Murder at the National Gallery

by Margaret Truman

  “Of course, my friend,” Giliberti said, following Mason to the sidewalk. “We will breakfast together?”

  “If you’d like.”

  “I would like very much. We must leave early to allow time for the drive.”

  “All right. Now excuse me, Carlo. I have a dreadful headache,” said Mason, sounding to himself for a second like the classic disaffected wife.

  “By all means. I am just so happy that things went well this morning with his excellency.” Giliberti held open the door of the waiting Mercedes, but Mason shook his head. “It’s only a few blocks to the hotel. A walk might help clear my head. I’ll see you at the hotel at nine for breakfast.”

  “I shall be there. Enjoy your evening in Rome, amico. Ma sta attento o te ne pentirai!”

  Luther didn’t have to be reminded that crime was rampant in Rome.

  In retrospect, Luther was sorry that he’d been cross with his friend. He’d been losing his temper with greater frequency lately. But who could blame him? The mounting of the exhibition at Mason’s curatorial home for the past twenty-two years, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was the most meaningful event of his professional life. It was also proving to be the most difficult of the many exhibitions he’d curated.

  It was hard enough navigating the tricky waters of foreign governments and international art dealers to pull together a show of this magnitude. But now there was the added complication of the new director, Mr. Courtney Whitney III.

  From Mason’s perspective, Whitney’s talent was limited to wooing wealthy patrons of the arts and schmoozing with members of the Board of Trustees at interminable cocktail parties and dinners and weekends in the country. But did he have a genuine appreciation of the art that hung in the Gallery he directed? Hung anywhere for that matter? Not as far as Luther was concerned.

  It had been Mason’s dream that the Gallery one day own a work by Caravaggio as part of its permanent collection, and he considered not owning one a representation of the Gallery’s glaring weakness. The National Gallery possessed a still life that had once been thought to have come from Caravaggio’s hand, but subsequent analysis cast serious doubt on its provenance.

  And years ago, former National Gallery director John Walker had bid seriously for Caravaggio’s Saint John the Baptist. But not seriously enough. It went to Kansas City’s Nelson Gallery–Atkins Museum. After stepping down as director, Walker often cited losing that painting as one of his greatest professional disappointments.

  Aside from the intense personal pleasure Mason would take from having many of the petulant genius’s works occupying the walls of the National Gallery for the six months of the exhibition, he also hoped that one of the lenders to the show, possibly a private dealer, would be sufficiently impressed by the Gallery’s professional approach to will a Caravaggio to it. It had happened before—but never, unfortunately, with a Caravaggio.

  The three o’clock meeting with a curator and the administrative head of the Galleria Borghese was over in fifteen minutes. There were only a few details to iron out, which Mason knew when he planned this trip. The meeting could easily have been accomplished by telephone. But using the phone would have meant not making this particular journey to Italy. Of all the trips Luther Mason had taken there over the years, this one had to be made.

  5

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING

  Carlo Giliberti was late for breakfast, something to do, he told Luther, with an unexpected and thoroughly delightful meeting with a female friend he hadn’t seen in years—“Bellezza rara, Luther, a raving beauty”—who was reluctant to have him leave her apartment that morning. Luther had already eaten and was waiting in the lobby, his suitcases at his side. The Italian cultural attaché’s penchant for being late was pathological. And so routine it no longer annoyed Mason.

  They placed the luggage in the rear seat of Giliberti’s red Fiat convertible. Mason folded his lanky frame into the passenger bucket seat, secured the seat belt, and clenched his teeth. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have insisted that Giliberti arrange for a government vehicle and driver. But this was not an ordinary circumstance.

  From the moment Giliberti slapped the gearshift into first and pulled away from the curb, Mason’s apprehension was understandable. Giliberti was a pure madman behind the wheel, perhaps no more maniacal than the million other drivers in Rome that morning, but sufficiently demented to cause Mason to wince and to tighten his stomach muscles as though preparing to pull G-forces. No matter how often Mason asked Giliberti to slow down, it only inspired the Italian to go faster.

