Dead Birmingham (3 page)

Broom rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Yeah. I was checking out some of those tattoos on the body. Seem to be the names of hippy bands. A bunch of bands that try to sound like the Grateful Dead and don't succeed.”

Broom turned to McMahon. “Mack, I need you to do me another favor.”

“Sure.”

“Get together a list of all the shoplifting reports that have come in over the last three months or so.”

“You mean for the whole city?”

Broom nodded. “I mean for the whole city.”

“Christ, Broom, that's going to be some list. Three months? Every two-bit shoplifter in town's going to be on there.”

“Yeah, Mack. I know. But it looks like this kid picked up something he shouldn't have. Looks like someone wants it back. Maybe awfully bad, at that.”

“What makes you think they didn't get it from him already?”

“I thought about that, but it looks like they didn't have any luck. Look at him, Mack. He's been cut to shreds. If they had gotten what they were after, there would have been a quick
coup de gras
. They wouldn't have wasted so much time torturing him like this. And that tells me something else.”

“What's that?”

“He didn't know where it was. Because if he had, he would have told them, long before he looked like that.”

“So maybe the killer doesn't know which kid stole it? He's just going around killing kids until he finds the right one?”

“Maybe. But, maybe not. I think this guy is pretty methodical, a professional, so he might know exactly who and what he's looking for. I'm still just guessing, though.” Broom turned and started to walk away.

“Hey, Broom,” McMahon called after him.
 

“Yeah?”

“Where are you going?”

“Somebody has to go tell this kid's parents.” Broom shrugged. “In this case, that somebody is me.”

 

Chapter 5

 

The children loved their new castle. They had found it after many nights of searching. The six of them had been living in an old office building, until one day workmen showed up and disturbed their rest. Then they had faded into the shadows, killed the day roaming the city, and moved on. They had spent a few nights in an abandoned supermarket in a crumbling postwar neighborhood, but the people there were older and more vigilant. The old had eyed the young suspiciously as they walked down the street. The kids had known immediately that it was time to move on again.

Scott had found it. He was the best of them, the quickest, usually picking things first when they boosted. He stole the best items. He always found the best places for them to squat. This time, he had found a place that was heaven, pure gold. The place was perfect for them. The name of the place was the Cabana Hotel, a beautiful abandoned hotel near the middle of old downtown. It was a twenty-three-story Wonderland, where at last they had been able to throw their tired young bodies down, and after a long rest, go exploring in the labyrinthine that was their new home.

Scott was their leader, and they were his followers, his disciples. He had preached to them the gospel of Stealing for Freedom. “Reject the order that has been imposed upon you,” he told them. “Swipe whatever you need.” They had met him in college. Most people had thought he was crazy, but not these five; they thought he was a genius, and had signed on for whatever adventures that becoming his follower promised.

There was Bone, the black kid from Missouri, an ex-engineering major; Yim, his girl, from South Korea, who had studied the violin; Mule, the rich kid from Mountainbrook who hated his life, who changed his field of study every semester; and Mule's girl, Dextra. Then there was Angel, Scott's girl. She took his every idiosyncrasy in stride, and never doubted his words or his convictions. Scott was a rebel, her rebel, and he was the leader of them all.

 
They were from the upper crust, disaffected, bored, looking for a way out of lives that had been laid out for them the moment they were born—boring lives. Scott told them (though no one knew where he'd gotten the information) that the Cabana Hotel was taken by the City of Birmingham against back taxes. It had been vacant for almost thirty years. Many more years might pass before anyone came to run them out. And ‘many more years' seemed forever, to ones so young.

* * *

“This place is a trip.” It was Bone, coming out of the shadows of a room in the Penthouse. “The damn table is still set in the next room, like it's been waiting for a hundred years for someone to come to dinner, only they never showed up.”

“The beds in the rooms down the hall are still made,” Angel said brightly, as she pranced into the room, Yim close behind her. “No one's had any fun here in a long time.”

“The downstairs rooms are all cleaned out. Only the top floors still have stuff in ‘em. It's like whoever was hauling things away just got tired and stopped at about the twelfth floor. Maybe somebody was trying to save the place, maybe trying to reopen it or something,” Bone mused, picking up an embroidered pillow and staring at the inscription. “Weird, like all this stuff is sittin' here, waitin' on somebody to come home.”

Dextra was stretched out on a couch, staring at a blank, dusty television screen. A black-haired girl with olive skin, and pierced upper lip and eyebrows. She was dressed in black. The television wouldn't work, since the old hotel had no power, but she watched it anyway.
 

Dextra's boyfriend, Mule, sat at her feet. She frowned. “Yeah, it's kind of spooky how everything's still just sitting here. Reminds me of that book where the old lady still has her wedding cake on the table . . . after like, thirty years, or something. What's it called, uh . . .”

“
Great Expectations
,” Scott announced, as he walked in from an adjoining room. “I think Charles Dickens would agree with you. This hotel certainly speaks of purloined hope.”

Dextra gave him a theatrical roll of her dark eyes. “Thank you, mister genius. Any time I need to know something irrelevant, you're the man I'll come to.”

“Oh, Dextra, you are one catty bitch,” Angel said, and everyone laughed.

 
Scott smiled. “All I mean is, I believe some optimist must have intended to resurrect the place, but probably was unable to escape the legal entanglements. Why else would a lot of the furnishings still be in place? Lucky for us, though. I found these in the closet down the hall.” He produced a pack of paper with Hotel Cabana letterhead and a pack of pens.

