with the time she had lost due to jet lag.

~ 18 ~

Jay Ferguson was in the business of finding things out and, over the years, he had accumulated a small band of people around him, both inside and outside of government circles, that could help him in various ways.

When he got back to DC, he contacted a fellow named Fitzgerald Sykes, who was a hacker Ferguson had met while he was working for the government. The government had several hackers on retainer.

Sykes was a little paranoid and didn't want anyone knowing where he was living, which was in the countryside somewhere outside of Bethesda. Sykes was busted about ten years back for hacking into BankAmerica and siphoning off one dollar from each of over two million chequing accounts. 

After he was arrested, he cut a deal with the Treasury Department and went from being a crook to a government cyber-sleuth. Sykes was about 40 years old, thin as a rake with fuzzy hair. He reminded Jay of the singer Art Garfunkel. But he was wired to the gills, extremely paranoid and one of the most knowledgeable hackers in the country. Uncle Sam was fortunate indeed to have him on their team and not working for the bad guys. 

Sykes came recommended to Jay by an old girlfriend who worked at Treasury and over the years, his help had proven expensive but worth every penny.

Ferguson and Sykes met at a Starbucks in the Montgomery Mall in North Bethesda. Sykes was already there, plowing through a large latte and messing around with his iPad when Ferguson arrived. 

Ferguson sat down with his coffee. It was the middle of the afternoon and there was hardly anybody in the place.

“How’s it going, Fitz?”

“We trudge along. How about you Jay? Another sordid affair to clean up?”

“As a matter of fact, this one is much more interesting. Art theft, among other things.”

Ferguson pulled out Senator Getty’s MacBook. “I’m looking for any evidence of hacking on this machine.”

“Who does it belong to?”

“Senator Thornton Getty.”

“Ooo.” Sykes said as he flipped the computer open. “I take it there are no state secrets in here.”

“No, this is their family computer. He’s smart enough to know that business and pleasure don't mix in DC.”

“So what’s your operating theory?”

“The best I can do at the moment is that I’m looking hard at a place called the Deschanel Gallery in New Orleans. Specifically, a lady named Ava Fairburn, who is one of the owners.”

“So your Senator bought some art from this gallery and then, how long before it got boosted?”

“Four years.”

“So they’re playing a long game. Not a bad scam if you have balls to run it.”

“Oh she's got the balls. I’ve already talked to her. I think she’s got a crew that is very, very good.”

“So this gallery, how does that connect to this Mac?”

“The Senator is on an email list from the gallery. They email out news about new paintings that they have for sale. It’s pretty high-end stuff, and the Senator fancies himself a bit of a collector.”

“OK, I’ll dig around in their emails and see what I can find. You a got budget?” 

“No, whatever it takes.”

OK, give me two days. I have some other things I have to deal with ASAP, then I’ll go at it. Shouldn't take too long. Probably some kind of virus embedded in the email. Good racket though. Make a bundle selling the art, make a bigger bundle reselling it to some crazy rich collector who’ll just hang it in his hermetically sealed gallery and whack off over it.”

“Ironic isn’t it?”

They talked a bit more and then Sykes got up with the computer and left the Starbucks, while Ferguson got on the phone and tapped another source to see if he could fix a location on Ava Fairburn. Three hours later he found out that he could not. 

~ 19 ~

About a week after they got back from New York, Travis got a call from the investment guy, Franklin James. James did not want to talk on the phone but suggested they meet in Richmond, Virginia. He would bring the necessary agreement paperwork that they both could sign and Travis would bring his paper. Richmond was only an hour’s drive from where they were in Virginia Beach, which meant that Franklin James likely lived close by as well, not that it mattered. But Travis was a cautious man who believed that knowledge was power. What he wanted was to know exactly how this guy could be found if anything was to go sideways in his dealings with him. 

He and Jules drove to Richmond in separate cars. Jules in the 4Runner, Travis in the black Beamer.

Travis and Franklin James met in a small restaurant on West Broad Street in downtown Richmond. The restaurant had a terrace out back where James was waiting. It was the middle of the afternoon and the whole area was deserted. James was dressed in a lightweight linen suit. His hair was short. He had an athletic look about him. Travis pegged him for some kind of runner. He also wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses. He was definitely a new-age rich guy.

He got to his feet when Travis approached. The two men shook hands and sat down. A waiter came and they both ordered Diet Cokes.

“So you have the Berto seal of approval, Mr. Timmins. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I have a pile of bearer bonds. Berto said you were the man to talk to about putting them to work for me.”

“May I see one?”

“Certainly.” Travis reached down into his bag and pulled out the rolled-up bond. He handed it to James, who stared at it for the better part of a minute.”

“They’re the real deal. What’s the total?”

“Six million one hundred thousand.”

James thought about that for a bit then he said, “Okay, so we don't really know each other and that’s fine. But what I would advise you to do is give me a million to work with, and then, once you’re happy with the rate of return, say in three months. I’ll take the rest. With a 10% laundry fee on the total.”

Travis took his time to give James the impression that he was thinking about it carefully, when, in actuality, he didn’t know much about how the money business worked. “I can do that. But I’m curious as to why you wouldn’t take the whole amount.”

“The market is quite volatile right now, and will be for the next while. You can thanks the assholes in Washington for that. We’re working extra hard these days to keep our margins strong, but I won't bullshit you, Bryce, it’s a bit of a looney bin these days.”

“Okay, well I appreciate the advice. This is nowhere near my area of expertise.”

“So if you’re willing to sign me over a million, we can get started and see how it goes. It’s a long game, but I’m playing with some smart people I genuinely trust.”

“Okay, well I assume there is some paperwork for me to sign.”

James reached down and pulled a file folder out of his case. He wrote in the amount and the date and signed two copies. He then handed them to Travis who signed them and pulled ten more of the bearer bonds out of his bag and handed them over to Franklin James, which would give him and invested million and cover the laundry fee.

There wasn’t much more to talk about. James handed Travis two business cards.

“Write out your safest email address on the other card. We’ll only communicate that way until we meet up again. I’ll email you monthly account statements. I assume you have an offshore account of some kind.”

“Yeah, in the Caymans.”

“Good, if you ever want take any money out, I will wire it there. Just text me a deposit code.”

“Fair enough” Travis said.

They both got up and shook hands.

“I’m gonna stay here.” Travis said. “Got a couple of calls to make.”

As soon as James was gone, Travis called Jules. “He’s on his way out. Tan suit. Preppy looking guy.”

“Roger that, sweetie.”

“Be careful. Don’t follow too closely.”

“I hear you. This is so fun.”

“Yeah, we’re real spooks now. 

“Ooops, here he comes. Talk soon.”

Jules was parked on a side street that faced the restaurant, so no matter which way Franklin James went, she could follow him without a lot of trouble. James got into a snazzy-looking Jaguar sedan. It was a beautiful shade of burgundy. He came out of the restaurant lot and turned right. Jules waited a bit and then followed him right out of town. At Arthur Ashe Boulevard, he turned left and headed toward Route 64 and kept on heading north. He finally picked up Highway 1 and drove all the way to Fredericksburg. When they arrived in the city, Jules followed him into the downtown area, where he parked on a side street off Williams Street and, through the side door using a key, entered a building that housed a restaurant. As she drove by, she noticed that inside the door was a flight of stairs, which James walked up and another door.

