Carat Capers Read online

  BY DAN KELLY

  Carat Capers

  Daniel Kelly

  Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Kelly

  Smashwords Edition

  PUBLISHERS NOTE:

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced , stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  Dan Kelly

  CARAT CAPERS

  Chapter 1

  It’s a beautiful, balmy and peaceful Saturday morning in New York City’s Central Park and homicide detective, Mickey Morretti, is looking forward to spending an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend with family and friends, barbecuing, sipping some suds, sharing funny stories, pitching some horseshoes, throwing some darts and shooting some pool.

  He’s in the park this morning to hook up with his kid sister so they can drive together to their folks’ house out on Long Island. That is where they always hang out on any holiday they have off. His sister, Cheryl, also works for the City, but as an assistant district attorney. He arrests, she prosecutes. The two of them are as close as two peas in a pod. Anybody messes with one of them they’re taking on the other as well. They’re only a year apart in age, he’s 35 and she’s 34, but he’s always teasing her with the kid sister bit. They’re both single, their jobs always getting in the way of developing lasting relationships.

  They agreed to meet at 9:30 this morning which is five minutes away and Cheryl is always on time. Punctuality is an obsession with her, unlike her brother who wears a watch, but hardly ever looks at it. His job is always throwing unanticipated delays in his path so he long ago decided to go with the flow and not worry about things not going according to his time schedule. Today is a rare exception because he doesn’t want to begin his holiday by ticking off his sister.

  True to form, at 9:30 on the dot his sister appears from around the bend in the sidewalk which is hidden by some shrubbery from where he’s sitting on one of the many benches scattered throughout the park. As usual, she’s walking at a pretty good clip and appears to be deep in thought about something amusing, judging from the smile on her face.

  The two of them couldn’t deny they are related. They could almost be mistaken for twins they look so much alike. Both are close to six feet tall and possess athletic bodies, eyes so brown they are almost black, attractive faces that can show emotion or be as blank as a Texas Hold ‘Em gambler’s and skin the color of a light summer tan.

  “Hey, big brother, you ready for some fun filled down time?”

  “An Army couldn’t keep me away.”

  Seconds later he found out just how naïve he could be.

  Out of nowhere a Cadillac Escalade comes tearing through the park with three NYPD patrol cars on its tail, sirens blaring, warning lights flashing. Before they are out of sight, his cell phone starts doing the cha-cha in his pocket and his holiday mood is shattered when he sees that it is his division chief, Captain Clancy, calling.

  “Mickey, I need you over at the American Museum of Natural History. There’s been a robbery of a rare precious gem collection that is scheduled to go on display on Monday and two security guards have been killed and one is in serious condition and on his way to the hospital. The collection is on loan to the museum by Irving Silverman, the founder of Silverman’s Exquisite Gems. In case you don’t know who he is, he’s a member of a very elite group of precious gem collectors and dealers and I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t have a lot of friends in very high places. I want no stone left unturned in your investigation, pun intended, and no wiggle room left for criticism of the department. Are you reading between the lines, Detective?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in Central Park and only a few blocks away from the museum.”

  “Good. Get your butt over there ASAP and keep me informed. And, Mickey, I’m sorry I had to spoil your holiday. I know how much you were looking forward to getting away from this kind of crap for a while, but you’re the best I’ve got and this mess requires the best.”

  “Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, boss. I’ll do my best to live up to it.”

  When he dropped his cell phone back in his pocket, Mickey didn’t have to tell Cheryl that he wouldn’t be going with her out to Long Island. The vibes she was picking up from her brother told her the sad news.

  “Gee, Mickey, another holiday flushed down the toilet, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

  He quickly filled her in and then headed for the museum. On his way over he’s thinking, “The dollar value of this heist has got to be in the millions. I’m surprised it went down in broad daylight and the thieves were able to circumvent the museum’s sophisticated security system and deal with the security guards. From what I’ve read and heard, precious gem robberies of this magnitude usually involve someone on the inside, so I’m going to have to bear this in mind when I’m questioning folks and getting a lay of the land.”

