by Dan Kelly
Chuck repeats the information and adds, “Alim and a woman dinner companion were just seated at a table about thirty feet from us. Get someone over here now and tell him or her to be on the alert for bodyguards.
“Will do as soon as I receive the picture.”
“I’ll send it in a few minutes.”
As Chuck hangs up, Vicki gets up, grabs her purse and heads for the restrooms. When she returns a couple of minutes later she walks right past where Alim and Colette are seated talking on her cell. They pay her no mind as they are preoccupied with each other.
As she sits down, she slides her phone over to Chuck and says, “I think I got a good one of him, full face looking at the lady.”
Chuck says, “I wondered what you were up to. Way to go. Let’s have a look.”
It is, as they say, picture perfect for their needs. He sends it on to Alain and then he orders another round of drinks for them to sip on during the entertainment. It was perfect timing as the drinks arrived just as the musicians began to play and the chanteuse took center stage. Jacques was right on when he said the singer was exceptional. She was not the typical lounge singer. She had a beautiful voice to go along with her beautiful face and figure and she had a special kind of charisma that drew her audience to her like nails to a magnet. Unlike other lounges Chuck has been in, no one was engaged in conversation while she was performing. Every eye in the place was glued to her. Her repertoire provided a little over an hour of exceptional entertainment and for her efforts she received a good fifteen minutes of applause.
After Chuck has paid the tab and they are preparing to leave Chuck says, “Boy, this place sure has an appropriate name. Everything about this place is exceptional, the ambience, food, the wine, the entertainment and, surprisingly, it didn’t max out my credit card.”
Jacques smiles and says, “We even got an unexpected bonus, a possible lead to the people with sticky fingers.”
As they are leaving, Chuck spots a woman seated at the bar that upon seeing him glances over to the dining area and then turns her back to him. “Okay, we’re now ready to play follow the leader.” Surreptitiously looking around, he sees no signs of the body guards. “They’ve got to be close by or they’d be useless if Alim was placed in harm’s way.”
As they approach Chuck’s rental, he catches some movement out of the corner of his eye across the narrow street. In the darkened doorway of a men’s clothing store, a man is watching the pedestrian traffic and the automobile traffic as it passes by the club along with occasional glances at the parking lot and doorway to the nightclub.
As Chuck unlocks the car doors, he casually glances around the parking lot and takes a closer look at the people leaving the club and in so doing spots Alim and his dinner date leaving the club as a limo pulls up to the door. The limo driver hops out and opens the door for his passengers. As this is taking place, the woman at the bar comes out and heads for a car in the front row. She quickly jumps in, starts her car and pulls up behind the limo and waits for them to pull out of the lot. There’s not enough room for her to go around the limo. Chuck looks over at the doorway where he spotted the guy lurking and the doorway is now empty. Another car pulls up behind the car driven by the woman tailing Alim and the driver of that car has the looks of someone not to mess with. He’s a big man with a menacing look on his face. As he’s comes to a stop, a man comes out from alongside the club and climbs into the car. Chuck is assuming he’s the guy that was in the doorway of the men’s clothing store.
As the parking lot begins to empty out, Chuck voices what’s on his mind. “It would be nice if we could get a tracking device on that limo.”
Jacques says, “Alim is a lot more security conscious and savvy than Pierre Lavelle. I’m sure it would be very difficult, not to mention dangerous, to try something like that.”
“You’re probably right, but just in case an opportunity pops up I’m going to see that our tail has one to plant.”
Chuck calls Alain again and when he answers confirms that the tail is on the job and instructs him to get a tracking device to her in case she has a chance to plant it undetected.
Chuck drops Jacques off back at his office and then drives back to their hotel. Chuck’s thinking, “It certainly hasn’t been a dull day.”
Chapter 28
Mickey has just hung up from the joint task force daily conference call and he’s not a happy camper.
Captain Clancy is just passing by his cubicle and seeing the look on Mickey’s face stops and asks, “What’s up?”
“My dander, that’s what’s up. I think these bastards are jerking us around, Captain. These guys have been very careful about leaving anything behind that will lead us to them. Sure, we picked up some shoe prints, a crushed contact lens and a blood sample, but by themselves they’re no help and we can’t find anybody to compare them to. I think these were left by accident.
“Now, all of a sudden, we’re finding clues all over the place. I don’t think these finds are accidents. A paper match book with a strip joint ad on its cover and two cigarette butts were left at one scene, used tissues at another, paper cups at another and an expensive Mont Blanc pen at another. I think this is a tactic to get us to waste our time and resources checking out phony clues which will prevent us from uncovering and pursuing real leads. I think when these items are processed there will be finger prints and DNA samples found that will belong to innocent folks who don’t have a clue about what’s going on and we’ll have wasted a lot of time checking them out.”
