Big Deal on Casino Street

The job took only three minutes. At 10:30 a.m., a tiny grey Citroen delivery truck double-parked in front of Clerc's jewelry shop, on the Place du Casino across from Monte Carlo's tourist-draped Hotel de Paris. Three men in smocks, mountaineer hoods and submachine guns jumped out; one took station at the door. Inside the store, the smaller hood yanked the telephone wire and smacked an employee while the larger hood snapped a burst of bullets through the window of a display case.

As alarm bells rang, the two men coolly ladled a stream of gems into a black bag. "They heard the signal go off," said the shop's manager later, "but they didn't lose their sangfroid. They took only diamonds, emeralds and really precious necklaces. They chose well."

When a cop turned up, another of the gunmen cut him down with two shots. An onlooker intervened to help the wounded policeman, and one of the hoods said: "Fous le camp (Buzz off)." He did, and they did too. Several hours later, police found the stolen Citroen. In it were two Tommy guns, five pistols, two lead pipes, a grenade, and a lingering air of smug satisfaction.

Clerc clerks stayed up most of the night taking inventory of the stolen jewels -- a task that was becoming routine, since this was the fourth time in a decade that the store had been hit. This time, though, the take was more than $2,000,000. That made the Monte Carlo jewel robbery the biggest ever pulled off in Europe. But the thieves would probably clear no more than $300,000 after breaking up the gems and paying commissions to middlemen. In Europe as elsewhere, good fences rarely make good neighbors.

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