The Take

by Christopher Reich

  Easy come. Easy go.

  Chapter 55

  Home.

  Simon eased the Peugeot off the highway, taking the first exit into the city. The road narrowed to a single lane and led down a long, gradual hill, dumping them out at the western edge of the new port, a kilometers-long maritime freight depot with towering cranes, freight elevators, and gleaming steel warehouses. Traffic was sparse, and he sped along the coast past the tankers and freighters, a steady wind scalloping the sea’s surface, filling the cabin with tangy sea air.

  “How long since you’ve been back?” Nikki asked.

  “A while. I got out when I was twenty-three. That makes it—”

  “Ages ago. Eons.”

  “Glaciers have come and gone.”

  Nikki dodged the invitation to make light of his extended absence. “You never visited?”

  “Smarter not to.”

  “Your mom? Stepbrothers?”

  “Like I said.”

  Simon considered this, turning his head and gazing out the window toward the expanse of blue running to the horizon. It was a view as familiar as any he’d known.

  He’d promised himself never to come back. Yet here he was.

  Business, he told himself. It’s different.

  He’d imagined this moment too many times to count, unsure what memories might surface that he’d kept hidden, what recollections would sway him most. The truth was, there had been plenty of good times to go with the bad. He was honest enough to admit that he’d enjoyed his days on the wrong side of the law. He did not regret them. The peril and opportunity they brought, the betrayal that followed, had forged his independent nature and solidified his will to dictate life according to his own terms.

  He also knew that despite his time in prison, the years in solitary confinement, the acts he’d committed, and those committed against him—all the events he wished most to expunge from his past—part of him would forever be an outlaw. He needed no more proof of this than the quicksilver flash of desire and regret he’d felt walking the scene of the hijacking and conjuring images of Coluzzi and his crew taking down the prince. For a few moments there, the longing for his old life had won him over. False visions of ill-begotten glory and bloody lucre had swum before him, beckoning him with a harlot’s wanton smile.

  It’s all still here, Simon. Ripe and ready for the taking. Up to you…

  But like a long-recovering alcoholic who one evening smells his favorite whiskey and asks “Why not?,” Simon had quashed any misguided notions about his past or what might be gained from returning to it. Seeing the Château d’If sparkling beneath the midday sun and the twin forts guarding the entry to the old port, he felt solid and at ease, satisfied of what he’d made of himself and eager to continue in the same vein. He’d left Marseille as a prisoner and returned a free man.

  The American author was wrong. The past might not be dead. But it was definitely past.

  A modern commercial development had sprung up adjacent to the new port. There were boutiques and wine merchants and a slew of small restaurants with tables and chairs set out front. A parking space opened and he grabbed it.

  “Hey,” said Nikki. “Why are we stopping?”

  Simon pointed to a chalkboard advertising the day’s specials. “Bouillabaisse, fifteen euros.”

  “We have time?”

  Simon opened the door. “Eat quickly.”

  Back in the car, Nikki said, “So where do we start?”

  “City of a million. Should be easy.” Simon eased into traffic, driving through the tunnel that ran beneath the port, then up the hill into the center of the city. “How are your contacts at Marseille PD? Any old pals that owe you a favor?”

  “One or two.”

  “Anyone you can trust?”

  “One,” said Nikki. “Maybe.”

  “I need anything you can find on Coluzzi. If there’s a piece of paper with his name on it, I want to see it.”

  The headquarters of the Marseille police department was located in a block of white concrete across the street from the Cathédrale la Major. Simon pulled to the curb a block away. Nikki jumped out and ran to a nearby kiosk. She returned five minutes later carrying two cellphones in their packaging. After activating both, Simon called her phone so that both had the other’s number.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “The old neighborhood.”

  Nikki looked both ways, then slipped him her pistol. “Just in case they don’t like you any better than Falconi and his friends.”

  He looked at it, immediately thinking of where to stash it. “No,” he said, catching himself falling into old habits. “I don’t work that way.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’ll try and be more careful this time.”

  “Do that.”

  “How much time do you need?”

  “Depends on how much I’m going to find.”

  “If you don’t find a lot, you’re not looking hard enough.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Someone high up recommended Coluzzi to Neill. We’re talking cooperation between intelligence agencies at an international level. They didn’t pick Coluzzi’s name out of a hat.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He’s been doing this for a while.”

  “You think he started with you?”

  “September 1999. Look me up while you’re at it.”

  “Count on it.”

  “Call me when you’re done.”

  Nikki nodded, then leaned into the car and kissed him. “Be careful.”

  Chapter 56

  Simon shifted the car into gear and punched the gas, heading down the hill into the city. He rolled up the window and spun the AC to full. The engine coughed and a stream of lukewarm air trickled from the vents. He banged his hand on the dash. If anything, the flow of air diminished.

  He headed into the Prado district, an upscale residential area with broad, leafy streets bordered by modern apartment buildings. Two hours had passed since he’d boosted the car in Avignon. It was prudent to assume the owner had reported it as stolen. In and of itself, such a report was no cause for worry. It could be hours before the police put out word to look for the car. Interest in recovering a stolen vehicle demonstrated a positive correlation with the car’s value, meaning the better the car, the greater the desire to find it. Few resources would be expended looking for a twenty-year-old Peugeot with a crapped out air conditioner.

