Once a Thief (Gentleman Jack Burdette Book 3)

by Dale M. Nelson

  “What happened to the Knightsbridge money?”

  “I don’t know. Reginald never told me how or if he got it. The reason they left it in the first place was they couldn’t figure out how to smuggle the cash out of the country. Vito never admitted it, but I always assumed he moved it out by boat between England and one of the countries on the other side of the channel, then drove back to Italy. Maybe they figured out a way to launder it in London, that’s always possible. I don’t know.”

  “But if Vito stiffed him thirty-some years ago, why work with him now?”

  “We don’t know that Vito did. Reginald never told me about it. I assumed that’s what happened, because when I asked them both, they told me not to ask. If that is true, could be this was a way to make up for it. Whatever they may have had against each other in the past, they’ve still got one thing in common. They both hate me more than anything.” Jack leaned against the counter and took a deep drink. “If they are working together, this looks more and more like a long con. Vito convinces me he’s been living hand to mouth for twenty years and that he just figured out where Bartolo hid the diamonds. We help him get the stones out of the bank and into the open, and then Vito steals them from us.”

  “Then Reginald helps him bring the diamonds to the US to sell them? I don’t know, Jack, that seems like a long shot. The diamonds are in Europe now, and that’s where half of the gray market is.”

  “That’s true, but Vito doesn’t have the connections with them. That’s the one thing he told us that I do actually believe. Reginald wouldn’t risk traveling abroad. He was convicted of passport forgery, among other things, and will assume he’s on a watch list.”

  “He could slip in and out of the country pretty easy on a decent fake,” Rusty said, challenging the logic. “You know that better than anyone.”

  Jack closed his eyes and thought. He knew Reginald very well. They’d worked together for so many years, Jack felt he had a good sense of how Reginald might try to play this. Jack knew how he would do it.

  “Reginald just finished his second stint in prison and got out legally. He’s not going to take the risk and travel abroad. Also, after being inside for six years and a snitch jacket, no one he used to know will talk to him ever again.” Jack paused. Think, Jack. Think. He snapped his fingers. “They’re going to move the diamonds legally. Well, sort of.” His mind was getting ahead of his mouth. “The only reason to bring them to the States is they are going to try to sell them on the legitimate market. They’d just need to make themselves look like diamond brokers, which wouldn’t be that hard to do—a website and some bogus incorporation paperwork? Importing gems into the US is so shockingly simple that most smugglers never think about it. You don’t even pay taxes on gems coming in. As long as you have import paperwork, which can be faked, it’s not that hard. Once they’re inside…in my experience, most buyers will look the other way, or at least not ask questions.” Jack stopped for a minute and tried to catch up with his thought process. “We also have to consider that these diamonds have been out of the news for twenty years. No one has stolen an amount like this, except for what I did in Cannes, and that was eight years ago. I doubt a buyer is going to question it if they can come up with a convincing enough provenance. They won’t have thought that anyone could steal this many diamonds.”

  Rusty was quiet for a time, and Jack could hear him typing. “But how do they get them in the country? You keep them here in Europe, we have way more bulk diamond buyers than they do in the States, and it’s a lot easier to smuggle them across borders. How do you sneak six pounds of diamonds on an airplane?”

  Jack had never tried to move stolen gems in the United States, but he had to assume gem buyers the world over were much the same. Consumer appetite for previous stones was nearly insatiable and too often, buyers simply looked the other way or just didn’t ask a lot of pointed questions when they were acquiring them. Except for those that were part of single supply chain distributors, some portion of the diamonds and other gems that were sold in Europe and Asia had, at one point, been stolen.

