Collar Robber by Hillary Bell Locke

passport and then showed me the door.”
    I gave Proxy that report by phone about five seconds after reaching the sidewalk outside the Vienna Politzei Unterprefaktur Zwei . I figured she’d want the news in a hurry. I was right. She’d answered on the first note of her ringtone.
    â€œSo far, so good then,” she said. “Anything about enjoying Vienna’s attractions for a few more days in case they’d like some more help with their inquiries?”
    â€œJust the opposite.” I looked up and down the street for a cab without seeing one. “More like, ‘Here’s your hat, the door’s right there.’”
    â€œMaybe we should take the hint. I’m back at the hotel, but there’s still time for me to get someone working on a flight sometime tonight.”
    â€œBefore they change their mind, you mean.”
    â€œThat’s what I mean.”
    â€œNegative, if I have a vote.” I was beginning to think I’d walk all the way back to the hotel before I spotted a cab or stumbled over a subway station. “A name came up at the tail end of our chat. It ties this circus into the computer-hacking thing I was looking into in New Mexico.”
    â€œI don’t want to sound flippant,” Proxy said, as if that would have set some kind of precedent, “but so what?”
    â€œI’m the common denominator. Seems to call for some follow-up.”
    â€œHow do you plan to follow that up in Vienna?”
    â€œBy tracking down Nesselrode.” Still not a cab in sight.
    â€œEasily done. He’s sitting right here, and he’s as anxious to talk to you as you are to him.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    â€œI’m not kidding.”
    â€œShe’s not kidding.” Nesselrode’s voice. “How fast can you get back to the hotel?”
    â€œHell if I know. Apparently every cabbie in Vienna is on vacation.”
    â€œKittens, drunks, and Americans,” Nesselrode muttered. “God looks out for you—and you make it a full-time job for him. Listen. At the end of the block across the street from the police station you should see a café kind of place, little basement thing. See it?”
    â€œLet’s see…Esterhazy something?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGot it.”
    â€œI’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.” He was off the phone before I could say okay.
    He made it with two minutes to spare. He looked like hell: hair hastily finger-combed, day-old growth of beard, bloodshot eyes, and a suit that looked like he’d slept in it, except not long enough. I probably didn’t look much better, but at least I’d gotten a couple of hours of shuteye before my appointment with the cops. I let him sit down with a mug of nutmeg-scented coffee before I opened up on him.
    â€œI’m working on my bachelor’s degree in Abba Ertel. Educate me.”
    â€œA hood.” Nesselrode shrugged. “Palestinian. Made his chops running errands for Hamas but he liked money even more than he hated Jews so he started doing freelance computer penetration against soft targets.”
    â€œHe apparently branched out from there.”
    â€œThey usually do.”
    â€œWho was his partner?” I shot that question out without warning, hoping to surprise him.
    â€œWhat makes you think he had a partner?”
    â€œWild guess.”
    â€œYou’re right, he must have.” Nesselrode took a big gulp of what I figured to be throat-scalding coffee. “It’s not like he spent six years at the Sorbonne studying twentieth-century European art, is it? Had to be just an intermediary.”
    â€œBut you don’t know who he was working with or for?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNuts.”
    My turn to sip coffee. Damn this stuff is good.
    â€œSo,” Nesselrode said, “where does Transoxana go from here?”
    â€œThat’s Proxy’s department, but I’m betting that