A Legitimate Businessman

by Dale Nelson

  This was an emergency fund, a kind of golden parachute that could only exist in the kinds of orbits that men like Hassar occupied. Though he was rebuilding his businesses and the diamond market was gradually coming back around, there was the legitimate possibility that Hassar would never fully recover, and so this three-hundred-million-dollar scheme, minus expenses of course, was to be a fail-safe, just in case he wasn’t able to bring his empire back into the black. He would be able to sell off the businesses he had and live out his days as his contemporaries would expect of him, sparing himself the considerable embarrassment of having to admit he’d gone broke. Instead, he’d appear a shrewd investor with strong hedges against failing business and global instability. He’d win where his peers had lost everything.

  As with LeGrande, Jack initially rebuffed Hassar’s offer. He had a winery to run. Jack was given a number to call if he changed his mind.

  Then, Paul Sharpe.

  Jack waited until he was down to his last option. When he knew that he had no better choice, and when his faith in the criminal justice system was proven hollow, Jack called that number and told them he was in.

  Jack accepted the deal. He negotiated them up to thirty million from the laughable starting price of fifteen. Hassar believed that Jack’s initial refusal and later acceptance was all an elaborate negotiating tactic and that it was a shrewd, audacious play.

  Hassar’s man appeared at the once and future mogul’s side, bent low, and exchanged some words in Hebrew. Then, he disappeared. Hassar turned to Jack in his chair. “I am informed that we have transferred the agreed upon funds into your bank in Vanuatu, less a bit for some stones that I understand ended up on the streets of Cannes.”

  “How much less are we talking,” Jack asked cautiously.

  “One dollar.” And then he practically bellowed, enjoying the expression on Jack’s face.

  Twenty-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand dollars. Actually, as Jack thought on it, it was pretty fucking funny.

  “I must say that I have enjoyed being a ‘victim’ of the great, Gentleman Jack Burdette.”

  Jack didn’t like where this was going. Of course, Hassar would only want to be stolen from by the best and might enjoy the cache that brought him in certain circles. Jack was reminded of the Warhol hanging downstairs.

  “Well,” Jack said with a disarming smile, “I hope you didn’t enjoy it too much. I‘m afraid this one won’t be making my resume.”

  “A pity,” Hassar guffawed. “You’re now the most successful jewelry thief in history and you cannot even talk about it. It’s a shame, in a way, that no one knows but the two of us.”

  Partially true, Jack corrected silently.

  “It would’ve made a great movie,” Jack allowed. There was no stopping Hassar from talking about this, he knew. If he was going to brag to his billionaire friends that he’d been robbed by the notorious thief Gentleman Jack Burdette, it would be worse if he had to explain to his billionaire friends who Jack actually was. The questions would come, certainly, long after the international law enforcement community resigned this to be a cold case, after the story faded from the headlines, and after Hassar’s promises to “find those responsible” became little more than echoes. There would still be questions from Hassar’s peers who would ask, rightly, how it could be that his personal security staff, some of the most highly trained intelligence operatives in the world with access to Hassar’s seemingly limitless resources, could not discover the perpetrator’s identity? He could only hope that Hassar’s discretion would outweigh his vanity, his bluster, and his compulsion to brag about the operation.

  There would also be questions from the press, typically triggered by the anniversaries of such events. Would someone get the itch to investigate the theft, already being described as the “Crime of the Century.” At least it’s a new century, Jack thought ruefully.

  He stood, straightened, and then buttoned his jacket. “Mr. Hassar, it’s been a distinct pleasure doing business with you.” Jack extended a hand. “I think, in other circumstances, you and I would’ve been great friends...but I’ll be damned if I’d ever play poker with you.”

  Hassar laughed heartily, stood, and accepted his handshake. The mogul wished him good fortune and hoped their paths crossed again in the future.

