The School of Turin Read online

  The School of Turin

  Dale M. Nelson

  Dale Nelson Books

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part II

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part III

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  If you enjoyed The School of Turin—you can make a difference

  Also by Dale M. Nelson

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Turin, Italy, 1997

  I’m a cop.

  Probably the last three words that anyone in Jack’s profession ever wants to hear.

  Bad enough coming from someone you know.

  Worse when it’s coming from a friend.

  A form detached itself from a nearby wall beneath the amber glow of softly buzzing streetlights.

  It was summer, and the night was cool. They were in the foothills of the Italian alps, and Castro had on his trademark car coat. A cigarette cherry flared in the dark. Jack walked past a line of parked cars.

  “What the fuck is going on, man?” Jack asked, speaking in his rough Italian.

  “I’m a cop. A detective in the Polizia di Stato. The state police.”

  “I got that part,” Jack said, his voice snide and clipped. One of the first things that Vito Verrazano told him when he got to Turin was to get to know the cops because there were so goddamned many of them. The Polizia di Stato was a civilian state police force and part of the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia. The DIA was a joint anti-mafia directorate made up of officers from the Polizia di Stato and the Carabinieri, Italy’s national military police. It was notoriously, ironically corrupt.

  “You have to get out of town—tonight,” Giovanni Castro said in English, so there was no mistaking the message.

  Jack had been in Turin for two years now, forced to leave the States after a job went south. His mentor and partner, a grizzled old robber named Reginald LeGrande, had sent him here. Said he needed “finishing.” Polish. Jack and Reginald had been doing well in Southern California. Jack started as a wheelman, a driver, but after a change up on Reginald’s regular crew, he invited Jack to join them inside. He only had two small jewelry store jobs under his belt before they tried the Loomis armored car depot in Long Beach.

  A job that was fucked from the word “go.”

  They had a guy on the inside. A pissed off employee with an outflow that greatly exceeded his capabilities. Paranoid too, which always helped. Got wind they were about to can him, so he tipped Reginald to this job. He was supposed to be a little slow triggering the internal alarms once the crew was inside, giving them enough time to hit the cash vault before the trucks dispatched.

  Turned out he called in sick that day.

  Stomach bug.

  His replacement was this trigger happy former Marine MP from Desert Storm. Jack shot first. It had been his first time firing a gun outside of a target range, and things went to hell right after that.

  The guy who returned fire was a much better shot.

  Sturdevant took one in the head.

  Lee took two.

  Lenkowitz was shot, but it hadn’t looked lethal. But Jack didn’t see him leave the place either.

  Jack and Reginald made it out. Maybe some of the others did too. They didn’t hang around long enough to find out.

  Reginald sent him to Turin. Told him to go buy a suit and arranged him a first-class ticket. Jack asked him what the hell for? Reginald said thieves didn’t hide out in first class. Jack tasked “Why Turin?”, Reginald said he needed “finishing.” Polish. Wasn’t going to work with him again until he got it.

  Told him not to come back for two or three years. To let this die down.

  Jack was to look up an old acquaintance of Reginald’s, Vito Verrazano. Vito was a cagey old bastard—sly, tricky, and with more tricks up his sleeve. He took Jack in on Reginald’s name and showed him the ropes in Turin, which was a thriving community of criminality. Always carried on like school was in session.

  There were times Jack was surprised Turin even bothered to have police.

  There was so much mafia activity in Turin that the local government had tried to make the pizzo, the protection money people had to pay to the mafia gangs, tax deductible. But Vito got Jack work, and business in Turin was good. You just walked into the back room of a coffee shop where a bunch of old men stood chain smoking around a chalkboard, and you told them what did and what you were looking for. If they knew your name, you got work. Vito helped turn Jack into a name they knew, the kind of name that got work.

  After about six months of Jack doing whatever minor B and E or wheel jobs he could get, slowly making a name for himself, Vito introduced him to Niccolò Bartolo.

  If Reginald was a robber, Bartolo was a thief.

  Bartolo looked like he walked straight off a movie screen. Nattily dressed, always, Bartolo probably spent half of what he stole on his looks, and the rest went to his cars. The Ferrari 348 was Jack’s favorite. Jack earned his way into Bartolo’s organization, of which Vito was a part. Bartolo called it the School of Turin, and Jack quickly learned that being asked to join was a unique honor. It was one of the most respected criminal outfits in the city, which, given the ratio of thieves to civilians, was saying something. The School was exclusive. If you were a member, that meant you were one of the best.

  But that didn’t mean that it was any easier for Jack to assimilate. He found Turin to be a lonely place for an American who’d never been abroad, who didn’t speak the language, and who was pretty naive about the world. Jack had perilously little experience with much of anything. On the run since he was seventeen, he’d spent those years stealing and running. He’d never had a bank account, never had an apartment in his name, never had a car that he didn’t pay cash for—or steal.