  Simon wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead, then opened the window, only to be met by a blast of hot, humid air, redolent of gasoline fumes and garlic.

  Safety, he decided, was one thing. Comfort another.

  He turned the corner and grabbed the first parking space he could find. Five minutes later, he was walking down the ramp to an underground garage beneath the nicest building he could find. He was done with twenty-year-old Peugeots.

  The garage was deserted and poorly lit, half the spaces empty. He walked down one row, passing an Audi, an Alfa Romeo, and a very attractive Renault convertible. All were late-model vehicles with electronic ignitions. Without a key or a set of advanced tools, he would be unable to start them. The last car in the row was a canary-yellow Simca work van at least thirty years old. Getting it started wasn’t the problem. He was willing to bet the air-conditioning was even worse than the Peugeot he’d just abandoned. He came closer and noted that the van had a flat rear tire. End of discussion.

  A door to the garage opened and he ducked behind the van. Footsteps echoed across the parking lot. A moment later, an engine started. Tires squealed as the car climbed the exit ramp. Silence returned.

  It was then that Simon realized he’d been wrong. The Simca wasn’t the last car in the row. Another vehicle was parked behind it, covered by a weathered tarpaulin. By its height and profile, he knew it was a sports car. A Porsche, he guessed, or a Jaguar. With care, he peeled the tarpaulin off the hood. The first thing he saw was a rectangular yellow nameplate
with the word “Dino” written on it. The car was a 1972 Ferrari Dino, nearly identical to the vehicle Lucy Brown was—hopefully—working on at that very moment. Color: corsa red. There was no missing this machine when it was on the street.

  Kneeling, he checked the tire pressure. Low, but drivable. Even with the tarpaulin, a layer of dust coated the hood. The car had not been driven in at least a year, maybe longer. He put his face to the window. The odometer read 88,000 miles. Doors locked.

  Sometimes, he decided, one blended in by standing out. No one would be looking for him in a vintage Italian sports car worth a million dollars. And if they were, too bad. He’d outdrive them.

  Simon looked around the garage. He saw no one. He stepped toward the van and snapped off the antenna, dropping it onto the floor and stepping on it, until round became flat, and flat became flatter. He picked up the antenna and deftly fit it between the door and window, closing his eyes, allowing his touch to find the lock and disengage it. He tried the door handle, waiting for the wail of an alarm.

  Nothing.

  Time was of the essence. He yanked the tarpaulin off the car and dropped it to the ground, then climbed behind the wheel. His hands found the ignition wires. Again, he stripped the wires and wrapped the copper filaments together. The engine sparked. The motor turned over, roaring magnificently, and for the first time in his life, he questioned why Ferraris always had to be so goddamned loud.

  The fuel gauge read half full. He had a hundred kilometers before tanking up.

  Again, an eye to the door. No one.

  He shifted the Dino into first gear and guided it up the ramp and into the sunlight.

  A minute later, he was doing eighty down the Avenue du Prado.

  Chapter 57

  Nikki’s contact at the Marseille police department was named Frank Mazot, a grizzled fifty-year-old detective who headed up the city’s major crimes division, the same team to which she was attached in Paris. Over the years, they’d worked a dozen cases together, ranging from tracking down the Pink Panthers, the Balkan crew that specialized in spectacular heists from haute joaillerie boutiques in Paris and Cannes, to the “Dream Team,” four Marseille-based gangsters best known for robbing a passenger jet of twenty million euros before it took off from the Provence airport.

  Mazot was strictly old school. He wore a white shirt and dark suit. He carried his gun in a shoulder holster—a .38 snub-nosed revolver, no less. (“If you need more than five shots to put a man down, you need to learn to shoot better.”) And he always had an unfiltered Gitanes cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  Nikki bounded upstairs to the third floor, stopping at a break room for two coffees before continuing to his office.

  “Surprise,” she said as she elbowed his door open. “Look who’s here.”

  “Nikki, what in the world?” Mazot jumped to his feet from behind a desk piled high with unruly folders.

  “The place is messier than last time I was here.” She set down the coffees as Mazot came around the desk and greeted her with a kiss on each cheek. “Hello, Frank. How are you?”

  “You know how it goes. Clear one case, two more pop up.” He picked up a coffee, viewing her from over the top of a pair of smudged bifocals. “Four sugars?”

  “How could I forget? I’m surprised you have any teeth left.”

  “Good genes,” said Mazot, smiling to reveal shoddy dental work stained a grubby yellow by decades of nicotine and coffee. “What are you doing here, kiddo?”

  “Last-minute deal. I’m working the big robbery in town. The Saudi thing. I need your help.”

  Mazot lit a cigarette. “So you came all the way down here?”

  “You want something done right you have to do it yourself.”

  “I do have a phone.”

  Nikki smiled. “Maybe I wanted to see you.”

  “Bullshit,” said Mazot, harshly enough to make them both laugh. He sat and offered Nikki a seat. The time for pleasantries had ended. “Any leads?”

