Once a Thief (Gentleman Jack Burdette Book 3)

by Dale M. Nelson

  The stare…something was off about it. Then Jack realized that Rusty had blue eyes. He’d dyed his hair, and Jack never knew because he’d always had stubble on his head. But it took Jack this long to realize that he was wearing colored contacts. That was a detail Jack shouldn’t have missed. It wouldn’t have tipped him to this, but glossing over details was what got you arrested, got you killed.

  “So how does this work, exactly?” Jack asked.

  “I take you into custody, and you’re arrested for attempting to sell a fortune in stolen diamonds, receiving stolen property, and bank robbery.”

  “Well, now, that’s interesting.”

  “I don’t have time for this, Jack. And I’m tired of talking about it.”

  “They’re lying to you, pal.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, the Bureau, it would seem. Again.” Try to land the punch, see what he did. “Anything that happened in Rome was part of my plea deal, my trade for Andelić. The Commerce Bank, Vito stealing the diamonds—remember, I wasn’t there. He was also the one who shot you. Vito brought the diamonds into the country, not me. If anything, you should have made a deal to give them him.” Rusty wouldn’t know the details of Jack’s plea deal, and the judge sealed the records because of the assistance Jack gave Danzig on rolling up gem trafficking networks in Europe. Anyone Rusty was working with would need to get those records unsealed, which would take a judge’s authorization. Jack was stretching it a bit when he said he had a pass on anything that happened in Rome. He obviously didn’t tell Danzig that they were stealing Bartolo’s diamonds from the Commerce Bank.

  That meant Danzig maybe didn’t know about this thing, otherwise she never would have come to his place and asked him questions about Cannizzaro. Unless they’d brought her in on it. Jack forced himself to stop that line of thinking. Jumping at mental shadows was only going to make him paranoid.

  Whatever Rusty knew, the FBI wanted to silence it and was going to some great lengths to keep it quiet.

  Rusty tensing up as they drove by the FBI building a few minutes ago suggested that maybe this thing Rusty was involved in, whatever deal they offered him, wasn’t being run locally. Otherwise, wouldn’t Rusty just have turned Jack in at Pan Pacific?

  It also meant, though, that there were some holes in Rusty’s story, or in the story the FBI was giving him.

  That was no longer Jack’s problem.

  “We’re done talking, Jack. I’m going to cuff you now and then turn you in.”

  “Someone want to explain to me what the hell this is?”

  Enzo Bachetti in a silver Chevy Malibu.

  Jack had never been so happy to see someone in his life.

  Enzo parked the car, still idling, just behind Rusty and Jack. His door was open, and he was talking to them over the roof.

  “What the fuck?” was all Rusty said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, Enzo, but you should leave now. I’m not turning you in, but I will if I have to.” Rusty’s eyes went to the corners, but he didn’t turn his head. The car was in his peripheral. His gaze returned to Jack.

  “Turning me in? What are you talking about?”

  “Rusty made a deal, Enzo. He walks on whatever he did before we knew him, in exchange for me and the diamonds.” Jack turned his attention back to Rusty. “As for why he’s here, that’s what I meant when I called Enzo from the parking lot. The phrase was from Dante and was about the value of friendship, but back in Turin, we worked for someone that used to quote it all the time. He was a real asshole and had a way of not paying you what you were worth, so over time, Enzo and I started using it ironically. Eventually, it turned into a code we used to use, shorthand for ‘I don’t trust you.’”

  Rusty looked genuinely confused.

  “You were acting erratic all morning. I was worried that you might do something strange, but I didn’t think you’d turn into a snitch.”

  “That’s pretty clever,” Rusty said, conceding the point. “The Bureau isn’t interested in you, Enzo. You should leave now.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I’m not particularly interested in them. I am interested in my share of the diamonds, though.”

  Enzo stepped back from the car door and moved down the length of the front. Jack saw motion and Enzo brought his gun up. The gun. Rusty had gotten them the guns and the BMW. A deal like this would be a long time in the works, which meant it wasn’t something that was offered when Rusty broke the surface tension of the US border. Either these were plants or Rusty was hedging his bets. If the cars and the guns were plants, the BMW would most certainly have GPS tracker on them.

