Ch. 7
I used to love D.C. when I was a little girl. The monuments, the street vendors, the excitement. I remember taking a few family vacations down here. Only, now I know they were heists, not vacations. As my feet crunched over gravel, I passed a stand where my mother had bought me a double scoop ice cream cone. Turns out later the vendor was the very man who we were stealing from. The memories still made me happy. A gust of wind blew, giving my hundreds of little goose bumps, as I scurried into my father's favorite breakfast place here.
I had told Nathan that it may take me a couple days to find my father. That was a lie. Yes, Tommy Bendlin changed his address and his phone number almost once a week, but as his daughter, I knew exactly where he would be.
After buying a croissant for him and a bagel for me along with two coffees, I went to the large reflecting pool in front of the Washington Monument. And there my father was. He stood by the water as if carefully placed. His cashmere jacket was zipped around him to shake off the cold as he paced around the perimeter of the pool. My father walked with the crowds of people there, not too slow, not too fast. Anyone else here would assume he was like any other tourist, taking in the scents and smells of the nation's capital. I knew better... he definitely was not. Suddenly, a little girl cried out, her eyes wide. I stared at her, curious what happened to make her upset.
“Mommy?” She screamed, making it clear that she had lost her family in the chaos of the crowds. I sighed and knelt down beside her- my mistake.
“Hey, sweetie, did you lose your mommy?” I asked, already knowing the answer. She nodded her head yes.
“Can I lift you up?” The little girl nodded again, some of her fear left her eyes.
On the count of three I held her up and instructed her to look for her mom. Lucky for us, her mother spotted me holding her.
“Ariana!” The mother screeched. I jumped, but the child looked so relieved.
“That’s my name too.” I whispered to her. Little Ariana’s eyes widened and she hugged me.
“Thank you so much.” Little Ariana’s mother said to me, taking my mini me out of my hands.
I shrugged, “No problem.” With a small wave to the little girl, I disappeared back into the clumps of people.
My eyes searched the pockets of crowds for him, but it was too late. I had made the mistake of taking my eyes off the prize for two minutes only for him to run off.
I'm not sure what I was expecting. I hoped that my father would see me and be shocked, happy even. Instead, he didn't even notice me- not even when I was holding a little girl in the air, drawing attention to myself. That would serve as a good compliment to thieves everywhere, but no daughter wanted to be invisible.
Patiently I waited, taking my own turn looking into the reflecting pool. With an annoyed sigh I started to walk away, but for some unexplainable reason, I spun back around and found him again.
My eyes instantly locked on his jet black hair, almost identical in coloring to mine, only a few meters from where I was. He stood towards the edge of a tour group, probably only half way listening. My father didn't see me weaving through thickets of people. He didn't notice when I slipped and almost fell. He didn't notice my furious shivering. He just watched the group.
But, when I slipped into the group beside him, I noticed his lips twitch up slightly. A smile was a rare blessing from my dad.
"Hope that's for me." He murmured, nodding at the pastry in my hands. In my head I found my thoughts between being impressed and annoyed by his casual tone. He remained in character, if you will, but deep down I wanted a big hug and a decent hello. Hesitantly, I handed him the coffee and snack as still as I could manage because of the cold gusts.
"No gloves?" He said, for once sounding like a concerned father.
"I could say the same to you." I smirked, noticing he too didn't have anything on his hands.
"I don't wear gloves on my days off." He laughed quietly.
Thieves aren’t supposed to want too much—which is ironic, but true. Never live anyplace you can’t walk away from. Never own anything you can’t leave behind. These were the laws of my life—of my world. As I watched my father sip hot coffee and sneak smiles at me over the top of the cup, I knew that, strictly speaking, no thief is ever supposed to love anything as much as I loved him.
"Hi daddy." I whispered, resisting the urge to wrap my arms around his torso like I did when I was a little girl. His smile widened, but his eyes remained on the German speaking guide for this group.
Nearby, church bells started to ring. Pigeons scattered.
