Once a Thief (Gentleman Jack Burdette Book 3)

by Dale M. Nelson

  “I didn’t…I didn’t…even think to check you. You were always such a pussy about guns.” He grinned as he spoke. His teeth were framed in blood. “That’s a pretty good hit,” Reginald whispered, though it wasn’t clear to Jack if he was referring to Jack’s shot or his own. “How ’bout we call it a draw and you call me an ambulance.”

  Jack breathed in pained silence for a while. One hand was pressed over the wound, the other white-knuckled the pistol. He’d endured a lot over these last eight years, and much of that pain was caused by the man bleeding out on his floor. If there was justice in this world, this was it. But even in these last few days, Jack had been betrayed by someone he thought was a friend, and he’d won only to find out that really, he still lost. And now, in the face of all that, that thing he built and loved, together with the woman he loved, was going to go up in actual flames.

  Jack found that among the dying light and the gunpowder smoke and the smell of wildfires that he could now see from his home, that he was all out of mercy.

  The first shot was self-defense.

  The second shot would be murder, and Reginald had earned both of them.

  Jack held the gun out for a moment and then lowered it.

  He wasn’t going to do this, not in front of Megan. If he crossed that line, if he became that person, he would be no different than Ozren Stolar, Aleksander Andelić, Clint Sturdevant. No different than Reginald.

  And he wasn’t going to give Reginald the easy way out with a quick death.

  Jack knelt down next to him. LeGrande coughed, and blood spurted out of his mouth.

  Jack leaned closer and lowered his voice. He hoped Megan wouldn’t hear, but he couldn’t help it if she did.

  “You’re going to die soon, Reg,” Jack said. His voice was flat and even. “I could help you, but I won’t. You deserve this.”

  “So, you turned into a killer anyway, huh? For all that lofty talk. You’re just like the rest of us.” Reginald coughed blood again. “Maybe worse…you…actually believe the lies you tell yourself.”

  “I’ll never make excuses for who I am or what I’ve done. Those were all my choices. I could have walked away after Rome, let you and Vito have the diamonds, but I didn’t. I thought you’d never leave me be. But, unlike you, I’ve done something, built something. It doesn’t make up for the kind of life I’ve led, but it brings people a little bit of joy in a pretty fucked-up world. Maybe that’s not so bad.” Jack shook his head slowly.

  “Filling a wineglass doesn’t make you better than me.”

  “You’ll only ever be a carrion bird, Reg. Picking at the scraps of better thieves.”

  Reginald coughed again, and it was an ugly, wet sound.

  Jack stood up, and then he watched Reginald die.

  It took the son of a bitch a long time to go. He sputtered and wheezed, but Jack could see the pool of blood beneath his body expanding farther and farther. It soaked into the carpet.

  When he knew it was done, he didn’t kneel down and close the eyes. Jack left him staring off into a heaven that would never let him in. He turned around and staggered over to the dining room table, where he set his gun.

  “Jack?” Megan asked.

  He pulled a chair and sat. He was very, very tired. “We have to call the sheriff, and I’m going to need an ambulance.” Jack leaned his head against the back of the chair. Megan was already reaching for her phone.

  “Are you sure you want to call the police?” she asked. “Jack?”

  “We have to call this in,” he croaked. “You did good, Megs. You saved us.”

  It took the Sonoma County Sheriff and an ambulance a little over an hour to get to Jack’s house on the ridge. In that time, Megan got him a clean hand towel to hold over the wound and some water while she attended him with a first aid kit. Jack stayed in the chair with the gun next to him, just in case. Reginald had dropped his pistol when he fell, but it was still close to the body, so Jack had Megan kick it out of reach. If Reginald so much as twitched, Jack was going to empty the gun into him. But he didn’t.

  “What are we going to tell them?” she asked.

  “We’re going to describe it exactly the way it happened,” he said. “But we’re not saying anything about diamonds. There wasn’t a lot of talk. Reginald told us to go inside, and we did as we were told. Reginald complained about going to prison, said it was my fault and that he wanted me dead. The fight happened exactly as it did.”

