Chapter 6

Okay, the penthouse was empty, and that solved a part of the problem. However, the biggest part of the problem is how could Alice and I get into the penthouse without having to shoot somebody. Well, the next act was up to me. I went into the lobby of the Colonial Hotel and very pointedly looked at my watch. A few minutes later, I looked at my watch again. When I wasn't looking at my watch, I was staring at the elevators. Once I was sure that I had convinced anybody who was watching me that I was waiting for somebody, I walked toward the elevators.

The elevators did not open directly on to the lobby, and the doors were invisible to the clerks at the desk. They were located on a kind of side corridor that was visible from the lobby, just not from the main desk. I went in to examine the elevators for a clue as to which one led to the penthouse. There were eight elevators, and seven of them appeared to be completely normal. The eighth elevator had no call button. Instead, all it had was a place where a key could be inserted. Obviously, this had to be the elevator leading to the penthouse. Okay, where could I get a key?

The obvious answer was that I could not "get" a key. With no one in the penthouse, all of the usual scams about somebody in the penthouse having elevator trouble wouldn't work and neither would the delivery gambit. It looked like all I could do was to make a key. Actually, that was not all that difficult: all it took was patience.

I hung around until there was a break in the action with the use of the elevators. When it looked like I would have a little time to work, I pulled out a piece of paper and a soft pencil. I laid the paper over the opening to the lock and rubbed the pencil over the paper. This gave me a perfect outline of the keyhole, and that was all I needed to know what kind of key blank that was required. The other crucial data was the length of the key. I had a little kit that I always carried with me, and in this kit was a piece of wire of very small diameter and about three inches long. I pushed the wire into the keyhole and bent it flush with the outside surface of the lock. This gave me the minimum length I needed.

Now we needed to confuse the trail even more by having Alice make a trip to a locksmith's shop. She dressed the part of a harassed housewife and went to a fairly large key shop. She walked up to the clerk and said, "Mister, can you help me? I have done something very stupid, and my husband will kill me if he finds out what happened. In four days, he is bringing a very important client home for dinner, and I have lost the key to the wine cabinet. The client is a wine-snob, and my husband wants him to think that my husband is as knowledgeable as he is about wines.

"I lost the key to the damned cabinet, and I have to produce one pretty damned quick to save my marriage! I can't just call in a locksmith to open the cabinet because my husband wants to make a production of how he keeps his best wines locked away from casual drinkers. That is sure to impress the hell out of the client and earn my husband more money in the long run."

"Yeah, Lady, I can help you if you tell me the brand of the lock so I can find the right blank. Otherwise, you are out of luck."

"Oh, my God, I didn't think of that! I talked to my friend, and she suggested that I bring you this." Alice took out the paper and the wire and showed them to the clerk. "This is what the lock looks like, and I made it by rubbing a pencil over the face of the lock. This wire shows the depth of the lock, so I figure that a blank at least that long would do the job. I figured to get the blank from you and smear it with pencil lead. That way I could put it in the lock and wiggle it back and forth, marking in the lead the outline of the inside of the lock. I figured that you could then cut me a workable key if I brought the thing back to you."

"Yeah, that should work. Let me look in my stock of blanks for one that meets these requirements." The clerk was gone for about 15 minutes before he came back with a blank. "Here, Ma'am, this is the blank you are looking for. Good luck on the rest of the job."

Alice paid for the blank and rushed back to me. I took the blank and headed for the Colonial Hotel. I went into the men's room and thoroughly coated the key blank with graphite and walked back to the elevator. I stuck the blank into the lock, and it went in with no problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the surplus graphite helped to lubricate the key as it went in. I twisted it back and forth as hard as I could to make the necessary marks and them withdrew the key. Yes! The marks on the blank showed where the cuts had to be made.

Alice took the marked blank back to the key shop and found the same man who had waited on her before. He recognized her, so no further explanation was required. He spent about 10 minutes working on the key and came back. "Here you are, Ma'am. This key should work as well as the original."

Alice paid for the work, thanked the man profusely, and gave him a $5 tip. She rushed back to me and we were in business! Alice fixed herself up a little bit in the car and we were ready to head for the penthouse. There was no need to wait until nightfall since we looked like normal customers of the hotel.

We walked in just like we were headed for a room and I pushed the key into the lock. I did have to jiggle it a little bit, but the key turned and the elevator door came open. We stepped in and pressed the only button that was visible. There was a panel that looked like it was there for the benefit of the FD, but I had no need to mess with it. The elevator quickly took us to the penthouse, and we drew our guns just in case before we stepped out. It was a relief when we found the expected empty corridor.

We were looking for two things: the master bedroom and the office. Alice took one side of the hallway and I took the other. It did not take us long to find what we were looking for because all we had to do was to open the door and look inside the room. Alice found the office: it was the first door on the left.

I found the master bedroom: it was the last door on the right. Okay, we are as human as the next person. We looked for the gold first. I found three chests in the closet much like the two that had been found in Boston. We did not have a key for any of the chests, but I was able to pick the locks. Oh ... My ... God... ! One chest was full of gold coins. Hell, it looked just like a pirate's chest in the movies. The other two chests were full, and I mean FULL of gold bars. Each chest weighed over a hundred pounds. Shit, these chests were going to be a pain to move.

Well, time to stop playing with our toys and to get back to work. We went into the office and looked through the filing cabinets. There was also a computer in there, and we figured that we had better take it, too. We went through the papers in the filing cabinets, and they looked like wonderful blackmail material against the other members of the Russian Mafia.

Dammit, there was no way that we could get away with hauling all of this stuff through the lobby all in one load. Wait a minute, let's not try to sneak it out! I will dress up like a common laborer and Alice could dress like a businesswoman. We could rent a truck and the necessary dollies to move the stuff we wanted out of the penthouse. If we were challenged, Alice could hold up her key and ask, rhetorically, "Why would Mr. Vladovich give me the key if he did not want me to fetch this stuff for him?" We didn't see how the workers at the hotel could argue with that.

The next day, we went through the motions and moved the chests of gold, the three filing cabinets, and the computer system to the truck. Alice was approached by a desk clerk, and she gave him the spiel about the key and Mr. Vladovich, so he backed down. Fortunately, he was not the same guy that she had talked to a few days before.

That afternoon, we drove back to Boston and moved the stuff from NYC into my condo. There was weeks of work ahead of us figuring out what we could do with the information we had come up with. However, it was more important to work on the terrorist problem first. Just to keep anybody from tracing us to Boston, I drove to Hartford to turn in the rental truck and dollies. Hopefully, that will confuse our trail sufficiently.

We finally got around to estimating the value of our new gold supply. We have close to 350 pounds of gold as weighed on the bathroom scale. My guess is that is on the order of $7million. That gives us something like $12million at the moment. I don't know how much more than that we will need, but it is certainly enough to keep us going for now!