The Take(97)

“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.”

After Frank Mazot left, Nikki opened the box and began sorting through the files inside. Alphabetizing was not the archivist’s strong suit. It took her fifteen minutes to locate Coluzzi’s file, tucked between “Cranmont” and “Czell.” The file was thick as a phonebook, a compendious mess of arrest sheets, interviews, court records, and sentencing documents, all mixed up haphazardly. She required a further thirty minutes to put them in something resembling chronological order before she could begin her research.

Coluzzi’s first arrest was at the age of sixteen for burglary with a sentence of six months’ probation. The second arrest was three months later, for which he served a year at a reform school near the Spanish border. A note from the school director called Coluzzi “willing to cooperate and a model student.” Nikki wrinkled her nose. A handwritten note to Coluzzi’s parole officer stated that the young man had come to the director with the name of a student who had been pilfering from the kitchen and selling canned goods to a local vendor.

The die was cast at an early age.

From there, Coluzzi’s record grew at a blistering pace. Extortion. Assault. Grand theft. And then at the age of twenty-one, attempted murder. The trial lasted one day. Coluzzi was convicted and sentenced to five years at Les Baumettes.

Nikki paused, studying the paper. Something was missing. Normally, there should be a prisoner transfer sheet attached, documenting his remanding to the national prison system. In its place was a pink-hued form she knew all too well. She’d filed a similar one a dozen times, if not more, including one with Aziz Fran?ois’s name on it when she’d recruited him as a confidential informant.

At once, Nikki took a photo of the form with her phone.

Reports from Coluzzi’s case officer followed, providing a comprehensive list of criminals with whom he regularly worked, as well as crimes they’d committed and crimes they planned to commit. There on the third page was “Simon Ledoux.”

With mounting fury, she read Coluzzi’s detailed, almost joyous recounting of the plan to rob the Garda armored car on September 2, 1999. The following page was a copy of the arrest record, including a brief description of the attempted robbery. Four men killed, names given. Simon Ledoux shot three times, taken to hospital, condition unknown.