  Megan nodded.

  There was the sound of hurried knocks on the door and shouts of “Sonoma County Sheriff” on the other side.

  Jack and Megan sat at the table with the pistol next to them, the body of Reginald LeGrande between them and the front door, awkwardly sitting through the moment it took the deputies to open the door. Three uniformed deputies came in first, guns drawn and sweeping the room. Two of them covered Jack and Megan, instructing them to put their hands on their heads. Jack told them he was shot and couldn’t lift his arms. Two men in suits entered after that. There were another few awkward moments as the deputies secured the room.

  “Good evening, Mr. Fischer,” Detective Sergeant Ted Navarro said. Navarro ran the Violent Crimes Unit of the sheriff’s department. They must have sent him automatically when Megan said on the 911 call that there was a shooting and a man dead. Navarro had been in the job for some time. He and Jack first met when Danzig shot Milan Radić in the Kingfisher tasting room, after receiving an anonymous tip that Radić would be there. A tip Reginald called in.

  “Hey, detective,” Jack said.

  Navarro and his partner spoke with Megan first while the paramedics were working on Jack. They told him he was really lucky. The bullet looked like it grazed him, but they wouldn’t know for sure until they got him to a hospital and could X-ray.

  There was a sheet over Reginald.

  Navarro sat down at the table next to Jack. “We’ll want to have a more detailed discussion at the office, once you’re out of the hospital, Frank, but it’s very important that we get the initial facts straight. Is it okay if I ask you some questions now, before the EMTs take you in?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “And I understand.”

  “Great,” Navarro said. The detective looked to be about Jack’s age, late forties or early fifties. He had a light complexion, bushy black cop mustache that was now speckled with gray, black hair similarly dusted throughout. There wasn’t a lot of violent crime in Sonoma, but Navarro seemed much older than the last time Jack saw him. They’d interacted a lot in the time between Radić’s shooting and Reginald’s trial, and he’d even testified to those events. Jack had brought a case of wine over to the VCU when it was over. He said he wasn’t sure if this sort of thing was appropriate, but if it was okay anywhere it would be here. Navarro said it was fine. “Can you tell me what happened?” he said.

  “Megan and I came home from the winery. We’d just wrapped up shift and sent everyone home. LeGrande was waiting for us. I think he was behind the oak out front. I wasn’t really paying attention. He stepped out and spoke, told us to open the door and go inside. I saw that he had a gun. We went inside, and he closed the door behind him.”

  “What did he say to you? Did he give you any indication of why he was here?”

  Navarro was seated at the end of the table with his back to the kitchen. Jack’s pistol was in an evidence bag in the center of the table. Jack looked off into the distance past Navarro. “Said it was my fault that he was in jail. He wanted to die a rich man but would settle for me being in the ground where I belonged.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He directed us farther inside, I was standing there, by that chair, and Megan was right here.” Jack used his left hand, the uninjured side, to point to their respective locations. The front door had been open this entire time and now the room smelled like ashes and burned things. “I tried to get him to let Megan go, but he said no. I think his words were, ‘That’s sweet, but no.’”

  “Did he ask you fo
r money, valuables?”

  “No,” Jack said, and it was the first time that he lied to the detective. This time, at least. “I had the impression that he was just here to kill me.”

  “Were you aware that he was out of prison?”

  “I was not. I knew that his sentence would be up soon, but I wasn’t following the date. I guess I should have.”

  “And he didn’t attempt to search you or Ms. McKinney when he entered the home?”

  “No, sir. I had the pistol in a concealed holster. The weapon is registered, and I have a concealed carry permit.”

  Navarro nodded and made notes. He looked back up at Jack. “When did you get that?”

  “In 2014. After the…well, after the other time.” Jack followed it with a perfunctory half-laugh. Navarro nodded but otherwise didn’t engage. He was very good, professional and even. Navarro didn’t attempt to lead Jack in one direction or another; he just asked questions and took down the answers. This was dangerous for Jack because if he was only answering questions, responding to what was asked, he had no opportunity to steer the conversation. Jack knew Navarro would circle back and check on the answers later, come at it from different angles and try to poke holes in the story.

