The School of Turin

by Dale Nelson

  Those idiots were on their own now.

  Whatever unfathomable, cosmic stupidity possessed one of them to not only sneak a weapon on this job, but then to actually use it, cost Jack and the others at least two minutes inside the jewelry store and probably reduced their take by several million dollars. Their source said that the full contents were worth upwards of eight. Jack estimated they got about half. To say nothing of the panic they caused. Jack’s plan called for them getting in and out without most of the hotel knowing about it. Now, the police would be on their way.

  Jack put his weight behind the door and pushed it open. Cool, wet air hit his face and wrapped around his body. Rue Cambon was a small, one lane alley that ran along the west side of the hotel, looking like a fissure between canyons. He moved out of the way just in time as both Anton and Alonso crashed out right behind him. Alarms started sounding. The door snapped shut behind him with a resolute, mechanical force, and a lock engaged. That would be a security system—one their source hadn’t warned them about. If they’d been just thirty seconds slower, they’d be trapped inside. Jack pulled on the door to be sure. It didn’t even rattle against a deadbolt. That sealed the fates for the three still inside.

  He and Remy were going to have a chat about this when it was all over. He’d have planned this job differently if he had known about the new security measures. Remy sure as hell should’ve known. And he absolutely would not have brought those three rookies along if he had.

  They came up on a line of scooters pushed up against the building. Jack grabbed his scooter and mounted it. They had been his idea. He didn’t trust anyone in this crew to be the wheel on this job. Rue Cambon was a busy, single lane road that would have required precise timing and execution to pull off a getaway without drawing attention to themselves. It was just an extra complication that Jack didn’t think was worth the risk, or that any of those fools had the skill to do.

  “Ray, what about the others?” Alonso asked, looking back at the building. He knew Jack by the name “Raymond Carver.” Jack was traveling under the alias “Russell Macaulay,” though no one on the crew needed to know that.

  “We can’t just leave them there.”

  “Yes, we can, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.” Jack leveled a hard stare at his partners in response to their astonished expressions. “They didn’t follow the plan,” he said flatly. “And they didn’t follow my orders. I said no fucking guns. We should have been three blocks from here before the alarms hit. They’re on their own. We need to get to the safe house fast and get the hell out of here.”

  “What if they talk?” Alonso asked.

  “They don’t know enough to be dangerous.” Jack pointed down the street. “Let’s go. Take different routes. Don’t stop for anything. I’ll wait fifteen minutes at the safe house, and then I’m gone.”

  Jack sat down on the Vespa, turned the key, and made a quick look around. The curtains on the ground-level windows were drawn, and no one above him would get a good enough look at his face, so he removed the ski mask, dropped it in his backpack, and sped south through the baroque canyon of the Rue Cambon. He jetted down the street for three blocks and turned west. Jack looked back as he did. Anton continued on that street, and it looked like Alonso went north, against traffic.

  Jack turned back to his own escape. The streets were filled with evening traffic, but still he raced, darting and weaving between the slower cars. The sidewalks were too filled with people to consider. He ruefully noted two jewelry shops as he passed that looked like easier marks than the job he’d just done. Jack crossed a bridge over the Seine and vectored back east once he was over the river. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, mostly so he could listen for pursuers. He could hear sirens in the far distance, above the horns and engines, above the nasal, insect-like drone of the Vespa’s motor.

  The safe house was just over two and a half miles from the hotel in the neighborhood knows as Panthéon, chosen because of the large student population. New faces wouldn’t draw attention. They would consolidate the take, and Jack would slip out of Paris in a clean car and drive to meet his fence in Turkey. They’d get forty-five cents on the dollar or each gem and up to sixty for watches. Jack would take forty-five percent. Alonso and Anton would each get twenty percent, the three idiots ten, and five to Remy. Jack would wire each of his partners their share once he had payment from the fence. That’s how it was supposed to work. No one else had any connections to move the merchandise, so Jack left them with little choice. Accept the terms or walk.

  In the old days, everyone got an equal share regardless of their role on the team. But then, that’s why they’d called him “Gentleman” Jack. When everyone was paid the same, everyone was a lot less likely to sell out their teammates because they weren’t happy with their cut. Of course, Jack also had a stable of reliable people to choose from, people he trusted.

  Those days were long gone.

  Now, he worked under a series of aliases and rarely with the same people more than a few times.

  If Alonso and Anton could make the safe house in time, Jack would cut them a new deal, increase everyone’s share by ten percent since they didn’t have those three morons to split it with.

  Fifteen minutes was a long time to wait.

  Too long.

  The police were already responding. The three idiots would be in custody soon if they weren’t already. They could only give a bogus name and physical description, but it was still something.

  Forget it.

  It was time to move.

  Jack would hit the safe house just long enough to grab his passport and go-bag. If he ran into the other two, he’d split the take, and they could find their own fence. If not, they’d figure it out. Jack would burn the Russell Macaulay identity as soon as he was safe and never use it again.

