Carat Capers

by Dan Kelly

  Pausing to take a breath he finishes up with, “Imagination can be a wonderful tool when you’re trying to outthink somebody, but in this case all it’s doing is adding to my frustration because this time around it isn’t giving me anything to hang my hat on.”

  “Well, unless something significant happens in the next two days we should stick with our plan to head back to New York. From what I’ve seen, your people here know what they’re doing and right now you’re the fifth wheel, not needed and spinning aimlessly. You might be able to make better use of your time helping Lieutenant Morretti with his investigation back there.”

  “I agree. We’ve made some progress towards solving these crimes. We now have more irons in the fire at any rate. And an added bonus has been that I’ve had a ball seeing Paris with you. I’m only sorry that we couldn’t have made more progress towards identifying and putting these people behind bars.”

  “Well, we still have two more days to see the sights and sample more of the delicious food. Let’s see what mischief we can get into today.”

  The remainder of the day is spent sightseeing, snacking, shopping and people watching. They are surprised to find out that they both like a lot of the same things and soon begin to do less of the tourist stuff and more of the getting to know you stuff. Chuck’s thinking, “Damn, this is a first class lady, but way out of my class. I’m glad we’ll be heading home soon. I just hope I don’t make an ass of myself before then.”

  Chuck needn’t have worried. Around six in the evening, someone does it for him. That someone is an obnoxious valet. Chuck and Vicki have just returned to their hotel to freshen up before having dinner at one of the restaurants in the hotel and they decided to have a drink in the hotel lounge before attending to their ablutions.

  As they are being seated, Vicki happens to glance across the room and can’t believe her eyes. Sitting in the corner surrounded by potted plants is Alim Bukhari engaged in a serious discussion with none other than Pierre Lavelle. When the waiter has seated them and taken their order, Vicki taps Chuck’s arm and indicates with her eyes where she wants him to look.

  “Well, well, it doesn’t look like their talking about the weather does it? It wouldn’t surprise me if Pierre is trying to entice Ali to purchases some of the new baubles recently added to his inventory and Ali is haggling over the price.”

  When Vicki glances over she sees the two men smiling and shaking hands. “It looks like Pierre has made a sale and it looks like they’re getting ready to leave. They’re calling the waiter over to settle their tab.”

  “I know my men are on them, but I sure would like to follow them and see where they’re headed. If you’ll pay for our drinks, I’ll have the valet bring our car up before they can get to theirs.”

  “What if they came in separate cars? Which one do we follow?”

  “I learned early on that you always follow the money. We’ll follow Ali and I’ll let Alain know what we’re up to so the person he has tailing Ali will be in the loop.”

  “Okay, go!”

  Chuck makes a beeline for the valet station and that’s when he grows donkey ears. He tells the valet he’s in a hurry and gives him what Chuck thinks is a decent tip to encourage him to move it. The valet glances down at the tip and says “There are a lot of people ahead of you. I’ll do my best to accommodate you.”

  Chuck adds a little more to the tip and says, “I’d appreciate it if you could have my car here in the next three minutes.”

  Looking at the additional money placed in his hand, the valet’s polite smile becomes a supercilious smirk and he says, “You Americans think you can buy anything don’t you?”

  There were a half dozen people nearby waiting for their cars to be brought around and they were taking in this little exchange. Noticing this, Chuck’s face starts to turn red, first with embarrassment and then with anger. Vicki, who has just come out of the hotel and caught the last of the confrontation, intervenes and speaking in flawless French has the valet almost instantly turning beet red with embarrassment. After shoving more money into his greedy paw, their car miraculously appears in less than a minute.

  When they are pulling away from the hotel Vicki said, “You were about to deck that guy weren’t you?” “That pompous ass had it coming to him. I gave him twenty Euros. What the hell did he want, a retirement package? What did you say to him to make him change his tune?”

  “I happen to know the manager of the hotel and I told him that if he wanted to have a job at the end of the day he’d better shape up and shut his mouth. I gave him another twenty Euros to embarrass him in front of the onlookers.”

  “Well, thanks for jumping in. You probably kept me out of jail. I guess I’m just not meant to be a jetsetter.”

  Vicki senses his unease at not being able to handle the situation on his own and tries to make a joke out of it by saying, “You’re welcome. I’m glad I was able to defuse the situation. If I blew it, we would have had to deal with headlines like, ‘American private dick decks French prick!’

