Murder at the National Gallery

by Margaret Truman

  She calculated direction and looked northwest. No one conspicuously stood holding what might be a painting. Then her eye went to a large, black, four-door Mercedes with opaque windows. Maybe he’s waiting inside it, she thought, crossing the street and approaching the vehicle.

  She stood next to the car and squinted in an attempt to see inside, but the black glass effectively prohibited it. A door opened; Annabel leaned forward to better see the person sitting in the rear compartment. Her first attempt at saying his name came out as air. She did better the second time: “Julian Mason?”

  Annabel instinctively stepped closer and saw the painting he held. Grottesca! It was as though the canvas emitted a magnetic pull, a positive force drawing Annabel’s negative field to it. As she stepped still closer, the front passenger door opened and a man hopped out.

  Mac jumped up in the cafe, nearly knocking over his small table, speaking, below a shout, “No, Annabel. Watch out!” Others in the cafe smiled at his actions.

  The man who’d come from the front of the Mercedes shoved Annabel onto the rear seat, slammed the door behind her, and scrambled into the passenger seat. The car roared away.

  Mac was running. “Stop them, stop them,” he yelled into the air.

  Jordan and Colarulli had been taken by surprise. When it registered, Colarulli spun rubber and headed for Mac, who’d almost reached the scene of Annabel’s abduction. Jordan was on the radio, calling for the backup car.

  “Get in,” Colarulli shouted.

  Mac seemed stunned, immobile.

  “Get in,” Jordan repeated, reaching behind and opening the rear door. Mac fell in and they sped after the Mercedes.

  “Catch them,” Mac said, leaning over the seat back. “Damn it, pull them over.”

  Colarulli held up his right hand, his left on the wheel. “Let’s see where they’re heading.”

  “I don’t care where they’re heading. Call for help. Set up roadblocks.”

  Colarulli ignored him, speaking to Jordan. “They don’t seem to be trying to lose us.”

  “Maybe they don’t even know who we are,” Mac said angrily.

  The car containing the American and Italian detectives made radio contact with Colarulli in Italian. “What did they say?” Mac asked.

  “They’re with us,” Colarulli said. To Jordan: “They’re heading for the A24.”

  “Where’s that lead?” Jordan asked.

  “East. The Abruzzi region,” Colarulli said, swerving to avoid a gaping pothole and tossing Mac against the door in the process.

  Ahead, Annabel sat wide-eyed next to Julian Mason. Her question of the men in front, “Who are you?” was answered by a revolver leveled at her over the seat back. Once she’d regained enough composure to speak again, she turned to Julian. “You?” she said, looking at the painting he held close to his chest.

  “I didn’t know it was you coming to buy it,” he said, his quivering voice mirroring his fright. “They didn’t tell me.”

  “That’s it?” she said. “The original Grottesca?”

  He nodded, tightening his grip on the painting.

  “Julian, what about your father? Did you—?”

  “It was an accident. He fell.”

  “Fell? You were there?”

  His silence answered affirmatively.

  She was about to ask more when the driver entered the A24 and pushed down hard on the accelerator, pressing Annabel and Julian Mason back against their seats.

  “We’ll lose them,” Mac said as he saw the Mercedes suddenly increase the distance between them. He twisted and looked through the rear window. The second car of detectives was right behind them. “Can’t you stop them?” he yelled at Colarulli.

  Again, the detective’s right hand came up. “Trust me,” he said.

  “Trust you? That’s my wife, damn it!”

  “Easy, Mac,” Jordan said. “Everything’s going to be okay.” It didn’t sound to Mac as though he believed it.

  As the Mercedes with Annabel and Julian Mason, and the police cars with Mac, Steve Jordan, Paul Colarulli, and the other detectives continued traveling east from Rome, a surrealistic calm settled in.

  Annabel and Julian rode in silence, trapped in their thoughts.

  Mac thought of the now-infamous O. J. Simpson Bronco “chase” and wondered if this would look the same were it televised. The only difference was speed. The Bronco had been going thirty-five miles per hour. They were doing seventy or better.