  The red flares of sunset flashed between buildings and down cross streets. Jack pulled his scooter around a slowing Peugeot, veering slightly into the oncoming lane. Horns screamed at him from both sides of the street, and Jack did his best to block them out. He swerved again, now straddling the dividing line between the two directions of traffic, accelerated, and looked for a gap. He needed to get off the streets and ditch the bike. Too many people had seen him running out of the Ritz and getting onto a scooter. He assumed the three idiots would be arrested immanently, and the police would be pressing hard to find out where their accomplices were headed.

  Jack had ridden and walked this route many times over the last week prepping for the job. He knew the way well and had memorized the landmarks and the buildings. He turned off Boulevard Saint-Germain and pulled onto a curb, stopping. Paris Descartes University was on the next block over, and the sidewalk was cluttered with bicycles and scooters belonging to students. Jack removed his black jacket and replaced it with a gray and white packable jacket and ball cap from his backpack.

  He walked a block with his black jacket tucked under his arm and then ducked into an alley where he dropped it into a dumpster. He kept the gloves on. It was a damp, cold spring evening, and they wouldn’t look out of place. Then he crossed the street and walked through a small park, where he paused beneath a tree. Jack looked down at his watch. It had been seventeen minutes since he’d gotten on the scooter. If the Parisian police were any good, the three would be in handcuffs and in the middle of a field interrogation to find out who their accomplices were. There would be witness interviews, and it wouldn’t take long to figure out that there had been others involved and that they had gotten away. The only thing Jack had in his favor was that the hotel was huge and there were a lot of people to work through.

  The safe house should be secure for maybe an hour.

  Jack positioned himself across the street from the apartment building where they’d rented a room and watched. It took every instinct of self-control he’d honed over the years not to scramble across the street, grab his things, and go. The adrenaline pumping through his veins didn’t help. But Jack also didn’t want to
get caught in an apartment with no exits while French police poured in, so he forced himself to calm, to watch. In the far distance, Jack could hear the ever-present drone of sirens that were the backdrop of every major city around the world. It was impossible to tell if they were responding to the Hôtel Ritz or were just part of the Parisian background noise. What he was listening for was whether they got closer.

  Night descended on Paris, and the city took on the ethereal, yellow-orange glow for which it was nicknamed. Jack checked his watch again. It had been five minutes since he took up his post across the street. He hadn’t heard anything from either of his companions or seen any indication the police were on their way. He waited for a lull in traffic and darted across the street, both hands on the straps of his backpack and the several million dollars of jewels within. Jack was halfway through the small lobby when the street outside erupted with sirens and flashing lights.

  Two

  Jack had seconds.

  He crossed the lobby to a door on the far wall, which he’d seen the building’s facilities personnel use during the day. It wasn’t locked. Jack slid through that door and flipped the light switch. The first thing he checked was the mechanism to lock the door. That lock required a key to engage on both sides, so that wouldn’t do him any good. The next question was the jewels. If the police responded this quickly, it meant that someone talked. Only someone young and stupid would give up their one tradable piece of information before they talked to a lawyer.

  Which brought him back to the jewels.

  Jack assumed the police now had a description of him, so the net was closing. His passport was upstairs, hidden in a cutout. Normally, he’d have kept his things in a separate location, but this had been his safe house. They hadn’t agreed to bring on the other three until very late in the game, and Jack didn’t think it would be an issue since he wasn’t planning to stay here past getting his things and leaving. That was proving now to be a critical miscalculation.

  Jack quickly moved to a tall, metal cabinet that contained cleaning and maintenance supplies. He wrapped his arms around the thing and rocked, testing it. It wasn’t secured to the wall behind it. Jack walked it forward several inches by pulling on one side and then the other. He didn’t need much. When he felt like he had enough, he pushed the backpack between the gap. Jack then went to the double doors of the service entrance at the back of the room. He thought briefly about using the hand cart to secure the door, but that would just alert the police that someone had been here. Better to let them find no one and wonder.

  Jack slid out the service door into an alley that was oddly uncovered by the police. The sweet, sticky rank of garbage assaulted his nose. He ran to the end of the alley and emerged onto the sidewalk. Jack turned north and headed toward the Seine, three blocks from his current location. Looking back, he saw a crowd had massed on the corner, inevitably drawn to the sights and sounds of the police. He made his way to the first street and joined a few other pedestrians on the crosswalk who couldn’t be bothered with whatever was happening behind them. He continued north, keeping to the side streets, working his way to the river. Jack took out his phone, a disposable he’d bought for the job, and dialed Anton. The only numbers programmed into any of their phones would be the other burners, so this wouldn’t be good for very long. In the States, he knew the police would need a warrant to trace cell traffic, but he wasn’t sure about France. Jack cleared the last of the buildings, and the glowing splendor of Notre Dame was coming into view.

  Anton picked up on the second ring.

  “Anton, it’s Raymond. The safe house is burned. Someone talked.”

  “Already?”

  “Yeah. Look, I don’t want to be on this phone long. I just wanted to give you the warning. Probably best that we all try to find our way out of here on our own. Good lu—”

  “Wait,” he said, sounding frantic. “I have a way out.”

