The Collection
Page 10
I check the burner phone. Burim sent me a text: cimitero monumentale riparto esterno bicchi 10.00.
Wonderful. A meeting in a cemetery.
Chapter 19
Taxis tend to keep track of where they drop their fares, so I ride the Metro to see Burim. The subway’s busy but not jammed. The riders look like subway riders everywhere, reading or bored or necking with their seatmate(s). They’re not dressed better than any other city people I’ve ever seen. Another myth squashed.
The Cimitero Monumentale was built in the 1860s to replace a bunch of ratty little suburban cemeteries. It’s supposed to be amazing. And it’s closed Mondays. Today’s Monday.
I stand at the chained main gate for a few moments, checking out the arcaded wings flanking the Famedio, the cemetery’s Lombard Gothic-revival main chapel. The red-and-white-striped stone fenceposts echo the decorative masonry on the arches. Then I make my way around the southwest side. They’re not kidding with the “monumentale” part: the place is huge. I find an open side gate after about ten minutes and enter a city of the dead.
I’m used to the low-rise graveyards back home, the sterile marble markers, grounds like golf courses. This is a riot. Tombs like small skyscrapers, carved skulls, soldiers, writhing ironwork, obelisks, a surprising number of sensual female nudes (well, it’s Italy), figures prostrated on slabs, a life-sized woman in a 1940s evening dress, a tiny stone child running across a lawn, bronze dead reaching for the sky… this place is wild.
According to the maps, the meet is on the northeastern side of the place. I came in on the southwestern side. I skulk through the tombs and trees so nobody sees me, until a couple gardeners ripping up weeds see me and just keep working. Okay, “closed” is advisory only.
I get jumpier with every step. This isn’t my first rodeo dealing with skeezy people in colorful places. It seemed like I was doing that a lot toward the end of the gallery. But Gar nearly always knew where I was going—he was usually the one sending me there—and I never had a meet in a place that looked like a Goth kid’s wet dream. Maybe I should’ve thought this through better. Maybe I should’ve told Carson.
The Riparto Esterno is the new part of the cemetery: modernist and contemporary architecture, much less breast-beating, quieter in more ways than one. I assume Bicchi is the name of the corpse who’s hosting the meeting. I don’t see any live people hanging around, so I walk up and down the gravel paths, scanning the names. After a few minutes, I find Bicchi: a black granite slab with an intricate iron-tracery monument that looks like the veins of a leaf. Nobody’s here other than the guy under the rock.
“Neutra?”
The thin voice comes out of nowhere. Is the dead dude talking to me? Then a skinny guy in a black track suit and a red Atlanta Hawks jersey stands up on the next path over. Not the neck-breaker I was expecting, though he doesn’t need to be big to shoot me. He waves me to him.
Burim—because who else would it be?—stands in front of another grave, this one belonging to somebody named Gervasini. It’s a brown granite slab with a life-sized bronze woman kneeling on top. I’m paying more attention to the live guy, though. He’s swarthy but somehow delicate. Even though I know the answer, I ask, “Burim?”
“Yes, yes, Burim. You know Getz, yes?” He talks fast. I nod. “Good, good.” He gestures toward the grave. “I like. Is good, yes? Good place to stay forever, yes?”
The bronze woman wears a short bob and a cape around her shoulders. Bronze roses fall out of her hands onto her full skirt and the slab. “Yeah, it’s pretty. A lot calmer than in there.” I thumb toward the older part of the cemetery. “Getz says you find things.”
He smiles. He seriously needs a cleaning. “Yes, yes.”
“Do you get rid of things, too?” Blank look. “Make things go away?”
“Yes, yes. Find, lose, buy, sell. I do all.” His accent isn’t Italian and isn’t Russian and isn’t Greek, but put all three through a blender and it might sound the same. “What you want?”
“You handled art for Getz?” He frowns. I hold up my work phone with Sargent’s Madame X on the wallpaper. “Art? Paintings?”
He nods like a bobblehead. “Yes, yes. Painting, statue. You want painting?”
