The Vintage Caper Read Free Page A

which was helpful. They would need to spend less time looking through the storage racks. Working from their list, they began to pack bottles into the cartons, ticking off names and vintages as they packed. Rafael was kept busy putting the filled cartons into the back of the ambulance, with a warning that any breakages would cost him dearly.
    Each carton held either a dozen bottles or six magnums, and by the time the men had finished, forty-five cartons had been filled and loaded. After one last check, and a regretful glance at Roth’s California wines and his boxes of pre-Castro Havanas, they switched off the cellar lights and closed the door. Now it was time to make a few adjustments to the interior décor of the ambulance.
    The cartons were stacked neatly on either side of a stretcher bed before being covered with hospital blankets. Rafael, by now so nervous that he was very close to being a genuine emergency case himself, was tucked into the stretcher bed and hooked up to a fake morphine drip that would alleviate the pain of his fake burst appendix. Thus prepared, the ambulance drove down to the security gatehouse, pausing only long enough to wish the guard a brisk Merry Christmas before disappearing, lights flashing, into the night.
    The driver grinned as he heard sounds of movement from the back of the ambulance. “OK, Rafael, time to get up. We’re going to drop you off before we get on the freeway.” He took an envelope from his pocket and passed it back over his shoulder. “Better count this. It’s all in hundreds.”
    Five minutes later, the ambulance pulled into a dark side street to let Rafael out. Next stop was a lock-up garage on an even darker street in a run-down section of west L.A., where the cartons of wine were transferred from the ambulance to an unmarked van. All that remained was to remove the license plates from the ambulance and abandon it in a nearby hospital parking lot before the two men headed off in the van toward Santa Barbara.

Three

    Aspen had been more than usually enjoyable for Roth. Plenty of A-list names were there, skiing and being seen, and he was able to cultivate the acquaintance of three or four potential clients. This, to his surprise, was helped considerably by the L.A. Times piece. Even though it had appeared back in September, those A-listers who were, as they said, “into wine” were thick on the ground that year, and they had all read about Roth’s collection. The traditional topics of Aspen conversation—adultery, stock tips, cosmetic surgery, studio larceny—had been replaced by talk of cellars and vintages, Bordeaux versus California, optimum aging times, and, of course, wine prices.
    Roth found himself holding forth to small but rapt audiences, household names who would normally have been a little out of his social reach, and the business possibilities were not lost on him. It might be wine today, but it could easily be a juicy contractual crisis tomorrow. Throughout that snowy Christmas week Roth’s skis lay untouched, and Michelle had their personal ski instructor all to herself.
    The Roths shared a jet on the way home with a couple whom they knew slightly from L.A., and who had been wildly impressed to see Roth in such celebrated company. Roth waved away their flattery and complained, in a good-natured way, of being kept far too busy to ski. The implication was that he had been talking business, not Bordeaux, and Roth was happy to leave it like that. It was a satisfactory end to a most satisfactory week.
    His good mood lasted until the evening, when he and his wife arrived back at the house in Hollywood Heights and found that Rafael wasn’t there to greet them. Nor had he left a note to explain his absence. It was unusual, and worrying. But as they went from room to room they began to relax. The Warhols were on the walls, the Giacometti was stalking across the terrace, and the house seemed to have been untouched. In Rafael’s tiny basement apartment, his