Carat Capers

by Dan Kelly

  “Okay, Mick. I’ll touch base with you tomorrow afternoon and let you know what we’ve come up with. Bye.”

  Letting out a long tired and frustrated sigh, Mickey heads for his neighborhood pub, Antonelli’s, for the best Totani E Tubetti outside of Italy and a couple of cool Michelob Amber Bocks. Antonelli’s serves a lot of Italian beers, but the ones Mickey has tried he hasn’t liked and he thinks they’re priced too high. “You can keep your precious gems. This is what’s precious to me, good grub and good booze.”

  Chapter 16

  Feldman, Kadden and Kessner are in their office in the back of The Paragon discussing the ramifications of what they all thought had to be done with Ralph Reid, but Feldman is really upset about how it was done and is lacing into Kessner because he was the one who set up the hit.

  “Damn it, Jake, we all agreed that Reid was to just disappear, killed and his body dumped a couple of miles out in the Atlantic. What the hell happened?”

  “Reid was a pretty big guy and put up a hell of a fight. The plan was to grab him on his way home from work, gas him, take him down to the harbor where the guys I hired have access to a boat, haul his ass out to sea, shoot him and dump the body in the ocean. The ruckus he was creating had people opening doors and windows to look out and see what was happening, so they shot him, threw his body in the car they had stolen for the hit, tossed him in the first dumpster they came across and split.”

  “Well, those morons have really opened a can of worms.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Jake, the cops aren’t stupid. They’re not going to buy the fact that the guy who was going to help them identify the people who paid him to open the museum door for them was shot the day before he was to show up at the station was a coincidence. They’re also going to quickly surmise that they have a leak somewhere and are going to search high and low to find it which puts our source in a hell of a bind. He’s going to have to lay low and hope he can avoid the spotlight.”

  “Maybe he should go for a dip in the ocean.”

  “It might come to that, but killing a cop is serious business, even a crooked one. Besides, there are a couple of go-betweens connecting this guy and us and they don’t know who we are. To them we’re just phone numbers on throw away cells and special delivery envelopes from fictitious senders. We’ll just have to bide our time on this mess.

  “Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with Reid. The people we sent to take those pictures in the museum know us and if identified might have been coerced into turning on us. Reid had to be dealt with, but those idiots you hired panicked and we now have to deal with the fallout. Pay them and then sever all ties with them. We need to work with people who can think clearly and function under pressure. Hiring dolts who piss their pants at the slightest provocation is just asking for trouble. Where did you find these guys, K Mart?”

  Jake was really working up a head of steam and was about to blow his top. “What the hell would you have had them do? Witnesses were popping up all over the place and any one of them could have decided to be a Good Samaritan and joined the fray. Reid was a threat to us and they were hired to eliminate that threat and they did. Sometimes things don’t go as planned no matter how diligent the planning has been.”

  “They could have fled the scene, leaving everyone to believe that it was just a mugging gone badly.”

  “Then Reid would most likely have been able to show up at the police station and who knows what kind of trouble we’d be in if those police sketches were any good and they hit the streets.”

  Amos could see that neither one of his partners was going to back down and if he didn’t do something soon it was going to get physical, so he decided to jump in and diffuse the situation with some misdirection. “Okay you two, what’s done is done. I’ve got some great news on the Antwerp job. It’s now a go and Pierre tells me the buyer has bumped up the price he’s willing to pay by another million Euros if we can deliver the merchandise by the end of the month. Pierre says that the buyer has a lot of business connections in the Middle East and thinks his impatience indicates the buyer intends to engage in a little bribery in the very near future.”

  His ploy works and the mood in the room lightens considerably. The argument isn’t immediately forgotten, it’s just been put on the back burner for a while, but Kadden is hoping the anticipation of the addition to their coffers from this Antwerp job will eventually smother it to death.

  The Antwerp heist is the most ambitious the three men have ever contemplated. It has been on the drawing board for months and a lot of time, money and energy has been consumed to get to the point where they are now ready to go for their biggest payday ever, €70,000,000 in uncut diamonds which when cut and set will be worth a great deal more.

  Felix asks, “Amos, what’s the status of the jobs in the pipeline after Antwerp. I’d really like for us to strike while the iron is hot. The less time between jobs, the more difficult it will be for the authorities to get their act together.”

  “The last major target we have on our current agenda for the States, the multiple and simultaneous hits in the Jewelers Building on Washington Street in Boston, is still in the planning stage. We’ve run into some snags getting intel on security equipment and safe locations, but should be ready to move in a week to ten days. I’m still in limbo on the smaller yet still financially attractive candidates in Palm Beach, Florida, Kenilworth, Illinois and Nashville, Tennessee. The possible targets in these cities are private collectors who have expensive tastes in exquisite rare gems, but I’m unsure of what and where the market might be for the fruits of our labor. I was holding off on talking to you two until I had all of my ducks in a row.”

