by Cindy Dees
“This piece will not be listed with either,” the man said with quiet certainty.
Robert kept his facial expression neutral. A stolen work, perhaps? Coming out of hiding after a long time? A Nazi piece? Maybe even a new find? An involuntary ripple of anticipation passed through him. He dreamed of unearthing a lost masterpiece someday. Aloud, he said, “If no provenance work has been done on a piece, the research requirements can be quite extensive. And expensive, I must add.”
The shadowed gentleman waved a dismissive hand, and Robert saw that it was bony and heavily veined, mottled with age spots. The man was older than his profile gave away. “Price is no object,” the stranger growled.
Well, then. Blokes usually wouldn’t invest unlimited funds in tracing a work unless it was worth a great deal more than they were about to spend verifying its authenticity or ownership. He leaned forward in his seat. “Tell me about the piece.”
“First, you must agree to trace it for me.”
“You wish to pay the costs of the provenance search, then?”
The man didn’t answer. Instead, he reached inside his suit to an interior breast pocket and pulled out a checkbook.
Robert did some fast math on how much money to ask for up front when this guy pulled out a pen and poised it over a blank check.
But the man surprised him by pushing the entire black leather checkbook across the desk to him. “That is a numbered Swiss bank account. It has fifty thousand dollars U.S. in it. If it runs out of money, it will be replenished. As I said, price is no object. Will you do the job for me?”
His palms itched to take the checkbook and get out of this jail. To hit the road once more in search of adventure and fortune. To toss off the yoke of classes and papers and the boredom of academia and do what he loved best. Chase treasure. On this guy’s penny, no less.
But his last brush with the law slowed him down in accepting that checkbook. A year in prison will do that to a guy. Accessory to grand theft. Reduced sentence for testifying against the ringleaders, out early for good behavior and his police record sealed. But nonetheless, enough to still his hand at his side.
“Is it stolen?” he asked bluntly.
“Not by me,” the man retorted.
Robert peered into the shadows. If only he could see the guy’s eyes more clearly. No way to judge if the man was lying or not. He sounded genuinely indignant at the suggestion.
The man added, “All I want you to do is find out where it came from. Who has owned it before? Who made it?”
There was nothing illegal in that. Still, his internal radar was sending him red lights and warning Klaxons over this man and his secretive request.
“Who are you?” Robert asked.
“I am a patron of the arts. I wish for my identity to be kept secret. There are those who would try to kill me if they knew I was looking into the history of this object.”
Object. Not a painting, then. Damned if his mind wasn’t already spinning off on the possibilities of what the object was. Pre-Roman antiquities were hot right now. Lots of pottery and jewelry coming onto the market. Maybe something from the Far East. China was dumping a lot of old stuff onto the market at ridiculously inflated prices. The thing Westerners didn’t seem to grasp is thousand-year-old trinkets are a dime a dozen in that ancient land. Just because it was old didn’t make it valuable.
“If you take this job, you must not reveal my existence to anyone for any reason. You could, quite literally, cost me my life.” The stranger surprised him by standing up abruptly and beginning to loosen his tie.
What the hell? The guy peeled back his crisply starched shirt to reveal sparse white chest hairs and dry, wrinkled skin. But that wasn’t what captured Robert’s attention. Rather, it was the fist-sized scar, angry red and nastily puckered directly over the old man’s heart.
“This is what happened the last time my enemies caught up with me. You must promise to keep your silence about me.”
Robert blinked. That was a bullet wound or he was the Easter Bunny! “Am I going to be in danger if I take this job?”
The man finished buttoning his shirt and adjusting his tie. He sat down, his face disappearing into the shadows once more. “Would it matter if you are?”
Hullo. How did this guy know that about him? Robert did love the rush that came with risk. But ever since he’d come to Edinburgh University, he’d been doing his damnedest to suppress it. Either the man was phenomenally perceptive or he’d done his homework on Robert Fraser. Either way, the adrenaline junkie in Robert was aroused. Hungry. Demanding.
