“Sure.” I hold my hands out to the side while Egidio pats me down. Stay away from the shoes, I tell him telepathically. For once, it works. He lifts my burner phone from my back pocket, shows it to Morrone, then pulls a small, silvery bag from his inside coat pocket and drops the phone in. It’s one of those bags that blocks radio signals. Carson was right.
Egidio escorts me by the elbow to the right rear door and ushers me into the back seat. I’ve been in smaller studio apartments. The plush beige leather seat hugs me gently when I sit. Soft blue lights embedded in the doorsills and the trim make the interior look like a swimming pool at night. At least I’ll be comfortable on the way to the execution.
Salvatore thumps behind the wheel and adjusts the seat to make up for the several inches Egidio has on him. The guard hands him my phone and an extra silver bag, then closes the door and trots to the sidewalk.
“Tonight I am the driver,” Salvatore says, half-laughing. “I try to not be lost. Please, Ricardo, be in comfort. The chair you control with the buttons on the door.”
By the time we whir away from the station, I’ve fiddled with the power footrest, and Salvatore’s wrapped his phone in the other bag. The living room in the pool house back home is louder than this car’s cabin. I notice that the GPS is dark. “You’re being very careful. Is it because of that attack on Lucca today? I’m sorry for your loss, by the way.” How’s it feel to kill your own brother?
“Grazie. No, the security, it is to protect my paintings, si? Many people want to take them. Are you in comfort, Ricardo?”
“Yes, very.” If I wasn’t deep in fight-or-flight mode and hoping I’ll see sunrise again, I could fall asleep back here.
“Buono. Please, take the thing in the bin next to you.”
I check the center console under the back-seat climate controls and find a roll of black cloth. When I pull on it, it unrolls into a cotton hood. “Seriously?”
“Please, Ricardo, wear this while we go. It is for the security. I do not ask if it is not important.”
Once again, Carson called it. I slip the hood over my head. It’s light enough to be only mildly annoying right away, and it does a fine job of letting me see only blobs of light and dark. I can’t relax, though—this is too Goodfellas (or worse, Casino) for that. “If your collection’s at risk, why don’t you have it someplace secure? Geneva’s not that far away. You could put it in the Free Port and nobody’d ever get to it.”
“Si, si. I think of this. My art is not for me only, it is for my business. I must use the art very fast sometime, and no record. Capiscira? You understand?”
That’s a bit lame. I think he just wants his toys where he can see them. “Well, I’m sure you’ve looked at this from all the angles.” Now what? How’s the war going? Did Lucca get your okay before he tried to off Belknap? No, that’s pushing it. Besides, he can’t tell me anything I don’t already know.
Morrone doesn’t have much to say while he drives. My claustrophobia kicks in after about ten minutes and I want to tear off the hood after every third breath. I can’t just sit here with a bag over my head and obsess over what’s on the other end of this ride—I need to keep my brain busy.
I wonder: what happens after I tell Olivia where Morrone’s stash is?
Who’s the client? It could be the Russians. It could’ve been Lucca, and Sunday was his way to encourage me to hurry up. (What happens if a client dies? Who pays Allyson’s bill?) It could be whoever Carson’s meeting in the AMG, if that’s not Lucca or the Russians. Angelo? He knows he’s going to get the family business after Salvatore goes to mafia heaven, but he wouldn’t be the first heir to want to speed things along. Belknap? He’d get his hands on a ton of fenceable art to sell to his Chinese friends and get back at Morrone. But if he’s as tapped as he implied, how could he afford Allyson?
Whoever wants to know isn’t spending all this money for nice-to-have information. That means the clock starts ticking on Morrone the minute Olivia hangs up on me.
Is getting Morrone killed okay?
I know what Salvatore is under that grandpa-art lover façade: he’s a wheel in one of the nastier organized-crime outfits in Europe. All I have to do is picture those dirty, terrified women in that shipping container to understand what he does for a living. I saw the addicts in shooting galleries in the dead factories we cased. I remember the sheet-covered dead bodies on the news.
Is that going to be me?