  The Mercedes exited A24 and continued on A25.

  “Cocullo,” Colarulli said to no one in particular, indicating a town they’d just passed. “They worship snakes there.”

  “What?” Mac said.

  “Snakes. Snake worship. Looks like he’s heading for Pescara.”

  “Pescara?” Mac repeated.

  “On the coast. The Adriatic. Too polluted to swim.”

  The last thing on Mac’s mind.

  A25 cut north, up through breathtaking snowcapped mountains, the towns of San Pelino and Caporciano a blur through the window. “You’re losing them,” Mac said as the Mercedes disappeared over a crest, only to reappear again on the other side. It was almost twilight; shards of shadow sliced across lush valleys and onto mountaintop villages with barns constructed of reeds, as they had been for centuries, and over old men and women shrouded in black. The road had turned chiaroscuro, sun to shade, shade to sun, the air cooler through a window Mac had cracked open.

  The Mercedes slowed as it entered Pescara and navigated narrow streets, then broke free again on a ribbon of road leading to the seacoast’s rugged beaches.

  “Where the hell is he going?” Jordan said.

  “Up there.” Colarulli pointed to the crest of rocky hill growing up out of the beach to a plateau studded with scraggly pines. Although it was still light, an eerie glow came from the plateau, light of a different genesis than the horizon’s pumpkin-colored scrim.

  The Mercedes started up a one-lane road. Colarulli stopped at the foot of it. The second Italian police car pulled up alongside.

  “Pazzo,” the Italian detective said to Colarulli through an open window.

  “What’s crazy?”

  “Going up there. There’s no other way down. This is the only road.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My family’s from here. I came every summer to swim.”

  They got out and stood by their cars.

  “Lupi mannari,” said the detective whose family was from Pescara.

  “What’s that mean?” Mac asked Colarulli.

  He screwed up his face, said to the other detective, “Werewolves?”

  “Si.”

  “Werewolves?” Mac said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “This is a superstitious area. They used to practice sorcery, witchcraft, other such things.”

  “The caves are up there,” the other detective said.

  “What caves?” Colarulli asked.

  “Where the hermits performed their ceremonies. The Middle Ages.”

  “What are we going to do now?” Mac asked.

  “Looks like they can’t go anyplace,” Jordan said. “You have backup coming?” he asked Colarulli.

  “I requested it. They said they would. Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” Mac said, his voice filled with frustration. “Maybe?” he repeated, louder this time.

  The sound of approaching vehicles caused them to turn. Three marked polizia cars from Abruzzi’s capital, Aquila, came to a dusty stop, and a half-dozen uniformed officers joined them. Colarulli engaged in a spirited conversation with the squad’s chief before saying to Mac and Jordan in English, “They’re trapped up there. No way out.” He said to his two detectives, “Come with me.” The chief of the uniformed contingent told his men to join them.

  “Where are you going?” Mac asked.

  “Up,” said Colarulli.

  “Not without me you’re not,” Mac said.

  “Please, it is better that—�
�

  “He’s coming with us,” said Jordan, knowing there was no way to prevent it.

  “As you wish,” Colarulli said. “But stay back. Behind us.”

  They started up, the police fanning out across the road, guns drawn, Mac in lockstep with Steve Jordan.

  Jordan waved the party to a halt. “Whose car is that?” he asked, referring to a silver-gray Mercedes parked beneath some trees.

  No one had an answer.

  They continued to climb, slower now, more alert, senses tuned to their surroundings. They reached a relatively level dirt area where the black Mercedes that had led them to this lonely, lovely, forbidding spot was parked, along with four other vehicles—a muddy brown Mercedes and three Volvo panel trucks. Jordan and Mac checked the cars. Empty.

  “What the hell is going on?” Jordan asked.

  He was answered by a sudden burst of light emanating from behind a row of trees separating them from the hill’s plateau. They tensed; the officers crouched, held their weapons in both hands, and pointed them toward the trees.