Down, Tonto. We’re not doing anything stupid anymore.
“How will I communicate my findings to you?” Robert asked. Had he just said that? Was he actually considering taking this job? A surge of adrenaline hit him almost as hard as an orgasm. Damn, the rush felt good. Had he really let himself go that dead inside for the last couple years? Somewhere, buried deep beneath the sexual thrill, was the tiny voice of his common sense telling him to get up and walk out of here.
“All in good time. First, you must accept the job. On my terms.”
Robert stared at the man. Hesitated a few more seconds. Aww, what the hell.
He reached out and took the checkbook. The eel skin was cool and smooth beneath his fingertips. “What am I looking for?”
I looked around the alley and did my best not to wrinkle my nose. Sewage ran along the curb and a few pieces of paper skipped lazily across the uneven cobblestones. That creepy feeling was back from last night. Like I was being watched. I’m not the type to go in for paranoia, but I had to admit I’d been having feelings that I was being watched a lot in the last twenty-four hours.
René the Snitch was known to sleep in this alley, behind a gay bar called Le Jeu d’Amour. The Game of Love. René spent his days going through the club’s trash, drinking the last drops from wine and beer bottles and scrounging food from the Joue’s Dumpster. Hard to believe that he’d been one of the premier art thieves in Europe in his day. If tales of his exploits were even half-true, he ought to be enjoying his old age in style, not lying in a filthy alley waiting to die.
I spied a pile of denim and black wool in front of me. That was my snitch. Damn. Passed out early today. It was barely midafternoon. I walked over and nudged him with the toe of my shoe. “René. Wake up. It’s me, Ana.”
An incoherent mumble is all I got. I poked his ribs a little harder.
“Stop tha’,” he whined, batting at my shoe and burying his face deeper in his coat.
“Get up. I’m not going away. I need to talk. I’ll pay.” Assuming he was in any condition to answer questions.
An offer of cash always got him. He struggled to a seated position and stared up at me blearily. “Ahh. The toy cop. Whaddiya want, Anabelle?”
I didn’t bother to correct him. He always called me that. “Let’s go somewhere. Get a bite to eat. Some coffee.” Which was to say, I wanted to sober him up before I questioned him.
“No coffee. Gin.”
“No gin. Coffee. Take it or leave it,” I retorted.
“And supper?”
“And supper.”
“Agreed.” He stood up, wobbling only a little. Good. Not so drunk, then.
I led him down the alley and turned into the first café we came across. The head waiter glared at René and puffed himself up preparatory to pitching a fit and tossing my companion out on his skinny behind. I did not need the hassle of a temperamental Frenchman today. I yanked my Interpol badge out of my coat pocket and flashed it at the waiter, along with an “I dare you” glare.
The guy deflated and seated us in the darkest corner he had. René ate a large steak, his baked potato, and mine, a salad and an entire baguette of bread before he finally slowed down. I ordered him a sandwich, and waited until he was partway through it before I leaned forward.
“Tell me, René, have you heard any good rumors recently?”
“What kinds of rumors?” he mumbled around a mouthful of san
dwich.
“About a theft. Yesterday afternoon. A small object.”
“Where?”
“In the Ninth arrondissement, off the rue de Bassano.”
He tried to whistle between his teeth and only succeeded in spewing bits of lettuce and turkey at me. “High-rent district,” he commented. “Lots of Impressionist masters hanging on those walls.”
The guy actually was reasonably intelligent when he wasn’t plastered. “I think this was a statue or a pot. It stood on a small pedestal.”
“You don’t know what was stolen?” he asked in surprise.
I squirmed uncomfortably. “I’m the one asking the questions. Have you heard any rumors?”
“Ahh. Not going to tell, are you? Waiting to see if my sources are right? Good plan. Not bad for a girl.”
I rolled my eyes and didn’t bother to rise to the bait.