  “Good for you,” Jack said, thinking about his own exit strategy. His one viable passport was in that safe house. The EU had open borders, so he could get to any other member country without one, but he couldn’t get home. He had about a thousand Euro in walking around money in his wallet, a Swiss driver’s license, and his other phone. Normally, he didn’t carry anything on a job that could link him with his life in California and the alias he lived under. Or his real name, for that matter. But, in this case, everything on that phone was encrypted, and he used a special program to make phone calls, which required face recognition to open and unlock. Plus, the phone itself was for “work,” meaning it didn’t have any data, calls, numbers, apps or texts that associated him with his alternate identity.

  Jack saw two options, and neither of them was good. He could go to one of the US consulates outside of France and make up a story that he was here on business and was mugged, the dirty thieves making off with his passport. Italy or Spain would be the best bet for that. The downside was that it would place Frank Fischer, the name he lived under, in Europe. It might be possible for the State Department to verify whether a passport issued in the name of “Frank Fischer” was used to leave the US recently. Plus, it put unnecessary pressure on an otherwise clean identity.

  The second option was to call Rusty.

  “Ray?”

  Jack shook his head and looked around. He was so lost in thought thinking about what to do, it took a moment for him to remember he was still on the phone. “Yeah, sorry. I was thinking about my own escape plan.” Anton seemed like a competent thief. Jack hoped he got out.

  “Look, I’m working on a way out of France. If you want, you can come with.”

  “I don’t,” Jack started to say. He paused. He had no place to stay and no clothes. He had limited funds. He could only travel by land because he didn’t have a passport, which meant stealing a car, renting one, or buying a train ticket. Anton made it out with about a third of their take. If he got about what Jack did, he’d get around two million. That was still a four hundred thousand dollar payout, after the fence got his cut. “I’m listening,” Jack said.

  “I was saying that I’m working on a way out of France and wanted to offer you a ride.”

  “My passport is in the safe house.”

  “I’ve got a way around that,” Anton said.

  “I’ll make you a deal. If you can get me out of France, I’ll take you to my fence and help you move whatever you came away with from the hotel. We’ll split it down the middle.”

  “Deal.”

  “Great. Listen, I’m going to get rid of this phone. I’m going to give you another number.” Jack paused. “Where are you right now?”

  “I don’t know Paris very well, but I’m on the north side of the river,” Anton said. “I got stuck in traffic after we separated. There was an accident. I couldn’t even move the scooter between other cars, and there was too much shit on the sidewalk, so I just ditched it and walked. I was running toward the safe house when you called. I’d have been arrested if you hadn’t.”

  Jack gave Anton the number for his other phone. Anton told him he needed a couple hours to lock down their transport and that he’d be in touch as soon as that was ready. When the call was done, Jack popped the SIM card out of the phone, looked around and tossed the phone over the railing and into the Seine. He dropped the SIM card in the first trash can he found.

  His ties with the larger team were severed now. He liked Alonso well enough, they’d worked together for years, but there was no loyalty there. This was business.

  Jack doubled back several times to make sure that he wasn’t followed. He eventually made his way to a quiet, dark café. It looked like it was a coffee shop or a bakery by day, but now the lights were dim, and they were playing jazz. He grabbed a table about halfway through the place, with both a clear view of the front and back doors, and ordered a glass of burgundy. He nursed the wine over the course of an hour, more something to calm his nerves and give him a reason to be in there. Jack needed to keep his wits about him. By the time he finish
ed his glass at about eight-thirty, it had been two hours since they’d fled the Ritz.

  So, why wait here?

  The police would search the safe house, but how well?

  Before he left to get in position that afternoon, Jack wiped everything down with bleach and washed all of the linens. His go-bag and passport were hidden in a cutout in the wall of a bedroom, hidden behind a chest of drawers. He had to get that before the police found it, otherwise they’d not only have his Russel Macaulay passport, but also his fingerprints.

  Jack was slipping, and he knew it.

  This was a mistake that he’d never would have made in jobs past.

  What he should have done, what he would have done if he’d been on top of it would be to leave the go-bag and his passport in a clean car, stashed in another location on the escape route. Jack would have consolidated the take before getting on the scooters, and then he would have disappeared, wiring the money to his crew once he was paid. In those days, he also had someone to not only find the jobs for him, but also provide a list of vetted and veteran thieves to work with. Jack had a reliable stable of personnel to choose from, some of whom he’d even considered friends.

  Until the Carlton job.

  After that, “Gentlemen” Jack Burdette became the most famous thief in the world. He’d worked hard to keep his involvement in that affair secret, but the list of thieves who could have pulled that job off wasn’t deep to begin with, and it didn’t take long for people to start putting it together. It made it hard for him to work under an alias. Jack wasn’t sure, but he suspected that the others on their Ritz crew at least had an idea of who he really was.

  The server came by and asked Jack if he wanted anything else. “Moment,” he said, his attention fixed on the television that hung above the bar. He’d been steadily watching the story of the botched heist unfold on CNN International’s website. Four were in custody now. Apparently, Alonso had been captured because he was going the wrong way on a one-way street. He would be able to link Jack to a half-dozen jobs they’d done together over the last several years, if he decided to roll.