  “Slow,” Colarulli said, leading a further advance.

  They reached the trees and peered beyond. The lights originated from floods mounted on stands and taped to trees, powered by large generators that had been trucked in. Mac spotted Annabel at one end of the clearing with two other people, one of whom held a gun. He strained to make out the other face. “Julian Mason?” he said.

  At the opposite side of the tract stood three men, none of whom were familiar to Mac. One had a helmet of Harpo Marx–style blond curls that appeared to have been pasted on his head.

  An amplified voice cut through the evening. “Come up and join us.”

  “He’s got a bullhorn,” Jordan said.

  “Those are cameras over there,” Paul Colarulli said, pointing to a raised area formed naturally by a rock shelf worn smooth over centuries by wind and rain.

  “Jesus,” Mac muttered. “That’s Scott Pims.” Next to him stood “Count” Filippo Testa.

  “Come, come,” Pims said through the battery-powered bullhorn. “The party’s just beginning.”

  Mac stepped away from the police and into the glare of the lights. “Come here, Annabel,” he shouted, beckoning her with his hand. “Let her go.”

  “All in due time, Mackensie,” said Pims. “First, there is business to be conducted.”

  All eyes were on Pims, who was dressed in black trousers and a billowing black shirt with puff sleeves. Draped behind him was a huge blowup of an ink-on-paper drawing of a bearded young man. As everyone watched, Pims said into the camera:

  “I am M. Scott Pims, your benevolent host of this week’s Art Insider, brought to you through the extreme generosity of viewers like you who support this public station. And I welcome those of you now able to join me on this visionary cable network.”

  He indicated the drawing.

  “Behind me is the face of one of the world’s great artistic geniuses, Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio. It is in his honor that we gather here this evening on a windswept plateau in Italy overlooking the magnificent Adriatic. It is here that we invoke the spirit of Caravaggio—and solve the mystery of Grottesca.”

  “The son of a bitch is turning this into a TV show,” Mac said to Jordan.

  “Looks like it.”

  “We have many distinguished guests on this week’s program,”

  Pims said.

  “The government of the United States, which was terribly embarrassed when it lost Grottesca, is represented by one Annabel Reed-Smith, who appears here as an emissary of the White House’s Commission on the Arts. Welcome, Mrs. Smith.”

  A camera captured Annabel, Julian, and the two men standing with them, then zoomed in on the Grottesca Julian held. Mac looked across the small clearing at his wife; she appeared to be as dumbfounded as he was.

  A gust of wind sent Pims’s sleeves fluttering as he raised his arms and continued:

  “Also joining us this evening is the noted San Francisco art collector, Mr. Franco del Brasco, who has flown here at great expense in pursuit of the remarkable work from Caravaggio’s hand known as Grottesca.”

  Del Brasco and his henchmen took in the scene, impatient to act, nervous in the light. The blond man looked as though he might bolt at any second. Del Brasco’s Grottesca—the original—became the subject of another camera closeup.

  Steve Jordan, who’d been standing with Mac Smith, stepped into the center of the area and shouted, “Don’t forget to introduce us, Pims. The police, and plenty of us, American and Italian.”

  Pims clapped his hands and laughed. “Would I forget you, Detective Jordan? I would be keenly disappointed if you hadn’t decided to partake in the festivities.” He said to the camera,

  “We are also joined by law enforcement from both the United States of America and Italy. These dedicated men and women have been searching ’round the world without success for Grottesca. Fortunately for the art world, I have been conducting my own exhaustive search, which has proved far more fruitful than their efforts.

  “My other guest, no less significant than the others, is senior curator of the Vatican, Mr. Joseph Spagnola.”

  Spagnola had been in the shadows behind the sketch of Caravaggio. Carrying the third Grottesca, he stepped into the light and stood at Pims’s side. A stronger gust sent Pims’s hair flying, and he placed his hand atop his large head.

  “The details leading to this remarkable evening will be revealed to you from a studio, in less turbulent conditions. But now, it is time to right wrongs.”

