Once a Thief (Gentleman Jack Burdette Book 3)

by Dale M. Nelson

  “Thank you,” Jack said. “We appreciate you meeting us on short notice, and I promise you, we won’t take up too much of your time.”

  “It’s no problem at all. I’m always happy to help out Customs,” he said.

  Jack opened his briefcase and drew out a folder. He set that on the table, opened it, and turned it to face Galbraith. Inside the left sleeve was an FBI wanted notice displaying Reginald LeGrande’s picture, on the right was an INTERPOL wanted notice for Vito Verrazano. Rusty had created a pair of law enforcement notices that looked absolutely real.

  “Mr. Galbraith, Inspector Benedetti and I are here because we believe that these men are attempting to make a sale of a large quantity of diamonds here in Los Angeles. The diamonds were stolen in Europe several years ago, hidden, and recently smuggled into the US. We believe they are attempting to sell them here because American law enforcement wouldn’t be following this.”

  “Then how did you hear about it?”

  “My agency, Italy’s financial police, have been following Vito Verrazano for quite a while,” Enzo said. “I am the…is ‘case officer’ the right term? We believe this is the work of a thievery ring that has been amassing wealth over time, small- and medium-size scores with the intent of trying to sell them on the legitimate market.”

  Galbraith concentrated on the photos and the notices for several long moments. Then he pulled his phone out and hammer-tapped the screen like a woodpecker drilling a hole. Jack watched his eyes jump between the phone and the notices. After a few moments of scrolling, Galbraith leaned back in his chair. “I’m scheduled to meet with a pair from an international brokerage later this week. Burton and De Angeles are their names. Reginald Burton and Vito De Angeles,” he said. “Thursday morning at ten.”

  Reginald and Vito.

  They didn’t have the name Reginald used when chartering the flight—and that would be a bogus name anyway—but Vito De Angeles was the client on the passenger manifest. Jack looked over at Enzo. “Those sound like our guys,” he said, and Enzo nodded in grave agreement.

  “So, how can I help?” Galbraith asked.

  “For now, I’d like you to cancel the appointment.”

  “That’s it?” Galbraith appeared visibly relieved. “You don’t need me for a sting or anything?”

  Jack gave him a perfunctory laugh. “Not right now, Mr. Galbraith. At this stage, we first need to verify that it’s them. That means closing down some options.”

  “Well, wait a second. I’m running a business here. I can’t just cancel appointments because Customs tells me to. If these guys are doing something shady, then obviously I want to help out. That’s bad for our entire industry. But if you’re wrong and they aren’t your guys, then I could be passing up on a deal that one of my competitors is going to grab. I don’t think you appreciate how competitive this business is.”

  Jack leveled a gaze on him that said, “You have no idea,” but Galbraith didn’t pick up on the double meaning.

  “Mr. Galbraith, the most help you can be is to give us the phone number that they provided. This will allow us to check them out. If they turn out not to be our guys, then you can reschedule your meeting with our apologies. If this is a large deal, like you say, I’m sure it won’t close that quickly.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said. But Galbraith provided both the office and mobile numbers for Reginald Burton and assured them that he would cancel the appointment. Jack admonished him that it was essential that he not give anything away, just to tell them that something came up. Galbraith probed a little more on the investigation, fishing for details, Jack suspected, so that he had something to give his chief legal officer as soon as this meeting was done. Jack remained cagey on details, giving him that age-old line that he was forbidden from talking about an ongoing investigation. They thanked Galbraith for his time and left.

  When they got outside, Enzo asked why they didn’t have the guy set them up. “He seemed like he was ready to jump, man, why didn’t we just have him go all in? We could take them. Set up the sting like he said?”

  “Well, I don’t want to do anything until Rusty is here, because we don’t have any additional support. But I’d be worried about Reginald being able to sniff out that something was up if it’s their first meeting and the guy wants to buy all of the diamonds. It’ll look suspicious. Besides, we’ve got the most important thing right now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Reginald’s phone number.”

