by Dale Nelson
“I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself,” he said and took a sip, leaning against the back of the bar. Now, he was stalling for time until Hugh called him back so he decided to indulge her. “You wanted to ask a question, so go ahead and ask.”
“The morning after LeGrande’s house burned down, we showed up at your house to arrest you, but you were nowhere to be found. Where were you?”
“This seems highly irregular.”
“You were adamant the first time we spoke that someone was trying to frame you and that you weren’t really Jack Burdette. If that’s true, it seems like it would be in your best interests to convince me of it.”
“Is this all off the record?”
“I’m not a reporter, Mr. Fischer, I’m a federal agent. Anything you say to me is on the record. But you’re also not under arrest. Call it a curiosity.”
Jack had no experience with her side of the law, but all of this still felt very off to him.
“I had dinner with a friend in downtown Sonoma and then we had a couple bottles of wine. I crashed in his spare bedroom.” Jack landed at Sonoma County Airport just before ten and met Hugh for a drink and a late supper. He made sure to pay the check with his credit card so his name appeared next to a timestamp. Then, he and Hugh went back to Coughlin’s and got proper drunk. Jack teetered on telling Coughlin everything but didn’t.
“Lucky you,” was all Danzig said.
Less luck and more Rusty burning several favors to learn that they’d gotten a warrant and were coming for him.
“My neighbor called me and said there were a bunch of police at my door that morning. I had to tell him that you people got the address wrong. I hope you can appreciate how embarrassing that was.”
Danzig was launching into her rejoinder when Jack cut her off. “I told Highway Patrol all of this when they interviewed me about Paul Sharpe. You know all of this, so what are you doing here?”
Danzig was opening her mouth to respond when the door opened and a man walked through.
Coughlin could not have gotten there that quickly, and this man was much, much larger.
“I’m sorry, we’re closed,” Jack said, as the man stepped through the doorway.
Danzig half-twisted to face him.
“I’m not here for wine,” came the reply. His English was good, but there was no mistaking the Eastern European varnish on the words. Mostly the emphasis on the “r” that was almost like gravity sculpted the sound. The man took exactly four long strides, putting him in the center of the room, a pistol already in his hand.
“I’m a Federal Age—”
“I don’t care,” the man said, cutting her off. He fired.
Agent Danzig was between Jack and the stranger, so he couldn’t see where the gunshot hit her, but the agent folded with the impact and fell to the floor with little more than a light but forceful, “uh” escaping her lips.
“Put your hands behind your head, Burdette.”
The face was familiar, but Jack didn’t know from where. Was this someone he’d done business with?
“Who are you?” Jack asked when his hands were laced at the base of his skull.
“I think you know.”
“I think I don’t,” Jack replied sarcastically.
“Milan Radić. I believe you knew my protégé, Ozren Stolar.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jack said aloud, simply losing all composure. Then, loud enough for Radić to hear, “How are you not dead?” Of which, Jack was genuinely curious. He’d seen Rusty put three shots right in Radić’s chest, and then Jack had checked his pulse. Which, admittedly, he’d only ever seen done on television and now realized he’d probably felt the wrong part of the Serb’s neck.
“I was awake, barely conscious, as you and your friends discussed things by the porch. I know all about Hassar. That’s how I found you here.”
“But, Rusty’s people,” he asked, flicking his eyes down to Danzig’s crumpled form on the ground. She was lying in a kind of fetal position, and he could see blood pooling on the floor. He had no idea what that meant, though, since he was obviously a poor interpreter of the thin line between life and death.
“They’re Italian,” Radić said by way of an answer and lifted his shoulders as if to add, “What do you expect?” This could mean he bribed his way out, overpowered and killed them, or simply walked off while they were having a smoke break. Whatever the truth was, Radić wasn’t sharing. Somehow, that word didn’t make it back to Rusty. “So, you’ll give me the money that Hassar paid you, and I will leave you to whatever your policeman friend has in store.”
“What an asshole,” Jack said, again under his breath.
“The money, Burdette.”
“What, from the register?” When Radić didn’t react, Jack added, “I obviously don’t have it here.”
“Of course not. You will transfer it.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I will not.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I gotta tell you, you guys are a swell lot of thieves. You and Ozren both just roll in and expect me to hand everything over because you have an accent and a gun.”
“Enough of this. The money, now,” Radić said again, pulling the hammer back on his pistol to emphasize the point.
Jack’s phone rang, and Radić’s eyes moved on instinct to the sound. Without thinking, Jack grabbed the Osprey bottle on the counter and hurled it at Radić. The bottle sailed through the air, spraying wine, and flew right past the side of the Serb’s face, smacking into the wall behind him with a wet crash. On instinct, Radić flinched and turned his head from the flying bottle and subsequent impact. Jack saw a dark flash of motion on the ground as Danzig rolled onto her back, pistol out and tightly gripped in both hands, followed by three precise, clipped shots. A trio of fire-bright flashes burst from the muzzle of Danzig’s small pistol, and the tasting room filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder. The first shot hit Radić just above the sternum, the second a few inches higher just below the neck, and the third just below the chin. His head snapped back and then exploded as the bullet exited the back of his brain. Radić crumpled to the floor, and this time there was no confusing his fate.