  “Okay, what about the list of possibles we put together for Europe? What progress have you made there?”

  “I’ve narrowed the list down to three enterprises worthy of our attention. They have the potential for very lucrative rewards.”

  Jake asks, “Who, where and how lucrative?”

  Amos responds with, “Jenkins Jewels Ltd. in London, Ancil Barrineau, a private collector/investor in Paris, and the safety deposit box of one Herr Hans Durrenberger at the main office of Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich.”

  Jake says, “I’m good with locks, but a foreign bank? I’ve never broken into one and know nothing about their vaults. I don’t care how much reconnoitering we do, my gut’s telling me to stay clear of that one.”

  Amos shakes his head and says, “You won’t have to break into the bank or its vault. The only challenge you’ll have is getting the correct hand print and keycard. With your hi-tech gadgets and know-how that should be a cinch. According to my sources, Herr Durrenberger always carries his safe deposit box keycard in his wallet and getting his hand prints should be as simple as lifting them from just about any surface the both of you has access to.”

  Jake starts shaking his head and says, “I have no experience tailing somebody or picking someone’s pocket. How in hell am I going to get my hands on the keycard and his hand prints without him seeing me?”

  Felix jumps into the exchange and says, “I agree with Jake on this, Amos. Getting what we need has too much risk associated with it. Let’s find something else to tap.”

  Amos is quick to come back with, “Hold on a sec. Getting what we need will require no more risk than we’ve taken to pull other jobs, in fact less.”

  Looking at Amos with renewed but cautious interest he says, “Explain.”

  “Herr Durrenberger is a creature of habit. Every morning, Monday through Friday, at seven sharp he shows up at a health club where he works out with a personal trainer. He focuses primarily on his cardiovascular system, muscle tone and reflexes. He’s not into heavy weight lifting. He couldn’t care less about looking like an Arnold Schwarzenegger. He goes at it for an hour and then showers and heads into his office where his secretary has a continental breakfast waiting for him.”

  Jake interrupts him with, “So?”

  Amo
s continues as though he hasn’t been interrupted with, “There seldom is anyone else in the health club at that hour so the locker room is usually empty during his workout. It would be easy for someone to pick the lock on his locker, remove the safe deposit box keycard from the man’s wallet, capture the code on the keycard if that someone has the appropriate equipment and then return everything exactly as he found it.”

  Amos really had Jake’s attention now. “Okay, how about the hand prints?”

  “Jake, remember the lecture you gave me when the three of us first sat down and seriously considered pulling these robberies? What’s the first thing you stressed that must be relentlessly done?”

  Jake thinks for a minute and then remembers what he had said. “I said we must concentrate on doing everything we can possibly think of to never leave any clues that would lead to us. We must avoid security cameras like the plague. Even if they only got partial pictures of our backs the pictures might lead to our undoing. I also emphasized the use of latex gloves and surgical booties.”

  “Why were you so adamant about the use of gloves and booties, Jake?”

  “They would prevent any identifiable prints from being left at the scenes.”

  “You had been reading an article about how prints could be lifted from porous surfaces like paper using the chemical ninhydrin which reacts with the amino acids in the prints to bring out the ridge surfaces, turning them purple and making them easily seen by the naked eye or a microscope.

  “You mentioned certain dusting powders were used on nonporous surfaces to get prints off of plastics and glass, electric charges to get prints off of metal objects like guns and the article even described methods used to lift prints off of fabrics, especially nylon, polyester and silk.

  “This article really had you hyper about wearing gloves and booties. Now, Herr Durrenberger is not going to have any reason to have any concerns about leaving his prints lying around. You were fascinated with that article and I’ll bet you saved it. I’ll further bet that you could put a kit together to lift prints off of any surface Herr Durrenberger came in contact with. Of course, you’d have to lift the prints surreptitiously, but you’re a sneaky bastard and I’m sure you could pull it off.”

  Amos knows his friend very well and is careful to use both subtle praise of his intellect regarding putting a print kit together and a little humor to hopefully make his suggestion more acceptable.

  At first, neither Jake nor Felix shows any reaction whatsoever. Then they both simultaneously nod their heads and smile like they were marionettes attached to the same strings.

  Felix said, “Jake, do you have the equipment needed to get the code off the keycard?”