She pulled over and parked, then called Travis. “Hey. Looks like he went into an apartment above a restaurant. Maybe that’s where his office is. I’m gonna check out the restaurant. It’s called La Petite Oberge. Sounds French. Maybe I’ll have a crepe.”

Jules entered the restaurant and saw that there was a bit of a line to get seated. She walked over to the wall and checked out the menu. It was French all right. She took a look inside and noticed a bar off to one side. She walked over to the bar and sat down. She ordered a glass of white wine and turned to look at the restaurant. Three or four waiters bustled around taking care of the customers. There was some nice French music playing, but not too loud. 

About halfway through her glass of wine, she noticed that Franklin James had entered the restaurant from the kitchen. He walked over to the bar and poured himself a few fingers of Scotch. He talked to the bartender for a minute, trading quips. Then he poured a little more scotch and sat down at the bar two stools down from where Jules was sitting. 

“Unless I miss my guess, this is your restaurant.” Jules said. 

James turned to her and smiled. “You’re very perceptive. Yes it is.”

“Well, it looks like a happening place.”

James just chuckled. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“How long have you owned it?”

“About four years, give or take.”

“Well, you should be very proud.”

“I am. This is my baby. Something I’ve always wanted to have.” 

“It’s a beautiful baby.”

“Thanks.” James said and he slipped off the stool and started to slowly walk around the place. He said hello to a few of the diners, and passed comments to a couple of the waiters.”

Jules finished her wine and called Travis. “He owns a French restaurant in downtown Fredericksburg. From the looks of it, he lives upstairs….OK. I’m on my way back home. See you in a bit.”

Jules disconnected and put a ten-dollar bill on the counter and her empty glass on top of it. Two hours later she was home.

~ 20 ~

Ava only stayed at the Barceló Isla Canela for four days. She unloaded all of the paintings to billionaires or their proxies and netted somewhere in the neighbourhood of ninety-five million all safely tucked away in the Caymans, where a lot of good old Yankee tax dollars go to hide.

She took her time driving back to Portugal. She used the time to think and plot her next moves. A lot of her thinking had to do with Jay Ferguson. With more than three hundred million in the bank, half of which was hers, and the gallery quite profitable even without the side gig, she thought about packing it in. Mostly because there was something about Jay Ferguson that made her feel ill at ease. He was a definite threat and he wasn’t constrained by the laws of evidence like the police detectives she had rebuffed in the past. The guy was a different animal altogether. She wondered if he had a price. God knows she could afford to buy anything or anyone she wanted. 

Two days later, she flew home from Lisbon. She took Roland and Jonas out for dinner and told them all the news. Then she asked if he had heard from their friend Jay Ferguson again. She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or suspicious when Roland reported he had not heard from the gentleman. 

Ava busied herself around the gallery for a few days studying some of the hacked correspondence, but found nothing of interest. She called Travis and asked him if they’d found a place, and he reported that they had and were very happy there. She told him that she had unloaded all the merchandise over in Europe and that she was actively searching out some more new leads in the northeast. Travis told her that there was no hurry, they were in good shape. He was actually thinking about buying into a security business.

Ava told him she would stay in touch. After she hung up, she thought about calling it quits again. How much money did she actually need? Or was it not about the money at all, but the game? She couldn't decide. But something about Jay Ferguson had really gotten to her. Maybe she saw him as someone who could finally beat her at her own game. The thought passed almost as quickly as it had arrived. 

But it would be back and it would be back in spades.

~ 21 ~

Fitzgerald Sykes got back to Jay Ferguson three days later instead of two. He apologized, but explained that the government came first in Sykes’ life. Ferguson knew the feeling. They met in the same Starbucks and Sykes returned the MacBook.

“I cleaned it up. Found a teeny, tiny Trojan horse that buried was deep in a couple of his newsletter emails.”

“Let me guess. The Deschanel Gallery in New Orleans?”

“No flies on you, Jay. Is that the connection you were looking for?” 

“Yeah, it is.”

“Now, before you start calling in the Keystone cops, I’ve gotta tell you that this bug could have gotten into that email in about a dozen different ways. A good defence lawyer would have a field day with that fact alone.”

“I hear you. We’re not interested in getting the law involved, Fitz. The downside risks are simply too great.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Pretty soon, some enterprising Jimmy Olsen type would glom onto it and, Lord knows, the Republicans are up to their asses in alligators already.” Sykes said.

“I think the Senator has something more nefarious in mind here.”

“Well, be that as it may. I’ve stayed out of prison by never taking sides in that mess. I’m an equal opportunity type. As I assume you are as well.” 

“Yeah, it comes with the territory.” Ferguson said.

You’ve got that right, my friend.”

“So bill me, and I’ll get you paid ASAP.”

“Right on, Jay.” And Sykes got to his feet. “Hope you get what you’re lookin’ for, man.”

“Me too, Fitz.”

After Sykes departed, Jay Ferguson got on his phone and booked another flight to New Orleans.

~ 22 ~

In New Orleans, Ava was sitting with Roland Deschanel at an outdoor cafe sipping coffees and watching the world go by.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the future, Rollie.” Ava said. “I’ve also been thinking about Lady Luck, who has really favoured us these last few years.”

“I have a feeling there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“But…I think it’s time to quit while we’re still ahead. I’m still young enough to have kids, and I can’t remember the last boyfriend I had.”

“Ahh, the lure of motherhood.” Roland said. “I have been resisting those same feelings for a few years myself. Although if I’m being honest. I’m a little past all that.”

“I’m also a little concerned about this Jay Ferguson fellow. I looked him up. Guy knows his way around a mystery.”

“Well, chere, you have made us both very rich, and you have put the gallery on the map. Better to go out a winner than any other way.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing. I talked to Bryce yesterday. They have just found a house somewhere and he was talking about investing in a security company.”

“From what you tell me, he’d probably do very well at it.”

“Yeah. And that was the only loose end.”

“You know, chere, I’m happy to go along with anything you want. You’re driving the car here, and have been for the past six years.”

“Let’s see what happens. It’s quiet now anyway, so it’s a good time to sit back and observe the landscape.”

The sun was over the building, so they were sitting in the relatively cool shade. Just another warm afternoon in the Big Easy.

Jay Ferguson showed up at the gallery the next afternoon. Ava was doing some paperwork and noticed him as soon as he walked in. Roland was taking the day off, so Ava was alone in the gallery.

Ferguson walked around looking at some of the paintings. Ava got up and walked over to him. “Didn't think I’d be seeing you again, Mr. Ferguson.”

“Call me Jay, please.”

“OK Jay, how can I help you?”

Ferguson smiled. “Well, first of all, you can tell me just how it happened that a virus got into your gallery emails.”