And he’s a doting father and grieving widower and he’s got a pretty primo modern-art collection. He probably likes little kids and kittens.
Hitler liked dogs. (Poor Blondi.)
For the next I-don’t-know-how-long—maybe thirty or forty minutes—I grind over this totally useless line of thought. It helps me concentrate on something other than the car bumping over tram and train tracks and the light blobs getting dimmer as we head farther out of town and closer to… the last night of the rest of my life?
We finally stop moving for longer than a stoplight. The engine switches off. Suddenly, all that displaced anxiety comes rushing back at me.
“We are come to the place,” Morrone says.
The place with the art? The place with the backhoe? “Can I take this thing off?”
“Soon. Very soon.”
By now, nearly all I can think of is getting rid of the hood. I clamp my mouth shut and wait for Morrone to help me out of the car. We’re on concrete, city noises seem far away and I don’t hear any other people or cars nearby. “Is it far?”
“No, no. Very close.”
Morrone steers my elbow as we shuffle across a slab I can’t see. I sense something large very near when he stops me. When I reach out my hand, I feel cool, painted metal—a door? Yes; I hear keys, then the clicking of a lock being turned. He pulls me to my left, a hinge squeaks, and then the ambient sounds start to echo. A thunk is followed by the world outside my hood getting very bright.
“You take the mask away now.”
I can’t decide if I should be excited or terrified. Do I really want to see?
You came all this way…
We’re about forty feet from a forest-green Volvo FM cabover semi. Angelo’s trailer is hooked to the back. The only people I can see are me and Salvatore. I take a deep breath of air that isn’t filtered through the hood and doesn’t smell like my dinner and sweat.
I may survive this.
Because it’s a reasonable thing to ask, I ask, “The collection’s in a truck?”
“Si, of course.” Morrone’s beaming. “When it moves, it is hard to find. Come.”
I follow him to the back of the trailer. It’s still full of pallets. Morrone hauls a three-step folding ladder from the sidelines, climbs up and fiddles with the left side of the pallets. There’s a loud click. He swings out the left-most stack on a hinge; the door’s less than six inches thick. “Come, Ricardo.” He waves me to follow. “This is what you want to see.” He disappears inside, then the doorway fills with light.
I hesitate for a second—mobile torture chamber?—then climb the ladder.
Oh. My. God.
The first thing I see is a Caspar David Friedrich pastoral featuring haystacks in front of a ruined castle. Another five Romantic landscapes hang on the metal mesh around it. There must be two dozen 6’x7’ white metal storage frames attached to the trailer’s right-hand wall, folded forward onto each other. The hinge edges are about a foot apart, and chromed posts with rubber tips keep the free ends from touching. Carabiners on cables secure each frame to its neighbors.
This is it. It’s real. We found it!
Morrone is working his way down the line, unhooking the frames and swinging them back toward me. I notice white magnetic strips with black lettering on the outside edge of each frame: “Paesaggio 18° sec,” “Ritratto 17° sec,” and so on, describing what’s hanging on the mesh. All very efficient. I have to hand it to Belknap—the bastard did a good job designing this.
I h
urry down the narrow aisle toward Morrone, catching glimpses of everything from medieval Russian icons to Dutch genre scenes to what looks like a sketch for a Jacques-Louis David battle panorama. There are a lot of holes on the frames where canvases used to be, now probably sold or being sold.
Morrone’s wearing a big smile and has the fingers of his left hand twined through the metal mesh on a frame marked “Paesaggio Imp.” He swings it open to show me a moody canvas of a garden on a riverbank. “Sisley” is scrawled on the lower-left corner. My heart jigs a little; a late-career Alfred Sisley could pull down mid-six to low-seven figures at auction.
“It is very good, si? You like this?”
“I do.” I’m wondering if it’s stolen, and for how long. I sweep the length of the trailer, wondering how many dozens of old burglary and grand-theft cases could be solved here. “This is incredible, Salvatore. I… I’m stunned. It’s so much more than I expected.”
