context: After nearly being caught on a routine burglary, master safe-cracker Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) decides the time has finally come to retire. Nick's flight attendant girlfriend, Diane (Angela Bassett), encourages this decision, promising to fully commit to their relationship if he does indeed go straight. Nick, however, is lured into taking one final score by his fence Max (Marlon Brando). The job, worth a $4 million payoff to Nick, is to steal a sceptre, which is discovered to be a French national treasure. It was hidden in the leg of an antique piano and smuggled illegally into Canada, stored in the ultra-secure basement of the MontrÃ©al Customs House after accidentally being uncovered.
  Nick is introduced by Max to young Jack Teller (Edward Norton), an ambitious thief who has infiltrated the Customs House and gained information regarding security by pretending to be an intellectually disabled janitor named Brian. It is not in Nick's nature to accept Jack, someone he has never worked with before. But he is talked into taking the job by a pleading Max, who is heavily in debt.
  Nick's trusted associate Steven (Jamie Harrold) hacks into the Custom House's security system to obtain the bypass codes, allowing them to temporarily manipulate the alert protocols of the system during the heist. Steven is caught, however, by a corrupt systems administrator who extorts Nick for $50,000 for the information. More complications arise when they are forced to move up their timetable after the Customs House becomes aware of the true value of the sceptre and adds extra closed-circuit television cameras and infrared detectors to monitor the basement room while preparing to return it to its rightful owners.
  Nick uses a sewer tunnel to enter the Customs House basement as Jack rigs the cameras to shut off when Nick enters the storage room. A fellow janitor stumbles upon Jack, who locks him in a closet. Nick fills the enormous in-floor safe containing the sceptre with water before inserting and detonating a depth charge to blow off the door. He quickly packs up the sceptre in a carrying case to depart, but Jack double crosses him and at gunpoint demands he hand over the sceptre. Nick reluctantly gives up the carrying case and seconds later the alarm, rigged by Jack, alerts the entire security staff to the heist. Nick darts for the sewer entrance he came in as Jack heads back upstairs, tucking the carrying case inside his janitor jumpsuit and slipping past the incoming police units responding to the burglary. Nick escapes the security guards chasing him through the sewer tunnels.
  After making it to a bus station to flee the city, Jack calls Nick to gloat but is shocked to discover that Nick has anticipated Jack's actions. Jack opens the carrying case Nick gave him and finds it contains a steel rod weighed down with various bushings. Brushing off Jack's threats of vengeance, Nick advises Jack to flee as "every cop in the city" will now be looking for him. Nick hangs up and boards a boat with the real sceptre as a shocked Jack broods over his situation. Later, Max smiles as he watches a news broadcast reporting a massive manhunt being organized to find Jack, the prime suspect, and an unidentified accomplice. Nick then meets Diane at the airport as she returns from work, and they embrace.
question: What was Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) profession?
answer: Master safe-cracker