  Turin was a hard town to assimilate in, and his profession didn’t help much. After six months, Jack spoke enough of the language that he was at least functional. By a year, Jack was reasonably fluent, if unpolished. He could read Italian now too, though he found the local newspapers tedious. Turin was an industrial city, and the honest people were hard, blue-collar types that wanted nothing to do with a random American. His fellow thieves were suspicious of him because he was different. Though, there was one, a safecracker in the School named Enzo Bachetti. He and Jack had taken a liking to one another and became fast friends. Enzo was his only real friend in Turin. Well, other than Guilia.

  Guilia Montalto.

  The love of his life. Of that, he was certain. She had Sophia Loren’s eyes and a dancer’s legs, and Jack had fallen for her—hard. They’d been living together the last few months in dangerous bliss. He’d once stolen a Lamborghini Diablo in Venice Beach once and drove it for a reckless weekend. That was the closest experience he had to Guilia Montalto. There were days he didn’t even
care about work, he just wanted to stay there with her. And she didn’t care that he was a thief. For the last year, his world was pretty small—Guilia and Enzo and stealing things.

  Until he met Giovanni Castro.

  Castro was this rakish rogue of a guy who always wore a black leather car coat, regardless of the temperature. He was a complete caricature. Had a decent resume as a thief, though he couldn’t pick a lock to save his life and Jack had never actually seen him work. Castro and Jack became friends, and Jack made the mistake of trying to introduce him to Bartolo, thinking they could use him. Castro said he was looking for work and heard Bartolo was the guy to know. Bartolo was angry with Jack for trying to bring an outsider in. He made a show of it, saying he should’ve been smarter. But Bartolo took the meeting anyway, even though he passed on Castro. Vito told Jack later that he was the only person that could’ve gotten away with that stunt. Bartolo had taken a liking to him, viewing him as an earlier version of himself.

  That was a month ago. He’d known Castro for about eight months at that point. But, man, they were tight. Fast friends in a faster life.

  Up until yesterday when Castro told him that he was a cop.

  Jack checked his watch. It was close to nine. He parked his red 1985 Fiat 124 Spider convertible on the street where Castro told him to meet him.

  Jack wasn’t a fan of Turin. He and Enzo had gone down to Rome a few times, and he’d spent that weekend at Lake Como with Guilia, but generally he stayed close to home, even though he didn’t really like the city. Fiat and the mafia were the biggest employers, and between the industrial smoke of the former and the cigarette smoke of the latter, there always seemed to be some amount of smog and grime in the air and on the walls of every building. And the city itself was like a labyrinth. All of the buildings were the same height and the same general design. There were no gaps between buildings, so a city block looked like a big, long wall seven stories tall. You felt trapped in Turin. Insignificant between the looming buildings.

  A rat in a maze.

  Jack’s stomach turned at that thought.

  Was that what he was now?

  You have to get out of town.

  “Just like that?”

  “Bartolo is getting arrested tomorrow. Everyone is. You need to get out of Torino tonight, or I can’t help you.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  Castro shrugged and turned the corners of his mouth down, a gesture Italians mastered that covered the spectrum from “I don’t care” to “everything is ruined.”

  “You are my friend. Irrespective of anything else, that much is true. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  Jack was too shocked to be angry. There was a part of him, something visceral, like it was part of that criminal genetic code passed down through generations of thieves that told him he should lash out, call Castro a liar or a rat or something. But the words wouldn’t form, and anyway Jack didn’t truly feel those things. Even though Castro used him to get inside the School.

  Jack should be mad. Scratch that, he should be fucking furious. Throwing punches, faces-through-windshields furious, but he wasn’t, and he didn’t understand why. That was pissing him off.

  “This is why you never went on jobs with me?” Jack asked instead.

  Castro nodded and let out a short laugh.

  But Jack still wanted to know why.

  “I could get into a lot of trouble for this, tipping you off. Anyone finds out, it’s my career. Or worse.”

  “So why take the risk?”

  “Why did you? You stuck your neck out, vouched for me in front of Bartolo. But you don’t deserve this. You’re not like them.” Castro said. “I know why you’re running, Jack, and maybe it’s time that you stop. Bartolo and his gang, they’re all out of second chances, but you can still take one.”

  Jack ran a hand through his hair. It was all still so hard to process. He needed to just sit down a moment, to think. But even then, it was a moment too long.

  “Pack a bag. Go,” Castro said. “Don’t look back.”

  The bag was packed and ready. That was one thing he’d learned coming here. The bag was always packed, always in his car.

  Jack had the equivalent of a hundred thousand dollars in Italian lira hidden in his apartment. That’s all he’d need to get before he left.