It was all Ava could do to keep from freaking out. She kept as straight a face as her shock would allow.

“A virus? What kind of virus are we talking about exactly?”

Ferguson smiled. “A virus that gives the sender access to the entire email program of whoever receives it. The one in your email was very cleverly buried. I had to hire a big gun to dig it out.”

Ava feigned looking shocked. “So you think maybe I did something like this deliberately?”

“That’s one theory.”

“What’s another theory? You know, the one that doesn’t involve me planting a virus. Because that’s quite likely your best bet here.”

“Sorry, Ms. Fairburn.” But there is no alternative theory.”

Ava thought about it for a second or two. “So if you’re so sure about this, why aren't the police involved?”

“Two reasons. One is that my client, the Republican Senator, doesn't want to deal with all the questions that would be asked. And the second reason is that he wants something else.”

“I don't understand. What does he want?”

“He wants to meet the person or persons who pulled off the theft. He wants to know exactly how they did it, so that he can protect against further…invasions of this sort. Plus he has a certain amount of, government interest.”

“What does that mean?” Ava asked.

“It means he would like to know who did this because they could be…useful to the government going forward.

Ava laughed. “Well, that’s some story, Jay.”

“Yes, it is, isn't it?”

“Anything else in little bag of tricks?” 

“Well there is, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the Senator.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It has to do with wanting to see you again.”

“Oh really?”

“Yep.”

“Would it surprise you to know that you had a similar effect on me?” Ava wasn’t exactly being honest but decided to play along to see if she could extract some more information from him.

Now it was Ferguson’s turn to fake not being surprised. “Alright, so maybe we could discuss this in more detail over dinner?”

“Anything’s possible, Jay. And you can call me Ava.”

Later that evening, after dinner and a stroll through the French Quarter, which was filled with tourists and fun seekers, Ava and Ferguson fell into bed and made love for a good long time, then they both conked out until the following day at noon. 

Ferguson woke first, pulled on his pants and padded to the bathroom to relieve himself. Then he wandered around the flat, thinking if this lady was selling paintings for millions, it certainly wasn’t reflected in her lifestyle. The flat was tastefully decorated but hardly luxurious. 

Ava’s purse was sitting on a table by the entrance door. Ferguson walked over to it and peeked inside. He pulled out her burner phone. There was no password, so he pulled up the call menu, and with his own phone, photographed the number she had dialled most recently.

He then wandered back into the bedroom, where Ava was just starting to stir. He was putting on his shirt.

“Leaving so soon?”

“Yeah, I’ve gotta get back to DC. No rest for the wicked.”

“So what about the reason you came down in the first place.

“Well, yeah. But that’s gonna be a hard nut to crack.” 

He leaned over and kissed her and then finished dressing and left with just what he came for. ‘Think about the offer.” he said as he turned to leave.

When Jay got back to DC the first thing he did was text the number he had gotten from Ava’s burner phone to Sykes asking him what he could find out about it.

~ 23 ~

Jules took to the task of finding a small security firm they could buy into with all the energy she had. Until she began to apply herself, she hadn’t realized how easy it had been to slip into lethargy and just let Travis do all the heavy lifting. Her energy level picked up almost immediately when she set about contacting four companies that she had sussed out on the web. 

The conversations she had with the owners of all four companies amounted to  zero. Three of them thought it was nothing more than a job pitch disguised as a partnership, and the fourth one insisted that Travis would have to be vetted by the Federal Department of the Interior, which was their main client. 

It was then, in a state of near total frustration, that Jules had a brainwave. 

She busied herself making dinner and thought it through. When they sat down later that evening, Jules brought up the idea.

“I've spent part of the last couple of days researching and talking with a small bunch of different security companies in the area.” she said and took a little sip of wine. “The conversations were extremely frustrating, to say the least. Three of them thought it was a come-on for a job, and the other one wanted to know if you could qualify for some insanely high level of government clearance.”’

Travis folded his hands and looked at her thoughtfully… “And?”

Jules took a deep breath. “And, I think we would be much further ahead to start our own business.” 

“Well, I suppose that’s an option.” Travis said, although it was nowhere near what he was thinking. He was looking for a business that already had some systems in place and a way to put his money to work for him that was more of a sure thing. 

“And just how would we go about getting clients? Have you thought it through to that extent?”

“As a matter of fact I have. I have been experimenting over the past week or so. You know the thing I can do, with passwords on touch screens and other locks?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ve also learned that I can do this on computer screens.”

“Are you telling me you can break into companies through an online connection?”

“Uh huh.”

“So can you show me?” 

“I can. But not here on our server. We could get discovered easily. I’m sure it’s quite illegal.”

“So how did you find this out?”

“I wanted to try it out, so I went to Cybernaut downtown, ‘cause that way it wouldn’t trace back to me.”

“So you’re talking about hacking into a company’s system?”

“Yeah, we don't have to take anything, just leave a little note for their owners or CEOs that they have been hacked and that their system is vulnerable. Make it sound menacing. Scare the pants off them.”

Travis sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I have to say, that’s so crazy it just might work.”

“I know. It’s totally insane.”

“So you never knew you could do this?” Travis asked.

“No, it never occurred to me. I thought it was just a physical thing.” 

“This could open up a whole new world for us.” Travis said.

“Yeah, I guess it could.”

~ 24 ~

The next day, Ava called Travis and arranged to meet with him in Richmond Virginia. She flew to Washington, rented a car and made the 90-minute drive down to Richmond. Once she was out of the DC area, she noticed that the geography had changed dramatically, and she spent more of her trip surrounded by greenery. Travis suggested they meet at a rib joint in downtown Richmond called Rudy’s Ribs, which he and Jules had discovered on one of their weekend trips inland.

Travis and Jules were already seated out back on the terrace, sipping Diet Cokes, when Ava arrived. Travis got up and gave her a hug. Then he introduced Ava to Jules, “Ava, this is Jules. Jules this is Ava.” Travis said. 

The two ladies nodded to each other and everybody sat down. 

“So this is a surprise, Bryce. Not that I’m not happy to meet your lady.”

Yeah, well. There’s a good reason for that, but you go first. Jules knows everything I know, so you can talk freely. ”

“Okay.” 

The waitress put a glass of wine down in front of Ava. She took a sip. “As I told you before, there’s a guy named Jay Ferguson, who has been working for Senator Getty to get a handle on who robbed him. He has somehow figured out how I get the information I feed you on the targets.” Ava paused and took another sip of wine. “When he first came to visit, he planted a bug in the gallery I own in New Orleans. But I found it, and have connected it to him. So we have come to a bit of a stalemate in that regard. If he exposes me, he risks exposing himself. And that would not be a good thing for his business.”

“So it sounds like you’re safe.” Travis said.

“For now. But it got me thinking about a lot of things, and well, I talked it over with my partner, and, we agreed, it’s time to close this operation down. At least until this dark cloud passes.”

“Travis just looked at her. His face betrayed no expression one way or another.” 

“If you don't mind me asking,” Jules said, “How do you go about getting this information you use to plan your jobs?”

