He sprinted past the restaurant’s outdoor seating, two rows of tables, that he’d spotted a moment ago. Behind that was a park that made up the corner of that block. Jack slid to a stop at the corner, getting no help from his dress shoes. He looked at the small park. There was a hedge that wrapped around it, large shrubs and trees throughout and a plaque on the corner. There was a large black-and-white picture beneath the words, “Princess Grace.” He didn’t have time to read anything else. Jack put a foot up on the waist-high concrete wall, stepped up, and dove behind a hedge.
Jack ducked behind a large bush so that he couldn’t be seen from the street and took a moment to catch his breath and tie his shoe. He still had the pistol Bartolo gave him. It’d been banging around his pocket as he ran, Jack keeping a hand on it out of instinct but otherwise forgetting he had it.
Turned out there wasn’t one shots-fired call but two.
Danzig and Choi rode with Cosseria to the most recent one, which occurred about four or five blocks from the Monte Carlo Casino. That was on the opposite end of the city from the Direction de la Sûreté Publique. Cosseria said it would take them about ten minutes to get there. They grabbed a Citroen squad car parked out front, lights and sirens blaring, and Cosseria floored it. Danzig didn’t speak French and couldn’t follow the radio traffic, but Cosseria said they would have responding officers on scene in about two minutes.
Danzig explained the situation as best she could, knowing that Cosseria was also listening to the radio chatter and trying to maneuver them through the congested nighttime streets. She said that the FBI’s involvement, apart from providing intelligence support to the Italian DIA, was that they believed one of the gem traffickers was an American. She didn’t say anything about the Russians. She almost mentioned it to see what she could get but decided this wasn’t the time and certainly not the occasion. Danzig knew from the Flipside briefings as well as her own knowledge that Monaco was a favored hiding spot for the world’s untouchable villains. The dictators, the arms dealers, the people for whom the word “corruption” was just a tax write-off. There were several Russian oligarchs that maintained residences here, though Sokolov was not believed to be one of them. She wouldn’t ask unless she first vetted Cosseria with the Paris LEGAT, who was also responsible for FBI activity in Monaco. Danzig would also need to clear that with the Flipside superiors—it was not her case, after all.
Cosseria wanted to know “why Monaco?”
Danzig didn’t have an answer for that. All they knew was their informant in the Italian mafia organization said the buy would happen here instead of Rome, where they’d expected it to be. As for why Monaco, she could only speculate. The principality was contained within France and had a close border with Italy, creating jurisdictional complexities if law enforcement got involved. It was driving distance to major cities like Nice, Toulon, Marseille, Genoa, and Turin. There was a train station in the city, an airport within thirty minutes, and, depending on the resources of the criminals, a port. Given the dollar value of the exchange, escape by yacht was a distinct possibility. Danzig texted Rawlings to have him check with the Italians to see if they thought Cannizzaro owned a boat. They knew his heavies made the six-hour drive from Rome by car, but that’s not to say Cannizzaro wouldn’t dump those things on a yacht to bring them home. That would be the safest.
“I’ve got people on scene,” Cosseria said.
Jack heard a crunch of shoes on grass and knew one of Cannizzaro’s men climbed up into the park. Jack was crouched, kneeling behind a large bush that hid him from street view, but it was only about chest height. If he stood, he’d be seen. He heard several tentative footfalls on grass until the shoes struck pavement—there was a short, winding footpath that curved its way through the small park. There were a few steps, then it stopped, and Jack could hear the sound of shoes rotating. He was looking around now, body pivoting. He didn’t see Jack and was debating whether he’d come the right way.
Jack squeezed the gun in his hand.
Then he heard the sound of sirens.
And they were getting closer.
Jack stood, gun out. Cannizzaro’s man wore dark pants and a black moto racer jacket. Short black hair and a deep, natural tan.
More sirens added to the sound.
Jack held the pistol out in front of him and orbited around the bush. As soon as his first foot hit the grass, the man’s head cocked to the side and his body started to follow.
“Don’t move,” Jack said in Italian. “Hands out to your side.” There was a moment’s hesitation while the goon calculated his odds, but he complied. “On your knees,” Jack told him. Slowly, he knelt down in the grass. Now, Jack had the problem of what in the hell to do with him. Police would be here any moment and it wasn’t like he could jump out of the bushes and declare he’d made a citizen’s arrest.
Jack flipped the gun around and brought the butt down hard on the base of the man’s neck.
The man cried out in pain with the impact, loudly, falling forward on his knees, cursing, again loudly. That was the opposite of what Jack was going for. With his left hand on the wound, the man turned his head. “What the fuck is wrong with you,” he asked in Italian.
Jack honestly thought that would have knocked him out, but he realized as he did it that he’d only ever seen that work in movies.
There wasn’t much time now.
“Take your pistol out, slowly.”
“Fuck you.”
Jack raised his own pistol several inches. “Your boss has a funny way of honoring his agreements.”
Cannizzaro’s man only sneered.