  Hassar’s man saw Jack out to the elevator, again saying nothing until he pressed the elevator’s lobby button. Jack fought the urge to ask him what his name was. “Good luck, Mr. Burdette, or whomever you may be,” he said softly. “Walk with God.”

  Jack got the GranTurismo from the valet and drove back to the Rome Cavalieri by a circuitous route that added about another fifteen minutes onto the trip. His eyes scanned the rearview mirror for possible tails, but he knew it would be next to impossible to spot one car during the chaotic crush of noontime Roman traffic. He’d be lucky to get the Maserati back without a ding in it, let alone spot a tail. Still, he drove in the most nonsensical, haphazard way back to the hotel. If anyone was following him, they’d think he was blind or the most inefficient tourist in history, or both.

  Jack spent the rest of the day inside at the Rome Cavalieri, mostly in his room watching the news and contemplating what to do about Reginald. The theft remained the leading story, even though none of the news outlets had anything new to report. The investigation was now turning inward to the hotel staff, with speculation mounting that it was an inside job. How else could security have been that incompetent to leave the salon’s street-side door unlocked? Hassar did not appear on camera, but a spokesman released a statement that said he was cooperating fully with the authorities—Jack actually laughed out loud at that—and that they too had questions about the hotel’s handling of the matter, even though the exhibition’s security was ultimately their responsibility. Jack knew that the finger-pointing was part of Hassar’s strategy to make this as murky as possible. It was also exactly the move a man in his position would make.

  Part of the arrangement was that Hassar would assume responsibility for covering tracks at the hotel.

  That solved, or at least mitigated, Jack focused on how to deal with Reginald. Having roughly fifteen million to work with, he could attempt to pay off LeGrande. The challenge there was that Reginald would be expecting a significantly larger sum. Fencing jewels, both finished pieces and loose stones, typically netted between thirty and forty percent of their market value. If Jack were selling these himself, there’s no way that he’d be able to move the entire take at once. Rather, it would’ve been cautiously done over the course of a several years and with a variety of different fences mostly, if not exclusively, in Eastern Europe or Asia, where such transactions could be conducted with greater ease and far less scrutiny. Were he to sell these on his own, Jack would’ve been looking at something between fifty and sixty million dollars total profit, only spread out over five years. That’s what Reginald would be expecting.

  Jack snapped his fingers. That might be a way to buy some time. Reginald would know that lead time probably as well as Jack, if not better. He’d know that there was no way Jack would be walking away with the full amount, and he’d also know there was no way Jack was going to fly back to the States with those stones in his checked baggage. Similarly, Reginald wasn’t about to blackmail Jack like this only to have him hand over the stones themselves and have Reginald assume the risk of fencing them. But would LeGrande be willing to draw this out over several years, or would he simply demand that Jack liquidate all of his current assets?

  Jack began to wonder how deeply and thoughtfully LeGrande weighed this before launching his blackmail.

  All of the options he devised, Jack just as quickly crossed off his list, for none of them ended in Reginald either walking away or lining his pockets with the expected amount. “What if I just pay the fucker off?” Jack finally asked himself. Hand Reginald the money Hassar paid him and walk away. Was fifteen million dollars worth it to have a chance at a legitimate life, a public life, and a life that inc
luded Megan, in whatever way that meant?

  Yes. Unequivocally.

  But, if he paid Reginald off, how did he save Kingfisher? They were still ten million in the hole, and even if they got the full amount back from Sharpe, which was unlikely, the winery would be bankrupt by the time the check cleared. Perhaps they could find a bank that would stake them. Certainly, Hugh could put him in a room with someone who would at least hear them out, though what they were asking for was still an incredible sum.

  The question was if Jack had the ability to lead them out of their situation even if he did get the money. He was finally able to admit to himself that the winery’s problems were largely his own making. Instead of trusting people who knew better than him, Jack assumed that running a winery was a complex operation and therefore equivalent to running other complex operations. He, to his fault, didn’t draw a distinction between the kinds. Jack micromanaged nearly every detail in an effort to appear that he was an expert businessman. He also put his trust in people who didn’t deserve it, and they all had paid the price.