Morrone nods. “When I am here, I get the, ehm… chill, si. Like the paintings, they have the energy, they live.” He gives me a bashful smile and waves his words away. “I am the old man with funny ideas. Here, I show you things you will like.”
There are many things I like. Eleven frames hold Impressionist or later art, and we pore over every one. He’s like a kid showing off his videogame collection. Every few minutes he says, “Ah, this is my favorite…” and turns up another beautiful portrait or ocean scene or landscape. Whatever else you can say about him, Salvatore isn’t a magpie the way a lot of our clients were at Heibrück. He really loves this art.
I catch his enthusiasm and start pointing out the familiar names or styles. We huddle over a canvas to study the brushwork, the impasto, the way an artist portrays sunlight on water, firelight on lace, or candlelight on skin.
We’re both grinning like idiots by the time we finish with the last frame. I haven’t had this much fun with art in… maybe ever. For once I can look at it as what it is—what my mom called “beauty frozen forever”—rather than a commodity or a scam. And sharing it with Salvatore is surprisingly nice. He doesn’t speak in MFA; he uses direct, simple language to talk about how the works make him feel.
Sometime back, Morrone pulled a spiral-bound notebook from his shirt pocket and jotted down the pieces Hoskins wants to buy. Now he reviews his notes and chuckles. “You take many souvenirs home, I think.”
Several million dollars’ worth at auction value. Of course, he promised special prices, and I’m sure a good number of pieces on the list are stolen, but that’s part of the fun. Why don’t we have fantasy art collecting, like fantasy football? “The problem’s going to be when I get them home. I’ll need more walls.”
We laugh at that. He copies out the list so I can have my own while I put the frames back in traveling formation. He swings shut the trick door and locks up the trailer. At the door to outside, he gives me an apologetic look. “Mi dispiace, Ricardo. You must wear the mask now.”
“Oh. Fine.”
Salvatore slows after a few steps across the parking lot. His hand squeezes my elbow harder. “What is it?” I ask.
“Ehm…a person is here.”
Belknap? Back for revenge? “Who?”
He doesn’t answer. We step carefully across the concrete. Salvatore tenses more with every other stride. This clearly wasn’t part of his plan. Knowing this sends my brain spinning through all the worst possibilities—Belknap, Lucca’s hitters, Russians, cops…
“Signorina Carson?” It’s like he’s saying, The Loch Ness Monster?
What? I whip the mask off my head. Yes, it’s Carson, arms behind her back, leaning against the hood of a dark-blue Alfa Romeo Giulietta sedan parked next to the Merc. At least, I think it’s blue; the yellow mercury-vapor floodlights on the warehouses around us turn the color to a muddy green. Carson’s wearing the same dark jeans and black long-sleeved tee from a few hours ago.
I’m as confused as Salvatore. This isn’t part of the plan. “Carson? What’re you—”
“Is it here?” Her voice is quiet, almost gentle.
Salvatore turns me to face him. “What does this mean? Why does she come here? How does she know?”
“I…” I know the answer to the last question, not the rest. I turn back to her. “What’re you doing here?”
“Is it here?” There’s more force behind the words now.
“Well… yeah, but—”
She pushes away from the Alfa and takes a step toward us. “Salvatore Morrone?”
I glance toward him. His face is completely blank. His circuits are blown… just like mine. “Of course, si, you know this, why do you—”
Carson pulls a pistol from behind her back. It has what looks like a pipe stuck on the end.
She shoots Morrone between the eyes.
Chapter 55
“What the fuck?” I’ve never had to work so hard to get words out of my mouth. I point toward Morrone not moving on the ground. “Is this about those women?”
Dead. Just like that. A neat hole in Morrone’s forehead, trailing a trickle of what looks like chocolate syrup in the yellow light.
Carson holds the gun in front of her hips with both hands, aiming at the ground. I can’t read her face. “No. That helps.”
“This was your job?”
She nods. “Now you know why I couldn’t tell you.”
I can’t process this. “This is what you do for Allyson?”
“Not for her.”