Danzig, still on her back, kept the pistol leveled, though Jack could see from the strained expression on her face that it was causing her considerable pain. He could see now that Radić’s bullet struck her in the right shoulder. Taking that hit at such close range would’ve been enough to send her to the ground, but Danzig had the sense to play dead so that if the opportunity presented itself, she could do exactly as she did.
Danzig was on her feet by the time Jack made his way back around the counter, a clean bar rag in his hand.
She walked over to Radić’s body and slid his pistol out of reach with her right foot.
“Stay over there, Jack,” she said and moved around Radić’s body. She knelt without taking her eyes off Burdette and felt for a pulse. Satisfied that the Serb was indeed dead this time, she walked over to where she’d kicked Radić’s gun and picked it up with a pen, careful not to touch it with her hand. Danzig walked over to the bar and set the gun on the counter. She turned to Burdette.
“Sure you don’t want that glass of wine now?” Jack asked.
“Who was that?”
“His name is Milan Radić. He’s a Serbian thief, works with The Pink Panthers.”
“What was he doing here?” There was the faraway look in her eyes that people got when they were concentrating on something besides the conversation in progress.
“I’m starting to think I’ve got an idea, but maybe why don’t you tell me what you’re really doing here, Agent Danzig, because you aren’t following a hunch. And I just now noticed that you’re not here with your partner.”
“I got an anonymous tip that said if I showed up here tonight, I’d catch you making the exchange of the Carlton jewels to someone matching his description.” She thumbed at Radić.
&
nbsp; “That anonymous tip was Reginald LeGrande.”
“Of course it was,” she snapped, apparently annoyed at him connecting an obvious dot.
“So, LeGrande tips you to be here tonight, and then he dimes me to Radić, telling him to wait until you’re inside and then take us both out. That effectively kills the investigation, right?”
Danzig shook a negative. “Not really, but I can see where he’d think that. We’re after him for forgery, and that’s a different division than me, but LeGrande wouldn’t know that. He’s got immunity from CHP because he’s been their informant for so long, but we’re looking at him for the forgery. I can see, though, from his line of thinking how he’d conclude that killing me would kill the investigation. He’s probably assuming that with you and me dead, the blame goes to Radić, and he’s cleared of any involvement.”
Jack didn’t say anything in response.
“What’s Radić’s angle here?” Danzig asked.
“Reginald probably promised him a share of the jewels.”
“But,” she said, in a quizzical tone, “he mentioned money.”
There was a bitter and hilarious irony here, Jack thought. Reginald tried to set up Jack and Danzig to get killed by a Serbian gangster so that he could walk free, and it never would have mattered because he didn’t plan to kill the right cop. Reginald also didn’t know that Radić overheard the discussion about the arrangement with Hassar, so when the Serb showed up here, he planned to just cut out Reginald entirely.
A knot formed in Jack’s stomach, and it was a heavy, cold thing. Selling him out to the police was one thing, but Jack would never have thought Reginald would set him up to be murdered. There was just no honor among assholes anymore.
“Just so we’re clear,” Danzig said in a flat tone, “I don’t want you to think that this is one of those ‘moral dilemma’ situations where I let you go because you distracted him.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her face soured with annoyance that she was actually going to have to go through the effort of explaining it to him. Danzig motioned to Radić’s body with her free hand. “Your friend there basically confirmed everything I’ve been saying. I can’t let you walk.”
“Seems like the thing to do in this situation, saving your life and all.”
“You’re a criminal,” Danzig said, as though she were explaining something to a child after a string of “but whys.”
“Am I?”
“Semantics,” she said through a grunt of pain. “You’re wanted for over twenty jewelry thefts in Europe, not to mention the Carlton InterContinental.”
“Am I?” Jack asked, and she shot him an incredulous look in response. “No crime was committed, Agent Danzig.” Jack paused, and a smirk broke across his mouth. “What’s the short form of that? Agent, Special Agent, what?”
“Special Agent Danzig is fine.”
“Jesus, no wonder you people never get anywhere.”
“This is over. I’m arresting you for Carlton InterContinental heist. I’ll have the Sonoma County Sheriff remand you into custody until I can have you transported to San Francisco.”
“Like I said, no crime was committed,” Jack said matter-of-factly.
“What are you talking about?”
“I was paid to do it.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
“By the owner,” he said slowly. “That’s what Radić was talking about.”
Danzig formed a response but stopped before the words left. Jack’s three words clearly short-circuited her synapses.
“So far as I know, all I did was relocate those jewels at a time and place as determined by their rightful owner. He got wind that someone was going to steal them,” Jack paused and let his words hang in the air, “so he hired me to get them first.”
“That’s ludicrous,” she shot back. “He’d have just hired more security guards.”