  They roared south out of Rome on the A2, the honey and pomegranate hues of the city, the ancient red brick and gleaming white marble and steel of skyscrapers sliding by in an Impressionistic blur as they headed for the less congested Lazio, that large region surrounding the city. Another request for Carlo to drive slower was met with a laugh and a surge of the powerful engine.

  “We aren’t meeting him until dinner,” Mason said over the whoosh of wind. “Why are we rushing?”

  “We are not rushing, Luther. We are going for a ride. Sit back. Relax. Italians are born to speed.”

  And to lose wars, Mason thought grimly.

  They said little to each other as they passed the Alban Hills on their left; to their right was the beginning of the Tyrrhenian Coast, home to sun-seeking hedonists.

  They passed through the town of Frosinone and continued southward into the Campania region until reaching Naples, where they exited the A2. Giliberti followed narrow, winding local roads down along the Amalfi coast, passing Mount Vesuvius and going through the city of Pompeii, then heading directly south to the pastel seaside resort village of Positano. They checked into the Poseidon, on the coast road near the San Pietro.

  “What time are we meeting with him?” Mason asked as they checked in.

  “We made very good time, huh?” Giliberti said. “We will meet at eight. Would you like some feminine companionship this afternoon? Positano has the loveliest of puttane.”

  A prostitute was the furthest thing from Mason’s mind. “No,” he said. “I’m still fatigued. A nap is certainly in order, maybe a swim in the pool.”

  “As you wish. One thing concerning our dinner this evening.”

  “What is that?” Mason asked as a bellman approached to take their baggage.

  “The gentleman you will meet is deceiving in his appearance. He is an old man, Luther. Such men are often thought to not pose a threat to anyone. Too old. Too feeble. But he is very powerful in this part of Italy. His connections are strong. Those who work for him are extremely loyal.”

  As the bellman walked away burdened with their bags, Mason lingered behind with Giliberti. “Be direct with me, Carlo. What are you saying?”

  “I am saying, my friend, do not enter into this meeting unless you intend to go through with your plan.”

  “I made it clear from the beginning,” said Mason, “that it would depend upon my evaluation of what he has to offer.”

  “Of course, of course, and that is still the understanding. Tonight, you and he will break bread and get to know each other. Establish trust. That is very important to the Camorra,” he said, referring to the Naples Mafia. “Signor Sensi rules with—what do you say?—with the iron fist. He must trust those with whom he does business.”

  “And so must I, Carlo.”

  “Go. Swim. Take your nap. I am confident everything will turn out exactly as you wish.”

  Mason was alone in the pool. He swam laps until a shoulder cramp sent him to a chaise for a half hour of sun. He returned to his room, sprawled on the bed, and fell asleep. Soft, fragrant breezes drifted in from the terrace through the open French doors.

  That evening, Luther and Carlo walked to a restaurant called Covo dei Saraceni, where they were ushered to a table already occupied. He was, as Giliberti had said, an old man. He had the face and hands of someone who’d spent his life doing hard manual labor in the sun; his brown skin had the q
uality of elephant hide, his face was molded into dozens of lumpy planes. The fingers were gnarled, his gray hair unruly. He wore a suit that had been bought many harvests ago; the points of the collar on the once-white shirt were curled. His tie was a mustard yellow and carelessly knotted.

  He reminded Mason of a groundhog.

  Aside from a cursory interest in those physical details, Mason was more aware of two young men seated behind the old man at their own small table. He didn’t know, of course, that one of them had recently gunned down a former schoolmate, Giovanni Saltore, in an alley in Cosenza, an act for which he’d been rewarded by a promotion to Signor Luigi Sensi’s cadre of personal bodyguards.

  Giliberti introduced Mason to Sensi, but Sensi waved away Mason’s outstretched hand and mumbled something in Italian, gesturing for Mason to sit to his left. Giliberti took the chair opposite.

