Carat Capers

by Dan Kelly

  “I’ll call our bank as soon as they open up for business tomorrow morning. I’m glad your trip up here wasn’t a wild goose chase.”

  “Me too, Mr. Goldberg, me too. We’re flying back to La Guardia tonight, so you can reach me at my office tomorrow when you hear from your bank. Thanks for all your help with this. I hope you didn’t lose any commissions on our account.”

  “Removing men like this from society is a lot more important than any commission I might lose. Good night, Lieutenant.”

  “Good night, Mr. Goldberg.”

  Chapter 66

  About mid-morning on Tuesday Mr. Goldberg calls Mickey with the information he requested and he then calls his sister Cheryl and asks her to get a court order to freeze the accounts at the credit union. “Cheryl, if you can get the court order, I’ll have cut these guys off from all of their cash both here and abroad. With the Fed’s help, I’ve found out that these creeps keep most of their money in accounts with Credit Suisse in Zurich and the Fed persuaded the Swiss Central Bank to get Credit Suisse to freeze those accounts.”

  “Boy, big brother has been a busy little beaver hasn’t he. You know, Mickey, desperation can make people do some very bad things. If Feldman and Kadden get frustrated enough, they might decide to go down with a big bang instead of a whimper and figure they have nothing to lose by making the law regret ever going after them by shooting innocent people.”

  “Chuck has given me the same warning, but I have to keep the pressure on and run these guys to ground. I have no other choice. I’ll do my damndest to keep the collateral damage to a minimum, but if they flip out and start killing people willy-nilly all the blame belongs to them not law enforcement. We’re just doing our jobs trying to put the bad guys where they belong, in prison or in the ground.”

  “Just be careful, Mickey. These guys aren’t your run of the mill punks.”

  “I will, sis. We’re zeroing in on them now. We have good reason to believe they’ve split up with one headed for El Paso and the other for San Diego. Law enforcement in those areas has been alerted and I’ll have plenty of help when they’re cornered. I’ll fill you in on the details when this is a done deal.”

  An hour later the court order is sitting on his desk and a half hour after that the credit union accounts are frozen. Now Mickey’s back in the wait and see what happens mode and he knows that’s not one of his strong points so he calls Chuck and gets him to join him for lunch and an update on what’s going on with the manhunt.

  They meet up at a Puerto Rican restaurant not far from Chuck’s office and quickly get lost in the aroma and tastes of the food they’ve ordered. After about twenty minutes of this, Chuck’s curiosity gets the better of him and he says, “Okay, give. What’s going on with our two new celebrities?”

  Mickey gives him all the details of what has happened since they last talked and Chuck reacts with a curt, “They’re headed for Mexico. Once there, they can take off to a lot of places in Central or South America. It will be a lot easier for them to do that from Mexico than from the U. S.”

  “I agree, but these guys have been using a lot of phony ID and I can’t see them changing their MO now. I think they’ll stay on this side of the border until they have the docs they need to get where they want to go. How long that will take, I don’t have any idea. I just hope it’s long enough to be spotted and arrested. What’s up with Pierre Lavelle? Do you still have men on him?”

  “I’ve still got a round the clock tail on him, but so far he’s been behaving himself. He’s sticking pretty close to home these days. He was able to talk his way out of trouble with the gendarmes only because they had no tangible proof to use against him, but he’s no dummy. He knows they aren’t buying his innocent act for one minute and will use any excuse to haul his ass in again for another round of twenty questions.”

  “I think his behavior is going to be changing real soon. When Feldman and Kadden find out their bank accounts are frozen, the first thing they’ll think of is converting the ruby they stole to cash ASAP and they know Pierre is the guy they can trust to do that for them. These guys aren’t going to want to take time to look for someone, some fence to deal with in El Paso or San Diego, knowing that they’ll probably be getting short changed on the deal and be putting themselves in danger in the process. Hell, they might have already sent the ruby to him without knowing about the freeze on their accounts. From the phone call your people listened in on, we know that was their original intention. I think they’ll stay with their original game plan and Pierre will be the man of the hour.”

  “I agree. I’ll call my people in Paris and alert them to the likelihood of Pierre getting active again real soon.”

  “We’ve got them on the run, Chuck, and they’re starting to make mistakes like talking too much, like telling people where they’re going when they didn’t have to. Their nerves are already working over time trying to act normal and that’s going to be their one way ticket to catastrophe.”

  “Then let’s hope they become blabbermouths real soon.”

  Chapter 67

  Ramon comes through for them and both Felix and Amos receive the docs they’ve been waiting for in Wednesday’s afternoon mail. It’s now early afternoon on Thursday and they’ve both decided to drive across the border into Mexico in their rental cars and ditch them at the airports where they’ll be boarding their planes to take them to Chili.