Ava looked at Travis and he just nodded. 

“I have an associate who created a small virus that is embedded with my email newsletter. We send them out to all our customers and people who sign up on our website, once a month, telling them about new works that are available. Once the email is in their computer, the virus gives me access to their emails, all of them, incoming or outgoing. So I keep track of things like notes to families and friends, airline and hotel reservations that they make online.”

Jules and Travis just looked at each other and cracked slight smiles. 

“And it’s worked really well for almost six years.” Ava said. 

“OK.” Jules said. “So this Ferguson fellow has figured all this out. But you have something on him. Why not just carry on business as usual?”

“That’s a good question. The answer is because I don’t trust Mr. Ferguson as far as I could throw him. He could easily have any allegations I might make squashed through his DC connections.”

“So, do you want to pack it in?” Jules asked ‘Or are you being forced to do that?”

Ava thought about that for a while. “A little of both I guess. We have accumulated quite a bit over the past six years. And there is always that notion of quitting while you’re ahead.”

Travis was sitting quietly, but his brain was going a mile a minute. “Suppose we told you there was a way to keep on going that didn't involve planting a traceable bug into your customer’s computers. That there was a way to hack their email programs that would be completely untraceable.” he said.

Ava smiled. “You know…when I first thought about this idea, I went through a lot of possibilities with a real cyberwhiz who is my partner’s significant other and this was far and away the best we could come up with.”

“Do you have your phone, with you?” Jules asked.

“Yes.” Ava said.

“Okay.” Jules said. “Turn your phone completely off, then and hand the phone to me.”Ava looked a bit puzzled but took out her phone. She punched a few commands and handed it to Jules.

Jules put the phone down on the table. She held her hand over the screen. She then brought up the keyboard and typed in the nine-character password and the phone opened.

She slid the phone back to Ava.

Ava looked at the phone and then back at the two of them. The look on her face was one of absolute wonder.

“My god…How?…” 

“I have no idea,” Jules said. “I just know that I have been able to do this for a few years now.”

“I, uhh. You can do this with any password-protected program?”

“Yep.” said Jules. “Well, I don't really know that but we've tested it on a couple  dozen different things, and so far so good.”

Ava took another sip of her wine. “Well, this certainly paints the whole enterprise with a different brush.” Ava was working very hard to keep her excitement contained. “OK. I was fully prepared to give you a million dollars and part company, or at least put things on hold. But this changes everything.”

“Yes, it does.” Jules said. “We were planning to use this to demonstrate vulnerabilities to companies and build a cyber-security business out of it. But honestly, stealing stuff from rich people is much more fun.”

“So explain to me exactly how this would work.”  Ava said.

Jules thought about it for a few seconds then said, “OK the very first thing we do is set up a Virtual Private Network. It’s three-way street between you, your computer guy and us. Nothing online. We each have computers that are only connected to the VPN. Second thing you do is load your email list into the computer at your end. Then whenever you send them a clean email you blind CC me. Once I have that connection I can grab their passwords and enter their system. Then I simply send the passwords back to you guy through the VPN and you do the figuring out same as you used to. Once you have enough info, you send it to us and we go off and do the job. As long as we keep our communication within our VPN, no one will know we even exist.”

“How did you figure this all out?” Ava asked.

“I did a little reading, and had a nice chat with a fellow named Darren at our local cybercafe. Darren’s a tech writer I’ve gotten to know. He was doing
research on this exact thing and he explained it to me in detail. Even showed me the sites he used for his research.”

Ava sat silently for almost a minute, computing it all. Then she said. “And you’re sure about the mechanics?”

“It’s mostly simple logic when you boil it all down,” Jules said. “So yeah, I’m pretty sure. As long as we stay away from the Internet, we should be fine.”

“I suppose you have a fee structure in mind.”

“As a matter of fact, we were thinking more of a partnership.”

“As in an equal partnership?”

“Yeah.” Jules said. A Third for us. A Third for you. And a third for your partner and his partner slash computer guy.

“What about expenses? ” Ava asked.

“We can split all that. It would entail setting up and maintaining the Virtual Private Network, and the new hardware new hardware and software we would need to set this all up and then cloak it. 

Ava took a deep breath. And she shook her head. She was stunned. “How long have you been able to do this, this thing you can do?” 

“I first noticed it in high school. I’ve been trying to understand where it came from ever since. Still haven’t figured it out.” Jules said.

Ava was staring at her wine glass. Her head was starting to hurt as she kept thinking about all the possibilities that this talent of Jules’ represented. A lot of them were much bigger than just setting up art theft scenarios. Much, much bigger.

“I have to tell you, the last ten minutes here have been absolutely mind blowing. This gift you have, it goes way beyond art theft. We could easily end up making billions if we play our cards right. Are you up for that?”

“This is exactly what we hoped you would conclude. Because, yes, we think there’s a lot more to be made, but we really need some guidance.” Travis said.

“Well, I can guide you for sure.” Ava said

“One thing, though.” Jules said. “I’m not interested in hoarding what we can make here. We already have enough to live comfortably as we’re sure you do. I’m more interested in what we can do with this money.

“So you’re saying you would keep enough to take care of your needs and give the rest away?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Jules said. “Have you ever considered doing something like that yourself?”

“If I’m being honest, I’d have to say no. I’ve been so obsessed with accumulating it and haven’t really thought about what I would do beyond that.”

“Well, maybe you should.” Jules said, in a gentle voice.

Ava said nothing for quite a long time, and then she just chuckled. “‘He robs from the rich and he gives to the poor.’ That was part of the theme song from a really old TV show about Robin Hood.”

Neither Travis nor Jules really knew much about Robin Hood, so Ava explained it to them. They all laughed and, as they talked about it some more, they realized that Jules’ talent could also be used to get them into private bank accounts where they could re-distribute cash digitally. All they would need, according to Jules, would be the user name. Ava was pretty certain that her man, Jonas Dupree, would be able to hack a list of user names at various banks and cloak all these transactions, so they wouldn't trace back to a free-standing VPN. But she wanted to make sure of that. And if they could…well, the sky would be the limit.

As the thoughts cascaded into Ava’s consciousness, she found herself verbalizing them. Travis and Jules just sat there listening and smiling and realizing that this was a doable thing and that maybe it was the very thing that Jules’s talent was intended for, especially in today’s America, where the current administration was bending over backwards to cut back on essential services.

Right there and then, without a lot more thinking, Ava stopped herself and said. “Leave it with me. Let me noodle it around, talk it over with my guy, Jonas, in New Orleans and then we can put some flesh on the bones. Give me a week, maybe two and we’ll get together again. You should come down.”

Always up for a road trip, Travis and Jules agreed. 

After half an hour and another glass of wine to celebrate and cement their partnership, Ava got up to leave. Hugs were exchanged and a promise to get together in two weeks in New Orleans.

~ 25 ~

Two days later, Jay Ferguson got an email from Fitzgerald Sykes. Through one of his Bell connections, he had traced the number and name B. Timmons that Jay had given him. He noted that the first B. Timmins calls were in the midwest. The second batch were was from the east coast. Ferguson stared at the number for quite some time trying to decide how to move on it. Finally, he took a deep breath and dialled it. It was about 8:30 in the evening.