  Even though they’d had the flight information and knew when Vito’s plane landed in Van Nuys, they’d agreed that it was a bad idea to try to tail them. At that point, it was just Jack, and running a tail was very hard with just one person. Not to mention, Van Nuys was a small airport and the chances of Reginald spotting Jack were just too high.

  So, Jack decided on this approach—posing as law enforcement officers to close off their options, force Reginald to make a bad, hasty decision, and take the diamonds. Their backup plan was to find out where the diamonds were being stashed and just steal them from there.

  Jack’s phone rang.

  It was Special Agent Danzig.

  8

  Jack flew home.

  Kingfisher was located on the northern end of Sonoma County, about a half an hour from the town of Sonoma. Jack told her that he’d meet her in downtown Sonoma, which would save them an additional hour in the car if they were driving up from San Francisco. Danzig told him it was no problem, they would meet him at the winery. When Jack pushed back on the idea, Danzig reassured him they were just coming to talk. She figured that’s where he would be during business hours and didn’t want to inconvenience him. He told her that he didn’t typically have federal agents just come to talk, and he didn’t want them raising unnecessary suspicion with the winery staff. But Danzig seemed insistent that they conduct the meeting at the winery, and Jack knew he could only push back so hard without it looking like he was hiding something. Like the fact that he’d been away the last two days and the questions that might bring.

  Jack just didn’t want the FBI crawling all over his place of business “just to talk.” Danzig offered a compromise. She said that she and her partner would dress in casual clothes and they wouldn’t drive a Bureau car. Jack reluctantly agreed, reminded her that everyone there knew him as Frank Fischer and that he took her advice and lived as Fischer, full-time.

  With no other option, which, he recalled, was how Katrina Danzig did business, Jack agreed.

  Things seemed to go poorly after that.

  First, Jack had told his staff that he’d be away for a few days on business. He told Megan that he’d had something to take care of; she knew now not to probe too deeply in certain areas. Then, in the middle of this trip, Jack showed back up at the winery, unexpectedly, because he was going to have some guests and he wanted to show them around. It was a ham-fisted explanation, but the staff at Kingfisher knew that their boss was a bit of an eccentric who kept his own hours and would show up or disappear at the drop of a hat.

  Jack asked Danzig to be there around ten so that he had time to finish whatever this was before guests started arriving. Then Danzig proceeded to be three hours late. Maybe they got a late start leaving San Francisco, misjudging the travel time. Maybe, also, they planned it this way. Conspiracy theories had a way of worming their way into a stressed mind. All of Jack’s thoughts were on Los Angeles right now, how quickly he could wrap this up and get back there.

  Danzig and another agent, whom Jack recognized from Rome, got out of their car. Choi, he thought the name was. Jack was watching from his office, which overlooked the winery’s parking lot.

  Danzig was in her mid-forties and very athletic. She’d grown her hair out since the last time Jack saw her. It hung to her shoulders now and curled in just slightly. She had large, piercing dark eyes that missed very little. They always seemed to be narrowed, just slightly, as though she was always focusing her stare on something. Danzig was dressed in jeans, a whit
e blouse, and dark blazer. Choi was taller, a few years younger, and looked like he could run down an NFL quarterback. He wore a white polo and chinos. Both of them exhausted.

  They both looked like federal agents who were trying hard not to look like federal agents.

  Jack moved downstairs as quickly as he could, intercepting them before they got to the main building.

  “Welcome to Kingfisher,” he said in a dry tone.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Frank,” Danzig said.

  Jack’s tension lowered a bit, automatically. Danzig was preserving his cover as a courtesy.

  It was early afternoon, though it was a weekday in the fall, so they didn’t have too many customers yet, and most of the ones they did have were inside in the tasting room. They had one group at a table on the patio. Jack spotted a couple on their honeymoon who’d finished their tasting and were taking a stroll around the grounds.