  Unbeknownst to Mickey, Felix and Amos have checking accounts and credit cards at several different banks in Manhattan under their various aliases, but the balances kept in the checking accounts are small, averaging about $5,000 and the credit card lines of credit amount to only $10,000. They’ve been using these resources heavily lately and their credit cards are close to maxing out and the balances are low, less than $1,000 in every one of them.

  Felix is the first to find out his credit union account has been frozen when he goes to an ATM machine and tries to withdraw some money from his account using his debit card. He quickly contacts Credit Suisse to have some funds transferred into the accounts held under his aliases only to find out that his account there has been frozen as well. He does a rapid calculation of the money he has to work with and counting the six hundred dollars he has in his pocket he has less than $3,000 to hold him over until Pierre can sell the ruby and send him his share of the proceeds. He can’t use the account at Credit Suisse any more. He’s going to have to wait until he gets to Chili and can open an account in his new ID and have Pierre wire the money into that account.

  Surprisingly, Felix hasn’t come unglued on finding out that he no longer has access to the millions he’s accrued during his string of robberies, but he’s far from a happy camper. “That son-of-a-bitch Morretti is a lot smarter than I thought he was. Instead of skimping on the bread, I should have paid the big bucks for a top level hit man to take him out. You’re on my To Do list Morretti. When I get settled in in Chili, I’m going to correct that error in judgment.”

  Amos is in the same pickle as Felix. He’s also tight for cash and when he goes to an ATM to withdraw some funds from his credit union account he gets the bad news just like Felix did. He too contacts Credit Suisse and is told the source of his funds is under review by the authorities there and will be unavailable to him until the investigation is concluded and nothing illegal has been uncovered. This is more than Felix was told, but still no less upsetting.

  When he adds up all the money he can lay his hands on in a hurry, his total is less $2,500, and three hundred of that is in his wallet. Amos doesn’t take the news as well as Felix did and starts to sweat profusely. “I’m glad I kept the Glock. I might have to resort to holding people up in parking lots to survive until I can come up with something better.”

  Both Amos and Felix are carrying Glocks in ankle holsters and aren’t afraid to use them if they have no other way out. Amos is rationalizing why he shouldn’t hesitate to use his by thinking, “I’m already an accessory to murder. In for a dime, in for a dollar. If
I have to shoot somebody to stay free, so be it.”

  Felix doesn’t have to waste energy rationalizing. He never gave the killings that took place during some of the gem robberies a second thought. His philosophy has always been any means to an end.

  As Felix joins one of the lines of cars waiting to be checked out by the Mexican Federales, he glances in his rear view mirror and notices one the U. S. Border Patrol guys checking him out, well, not him but his car and plates. Suddenly, it dawns on him how he must have screwed up.

  “Somehow I left a trail that led them to check out the right car rental agency and they were able to match me up with the car I rented and put its description and license plate number out on a BOLO to the Border Patrol and other law enforcement bodies. Damn! How could I have been so dense? I should have anticipated that. This Morretti is no dimwit. I should have at least switched plates.”

  The officer goes inside the office and as soon as he is out of sight Felix gets out of his car and casually walks over to an old truck that’s in the line next to his and climbs under the canvas covering the cargo area and hides behind a pile of empty crates and bushels that are used to haul fruits and vegetables across the border. There are still traces of rotting produce in some of the crate and bushels.

  There is only one car ahead of the truck and it is waved through without being stopped. The driver of the truck must come across the border on a regular basis because the Mexican cop and the driver seem to know each other judging from the way they are laughing about something and the cursory look he gives the cargo area when he pulls the canvas back to see inside. The truck is waved through and Felix is now across the border and headed to some unknown destination but he’s still a free man. He had to leave the suitcase containing a few clothes and toiletries in the car, but they could be replaced.

  The officer is in the office for a couple of minutes, but he isn’t concerned because the car he is interested in has at least ten cars ahead of him and four behind him, so he isn’t going anywhere. It takes the officer that long to find and check the BOLO to make sure he has the right car, but when he comes back out to pull the driver over the driver is gone. There’s no sign of him anywhere. “He must have spotted me checking his car out and saw a way out of here and had to react fast. He didn’t close the car door all the way and he left the engine running. I’m gonna get my ass chewed out for this. I should have immediately detained him and then checked the BOLO.”

  Mickey gets the bad news around five the same day and as Yogi Berra would say it’s déjà vu all over again. “I’ve got to be having a nightmare. Nobody can be this lucky in real life.”