"Last I heard my daughter was at the Heathrow Academy for Girls," My father glanced at me from the corner of his eye and continued, “I know the Academy is good, honey, so D.C. seems like a boring place to come for a field trip.”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s fall break.” I didn’t want to know why lying to my father was far easier than telling the man who raised me the truth, “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
Another sip. Another smile. But this time he didn’t meet my eyes. “You wanted to see if the rumors were true,” he said, and I felt my face burn in the cold wind. “So, who told?” my father asked with slight irritation in his voice, “Uncle Will? Harry?” My sudden tense body and the look in my eyes gave me away. He shook his head and spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m gonna kill that kid.”
"He's one of the only people who tells me things!" I whined, now was my turn to be annoyed.
My father seemed to consider this and I knew he was thinking about the job in Guam. That job was so screwed up- practically impossible to successfully complete. My father still blamed it on Harry.
"What would you say if I told you I didn't do a job in Persia last week?" He murmured, finally meeting my eyes.
I heard the urgency in his voice- Urgency was rare with my father--and I knew he was being honest... or as honest as Tommy Bendlin ever is.
"You have an alibi?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.
"I swear." He nodded.
"Can you prove it?" I wondered aloud, knowing his typical alibis.
"Well it's a little complicated..." My father smiled nervously and right then the tour group seemed to shift with the wind, revealing a newspaper stand. In bold lettering the words: "American History Museum Robbed of First Car Driven Across the US." I turned to look at my dad's sheepish grin showing just above his cup of coffee.
"Does this have anything to do with you?" I smirked, gesturing toward the headline.
He blew on the steaming coffee, then whispered, “I told you it was a good alibi.” He took a small sip. “Of course the work wasn’t quite up to my usual standards—you know my best assistant left me recently?” He shook his head and drew an exaggerated breath. “Good help is so hard to find.”
One of the German ladies hissed, warning us to be quiet, and I started to feel claustrophobic. I wanted someplace private. I wanted someplace she could yell. Then suddenly I found myself wondering...
“Dad, if the job was last week, why are you still in D.C.?”
As he paused mid-sip, I couldn’t help but think that the thief had been caught, busted. The father, on the other hand, just seemed proud of his little girl.
“Sweetie, let’s just say possession is nine tenths of the law, so right now I’m not as guilty as I might like to be.”
“Dad...” I stared up at my father, not quite sure I wanted to know the answer to my next question: “Where’d you stash it?”
“It,” he said hesitantly, “is someplace safe.”
“Someplace lonely?” I tested his boundaries.
“No.” My father chuckled, “Unfortunately, at the moment, it has plenty of friends.”
He continued to smile, but something about the way his eyes kept darting around the square made me worry.
“Then maybe you should leave it there,” I suggested, "Or turn it in."
"I don't see the fun in that." My dad whined like a little kid. He smiled wider, and I could have sworn I saw one of the German women swoon a little at the sight. A pair of teenage girls were whispering and giggling in our direction, but as far as i could tell, there was only one woman on the square who dared to openly stare. Perhaps she was too beautiful—too self-assured—to care who saw her looking. And yet this gorgeous, light-haired woman’s unwavering eyes made me feel strange. I knew my father was not the ugliest-especially since he was still young. He and my mom had me when they were in their early twenties- I've never been told their ages when I was born, but I assume they were not much older than I am when they had me. Still, seeing these women looking my dad up and down with open mouths was really uncomfortable.
I turned to him after finishing my bagel and cringed, “Watching women checking out my dad is creepy, you know?”
“Sweetheart”-my father’s voice was steady, somewhat amused- “sometimes it can’t be helped.”
He was teasing, I thought. Wasn’t he? But as we started to follow the tour group to the steps of a nearby museum, I still felt the staring, as if someone were watching my every move.
I pulled a tiny camera from my purse and scanned the crowd. A man sat beneath an umbrella at a sidewalk café, not eating. I zoomed in on two men who lingered on a bench at the corner of the square, and recognized the plain clothes, bad shoes, and haggard look of a surveillance team five days into a job. And finally, I studied the woman standing at the edge of the square, staring at my father, who had barely met my eyes since I found him.
“So who are your friends?” I turned back and sighed, “D.C. cops?”
“Interpol, actually.” My father corrected with a mixture of pride and terror in his voice.
“Nice,” I said, drawing out the word awkwardly.
“I thought you’d be impressed.” My dad chuckled, finally wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
“It’s every little girl’s dream,” I joked, leaning into him, “Interpol surveillance. And kittens.”
