Carat Capers

by Dan Kelly

  This gets a laugh out of Vicki and Chuck and finally Mickey. “Yeah, now I remember. They looked like they had been hit in the face with a strawberry pie. I wonder if they ever changed their ways or are still bullies. If I remember correctly, shortly after that episode their father got transferred to Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, some place that began with a C in the Midwest somewhere. Why I remember that I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “The point I’m trying to make, Mickey, is it isn’t in you to give up. You’ll roll with the punches until you put them down for good, so stop your whining and pass me the salat yerakot.”

  This gets another laugh and then Mickey gets everyone back on track with, “Okay, thank you, sis, for the pep talk. Now, let’s take our discussion down a different road. What do you folks think these guys have done with the ruby? Are they still sitting on it? Have they shipped it off to Pierre Lavelle? Have they unloaded it somehow here in the States? Stashed it somewhere? What?”

  Chuck says, “I think they’ll want to convert it to cash as soon as possible. Pierre Lavelle is still the go to guy when it comes to that. How they get it to him may be by a different route than usual, but I strongly believe it’s already on its way. I’ve got my men plastered to him 24/7 until I have a damn good reason to pull them off.”

  Vicki says, “That ruby is a real hot potato and they’re going to want to get rid of it ASAP before everyone becomes too scared to go anywhere near it. That’s a no brainer for me. Who’ll they’ll approach to take it off their hands is another matter altogether. They don’t have to go to Pierre and if time is of the essence that might not be best way to go. Besides, Pierre has been in the spotlight a lot lately and they may feel uncomfortable using him this time around because of the increased surveillance he might still be under. From the rumors I’ve heard over the years, there are a number of people here in the U. S. who would be willing to acquire it if the price was right.”

  Cheryl says, “I’m in favor of the stashing option. Until they have no other way to get their hands on cash needed for survival, it’s not worth the risk of exposure, the risk of something going wrong during the transaction. If the reward becomes a reality, that makes trying to unload it with strangers a very dangerous proposition. I think they’ll stash it in a safe place until a more propitious opportunity presents itself.”

  Chuck asks, “What’s your opinion, Mickey?”

  “Mine’s an either/or opinion. If we don’t find their bank accounts or find them and can’t get authorization to freeze them, they’ll be under no pressure to sell the ruby and they’ll hide it someplace until it’s safe to sell it. If we find their accounts and are able to freeze the funds in them, then they’ll eventually be strapped for cash and have to look for a buyer somewhere. Everything hinges on their need for cash.”

  Cheryl says, “So, how does knowing what their options are help us nail them?”

  “It cuts down on our reaction time to any road they choose to go down. We can have a strategy in place for every contingency. If they have to sell the ruby, they will need potential buyers. Who might be these potential buyers and how do we keep them under surveillance? If we can ID the most likely purchasers or middle men, that will make that job a lot easier. If they elect to sit on the ruby, where would be the most likely places to hide it? If we can ID the most likely places for it to be hidden, that makes things a lot easier as well.”

  Cheryl says, “You’ve lost me. I don’t see how identifying potential buyers or hiding places makes things easier or even how you’d go about doing that.”

  “Bear with me a minute. The kinds of fences Kessner and Kadden would be dealing with wouldn’t be your run of the mill type. They’d be top notch with all of the right contacts. These types usually base their operations in large metropolitan areas, not some small town out in the boondocks. I can send an inquiry and request for assistance to all of the police departments in every major metropolitan area in the country, explaining what we’re up to and how they can help.

  “Chuck, you have a network of informers all over the place, informers that are plugged into a lot of sources not available to the police or the general public. If you can get word out to them about what we’re up to and let them know there’s a decent chance of getting a humongous reward for being the person that give us info that leads to the arrest of the thieves and/or recovery of the stolen gems that will increase our chances of doing just that substantially.

  “Vicki, if you can track down the sources of those rumors you’ve heard and enlist their support in helping us find out who the players are when it comes to fencing high value stolen gems, that would be a great help also.

  “By tapping the resources of police departments all across the country along with the ones we have access to, we will not only be able to ID the major fences and/or purchasers where stolen precious stones are involved, but we will also have a small army of people watching and listening to everything they do or say.

  “As for the most likely hiding places, that one’s a lot tougher. If I was in their shoes, I’d want to keep it reasonably close to me, someplace I can easily check to assure myself that it is still securely hidden, some place like a safe deposit box. This would be a reasonable premise to work with if they stay put somewhere, but it’s not if they are on the run. If that’s the case, I would take it with me and keep it on my person at all times.