“So, let the other members of the joint task force know what you think is going on and advise them to ignore the false trails. I have no authority over these other law enforcement agencies, but I can tell you to go with your gut and stay on the path you’re on. By the way, what is that path?”
“To continue my search of the gun owners’ data base and my collaboration with Chuck Ferguson who is pursuing some leads in Paris that have a lot of potential.”
“Okay, keep me in the loop.”
“Is there any progress on locating the department leak?”
“Internal Affairs is looking very closely at a couple of possibilities, but nothing substantial has yet come to light with respect to either party.”
“Well I hope they ID whoever it is soon. Not being able to be open about what I’m up to and getting some help internally has certainly slowed down the pace of my investigation.
“It is what it is, Mickey.”
As Clancy walks away Mickey mutters, “Yeah, it’s a real pain in the ass.”
The day goes downhill from there as the department’s computer system crashes so Mickey can’t continue with his search of the gun owners’ data base and then he gets a phone call from Chuck that really puts the kibosh on his day.
“Mickey, our nemesis has struck again. This is the biggest one yet. A diamond merchant in Antwerp was hit for 70,000,000 Euros in uncut diamonds and other precious stones. Apparently, the same MO was followed. Access to the premises and the vault were gained as if they were well acquainted with the multiple layers of security. This is the most sophisticated security system they’ve bypassed yet. It has infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and the vault has a lock with millions of possible combinations.
“Jacques Prevot says this reminds him of a robbery that took place about ten years ago on the same street, Hoveniersstraat, by some Italian guy, a Leonardo Notarbartolo. Evidently this Hoveniersstraat is the diamond district's main street in Antwerp. The take there was over 100,000,000 Euros worth of jewelry from safe deposits boxes in a vault. That was supposed to be some kind of record heist. The loot was never recovered, but Notarbartolo wound up in the clink.”
“Perhaps this Notarbartolo guy was knowingly or unknowingly their mentor for their job.”
“I don’t know about that, but Jacques says a lot was written about the robbery and our guys may have learned a lot from these articles.”
“Damn, Chuck, the
se guys have to have a chink in their armor somewhere.”
“Mickey, you and I have talked about this before. The chink in their armor is their growing self-confidence and their growing boldness, almost a cockiness of sorts. That kind of attitude leads to overconfidence and mistakes being made through carelessness. This time I think they bit off more than they can chew.
“Somehow some of the security guards patrolling the place didn’t get gassed and somehow one or more of these guards was alerted to their presence outside of the building and they zeroed in on the location to investigate. All six were shot and killed for their trouble. One of the six guards shot was still alive when he the police arrived and was able to tell them the robbers were armed with some kind of machine pistols that fired a lot of rounds very rapidly.
“There are now more alphabet agencies here in Belgium and the rest of Europe being called in to get to the bottom of this crime wave and I’m sure they will be contacting your joint task force and the folks in South Africa within the next few days, perhaps in the next few hours. These robberies have been holding center stage in all of the news media around the globe for some time now, so they’ll know who to contact. With all of these resources focused on bringing them down, the pressure is definitely going to make them nervous and nervous people make mistakes.”
“Well, you’re right on about the cockiness.” He told Chuck about the phony clues and finished up with his status on the data base search. Chuck filled him in on the Arab encounter at the L'auberge Exceptionnelle nightclub and the decision to try to plant a tracking device on Alim’s limo.
“Be careful, Chuck. These people are killers, very intelligent killers, the most dangerous kind.”
“You too, Mickey.”
Chapter 29
In mid-afternoon of the next day, Felix Feldman and Amos Kadden are waiting anxiously for Jacob Kessner to arrive from JFK. He’s two hours late and they haven’t heard a word from him. His plane arrived from Brussels on time at 11:50 a.m.
When the heist had gone down, the take was to be split up into two separate vans and driven to a construction company site and concealed in a pile of dirt in a dump truck and then be transported to a cargo ship at the Port of Antwerp where it would be transferred into small boxes and loaded into one of the big shipping containers being loaded onto the ship. The container would be offloaded at the Bordeaux seaport in France, the small boxes removed and then driven in a small truck to a ware house in Paris owned by Pierre Lavelle under an assumed name. While Jacob is enroute to JFK, the stones would be on their way to Paris. When Jacob arrives at the office, Felix is to call Pierre to confirm that everything is going according to plan and Pierre would call them back when the gems arrived at the ware house. At the moment, things aren’t going according to plan.
At six-thirty the next morning, Felix is awakened by his phone ringing. It’s Jacob. “What the hell happened and where are you?”
“I’m still in Antwerp and I just got out of jail.”
“WHAT!!!