  “Describe how the shooting happened,” he said.

  “Like I said, I tried to get him to let Megan go, but LeGrande wasn’t having it. I had been able to set the bag of groceries I’d been holding down, but Megan was still holding that bottle of wine. My hands were full when he jumped us, which is why I couldn’t go for my weapon at the time. Anyway, after he said no to letting Megan go, LeGrande stepped forward, closing the distance between the two of us and basically making it impossible to miss me. Megan screamed at him and swung the wine bottle at his head. He must not have seen her, or was only focusing on me. She must have hit him pretty good because I saw blood flying. I pulled my pistol and fired. Reginald fired too, I guess as a reaction. He fell. I didn’t realize that I was hit until a few moments later.”

  “After you shot Mr. LeGrande, did you attempt to administer first aid?”

  Jack paused, and again he looked off into the window far behind Navarro, beyond it. There was a time he’d have given a lot to save Reginald’s life. Never his own—Jack had honed his self-preservation instinct to a keen edge early on. Though decisions he’d made over the last few years certainly could suggest that edge had dulled.

  “No,” Jack said with finality. “I didn’t think he could be saved.”

  Navarro again wrote that down and nodded in his cool way. But this time he said, “Can’t say as I blame you. Man did come here to kill you, and it wasn’t the first time.” Navarro closed his notebook and slid it back into his jacket pocket. He stood. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Fischer. I’ll let these folks get you to the hospital now.”

  “Thanks, detective.” Jack winced in pain, and it wasn’t faked. “I appreciate your time.” Jack gave him a half-smile. “I hope the next time I meet you, someone’s not trying to shoot me.”

  “Well, word gets around,” was all he said. “I’ll be in touch next couple of days, let you know what’s next in the investigation.”

  “How long until I get my house back?”

  “Crime scene for now, but we’ll wrap this up pretty fast. Day or two. Goes without saying, but I need you to stay in town next couple of days, least until we get this sorted out. Of course, if you have to evacuate, that’s different. Just let me know.”

  The EMTs loaded Jack into the ambulance and took him to Sonoma Valley Hospital. X-ray showed that Reginald’s bullet nicked Jack’s rib and took a small chunk out of it but otherwise passed through entirely and missed all of his organs. They said he was extraordinarily lucky. If the bullet had been an inch to the left, it would have pierced his lung. A few more and would have severed his spine.

  Six lives to go, Jack reasoned.

  They kept him overnight for observation, and he was released the next morning. Megan picked him up.

  She drove him into downtown Napa and a restaurant called Grace’s Table, which was one of his favorites, so that he could have a nice meal. When she wasn’t shifting gears on the drive over, Megan held his hand. They sat outside at a sidewalk table, drank late-morning coffee, and picked at grilled cornbread. “You don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “And you don’t have to tell me anything about why he was there.”

  Jack’s pulse jumped.

  The diamonds.

  They were in a safe concealed in a sliding floor panel in his bedroom. It was under a throw rug that ran alongside the bed, but it had been designed to perfectly match the existing wood paneling and was expertly done. If you didn’t know what to look for, it would be very hard to find. There was a matching rug on the other side of the bed as well, so the rug itself didn’t draw any attention. But that would deter casual burglars, not trained crime scene investigators. The sheriffs wouldn’t be able to open the safe without a warrant and a locksmith, but if they found it, there would be the inevitable question of, “What was LeGrande really here for? Are you sure that he didn’t demand something of you or know that you had valuables? What’s in the safe, Mr. Fischer? If you’ve got nothing to hide, open it up.”

  Jack tensed suddenly, and Megan caught it.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, but his voice was tight. “Sorry,” he said through a forced smile. “I moved wrong and pulled it. Guess it’ll take some getting used to.” Jack took a sip of coffee. The historically sleepy downtown Napa was enjoying a resurgence, even with the wildfires. For years, there had been little traffic with most of the focus naturally being on the region’s wineries, which were outside the city. Restaurants might last eighteen months and many specialty shops less than that. Even at this early hour, most of the street parking was taken up with cars, and people were walking the streets. It was great to see.