Some distant church bells started to chime again. A tour bus pulled to a stop in front of us, blocking our view of the square, sheltering us from prying eyes, and in that split second, my father reached for me, gripping her shoulders tighter than he ever had before.
He glanced around us then said, “Look, Ari. I don’t want you to worry about this thing-this Persia thing. No one’s going to hurt me. This Savid guy doesn’t care about me. He cares about his paintings, and I don’t have them, so...” He shrugged.
"I know you don't, dad," I hated that he was in this position. After years of stealing you just become addicted-or at least I've been told. Quietly I reminded my father, “Savid Nuri thinks you have them.”
“But I don’t,” he said in that no-nonsense kind of way that all good fathers and great thieves are born with, “I’ve got a twenty-four-hour tail and a solid alibi. Trust me, Ari. Savid Nuri isn’t going to come for me.”
Besides the fact that his alibi is technically illegal, I almost believed him. I wondered if he believed it himself. But I had learned at a very young age that thieves live and die based on perception-my whole life was a lesson in sleight of hand. If someone thought my father had the paintings, then the truth wasn’t going to save him.
“You’ve got to talk to him,” I pleaded. “Or hide, or run, or-”
My dad stopped me, shaking his head instantly. He didn't like where I was going with this anymore than I did, “Give it till the end of the week, Ari. He’ll turn over enough rocks, and enough things will crawl out that he’ll figure out the truth.”
“Dad-” I started, but it was too late. The bus was moving and my father was already pulling away.
His lips barely moved as he asked, “So where does your school think you are right now? Do you need me to write you a note?”
“You already did,” I lied, not letting him know I had been expelled. With a small smile I continued, “It was faxed directly to Headmistress Compion from your London office yesterday morning.”
“That’s my girl,” he whispered, and the previous unpleasant conversation seemed a million years ago, “Now go on, get back to school.” He looked like he wanted to hug me, give me a kiss on the forehead, anything fatherly- but he couldn't.
I hesitated, not knowing whether I should admit to him that I’d been kicked out-that the biggest job I’d ever pulled had just blown up in my face-or whether to let the con live on.
“Do they give you a winter break at the Heathrow Academy?” His gaze was locked on the guide at the front of the group, my time with him was almost gone, “I was thinking about Greece for Christmas.”
“Greece for Christmas,” I echoed softly, hopefully.
“Or maybe Russia?” he asked, "We could visit your grandparents."
I held back a grin and whispered, “Surprise me.”
“Ari,” His voice stopped me from walking away. I even risked looking at him, “I don’t suppose you can help your old man out?” I understood what he was talking about: Interpol.
I smiled and started through the crowd, clutching my camera like just another tourist.
When I saw a pair of D.C. cops lounging a few feet away by a hot dog stand, I shouted, “Excuse me!” I sounded like an ordinary girl on the verge of panic. I had a death grip on my purse and looked utterly helpless as I rushed toward them yelling, “Excuse me, officer!”
“Yes?” one of the cops said in accented English, “Is something wrong?”
“Those men!” I screamed, pointing at the two disguised Interpol officers who had left the café and were now chatting with their fellow undercover agent on the bench.
“They tried to get me to..." I trailed off, blanking on a good lie. The cops looked impatient but intrigued by my outburst.
“Yes?” They encouraged me to continue.
“They-” I gestured for one of the cops to come closer, then whispered in his ear. My lie worked. In a flash, both men were pushing through the crowd.
“Hey you!” the cop called to the surveillance team rapidly. “You men, stop!” The Interpol officers were almost to the fountain when the cops called again and almost had a hold of them, “Stop this instant!”
The men tried to pull away, but it was too late. People were staring. The cops were bearing down. Obscenities were flying. Pockets were searched and I.D.s were studied, and through it all, the pigeons kept scavenging, the bells kept ringing.
And I knew my father was already gone.
I turned my back on the chaos, ready for a taxi and a quick, quiet plane ride back to New York. But suddenly, someone grasped my arms from behind. My thrashing did little to the thick bands of muscle constraining my arms. So instead of wasting my energy fighting, I went limp. I heard a car door open behind me, and for the second time in two days, I found myself in the back of a dark car, greeted by another unexpected voice.
“Hello, Ariana.”