  Whatever its origins, Enzo’s pistol was up now.

  “After all that talk about how the government turned its back on you, how the Bureau hung you out to dry, you’re still willing to go crawling back,” Jack said. “Can you at least tell me at what point did everything you’d told us become complete bullshit?”

  A short, mirthless “Ha” escaped Rusty’s lips. Jack watched the corners of his eyes narrow. Rusty was getting impatient, getting nervous.

  “That’s funny coming from you, Jack. You’re the Dutch Master of bullshit.”

  “I was never anything but honest with either of you. After the Carlton, when I needed your help, I trusted both of you with the name of my other identity, the name of my winery, so you’d have some collateral if you needed it. Even going into this thing, I was completely honest about what I was risking and why I didn’t want to do it. I gave you all an out, a chance to back out if you didn’t want to go through with it. But I guess by then you knew you had something to trade. Isn’t that right, Scott?” Much like Jack had created Frank Fischer, “Rusty” was an alias, a persona that the fixer lived under. Jack landed a shot saying his real name and saw the man wince at its use.

  Rusty said nothing. They all knew there was no response he could give.

  One last try. “We can all still walk away from this.”

  “No, Jack, we can’t. There’s no deal without you.” His eyes flicked to the corners again. “But I don’t need to give them Enzo.”

  “You’re not giving anybody anything,” Enzo said, and he took one more step to the side.

  “That’s fucking far enough, Enzo,” Rusty said.

  “You know what I went through for those, Rusty,” Enzo spat. “You saw what they did to me.” Enzo had broken into Andelić’s house while Jack, Rusty, and Vito were making their play for the diamonds. Enzo was caught and one of Andelić’s heavies worked him over in a garage for hours while the lawyer, Castillo, watched and asked questions. With each set of them, the promise that it would end, but it never did. Not until Jack showed up and ended it for them. “You’re not taking those diamonds from me.” For some reason, Enzo’s accent was especially thick when he said those words.

  Rusty turned his head a quarter to look at Enzo. The gun was still pointed at Jack, and Jack could see Rusty’s eyes flick to the right to make sure Jack wasn’t moving.

  There were things Jack could say. He could tell Rusty that there was a way out of this, and there was. Rusty could walk away now and still get his cut. Jack had no issue with that. Or Rusty could simply walk away. Disappear. From everyone. But Jack could see in Rusty’s eyes that he wouldn’t. Jack knew what it was like to have to run and he knew he didn’t ever want to do that again. Rusty had reached his limit. Again, something Jack could understand. There were other deals Rusty could have made, if only he’d trusted Jack enough to talk this out with him first.

  Instead, Rusty blamed Jack for his situation, and so he traded the one commodity he knew he had. Trust.

  That, Jack understood as well.

  Rusty’s deal was based on his giving Jack over to the FBI. There was no trade Jack could offer him, nothing of equal value to them that Rusty could offer up in Jack’s place. Maybe the diamonds, but Jack already stole those and impersonated a federal officer to do it. His fate was sealed.

  Rusty was abo
ut to speak. Enzo cut him off.

  “Last chance, Rusty,” Enzo said. “Put the gun down.”

  “You can’t shoot me. You don’t have a deal if I’m dead, Rusty,” Jack said.

  “That’s true,” Rusty said evenly, and he corked his torso around to match the direction his head was facing, to Enzo, and the gun barrel followed.

  Rusty knew Jack wouldn’t shoot him. Jack had killed a man once before. It was self-defense and that man earned it, but it was still something Jack lived with every day. It was a human life and that had a cost. Maksim Radas was an enemy, a thief, possibly a war criminal, and a genuine threat to people. That was hard enough to live with. Rusty was his friend.

  Jack went for his pistol.

  Rusty snapped back and realized his mistake too late. Jack had his own weapon out now and braced for the reflex shot. But it never came. Rusty maintained his discipline, it seemed.

  Two on one. Enzo and Jack had Rusty covered, and Rusty had a gun on Enzo.