  The air was yellow and gray with ash and smoke; it looked post-apocalyptic. Normally, the restaurant opened their windows once the morning chill burned off. Today they kept them closed. Jack had a view of Franklin Street up to First Avenue and could hear if anyone came out of the restaurant. “Is there anyone behind us?”

  “No,” Megan said, confused.

  “Reginald was talking about diamonds. I think you gathered that much.”

  “Jack, you don’t have to do this,” Megan said, and Jack could tell by her tone that she meant it. “I don’t want to know about it. It feels safer if I don’t. What I want to know is what you’re going to do about it.”

  “I just want to say this. These were stolen about twenty years ago in Europe—not by me,” he added with a dead, humorless smile. “But they were never recovered, obviously. The owners were compensated by their insurers and never publicly acknowledged the theft. The insurance company wrote it off. I’m only telling you this because that job was something I’d never do. We got them in Rome.”

  “Does this have to do with what that Serbian gangster tried to make you do?”

  Jack nodded and sipped coffee. “That’s right. They were hidden in a bank that the mafia controlled.”

  “Jack, that sounds like details.”

  “Sorry. We got them, there was a bunch of double-crossing and guns, and Reginald’s partner ended up with the diamonds. The reason I went to LA was to get them back. I thought Reginald had been arrested, actually. So, my partner and I have them now and need to figure out what to do with them.”

  “But they’re illegal?”

  Jack shrugged. “I guess, technically. Honestly, Megs, a certain percentage of the precious gems that end up in jewelry stores were probably stolen at one time.”

  “But you could just as easily let them all go, right?”

  “Adjusted for inflation, they’re worth about a hundred million dollars,” Jack deadpanned.

  “Or we could keep them,” she said.

  “It’s not like anyone is looking for these. Nobody other than crooks, that is. I was planning on selling them off over a period
of years, a little at a time. That’s basically all the cushion the winery would ever need.” In truth, the winery didn’t need it. They were stable now and had been making a profit for the last few years. Jack hadn’t recouped the ten million that he was forced to invest in order to keep it running eight years ago, but he cared less about that. What he needed was a vehicle to legitimize his money. This part was dicey because after Rome, Danzig told him that she wasn’t going to send the IRS after his assets as long as he took the chance that was offered him and straightened out. This was not that.

  “What would you do with the money?” she asked.

  “A lot of it goes to charity. Always has. There’d be a pretty big donation to the California Red Cross, World Central Kitchen, some of the other groups that help out during times like this. I’d like to do some good with it. We’ve talked about buying more acreage so that we can grow different types of grapes. Could expand production.” Jack took a long drink of his water, and their server appeared to freshen their coffee. “And I’m going to need to buy a new house. I’d never be able to live there knowing a man died on my floor.”

  They were both quiet for a long time, neither quite knowing what to say next. Megan’s response surprised him, perhaps even surprised herself.

  “I think I understand now,” she said, “all the years that you justified keeping your money offshore and ranting about how you didn’t want to give the government tax money if you didn’t trust what they were going to do with it. I know a lot of that was for show, but I know you well enough to know there was truth in some of it.” Megan lifted her coffee cup and held it in both hands, staring over the top. “They didn’t help us, ever. We never got the money back that Paul Sharpe stole from the winery, just a bunch of bullshit excuses about ‘the process.’ That asshole from the state actually had the nerve to say ‘at least justice was done’ when they sent Sharpe to jail and looked at me like I had two heads when I asked him about the money.” Megan shook her head slowly. She looked to her side, across Franklin Street, to the shops of downtown Napa that always seemed to be turning over. “I wouldn’t go along with this if I thought you were stealing them fresh. I’d never support that, and the thing I told you before is still true. If we’re going to have any kind of life together, you have to be retired. But if the owners of these diamonds wrote them off twenty years ago and you can sell them without getting yourself in trouble…” The last words hung in the air like smoke, heavy and undeniable. “Let’s let them work for us for a change.”