  “If they’ve already shipped the ruby off to Pierre or sold it to someone else, then they’ve got the means to survive for a very long time and trying to ID potential players and keeping eyes and hears focused on them will be a waste of time. However, since we don’t know what they’ve done with the ruby I think doing what I’m suggesting is the right next immediate step to take. We can’t let up on trying to outsmart these guys. We’ve got to do our best to cover every possibility.”

  Vicki suggests a couple more places that would be ideal for hiding something, a storage facility and an office safe somewhere, and after several minutes of discussion and consideration of other ideas they soon realize that the number of possibilities is too large to be of any use to them.

  Mickey sums thing up with, “Okay, we have another strategy to help us deal with these people. I don’t care if word gets out about what we’re up to. When they get wind of what we’re going to be doing, that will only add fuel to the fire and push their frustration, confusion, tension and apprehension to new heights. I’m going for the gold. I want their emotions to set new world records. I want to get them completely unglued and not thinking rationally. If we can get the media and insurance companies on our side, these guys will quickly wilt like flowers in the desert and toss in the towel or blow their brains out. I’m kind of hoping for the latter. Too much money has already been spent in trying to bring these human predators to justice. The expense of a trial would be adding insult to injury.”

  At first Cheryl is a little shocked by what her brother just said, but after a moment’s reflection she’s thinking, “Wow, big brother has to be really pissed to talk like that. That’s a side of him I’ve never seen before. But, hell, he has every right to be. I would be too if someone tried to off me for doing my job.”

  Out loud she says, “If their brains get blown out, just make sure it’s their fingers that pull the triggers and not yours in a state of anger. I’ve kind of gotten used to having you around.”

  “I’m steamed not stupid, Cheryl, although if they resist arrest in any way all bets are off.”

  Cheryl brings the evening to an end with, “On that note, I’m kicking you all out as I have a lot of domestic chores on my agenda for tomorrow and need my beauty sleep to give me the energy to plow through them all and Mickey and Vicki have to get a good night’s sleep to be mentally chipper enough to do that interview tomorrow morning at nine.”

  When everyone is leaving, she takes her brother by the arm, pulls him back into the foyer and whispers softly. “Please don’t shoot anyone without good reason. That would look terrible on a resume a
nd you don’t have any other skills besides being cop and worrying me half to death.”

  This gets a laugh out of him and he says, “Cheryl, I’ve never lied to you except for the time I ate your chocolate Easter egg and said your friend Peggy ate it. Trust me. I’m not going to shoot anybody unless they do something that endangers my life or the life of someone around me. Oh, there was one other time I lied to you. You remember that dweeb Joel Fleming, the kid you had a crush on in the eighth grade?”

  “What about him?”

  He called you for a date to go to the movies once and when you came back from hanging out with Peggy and asked me if anyone called I said no. The guy was a real jerk and I could never understand why you didn’t see that. Other than those two times, I’ve been Honest Abe all the way.”

  “Well, for your information oh mighty protector of sister from the jerks in town, that jerk is now the owner of one of the largest and most respected astrophysics research facilities in the country and has a net worth in the tens of millions. The man did real well for being a jerk. If you hadn’t interfered, I might now be Mrs. Fleming. So, who’s the jerk now?”

  Laughing and heading out the door once more he replies, “Me for bringing the matter up.”

  Chapter 59

  Felix and Amos have had a busy day. After numerous lengthy debates over the last few days, they finally agreed on a way to get the ruby to Pierre that entails a level of risk they can live with. A while back Pierre mentioned he was considering using his contacts at the French Embassy to assist in the transportation of merchandise from the U. S. to Paris via diplomatic pouch which would prohibit searches of any kind.

  They need to talk with Pierre about how to go about that, but on a secure line. This morning they mailed him one of those throw away cell phones via FEDEX’s overnight express mail service with instructions to use it to call Felix on his throw away cell phone ASAP. After what went down in Paris, they aren’t willing to gamble on Pierre’s phones not being tapped.

  Felix has been toting the ruby around in one of those men’s shoulder purses a lot of European men carry. There’s no way he’s going to leave that stone lying around unprotected. He’s not concerned about purse snatchers. He also totes around a very lethal 9mm hand gun tucked in a belt holster in the small of his back.

  They’ve also been preoccupied with putting the final touches on their emigration plans and double checking everything to make sure they’ve covered all the bases. It’s now a little past eleven and the first time they’ve had a chance to sit back with a drink and relax. Amos turns on the TV to catch up on the news.

  The lead news item is the attempted murder of Mickey. Judging from Amos’s and Felix’s reaction as the reporter tells his viewers what happened, there’s going to be a lot more drinking and not a trace of relaxation. They’re both becoming beet red angry, but for entirely different reasons. When the reporter moves onto the next news item, they both explode into barely controllable fury, tossing everything not nailed down around the room, turning it into something that looks more like a war zone.