  Jack dismissed the idea of a loan and, by extension, the possibility of paying Reginald off. LeGrande would know that Jack couldn’t have moved the stones this quickly unless he had a single buyer lined up in advance, and that would immediately draw suspicion and speculation. Reginald would press for the details because he would rightly deduce that Jack had something up his sleeve. Worse, Reginald would think there was another well to tap.

  Jack was almost willing to let him try.

  He dialed guest services and had them send up a Nero d’Avola.

  He was suddenly very tired. Tired of running, tired of the balancing act, and tired of the questions for which there were no good answers.

  Sixteen

  Jack nursed the bottle over a period of several hours, taking care that he kept his wits, if not about him, in sight. He remembered a quote from Hemingway that he pulled out of an in-flight magazine once in an article about Key West. “Write drunk, edit sober.” The author’s point was that Hemingway’s creative juices flowed better when the actual juice was in his veins. Maybe that worked for Pappy, but this wine wasn’t unlocking any brilliant ideas.

  A second bottle after dinner similarly obscured any genius.

  Jack had an eight a.m. flight the next morning out of Fiumicino with a connection in Frankfurt and then direct to SFO, landing around four in the afternoon Pacific Time. That alone should have given him pause on the second bottle, but Jack could not quiet his mind. He convinced himself it bought him extra time to devise a plan to handle Reginald.

  Jack was halfway into the second and just a shade south of drunk when Megan called. The clock was pushing midnight. She was frantic and confused.

  “What’s wrong?” he said slowly, concentrating on each word.

  “Frank, two people from the FBI are here. They demanded to see you and wanted to know if I knew anything about a guy named Jack Burdette. Do you know what this is about?”

  Jack’s blood turned to ice, and he felt a queer, queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach. His heart rate immediately redlined. He’d heard people describe accounts where they were drunk or high, recounting that they had some kind of sobering event where they somehow had total control of their mental faculties. This was bullshit. Jack was still half-cocked, and he knew he was still half-cocked, but the fuzzy-robe feeling you got after drinking a bottle of red wine was quickly replaced by a sensation that felt a lot like being on the deck of a ship skippered by a particularly incompetent captain navigating a hurricane. Still, it seemed like someone dunked his head in ice water, and things were all the clearer for it.

  Think fast, Jack.

  “No. No idea. Jack Burdette?” He said the name, rolling it around on his tongue. “Did they say what they wanted him for or why they wanted to talk to me?”

  “They seem to think you know him or know how to find him. They didn’t say what it was for, only that it’s in our best interest if we tell them immediately. They wanted to know when you were coming back and were really pushy about it. I didn’t know what to say. I told them you were in Switzerland on business but would be back in a few days.”

  “Okay, Megan, I want you to call Hugh Coughlin. Call him right now. Tell him everything that happened. Are the FBI people still there?”

  “Yeah, they’re out in the parking lot on their cell phones.”

  “We’ve got nothing to hide and we’ve done nothing wrong, but you already know how I feel about the government. If they don’t have a warrant, they can fuck themselves.”

  “Frank.”

  “Sorry. I just don’t like the thought of them bullying you.” Then he quickly added, “If they talk to you again, tell them that we’re happy to cooperate with them, but it will be in the presence of our attorney. Don’t take no for an answer. If they give you any shit, you tell them that we have every right not to trust them and that they can talk to our lawyer.”

  “Frank,” she said at length, “I don’t know if we want to play hardball with these guys. They’re the FBI, and this is kind of scary.”

  “I know, Meg, but we’re also not going to let them push us around.” Jack pressed his eyelids together and scrunched his face. Maybe he could force the tension out by sheer force of will. He prayed he sounded sober. “Look, we don’t have anything to be afraid of. We haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t know who this guy is or why they think I’d know, but I promise you we’ll get this sorted out as soon as I get home.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I land at four in the afternoon, your time.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Megan promised her next call was going to be to Hugh Coughlin.