  “That part is also not as hard as you might think, which is not to say that it’s easy. But I’ve done it.” Well, to be specific, Jack set it up for someone else to do. But when he was working steadily in Europe, he employed any number of methods to sneak his stolen goods across borders. One of the most successful had been to have a hardshell carrying case for sensitive and fragile equipment, such as cameras, modified with small lead-lined compartments that followed the contours of the case. On the airport X-ray, it looked just like the case walls. “Just speculating, I would guess Reginald would fall back on one of the techniques I used back in the day. He never moved anything himself. Alternatively, I suppose Reginald could have someone in Customs, but that seems highly unlikely. He did go up for forgery, so maybe he found a way to doctor an import certificate.”

  “This all seems like a long shot to me, Jack,” Rusty said. “I get all of the things you’re saying, but it seems like the risk of bringing these diamonds into the States would be too high. And there just aren’t that many places that can or would do an eighty-million-dollar acquisition. I’m reading right here most of the big transactions happen at a couple large trade shows, neither of which are in Los Angeles.”

  “Maybe they aren’t thinking about one big push. I wouldn’t. They could be holding onto them for a bit and selling them off in small chunks like we planned to. But let’s say for the sake of discussion that they wanted to move them all at once. Major supply lines have been significantly disrupted, and production isn’t nearly what it was eighteen, twenty-four months ago. Somebody shows up with a massive amount of stones like that, offering in bulk, as long as they look legit enough, that lets a small company not quite corner the market but make a significant dent. All of a sudden, they’re on par with De Beers. You don’t think that a businessman is going to hold back on some of the questions he might ask for a situation like that? There are multiple importers and wholesalers in LA’s Jewelry District. One of the biggest trade shows in the world is in Tucson, which is only four or five months out. They could be doing the prep work for that now, using diamonds like flash money and establishing their bona fides.”

  “Okay, now that I believe.”

  Jack paused again, trying to put himself in Reginald’s shoes. What would he do in this situation?

  “Look, neither of these guys are young. They may not try one big push, but they are also not going to sell a handful a year for the next two decades. I think they are going to try and do this in a couple of big moves, taking whatever they can get, and live the rest of their lives burning money.”

  “What’s our next move, then?”

  “We need to figure out where Reginald is living now. If he was released from prison early, he’s likely on parole. See if you can’t figure out an address. We have to figure a way to flush these guys out into the open.” Jack took the phone off his ear and looked for new messages. Still nothing. “Where in the hell is Enzo?”

  4

  When the lights came on in the room, Enzo could see the outline of a man standing in the doorway in his peripheral vision, but he was too focused on staring at the empty safe to give it much notice. It wasn’t until the man said, “Don’t fucking move,” that Enzo broke his gaze. His eyes, adjusted for the darkness, were burning in the bright light. They flashed over to the man, but he didn’t move his head. He saw the barrel of a gun that the guy was holding about waist height.

  Enzo’s Beretta was on top of the black backpack next to him, with the bulk of his body blocking it from view. Enzo snatched up the gun in his left hand, cranked his body around, and brought his right hand up to meet it. He squeezed off a shot before the other man even knew what was happening. The bullet landed right in the middle of his chest. The guy pitched forward, making gurgling sounds like a broken drain. If the man wasn’t dead yet, he would be soon. Enzo didn’t have time for guilt. He pushed everything into the backpack and urgently z
ipped it, then threw it onto his back, keeping the gun in his hand. Then he was on his feet and stepping over the crumpled and moaning man, careful not to get the pooling blood on his shoes. Enzo didn’t bother checking for a pulse.

  He needed to find a way out of this house and needed it fast. The way he came in was no longer an option. There were too many choke points, and he didn’t know if the stairs or the back door would be covered. That left the front. It was the more obvious route but closer to where he’d stashed his car. Enzo didn’t know anything about the layout of the house but could figure it out based on where he’d been. He ran left down the hallway. The next room, the one adjacent to Vito’s office, was a large living room that faced the lake, and the kitchen was at the end of the hall. He could see all of this because the lights were all coming on. Enzo didn’t take the time to count them all, but there were a lot.