  “You both have about two minutes,” Rusty said in a flat voice.

  “For what?”

  “For a car to come around the corner and see you two with guns drawn. They will call the police. I have an out. You don’t.”

  “Yeah, but not much of one,” Jack said. “I saw you tense up when we passed the FBI building back there. You might have a deal with someone in the Bureau, but it’s not with anyone in this town.”

  “My problem is solved with a phone call. Yours is not. Enzo, they don’t care about you. You could slip out of the country and go back home. The US government won’t come looking.” Rusty’s eyes shifted from Enzo to Jack. “But Jack, your only chance is to give up and come with me. Right now, you have something to trade and an opportunity to come willingly. If I have to take you by force, it’ll mean I’m turning in the diamonds, not you.”

  “Rusty, there’s no turning anything or anyone in. I’m going to explain this one time, and I hope you can appreciate it, even if you can’t understand it.”

  “You’d better talk fast.”

  “Bartolo tried to kill me in 1997. He found out that Giovanni Castro was an undercover cop, and since I brought Castro into the School of Turin, he thought I was in on it. Obviously, I escaped, but I spent the next five years looking over my shoulder. Up until Bartolo was arrested for stealing these diamonds. He spent the next sixteen years in prison thinking about nothing but them. This is his life’s work, and I’m taking it from him. I risked my life and my freedom for these. Enzo and you, I might add, both bled for them. So, no, I’m not giving up and turning myself in.”

  Jack’s speech was interrupted by the squeaking of tires across concrete. Somewhere, in the bowels of the garage, a car was moving. If the car left, it was no problem. But if it came this way, Rusty was absolutely right.

  “Tick tock, Jack.”

  “I’m not turning myself in, Rusty. You can walk out of here or we can all fucking shoot each other, but I’m not turning myself in, and you’re not arresting me.”

  There was another squeal of tires, this one closer.

  Rusty’s eyes, which now seemed to be someone else’s once Jack noticed that the color had changed, were hard. The hair, grown out and colored, it was as if he were speaking to an entirely different person. Someone he couldn’t reason with, someone for whom Jack’s struggles wouldn’t even register. A stranger. Rusty was, he saw now, a chameleon. He’d adopted one persona as the dashing underworld fixer and troubleshooter, perhaps as a way of distancing himself from the life he’d had as a federal agent. Jack saw now that it was just that, a persona, a role. Even the name was fake. He was now Scott Donners, a disgraced former federal agent, but that man knew what he’d given up or been forced to.

  The tires screeched again. The car was on the level below them, and they could hear the engine now as well.

  “What’s it going to be, Jack?”

  “I’ve given you the terms, Rusty. That’s the deal on the table. There’s a lot you have to offer up to your handlers, but Enzo and I aren’t part of that bargain.” Jack faced west, and he had a view on where the ramp up to this level of the garage was. He could see a white Lexus SUV through the concrete pillars. The driver would be a woman, professional, forty-five to fifty-five years old, and she would not take risks. She would deer-in-the-headlights freeze the second she rounded that corner, and the only pause they would have would be for her to panic dial 911 from her car.

  “Put it down, Rusty,” Enzo said.

  “You first.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jack said, now unable to contain his anger. If a phone call went to LAPD, they were all of them done. The diamonds would be gone forever. The three of them arrested and Jack didn’t know the nature of whatever Rusty had worked out with the Bureau, but he had to imagine that getting picked up first by the LAPD was not part of it. The one thing Rusty had to offer the FBI was his continued silence on whatever got him ousted in the first place. Once another agency got involved, the Bureau wouldn’t know for certain whether or not Rusty talked.

  Rusty’s eyes went to the corners, toward the SUV. They had seconds. He lowered his gun. Enzo didn’t.

  “Enzo,” Jack said through gritted teeth.

  “He turned on us,” Enzo growled.

  “And we’re not solving that problem in a garage in broad daylight with an eyewitness,” Jack said. “A dead body only gets us revenge, it doesn’t get a ticket out of here.”