Travis was sitting on the back deck of his house in Virginia Beach. He’d gotten into the habit of keeping his Ava phone with him, just in case. Jules was in the house on a Skype call to her mother. Travis picked up the phone when it rang. He didn’t recognize the number but the area code was in the east. It was probably a wrong number because Ava was the only one who had that
number. So he answered.

“This is Bryce” Travis said, thinking it was Ava.

“Bryce? Bryce Timmins?” 

“Who’s calling?”

“We have a mutual friend, Ava Fairburn. My name is Jay Ferguson.”

“Sorry Mr. Ferguson. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“I think you do Mr Timmins. And I also think you know exactly who I am.”

Travis chuckled. “That’s quite a come on. What are you selling, sir?”

“I’m not selling anything, Mr Timmins, except perhaps your freedom.”

Travis said nothing for several seconds. ‘What do you want, Mr Ferguson?”

“A meeting. Face to face.”

Travis laughed. “To what end?”

“I have a proposition for you.”

“But you have no idea who I am. So what kind of proposition could you possibly have?”

“You’d be surprised.”

With that Travis disconnected. A couple of thoughts ran through his head. One was to call Ferguson back. Meet with him and hear what he has to say. Travis knew there was no evidence that Ferguson could use to incriminate him. Two was to call Ava and tell her what had just happened. Of course, she might panic and call a halt to everything. The third option was to take the chip out of the phone, destroy it, call everything off himself, get out of Virginia Beach, forget Ava Fairburn and go it on their own.

For some reason that he did not truly understand, he decided to meet with Ferguson and find out what he had to say.

He picked up the phone. Ferguson answered. “Thought it through?”

“Yeah. I have. When and where?”

Travis listened for several seconds and then disconnected. He sat looking out at the deep blue water until Jules joined him.

“How’s everything in farm country?” he asked.

“Everybody’s fine. I saw you were on the phone. Who were you talking to?” Jules asked.

“Jay Ferguson.”

Jules said nothing.

“I have no idea how he got to us. But he did. He wants to talk. So I’m gonna meet him.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It would be if he had any actual evidence on us. But I know he doesn’t because there is none.”

“So what does he want?”

Travis shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. But if we don’t deal with this right away, it will just be there like a mosquito in the tent.”

“So when do we meet him?”

“There’s no we in this one, darlin’. I don’t want him to know you even exist.”

Jules said nothing because she was smart enough to know when Travis was right. She looped her arm into his and pulled herself closer to him. Out in the darkness over the water, they could see lightning flashes. Travis didn’t believe in omens, but it did underscore the need for all due caution going forward.

~ 26 ~

They decided to meet at The Hilton Garden in Woodbridge, Virginia at 2:00 PM the following day. Travis drove the BMW and arrived about a half hour early. He parked across the street at the Woodbridge District Supervisor’s Building and waited, watching the hotel entrance with his binoculars. At 1:55, he saw the man he thought was Jay Ferguson pull up in a Toyota Hybrid. He parked in the front lot of the hotel and sat in his car for a moment. Travis called him. 

“Mr Ferguson. Go into the hotel lounge. Leave your phone in the car. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

 “A little paranoid, aren’t we?”

“No sir. I am a lot paranoid.”

Travis watched Ferguson exit his car and walk to the hotel. No other cars had pulled in. So he got out of the Beamer and crossed the street. He walked over to the Toyota and saw a cell phone on the front seat. He entered the hotel and walked to the entrance of the lounge. He looked around and didn’t see anything that struck him as unusual. So he entered the lounge. Ferguson was sitting at a table by the window. A waiter had just brought him a beer and a glass.

Travis approached the table and sat down. 

The waiter came back. Travis ordered a Diet Coke.

“Okay. I’m here. What is it that you want?”

“What’s the nature of your relationship with Ava Fairburn?”

“I know Ava. We met in New Orleans when I visited her gallery. We talked about a couple of pieces that I was interested in. We kept in touch. She called me a couple of times to try and sell me a painting or two. That’s about it.”

And how is it you are a collector of fine art? I had some very good people check you out and you are the invisible man.”

 “You of all people should know that it’s safer in America to be as invisible as possible. How I make my money, and how I chose to spend it are none of anyone’s business.” 

“They are if you make that money, how shall we say, outside the law.”

Travis smiled. “Yes, I see your point. But the fact is that I don’t so much make money, as have it. A great deal of it in fact. An alternative identity and a relatively humble lifestyle are my best safeguards.”

“Against?”

“You name it. Kidnappers, extortionists, conmen, misguided private investigators, thieves etc.”

“You’re quite paranoid for such a young man.” Ferguson said.

“Actually, you’re confusing paranoia with caution.”

Ferguson took a long sip of his beer. It was obvious to him that this fellow was very well rehearsed.

“So you only know Ava, Miz Fairburn through the Dumont Gallery?”

Travis looked at Ferguson curiously. “You mean the Deschanel Gallery, don’t you?” Travis smiled and shook his head. “The oldest trick in the book, Mr. Ferguson. Nice try though. Your delivery was very smooth.” 

Ferguson didn’t say anything for about ten seconds. “My client is a high-ranking Senator. He has asked me to find the person or persons who broke into his house, stole some very valuable paintings and a lot of other things. But he doesn’t want to press charges. What he wants is to recruit that person or persons to work for the government. I have been tracking down leads and you are, far and away, the most likely suspect.”

Travis chuckled. “Well I hate to disappoint you and the Senator, but I really wouldn’t know the first thing about burglary or home invasion or whatever they are calling it these days. I’m an art collector, living a peaceful life off the grid, or at least I was until now. But I do have a lawyer, and well, if you have any idea about continuing to investigate me, I’ll arrange for the two of you to have a little powwow. And trust me, you will not be a happy camper after that, sir.”

Travis got to his feet, as did, Ferguson. Travis held out his hand and shook Ferguson’s. “Good luck with your search, Mr Ferguson.” And with that, Travis left the lounge.

When he was out of Ferguson’s view, he took the elevator in the hotel to the second floor. He walked down the corridor to the end and watched Ferguson’s car until Ferguson came out, got in, sat for a good fifteen minutes and then drove away.

Two hours later Travis was home.

Early that evening, Travis and Jules were walking along the beach. The sun was low in the sky and there was a nice breeze coming in off the water. Travis explained the whole reason for deciding to meet with Ferguson and was happy to report that he believed he had thrown him off their trail. Or at the very least had made him think twice about continuing to investigate them. Truth of the matter was that there was relatively little to investigate.

Travis was smart enough to have put the house lease in Jules’s name. So he knew that even if Ferguson tried to trace him, he would have a hell of a time. Travis had also set up a dummy company called Securicom, which he would seed periodically with cash, and which retained Jules as a security consultant and paid her $6000 a month, deposited into her current account at their local BankAmerica branch. This covered the lease, the bills and their other expenses. He got Jules a bank card and a credit card, and periodically seeded the account with cash from his US cash stash, which was well over two million.