He leaned back and signaled the waiter, who came over reluctantly. “A double piece of that apple tart I saw in the window when we came in. And a spot of—” René looked over at me guiltily “—coffee,” he finished lamely.
“So?” I prompted.
“No, cherie, I haven’t gotten wind of any such thing. I shall, without fail, hear of it when word does hit the street, however.”
I didn’t ask how he always managed to know the latest happenings in the art theft community in spite of his decrepitude. He just did. And, in return for a hot meal and twenty euros, he’d tell me. He’d figured out long ago that I wasn’t really a cop, despite my employer. He seemed to think it was a grand joke to talk to me when he steadfastly refused to speak to the Paris police. In return, I didn’t turn him in to those same police for some of the things he told me.
“Thank you, René,” I answered him, “I am confident in your ability to find out what I need.”
I sat back and watched him savor the apple tart as if it were his last meal. The guy knew how to take pleasure in the small things in life. “How did you end up like this?” I asked him abruptly. He looked up, startled. Never before had either one of us introduced anything personal into our conversations.
He shrugged. “Money, it comes. It goes.”
“Did you drink away your fortune?” I pressed.
A faraway look came to his eyes. “Mais, non. It was a woman. Sweet Bernadette. She was worth every sou. I would do it again. The memory of her smile still warms me at night. Her eyes, they sparkled like the stars. Her breasts—”
“I get the point,” I interrupted. “Why didn’t you go back into the trade when you got low on cash?” This was a rare peek for me into the other side of the art world.
“I lost the use of my hands.”
I glanced down at them, startled. He seemed to be handling a fork just fine.
He shrugged. “I was electrocuted on my last job and the nerves in my fingertips are gone. I lost the touch.”
“I suppose the workman’s compensation in your line of work isn’t that hot,” I commented dryly.
He laughed heartily. “I like you, Anabelle. I will find out what I can about your theft.” He added wistfully, “You know, if it’s dark enough and you tilt your head just so, you look a little like my Bernadette.”
I smiled gently. What a sad little man. “Thank you,” I said quietly. On impulse, I reached out across the table and squeezed his hand. He looked startled as much at the gesture coming from me as at the human contact. I suppose being touched is something a filthy, homeless old man doesn’t get a lot of.
I delivered him back to his alley, and on impulse again, I hugged him. And damned if those weren’t tears in his eyes as I turned away from him.
The piercing sympathy I felt for him came as a surprise. Somewhere along the way, I’d gotten hard. Cynical. I should work at being a little softer. A little more feminine. Maybe do something about my hair and clothes. Maybe meditate or something to release my pent-up anger.
I hailed a taxi to take me home, and the driver was rude enough to snap me out of the moment. I didn’t know whether to curse him or thank him.
When I got out of the cab, thoroughly exasperated, I caught the faintest flash of…something…out of the corner of my eye across the street. It wasn’t so much the sight of a tall figure wearing too heavy a coat for this fall evening as it was the furtiveness with which the guy ducked into an alley and out of sight that did it. Why would anybody follow me? If you look in the dictionary, a picture of my life is under the listing for boring. Heck, maybe a picture of me is in there under the listing paranoid female, too. I shook off the willies and went into my building.
My third floor walk-up faced the street, and I went immediately to the tall French windows in the living room and had a peek outside. I watched for several minutes, and there was no sign of anyone remotely suspicious out there. Man, I needed a vacation.
I headed for my desk on the other side of the room. The message light was blinking on my answering machine. Crud. I’d turned off my cell phone during dinner with René, and I’d forgotten to turn it back on. I hit the play button. Littmann. Twice. Jacked up enough to sound like the schizophrenic poodle he resembled with his big, sharp nose and frizzy halo of hair. Wanting a progress report.