I stash my phone and think about my next question for a moment. “Do you know Geofredo Lorenzoni?”
Burim’s bloodshot brown eyes slam down into tiny slits. He makes a big show of pulling a pack of Marlboros from his track-suit jacket and sparking up with a red plastic lighter. He holds his cigarette inside his curled fingers, like he’s used to keeping it out of the wind or masking the glow. Useful habit for a smuggler-fixer-gangster. It takes him four long draws on the cigarette before he snaps, “Lorenzoni, yes. I know.”
“What’s your beef with him?” More frowning. “Why are you angry with him?”
“Very cheap. He ask for favor, not pay good. I tell him, this not good. He say, this is deal, stay or go. He…” Burim sucks down another lungful of smoke, then streams it out while he looks off toward the Famedio. “He is protected.”
Just great. It’s not a shock, but I could’ve gone all day without hearing it. “By who?”
Burim grinds his cig into the sole of his track shoe, then stuffs the butt in his pocket. He glances around, like he thinks we’re being watched. “Kalabrezi.”
I think back to signs I saw at the Libera rally on Saturday. “Siciliano No! Calabrese No! Albanese No! Russo No!” Burim’s talking about one of the local mafias.
Sweet. Belknap’s connected.
“Okay,” I say. “He’s hard to deal with and he’s got nasty friends. Do you still do business with him?” I get a mushy shrug back. “I need you to sell him a painting.”
“What painting?” Burim’s face goes tight and opaque. This isn’t going the way I thought it would.
“Any one you can get your hands on. Nineteenth century, not an Impressionist, not too famous.” I watch his left eyebrow ratchet up. “And no papers.”
He laughs like a howler monkey. “Stolen, yes? You want stolen?” In a flash, he has a knife in his hand, pointed at my throat. “Police, yes? Yes?”
“No.” I manage to not sound like I’ve huffed helium. Guns make me nervous, but knives scare the piss out of me. “Not police. I’m as not-police as they come. Put that thing away.”
Burim steps closer. Now he can dissect me without having to stretch his arm all the way out. “Why I believe? You lie, yes? More police where? In tree? You have sound, yes?”
“No, no, no and no. Look, Getz said I’m okay, right? You think he’s gonna send a cop after you?” I still don’t sound like Mickey Mouse, but my words trip over each other on their way out. I try to stand my ground even though everything inside is telling me to run.
We stand there staring at each other, breathing hard. The knife makes little circles near my throat. I have no idea how to stop this standoff. Does Burim?
“Pull up shirt,” he says. He twitches the knife upward a couple times to make his point. It almost slices my chin.
I pull up the hems of my polo and undershirt. When he twists the knife’s point in a circle, I turn around slowly so he can see I don’t have a wire or a gun or a badge. Maybe he’ll think the sweat trickling down my back is from the humidity. We have another staring match for a few seconds, then he nods. I don’t move until the knife goes away.
“Why I do this?” he asks.
In any sale, the seller has to figure out what the buyer wants—which often isn’t the thing that’s for sale—and tell the buyer how he’ll get it. Now’s that time.
I give Burim my let-me-tell-you-a-secret smile and lower my voice. “Burim, I can tell you’re a sharp operator.” He’s probably a total squirrel, but this isn’t one of those honesty-is-the-best-policy moments. “The way Lorenzoni does business offends you? It offends me, too. A man should have honor, right? Stick by the deals he makes. Ask a favor, give a favor, right? It’s the only way to do business lik
e men.”
“Yes. Yes.” Burim’s starting to lean toward me.
“I knew it. You see, we’re not so different. Lorenzoni’s screwed me the way he’s tried to screw you. He has something of mine, a canvas I used to own, that got stolen.” The easiest, least-checkable lie I can cook up. “You want to get back at him? So do I. If we work together, we can both get what we want.”
The skinny Albanian’s nodding along. “How?”
Bingo. He’s moved from no to how. “Lorenzoni fences, right?” Burim frowns. “He buys stolen paintings?” He nods. “I need to know where he keeps them before he sells them on. I want mine back. Understand?”
“You steal?”
