Thief's Odyssey Read online

  John L. Monk

  Thief’s Odyssey

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Thief’s Odyssey

  Copyright © 2015 by John L. Monk

  http://john-l-monk.com

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Cover Design by Keith Draws

  For Dorothy, who stole my heart.

  Chapter 1

  Doug Oster steered down the long drive from his red brick starter mansion a few minutes after Linda, his wife, left for work. He didn’t look around warily the way they did in some neighborhoods, where the sale of steel-framed security doors tracked closely with the crime rate, so he missed seeing me slouched behind the wheel across the street. He was confident in his place in the world. Invincible.

  Rather than resent him for it, I admired him. Who wouldn’t want to wake up every day on the winning side of life? I even liked how he’d acquired his wealth—managing a hedge fund for a prestigious firm. You could tell it was prestigious because the website had a picture of a man in a suit and no tie, standing alone on a skyscraper.

  Doug had a new black Mercedes. After he left, I stepped out of my used Honda, opened the trunk, and grabbed a lightweight backpack and a prestigious clipboard. The backpack had peace symbols and buttons from various causes pinned all over it. I’d even heard of some of them.

  Nonprofits made great cover. If someone asked what I was doing here, I’d need a solid story. In this case: circulating a petition to stop a popular circus from coming to town. If suspicious, they could call my regional coordinator to prove I was there legitimately. When I’d volunteered for the animal rights group, I’d purposely made an impression on the woman so she’d remember me.

  Legitimacy was my armor, but if the cops showed up and searched my backpack, nothing could save me. They’d arrest me, I’d go to jail, and the evil circus would remain free to entertain children of all ages, unopposed.

  I walked up to the house and pretended to knock, silently thanking the security technician who’d affixed their company’s sticker to the glass door. Now I knew what I was up against.

  Nobody answered.

  I consulted my clipboard, shook my head at the unfairness of it all while waiting for a car to pass, then took a dangerously exposed walk around the side of the house and into the backyard.

  Off to the left, a large deck filled most of the yard. Ahead of me, wide concrete steps descended to a set of French doors tagged with another of those little security stickers. Most homes weren’t hardwired to the control box and this one was no exception, with familiar wireless shock sensors and door contacts plainly visible.

  I took the backpack off and got out my RF jammer, a walky-talky-looking device with four antennas and a power cord. A glance at my smartphone showed four bars. I clicked through the settings and found three wireless networks in the area: two barely in range, and one so strong it had to be from somewhere in the house, with an SSID of “satchmo.” I wondered who the music lover was, Doug or Linda.

  When I plugged the jammer into the convenient outdoor electrical socket and turned it on, satchmo and the other two networks disappeared, but my four bars still remained. I moved the knob for one of the antennas to a pre-marked location and watched as, like magic, the bars disappeared. This would keep the alarm from calling out over cellular.

  Because I couldn’t know if a landline was in use as a backup, I moved a third knob to another pre-marked setting. It should have knocked out the transmitters on every sensor and motion detector within 120 feet, but I couldn’t be sure I’d matched the frequencies until I opened the door and nothing happened. These consumer systems were more about personal safety than anything else. They’d call the police, sure, but if they could scare away an intruder with an audible alarm and save someone’s life, they’ve done their job. This had the added benefit of keeping people like me out of jail—both very good things.

  I’d brought my lock picks with me when I left, but this was a French door. There’s more to picking a lock than they showed in the movies, but getting through a French door was so easy even Hollywood didn’t show it for fear of losing credibility. After putting on a pair of gloves, I took a butter knife from my bag and leaned hard against the top corner where the two doors met, opening a small gap. Then I pushed the blade through and disengaged the bolt with a downward pull. I did the same at the bottom, using my foot and pulling up. With both bolts free, I bypassed the remaining deadbolt and the locked doorknob by gently nudging with my hand.

  The house was quiet. Either the jammer had worked or Doug forgot to arm the system. Something so common I’d thought about leaving the jammer home, because the penalty for possession of burglary tools was worse than getting caught trespassing.

  The Osters’ basement had a pool table, a full bar, a game parlor like you’d find in Vegas, and a spectacular home theater with movie posters on the walls. About what you’d expect from an active couple with money to spend. I wanted to pour a drink, pop some popcorn in their old-fashioned popper and hang loose for a while. Instead, I closed the doors behind me and found the stairs.

  The alarm console showed it was armed, though not tripped. So long as the jammer kept doing its job, I was fine.

  It was nine thirty. Too early, but at least I was in place. A quick peek outside confirmed I was still alone. With nothing to do but wait, I went upstairs for a look around and made sure to call out “hello” as I went, but nobody called back.

  Any thief will tell you: there’s a rush to being inside a strange house, uninvited. For just a little audacity, the hidden lives of the owners are yours to uncover.