  This gets the laugh she wants and the tension in the car evaporates. They find a place to park across the street from the hotel that has a clear view of the valet station and the driveway leading to the street. While they are waiting for Lavelle and Bukhari to show their faces, Chuck calls Alain to clue him in. “I was just about to call you, Chuck. Our gal tailing Bukhari’s limo just called in and said she was in a fender bender which has disabled her car and damaged the tracking equipment. I’ve got someone on the way over to take over the tail, but it’s going to take a good half hour for him to get there.”

  “Okay, we’ll fill in until you have things straightened out. We think these two have just agreed to a transaction that we’d like to be privy to and that’s the reason for our joining in on the tail.”

  “Our? Do you have someone with you?”

  “Vicki Valance.”

  “Boss, from what you’ve told us these guys play rough. She could get hurt if they spot you.”

  “You couldn’t keep her away with an army. I’ll keep you posted.”

  When he hung up Vicki said, “Did I become part of that conversation?”

  “Alain is worried about your safety if we are spotted tailing these men.”

  “Chuck, are you armed?”

  “I am, but I don’t think it’s legal for me to be carrying in France. I hid it in my luggage just in case I needed it. If I have to use it, it may keep us safe from the bad guys, but the gendarmes may not be happy with me.”

  “Well, hopefully, we may never have to face that issue and you’re right on about an army not keeping me out of this pursuit. These guys picked on me first and if I can play a part in bringing them down I’d relish that more than owning the Hope Diamond.”

  Before Chuck can respond, their targets appear at the valet station and the game is on. The two men have come in separate cars, but soon after they drive away it quickly becomes apparent that Ali and his entourage of security personnel were following Pierre.

  “Vicki wonders aloud, “They may be heading back to Pierre’s place to close the deal.”

  “If that’s where they’re headed, I doubt any gems will change hands. Pierre’s too smart to keep any contraband in his home. Whatever inventory he has on hand, he’ll have it stashed someplace else.”

  “I don’t know about that. He’s real full of himself and I think there’s a good chance he’s convinced that the authorities will never consider him a suspect and come knocking on his door with a search warrant.”

  “Well, I’ve got a camera in the glove compartment. Wherever they’re headed, I hope I can get a picture of them together when they arrive. It may come in handy down the road.”

  Their final destination was, surprisingly, a closed jewelry store and Pierre has a key to the front door.

  Chuck says, “Isn’t that interesting? Who would have thought Monsieur Lavelle would be in the jewelry business, at least on the legitimate retail end of things. It certainly affords
an ideal cover for the more unseemly aspect of his precious gems activities, if he is so involved. I’ll make my people here aware of this latest development and have them look into it more closely. Using his zoom lens, he gets some great frontal shots of the two men walking together from their cars to the door of the store and of their backs as they enter.

  Chapter 33

  It’s a chilly overcast early fall morning and the weather suits Mickey Morretti’s mood perfectly. Chuck Ferguson and Vicki Valance are returning from Paris later today and although they’ve managed to strengthen their suspicions about Pierre Lavelle, generate some interesting theories and identify a probable player in the overall scheme of things it all adds up to zero in the progress column. So far the phone taps and tracking devices have lead nowhere and Mickey’s search of the gun owners’ data base has produced nothing as well.

  Adding to his bleak mood is the lack of anything helpful from his phone call to the Israeli consulate. No thefts of military weapons of any kind have been reported. That doesn’t mean that none have occurred. It could be that some weapons have disappeared, but the theft hasn’t been noticed yet. The man at the consulate said that an investigation would be made into the possibility and if anything turns up he would get back to him.

  Mickey’s thinking, “These bastards live a charmed life. They’ve done nothing, left nothing, which will lead to their identity, at least nothing that we’ve been able to uncover. After all of these weeks of investigation all I can reasonably make a guess at is that there are three men at the head of the operation, their first names are Felix, Amos and Jacob, they’re in the jewelry business, they live and work in New York City and have a relationship with a shady blue blood in France by the name of Pierre Lavelle. They’re also planning another job, something different, and the target will probably be out of the city, maybe even out of the country.

  “Damn it, I’ve got to stop being reactive and start being proactive. The other night I was thinking of baiting a trap for them. I put that on the back burner because I haven’t been able to come up with bait attractive enough to get their attention. Vicki Valance might have some ideas about that. I hope so.”

  Mickey calls Chuck and gets their flight information and tells him that he will meet them at JFK. “I’ve got an idea I want to run by the two of you and want to get to you before you get sucked back into your daily business routines and not be able to talk with me right away.”

  “Okay, I’ll let her know.”

  Their plane arrives at 3:53 p.m. and Mickey meets them in the baggage claim area. “Welcome back you two. If you’re not too tired from your flight, I’d like to run that idea I have by you and get your ideas about it. If you’re hungry, we can stop someplace and get a bite to eat and we can talk then or I can drive you back to the city and we can talk during the drive.”