  Jack paced the length of his hotel room, furious. He gripped his hands so tightly his fingernails dug into the heels of his palms. It was all he could do to keep from screaming at the top of his lungs. Reginald gave him forty-eight hours, so where in the hell was that? Why didn‘t he honor it?

  After a fast eight minutes, fury, alcohol, and anger beat out discretion.

  He grabbed his Burdette iPhone, powered it on, and dialed Reginald from the encryption program. LeGrande picked up on the third ring, and when he answered, his voice was smug, haughty, like a teacher delivering an answer from the instructor’s edition.

  “Hi, Jack. I wondered when I’d hear from you.”

  “Cut the shit, you lying fuck. You said I had forty-eight hours.”

  At first, all Jack heard on the other side was soft chuckling.

  “What’s so fucking funny, Reginald? I don’t remember making a joke.”

  The chuckling continued for a few beats, and then Reginald deadpanned. “I’m blackmailing you for eighty-five million dollars, and you’re quoting Robert’s Rules. That’s very funny to me.”

  “You said I had forty-eight hours,” Jack repeated through his teeth.

  “You do have forty-eight hours. This was just a little reminder to let you know that I’m serious.”

  “You sent the FBI to my place of business,” Jack said in a low voice.

  His voice even, Reginald said, “I told you I was going to do that. When I didn’t hear from you, as I knew I probably wouldn’t, I set certain things in motion just to make sure you knew it wasn’t an idle threat.” Reginald paused. “This can all be turned around, Jack. Nothing is irreversible, not yet.”

  “What, and live with the FBI hanging over my shoulder for the rest of my life? What am I going to tell my employees? They’re going to need to know why the feds were there asking questions and looking for me.”

  “Tell them whatever you want. I think you’ve got this double life thing down pat, by now.”

  “I’ve got a way into a normal life, and you’re taking it personally. Are you angry that I have a parachute and you don’t, is that what this is about?”

  “Don‘t get sanctimonious with me, Jack. Yeah, you kicked me a couple nickels when I got out of prison, but you forget that they took everything I’d ever made
. Think you could keep your lifestyle up on that?”

  “A couple nickels, huh? I made sure you had something to count besides ten years of probation,” Jack shouted back. “And I made you a lot of money in the years since. I was even going to cut you in on some of this score until you pulled this shit.”

  “Cut me in? I tipped you off to it. You wouldn’t have even known about this if it wasn’t for me.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Jack fired back without thinking. He immediately regretted it. Reginald was forming the words that Jack knew would turn into, “What did you say?” so he immediately applied some misdirection. Jack practically screamed at himself for being so stupid, but he just couldn’t stand the thought of Reginald getting the better of him. He wanted him to know that Reginald wasn’t entitled to damned thing. Wanted him to know that it wasn’t his score. It was never his score.

  Why not just tell him you’re working for Hassar, Jack scolded himself. What did one-upping Reginald get him other than tipping his hand?

  Finally, Jack said, “It wasn’t my fault you went up, Reg, and you sure as hell aren’t making me suffer for it now. You don’t like how your life turned out. I’m sorry, but I’m not paying for your mistakes. Maybe you shouldn’t have taken that job.” Jack had to clamp his mouth shut before the words “like I told you not to” practically bounced off his teeth. This had escalated enough already.

  “Maybe you can give me another lecture on your rules.”

  “I’ve never been caught, have I?” Rusty doesn’t count, Jack told himself. He was already bent by then.

  That laugh again, though this time Jack knew it was forced. “Not yet.”

  Jack’s head swam against the current of betrayal, rage, alcohol, and incomprehension. All he wanted to do was put his hands around LeGrande’s neck and squeeze. If this conversation had happened face-to-face, Jack wasn’t sure he’d have been able to stop himself.

  Blackmail was a sin of an entirely different order.