  The house’s entry foyer was on the right at the end of the hall, almost to the kitchen. Enzo was maybe twenty steps away. He looked up and almost froze in mid-stride. There was a man in the kitchen, dark suit and dark shirt, whose features looked like they’d been chiseled out of rock. But it was the eyes that almost stopped Enzo cold. They were blank voids, empty black pits without any feeling, any recognition of humanity. It was the face of someone who would simply and casually kill you without explanation or hesitation, because that was the next action to take.

  Enzo was so focused on the hallway that seeing this person jarred him and he almost missed the movement at the man’s sides, almost forgot that he too had a gun in his hand. Enzo stopped his run, skidding across the tile, and brought his pistol up. He snapped off three rounds without aiming and then dove through the doorway into the entry foyer. There were shouts behind him now, movement, chaos. He didn’t even remember opening the door but now he was moving outside—then he stopped. He was staring across the gravel carport at the closed gate and something wasn’t connecting in his brain, adrenaline and flight instinct was clouding out his ability to solve problems. Then Enzo smashed the controls for the gate and ran.

  Enzo’s car was about a tenth of a mile away, hidden down the road. He’d have stolen one of Vito’s cars but he didn’t see keys on his way out the door. Enzo dashed across the dark carport, gravel crunching under his feet. He was halfway across when the place erupted into light. Vito had floodlights on the carport and ground spots aiming at the house. All of them seemed to be aiming right at Enzo’s eyes.

  The first gunshot cracked the night.

  Enzo made the gate, grabbed a bar, and whipped himself around, nearly slamming himself into a car parked there.

  Enzo ducked low and aimed his pistol at the BMW’s rear left tire. He fired once, hearing the serpentine hiss of air escaping after the gun’s report. Contrary to popular belief, car tires didn’t explode when shot; instead they leaked like any other puncture until they went flat. The tire would probably hold enough air to get them a little ways down the road but not much more than that. At least he’d cut his pursuers in half.

  Angry voices entered the carport, orders hurriedly shouted. Enzo stood and broke into a full run, passing a second parked car. The road was a tree-lined two lane in the foothills overlooking the lake with barely any shoulder to speak of. The road looked like a smear of black paint on a dark blue canvas, and Enzo, also wearing all black, was running down it at full speed. He could only pray that he wasn’t struck from behind by a passing car.

  He ran.

  The sounds of a chase mobilizing behind him, shouts and ignitions.

  Enzo had parked his car in the darkness beneath a tree alongside the road, where it widened just enough to count as a shoulder. A passerby would think he was a guest visiting the house it was in front of. He’d scoped that place out and, like several of the homes along this road, seemed like vacation property and didn’t appear to be occupied. On his initial ingress to Vito’s house, Enzo had snuck through this yard and descended the slope to the lake front and then made his away to Vito’s. He’d rented a boat the day before and examined the route from the water to make sure that it could be traversed on foot.

  Enzo found his car, which was a black Alfa Romeo Giulia. He’d purchased it from a contact of his in Rome. The car was clean and registered with plates from Milan. At least that was one thing he’d done right. The car lit up as headlights painted it and he saw two pairs in the side mirror as he was climbing in.

  So much for the easy way.

  Enzo powered the car up and mashed the accelerator just as the two cars were about on him. The Alfa’s wheels spun for a second before getting traction on the damp asphalt, but once they did, Enzo rocketed forward. And just in time. He continued accelerating, quickly pulling away from the two cars. The Giulia was Alfa Romeo’s entry into the luxury sports sedan market, and while it was quick enough, he didn’t think it’d be a match for what his opponents were driving. The one advantage Enzo had was the Via Mazzini was a more or less straight line that followed the contour of the lake, but it would be dangerous to get up to top speed. He’d be in the next town quickly, and there was always the possibility that, even this late at night, a car could pull out of one of the residences that lined the lake. He blasted past a copse of trees, and Lago Maggiore opened up on his right, a long dark blotch in the night, marked only by the absence of light. Boats floating on the surface looked like bodies in space. In the distance ahead, he could see the lights of the next town along the Via Mazzini as well as those on the other side of the lake. Trees were more sporadic now with more frequent pull-offs so that cars could access the beach.

