Flawless

by Scott Selby

  Meanwhile, at the Diamond Center, Notarbartolo was growing increasingly impatient with Boost’s inane chatter. It was very out of character for the manager to be so gabby. Peys later complimented her performance. “I’m not always in the best way of dealing with Julie Boost,” he said, “but she did an excellent job by stalling him.”

  Outside the building, several police officers slowly gravitated toward the Diamond Center, and a few went inside. The appearance of the police in the main lobby was more than Notarbartolo could bear and he began edging his way toward the front door and freedom.

  Boost, on the other hand, was relieved that law enforcement had finally arrived, but she couldn’t understand why Notarbartolo wasn’t being taken into custody. The scene fell apart into one of sheer confusion—Notarbartolo tried to talk his way toward the exit, Boost argued in hushed tones with one of the officers to arrest him immediately, and the officers grappled with what, exactly, they should do to contain the situation until the detectives arrived. One thing they were not willing to do was to arrest someone just because Julie Boost told them to.

  Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait long. De Bot later commented that it felt like he made the ten-minute trip from headquarters in “ten seconds.” They’d turned off the emergency lights and sirens as they maneuvered through the vehicle barricade on Schupstraat and parked in front of the Diamond Center. Though their hearts were racing, they strolled inside trying to appear friendly and casual. It wasn’t hard to pull off. Vanderkelen looked like a wholesome college athlete and De Bot could have been his balding father.

  As disarming as they may have been, Notarbartolo knew he was in for a dangerous game of cat and mouse as they took him to the side in the hallway to speak with him. “Notarbartolo, because he’s quite intelligent, knew something was going on,” Peys explained, “but he couldn’t afford to act suspicious. If he’d said ‘No, I’m not going to say anything,’ he would have burned his last bridge.”

  The questioning was easy at first, but the detectives soon got to the point: And where do you live in Antwerp? Suddenly, Notarbartolo’s French wasn’t so good and, as politely as ever, he explained that he didn’t understand. “Mr. Notarbartolo said that he speaks only Italian, that he doesn’t understand English or French,” De Bot recalled. But it was such a bald-faced lie—Notarbartolo had been speaking French perfectly well when they arrived—that the detectives patiently but firmly repeated the question. Notarbartolo now did the stalling, his mind racing for a way out of the jam in which he found himself.

  Unaware of the tense drama unfolding on the main floor, Fay Vidal finished her work at IDH Diamonds on the third floor and took the elevator to the -1 parking level. As she tried to exit, she found the garage doors shuttered. The guard steadfastly refused to let her, or anyone else, leave the building. Orders of the police, he said.

  For Vidal, it was the last straw of a long and exhausting week. From Rijfstraat to Schupstraat, there had been only one topic of conversation: the heist. Like many other victims, she’d filed her insurance claim, and there was nothing more to do now except try to get back to a normal routine. At the end of this very long week, she was eager to get home and try to put it all behind her. Now this.

  But Vidal wasn’t easily told what to do. “That’s not one of my characteristics,” she later explained. At that moment, she resolved to herself, “I’m going to leave this building.”

  She marched down the main corridor toward the Schupstraat entrance, intent only on finding Julie Boost and demanding that she be allowed to leave through the garage. Like most tenants of the Diamond Center, she had no clue who Leonardo Notarbartolo was and, in fact, had never even heard his name. It was clear that the man she passed in the hallway was being questioned in relation to the heist, but so had many people in the previous five days. She had no idea that he was the one who had stolen her precious jewels, diamonds, and family heirlooms.

  “I see a man standing there with a little jacket on, and there are three other men, very tall, and they’re looking at his papers, and they’re obviously talking to him,” she recalled. “I hear him say, because he’s Italian, ‘Questo non è possibile’ [‘This isn’t possible’]. Here’s this man who doesn’t understand what they want of him and why they want his papers and [he’s like] a little virgin, ‘What do you want?’”

  At the time, Notarbartolo was “absolutely nobody” to her, but when she found out later that she could have reached out and punched the man who robbed her, his name was forever pronounced as if she were spitting gristle from her mouth. No-tar-BAR-tolo.

  Shortly before the police arrived, Tonino Falleti realized he had to go to the bathroom.

  It was freezing outside, and Notarbartolo, stuck in conversation with Boost, was taking a lot longer than the few minutes he’d promised. Falleti paced under the Diamond Center’s concrete awning and eyed the empty street for a convenient place to use the facilities, but there was none. Schupstraat was filled with diamond businesses and banks, all of which were either closed this late on a Friday or required security badges to enter.

  His need finally became too much to bear, and he walked around the corner to a nearby tavern. Rather than return to the Diamond Center right away, he decided to drink a beer and wait for his friend from the warmth of a barstool. Falleti became slightly concerned when he tried calling Notarbartolo on his cell phone to tell him where he was and while the phone was answered, whoever answered didn’t say anything. So he decided to walk past the Diamond Center again in the hope of running into Notarbartolo on the street. What he saw when he turned the corner baffled and alarmed him.