  They’d been here once before, and Jack only now realized how dangerous of ground they stood on. Enzo Bachetti had learned to stomach a lot of unpleasant things in this life he’d chosen, but betrayal was not one of them. When Ozren Stolar double-crossed them in Cannes and murdered Gaston Broussard and Gabrielle Eberspach, when he thought he’d killed Enzo, Enzo and Rusty followed Ozren and his fellow Pink Panthers to Jack’s safe house in Rome. Even though Rusty had Ozren covered and he was essentiality disarmed, Enzo shot Ozren in the face.

  Twice.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Enzo turn his head to look at him. Jack was still focused on Rusty, watching for any sign of movement, of a change of heart.

  Enzo lowered his weapon.

  The Lexus rounded the corner, and it slowed when it approached. Enzo’s Malibu was still in the middle of the lane. The Lexus driver—Jack couldn’t tell if his profile had been right because the windows were very dark—slowed even further so that it could creep around the Malibu without scraping it. The Lexus edged around it and then put on a short burst of speed, just a touch of engine rev to show them the driver was annoyed. It parked in an open spot at the end of their row.

  No one spoke.

  A door slammed, and they heard purposeful heels clipping the concrete. Jack took his eyes off Rusty for a moment, they all did, to see a nearly six-foot blonde stomping away from the vehicle in the direction of the stairwell on the garage’s northeast corner. She wore a white jacket, skirt, and handbag that matched the color of her car.

  Before anyone could speak, Jack said, “Is the BMW yours, or did the Bureau give it to you?”

  “Did I acquire it for this job, you mean?”

  “I mean what I fucking said, Scott.”

  “It’s not the Bureau’s car,” Rusty said.

  “Good. Then you can call them for a ride.” Jack turned his head. “Enzo, get in the car and drive. I’ll call you from the road and tell you where we’re going.”

  It’d be one of the last phone calls he’d make with this phone, too. Though they’d always communicated using a secure app so others couldn’t listen in, Rusty had the number, so Jack had to assume that the FBI did too. They’d need new everything.

  Jack had two remaining passports, one was at his home in Sonoma and the other was at a place he had in Tuscany, but Rusty had created them both.

  Strangely and entirely against type, Enzo got into the car without another word. It was probably the only time the safe cracker had done something in his adult life without wallpapering it with profa
nity first. He started the vehicle, then pulled backward to let Jack back the BMW out.

  “Tell me,” Jack said. “Do you feel any remorse over this?”

  Rusty had an expressionless face. It looked like he was wearing an actual mask. “None whatsoever.” Then he said, “You can run now, Jack, but you can’t run forever.”

  “Everybody runs.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed, just slightly. He nodded once and got into the BMW, locking the doors immediately. He kept the pistol on his lap. Jack backed out of the space.

  Rusty stood, pistol at his hip, neither ready nor not ready, just…there.

  Jack didn’t know how long they had, but he wasn’t waiting here to find out.

  Jack pulled around, and Enzo followed him out of the garage.

  They found the 405 and drove north.

  26

  Supervisory Special Agent Linda Abbate was not happy.

  “I, and frankly others, are wondering how in the hell that a suspect managed to get past two of your agents, get down to the first floor, past you two, and convince an Inglewood Police Department officer to give him back the diamonds. All in the middle of a fucking shootout.”

  Fuery learned long ago to look the boss in the eye during an ass chewing, though this one was particularly difficult. It was his operation, his responsibility, and his fault. Abbate was a tough boss, she had high standards and didn’t tolerate cut corners from the agents under her command. Fuery had let her down, and it left a dark pit in his stomach.

  There would be a formal debrief with all of the agents involved later. This one was so Abbate could get the facts straight for the briefing she’d have to give the Assistant Director. They’d just finished their first pass. Normally, a field office was run by a Special Agent in Charge, but given its size, the Los Angeles Field Office was led by an Assistant Director.

  “We heard gunfire coming from the front of the building and received a shots-fired call from the Inglewood PD. Kent and I responded. I neglected to take the tactical radio with me. I was thinking only about assisting the other officers, and I didn’t believe I could hold a radio and shoot.”