6.The Alcatraz Rose (20 page)

“After a fashion. It was about how you kept things secret from one another. If an escape attempt was in the planning, how was it kept secret in such a tight-knit community? I assume there was a sort of prisoners’ grapevine.”

“Most things, you kept to yourself. But once in a while some prisoners got to know—like it or not—about things like escape attempts because it often involved their help or cooperation, particularly those in the workshops who could lay their hands on materials and tools and machinery, what have you. But nobody would ever tip off a guard if he knew something was going down.
Never
.”

Kingston couldn’t help noticing that Kaminski had that same faraway look in his eyes as before—when he’d talked about information as something that could be dangerous to possess.

“I’m wondering, Darrell,” he continued, knowing he was straying from the game plan. “Did you ever hear anything that you wished later you hadn’t?”

A longer pause followed. Kingston wondered if Kaminski was going to answer the question, or dodge it altogether.

“Only once,” Kaminski said at last. “I never told anybody about it. At the time, it gave me a few sleepless nights, though. I haven’t given it too much thought since. No reason to, really.”

Kingston and Harris exchanged a glance.

“Go on,” Andy urged.

“It happened about a year before Alcatraz was shut down, and I was moved to McNeil Island. One weekend I got lucky and was assigned to collect the softballs and handballs that landed outside the recreation yard walls. Usually there were only a few, so most of the time you could just sit and look at the view or just walk around the scrubby area outside the wall.”

“Presumably in view of the guard,” Kingston said.

Kaminski smiled cynically. “Are you kidding? From the minute you got up at six thirty, a guard was watching what you were doing—even
when you were asleep.” He paused, rubbing his chin in thought. “Yeah, there was always a guard on the catwalk around the yard, watching for trouble down below, another in the guardhouse. Anyway, that day, a couple of minutes before the bell went off at four o’clock, the guard waved for me to go back into the yard, so I picked up the few balls I’d gathered, headed back in, and put them in the small storage room in a corner of the yard. Nearby were a few small tables where the guys played dominoes and checkers. As I was putting the balls back in the baskets, I could hear some men at the table near the door talking. Three men. And they weren’t talking about dominoes, or checkers, or chess. No.” Kaminski shook his head. “They were talking about diamonds.”

“Diamonds?” Kingston’s eyes widened.

“Yeah. Some diamonds that had been hidden by one of the inmates before he went to prison, probably from some robbery, I guess. They didn’t mention how much they were worth, but it wasn’t chicken feed, it was big. They had some kind of plan going—something that involved one of the guards.”

Harris frowned. “A guard?”

“That was my reaction. I realized right away that I’d gotten myself into a tight spot. If I walked out right then, they’d know that I’d overheard what they were talking about. Not a healthy situation. So I decided to stay, praying that the bell would go off and I could come out after they left. Course, the danger in doing that . . . either of the two guards might wonder why I was taking so long and decide to investigate.”

“So what happened?” Kingston asked.

“After what seemed like forever, the bell finally went off. They packed up and I managed to slip out unnoticed. But in those last few seconds—or however long it was—I heard more of what they were planning. Only snatches here and there, but I knew it was for real, not some movie they were talking about.”

“Was it part of an escape plan?” Kingston asked.

Kaminski shook his head. “No. From what I could make out, the one who’d hidden the stones wanted one of the other two—whoever got out first—to find the diamonds and deliver them to a third party. He’d get a sizable cut if he pulled it off.”

“And where did the guard come in?” Andy asked.

“As a last resort. If it turned out that neither of the other two could carry out the mission—you know, not everybody left Alcatraz alive—then it would have to be left to someone else. That’s probably why one of them suggested a guard as the only possibility.”

“No names were mentioned, I take it,” Andy said.

“No. But it was as if they had a particular screw in mind because they discussed the likelihood of his going for it.” Kaminski looked off to the side for a few seconds. “There was one other thing. I’m pretty sure the stash was hidden in another country.”

“What made you think that?” Kingston asked.

“One of them talked about the money already having been converted into diamonds and not having to get involved with foreign currency.”

“I see.” Kingston pulled reflectively on his earlobe and gazed absently out the big window, where two squirrels were chasing each other on the lawn.
A cache of stolen diamonds. A decades-old plan to bribe a guard. They were a long way off from the Alcatraz rose
, he thought.

He turned back to Kaminski, who showed no signs of being troubled by the shift in questioning. “Men like yourself, sent to Alcatraz from other prisons, were all serving fairly long sentences, I presume.”

Kaminski nodded. “Yeah.”

“So, based on what you’d overheard, it would be reasonable to think that the prisoner who’d hidden the diamonds knew that he was either likely to spend his remaining years in prison, or perhaps, if he were in poor health, knew he wouldn’t outlive his sentence. That could explain why he wanted to line up surrogates who would give him a degree of assurance that this relative or friend would receive the inheritance, even though it was stolen goods. If the next in line were to be killed or die before being released, the next would take on the task.”

“I guess so,” Kaminski said.

“Anything more you can remember about their conversation?” Kingston asked.

Kaminski thought hard for a few seconds, then leaned back. “I think they talked of having help at the other end. That’s all, though.”

“Did they say what kind of help?”

“No.”

“And no mention of what country?”

Kaminski shook his head. “Negative.”

They were interrupted by the sound of key turning in a lock and someone entering the house.

“That’s my wife, Paula,” Kaminski said, looking over his shoulder. “We’re almost through, dear,” he called out.