  “Aren’t you going to move on him?” Mac asked Jordan.

  “Let’s hear what he has to say. Nobody’s going anywhere.” The uniformed Italian police and the detectives were poised for action once the word was given. But they, too, seemed transfixed by the scene.

  Pims pointed to where Annabel and Julian stood. “Come forward,” he said. To the camera:

  “This young man is Julian Mason, son of the deceased Caravaggio expert, Luther Mason. He has with him Grottesca, which he intends to sell for two million dollars to Mrs. Smith, representing the White House. Have you consummated your sale, Julian?”

  “Hold on,” del Brasco barked. “That’s mine.” He started walking toward Annabel and Julian, flanked by the young blond man and his colleague, both of whom had pulled handguns from their jackets.

  “Aha,” Pims said.

  “Mr. del Brasco is heard from. He, too, has in his possession a version of Grottesca which he believes to be a forgery.”

  Del Brasco brashly tossed the Grottesca he carried to the ground as he continued in Annabel’s direction.

  “Stop him,” Mac said to Jordan, taking a step toward the advancing del Brasco. The blond saw Mac, stopped, and pointed his revolver at him.

  “Come now,” Pims said through the bullhorn. “There is no reason we can’t resolve this like ladies and gentlemen.”

  “Let’s go,” Jordan said to Colarulli, who motioned the others to follow. The police went to the center of the area. “Drop the weapons,” Jordan shouted. Colarulli repeated the order in Italian.

  The del Brasco men were unsure.

  “Drop them,” Jordan said. “On the ground.”

  The men who’d driven Annabel and Julian to Pescara tossed their weapons in front of them.

  “You, too,” Colarulli ordered del Brasco. “Tell your men to give up their weapons.”

  “Get the painting,” del Brasco growled. The blond and his partner hesitated, then lunged at Julian and Annabel. Mac also made his move, but too late. Annabel, who’d been standing with her hands shoved into the pockets of the light wind-breaker she wore, pulled them out in an involuntary gesture of self-defense. The blond turned his revolver on her. Julian also acted without thought. Still cradling Grottesca in his arms, he stepped in front of Annabel as the discharge of the blond man’s weapon snapped the air like a whip. The bullet passed through the chest of the sensuous young model in Grottesca and entered Julian’s ches
t to the left of center. He slumped silently to the ground, first on his knees, then toppling forward on top of the Jacques Saison forgery.

  The uniformed police from Aquila opened fire. The blond thug was hit in the shoulder and thigh, his revolver sent spinning into the air. His companion, who’d fallen to the ground unhurt, pushed his weapon away from him, covered his head with his hands, and pleaded to not be hurt.

  Mac reached Annabel’s side and held her close. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. God, poor Julian.” They dropped to their knees, and Mac gently rolled Julian on to his back. “Julian?” Annabel said.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Don’t talk,” Annabel said. “You’ll be all right.”

  One of the uniformed officers, clearly trained as a paramedic, started to work on Julian Mason while another ran to the cars to call for an ambulance.

  Detective Colarulli ordered two policemen to place del Brasco under arrest.

  “For what?” del Brasco asked, his attention on the Grottesca Julian had been holding that now lay in the dirt, a gaping hole through its center. “I did nothing.”

  “Not true,” Pims blared through the bullhorn. The sound of his voice made everyone aware again that what had played out had been captured on videotape by the three cameras that continued to roll throughout. “You bought Grottesca from Luther Mason knowing it had been stolen. That makes you guilty of receiving stolen merchandise. You bankrolled Luther from the beginning.”

  “Prove it,” del Brasco said.

  “What about them?” Jordan asked, turning his attention to the two men who’d brought Annabel and Julian to Pescara.

  Colarulli, who’d been questioning them, said, “Private detectives from Rome. Hired by Mr. Pims.”

  “That right, Pims?” Jordan shouted at the fat man.

  “That is correct.”

  “You kidnapped my wife,” Mac said to them.

  They responded with a fusillade of Italian.