If he, Denny, could survive the next twenty-four hours and get out of the country, the fortune would be his and his alone.
At an all-night pancake house he parked close to the front door and took a table with his truck in sight. He opened his laptop, ordered coffee, asked about Wi-Fi. The girl said of course and gave him the password. He decided to stay for a spell and ordered waffles and bacon. Online he checked flights out of Pittsburgh, and booked one to Chicago, and from there a nonstop to Mexico City. He searched for storage units that were climate controlled and made a list. He ate slowly, ordered more coffee, killed as much time as possible. He pulled up the New York Times and was startled by the lead story, one posted about four hours earlier. The headline read, “Princeton Confirms Theft of Fitzgerald Manuscripts.”
After a day of offering no comments and suspicious denials, officials at the university had finally issued a statement confirming the rumors. On the previous Tuesday night, thieves had broken into the Firestone Library while the campus was responding to 911 reports of an active gunman. It was evidently a diversion, and one that worked. The university would not disclose how much of its Fitzgerald collection had been stolen, only that it was “substantial.” The FBI was investigating, and so on. Details were scarce.
There was no mention of Mark and Jerry. Denny was suddenly anxious and wanted to hit the road. He paid his check, and as he left the restaurant he dropped his Sat-Trak into a waste can outside the front door. There were no more ties to the past. He was alone and free and excited about the turn of events, but also nervous now that the news was breaking. Getting out of the country was imperative. That was not what he had planned, but things could not be lining up more perfectly. Plans—nothing ever goes as planned, and the survivors are the ones who can adapt on the fly.
Trey was trouble. He would have quickly become a nuisance, then baggage, then a liability. Denny thought of him only in passing now. As darkness began to dissipate and he entered the northern sprawl of Pittsburgh, Denny slammed the door on any memory of Trey. Another perfect crime.
At 9:00 a.m. he walked into the office of the East Mills Secured Storage operation in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont. He explained to the clerk that he needed to store some fine wine for a few months and was looking for a small space where the temperature and humidity were controlled and monitored. The clerk showed him a twelve-by-twelve unit on the ground floor. The rate was $250 a month for a minimum of a year. Denny said no thanks, he wouldn’t need the space for that long. They agreed on $300 a month for six months. He produced a New Jersey driver’s license, signed the contract in the name of Paul Rafferty, and paid in cash. He took the key back to the storage unit, unlocked it, set the temperature on fifty-five degrees and the humidity at 40 percent, and turned off the light. He walked the hallways taking note of the surveillance cameras and eventually left without being seen by the clerk.
At 10:00 a.m. the discount wine warehouse opened, and Denny was its first customer of the day. He paid cash for four cases of rotgut chardonnay, talked the clerk out of two empty cardboard boxes, and left the store. He drove around for half an hour looking for a spot to hide, away from traffic and surveillance cameras. He ran his truck through a cheap car wash and parked by the vacuum machines. This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned fit nicely in one of the empty wine boxes. Tender Is the Night and The Last Tycoon were placed in another. Gatsby got a box of his own, once the twelve bottles were removed and left on the rear seat.
By eleven o’clock, Denny had hauled the six boxes inside the storage unit at East Mills. As he left, he bumped into the clerk and said he’d be back tomorrow with some more wine. Fine, whatever, the clerk couldn’t care less. As he drove away, he passed rows and rows of storage units and wondered what other stolen loot could be hidden behind those doors. Probably a lot, but nothing as valuable as his.
He drifted through downtown Pittsburgh and finally found a rough section. He parked in front of a pharmacy, one with thick bars over the windows. He rolled down his windows, left the keys in the ignition, left twelve bottles of bad wine on the rear floorboard, grabbed his bag, and walked away. It was almost noon, on a clear and bright fall day, and he felt relatively safe. He found a pay phone, called a cab, and waited outside a soul food café. Forty-five minutes later, the cab dropped him off at the Departures ramp at Pittsburgh International Airport. He picked up his ticket, eased through security without a hitch, and walked to a coffee shop near his gate. At a newsstand he bought a New York Times and a Washington Post. On the front page of the Post, below the fold, the headline yelled at him, “Two Arrested in Princeton Library Heist.” No photos and no names were given, and it was obvious Princeton and the FBI were trying to control the story. According to the brief article, the two men were picked up in Rochester the day before.
The search was on for others “involved in the spectacular burglary.”
19.
While Denny waited for his flight to Chicago, Ahmed caught a flight from Buffalo to Toronto, where he booked a one-way flight to Amsterdam. With four hours to kill, he parked himself at the bar in an airport lounge, hid his face behind a menu, and started drinking.
20.
The following Monday, Mark Driscoll and Gerald Steengarden waived extradition and were driven to Trenton, New Jersey. They appeared before a federal magistrate, swore in writing that they had no assets, and were assigned counsel. Because of their affinity for fake documents, they were deemed flight risks and denied bail.
Another week passed, then a month, and the investigation began losing steam. What at first had looked so promising gradually began to look hopeless. Other than the drop of blood and the photos of the well-disguised thieves, and of course the missing manuscripts, there was no evidence. The burned-out van, their escape vehicle, was found but no one knew where it came from. Denny’s rented pickup was stolen, stripped, and devoured by a chop shop. He went from Mexico City to Panama, where he had friends who knew how to hide.
The evidence was clear that Jerry and Mark had used fake student IDs to visit the library several times. Mark had even posed as a Fitzgerald scholar. On the night of the theft, it was clear the two had entered the library, along with a third accomplice, but there was no indication of when or how they left.