Bone came over and slapped Scott on the back. “I know that makes you happy. Now you can finish your manuscript, and we can start taking over the world.”

“Hey, it's more than a manuscript,” Mule put in. “It's our ‘how to' book to the world. Our . . . what's the word . . .”

“Manifesto,” said Angel, as she threw her arms around Scott from behind. “Our brave leader's manifesto.”

* * *

Excerpt from Scott Anthony LaRue's unpublished manuscript,
Shoplifting in the 21st Century: Boosting for Fun and Profit:

People steal for many different reasons. The things that we steal say a lot about us. The destitute steal for food, but hunger robs them of reason. They steal just enough to fill their bellies, and tomorrow, they are hungry again. The banker steals the money with which he is entrusted, because he has seen the super rich, and he feels that he deserves to live as they do. He is right, but so do we all. We cannot all live that way, though. This book is a rejection of a society that holds such extremes over our heads.
 

The starving man goes to jail, for stealing what he needs to survive. Millionaires fly over the prison in which he is housed and the money they have in the banks, that the banker so covets, was made from the sweat of countless poor people's brows, and through other, even more sinister, designs.

So steal what you need. But don't get caught. He who gets too greedy without weighing the danger ends up in the prison, above. He who is cautious and awaits the best opportunity might just end up in the private jet. Of course the latter is preferable. So read carefully the following examples, and you will learn the secrets of the Booster, the modern, anti-corporate thief. And you just might end up beating the system, and finding yourself a nice big jackpot, if you're very, very careful.

 

Chapter 6

 

As I drove across town I considered the ramifications of this strange little case. Malvagio had paid me three thousand, up front, to hunt down a ragtag group of shoplifting kids. He'd agreed to pay more when the item they had stolen was returned safely. If the empty jewel case were truly that valuable, I thought, he damn sure shouldn't have left the thing lying around where quick-fingered kids could snatch it. If the old man was willing to put out so much money to have it back, why not just offer the money to the thieves?
 

Maybe that's what he plans to do
, my chiding little inner voice told me.

I had developed a healthy distrust of most people, over the years. Yes, most people I met were genuinely distraught, and yes, most of the time what they told me was close to the truth. Whether they misled me intentionally or not, most people skewed details, forgot, or blurred events because they were looking at life through the filters of their own perceptions, like everyone else in the world does.

Others, though, just plain lied. Malvagio's story could very well be the unadulterated truth, of course. Maybe the missing box was, after all, just a box, and nothing more. But something just didn't seem to add up about his story.
 

If the old man was sitting on something that valuable, why not sell it off right here in the U.S of A, and spend his twilight years on the Riviera? Did one have to travel all the way to Italy to unload a Medici item, or any other? Maybe there was another angle. Maybe someone had paid the kids to get the item, since it was an antiquity. Maybe . . . maybe.
 

I needed something else to go on—a second opinion, and a well-informed one, at that.
 

I remembered something about the Medici from college. Machiavelli had written
The Prince
for one of them. They had been rich people, I remembered, Old World Royalty, powerbrokers and real heavy hitters. Lords or barons or some such, like most people with power were back in those days. But I couldn't remember much else.
 

Well, then, I'd better go back to college and find out, I reasoned.

* * *

The History Department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham was in the old liberal arts building. I had earned a degree in English down there, years before. The grounds of UAB looked much the same. I still remembered my way around inside, but the names on the doors had all changed, of course.
 

I examined a faculty roster posted in the hall, and found my man: Dr. M. Boswell. Specialty, Medieval to Nineteenth Century European History. According to the posted office hours, the doctor was in. “That almost never happened when I was in school,” I mused aloud.

I came to a door where a thin, middle-aged woman sat typing at a computer. I knocked lightly, and the woman looked up.
 

“Yes?”

“Uhm, I have kind of a weird, academic type of question.”

She smiled disarmingly. “Well, as long as it's a weird, academic type question about history. Weird questions not pertaining to history should be taken to the Psychology department, across the street.”

“Fair enough. I was wondering if there was someone around who would know about the Medici family.”

“Well, well, do tell.” She spoke with a Midwestern drawl. “Have a seat. Luckily, you're in the right place. So, are you a student of history, Mister . . . ?”

“Longville, Roland Longville. Call me Roland, please.”

“Okay, Roland. I'm Dr. Boswell. Miranda Boswell. Call me Miranda. Now . . . ?”

I smiled. “Well, I've always enjoyed learning about history, but this is more of a business matter. I have a couple of questions about something potentially valuable that might have belonged to the Medici.”

“An art object?”

“Well, yes, I suppose. How did you guess that?”

“The Medici were bankers and powerbrokers, Roland, but they were also fantastic patrons of the Fine Arts. They were patrons of artists as diverse as Machiavelli and Michelangelo, among many others. Which d' Medici were you interested in, exactly?”

“Lorenzo.”

“Hmm. Lorenzo the Magnificent.” Her eyes narrowed, and she seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. “Tell me, what is this
objet d'art
?”

“Well, it's a box. A very ornate box. It supposedly has the crest of the Medici family upon its lid.”

“What does it contain, or did it contain?”

“I am told, the Medici jewels, but they have since been lost.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, I can assure you that whatever this box did contain, that story's not true.”