  Schupstraat was filled with police outside the Diamond Center, with more arriving every minute. There seemed to be a lot of excitement and confusion on the street. Falleti had a sinking feeling that Notarbartolo was in some sort of trouble and that it had to do with the heist. He called Crudo and asked her what he should do; she told him to return to the apartment immediately.

  As calmly as possible, Falleti walked away from the mob of police toward his car and managed to find his way back to Charlottalei without getting lost. During the drive back, he tried calling Notarbartolo but this time there was no answer at all. He was extremely worried about Notarbartolo and the depressing little apartment did nothing to help. He drank a shot of grappa to help clear his head. It was getting on in the evening and the dinner he and Zwiep had brought from the Netherlands was still untouched. Crudo was tense and filled with dread, unsure what to do.

  Crudo was worried that Notarbartolo was in trouble because of his extensive criminal history. She and Falleti agreed to drive back to the Diamond Center so that she could speak to the police about where he was and what was happening to him, but then they changed their minds in the car. It wasn’t like Notarbartolo not to answer his phone; they took his silence as a signal that he was in trouble.

  Falleti decided he’d rather not leave his wife and kids at the apartment and risk them getting caught up in a police investigation, so he and Crudo returned to the apartment, where they gathered Falleti’s family for the drive back to their home in the Netherlands. They packed up the items in the apartment in a hurry. There was the sense that they were trying to flee ahead of some calamity. The uneaten food was repacked, the girls bundled back into their overcoats, and the suitcases arranged by the front door. Falleti helped Crudo organize everything she and Notarbartolo had planned to dispose of at their leisure later that weekend. Falleti would return to Antwerp the following day after he’d had some time to think of a plan.

  Less than a half a mile away, Notarbartolo understood the pressure Crudo felt. He knew that the moment he told the detectives his apartment address, it would be overrun by police, so he stalled for as long as he could, giving his wife and friends time to clean up and clear out. He was aware he was playing a losing game; it was only a matter of time before the polite insistence of the questioning collapsed into pointed suspicion that he was being intentionally unhelpful.


  Of course, for the detectives there was never any question that Notarbartolo was a suspect, but he didn’t know that. He had no clue of the evidence the police had against him and he still hoped to be able to talk his way out of this by playing the confused, innocent victim. The detectives knew Notarbartolo was hiding something, but, by keeping their inquiries as friendly as possible, they gave him no reason to become indignant and uncooperative. “He was very confused,” De Bot recalled. “He was very surprised. You saw that on his face and nonverbal behavior. I don’t think he knew that we were looking for him.”

  Notarbartolo’s only hope was to eat up enough time to give Crudo and the others time to abandon the apartment and hopefully leave nothing behind. And he had to be polite enough about it that it would be impossible later for the detectives to claim he’d hindered their investigation, which could have been another excuse to arrest him. Plus, as long as they continued talking in a friendly way, the police might let slip what they had on him.

  Under questioning, he claimed he didn’t know his apartment’s address. He told De Bot he only knew how to walk there from the Diamond District. De Bot, as pleasant as ever, steered Notarbartolo toward his police car and said they’d be happy to drive the route back to his apartment. The Italian thief was like a determined chess player desperately moving his lonesome king from one square to the next while his opponent’s rooks and knights patiently worked him into checkmate.

  Eventually, Notarbartolo ran out of squares, and from the back seat of the squad car, he directed De Bot to the apartment.

  “He was very afraid to say where his apartment was,” De Bot recalled, “but when we say to him, ‘Sir, when you are not involved in the criminal case, why are you afraid to say where you live, of where you stay?’ he understood that when he doesn’t cooperate on that matter, that it was difficult for us to believe him . . . So he understood that he must give an address or otherwise he had problems with the authorities.”

  Once the detectives drove him to Charlottalei, Notarbartolo pointed to his apartment, hoping he’d given his friends enough time to clear out. Without backup, De Bot and Vanderkelen decided not to get out of the car. They didn’t want to walk into a trap if there was a lookout hidden on the street. They also didn’t want to risk Notarbartolo’s somehow making contact with the other suspects. Instead, they radioed for reinforcements and left to take Notarbartolo to police headquarters for further questioning.

  For a few moments after they pulled away, there was no police presence outside of Charlottalei 33.

  The final leg of the attempted escape from the apartment would have been comical had the moods of the escapees not been so dire. Three adults and two small children were jammed like sardines into the puny elevator with a rolled up carpet, several bags, luggage, and a home-cooked Italian dinner. After a painfully slow descent from the seventh floor, the elevator reached the ground floor.

  It was at that same moment that the first police car pulled to the curb. Depending on the perspective, the timing was either perfect or abysmal.

  Falleti, his family, and Crudo exited the elevator directly into the arms of the police, caught red-handed with a wealth of damning evidence.

  Falleti, Zwiep, and their two small children were put into one police car, and Crudo in another. Notarbartolo had already been driven away in a third. None of them were placed under arrest, but they were all driven to the federal police building for questioning.

  Still, however, the detectives were not finished racing the clock. So far, they were lucky to have made it to the Diamond Center before Notarbartolo grew suspicious enough of Boost’s stalling techniques to leave the building, and they’d captured Falleti and the others only moments before they would have vanished with valuable evidence. Now, however, they needed a warrant to search the apartment, and, if they didn’t have it in hand by 9:00 p.m., Belgian law prevented them from entering the building until the following day.