  The master bedroom was kind of a mess, with clothes heaped in the corner in a way that didn’t fit with the tidiness of the main floor or the basement. That concerned me. A mess like that in another house would have come with dishes piled in the sink and weeks of mail stacked on the dinner table, but the kitchen and living room downstairs were spotless. I began to worry a maid might show up—someone instructed to keep the rest of the place clean but to stay out of the bedroom. And then I stopped worrying and became curious: what was so special about the master bedroom that they had to get all bossy with the maid? All right, I’m cheating a little—people hide stuff in bedrooms all the time, messy or not. The point is, a house will speak to you if you take the time to listen.

  I still had time, so I started in the closet, looking for anything of value. Then I went around the room, systematically peeking behind paintings and rummaging nightstands and looking under the bed. After five minutes I found a small pistol, some nice watches, and a jewelry box filled with rings, jumbled chains, and bra
celets.

  As a rule, I never bothered with weapons. If I ever got caught with one, it could turn a one-year stint into a ten-year nightmare in maximum security. Besides, there wasn’t anyone I wanted to shoot. But jewelry—that was a different story. Such a small jewelry box, though, sitting all alone in a big room like this … something didn’t seem right. It didn’t fit with the Wayne Manor real estate, the new Mercedes, or the cool stuff in the basement.

  I picked up a gold ring with a large diamond wreathed in sapphires. A peek through my jeweler’s loupe revealed an absolutely perfect gem with no visible inclusions or other flaws. If it were real it’d be worth a fortune, but I didn’t think it was. To find out, I got out my diamond tester, flipped the switch, and waited for the little light to show it had finished heating up. When it was ready, I touched it to the gem and grinned when it came up fake. I checked a few more pieces and sure enough, all fakes.

  Wondering what I’d missed, I put the tester and loupe away and checked the room again. Nothing in the closets, still nothing under the bed. Some unpainted drywall patches, but if they’d hidden stuff in the walls, they could keep it. Big messy pile of clothes… Yeah, there was something about that, but I couldn’t see it yet. And no, I didn’t think there was a safe underneath. I walked over anyway and nudged it aside, but all I saw was more of the same beige carpeting adored by hedge fund managers everywhere.

  I went through the other rooms. They’d left the hamper in the laundry room filled with clean clothes folded and ready to put away. Doug and Linda probably squeezed as much life as they could from their weekends and let things stack up. But if they were so busy…

  Back in the bedroom, I walked over to the bed. The pillows formed lumps beneath covers spread semi-square with the mattress. Officially, they’d made the bed, but you’d never call it neat. My foster mother, Mrs. Swanson, would have had me make it again, and I would have. You didn’t mess around with Mrs. Swanson. But why would a couple so busy they couldn’t put their clothes away bother making it up at all? On a hunch, I lifted the covers on one side and found a three-inch-high drawer set in a hardwood frame running the length of the box spring.

  “Oh,” I said.

  When I pulled it open, I didn’t bother getting out my tester. It was obvious what I was looking at: long loops of pearls and gold chains and jewels with expensive diamonds, opals, emeralds, and rubies. Wider than it was long, the drawer spanned roughly six square feet. Here were the Rolexes and Cartiers, his and hers. But they’d never be mine. A quick look showed they were all monogrammed. Monogrammed anything and unique pieces were too difficult to move and a pain to break apart or melt down. Bill Mason, one of the greatest American cat burglars, once robbed Johnny Weissmuller, the best-known actor who’d ever worn a Tarzan costume. When Mason discovered one of the treasures he’d stolen was Weissmuller’s Olympic gold medal for swimming, he didn’t melt it down. The famous thief was so overcome with shame he mailed it back. He had a flare about him, I’ll give him that.

  All told, I ended up throwing back six watches and an engraved platinum locket frosted with diamonds that made me sweat just looking at it.

  After closing the case and arranging the covers back, I went downstairs to wait. An hour later the doorbell rang, on time. I took off my gloves and counted thirty seconds, then another ten as shadows played on the wall through the leaded glass above the door. When I finally opened it, the mailman on the other side paused in writing out the little slip he’d started and squinted at me, looking faintly annoyed. He was a busy man with a long route ahead of him.

  “Got a package for you,” he said, handing me a small, heavy box and an electronic signature pad. He didn’t bother asking for my ID. My Doug Oster ID had a magnetic strip that actually worked and a holographic sticker, but I’d already made him forty seconds late for his next stop.

  “See ya,” he said when I handed back the pad, turning and forgetting me with such impersonal efficiency it was almost art.

  After shutting the door, I put my gloves back on and wiped down everything I’d just touched. Then I left through the basement door. I used my butter knife to re-lock it before packing the jammer and the box in my backpack. The six thousand in gold and silver bullion formed a comfortable lump against the small of my back, and the tinkle of loose rings and chains accompanied my slow, purposeful, strides to the car.