  “I need to poke my nose into your archives.”

  “Who’s the lucky fellow?”

  “Tino Coluzzi.”

  “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Word was he’d skipped town. Some kind of dispute about a job.” Mazot put two and two together. “Coluzzi’s behind this?”

  Nikki shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”

  “Or a wild hair?”

  “Maybe a little of both.”

  “Which is why I haven’t heard from the lieutenant.”

  Nikki leaned forward, her arms resting on the desk. She met Mazot’s gaze head-on. “You do what you gotta do.”

  Mazot sucked down half the cigarette, stubbing out the butt in an ashtray filled to overflowing. Pushing his bifocals into place, he hunt-and-pecked Coluzzi’s name into the computer. “Write this down.”

  Nikki scrambled for a pen and paper, jotting down the file reference. “So you’re not digitized?” she asked, forgetting to hide her frustration. Digging through the archives could take hours.

  “We don’t have enough money to pay our detectives on time,” said Mazot. “You think we’re going to waste it scanning old files? You know what we say around here: ‘If you really need to find something, get off your ass and go look for it.’”

  “Sounds about right,” said Nikki.

  Mazot stood. A favor had been called in, the ledgers evened out. “That it?”

  “One more thing,” said Nikki. “It’s personal.”

  “Oh?”

  Nikki gave Mazot a second name, one that he claimed never to have heard before. He found it easily enough. She wrote down the file reference before following Mazot to the archives in the basement beneath police headquarters.

  They found Coluzzi’s files high on a shelf in the far corner of the basement. Mazot stood on his tiptoes to retrieve the storage box and handed it to Nikki. “You’re stronger than I am. You carry it.”

  He led the way to a small reading room near the elevator. “All yours,” he said. “Give me a ring when you’re done. I’m at extension forty-nine.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And Nikki? If Coluzzi is the one behind the Paris job, don’t forget me. I could use a raise before I retire.”

  After Frank Mazot left, Nikki opened the box and began sorting through the files inside. Alphabetizing was not the archivist’s strong suit. It took her fifteen minutes to locate Coluzzi’s file, tucked between “Cranmont” and “Czell.” The file was thick as a phonebook, a compendious mess of arrest sheets, interviews, court records, and sentencing documents, all mixed up haphazardly. She required a further thirty minutes to put them in something resembling chronological order before she could begin her research.

  Coluzzi’s first arrest was at the age of sixteen for burglary with a sentence of six months’ probation. The second arrest was three months later, for which he served a year at a reform school near the Spanish border. A note from the school director called Coluzzi “willing to cooperate and a model student.” Nikki wrinkled her nose. A handwritten note to Coluzzi’s parole officer stated that the young man had come to the director with the name of a student who had been pilfering from the kitchen and selling canned goods to a local vendor.

  The die was cast at an early age.

  From there, Coluzzi’s record grew at a blistering pace. Extortion. Assault. Grand theft. And then at the age of twenty-one, attempted murder. The trial lasted one day. Coluzzi was convicted and sentenced to five years at Les Baumettes.

  Nikki paused, studying the paper. Something was missing. Normally, there should be a prisoner transfer sheet attached, documenting his remanding to the national prison system. In its place was a pink-hued form she knew all too well. She’d filed a similar one a dozen times, if not more, including one with Aziz François’s name on it when she’d recruited him as a confidential informant.

  At once, Nikki took a photo of the form with her phone.

  Reports from Coluzzi’s case officer followed, p
roviding a comprehensive list of criminals with whom he regularly worked, as well as crimes they’d committed and crimes they planned to commit. There on the third page was “Simon Ledoux.”

  With mounting fury, she read Coluzzi’s detailed, almost joyous recounting of the plan to rob the Garda armored car on September 2, 1999. The following page was a copy of the arrest record, including a brief description of the attempted robbery. Four men killed, names given. Simon Ledoux shot three times, taken to hospital, condition unknown.

  Coluzzi stood trial to preserve his anonymity as an informant and received a cursory sentence of six months, of which he was released after two.

  And like Aziz François, Coluzzi did not allow his work as a police informant to interfere with his career as a criminal. A few years after the Garda job, he was arrested for robbery and assault, and sentenced to a five-year stretch at Les Baumettes. This time, no amount of snitching could shorten his term. The prisoner transfer sheet showed the date of his arrival as shortly after Simon would have ended his time in solitary.

  But nowhere was there mention of an attack on an inmate.

  And then, as if a magician had snapped his fingers and said “Abracadabra,” the file ended. No mention of Tino Coluzzi for the past fifteen years. Even if he’d never committed another crime in his life, there ought to be more here—the mandatory reports from his parole officer, to begin with.

  Something was wrong.

  Nikki put down the last sheet and closed the file.

  An administrative request form was stapled to the back of the folder. It was dated January 2003 and came from a Colonel M. Duvivier of the DGSE for an interagency transfer.

  The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure was France’s foreign security service, the equivalent of the CIA.

  The request read: “All further information kept at 141 Boulevard Mortier, Paris.”