  While Mickey is having conniptions in his cubicle which is getting smaller by the second, there’s another drama unfolding in San Diego. Amos has chosen the heavy rush hour to cross the border into Mexico, figuring the Border Patrol will be at their busiest at that time of day and be less attentive to the looks of the drivers of the cars and more lax in their questioning and searches.

  The temperature is in the nineties and Amos, not being used to such heat, is sweating like he’s in a sauna. The air conditioner isn’t doing its job very well and his nerves aren’t helping matters either. He’s worrying himself sick over what he’s going to do for money when the little he has runs out. He’s been kicking himself in the ass for letting Felix keep the ruby because he has no idea how to get in touch with him about his share of the proceeds from its sale when Pierre unloads it.

  The wig he’s wearing isn’t helping the situation either. His perspiration has his scalp itching like crazy and its taking all of his self-control to keep from ripping it off and the glasses he’s wearing keep sliding down his nose and he has to constantly push them back in place. After enduring fifteen minutes of this torture he can’t stand it any longer and takes the glasses off and puts his fingers under the wig and lapses into a state of bliss as he vigorously scratches away.

  Amos is unaware that he has an audience. Sitting in the back seat of the car in front of him is a little boy about nine or ten years old. He’s been taking in the show Amos has been putting on and says to his father, “Hey, Dad, check out the guy in the car behind us. His hair isn’t attached to his head and his glasses have been slipping down his nose so much he’s taken them off and thrown them on the dash. He looks like he’s going to melt.”

  His dad starts to laugh, but when he lookesin his rear view mirror the laughter turns to apprehension as he recognizes Amos from the news stories on TV. “Son, turn around and face forward and don’t look back.”

  “But, Dad, he can’t…....”

  “Don’t argue with me, Jimmy, just do what I said. I’ll explain later.”

  Jimmy obeys and dad tells his wife what he just saw. A Border Patrol officer is walking by her side of the car so she lowers her window and calls him over to the car. “Officer, my husband thinks the man driving the car behind us is one of the men that are being sought for those precious gem robberies and killings. His picture has been all over the news on TV.”

  This officer is a lot sharper than the one in El Paso and immediately calls one of his fellow border patrolmen over and tells him what the woman has told him. One of them goes to the driver’s door and the other to the front passenger’s door and drawing their weapons and aiming them at Amos’s chest start yelling at Amos to slowly open the door and then to put his hands on the dashboard where they can see them and not move. The car in front of Amos has heavily tinted windows so Amos doesn’t see the kid watching him and he has closed his eyes while he is enjoying the relief his scratching is giving him so he never sees the officers approach his car.

  When he hears the shouting, he’s so startled he ducks down to avoid being hit with something. He doesn’t think about doing it. It’s just a natural reaction. His thinking kicks in a few seconds later, but when he sees the Glock in his ankle holster he stops thinking and his preservation instincts take over. He draws the gun from its holster and comes up shooting at the officer on the passenger side of the car. One of his bullets catches the officer in his left forearm and then Amos takes a couple in his right shoulder from the officer on the driver’s side of the car and he screams out in pain, but Amos doesn’t drop his gun. Instead, he turns to take a shot at the officer that has shot him, but before he can get turned around enough to get a clear shot he takes another bullet in his chest and that takes all the fight out of him.

  He is then easily subdued and cuffed and within minutes the paramedics arrive to take him to the closest hospital under guard of another border patrol man. The two officers that were involved in the shooting are herded off somewhere to be questioned by the head honcho so he’ll be able to answer the questions his superior is going to be asking him.

  It’s SOP for any officer involved shooting for the officer to be repeatedly bombarded with questions addressing the whats, whys and how comes of the situation. It’s definitely no picnic, but something that must be done to assure that officers know and adhere to proper procedure and don’t become blasé about putting a slug in someone. If an officer pulls the trigger and it’s determined he shouldn’t have he’s subject to not only disciplinary action but criminal prosecution as well. It’s a nerve wracking experience, one that no officer looks forward to, but it’s part of the job they prefer over any other so they live with it.

  Mickey gets this bit of news at home around nine in the evening when he’s awakened from a sound sleep in front of his TV by his cell phone ringing. He’d been watching one of those new sitcoms that are supposed to be hilarious according to the promos, but he was bored into slumber land.

  It’s his buddy Tony Appecelli. “You sound like I woke you up?”

  “You did.”

  “Well, this time I have some good news. One of the guys you’ve been looking for, Amos Kadden, has been found in San Diego trying to cross the border. He’s been shot up a little, but he’ll survive. You’re to call a Captain Hendrickson for the details and to discuss what is to be done with him. I’ll leave
his number on your desk and you can call him tomorrow, but I thought I’d make your night by giving you the news now.”