  Sensi virtually ignored Mason throughout dinner, speaking to Giliberti in a tired, low, raspy voice. There was no menu. Regional dishes—pasta all’amatriciana, made with pancetta and local pecorino cheese; pasta all’arrabbiata, which Giliberti explained had been made “angry” with hot peppers; roasted artichokes, tripe; and saltimbocca, slices of veal, cured ham, and sage leaves in a hot sauce—were brought to the table one after the other. The two young men ate what looked to Mason to be spaghetti.

  Once dessert had been cleared, the old man leaned in Mason’s direction. “So you want to do business with me,” he said in hesitant English.

  Mason nervously glanced left and right. For the first time he realized that adjacent tables had deliberately been left unoccupied, even though a knot of people waited at the front door for vacancies. “Si,” he said in a barely audible voice. The old man fixed him in a cold stare. Mason cleared his throat and repeated, “Si. Yes. I would like to do business with you, Signor Sensi, provided, of course, that what you have for sale is—well, is what I want.”

  Sensi’s hand gesture to Giliberti said that he was about to enter into a difficult discussion. He looked at Mason again: “But I do not understand the terms you offer, Signor Mason. No. Non capisco. I do not understand. You will forgive me, but I am an old man.”

  Mason looked to Giliberti, whose face was serious. “Didn’t you explain to Signor Sensi about how we would proceed?” he asked.

  “Of course. But what you suggest is unusual. Not the normal way Signor Sensi does business.”

  Mason’s stomach had knotted, and he felt woozy. He’d sipped only half a glass of red table wine, so he knew his discomfort wasn’t from alcohol. His face felt hot; was he visibly flushed? he wondered. He started to explain to Sensi how things would progress but stopped in midsentence. The truth was that in this circumstance, and under these conditions, he was incapable of rational dialogue.

  Giliberti jumped in. “Signor Sensi, I realize what my good friend has proposed is highly unusual. But you and I have done business before, huh? Many times. And we have never had trouble between us. Am I correct?”

  The groundhog nodded.

  “And so I come to you with my friend, Mr. Mason, who is respected in the United States as a man of honor and integrity. He has carefully thought about what he proposes and has explained it to me in great detail. I understand what it is he wishes to do. I support his plan. I only ask that you trust him as an extension of your faith in me.”

  Without warning, Sensi motioned for his bodyguards to stand. He placed his misshapen hands on the table. “Then we will do business,” he said to Luther. Sensi was up now. One of his guards handed him a cane, and he lumbered away from the table, the young men following closely behind.

  Mason drew a deep, audible sigh of relief. Giliberti said, “See? I told you I could arrange it.”

  “But what about my opportunity to examine it?” Mason said.

  “Oh, I am relieved you did not insult him by questioning that,” Giliberti replied. “Everything is arranged for tomorrow morning. You will see it then. Now, I suggest we celebrate.”

  By the time Mason extricated himself from Giliberti at a lively, loud discotheque on the water’s edge, where they were joined by a voluptuous young blond woman whose only interest seemed to be to hang on Giliberti—who said she was a cousin he hadn’t seen in a while—his head was pounding, and a fiery heartburn had set in. He was also drunk, a condition he hadn’t experienced in years until getting better acquainted with Giliberti, and stumbled twice on the way up the steep steps from the waterfront to the hotel.

  He stood on the terrace outside his room and looked over the tranquil, shimmering sea. He had done it. All the months of planning were now about to be converted into action. How long had it been since Carlo Giliberti first told him of the existence of the painting? Six months? Seven? There had been two previous trips to meet with the old mafioso, Luigi Sensi, but each meeting had been canceled at the last minute. “He is a very cautious man,” Carlo had explained. And ruthless, Luther knew. He’d never before met anyone involved in organized crime. The Mafia? La Cosa Nostra? He didn’t even know the proper term. If he’d been told a year ago that he’d be sitting down to dinner with such a man, he would have scoffed at the suggestion. If he’d been told he would be poised to do something … irregular beyond that, that, too, he would have dismissed as folly.