They were, in fact, entirely through, Kingston realized. He’d run out of questions regarding the rose and cache of diamonds—questions that Darrell Kaminski might be able to answer, that is. Was there a connection between Belmaris’s peripatetic plant and the diamonds? Between Brian Jennings and the three men plotting in the Alcatraz yard?

Damned if he knew.

Kingston stood and thanked Kaminski sincerely for his time, promising a follow-up letter or call if he managed to solve the Alcatraz rose mystery.

Minutes later, he and Andy were in the Explorer, heading back to Oakland and the Fruitvale BART station.

“What did you think about that last bit?” Kingston asked. “The hidden stash of diamonds?”

“Sounds too much like a movie, if you ask me,” Harris replied, his eyes on the road.

“That was my first impression, too, but I doubt he’d make it up. What would be the point?”

“You’ve got me.”

Waiting at a red light a minute later, Harris glanced at Kingston, an amused smile on his face. “Maybe the diamonds are hidden somewhere in England. That would give you yet another mystery to solve. Or maybe the two mysteries are one.”

Kingston smiled back. “You must be reading my mind.”

19

Chelsea, England

I
T WAS FOUR A
.
M
., and a jet-lagged Kingston was wide awake, sitting at the kitchen table, wearing an Irish wool sweater and pajama bottoms. On his second cup of tea, he had just finished rereading the Wikipedia pages on the security van robbery, checking dates, details, and writing notes. Next he would do the same with Emma’s notes.

This repeat task was the direct result of something that he’d stumbled on during the night, in the dark of the British Airways cabin, while other passengers were sleeping or watching movies. Unable to do either, he had spent these hours rehashing the details of his talk with Darrell Kaminski, particularly his recollection of the cloak-and-dagger conversation he’d overheard all those years ago. He couldn’t shake it from his overactive mind. Was it meaningless—nothing more than a fantasy dreamed up by inmates with nothing else to discuss and little to live for? Or was it real and connected in some way to the robbery that had taken place five thousand miles away, six years before Alcatraz was closed? For a while he tried reading the book he’d brought for the trip, but he couldn’t concentrate on it, and soon his mind was back on the robbery. He focused on Jennings and then on the rose, and all the speculation it had engendered. Soon his thoughts drifted to Letty, leading to him to wonder how she was getting along with Emma. By association, his mind then turned to Fiona and the photos that Letty had provided. She had looked quite young. That led him to wonder how old she was when they were taken. Must have been quite some time before she went missing.

It was then that something odd had struck him. What had happened to Fiona after her mother had died? As far as he could recall, that had never been discussed. How had she ended up in Cheltenham, for that matter? He started jotting dates and ages on the edge of the dinner menu that was still on the empty seat next to him. He was fairly sure that the mother had died in 1968, at which time Fiona would have been about twelve. He stared up at the amorphous shadows of the overhead compartments. When had Fiona married? he wondered. He couldn’t recall a date ever being mentioned, but it was reasonable to assume that it was at age eighteen at the earliest, which meant there was a gap of six years or more in her life that was unaccounted for. That was when he had decided to comb through Emma’s notes the minute he got home.

It was four thirty when he’d finished reading her notes, and he had found no mention of the missing years in Fiona’s life. She was a minor and must have been placed in someone’s care. But whose? It would be at least five hours before he could call Emma, so he decided to cook a full breakfast—eggs, bacon, grilled tomatoes, and toast—and read the
Times
which, mercifully, was delivered early.

At nine o’clock he had Emma on the line.

“I didn’t expect to hear from you quite so soon. Didn’t you just get home?”

“I did, yesterday.”

“Well, welcome home,” she said heartily.

The next several minutes were taken up with his describing the highlights of his visit with Julie and Brandon, and how enjoyable it had all been. She listened without interrupting until he brought up his side trip to San Francisco.

“San Francisco,” she said, surprise in her voice. Isn’t that where Alcatraz is?”

He suppressed a chuckle. “It is indeed, and I took the tour again. Even better than the first time. Just as depressing, though.”

Emma’s only reaction was a sigh.

Undaunted, Kingston continued. “I also met with the Alcatraz historian I mentioned, Andy Harris.”

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Lawrence—”

“Wait, it gets better. I had an interview with a former Alcatraz inmate named Darrell Kaminksi.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Kingston felt a little deflated; he’d expected a little more interest, more curiosity.

“I was very glad I did. In an odd way, I felt privileged that someone who’d lived through that experience and had survived with such a remarkable degree of stoicism and equanimity would agree to sit down for more than an hour and talk with a complete stranger. Not only that, it resulted in an interesting revelation, a
very
interesting incident that could have a bearing on a lot of the questions that have stumped us about these damned mysteries.”

“What did he say?” Emma’s tone had lost its edge of cynicism. “I’d like to know.”

Kingston told her Kaminski’s story.

Emma didn’t respond immediately. For a moment, he wondered if the line had gone dead. Finally she spoke.

“I agree that it could be connected, Lawrence, that he could have been describing a scheme that was related to our robbery—even one of the robbers. But as your friend pointed out, all the inmates in Alcatraz were American. So it all comes down to whether it’s fact or fiction.”

“I guess it’s like a lot of other questions with these mysteries—maybe we’ll never know.”

“Looks that way.”

“There was something else I wanted to ask you,” he said. Two things, actually.”

“Okay.”

“In your notes there was a gap in Fiona’s early years—the period immediately following the death of her mother, when she was about twelve. I don’t know when she got married, either. Do you recall where she went? Whom she lived with?”

“Let’s see . . . When her mother died, in London—Bethnal Green, I believe—Fiona went to live with a single aunt in Cheltenham.”

“Which explains how she eventually befriended the Collinses.”