  Mickey found out when he got to the museum that the police pursuit that he and Cheryl had witnessed resulted from the robbery at the museum. A security guard spotted one of the robbers, there were three of them, stuffing some of the precious gems into a case of some kind and was able to alert the police before another security guard decided he was going to play Dirty Harry and began shooting at them and then all hell broke loose. The police arrived just as the robbers were driving away from the museum. Shots were exchanged and then the pursuit began. Unfortunately, somehow the robbers eluded the men in blue.

  After interviewing the surviving security guards and staff, Mickey finds out no one has a clue as to how these people got into the museum and into the safe where the gems were being kept. There are no signs of force used to open the safe and no signs of forced entry into the museum. “Sherlock Holmes where are you. Hell, I’ll even settle for Colombo.”

  Chapter 2

  A week later another precious gem robbery takes place in the Diamond District of New York City. This one involves a courier service and the haul is valued at over four million dollars. This one takes place at around four o’clock on a Friday afternoon and involves the use of a C4 type of explosive to blow open the vehicle’s doors. No one is killed this time around, but two couriers are badly injured by the explosion. The diamond shipment’s intended destination was the office and ultimately the safe of a private gem dealer, Victoria Valance.

  This robbery also falls into the lap of Mickey Morretti because of the size and nature of what was stolen. He’s hoping that he’ll make better progress with this investigation than he has with the museum robbery which so far has been zilch.

  Mickey is convinced that these robberies have been committed by professionals who know what they are doing and have buyers, probably private, for their merchandise. “Hell, a lot or perhaps all of these gems are probably headed out of the country somewhere. This time it was diamonds. At the American Museum of Natural History, sapphires, rubies and emeralds were taken and some
fabulous looking diamonds weren’t touched. What’s with that?

  “The media is having a field day with these robberies and the heat is coming down on Clancy for results. The dollar amount of the loot is staggering. Four million plus for the diamonds and ten million plus for the museum gems are numbers that are definitely attention getters.

  “Precious gems are surrounded by state-of-the-art security and their transportation is deeply enmeshed in secrecy. For these robberies to have been successfully pulled off there had to be inside help, but I’ll be damned if I can find anything that makes anyone jump out from the crowd of possibles as a person to look at more closely. There are a lot of people involved in the operations of the companies involved and anyone of them could be in cahoots with the robbers. I’m just going to have to keep shaking trees and hope that something useful will fall from the branches.”

  A couple more weeks go by without any new developments and the media has found other fish to fry, but Clancy is still in the pressure cooker and blowing more steam off at Morretti with each passing day. As if things weren’t bad enough, he’s been getting daily phone calls from Victoria Valance which is really driving him up the wall. As he’s pondering the mess he’s in, his office phone rings and when he answers it he finds out that there’s a new player in the game.

  “Lieutenant Morretti, my name is Chuck Ferguson and I’m calling to inform you that Ms. Victoria Valance has hired me to find her stolen diamonds and the individuals who took them. I’m a licensed private investigator, based here in Manhattan, with extensive operations around the globe. I want you to know that I will not willingly or knowingly do anything to interfere with your investigation and am hoping that we can work together on this. I will share with you any pertinent information I’m able to uncover and hope you will be willing to do the same.”

  “Mr. Ferguson, I’d appreciate any information you can pass on to me that would be helpful in solving this crime, but as to my sharing information with you involving an ongoing investigation I don’t know how that would fly with my boss or the district attorney. There are legal, professional and personal pitfalls associated with what you are asking.”

  “Well, I wanted to make the offer and hopefully convince you that I’m an asset not a liability.

  “I appreciate the gesture, but I’ll pass, at least for now.”

  “Suit yourself. Happy hunting.”

  “Damn, all I need now is for the museum to hire outside help and Clancy will really blow a gasket. For now, I think I’ll keep this bit of news to myself.”

  Chapter 3

  After making his pitch to the Lieutenant, Chuck calls Ms. Valance to arrange a time for them to meet to review her operation and the people involved. They’ve never met and have had only the one phone conversation when she called to hire him. His services have been recommended by an insurance investigator friend of his who is hoping Chuck can deliver and get his insurance company off the hook for a claim against the policy covering the stolen gems.

  “Ms. Valance, Chuck Ferguson here. I’ve just informed the police that I will be working for you regarding the recovery of the stolen gems and the identification of the thieves. I did that because I don’t want to ruffle any feathers by going behind their backs and getting stymied if I need their cooperation on something. We aren’t going to have a full-fledged working relationship, but I wasn’t warned off either. I want to come over to meet with you and get a detailed description of your operation and a run down on the people involved. When would be a convenient time for us to get together? The sooner the better.”