  They were both famished and said so, so Mickey leads them to the unmarked he’s parked in the no parking area right outside the sliding doors with the police placard on the dashboard. When Vicki spots the placard she says, “I wish I had one of those.”

  “No you don’t. You’d have to become a detective and put up with so much frustration and bureaucratic b. s. your ulcers would have ulcers.”

  Chuck asks, “Is the brass coming down on you over the lack of progress on these robberies?

  “My boss is ok with what I’m doing, but his boss, the politicians and the media are really raising the roof over the lack of any arrests.”

  Chuck nods and says, “Well, I think we have things in place that sooner or later will take the pressure off. These people are good, but they’re not infallible. They’re going to screw up and when they do there are law enforcement agencies all over the globe just waiting to pounce. It will be their death knell.”

  “I hope you’re right, Chuck. These people aren’t just clever thieves; they’re killers and deserve the worst the law can throw at them.”

  Mickey knows about a Chinese restaurant not far from the airport, so they decide to eat there.

  Vicki orders some plum wine, Mickey and Chuck order beer, a Sapporo for Mickey and a Tsingtao for Chuck. They each order an entrée and an appetizer which they will all share and then Mickey hits them with his idea.

  “We’re getting nowhere looking for something at the scenes of these robberies that might lead us to the people committing them. Except for the American Museum of Natural History, arriving at the scene before these people can split so we can confront them and hopefully bring them down has proved to be extremely difficult. The one time we had them in our sights, the pursuit of the getaway car from the museum heist, we blew it. It’s time for a change in tactics. I want to take control of things instead of being controlled. I want to set a trap for them, one with bait so tempting that they won’t be able to resist the temptation. I need your help in devising such a trap and coming up with the right kind of bait. Ms. Valance, these guys are into precious gems big time. What kind of stones, what kind of jewelry, do you think would do the trick?”

  “First off, please call me Vicki. As to the kind of bait that would get their adrenaline flowing, it would have to be something rare, unusual, the more rare and unusual the better. It seems to me that these people aren’t interested in ownership but rather the financial rewards to be reaped from the sale of such stones. They obviously have a market for these gems and have enjoyed much success so far. If the right bait is used, it wouldn’t take much to lure them in even if the challenge was high. These people are smart, so the trap has to be clever enough to embody substantial risk, but at the same time have a weakness that can be exploited. If it appears too easy to gain access to the bait and get away clean, they’ll become suspicious and walk away.”

  “So what kind of bait would do the trick?”

  “I would suggest some kind of ruby. Rubies are far rarer than diamonds and are only found in a handful of mines worldwide. One from Burma would be ideal since the US banned the importation of Burmese ruby due to human rights violations by the ruling junta.

  “The record price paid per carat for a ruby is $425,000 set in Feb, 2006, by Lawrence Graff, a well-known London jeweler, who paid over $3.6 million for an 8.62ct ruby.”

  “How could we get our hands on a stone like that?”

  “You couldn’t. No one in his right mind would risk losing something as precious as that if something were to go wrong. However, we might be able to convince Mr. Graff to play along with some subterfuge in the form of some phony publicity. I’m sure he’s as upset over these robberies as anyone and he just might agree to help us out.”

  Chuck asks, “Do you know this man?”

  “No, but it would be easy for him to verify your identity, Mickey, and through you ours.”

  Mickey likes what she’s suggesting and says, “I could contact the London authorities and ask for their assistance in approaching Mr. Graff. It might add some weight to our request if it came through British law enforcement.

  Both Chuck and Vicki nodded their agreement and Mickey then says, “Okay, let’s assume Mr. Graff agrees to participate in our little scheme, how, where and when do we set this rat trap?”

  Silence settles in over the table as everyone puts their thinking cap on and begins to mull over every plausible option that comes to mind. Fifteen minutes later, the appetizers having been served and devoured, Chuck says, “Since these people have to be feeling the pressure from law enforcement’s efforts to bring them to justice, I think the location of the trap should be somewhere they haven’t exercised their particular expertise yet. I’m thinking of Canada because of its proximity to us from a logistics standpoint and its close ties with the UK which gives them access to the one of the finest law enforcement operations in the world to supplement their own. That would be a nice tool to have at our disposal.”

  Mickey says, “I like that. Vicki, what scenario might we create in Canada that would be believable to our prey?”

  “Well, there are number of international trade shows launched in T
oronto and Montreal and on a fairly frequent basis. I can check with my sources to see what’s on the schedule for the next month or so.”