Travis had, in essence, made Bryce Timmins and himself almost completely invisible. 

“Are you gonna tell Ava about any of this? Jules asked.

Oh yeah. I think she’d be really interested to know that he somehow got hold of my number.”

They walked along in silence until they were back home. They sat down on the porch and Travis picked up the phone.

“Ava, hi. Listen, something happened today I think you should know about.” Travis said, and for the next five minutes, he explained about his meeting with Ferguson, and made sure that Ava knew exactly what he had told Ferguson.

“And you just made that story up on the spot?” Ava asked.

 “Not exactly. I thought about it on the way over to meet him.”

“Well, that’s a damn good cover story if I’ve ever heard one. That fucker must have gotten your number from my phone.”

“How would that have happened?” Travis asked.

“A lot easier than you think.”

“Oh. OK, I get it. You slept with this guy.”

“Ummmm, yeah, I did. Mostly, I was trying to see what he knew. But he’s not, uh, unattractive at all.”

“Well, no harm no foul. But I think you really need to give him shit for this. And we both need to get new burners’”

“You’re right about that. In the meantime, we’ll just wait and see what happens. Bottom line is he has no leads because he has no evidence. As long as we keep it that way, we’ll be fine. On top of that, we’re moving into a whole new ball game. Toss your burner. We’ll get new ones when you and Jules come down.”

“Okay will do. I just wanted to make sure you knew the story I gave him. Just in case it comes up.”

“There’s not much chance of that.” Ava said, trying to sound casual. But she was genuinely pissed.

Jay Ferguson drove home mumbling to himself. He wasn’t used to getting played this way. Maybe it was his fundamental arrogance but he had a lot of trouble believing that a twenty-something-year-old kid could have played him like that. Every bone in his body told him that this kid and his crew were indeed who he was looking for. The trouble was proving it. He had absolutely nothing in the way of evidence, just this wild ass hunch that he couldn’t get clear of. 

He looked around for the kid when he left the hotel. He sat in his car in the parking lot for about fifteen minutes. Hoping to catch him and tail him back to wherever the hell he came from. But nothing. He’d lost him. And for the life of him, he didn’t have any idea how to get him back. He guessed he could try tracing the number, but if the kid was as smart as he appeared, then ditching his phone would be the first thing he did. 

Even waiting for them to pull their next job was no sure thing, since they seemed to target people who tended not to make any sort of stink about getting robbed.

He started the car and headed back to D.C., thinking maybe he’d take another run at Ava. Although it would be more likely than not that she knew all about his treachery. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, he was, barring a miracle, shit out of luck. 

Maybe, he thought, he should just cut his losses, swallow his pride and get onto the next fire he would be asked to put out. On his way home, he drove to the Senator’s Washington residence, sat him down and told him the whole story. The Senator thanked him for sticking it out as long as he had. He then headed home, took a long hot shower, made himself some dinner, did a little reading watched the news and then went to bed.

At eleven o'clock the following morning, he was awakened by a persistent ringing. It was his doorbell. He scrambled out of bed and padded down the stairs.

When he opened the door, a very pissed off Ava Fairburn was standing on the landing.

 “You bastard!” she said.

“Nice to see you too, Ava. Please come in.” 

~ 27 ~

Ava plopped herself down on a chair in the kitchen and said nothing while Ferguson futzed around making coffee for both of them. Every so often he would sneak a peek at her and shuddered slightly, because he knew what he was in for.

Once their coffee was in front of them and he was sitting down across the table from her, she said.

“I guess I should have slept with my phone under my pillow.” Ava said. And he knew she was angry.

“But you didn’t. And honestly it was too tempting for me, I’m afraid.”

“Now Bryce Timmins. I understand you met with him.”

“Yeah. I did.” Ferguson said.

“Because he called me yesterday and explained to me that some stranger insisted that he was some sort of art thief.”

“Well, not really, but I was genuinely curious.”

“You should know that he recorded your entire conversation, and well, it’s up to him what to do with it.”

Ferguson took a sip of his coffee. “All I was doing was following a lead.”

“A lead my ass. You used me. Bryce was my client, for fuck sake. What the hell is wrong with you?” 

Ferguson just sat there taking the punishment.

“You have damaged my credibility with one of my clients. You do realize that, don’t you? I thought you had more discretion than that, knowing who your clients are. But you’re nothing more than a fucking bull in a china shop.”

“Yet here you are. In the flesh.”

“Yes, putting an exclamation point on this wild goose chase of yours.”

Ferguson took another sip of his coffee. “Your client, Mr. Timmins. You know I had one of my people do a thorough search for him. They came up completely empty.”

“Yes, well it’s good to know that if someone prefers privacy, they can still find it.”

“How well do you know him?”

Ava laughed. “You just never give up, do you?”

“Not in my nature.”

“Well, be that as it may. I just came to let you know that I do admire your determination. But I would strongly suggest that you find another tree to bark up. And as far as any further relationship between us, well, I think that’s run its course as well. I’ll try to keep Mr Timmins from swearing out a harassment complaint against you, for old time’s sake. But that’s it.”

With that, Ava got up and walked out of the house, leaving Ferguson sitting at his kitchen table thinking, curses, foiled again.

~ 28 ~

Travis and Jules took their time heading to New Orleans. They spent the first night in Nashville, walked up and down Music Row and ate some fine Cajun food. The next day, they drove to Memphis and took an underwhelming tour of Graceland. They then headed down Highway 61 to Jackson Mississippi where they just picked up some takeout and got to bed early. The final day was a straight shot to New Orleans. They walked into Deschanel Gallery at about 3 PM, where Ava introduced them to her partner Roland Deschanel and his life partner and their resident hacker, Jonas Dupree.

After Travis and Jules arrived, Roland closed the gallery and they all adjourned to the back deck where there were a couple of bottles of wine chilling and a round table set up. They all got seated and comfortable. 

Ava raised her glass. “I’d like to propose a toast to the success of this new venture. Cheers.” Glasses were clinked and sips were taken. 

“Everybody knows bits and pieces of what’s going on here.” Ava said. “I wanted everyone to meet so we could all get up to speed and incorporate everyone’s input.

“In a nutshell, we have been, for the past six years now, successfully appropriating product for resale in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. The system has worked very well up till recently, when an investigator named Jay Ferguson figured out the game. Fortunately, I have, hopefully, been able to dissuade him from any further nosiness. But the risk factor of this methodology has increased dramatically. 

“Now I was ready to pack it all in. We’ve all done well, and I’m not a big fan of risk, no matter how slight. However, when I went to see Bryce and got to meet Jules, the game changed. I’ll let her explain it. Jules?”

