Black Knight Read Online Free Page A

she said.
    Green was gone longer than Marc expected—a full twenty minutes. During that time the Kollets came for their car. Now the decision had been plucked from his hands. Either he went after Silvia or waited until next time. Yet he knew it was unlikely that he’d ever have a shot at such a large stone again. That was what kept him focused. If he could steal and fence the emerald, he’d be able to quit his life as a thief and get on to something important.
    Whatever that might be . . .
    In reality he’d be forced to quit. As it was he was already playing Russian roulette with the LAPD. Eventually the string of missing jewels would be traced back to the theater’s valet service, and to him. No way he was hanging around until he got caught. Tonight’s job had to be his last.
    Clocking out, Marc crossed the street to the mall’s parking structure and headed straight for the janitor’s closet. The battery-operated heater had warmed the confined space to over a hundred degrees. Ordinarily he’d hide the heater in the corner of the closet, but since tonight would hopefully be the last time he’d use it, he decided to dump it and the extra cases somewhere outside the mall.
    The decision carried with it its own risks. It was after two in the morning and Silvia and her boyfriend would be wanting their car soon. If he left the mall to dump his equipment, one of the other valets might come for the Jaguar at that exact moment.
    Yet he decided it was worth the risk. He couldn’t leave the tools of his trade behind for a detective to find. Collecting his used and unused steel cases, the heater, and two spare tubes of the magic plaster mix, he stuffed everything in a canvas bag and headed for the door.
    He was out on Hollywood Boulevard in a minute. He had scouted the surrounding area earlier. Small details mattered. He knew of a family-owned pizza joint three blocks north of the mall. It had a large Dumpster that was unloaded every Sunday morning, which would be tomorrow, before ten. He considered three blocks the minimum distance to safely dispose of his equipment. Even if he managed to steal the emerald, and some brilliant cop quickly traced the theft back to the theater, he or she wouldn’t have time to search several city blocks for clues before his stash disappeared.
    Yet the three blocks were long blocks and he had to force himself not to run. Running people looked like guilty people, particularly at night, and especially when they had a bag in their hands. The whole way to and from the pizza joint, he kept thinking that Silvia would have already come for her car and split.
    But the Jag was still there when he returned to the mall.
    He studied it before trying out his newly minted key. The trunk was on the small size—he’d glanced at it before but had failed to scrutinize it—and there was nothing worse than getting trapped in a trunk. It had happened to him only once, but that had been one time too many.
    It had been an old Mercedes, from the sixties, built like a tank, and it had not come equipped with a child’s safety-release lever—the kind that were nowadays standard on most vehicle trunks as well as refrigerators. Worse, the lock on the car’s trunk had not responded to his usual bag of tricks, and he hadn’t even been able to push out the backseat and crawl into the interior of the car. In the end he’d spent an entire night sweating in the garage of a mansion he’d never actually seen and needing to pee so bad he’d finally pissed all over the spare tire.
    He had only managed to escape the next afternoon when the owner had taken the car to get washed. Fortunately the guys at the car wash had been mostly illegal immigrants and hadn’t questioned the mysterious character who had suddenly popped out of the trunk in a white shirt, black pants, and black tie—his basic valet attire—and run like hell into a nearby alley.
    Since that happened, he never climbed into a trunk without carrying a mini