  Well, not the only thing.

  Castro exhaled a cloud of smoke and flicked his cigarette down the sidewalk. “You have to leave town. Tonight. Don’t say anything to anyone. That’s all I can tell you. The Polizia doesn’t care about you. You’re an American, and it would just mean more paperwork.” He let out a slight laugh that sounded mostly humorous. “Nobody needs that shit.” Castro stepped forward and embraced him.

  “I have to get Guilia. I’m not leaving without her.”

  “That’s the worst thing you could do. She’s bad news, Jack. Everyone knows it but you.” Castro looked down the sidewalk and the street again, checking to make sure that no one was watching them. “You didn’t tell her, did you? You didn’t tell anyone we were meeting?” Castro said it like it was fact rather than a question.

  “No.”

  Well, mostly.

  Castro sighed heavily and looked up and down the street again, clearly impatient. “I’ve seen you with her, man. You’d sell your best friend out for another ten minutes with her. What’s worse is the way other men respond to her. It’s like she’s a magnet or something. Guys are just drawn to her, and its constant. She loves the attention, probably craves it, and I think she likes that it screws you up inside.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack said, but the words lacked conviction.

  “Jealous men do stupid things, Jack. She’s dangerous, and she’s only as loyal as the next rung in the ladder. Remember that.” Castro checked the streets one last time. “I have to go. More importantly, so do you. I’m sorry we have to say goodbye this way.” He embraced Jack one last time, then held him at arm’s length, hands still gripping Jack’s shoulders. “I’m going to miss you, man.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, words heavy. He’d never had friends until he’d moved to Turin. Reginald was … irascible and crusty. He was a good teacher and mentor, sure, but not a friend. There were guys he ran with occasionally in California. People he knew from the car scene. If there was one lesson he learned in this life, it was not to form lasting attachments.

  Enzo and Giovanni were the first real friends he’d had in his adult life.

  But Giovanni was wrong about Guilia.

  Of course, other men wanted her. She was beautiful. But she was his, and he hers. Castro didn’t understand that, but that was okay, Jack didn’t need him to.

  “Good luck,” Jack said.

  Jack had been on the run since he was seventeen. Now he was twenty-five and had a modicum of stability, the closest thing to someone in his line of work would have to a normal life. The apartment he and Guilia shared was the longest he’d lived under one roof since he started running. Now, it was over, and he was running again.

  But at least he wouldn’t be running alone. He’d kept almost all of the money he’d made during his time here, and they could live on it for a time until they figured out what to do next.

  “Take care, Gio,” Jack said. “And thank you.”

  “Get out of here, you crook,” he said with light eyes.

  Jack ran.

  Ran to his car, the 1985 Fiat Spider he got to tear through the hills around Turin with. The fastest way out of the city was due west. This time of night, he could be on the Autostrada heading … he didn’t even know where … in fifteen minutes. Jack put the car in gear and sped off, turning back the way he’d come, northeast, toward his apartment.

  He hoped that Castro couldn’t see him.

  Jack wasn’t leaving without Guilia.

  He raced through the empty nighttime streets, his blood moving as fast as the car. Jack forced himself to slow down, to breathe, to think. If he got pulled over no
w, a cop would find him so agitated, he’d have a hard time explaining why he was doing eighty on city streets.

  A block before his and Guilia’s apartment, Jack stopped. Leaving the car running and double parked, he jumped out and ran to pay phone. “I hope you’re home,” he said desperately. Jack dialed Enzo.

  Enzo picked up on the third ring.

  “Enzo, it’s me.”

  “Jack? What’s up? Everything okay? You sound—”

  “No time for that. You have to get out of town. Now. Tonight.”

  “What? Why? This doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got that thing tomorrow.”

  “Enzo, the job is bad. I’ll explain everything later. Don’t talk to anyone. Not even Vito. I don’t know who we can trust.”

  So, I’m taking a chance I can trust you …

  “How do you know?”

  “Just go. I’ll see you—” Shit, he had to think and had to do it fast. “I’ll see you in Verona in two days.”

  “Verona, what the fuck? I don’t know anything about no fucking Verona.” Enzo swore the way most people breathed. He just put curses in-between words whether it made sense or not, mostly just to give him a space to think.

  “Goddamn it, Enzo. Just go. I’ll meet you there. The city ain’t that big, we’ll figure it out.”

  Jack hung up and ran back to the car. He hoped telling Enzo wasn’t a mistake, but he wasn’t about to let Enzo get arrested. He felt bad for the others, especially Vito. Vito was a good man, and Jack owed him a lot, but he couldn’t save them all. Vito was also pretty deep into it, and Jack just didn’t know if he could trust him. He and Bartolo went back. And Bartolo? Bartolo scared the shit out of him. Something about him—a black look he always had in his eyes.