  Enzo was doing eighty, and the mottled darkness blended into a single long blur on either side. In his rearview, he saw the headlights from the lead car drift to the left, putting them in the oncoming traffic lane. They were going to try to get next to him. Enzo put a little more to the accelerator. His pursuer’s headlights jumped back and forth, as though someone picked the car up and shook it. A dark grin broke Enzo’s lips. Their back tire would be just about out of air and the driver was just now realizing what was wrong. Enzo’s eyes jumped between the rearview and the road, watching the headlights quickly shrink to pinpricks of light, only to be replaced by the second pair. The second car accelerated quickly, and Enzo could tell it was most likely an Audi from the headlights.

  The Audi jumped forward and slammed into the back of his car. They were trying to run him off the road. Jesus, who the hell were these guys? Enzo took the car up to ninety. There were no streetlights here, and if another car pulled out onto the road, he might not see it until it was too late. Having bumped him once, the Audi was now trying the same thing that the other car did before they lost their tire, which was to get up alongside him, presumably so that the occupants could open fire.

  The next large city was Stresa, which was about four more miles up the road. Four miles until he’d have a road he could ditch onto and attempt to lose his pursuers. At these speeds, they’d be there quickly, but probably not fast enough for Enzo.

  Headlights appeared in the oncoming lane, and the Audi’s headlights snapped back to the right side of the road. Enzo saw the headlights of the approaching car drift over slightly, and he couldn’t tell if it was a curve in the road or if it was coming into his lane. He didn’t pay it any other thought; it wasn’t a thing he could control. Seeing their opportunity, the Audi closed again, ramming the back of Enzo’s Alfa again, trying to drive him off the road.

  The frequency of lights on either side of the road increased, and he could see by the small cluster of brightness up ahead that they were approaching the next small town. Enzo knew from his recon during the daytime that there would be a large hotel on the left and a group of buildings huddled by the roadside, bars, small shops, and a marina on the right. The possibility of someone walking across the road from the bar to the hotel or a car pulling out was almost a certainty. Enzo closed on the yellow-orange glow of streetlights; houses were already on either side of the road. He didn’t have long. The Audi tried accelerat
ing to his side again. Enzo weaved the Alfa into the other lane, cutting them off and jerking his car back just in time as angry horns erupted. A car appeared in the oncoming lane, he hadn’t seen it, or if he did, it didn’t register in his mind.

  Enzo could see the hotel perched on the hillside on the left side of the road, bathed in light. The road curved to the left, following the contour of the lake. He was going way too fast. Enzo tapped the brake to back the Audi off. It worked, but it was the kind of trick he could probably only pull once. He could see them start to accelerate again.

  There!

  He saw his shot.

  Enzo slammed on the brakes, and he felt like an invisible hand was trying to pull him through the car’s front windshield. He cranked the wheel over, and the car screeched into the parking lot across from the hotel. Enzo stood on the brake. The car fishtailed, the trunk swinging wide to the left. Enzo brought the wheel back around hard to the left, reversing the slide’s direction. He’d slid most of the way across the parking lot now. The car rotated, so he’d whipped it almost a full one eighty, but the momentum was still pulling it along its original trajectory. Enzo dropped his foot on the accelerator, wheels spun, and he shot out of the parking lot. The maneuver worked. The Audi overshot him by the length of the building, maybe a little more. He looked to the right and saw them pulling off into another parking lot that was on the far side of this cluster of buildings. He could hear them braking, tires practically yelling in protest. Enzo saw his chance. There was a small residential road entry across the street. As long as this didn’t dead end, it might be his chance to lose them. Enzo floored the accelerator, not even bothering to clear for traffic, and blasted across the road.