  “I do. I’ll have to do some homework on the prints though. I do still have the article Amos was referring to and it’ll be a good starting point. I think we should leave this job for last though. I want to make sure I know what the hell I’m doing when I get to the health club and how we’re going to do the deed at the bank. This one is going to require a lot of special planning because it’ll be going down in broad daylight with a lot of potential witnesses roaming about. How much will the take be if we pull this off? It better be worth the risk.”

  Amos says, “My main source says €4,000,000 in precious gems and the same amount in negotiable securities, all of it obtained illegally through the pilfering of estate trusts managed by the bank.”

  Felix asked, “Does this Herr Durrenberger work for the bank?”

  “No, he’s an attorney who has served and still serves as trustee for a number of wealthy, elderly widows and widowers who trust him implicitly They have been easy marks for him and we’d be returning the favor.”

  Felix said, “Okay then, what do you guys think of this? Since the other European possibles are still in the evaluation stage, I’d like to first stick a pin in the police departments of Palm Beach, Kenilworth and Nashville by paying a visit to all three of the private collectors in these cities on the same day and then immediately move on to Antwerp. This would definitely have law enforcement tied up all over the country trying to figure out how to protect the property of their citizens and at the same time trying to zero in on the dastardly culprits, making it much more difficult for European law enforcement to gain their cooperation in assisting them with their investigations.” This last was said with an arrogant smirk on his face. He then continues with, “I think we should get in touch with Pierre ASAP and get his input about the market for these collections. If he thinks he can unload them at a decent profit, I think we should go for it. Amos, how thorough is your knowledge of the inventories of these collectors.”

  “I’ve got pictures of everything they’ve ever put on display. Some collectors/investors are very tight lipped about what they have and where their collections are kept. I suspect some of the tight lipped ones have gems they’ve acquired via questionable means, like our customers.

  “Others, like the three I’ve been evaluating, like to show off what they have and are open to negotiations regarding trading and selling their wares. Our people have garnered all the site and security information that we’ll need to get in and out quickly and safely. Their sources are impeccable and have been used before with very successful results. I’ll be receiving floor plan data, pictures of the sites where the gems are kept, descriptions of the security equipment in place, security guard info, etc. by FEDEX sometime tomorrow. As I said, the only hang up is unloading the gems once we lay our hands on them.”

  “Well, what do you two think of my idea? No long justifications for your decision, please. A yea or nay will suffice. I’ve said my piece. If either of you disagree with me, I’ll shut up and forget about it.”

  Amos and Jake look over at each other and then silently think about the potential pros and cons of what Felix is suggesting for what seems to Felix is an eternity. Finally, they both say almost in unison “Yea.”

  “Great! It’s too late to call Pierre now. I’ll call him first thing in the morning and see what he has to say. Besides, I have to give him an answer on his offer to join him in brokering other valuable merchandise. His original deadline for an answer has long since passed and, up until now, I’ve managed to buy time with the excuse that we’ve been too tied up with the jobs in our pipeline to discuss it. When I talked with him yesterday, he said I had to give him an answer today or he would assume we weren’t interested and start looking for other partners.

  “If he does that, there are two things we have to seriously consider. One, our costs for transporting our goods to him is going to increase substantially and we will have no additional income to offset that. Two, he might be tempted to share our arrangement with his new partners which could expose us to greater danger of discovery and they might want a bigger slice of the pie which means a smaller piece for us.

  “We have a good thing going here. I don’t think we should do anything that could upset the apple cart. I vote for expanding our operation.”

  Judging from the blank look on their faces, it’s clear to Felix that Jake and Amos haven’t given Pierre’s proposal much thought, if any, but Felix has hit a nerve when he mentioned reduced income from their endeavors coupled with the possibility of additional exposure to outsiders increasing the odds of mistakes being made that could lead to their downfall. It doesn’t take them long to conclude that Felix is making sense and they give him their okay to seal the deal.

  Felix is thinking, “I’ll be damned! I never thought they’d go along. I thought I’d be doing a solo behind their backs. I hope I did the right thing by convincing them to join up with Pierre in this new venture of his. We’re going to have to learn new things and both of them are very set in their ways and get frustrated easily when things don’t go their way right away, especially Jake. If he blows his top at the wrong place and time, we could all be in a world of hurt real quick.”

  Everyone is quiet for a moment and then Felix breaks the silence with, “Okay, let’s call it a day and go spend some of our ill-gotte
n gains on some great Italian cuisine. I’ve been hearing some nice things about a place called Antonelli’s and I’ve been meaning to check it out. Now’s as good a time as any.”

  Ten minutes later they’re in Felix’s car heading for an evening of good food, fine wine, red and white checkered tablecloths, a wandering violinist who knows the right kind of music to play for any occasion and an encounter that the odds makers would bet their last dime on wouldn’t ever happen.