  But here he was, in Italy, having come from dinner with a “Godfather”—was Sensi called that?—should he have kissed his ring?—and about to meet with him again in the morning.

  He sat and wrapped his arms about himself. He suffered, at once, a rush of excitement tinged with almost religious joy and a powerful feeling of dread. Then he started to shake. His stomach went into a spasm that caused him to double over, followed by nausea, and soon its release in the bathroom.

  He fell onto the bed in a cold sweat and continued to shake until sleep calmed him.

  The Italian sun had not yet made an appearance when Giliberti and Mason drove away from the hotel in Giliberti’s Fiat. The forecast was for a sunny, pleasant day with low humidity.

  Because Giliberti seemed unsure of the route, he drove more slowly than usual. Mason was not displeased, and neither was his stomach. They passed through lush farmland as they traveled inland from the coast, past fields of sheep and large grape arbors that looked like aircraft hangars, and through thick forests of umbrella pines and cypresses.

  By the time they turned off the main road onto a rutted dirt path wide enough for only a single automobile, the sun had come up, and Giliberti was able to turn off his headlights. They went a hundred yards before reaching a break in the heavy vegetation lining the road. Giliberti turned through the opening and proceeded on yet another dirt road until arriving at a rambling, ramshackle farmhouse covered with vines. Two large dogs of mixed origin, one yellow, the other black, came around the side of the house and barked as the men got out of the car. Giliberti noticed the apprehension on Mason’s face and told him in Italian that they wouldn’t bite.

  The dogs, tails wagging in energetic circles, followed them to the front door. Giliberti knocked. The door was opened by an elderly woman wearing a black dress and white apron, a white net on her hair. She was stout; her face was sweet. The two young men who’d protected Sensi at the restaurant came up behind her. Giliberti said something to the woman in Italian, and she stepped back to allow them to enter.

  Inside, there was a musty coolness, and the strong odor of garlic and stale tobacco. The woman disappeared to the left; Mason and Giliberti followed one of the two men to the right, into a living room overflowing with old furniture. Drapes were drawn tightly over every window, keeping the room in virtual blackness, broken only by two lamps in opposite corners that spilled small amounts of yellow light onto a worn red carpet. From one of the darkened corners came the voice of Luigi Sensi, who sat in a chair that all but swallowed him.

  “Ah, Signor Sensi,” said Giliberti. “We are early. I apologize for that.”

  The old man struggled to his feet and leaned on the cane that had been hooked over an arm of the cha
ir. “Better to be early than late,” he said gruffly. To Mason: “You have come.”

  “Yes.”

  Sensi hobbled from the room and out the front door, Mason and Giliberti behind him, followed by the two young men. This day, without their suit jackets, the bodyguards’ shoulder holsters and revolvers were plainly in sight. The dogs joined the entourage as Sensi led it across the broad front yard and through a series of grape arbors fat with fruit. The guards opened large doors to a barn partially collapsed at one end, and they entered. The smell of hay and manure was pungent. Sensi gave an order in Italian, and the two men went up a ladder to a loft. Mason heard them rummaging about. Eventually, one descended the ladder; the other handed down a large rectangular object wrapped in burlap.

  Sensi instructed the young man to unwrap the object near a broken window that allowed a shaft of light to illuminate a small portion of the darkened barn. He motioned for Mason to come closer. “Look,” he said. “Come see.”

  Mason felt as though his shoes were glued to the floor. He was weak from his physical illness the night before and from the hangover he’d suffered since waking. But something other than those maladies kept him from stepping forward. Sensi had beckoned him into the holiest of churches, into a sacred shrine of a lost civilization. Although the only light cast upon the object came through the window, the entire area seemed to glow.

  “Yes, let me see,” he said, his words breaking the inertia. He stood at Sensi’s side and looked down at the thing that had brought him to this rundown farmhouse in southern Italy. His gasp was involuntary. He pressed his lips tightly together to keep any further sounds from emerging.