  “Thanks for taking the time to meet with us. You remember Dan Choi?” Danzig said. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”

  Jack looked to his left and right before he even realized what he was doing. Long years of staying a couple steps ahead of people like Katrina Danzig had taught him a few things, not the least of which was always knowing where the exits were. Danzig must have sensed this, picked up on his discomfort.

  “I’m not here to bother you, Frank,” she said. If Danzig wanted to cause him trouble, and God knew she had, she’d have used his real name and put him on his heels in public.

  “Sure thing,” he said. “You guys came all this way, would you like to try a glass?”

  “We’re on duty,” Danzig said.

  “Then just hold the glass while we walk around,” Jack said in a low voice. “This is a winery. People come here to drink wine. People who don’t drink wine don’t come here.”

  Danzig nodded, and Jack walked over to the service counter on the patio, poured three glasses, and returned to his “guests.” As he did, Jack introduced the wine for the benefit of anyone that might overhear them.

  The patio was ringed by a low wall of dark granite that had openings at both ends and in the center. Jack led the two agents out the nearest one to the driveway that circled the tasting room. There was a line of black oaks on the other side of the road, whose long, leafy canopy hanging from gnarled, hand-like branches drooped low and covered half the road. Jack walked silently back toward the barn and the fermentation tanks. Reaching that, he stepped off into the grass.

  “You’ve done well for yourself,” Danzig said.

  “I took your advice,” Jack replied matter-of-factly.

  As Jack was departing Rome to sign his plea deal two years before, accompanied by a pair of US Marshals to make sure he made it to Manhattan, Danzig told him, “Become Frank Fischer. Be a winemaker, live your life. Forget everything about Jack Burdette.”

  Well, he’d taken two-thirds of that advice.

  “I’m glad,” Danzig said.

  Jack was genuinely surprised to hear that.

  He’d been an obsession of hers for a decade, a master jewel thief that many in law enforcement debated even existed. That obsession nearly cost Danzig her career. But instead of being bitter, flaming out and blaming him for it, she learned from the experience. When the time came and she had the opportunity to arrest Jack for what would be—in contrast to the rest of his body of work—petty theft from a jewelry heist gone wrong, Danzig instead asked for a trade. Jack took a plea deal instead of prison, then helped the FBI and the Italian authorities break up a major criminal syndicate and jail a war criminal.

  “I have purpose here,” he said, and vaguely motioned at the rows of vines before them. “Look, I only ever stole gems because it was the thing I knew how to do. Over time, I learned something else.”

  That was mostly true. Jack reveled in the excitement. He lived for crafting an airtight plan and thrived in executing it. He loved outsmarting people like Danzig and Choi. Jack also recognized that about himself, however, and when he returned from the debacle in Rome, he applied that same philosophy, the same drive to winemaking. His people noticed the change immediately. Jack originally started this place as a way to launder the money he made from stealing jewelry. In time, he came to love it, love the people that worked here. But he still had no idea what he was doing. He made a lot of mistakes, some of which he paid for. He micromanaged. Jack assumed that because he was good at one hard thing, he was good at all hard things. But after Rome, he changed. He approached winemaking like a student, he listened, he took advice. The change in him was profound.

  “I won’t claim that this makes up for anything I’ve done in life, but I make a product that makes people happy. People come here and spend an afternoon with us, take a bottle with them, and make that turn into something special. We do weddings here now. It’s something.”

  “That’s really interesting,” Danzig said flatly, and took a polite sip of her wine. “But I’m here to talk to you about diamonds.”

  “I’m retired.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, Jack.” Switching to his real name now that it was just the three of them. “We need your help.”

  Jack said nothing for several long breaths. Instead, he looked out over the long rows of Cabernet grapes that climbed up the rolling Mayacamas foothills. The green tracts of grapes gave way to the lush green of the black oaks and other leafy trees in the mountains, with wide patches of wild grass that was golden brown now this late in the year. The wildfire threat was the highest now, and several other parts of the state were burning. A reminder, Jack mused as he flashed a sideways glance at Agent Danzig, that there was always danger even in peace.