Huh? “Then who—”
A trio of SUVs screech around the corner of the nearest warehouse, one after another. They fan out and squeal to a stop behind Carson’s car. Silver G63s. A pack of no-neck types in black pile out of the two outside Mercs and form a ring around us. One of the taller ones—a fuzz of blond hair, black UnderArmor tee, black utility pants, serious tats, and an assault rifle—slides up to Carson and says something that sounds like “Zakonchili?”
“Da.”
The goon murmurs into the microphone stalk next to his mouth. Before I can blink twice, somebody pins my arms. Panic explodes inside me. All I can see is me and Morrone in matching body bags.
“Nyet!” Carson gets in the tall guy’s face. “On v’poryadke! On so mnoy!” At least she’s wound up. What’s she’s saying? Don’t kill him? Don’t kill him yet?
The tall guy glares at her, then nods at whoever’s trying to pull my arms off. Through the shock, I realize that instead of being scared, I’m mad. Carson used me to get to Morrone, then popped him right in front of me, like I wasn’t there. Allyson made me accessory to a murder. Ten grand isn’t worth this.
Then the guy behind me is gone. My legs almost collapse.
Two more no-necks get out of the front of the middle SUV. The driver opens the back door, and another guy steps out and lumbers up to Carson. He’s older, stocky, thinning hair, lined face. The moment I see him, something clicks.
That first time with Carson and the AMG? He was the dude inside it.
Unlike the rest of them, he’s in a dark suit that’s as rumpled as his hair. His collar’s open and his light-colored tie hangs loose. Looks like a long a day for him.
The suit and Carson have a long exchange. Subtract twenty years from each and the body language is a dad having words with his stubborn teenaged daughter. He finally gives her a long, hard look, chews on the inside of his cheek, then nods and turns his head toward me. “Mr. Hoskins, yes?” Deep voice, strong Russian accent.
“Yes.” His age and the way everyone except Carson defers to him tells me he’s the boss. I’m used to Mafia bigwigs by now. “And you’re…?”
“Rodievsky.” He takes a couple heavy steps toward me. I try to not melt into a puddle. “Miss Tarasenko—” who? “—says I grateful to you for this.” He waves toward the warehouse. I finally recognize the place—we were here on Tuesday. “Pictures in building, yes?”
“Yeah.” I don’t want any credit for murdering Morrone, but it’s better to have this g
uy grateful than ready to kill me. “What now?”
“Now? You go with Miss Tarasenko. Home, to America.” He puts his hand to his chest. “With my thanks.”
Just like that. A guy dies, and we go home with a Russian gangster’s gratitude. Now I know who the client is. Carson was right—I want to scrape off my skin.
But my anti-conscience comes out of hiding. How much is his gratitude worth? It whispers an idea that the rest of me is still too scrambled to cook up. As usual, it makes perfect sense as long as the light isn’t too good, which it isn’t out here.
I take a deep breath and turn things over to Hoskins. “Glad you got what you want. Now there’s something I want.”
Carson’s eyes get big. Her mouth throws me a silent No!
Rodievsky raises a bushy eyebrow.
I’d like to swallow but can’t. “I want one of Morrone’s canvases to pay off somebody who helped me. We wouldn’t be here without that help.”
He frowns, then cocks his head. “Why I do this?”
“This person made the connection that led us here.” My heart’s going faster than a hummingbird’s wings. That bullet I dodged a couple minutes ago may be heading my way again soon. “You like how things turned out? Then let me reward the person who made it possible.” I point toward the warehouse door. “You’ve got eight, maybe nine figures worth of art in there, free to you. One piece more or less won’t matter.”
Carson’s eyes are closed. She’s rubbing a spot between her eyebrows.
Rodievsky stares at me for about a year, chewing his cheek.
“Yes,” he finally says. He holds up a thick index finger. “One.”
I’m still alive. That’s better than I’d expected. “Thank you. One more thing. You’re going to grab Morrone’s stuff from Lorenzoni’s gallery, right?”
He nods once.
“The assistant’s a nice Italian girl who doesn’t have anything to do with any of this. She just works there; she won’t interfere. Please don’t hurt her or get her arrested. Okay?”
The Collection Page 31