“Repossess.” That makes him smile a little. “Whatever painting you come up with, all I need is a few minutes alone with it. You keep whatever he pays you. I don’t want a cent.” The calculator behind his eyes flashes away. “It’s nothing more than you’d do anyway.” Now he’s got his mental protractor going, measuring all the angles. Time to close the deal. “The best part? You get to fuck Lorenzoni over, and he’ll never even know it. You can keep selling to him and laugh every time. We can make that happen, you and me. You like?”
Burim digs out another cigarette, takes a couple draws. Then he grins. Pretty scary with his teeth. “Good, good. I like. Okay. When you want?”
“As soon as you can. You got a piece in mind?” Frown. “Do you have a painting that might work?”
He shrugs. “I get. I find thing, yes? Three day, maybe four. Is okay?” I nod. “Good, good. I email.” He gulps down a long breath of fresh smoke, then peers at me through the plume he blows out. “You do this? You fuck Lorenzoni, yes? If no…” He drops the butt and stomps it into the gravel. “Okay?”
“Got it.” Do I dare get close enough to shake on it?
He solves the problem by picking the mangled butt out of the path and shoving it into his pocket. “You do this good, or bad for you, yes?” Then he turns and marches away.
Chapter 20
It’s come to this: Carson’s letting me drive.
We’ve been on the road for six hours, cris-crossing western Milan, hunting for fronts owned by Belknap’s landlord. Milanese traffic is just as bad as L.A.’s, but here the street system’s mostly paved cow paths and looks like linguine. We spend as much time not moving as we do moving.
“Turn right!” Carson barks.
“There isn’t a right!” I bark back. “You see a right here?”
It’d be okay if we were finding good stuff. We’re not. The ten places we’ve seen at least look legitimate and aren’t big enough to hold any collection of art we’d be interested in. By strikeout number seven, Carson’s face was turning a delicate shade of scarlet from screaming at the other drivers. I pried the keys out of her hand (I thought she’d hit me) and refused to start the car until she got in the passenger’s seat.
“Back off, asshole!”
“Me?”
“Him! Back off! Get in line!”
Even worse: we’re in Italy, and she got us a Golf. It’s the right size for this mess, but a German car in Italy? Seriously?
We’re avoiding residential properties. Despite Cornelius Gurlitt and his Munich apartment full of looted art, I doubt Belknap would try to store any significant number of pieces someplace people live. Somebody would notice and get fancy ideas. So we’re tracking down all the commercial and retail space, starting in the city center and working our way westward.
“Get over! Now!”
“Where? There’s no room.”
“Deke in before that asshole pulls up!” Horns scream. “Fuck you! We’re driving here!”
Now I know what “I’m a bad passenger” means.
We’re on Via Sempione, a raised freeway with the huge Fiera Milano conference center to our left and the Expo 2015 grounds on our right. Colorful Expo banners hang from the streetlights. There’s a goofy-looking ear of blue corn in an Indian headdress on the one ahead of us. “Who thought vegetables make good mascots?” I ask the sky.
“There’s the exit! Go!”
We finally break free of the Expo traffic and dive into an industrial area. The parking lots are mostly empty now at seven-thirty. It’s not too nasty, but I’d rather not spend a lot of time here at night. “Where am I going?”
“First left.”
We pass tilt-ups, iron fences, and cement-panel walls smeared with political posters. Nobody’s on the street. A string of small, attached cinder-block warehouses comes up on our right, screened by a line of trees. I let the car creep past the second one down. No lights in the clerestories; the barred window next to the office door is painted out. “This looks promising.”
Carson points down the road. “Park down there.”
We park in front of a tilt-up belonging to Anca (cabling products, judging from the sign) and walk back a block. Carson’s packing that oversized black satchel purse again. I pace off fifty-five feet for the warehouse frontage. There’s no company name anywhere. The roll-up freight door wears a new coat of forest-green paint. Carson uses her x-ray vision on the place as we stroll by. “No cameras outside.”
“Alarms?”
She shrugs and turns around. “Let’s find out.”