  “My afternoon is free from two o’clock on. How about we meet here at two?”

  “I’ll be there at two.”

  The next phone call he made was to a contact of his in Paris. If there was anything going on in the world of precious gems that Jacques Prevot didn’t know about, it wasn’t worth knowing. Jacques and he had first connected during an investigation of a De Beer security debacle involving a Saudi Sheik and a prominent gem broker in Paris, the prominent gem broker being Jacques Prevot. Chuck was able to get to the bottom of that mess and clear Jacques of any suspicion of complicity regarding diamond shipments being tampered with.

  “Hi, Chuck, when are you coming to Paris again? It’s been over a year since we’ve had a chance to share some good French food and excellent wine.”

  “Depending on your reaction to why I’m calling, it might be pretty soon.”

  Chuck clued him in on the two recent gem robberies and his recent hiring by Victoria Valance. “I was wondering if there have been any unusually large precious gem robberies elsewhere and/or if there are any rumors going around concerning how the stones are being unloaded.”

  “I heard about the robberies in New York, but I haven’t heard any rumors concerning the destination of the take. There was one unusual robbery here in Paris about a month ago where only tourmaline gemstones were taken which had a Euro value of about three point five million or three point nine million dollars at the current rate of exchange. Although they don’t get the publicity diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds get, top quality tourmalines can go for as much as $45,000 a carat. I haven’t a clue as to who might be the potential buyers for these stones, but obviously there are some out there if someone is willing to go to the trouble of stealing so many of them.”

  “Jacques, please sniff around and see what you can dig up. I sure would appreciate it. The size and closeness of these robberies lead me to believe that there might be more to come and that they’re part of a bigger game plan. Where what you might uncover will lead me I don’t know. I’m just looking for anything that might put me on a scent that will lead me to the loot and the culprits who zeroed in on my client.”

  “I’ll get right on it, Chuck. What’s the best way for me to contact you?”

  He gave Jacques his cell, office and home phone numbers and a promise to come to Paris as soon as he could arrange it and moved on to his next and final call.

  Paul Hoagland has worked for the Cullinan Diamond Mining Company in South Africa for over twenty years as their Chief Operations Officer and Chuck is hoping to tap his vast knowledge of the security and secretiveness surrounding the diamond industry. Their paths first crossed when Chuck was working on an embezzlement situation involving one of Cullinan’s accountants and they’ve developed a friendship through their love for deep sea fishing. They manage to get together a couple times a year to enjoy the briny deep.

  It took three tries to get through to him and when he did it was only for a minute. “Chuck, you really caught me at a bad time. I took this call because I know you’ve been trying to reach me. We’ve just had a large shipment of diamonds on its way to Brussels waylaid and the police and the top brass are all over my ass with tons of questions that I only have feeble answers for.”

  “Very quickly then, that’s why I’m calling. There have been a couple of spectacular precious gem robberies here in Manhattan and one in Paris also and I was calling to get your input as to how these people might be getting the intelligence needed to pull them off. When things settle down there a little, please give me a call and perhaps we can help each other. I’ve been hired by one of the victims to recover her stones and identify the thieves.”

  “Will do, Chuck.” Before Chuck could say goodbye, Paul was gone.

  “Well now, isn’t this an interesting coincidence? Or is it? My gut’s telling me that these robberies are connected somehow and that there will be more. Out of the blue, three spectacular gem robberies take place within a short time frame and everyone is clueless as to who might be behind the thefts. I don’t believe in coincidences. I think my best approach to helping Ms. Valance is to focus on finding a common thread that ties them all together. Time isn’t on my side either. The more that goes by the greater the likelihood the gems will be widely disbursed and damn near impossible to trace. Get a move on, Ferguson; this definitely isn’t going to be a slam dunk.

  Chapter 4

  At 2:1
5p.m, Chuck shows up at Ms. Valance’s offices, running late due to the troublesome gate in the parking garage in his office building failing to open again and having to wait for the parking attendant to manually open it. The tenants have been raising a ruckus over the damn thing for months, but so far their complaints have fallen on deaf ears.