  It was already 8:30 p.m. when they called the investigating judge, who was at home in a community outside Antwerp. The judge, however, did not have a fax machine or a home computer. He would have to write the warrant out by hand and someone from the local police would have to pick it up at his house and then fax it to the diamond detectives. If they couldn’t get the warrant in time, they would have to post guards outside the Charlottalei apartment overnight. But guards wouldn’t be able to prevent anyone from entering the building. If there was another accomplice in town who knew his colleagues had been detained, nothing would prevent him from walking past the police, entering the apartment, and flushing any remaining trace evidence down the toilet.

  The detectives’ great fortune was still with them. De Bot’s sister was an officer on the police force in the judge’s community, and she was on duty that night. With blue lights flashing, she sped to his house to retrieve the warrant and then drove back to her police station. From there, she faxed the warrant to the diamond detectives.

  While his sister was getting the warrant, De Bot revved his engine outside the police building, blue lights already flashing, ready to race off to deliver it to the apartment.

  “The time was very short,” he later said, “Agim [De Bruycker] was waiting by the fax machine and I was waiting with the car downstairs.”

  When the fax arrived, De Bruycker jumped in the elevator, ran out the glass doors of the police building, and stuffed the warrant into De Bot’s hand. De Bot floored it.

  The handwritten search warrant arrived on the doorstep of Charlottalei 33 at 8:58 p.m.

  Flawless

  Chapter Eleven

  CHECKMATE

  “Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,

  Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.”

  —Duke Ferdinand, The Duchess of Malfi (1613–1614)

  Leonardo Notarbartolo still thought he could talk his way free.

  As far as he knew, it was possible that the detectives were simply being aggressive in their pursuit of additional witnesses. In Notarbartolo’s mind, there was nothing that tied him to the heist. He’d worn gloves during the break-in, and they’d been vigilant about destroying the videotapes and not leaving behind any trace of themselves. He knew that the garbage had been found, but was unaware the garbage included household trash that had led police straight to him.

  Sitting at a table in a quiet interrogation room, Notarbartolo continued playing the part of the befuddled jeweler who didn’t understand why the police were interested in an innocent man such as himself. He needed to find the right combination of indignation and cooperation, if he was going to convince the detectives that they were making a big mistake.

  This was precisely the demeanor Patrick Peys wanted him to adopt. As long as Notarbartolo felt there was an escape route, Peys could keep him talking—and, in talking, even about matters that might seem mundane, Notarbartolo might accidentally reveal something of importance.

  “I first treated him not as a suspect, but more as a witness and somebody who might know some information,” Peys explained while recounting the details of this interrogation years later. “He was telling everything about what he was doing those days [surrounding the heist].”

  Notarbartolo had an answer for everything. He rented the car, he said, after oversleeping and missing his flight to Italy. He stayed a few extra days in Antwerp in the hope of doing a little extra business and chose to drive home rather than fly. It might have seemed an odd decision considering the distance, but it was far from criminal.

  Peys asked Notarbartolo why there were no records of him or his company conducting any business in the two years Damoros Preziosi had been in Antwerp. The company didn’t have a license application on file at the Ministry of Economy, a prerequisite to importing or exporting goods, or a record of any transactions through the Diamond Office. This, Peys said, seemed highly suspicious. Opting to take the fall for a small crime to avoid the larger one, Notarbartolo claimed that he dealt purely in black market diamonds to avoid taxes.

&
nbsp; Peys switched gears, asking Notarbartolo why he was at the Diamond Center the night of his apprehension. “He [said he] had something to do in the office, which was bullshit because it was perfectly empty,” Peys said later. Plus, Notarbartolo didn’t have the keys to his office or his safe deposit box. The police had found those in his apartment.

  That was correct, Notarbartolo countered when Peys pointed out the contradiction. He had only realized he’d left his keys behind once he’d stepped inside the front doors. It was then that he spotted Julie Boost and decided to ask about the heist. His explanation was a nimble maneuver in which he tried to turn Boost’s trap to his advantage.

  Peys embarked on a different tack next, pointing out that Notarbartolo had been the last person in the vault the night before the heist. Notarbartolo said there had been another man in the vault when he’d left the last time, an Indian. The police had already analyzed the videotapes of that visit carefully; Peys knew it was a lie. The detective then asked Notarbartolo why he had taken so long to return to the Diamond Center to inquire about the heist. Notarbartolo explained that he’d emptied his safe deposit box of all his cash on his final trip to the vault and knew there had been nothing to steal.

  The Italian had a valid answer for all but one of the detective’s probing questions: where he’d been on Saturday night, February 15. Notarbartolo said he’d made dinner alone in his apartment, watched some TV, and was in bed by midnight. As far as Peys was concerned, this was no alibi at all.

  Hours ticked by as the detective took his time, drawing out their conversation in order to keep Notarbartolo talking. They were both polite and professional; this was part of their mutual façade to disarm each other, but for Peys it was practical as well.