The Looters - Softcover

Born in New York City, HAROLD ROBBINS is one of the world's bestselling authors, writing novels that often mirrored his own experiences and that were peopled by characters he had met.

JUNIUS PODRUG was selected by the Robbins Estate to carry on the ideas, uncompleted works, and tradition of Harold Robbins because he was both a friend of Harold's and a writer whose books Harold admired. He is the author of Harold Robbins' Blood Royal and The Devil to Pay.

Chapter One

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. I railed against the depressing thought, but it punched back. I had had it all, but now I was on the run from killers and the police, stuck in traffic as the Jersey-bound lanes of the George Washington Bridge turned into a parking lot. My gutless rental car was boxed in between a tanker truck that blew lung-blackening smoke back at me, a dangerously shaky, overloaded car carrier on one side and a Bekins moving van on the other. Another behemoth was behind me, but all I could make out was a grille the size of a wall with a silver bulldog glaring down.

Earlier I saw that the Bekins van had a California license plate. Jesus ...what I would give to crawl into the back of that van and snuggle between mattresses as it headed for the West Coast—or anywhere but here.

Behind me was Manhattan, my penthouse with a park view and a lifestyle I might never see again. A thirtysomething woman with ambition and drive, I had ten good career years out of grad school with a master’s in art history. Avoiding the safety net of academia, I had jumped with both feet into the cutthroat world where the superrich pay tens of millions for "priceless" art and antiquities.

What a wake-up call that was about human nature for a girl from backwater Ohio. That writer who said the rich were different didn’t go far enough—the superrich were way different, far out. They lived in a rarified atmosphere of privilege but often were bored and eager for stimulation. And for reinforcement of their own accomplishments. It’s not hard to keep your ego swollen when you’ve never had to do anything but eat, breathe, and sleep.

Buying something that no one else could possess was a way for them to flex muscles. The rarer, the more desirable. That turned the world of art into a playground—and battleground—for billionaires, an atmosphere even more ruthless than that surrounding owning a champion racehorse or a sports team. Money and ego have turned the quest for art into a ruthless business in which the superrich battled to possess the rarest and most beautiful objects d’art on earth. Prices paid were stratospheric. The hundred-million-dollar mark for a painting by an artist most people would not recognize the name of had long since been surpassed.

When billionaire greed and egos collide, anything goes, at any price. And where mere money won’t do the job, drugs, sex, and murder are used.

Yes, I saw some things a woman shouldn’t see. Maybe I even did a few things a woman shouldn’t do. Hard lessons. The Greeks thought highly of the concept of pathos-mathos—gaining wisdom through suffering. I wish to hell I’d gained insights with a little less damage to my life. If I only knew then what I know now ...

I sighed and melted down a little more in the seat. I was tired, beat, soul-weary. Madison, you really know how to enjoy yourself.

Madison Dupre. That’s my name. My friends call me Maddy. But right now I had some openings on my list of friends.

LOST IN THOUGHT, gazing blankly as traffic moved, I got a blast from the bulldog truck’s horn behind me and almost jumped out of the seat. I pressed the gas, sending the cheap little import surging a few dozen feet before I had to hit the brakes again to keep from rear-ending the tanker truck in front of me. Tight-jawed, I dropped my chin to my chest and told myself to stay calm. The grating horn had scorched my frayed nerves and made my heart jackhammer.

I was usually a calm person, but I hated traffic, hated big trucks, and hated to be stuck in traffic with big trucks, breathing in their stinking fumes ...when I desperately had to flee the city. My life was on the line and I was getting more agitated as the traffic slugged along.

I checked my rearview mirror as that monster rig closed in again until I could only see the massive front grille. If I were in my expensive sports car, I would have flipped him the bird despite constant reminders to myself not to antagonize anyone because road rage created roadkill. Deal with it. But being hemmed in gave me the sick feeling in my stomach that I was in a prison cell. I had already briefly experienced a jail cell at the federal detention center, and that was enough for a lifetime.

I turned on the radio to hear traffic reports on the threes.

"Forty-five-minute delay for the GW out to Jersey."