“Jules smiled. “Okay, I don’t know how much of an explanation this will actually be. But back about eight years ago, when I was just starting high school I realized I had, I guess you would call it a gift. I was able to, somehow in my mind’s eye, see things. It started at school when I was able to open the locker next to mine, by mistake. When I took hold of the lock, I was suddenly able to see the combination of it in my head. So I tried it and sure enough the lock opened. Since that time, I have been experimenting with all kinds of different locks and have been able to open them all. On the last project that we did, the Senator’s house. I was able to see the 12-character code to his safe. After we moved to the east coast I went to a cyber cafe in town and found that I was able to access password-protected websites. This was huge because it meant I didn’t have to be dealing with something physical. 

“I don’t know where this gift came from. And believe me, I have thought it through a million times. My idea, as I expressed it to Bryce and Ava, was that maybe we could break into some hidden bank accounts in safe havens around the world and basically steal millions and anonymously donate a big part of whatever we take it to various charities. It would still be quite profitable for us, but it would be incredibly beneficial to people in need.”

“Thanks, Jules.” Ava said. Then she turned to Jonas. “So, Jonas, what do you think?”

“Jonas rubbed his face and stroked his goatee. “This is big-time crime you’re talkin’ here. We’re gonna have to be very careful. But I’ll tell you, while you were explaining this, Jules, I could see the mechanics of it crystal clear.”

Jonas went on to explain what he meant, mostly in computer language so esoteric that he had to stop frequently and translate or explain. But ten minutes later, everyone agreed that they understood. And more importantly, everyone agreed it was completely doable.

“Okay,” Ava said. “The only way for us to know for sure if this is going to work is to go ahead and put the network together.”

“From my research so far there are about a hundred and sixty potential target banks.’ Jonas said. “I suggest we use the DeChanel Gallery account in the Caymans. Both Ava and Roland have password access. We will use that for our pilot project. I will open a capital account in Ava’s name here in New Orleans and direct whatever we take to that. Doing a test like this is zero risk, because it’s Ava and Roland’s money, and she’s just basically moving it around. But the learning we will get from it will be invaluable. 

“I have already set up the VPN and have it linked to Ava’s account in the Caymans. I have also programmed two laptops; one for Ava, one for Jules and Bryce. Tomorrow we can gather in my studio and run the test.”

The mechanics were, as Jonas explained them, extremely simple. A VPN server with only three computers attached to it. They would all be networked to each other and worked more like an intercom system than a conventional network. Once the code was figured out by Jules on her computer, she would send it to Jonas and Jonas would enter the account, and syphon off the money, and direct it to a new account on Ava’s computer. Jonas would then, methodically, erase his trail each time, as would Jules. So all the money would end up in a new offshore account of Ava’s. Once they were done. Ava would send a third to Jonas and another third to Jules. All offshore private accounts. Since the VPN was closed and not connected to the Internet as such, there would be no trail of crumbs for anyone to follow. There would, of course, be hell to pay within the international banking/money laundering system. But that was hardly their concern. Jonas figured they could do this for about a week or ten days before the banks started talking to each other and another week or so after that before they built in trackers that could likely identify the VPN.

“So we get in, strike big, get out, move on, erase our tracks.’ Jonas said. “No more than nine hundred ninety nine million at a time. Once you get to ten figures, a whole new set of alarm bells go off. By the time we get to about twenty thefts, we’ll be playing with fire, so to speak, Jules’s gift notwithstanding. So we will do three a day for seven days and get the fuck out.”

Another half hour of discussion was all that was needed. Everybody was intelligent enough to know what was going on. 

That night, Ava showed them around the French Quarter, where they listened to some Zydeco, drank some bourbon and ate crawfish and jambalaya. Jules was blown away with the energy and the vibe the city gave off. They crashed in Ava’s guest room at about 4 AM, totally fried. 

Late the next day they all gathered at Jonah’s studio and did their first test. To say it went flawlessly was an understatement. Jules was able to type out Ava’s password from the account number display on her laptop screen. and they were in and out in under two minutes, with $200,000 of Ava’s and Roland’s money.

Ava’s phone lit up immediately with a text message from her bank, indicating that there had been a major withdrawal on her account. Ava simply responded that it was her.

Once the mechanics of the syphoning process were proven, there was a short but important discussion about who exactly they would be stealing from. Jonas explained to them that all of the larger accounts, were numbered and not named, and could belong to some pretty high-level criminal types, mostly in the illicit drug trade, who would spend as much money as was necessary to back-trace and track down whoever they could. This would constitute a much higher risk than stealing from a corporate entity or high net-worth individual, who would tend to shy away from any public outcry for fear of all the billions they were sheltering being discovered. The drug lords were already firmly positioned outside the law and didn’t give a shit who knew anything about them. They would launch something Jonas called a full-tilt assault. On the other hand, he felt very confident that whoever was doing the searching for them would be looking through the Internet and even if they weren’t they would still have to wade through more than  than half a billion active VPNs

The advantage they had was that Jonas would be able to monitor any attempts to penetrate the firewall around the VPN, and if someone did find them, he would know about it well enough in advance for him to shut it down and start a new VPN in advance of their ability to identify the source. This meant simply destroying the VPN. He considered that a very strong failsafe. 

Ava had a lot of faith in Jonas’ abilities. Travis and Jules, being younger and less experienced in these matters, were a bit intimidated and expressed their trepidation.

“The reality is that we are ripping off some very rich and powerful people.’ Jonas said. “ But I’d be lying to you if I told you there was no risk. There’s always some. In our case, it’s quite minimal and manageable, but it’s still there.”  

“Is there anything I can do to reduce this risk?” Jules asked.

“I’ll have to think about that. In the meantime, you guys should head home and get everything in place. This will be a smash-and-grab operation and it will only last no more than seven to nine days.” Jonas said. “I don’t want to risk these banks starting to talk to each other. And I certainly don’t want to be leaving any sort of scent for the real badasses to follow.”

The next day, Travis and Jules headed back north. They talked a lot about the up and the downsides of what they were doing. They were both slightly worried that maybe they were getting in over their heads. But at the same time, Travis understood enough about how these things worked technically to know that any trouble they encountered along the way would be covered off by the safeguards that Jonas had built into the plan. Still in all, he thought to himself, nothing is perfect.

~29 ~

The next nine days went by in a blur. Jonas sent Jules three new account numbers to crack each day. Then he sent a message that was really an ongoing tally of the money they were accumulating. By the end of the ninth day the figure sat at just a hair over twenty-six billion. Jonas then destroyed the VPN and advised them and Ava to reformat their laptops and stash them somewhere safe and well hidden. 

Two days later, Travis and Jules flew down to New Orleans to meet with Ava, Jonas and Roland. 

When they were all sitting on the back deck of the gallery Jonas announced that he had been monitoring all the banks that they hit and so far, nothing had leaked to the public. During the nine days that the program was running, Jules was doing some work of her own. She had compiled a list of charities that she wanted to start sharing the wealth with. There were about forty in all. They talked a lot about how much to set aside for each charity and how to get it to them anonymously. They then discussed how much each of the group should take for themselves. It was agreed on a nice round number of three billion for each of Jonas/Roland, Jules/Travis and Ava. This left them around seventeen billion to dole out to various charities. They then broke out a bottle of champagne and celebrated.

