The Take

He turned the corner and grabbed the first parking space he could find. Five minutes later, he was walking down the ramp to an underground garage beneath the nicest building he could find. He was done with twenty-year-old Peugeots.

The garage was deserted and poorly lit, half the spaces empty. He walked down one row, passing an Audi, an Alfa Romeo, and a very attractive Renault convertible. All were late-model vehicles with electronic ignitions. Without a key or a set of advanced tools, he would be unable to start them. The last car in the row was a canary-yellow Simca work van at least thirty years old. Getting it started wasn’t the problem. He was willing to bet the air-conditioning was even worse than the Peugeot he’d just abandoned. He came closer and noted that the van had a flat rear tire. End of discussion.

A door to the garage opened and he ducked behind the van. Footsteps echoed across the parking lot. A moment later, an engine started. Tires squealed as the car climbed the exit ramp. Silence returned.

It was then that Simon realized he’d been wrong. The Simca wasn’t the last car in the row. Another vehicle was parked behind it, covered by a weathered tarpaulin. By its height and profile, he knew it was a sports car. A Porsche, he guessed, or a Jaguar. With care, he peeled the tarpaulin off the hood. The first thing he saw was a rectangular yellow nameplate with the word “Dino” written on it. The car was a 1972 Ferrari Dino, nearly identical to the vehicle Lucy Brown was—hopefully—working on at that very moment. Color: corsa red. There was no missing this machine when it was on the street.

Kneeling, he checked the tire pressure. Low, but drivable. Even with the tarpaulin, a layer of dust coated the hood. The car had not been driven in at least a year, maybe longer. He put his face to the window. The odometer read 88,000 miles. Doors locked.

Sometimes, he decided, one blended in by standing out. No one would be looking for him in a vintage Italian sports car worth a million dollars. And if they were, too bad. He’d outdrive them.

Simon looked around the garage. He saw no one. He stepped toward the van and snapped off the antenna, dropping it onto the floor and stepping on it, until round became flat, and flat became flatter. He picked up the antenna and deftly fit it between the door and window, closing his eyes, allowing his touch to find the lock and disengage it. He tried the door handle, waiting for the wail of an alarm.

Nothing.

Time was of the essence. He yanked the tarpaulin off the car and dropped it to the ground, then climbed behind the wheel. His hands found the ignition wires. Again, he stripped the wires and wrapped the copper filaments together. The engine sparked. The motor turned over, roaring magnificently, and for the first time in his life, he questioned why Ferraris always had to be so goddamned loud.

The fuel gauge read half full. He had a hundred kilometers before tanking up.

Again, an eye to the door. No one.

He shifted the Dino into first gear and guided it up the ramp and into the sunlight.

A minute later, he was doing eighty down the Avenue du Prado.





Chapter 57



Nikki’s contact at the Marseille police department was named Frank Mazot, a grizzled fifty-year-old detective who headed up the city’s major crimes division, the same team to which she was attached in Paris. Over the years, they’d worked a dozen cases together, ranging from tracking down the Pink Panthers, the Balkan crew that specialized in spectacular heists from haute joaillerie boutiques in Paris and Cannes, to the “Dream Team,” four Marseille-based gangsters best known for robbing a passenger jet of twenty million euros before it took off from the Provence airport.

Mazot was strictly old school. He wore a white shirt and dark suit. He carried his gun in a shoulder holster—a .38 snub-nosed revolver, no less. (“If you need more than five shots to put a man down, you need to learn to shoot better.”) And he always had an unfiltered Gitanes cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

Nikki bounded upstairs to the third floor, stopping at a break room for two coffees before continuing to his office.

“Surprise,” she said as she elbowed his door open. “Look who’s here.”

“Nikki, what in the world?” Mazot jumped to his feet from behind a desk piled high with unruly folders.

“The place is messier than last time I was here.” She set down the coffees as Mazot came around the desk and greeted her with a kiss on each cheek. “Hello, Frank. How are you?”

“You know how it goes. Clear one case, two more pop up.” He picked up a coffee, viewing her from over the top of a pair of smudged bifocals. “Four sugars?”

“How could I forget? I’m surprised you have any teeth left.”

“Good genes,” said Mazot, smiling to reveal shoddy dental work stained a grubby yellow by decades of nicotine and coffee. “What are you doing here, kiddo?”

“Last-minute deal. I’m working the big robbery in town. The Saudi thing. I need your help.”

Mazot lit a cigarette. “So you came all the way down here?”

“You want something done right you have to do it yourself.”

“I do have a phone.”

Nikki smiled. “Maybe I wanted to see you.”

“Bullshit,” said Mazot, harshly enough to make them both laugh. He sat and offered Nikki a seat. The time for pleasantries had ended. “Any leads?”

“I need to poke my nose into your archives.”

“Who’s the lucky fellow?”

“Tino Coluzzi.”

“That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Word was he’d skipped town. Some kind of dispute about a job.” Mazot put two and two together. “Coluzzi’s behind this?”

Nikki shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”

“Or a wild hair?”

“Maybe a little of both.”

“Which is why I haven’t heard from the lieutenant.”

Nikki leaned forward, her arms resting on the desk. She met Mazot’s gaze head-on. “You do what you gotta do.”

Mazot sucked down half the cigarette, stubbing out the butt in an ashtray filled to overflowing. Pushing his bifocals into place, he hunt-and-pecked Coluzzi’s name into the computer. “Write this down.”

Nikki scrambled for a pen and paper, jotting down the file reference. “So you’re not digitized?” she asked, forgetting to hide her frustration. Digging through the archives could take hours.

“We don’t have enough money to pay our detectives on time,” said Mazot. “You think we’re going to waste it scanning old files? You know what we say around here: ‘If you really need to find something, get off your ass and go look for it.’”

“Sounds about right,” said Nikki.

Mazot stood. A favor had been called in, the ledgers evened out. “That it?”

“One more thing,” said Nikki. “It’s personal.”

“Oh?”

Nikki gave Mazot a second name, one that he claimed never to have heard before. He found it easily enough. She wrote down the file reference before following Mazot to the archives in the basement beneath police headquarters.



They found Coluzzi’s files high on a shelf in the far corner of the basement. Mazot stood on his tiptoes to retrieve the storage box and handed it to Nikki. “You’re stronger than I am. You carry it.”

He led the way to a small reading room near the elevator. “All yours,” he said. “Give me a ring when you’re done. I’m at extension forty-nine.”

“Sure thing.”

“And Nikki? If Coluzzi is the one behind the Paris job, don’t forget me. I could use a raise before I retire.”

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