  “So, how can I help?”

  Danzig took another sip. So much for duty, Jack thought. “This really is quite good,” she said softly. “After we arrested Aleksander Andelić, the Bureau put me in charge of a squad going after international gem trafficking operations. We, the Bureau, have been laser focused on counterterrorism for the last twenty years, and frankly, some other operations have slipped. Transnational crime is a big focus for us now. So, what does all that have to do with you?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “This is about your old friends, the Cannizzaros. Since we don’t have the lawyers present, I’ll just remind you that a condition of your deal was to assist any ongoing investigations about which you have specific knowledge.”

  Jack wanted to tell her he didn’t have specific knowledge of anything at this point, but held his tongue.

  Danzig continued. “You really kicked up a hornet’s nest during the bank job. This is a fairly complicated situation, but we’ll tell you what we can. We know from your depositions that they used extortion to gain access to an Italian shipping magnate. The Cannizzaro organization has been smuggling for years but over the last eighteen months has significantly ramped up their operations. They’re into everything. They’re buying guns in the Middle East, leftovers from the Iraq war, and selling them in Africa, mostly. Revolutionary groups, terrorist organizations, anyone with a checkbook. They’re financing the arms trade primarily with stolen gems.”

  Choi spoke for the first time. “I was posted in Rome as an attaché at the US Embassy when you…when all of that went down. We were aware of the Cannizzaros even then and were providing some intelligence to the Italian law enforcement agencies. These guys have been trafficking for some time, but it looks like they’ve expanded considerably in the last two years. We think they’re using a shipping company and moving things in container ships.”

  Trafficking precious gems was one of the primary ways that terrorist organizations and international criminal syndicates funded themselves and moved money beneath the eyes of governments. Gems had no serial numbers. They were a completely invisible currency, and consumer desire for them was practically insatiable. Most of the gems stolen in Europe and Asia ended up on the gray market, where they were acquired by unscrupulous wholesalers. Already cut and finished, these
stones would then be sold back to jewelry makers at a substantial profit because the wholesaler didn’t have any of the production costs. Everyone in the economy turned a blind eye to the dark economics of it because there was so much money to be made and, they rationalized, if we didn’t do it, someone else would. However, the trend over the last twenty years was that an increasing number of precious gems spent time in terror networks before making their way back to the gray markets. This was because the world in general and the United States in particular had invested considerable effort in rolling up the dark money pipelines in the years following 9/11, eliminating the anonymous banking and offshore havens.

  Danzig began her career in the FBI in financial crimes and chasing dark money before moving into gem trafficking. Jack had used those anonymous banks, mostly in Switzerland, and found that as the United States was more aggressively pursuing terrorist networks (and, to a lesser degree, criminal syndicates), he had fewer and fewer places to stash his money. The winery was born out of a need to repatriate his money so that he’d have access to it.

  “So, the Cannizzaros are trafficking gems now? That’s how you got involved?”

  “Sort of. The Italian government reached out to the ambassador and asked if the FBI could help. They feel powerless. After Gio…” Danzig’s voice trailed off. She took a drink.

  Giovanni Castro was the other link between Danzig and Jack.

  He was an Italian police officer and was the one who originally broke up the School of Turin in the late nineties on a lengthy undercover operation. Castro, while undercover, became close with Jack, and on the strength of that, Castro tipped Jack before the raid. Told Jack to run, change his life. Jack did not. Ten years later, Castro was working with one Katrina Danzig as part of a multinational countertrafficking taskforce—FBI, INTERPOL, Europol, and a host of other national agencies in Europe. They were investigating a string of unsolved heists in Europe, and Castro suggested they consider an enigmatic American thief known as Gentleman Jack.