  Although still ranting and raving, Felix is the first to regain his ability to speak clearly. “How incompetent and stupid can one man be? He not only can’t hit a target less than fifteen feet away, he leaves a witness to tell the police what he looks like.”

  Amos is still at a loss for words and instead of continuing to vent he decks Felix with a hook he never knew he could throw. For some reason, that unlocked his vocal chords and he lets loose with a tongue lashing that would do any Marine DI proud.

  “Talk about incompetence and stupidity; you epitomize the highest degree of both. You’ve set a new standard for morons. Trying to kill a cop, any cop, is not a smart move. Trying to kill a cop who is hot on your heels and will connect the dots in the blink of an eye as to who is likely behind his attempted murder reflects the intelligence of a gnat. All you’ve accomplished with that stunt is made it more difficult for us to avoid capture and make a clean get away. What’s really pissing me off is you did this behind my back because you knew I wouldn’t agree with you. “Well, I’ve learned a very valuable lesson tonight. You’re not as smart as I thought you were and I can no longer trust you to have my best interests in mind when you do something. Everything’s about what you want, Felix, and the hell with everyone else. Well, I’ve had it. From now on, you’re on your own. First thing tomorrow morning I’m out of here and taking my chances on getting into Mexico undetected. If I pull that off, I’ll play the rest by ear. Don’t get up on my account.”

  His anger finally dissipated, he stomps off to his bedroom to pack, leaving a somewhat bewildered Felix lying on the floor nursing a sore jaw.

  Felix’s mind is racing. “Damn, I never thought he’d blow a gasket like that and then jump ship to boot. Well, the hell with him. I’ll do better on my own anyway. I wonder if he still wants his share from the sale of the ruby. I’d better not prick that balloon. I’ve seen a side of him tonight I never knew existed. I’m not the only one who can hire a hit man.

  “Of course, I could remove him from the picture and have everything for myself. Nah. he’ll cool down and I might need him sometime in the future. He knows how to do things I’ll never get the hang of.”

  Getting up off the floor, he heads for the bottle of Grey Goose sitting on the wet bar for the first of more than a few vodka tonics to be consumed into the wee hours of the morning before he passes out on the living room couch.

  Chapter 60

  Saturday morning’s skies are clear and sunny and as misleading as a carnival con man when it comes to the outdoor temperature. The outdoor thermometer attached to the sill outside his kitchen window says it’s eighteen degrees outside, but one step out of his apartment building has him saying, “That damn thing has to be broken unless it’s eighteen degrees below zero and I read it wrong. This cold would even have the polar bears shivering. Those global warming folks should get their eyes checked or maybe their equipment is out of calibration or something. Every new winter seems to be bringing with it colder temperatures, not warmer ones.”

  The underground parking garage is a little warmer, but not much. He quickly gets into his car, starts it and turns the heater and defroster on full blast. Waiting for the car to warm up and the windows to clear, Mickey starts thinking about the conversation he had with his sister last night.

  “These guys are not only thieves, they’re murderers without consciences. They tried to kill me because I am doing my damndest to put them behind bars. So far, I haven’t even pointed a gun at them, but I could easily rationalize that retaliation in kind is justified, do it to them before they try again to do it to me. If I found them on my own and no one else was around, I could claim that they resisted arrest so I had to shoot them. No one would know what really happened and I wouldn’t have to worry about them hiring another hit man to have another go at me. They could do that even from prison if they had the means to pay for the service. Of course, if they actually do resist arrest, I or someone else could put them on the other side of the sod in front of a gallery of witnesses because it would be within the law.”

  As he pulls out of the parking garage and heads for Terri Townsend’s office he asks himself, “If the opportunity presents itself, if it is just you and him and you can arrest him without any difficulty, what will you do?” His answer scares the hell out of him. “I don’t know.”

  At five minutes to nine, he pulls into the parking lot for Terri Townsend’s office building and Vicki pulls up next to him just as he’s getting out of his car. Walking to the building’s entrance Vicki says, “There’s nothing like a nip in the air to get you wide awake in the morning is there?”

  “I prefer the nips that come from a bottle. They warm me up not freeze me to death.”

  Chuckling, they enter the welcomed warmth of the building’s lobby and headfor the elevator. Giving him the once over Vicki says, “You tidy up nice, Morretti. I never figured you for a Brooks Bros. ensemble. You’re more of a
jeans and leather jacket kind of guy.”

  “I wouldn’t have these duds if it weren’t for Cheryl. They were a present from her to celebrate my promotion to Lieutenant. The idea of spending four figures for a suit, shirt and tie would never enter my mind. In fact, I think you’ve got to be out of your mind to part with that kind of money for clothes. I usually find what I need in the factory outlet centers and if I really want to go overboard I’ll pay a visit to the local Kmart.”