“Don’t get your hemorrhoids in a dither. Everything’s cool. I got into a little altercation with some of the authority figures over here and got hauled in for failing to obey an order of one of the jerks which was to wait until he gave the go ahead to cross the street in front of the airport. A bunch of us were waiting in a heavy downpour forever and I’d had enough, so I crossed the street and seconds later was a surrounded by the three of the local yokels. They started shoving me around and I shoved back and slugged one of them. I had to spend the night in jail until I could be brought before a judge this morning.”
“Jacob, you asshole. Now you’ve put the spotlight on yourself. Whether or not you showed the authorities your phony passport when they asked you for ID, they probably took your picture and prints anyway and now know that you were in Antwerp on the day of the robbery. If something happens to make them think you might be involved in the robbery, your ass is grass.”
“You worry too much, Felix, always have. The cops have no way of knowing I was involved in anything illegal during my brief visit here. I’m catching the next available flight out of here and will call you when I arrive at JFK. Bye.”
Felix is livid. Pacing the floor and talking to himself and he’s saying, “I don’t know why I’m so surprised that something like this happened. That numb nut has always been a loose cannon. Since day one, when we first started to get serious about laying the ground work for these robberies, I’ve been worried about his temper screwing things up. Damn it to hell!!
When he finally gets his temper under control, he calls Amos and fills him in on what’s happened. “Amos, I think it’s time we think about closing up shop on our latest business venture and maybe even sell the boutique. We may be pushing our luck where Jacob is concerned.”
“You may be right, Felix. Even Jacob knows his temper is a liability to us. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for it to erupt. We’ve achieved the bulk of what we set out to do. I’ll have the final aggregate numbers for you in dollars in sense as soon as I can get to Paris and assess the value of the Antwerp take. They’ll be preliminary numbers because once you’ve cut the diamonds and other stones from the Antwerp take, they’ll be worth a lot more.”
“Okay, Amos, I’ll see you at the boutique at ten this morning. Bye.”
Chapter 30
After the call from Chuck Ferguson Mickey is thinking, “Machine pistols! How in hell did they get their hands on those kinds of weapons? Those are military guns and the only ones I know about are manufactured in Israel for use by their military. It’s illegal for a private citizen to own one here in the States. I wonder if our thieves have connections in Israel. Maybe the connection is a religious one. Maybe our thieves are Jews, although there are a lot of non-Jews living in Israel. Hmm. This might lead me somewhere. Maybe the Israeli Consulate here in Manhattan can help me find out if there have been any recent thefts of military hardware in their country. If so, maybe their investigators have come up with something that could help us here. I’ll call them first thing in the morning and then, hopefully, our computers will be back up and I can continue my search of the gun owners’ data base.”
As Mickey’s leaving the precinct, he runs into his buddy from dispatch Tony Appecelli who’s just coming on duty. Hey, Mick, I was hoping to get ahold of you before you split for the day.”
“Hi, Tony, what’s up?”
He pulled Mickey outside and down the front steps to a place alongside the stairs out of view of anyone inside but with a clear view of anyone approaching. “Mick, I saw something yesterday that I think you should know about and I’ll leave it up to you to determine what should be done about it.”
“What did you see that’s warranting all of this secrecy?”
“Mickey, I’ve been around here for as long as you have and I can tell when something is going on that is being kept from the troops. There’s a tension in the air and the normal camaraderie that pervades the place is missing. Others have noticed it too. If you know anything about what’s going on, and my gut is telling me you do from the way you’ve been acting lately, I’m not nosing around to find out what it is. Let me make that clear upfront, but since I’m picking up vibes that something is seriously out of whack here I’m passing on to you what I saw because I think you’d want to know about it.”
“Tony, we’ve been friends for a long time and I know your radar when it comes to your surroundings is phenomenal, so I won’t bullshit you about what’s going on. It’s something very serious that involves these robberies, but I can’t tell you what it is right now. Forget the explanations and just tell me what you saw. If you think it’s something I should know, I definitely want to know what it is.”
“Okay, around nine o’clock last night after everyone in your office had left for the day I had to go up to the file room to get some information for a project Clancy has me working on for a precinct time study he’s putting together. As I passed your area on my way to the file room, I spotted an i
nfo tech guy sitting at your desk using your computer. At first, I thought he was working on the system crash problem we were having, but he appeared to me to be very furtive. He was constantly looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was around. He didn’t see me because I slipped into the supply room before he spotted me. His behavior set off my alert meter, so I stayed in the supply room, opened the door a crack and kept my eye on him. It looked like he was scanning some files of yours and then he crawled underneath your desk for a couple of minutes. When he came out from under your desk, he hit sit some keys on your keyboard and then left.”