“I’ve taken out two of your friends tonight. Want me to make it three? Take your pistol out slowly,” Jack repeated. There were sirens all over now. They didn’t have long. “The longer you take, the less time you have to run.”
The soldier slowly reached into his waistband and pulled out a pistol.
Gesturing with his left hand and keeping a firm grip on the pistol with his right, Jack said, “Throw it over that hedge, onto the street.”
Jack knew he had to be prepared to shoot now. He had no reason to believe Cannizzaro’s man would comply, and if he decided he was after a shootout, Jack would have to shoot first. He prayed that Cannizzaro employed at least one person capable of critical thinking. The soldier probably realized now that Jack didn’t want to kill him, or he’d have done it. Even in the dark, the shadows between city lights, Jack could see in his eyes that he was doing math.
More sirens.
“You’re losing time and I’m losing patience.”
The heavy cocked his arm and tossed the gun, but not far, and it landed with a soft thud in the grass.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Jack told him and took several wide steps around him. He thought about hitting him again but decided against it. Cannizzaro’s man would be anticipating that, for one, and it might end up in a melee, the last thing Jack had the time for. Keeping his body and pistol facing his opponent, Jack rotated around him until he was on the other side. When his feet hit the footpath, Jack took several steps backward, turned, and ran.
The park was small, the space on the corner between two high-rises to the north and east. The footpath led between them, which Jack found took him back to Avenue Princess Alice, across the street from the excavation site. He dumped the pistol in a trash can.
Now, there was the problem of his car.
He couldn’t leave it where it was parked now that there were police on scene. It wasn’t in a legal parking spot and would eventually get noticed, then towed and fingerprinted. But even before then, they’d run the plates and trace it to the rental company, see that it was hired out to the Southerland alias via Jack’s hotel. An APB would go out on that identity, and he’d probably never make it home. Maybe that was giving a little too much credit to the efficiency of the Monaco police force, but Jack knew the FBI had an informant in Cannizzaro’s organization, that’s why he’d insisted on the drop being here instead
of in Rome. Danzig had probably called to alert the Monaco police already. Still, it was better than her being here.
There was a parking area the shape of an isosceles triangle between the buildings. Jack walked across that to the sidewalk and headed uphill, back toward his car.
Here was the problem.
When Jack reached the corner, having completed his loop around the block and now standing at the opposite end of the street he’d originally fled down, he saw the few things that he didn’t realize when he’d driven through here way too fast to pay attention to them. The street split at this corner. The right fork curving up and to the right, which is what he’d taken, and the left fork going straight. Both of these were one-way, single-lane streets. Worse, the direction of traffic followed the path he’d run down, which was now closed off by the Monaco police. There was a car, lights flashing, and two uniformed police blocking off this street about twenty feet in front of him and two more at the other end of the block. Judging by the sound of sirens he heard at varying distances, more were on the way.
The police hadn’t figured out crowd control yet, and traffic was already backing up on the street. Jack crossed to the opposite sidewalk and headed uphill to his car.
Cosseria parked in an intersection that one of the uniforms blocked off with his car. There were two police cars in the intersection before they’d gotten here. Danzig and Choi got out but were careful to stay out of the way. She didn’t bother hanging close to Cosseria while he got a debrief from the two police officers since she didn’t speak the language. Danzig looked around to get her bearings. The intersection was in the middle of what looked to be a mixed-use neighborhood, shops and restaurants on the ground floor of most buildings with residences stacked on top. The street in front of them was one lane in one direction, with cars parked along both sides. There was sidewalk seating for restaurants on both sides. There was a small park on the corner, between two buildings. Danzig saw the uniformed officer pointing at that.
After a few moments, Cosseria walked over to her and Choi.
“Eyewitnesses said a man came running down a set of stairs there.” He indicated to a point at the far end of the street. “That’s where the gunshot was. One shot and the shooter missed. The shooter chased the other man, which no one got a good look at other than he was wearing dark clothes. They ran down the street and jumped into the park over there. One person, the shooter, emerged and tried to flee, but we had two cars pulling up as he did. There was a chase, but another car grabbed him.” Cosseria pointed at a direction behind Danzig. “That’s where we stand. We’ll question the suspect and see what the hell he was doing, see if that’s your guy.”
“Any word on the person they were chasing?”
Cosseria shook his head. “Only one person came out of the park.”
There was a restaurant in the building adjacent to the park with seating on the patio. They’d have had the best view of whatever happened in the park. Police were conducting eyewitness interviews now.
Danzig nodded. She knew there was nothing that she or Choi could do until Monaco’s police confirmed that whatever the hell happened here tonight was related to her case, and it would likely be hours before that could be determined.
“What’s up there?” she asked, pointing in the direction of where the chase had started.
“Pretty much what you see here. Shops and apartments.”
“Mind if we take a look? I don’t want to be in your way here.”
“Be my guest. I’ll let the officers know you’re free to walk around.” Cosseria said something into his radio.
“Let’s go,” Danzig said to Choi, and they started walking up the center of the street. It was crowded. People had emptied out of restaurants and shops to see what was going on, were now waiting to be questioned by police. There was also a line of cars on the street, some of whom were honking, probably unaware of why they weren’t going anywhere.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Choi asked.