“Have you seen how these guys operate? The Panthers?” Jack asked, incredulous. “They smash Audis into storefronts and then wave MP-5s at people. You really think a couple extra unarmed French rent-a-cops are going to stop that? I was an insurance plan, nothing more.”
“You really expect me to believe that?”
“Would I admit it if it wasn’t? Ari Hassar wasn’t going to trust his collection to a couple extra French guards, so when he thought he didn’t have any other options, he called me. He wasn’t going to lose face by cancelling the show, and I suspect he probably wanted the publicity. Or the notoriety. In those circles, I’m not even sure there’s a difference.”
“How did he know he was going to get robbed?”
“Ask him,” Jack said, shrugging. “But consider that most of his security staff are ex-Mossad. You do the math.”
“Even if what you say is true, you’re still aiding in a conspiracy to commit insurance fraud on a pretty massive scale.”
Jack only shrugged. “Whatever he did after I gave them back is entirely up to him, and I’m not party to it. Besides, if that’s true, you’re talking about dollar values equivalent to the economies of some countries. Neither Hassar nor his insurers are going to publicly admit what happened, and you don’t have the jurisdiction to make the inquiry. As for your friends at Europol, something tells me Hassar probably has that covered.” Jack paused to let that sink in. “The insurer is going to go along with something that might look a little ‘gray area’ but is, essentially, not illegal. They’re more worried about the perception that they’re honoring their obligations, and they know that no gem business that operates at that level is entirely clean. You know what’s happening to Hassar’s business right now? It’s skyrocketing because of the notoriety. People love to be a part of something they think is just a little south of shady. All this is to say that if you go barking up any trees, you’re not going to find any leaves.”
Jack paused again when he saw the confused look on Danzig’s face, and then he realized that his metaphor didn’t make any sense.
“Hassar is probably making arrangements with his insurers to pay that money back very quietly as we speak.” That part was entirely fiction, but Danzig was too stunned to pick up on it.
“What about all of the jobs LeGrande said you pulled,” she asked.
“Who?”
“Don’t get cute, Jack.”
“You ever see a James Bond movie?”
“Of course,” she said, sounding irritated.
“So they’ve been making these movies for what, fifty-sixty years now? About every ten years or so there’s a new 007, but the films,” Jack wagged a finger with a rabbi’s precision, “never acknowledge this. So, there’s this theory going around for the last couple years that James Bond isn’t one guy. It’s actually a code name for a bunch of different spies. See, that’s how they explain away the fact that someone named James Bond has been assassinating the enemies of the Crown since the sixties.” Jack paused a moment. “So, you’re trying to tell me that a thief named Jack Burdette had this long and storied career and is wanted in connection with twenty some odd heists in Europe or elsewhere, and you make it sound like this is just the tip of some great criminal iceberg. You know what that makes me think?”
“I can only imagine,” Danzig said flatly, her voice oozing annoyance.
“Maybe Jack Burdette is just a name that thieves use to confuse the shit out of people like you.”
Danzig had no response, and they both knew it.
After the fire, there was no credible evidence beyond LeGrande’s testimony that Frank Fischer was actually Jack Burdette. Danzig showed up there on a last, desperate hope that she could find something to connect him, but any possibility of that had bled out on the floor.
“How does Paul Sharpe fit into all this?”
“If I had to guess? Reginald probably told him that Kingfisher would be an easy mark. It might even have been a grander scheme on his part to increase his share and spread his risk around. Sharpe found out you guys were after LeGrande and went after
him to cover his tracks. You guys will have a fun time untying that knot.”
Danzig shot him a look that was a slow, acid burn but said nothing. Then, she holstered her pistol and pulled out her phone. Jack didn’t know who she dialed, but he assumed it was the Sonoma County Sherriff. Danzig identified herself as a federal agent and said one suspect was down and another was in custody, that she’d need local law enforcement and a paramedic.
Jack picked up his own phone and hit the button to redial Coughlin’s missed call.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling my attorney.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t fucking trust you.”
Coughlin picked up on the second ring, and Jack told him Danzig was here, contrary to their understanding with the FBI, and to get over to the winery immediately. Best to let the lawyer’s blood get to a solid boil on the way over.
No one said a word until they could hear the sirens approaching in the distance.
“Are you listening to me?”
“No,” Jack admitted.
“Seriously, how do you function?”
Jack shot her a sideways look. “Shouldn’t you be conserving your strength? You just got shot.”
“I’m aware. Asshole.” Danzig grimaced as a bolt of pain crashed over her face, contorting the lines into awkward angles. She held a bar cloth against the bullet wound. “I just told you I’m going to catch you someday.”
“Not a cabernet fan?”
Danzig closed her eyes and sighed heavily. “Your friend, Robert Deutsch? He’s good, but he hasn’t covered all of his tracks. Not as well as he thinks he has, at least. It’s a matter of time. When I get him, I’ll have you.”
“Robert Deutsch?” Jack asked, suddenly uneasy. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t know anyone by that name.”
