The Take(33)

Coluzzi tossed a packet of ten thousand euros onto the floor. “There,” he said. “We’re even. Got it?”

Jojo looked at him, then at the money. “Sure,” he said. “We’re even.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear.”

“And you’ll never pull any kind of bullshit like this again.”

Jojo nodded.

“Say it.”

“I swear.”

“Okay, then.” Coluzzi pulled the stiletto out of Jojo’s hand. “Jesus,” he said, wiping the blade on a dishtowel. “What a mess.”

Jojo stood up, shakily, and put his hand under a stream of cold water.

“And one more thing,” said Coluzzi. “I need your ticket to the game tomorrow.”





Tuesday





Chapter 17



Simon woke at seven. After a shower and a light breakfast ordered from room service (cost: one hundred euros—apologies to Mr. Neill), he walked to the Champs-élysées and hailed a cab.

“Porte d’Orléans,” he said.

Twenty minutes later, the taxi turned onto the Avenue du Général Leclerc in the southern perimeter of Paris. It was a working-class area, the street lined with bakeries, laundries, hair salons, and corner grocery stores.

It was here thirty-six hours earlier that the prince and his entourage had been robbed.

Simon stepped out of the car, handing the driver a fifty-euro note and asking that he wait. Slowly, he made his way up the block. He envisioned the line of sedans advancing along the boulevard. Coluzzi would have needed to wait until the last one crossed through the intersection before blocking the lead car. Timing was crucial.

All over in sixty seconds.

Simon started the timer on his wristwatch, then retraced his steps, stopping in the middle of the block, looking one way, then the other, playing out the scenario in his mind. The entry to the highway lay three hundred meters ahead, the green placards in sight. The drivers would have spotted them and relaxed. For all intents and purposes, they were home free. So much more the surprise when Coluzzi’s men appeared from a side street to bar the route. The lead chauffeur would have had no time to warn his colleagues before they were blocked from the rear as well.

Fifty-eight…fifty-nine…sixty.

Simon stopped the chronograph. The Corsican had chosen his spot well. There was no question but that he’d known the route in advance. A day, if not more, to allow for him and his accomplices to rehearse.

“How would you have planned it?” Neill had asked him yesterday morning.

Simon had his answer. No differently than Coluzzi.

He made a second tour of the block, more briskly this time, looking for security cameras. Paris wasn’t London. He couldn’t find one.

He had a last impression before returning to the taxi. Tino Coluzzi had gotten smarter since he’d last seen him. Simon would be wise not to underestimate him. He’d done so once before and it hadn’t turned out well.

“Back to the hotel,” said Simon.

He rode the entire way in silence, lost in thought. He was not in Paris. He was in Marseille. In Les Baumettes. Reliving the worst moments of his life.



They came at him on his third day while he was in the yard. There was nothing hostile in their approach. Five prisoners casually walking his way. They knew his name. They knew what he was in for. They said they wanted nothing more than to introduce themselves. They were his “brothers.” Simon knew better.

The yard, like the entire prison, was segregated by race and religion. The natives, “les blancs”—comprising? French, Corsican, and any other Europeans with white skin who had run afoul of French law—had the southern side. The southern side had benches, a handball court, a bocce pit, and, most importantly, abundant shade from the coastal pine trees that grew on the steep hills surrounding the prison. The Muslims, referred to as “les barbus”—the bearded ones—and by far the largest group in the prison, had the east side of the yard, hardly more than a fifty-square-meter patch of concrete. The blacks had what was left, a patch of dirt as hard as rock during the blistering summer, damp and muddy in the winter.

At first they made small talk. “Everything okay?” “You get a room with a bed?” “Need any weed or anything else, for that matter?”

Simon replied that he was fine. He required no favors. He’d known what to expect coming in. In Les Baums, you found your own space. Cells stood open twenty-four hours a day. The assignment given on arrival didn’t count for anything. Built in the 1930s to house a population of six hundred, the prison held three times that number. On the day he arrived, Simon became inmate 1801.

He’d fashioned a shank during his time in the city jail and concealed it the only way he could. He knew how to spot the weaker man. The fight, when it occurred, was brief and bloody. Simon had his bed.

Situated in the suburbs of Marseille, the prison anchored a leafy neighborhood of lower-middle-class homes and businesses, separated from its civilian neighbors by no more than a street and a twenty-foot stone-and-mortar wall. There were no watchtowers. No barbed-wire fences. Just the wall with statues of the seven deadly sins built into its side and the towering steel door that served as the prison’s sole entry and egress.