  Invincible.

  Chapter 2

  “How are you at following instructions?” Lucas had said two years ago. The gist of every question since the interview began, but I didn’t mind. Far better than others I could think of, like, Why did you leave your last job? or Why have you stolen the identity of a dead man? It helped that my cover would have been twenty-five at the time with no job history.

  “I’m big on procedures,” I said, parroting something I’d read online. “If I learn something, I document it. If it’s something others can use, I send it to the team.” Not the answer to his question, exactly, but good enough. And it covered the inevitable follow-up: how’s your documentation?

  “I was just about to ask you about documentation,” Lucas said. “That’s a very important skill.”

  He told me a little about the company and its place in the history of the Internet. I wanted to ask him if they still called the Internet “Cyberspace” but settled for just nodding and smiling a lot.

  Lucas Villa managed the Network Operations Center, or NOC, for Milestone Communications, a fairly infamous web and email hosting company in Herndon, Virginia. Three years before my interview with Lucas, Milestone had gotten in the news over a terrific security breach where a congressman’s wife’s email got hacked—and her with so many colorful things to say about her husband and his shady real estate deals. Since then, what with more hacks, fleeing customers, and yearly Christmas layoffs, Milestone’s recruiters were doing everything but raiding homeless shelters for its ever-open technical positions.

  Eventually Lucas said, “So, ah, how do you feel about night work? Third shift? We always start people at night. There’s a lot less call volume and more time to show you the ropes. If you’re interested.”

  I was very interested, thank you, and landed the job without a background check or references, bearing nothing more than a positive attitude and a willingness to learn: always interested, always polite. Just like the interview prep sites suggested.

  Since then, I’d been quietly rotting in the eleven-to-seven shift doing second-tier email and web support. We got the calls first tier couldn’t handle, so there usually wasn’t much to do. Unlike first tier support, our calls weren’t automatically routed, so we could divvy up the work however we wanted—and that’s where Sean Powers, my coworker, came in. We had an arrangement: he slept through the night about ten cubes away, the only other person besides me on duty, and I handled every call. Sean had a second job to get to in the morning and classes after that, and a kid on the way, and I’m sure there was some back rent in there if that wasn’t brutal enough. I didn’t mind. I was in character: naive and ready to please.

  “If you run into anything too complicated,” he’d said on my first day, stifling a yawn, “wake me up—that’s what I’m here for.”

  Orientation completed, he’d huffed back to his seat—an expensive-looking padded chair he’d snagged from the executive conference room on the sixth floor. Then, in full view of anyone who might walk in, he fell unconscious.

  Occasionally, I have woken him up, just to keep up appearances. But after four years in the Linux club back in high school, and continued use after that, I could have qualified as a junior sys-admin at another company. Here at Milestone, after the exodus of real talent following the scandals, I could have run the place.

  ***

  “Very nice,” I said, hitting the spacebar to pause my script. I was still lying low after the huge score at Doug and Linda’s, but I couldn’t help looking: four people with deliveries pending from Huxley Capital, a company specializing in the sale of gold and silver bullion and o
ther precious metals, like platinum and palladium.

  I scrolled through the results:

  Kim McPherson had bought a twenty-count tube of one-ounce Silver Eagle rounds for $701.

  Craig Richter had purchased $9,075 worth of gold Canadian Maple Leafs.

  Sam Dowell had ordered a 1/10th ounce Gold Eagle, reminding me to build a filter for lightweights like him.

  Dennis Wright was an investor more to my taste, with a healthy mix of gold and silver bullion totaling more than $18,000. Nice as it seemed, there was no way he’d settle for picking it up at the post office. So it was hardly worth the effort to case his house, even if he was a regular investor.

  The Osters, with the messy bedroom, had been another story. They preferred modest monthly investments and liked to pick their deliveries up after work. Earlier in the month, when the gold market dipped on news of a global selloff, they’d made their biggest purchase yet, and I’d made my move.

  Today’s report was short, though on some days the output spanned multiple pages. I couldn’t store any of it on my desktop, and certainly not on the server I was running it from. Everything had to be pasted from my screen to the file on my thumb drive—which, incidentally, held the script I’d written to sift through our customers’ four million mailboxes. Every night, I’d paste it into a shell on the server, kick it off when my shift began, and then copy the results at the end. Usually, it took about three days for a complete scan to finish.

  Our email design used a supposedly “exploit-free” codebase. By all accounts, it lived up to the hype, which was why no self-respecting hacker bothered trying to exploit it. Mainly they settled for guessing your pet’s name or the model of your first car or the place you met your spouse, then sent the reset link to their address of choice. Or maybe they called support and got someone to reset it for them. I was neither a hacker nor entirely self-respecting, so I didn’t bother with any of that. The system stored customer mail in text files, one per message. What better way to read people’s mail anonymously than to open the files themselves?