She spots the alarm leads on the office window. We cruise to the end of the block, turn right, and reach the alley between our row of warehouses and the next one. A shed’s attached to the back of Belknap’s landlord’s place. Carson picks the lock on the door—of course she has lockpicks—revealing a pile of water-stained banker’s boxes and the warehouse’s back door. She pulls a small-but-deadly-looking black flashlight from her purse and runs its way-too-bright beam along the door seam.
“See anything?”
“No. Doesn’t mean it’s not alarmed. Hold this.” She hands me her light, then rummages through her bag. Out comes a dentist’s mirror on a telescoping handle. She works the mirror under the door, then slides it from jamb to jamb. “Got it. Contact plates up there.” She points toward the top of the door, about a quarter of the way over from the latch side.
“Cameras?”
“Can’t tell.” She drops the mirror into her purse. “Outside.”
The clerestories are mostly barred, fixed-pane windows, but there’s a set of jalousies on either end. The shed’s directly under one of them. I borrow a blue steel barrel from next door and roll it to Carson. In a minute, we’re both on the shed roof (she manages it more gracefully than I do). At least we’re both in jeans. I reach her as she’s sliding louvers out of their frames. “Wait!” I say. “Those might be alarmed.”
“They’re not.”
That’s weird. “See anything?”
“No cameras, if that’s what you mean.” She grabs the front of my polo and pulls me closer to the meter-square hole she’s made in the jalousie. “Look.”
The inside looks like a lot of warehouses I’ve seen: maybe seventy feet deep, steel trusses, concrete slab, a boxed-in office cube against the front wall, stacks of crates here and there. The more interesting part is the rust-red, twenty-foot shipping container in front of us, about fifteen feet from the roll-up door.
I point toward the strip of light under the office door. “Somebody’s home.”
“So be quiet. If this’ it, we’re done ten days early.” Nice thought. Carson points at the conex. “Put art in that?”
“Um… wouldn’t be my first choice, but yeah, you can for a while.” I look it over. “Those vents in the top could let bugs in. Do these usually have vents?”
She peers at the container. Her eyes go slitty and her lips disappear. “No.” She drags on a black ski mask—where did that come from?—then shoulders me out of the way and sticks her legs through the hole.
“Didn’t you hear? Somebody’s inside. We’ll—”
“I’m opening that thing.” She stabs a finger at the conex. “Come along or stay.”
“Wait! Where’s my mask?”
This is such a bad idea. I fumble another ski mask out of the bag and drag it on. She motions for me to drop the purse in, which I do, then jump after it myself. I hit hard and the concrete swats me good, but I can get up with only a little pain and joint-cracking.
We’re in the southwest corner. Stacks of crates clutter the warehouse’s north half. The conex is a good thirty clear feet to the east of me. The office cube takes up the north half of the east wall, with an exterior fire door between it and the roll-up door.
I check the office again—no sign yet of a reaction to us thumping in—then scramble after Carson to the front of the conex.
She’s got her flashlight in her mouth, aimed at the padlock she’s picking. The two full-height doors each have two latches, but only two of the door handles are locked.
Getting in here seems way too easy. I glance up at the trusses. Carson said there aren’t any cameras, but they’re so small now… is she sure? Can she tell if we triggered an alarm? Did we just walk into a bear trap?
What am I doing here? I’ve done my share of bad things, but B&E isn’t one of them. I press my back against the steel door to sop up the sweat trickling down my spine. Think positive. I try to imagine this box full of stolen canvases, like something the Monuments Men found in World War Two. It’s a nice thing to think about as long as I ignore that light under the office door.
Carson pulls the padlock, then opens both latches on the left-hand door. Of course, their squeaks and clunks seem as loud as a metal concert. She swings it open. “You. Bastards.”
Not the reaction I expected. I slide next to her and follow the flashlight beam.
Oh my God.
A dozen faces stare back at us. All young women—most of them really young, like teens—all dirty, all terrified, huddled against the far end of the box. Then the smell hits me: sweat, piss, and whatever’s in the two five-gallon buckets at this end. I gag at both the stench and the thought of what these girls have gone through.