I snorted. Everywhere I turned on this nonexistent case, I ran into dead ends. I wasn’t even sure at this point that there was a theft. I spent the remainder of the evening working my Internet contacts, which isn’t a bad way to do that sort of business. Today’s breed of art thief is up to speed on the latest computer and electronic gear. But then, they have to be to beat the high-tech security systems out there. Most of my snitches are techno geeks I’ve never met. By my talking to them over the Internet, they stay entirely anonymous and are frequently much more willing to talk because of it. Yup, poor old René’s time was past on many levels.
After four hours hunched over the keyboard and slurping down copious amounts of coffee, I was still exactly nowhere. I shoved back from my desk in disgust. Enough. Tomorrow morning I would tell Littmann and St. Germain that Elise Villecourt was a nutball and there was no crime. They’d just have to suck up the heat from the president’s office.
The thief caressed the sweet, almost childlike face of the woman in the statue. It occurred to him that if he stared at her for a while, he could almost imagine that she began to smile back. If he’d have seen this statue on the black market, he’d never have guessed its true worth. It was pretty enough and nicely executed for its time period. At a glance, he’d peg it for a medium-value piece of interest only to a collector of Madonna statues.
But that was before a quiet rumor reached his ears about the real reason this piece was so highly sought after. Hell, if the whispers were true, maybe he oughta keep her for himself. He could use a little of the mojo this lady supposedly gave her owners—perfect health and long life. Really long.
Yeah, right. He snorted. It was all rumors and lies to push up the price, no doubt. No statue could make its owner immortal.
His cell phone rang. The disposable one his client had given him especially for this heist. It had a lot of minutes on it, but then, the guy who’d hired him was rolling in dough. Hard to believe he was going to collect a million bucks for stealing this little lady. But hey, if some obsessed bastard had to have her for himself, he was all about taking the dough.
If that whole long-life business were real, it would be a hell of a choice. Keep the statue and live an extra fifty or more years or take the million dollars and live a normal length life. How did a guy choose one or the other?
He answered his phone gruffly. “Yeah?”
“Do you have it?”
The client. Not long on niceties. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Excellent. Bring it to the prearranged location immediately. A man will be waiting for you.”
“Yeah, well, here’s the thing. I mean, it was a pain in the ass to get this hunk of wood. You shoulda seen the electronic crap I had to wade through. I’m thinking maybe a million bucks isn’t…uh…fair compensation for all the t
rouble I went to.”
Silence from the other end of the line. It stretched out long enough that he started getting fidgety. He babbled, “I mean, if you got a million bucks to throw away on some old statue, then another couple hundred thousand ain’t gonna put you out none. I’m thinking another fifty percent. A million five and we call it good.”
More silence.
“She’s real pretty. Kinda smiles back at ya,” he wheedled.
The client’s voice, when it finally came, was practically a whisper. Like the guy didn’t want whoever was in the next room to hear him—or like he was really, really pissed off. “You bring that statue to the meeting place. Now. You take your million dollars and count yourself lucky to be alive. You hear me? You fuck this up and you’ll wish all I did was kill you.”
The line went dead in his ear. Goddamn rich people. Stingier than folks without two coins to rub together. Another half million in return for near immortality was nothing. Bastard. He could sit and stew in his threats.
Meeting place, schmeeting place. Let the bastard wait. The client would come around. He’d fork over the dough. Maybe next time they talked he’d ask for two million from the rich prick. Yeah. That was good. Every time the bastard refused to pay, the price would go up some more. Hell, if the client was stubborn enough, he might have the statue long enough to get the mojo from it and pocket enough cash to live on for a couple hundred years.
He kicked aside a pile of porn magazines and propped his feet up on the scarred coffee table. He picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV. And ignored the client’s phone when it rang again an hour later.
I went to bed, but I had trouble falling asleep. Too much caffeine, dammit. I tossed and turned, my sheets hot and wrinkled. Twice I nearly got to sleep when the rising and falling wail of a siren passing by outside wrenched me back to full consciousness. People weren’t kidding when they called Paris the city that never sleeps. And it was about to turn me into the art historian who never slept, either.