I banged my hands on the steering wheel. I already knew it—hell, I was stuck in it—but hearing it made it worse. It took away hope.

Okay, think positive. Forty-five minutes wasn’t so bad. It could be worse. The bridge could be closed even longer for an accident, bridge maintenance, someone being murdered ...

The sick feeling in my stomach started again. They wouldn’t try anything in front of hundreds of witnesses. I was sure of that. But not that sure. Only one thing was for certain: If they were behind me, they were stuck, too.

Get ahold of yourself, girl. My nerves were on edge, and crawling in this stop-and-go traffic didn’t help the situation; it just fueled my frustration and paranoia.

I thought about my predicament as I sat in the stalled traffic. My life was in ruins, the police were looking for me, and on the seat beside me was something "priceless" that someone wanted very badly, enough to kill for it. And here I was stuck in traffic on the world’s busiest bridge.

I had left my $85,000 XK Jaguar parked in a monthly garage, my $10,000-a-month penthouse, my designer wardrobe, and everything else I’d worked for back in the city to run from imminent danger. I hadn’t taken my Jag because I figured I’d be less noticeable in a rental car. They probably also knew where the car was garaged. At least that was my theory.

The traffic started moving. I started to zip out of my lane and in front of the moving van, but my economy rental car didn’t have enough horses. Another car zipped into the coveted space.

My mind went back to my problems. How could I have gotten myself in such a mess? I was basically an honest person, never involved in any trouble before. Now I’d gotten myself into trouble with a capital T. I had made a deal with the devil and he was coming to collect when I had only wanted to right a wrong.

Naďve, that’s what I’d been. I thought ten years of big city and bright lights had made me as tough as the crowd I ran with, but the small town in me came percolating out when I saw greed that couldn’t be satisfied with less than murder.

Another opportunity to change lanes arose and I pressed hard on the gas pedal. My Jag would have compressed me back into the seat with g-force, but this car had the surge of a tortoise. The brakes of the car carrier made a horrible rusty squeal as the big rig rattled and shuddered to a stop behind me. At least the driver didn’t lay on the horn.

I rolled down the window a few inches and stuck my hand out to wave "thanks for letting me in." When I checked my side-view mirror I saw his hand come out with his prominent third finger extended in my direction.

I didn’t seem to be able to please anyone.

OFF THE GW Bridge and on my way through Newark, I was exhausted and tried of traffic and trucks. I needed to get off the road for a while, get some rest, clear my head, and figure a way out of the mess. Only early evening, but I was too mentally drained to keep the car going.

A motel sign in the distance advertised "easy access" and "cheap hourly rates." Hourly rates? Perfect. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what that meant. Nobody would think to look for me at an "adult" motel.

The motel was close to the freeway exit. It looked pretty much like what could be expected from the neon sign—two stories of tacky pink caked on like too much powder on a whore.

I took one look at the place and shook my head. Oh yes, how the mighty have fallen....

I was beginning to sound like a broken record even to myself.

Walking into the lobby confirmed that the motel was a sleazy dive for paid quickies, but I figured that a place that accommodated prostitutes and rented porn movies wouldn’t be the kind of place to look for someone who lived in the Museum Mile area with a view of Central Park.

After I paid for the room, ignoring the lecherous look from the clerk and the hint that I should "tip him" if I planned to use my room for "business purposes," I walked past a condom machine, up the wood steps, and down the outside corridor to my room. I had the last room on the end, the one closest to the freeway. No surprise that the room reeked of cigarettes and store-bought sex. Both were popular vices.

I had asked for a second-floor room, as I always did after reading that it was a safer bet than a ground-floor motel room for a woman traveling alone. After I double-locked the door and wedged a chair under the door handle, I checked the big front sliding glass window. Unlatched, of course. I locked it.

The bedspread smelled as if it hadn’t had sex washed off in a while, so I took it off and put my long coat on top of the bedsheets to lie on it. The sheets were the one thing in the room that got periodically washed, but I still didn’t plan to use them; the room was rented by the hour, but that didn’t mean the maids changed the bedsheets by the hour.

For a long time I half-sat, half-lay on the bed and stared up at brown water stains on th...