“I don’t know. Some kind of indicator if these are our guys.”
“You want to see if this would have been a likely spot for the handoff?”
“That’s it,” she said. They made it to the end of the street and turned, now facing the stairs that Cosseria talked about earlier. The stairs led down from what looked like an apartment building and a street above, maybe just a more convenient way of getting to the shops on this street than having to walk downhill, to the corner at the end of the block, and around. There was a store on the left side of the stairs and the exit of a parking garage on the right.
“We know from Mazza the exchange was set up in advance so there wouldn’t be any negotiation,” Choi said.
“Quick handoff,” Danzig agreed. “Could happen anywhere.”
“Parking garage is a nice, out-of-the-way spot for that.” Three cars were lined up trying to get out of the garage with nowhere to go, probably had no idea what had happened and were honking.
“Why don’t you check it out,” she said. “I’m going to have a look up there.” She pointed at the stairs.
Jack hung on the corner, outside the police cordon, for several minutes, trying to decide what to do. In that time, there had just been more and more police arriving. He watched a pair walk down the street in his direction, looked like a man and a woman, though from this distance that was about all he could make out. They walked unimpeded, so he assumed they were police, probably plainclothes detectives. He was standing in a growing swell of onlookers wondering what was going on here. There were several police officers standing in the intersection keeping people out, and one of them was trying to direct traffic. He wasn’t close enough to the police to hear, but based on the hand gestures, Jack assumed they were trying to figure out how to clear the growing traffic jam.
Jack pushed through the crowd and headed uphill in the direction of his car. There was a thick cluster of palm trees of varying heights and bushes on the corner, so Jack lost sight of the stairs leading up to where he’d ditched the car. There was no sign of the Audi.
Danzig walked to the top of the stairs. She didn’t know what exactly she was looking for, but this wasn’t it. There was an apartment building, a carport, and a dead-end street. That seemed fitting. What did she hope to find up here? Or in Monaco, even. They didn’t know what Sturdevant looked like. Burdette’s description of him was thirty years old. They’d gotten a hit in the NCIC system, but that was twenty years old. And “Clint Sturdevant” was an alias that seemingly hadn’t been used since 2006 at least. Good reason to bring it out of retirement. But he could pass right by her on the street and she wouldn’t know it.
Hands on her hips, she looked around in the cooling night and swore under her breath. Cannizzaro must have figured out that there was a leak in his organization. That’s the only reason she could think of that they would pivot and make the sale here instead of in Rome. She supposed it was possible that it was here because Sokolov was here and they wanted to shorten the supply chain. Rawlings offered that one but retracted it almost immediately. Without knowing exactly where in the city it would go down, they had no chance to set up surveillance, nor did they know who they were even looking for. That, of course, was the point to the switch.
“Goddamn it.”
This wasn’t it.
As a handoff, it didn’t make any sense. Neither did the garage. There was one way in and one way out for all parties. If someone decided to double-cross the other, they were stuck with each other. People savvy enough to pull off a crime like this would be better planners. An exchange like this would be fast and prearranged, possibly even a monitored dead drop. If it was to happen in person, the location would be secluded, such as a hotel room or some other controlled location. Sturdevant probably wouldn’t go for that, would think it was a trap, unless it was his room and he had help.
What if it’s a diversion?
Monaco had one of the lowest personal crime rates in the world. Violent crime was almost nonexisten
t. The probability that there was random gunfire was too low to even contemplate. What if the gunshots and the chase were staged to draw police to one part of the city and the sale was happening in another part?
What was that old saying? It’s only crazy if it doesn’t work.
You’re grasping at straws, she told herself.
She stood there at the top of the stairs, staring at this blue Porsche that someone had left in the half-circle turnabout in front of the apartment building, probably took off when they heard the gunfire.
It was a long shot asking Burdette for help. He’d gotten his out and she understood how he didn’t want to risk himself, plus there was the matter of that psychopath LeGrande. If Reginald hadn’t tried to settle old scores, Danzig might have been able to convince Burdette to do it. Instead, she was in Monaco for reasons unknown, chasing someone with nothing more to go on than a twenty-year-old alias and a grainy mugshot, the date and time based on the words of a mafia accountant who would say literally anything to see the end of the week alive.
That Monaco cop had been hanging out by the Porsche for a long time.
Did she see something? Had he left something on the seat? Jack didn’t think so. There was no reason to stare at that car other than to admire the paint job, so why was she? He supposed he could just walk up to the car and get in. No one in Monaco knew what he looked like, certainly not the police. He was just an American-born Swiss citizen that was here on business. The most she’d do was tell him that it was a crime scene and he’d have to get his car later.
Jack was standing on the sidewalk across the street from the turnabout. It was maybe fifty feet from him. There were no streetlights on this side, just a wall and Monaco’s ever-present landscaping. Jack was in the half-light, shadows, he was just some guy on the street waiting for his car.
Once a Thief (Gentleman Jack Burdette Book 3) Page 39