~ 30 ~

In Bethesda, Maryland, Fitzgerald Sykes, by the purest stroke of luck, discovered one of the thefts. This one was from the Banorte Bank in Mexico City. He was able to follow the money to a numbered Cayman Islands account. He thought nothing of it at first, but it stuck in the back of his mind so he nosed around the Internet for news of anything odd from Mexico but heard nothing.

The next day, he called Jay Ferguson to thank him for expediting his fees on the Getty case. While they were talking, Fitz asked whatever became of the lady he was so interested in. 

“She found out that I had stolen Mr. Timmons' name and number from her phone, and flew up here to basically kick my ass.”

“The best laid, plans eh? So you have no idea what she’s up to now.” 

“No, I cashed in my chips on that project after running into a couple of brick walls. So what’s new with you?”

Gerald told him about the Banorte Bank thing that he stumbled across. Mostly just to make conversation. “Whoever it was got away with a shitload of pesos. And there has been no news at all about it. Sound familiar?”

Ferguson thought about that for a moment. He’d always been bugged about how someone could open a safe with a thirteen-character passcode. About the same degree of difficulty as getting into a protected private bank account.”

“Yeah, it kinda does, Fitz.”

“You might want to take a run at the Chiquita from New Orleans again.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that, Thanks.”

“Let me know what you find. I do love a mystery.”

“Don’t we all.”

Ferguson disconnected from the call to Sykes and sat still at his desk for a long time trying to put together two wildly different scenarios and attribute them to a single source. It had been almost three weeks since he last saw Ava Fairburn. He wondered if she had cooled down sufficiently to be approached. He decided to sleep on it and carried on finishing the latest report for a Congressman from Maine who was sleeping around with one lady too many.

After he had sent off the report and recommendation, he turned on the national news. He caught it in the middle of a story. Two newscasters were sitting at a desk and behind them on the screen was a large graphic. “Mystery Money For Charity.

….so far eighteen different charities in the US and six in Canada have reported receiving anonymous donations of ten million dollars each. The charities were all those which had had their support substantially reduced by various US state and Canadian provincial governments. The money comes as welcome relief to those organizations….” 

The news story carried on, but Ferguson’s mind was elsewhere, putting two and two together. He stared off into space for a good three or four minutes, then snapped back out of his reverie.

“Goddamn,” He said to no one in particular. But in his mind, he knew what was happening. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. What to do about it was another matter altogether. Not so much about what he could do, but why he would want to do anything at all. Or maybe it was just the idea that his instincts were right, and he could live with that.

The next morning, he put his latest project to bed and at noon that day, then jumped into his car and headed south. 

Two days later he pulled up to the Deschanel Gallery. It was later in the afternoon and the day was a little on the humid side. He walked to the front window and peeked inside. He saw Ava, sitting at the counter talking on the phone. He went inside and pulled up a stool on the opposite side of her table.

When she hung up, she said: “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Jay Ferguson all the way from DC. What can I do for you, sir?”

Jay looked at her for a few seconds and then he said. “You can have dinner with me, anywhere you choose.”

Ava just smiled. “Well, that’s a whole different kettle of fish. You came all the way down here to ask me out on a date?” 

“I did.”

“No dopey accusations. No pie-in-the-sky theories. Just dinner.”

“Nope, just dinner.”

“Why?”

 “Because I think we got off, I mean, I got us off on the wrong foot last time. I’d like to see if I can rectify that.”

Ava stared at him and saw that he was sincere. Or if he wasn’t he was a damn good liar. Either way, it kind of appealed to her.

“Okay. Where are you staying?”

“Nowhere yet. If you had told me to take a hike, I was just gonna head back home.”

Ava smiled. “Meet me back here at six. I’ll make a reservation somewhere expensive.”

“Six it is.” and with that Ferguson left the gallery. Ava smiled, and thought to herself, ‘I wonder what he really wants?’

~ Epilogue ~

It took the better part of two years to anonymously distribute the money the group syphoned from the various banks they attacked. In the meantime, everyone went on with their lives as usual.

Ava convinced Jay Ferguson to move to New Orleans. Which he did. They were married six months later and had their first of two children two years after that. Once they were married Ava told Jay about the scam, and Jay took over the role of financial administrator for the new Ferguson Family.

Ava and Roland sold the gallery about a year later. Roland and Jonas pulled up stakes and moved to New Mexico, where the heat was drier. Jonas continued to distribute the charity money, mostly based on suggestions from Jules and Ava, until it was all gone.

Travis and Jules stayed in Virginia Beach bought the house they were leasing. They then set up a security system and took off to see the world while they were still young. 

On the way back around they stopped in New Orleans to visit with Ava and Ferguson, who knew all about everything, and was a pretty cool guy when he wasn’t hunting you.

While they were in the south, Travis took Jules home to meet his parents who shoehorned them into their busy schedules.

Jules gifted her parents ten million dollars and her brother five million, after managing to convince them that she and Travis had won a massive Powerball lottery, but insisted on not having their names published, which was an option they had. She must have been pretty convincing because her parents didn’t seem to be at all suspicious when she told them. 

On their travels, Jules collected menus from a lot of the places where they ate and took pictures of everything. When they got back to Virginia Beach, Jules upgraded the large kitchen in their house and started to experiment with cooking 

A year and a half later, once Jules had mastered cooking the dishes she liked best and they went about the business of creating their own restaurant. Travis took care of the business side and Jules managed the food side, hired and trained the chefs and the wait and bar staff and became the restaurant’s hostess.

They named the restaurant Jules & Travis. And why not? The restaurant was an immediate success, and even though they didn’t need the money, it came rolling in. So they paid their people very well, and treated their customers like royalty.

One night, it was a Monday because the restaurant was only open from Wednesday to Sunday, Travis and Jules were sitting on the back steps sipping wine and looking out at the ocean. Travis asked Jules if she could still do the magic thing that had made them all so rich and done so much good in the world. Jules was pleased to report that she could not, which led her to believe that maybe all that had happened was the intention all along.

After three years of managing the restaurant on their own, they turned the responsibilities over to their respective second in commands and went about the business of starting a family. After they had their first child, a little girl they named Simone, they drove to Wisconsin for a visit with Jules’s parents and brother.  

On the way back, they stopped in Chicago and picked up all the jewelry that was stashed in Travis’s safe deposit box. They dropped the whole lot of it with Berto in New York City to fence for them. Travis also told Berto that all the bearer bonds had been laundered with Franklin James, and dividends were being deposited regularly in his Cayman Islands account

Finally, he explained to Berto that they were retired from the business. Berto told them he figured they wouldn’t be lifers in the trade anyway, and promised to send them a money order for whatever he could get for the bling less his profit, of course. Travis just nodded and the two men shook hands and Berto walked away with a thick briefcase filled with expensive stuff. And that was the end of that.

They then drove home, and carried on pretty much the same way they always had. Still very much in love. And now that they had a new little person to take care of, completely dedicated to giving her, and any brothers and sisters she may end up with, the best life possible. 

FIN