Vengeance Is Personal (A Colton James Novel, Book 2)

by Thomas DePrima

  I could perhaps follow the trail back to the person who had paid to have me killed, but it would be extremely time-consuming, and I wasn't in the mood just then. It was a job for later. I wondered if Saul was having any luck putting pressure on the SFPD to put someone in charge of the case who would cooperate, and I was also hoping that Hooper's contacts in the Highway Patrol could produce some results.

  I needed to do something, so I decided to track down the missing air cargo container. I took out the gizmo, tagged the container when it was first brought to the recycle center, and jumped to the present time. I located the container at an auto wrecking yard. It was now part of a cube of crushed metal and totally unrecognizable as a cargo container.

  I again felt angry and frustrated. I should be on a plane heading for Greece and Mia, and instead I was sitting on my ass in San Francisco, feeling totally impotent because of Fasko.

  ~ ~

  As I drank my first coffee the following morning, I turned on the news. The lead story was the recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen masterpieces. My day was instantly brightened as I turned up the volume and listened to the announcer talk about the recovery by California Highway Patrol officers near the Oregon border. They had tried to stop a van, but the driver refused to pull over, so they set up a roadblock ahead. The driver of the van blasted through the roadblock but lost control of the truck when the spike strips laid down by the officers blew out all four of his tires and the van plunged over an embankment. When the officers got down to the van they found the driver unconscious and seriously injured. He was taken to a hospital for treatment and would be arraigned when he had recovered well enough to appear in court. The CHP officers found eleven cases of the type used to transport valuable artwork in the rear of the van. The cases appeared to be undamaged, except for minor cosmetic marks on the exterior surfaces. The lead seals were still in place and the cases were taken, unopened, to a museum in San Francisco where the condition of their contents would be evaluated. The CHP spokesman had credited the SFPD, working in cooperation with the world famous art recovery expert Colton James, with providing information about the van and its cargo.

  After feeling miserable most of yesterday, I suddenly felt great today. I poured myself another cup of coffee and dug into my eggs and sausages. Eleven down, one to go.

  ~

  I had finished breakfast and was listening to a cable news channel when my cell phone rang. I had begun leaving it out of its protective case when I was in the hotel so I could be contacted more easily. This time the caller was Mia.

  "Hi, babe," I said, as I answered.

  "My darling, are you okay? We just heard on the news that someone tried to kill you in your hotel."

  "I'm fine, hon. He missed. I didn't."

  "The news report said you killed him."

  "I had no choice. He broke into my room and started shooting."

  "I'm always so frightened when you go away on a case. And you haven't called me since the night before that happened."

  "I'm sorry, babe. I haven't been able to get a lot of cooperation from the police department here. If I had, we'd have recovered all of the paintings by now, and I'd already be on my way to you."

  "How much longer will you be there?"

  "I don't know. You might have heard that we've recovered eleven of the twelve paintings, but I can't leave until we get them all. I don't think it will be too much longer."

  "I miss you. And my whole family misses you. At least the news report finally showed them you left because of work."

  "They didn't believe us?"

  "They did, but I think there was a small question in the back of their minds about whether there was a problem between us."

  "There's no problem. I love you."

  "And I love you, darling and I want you here."

  "I'll be there soon."

  We talked for another twenty minutes or so, mostly about our travel plans after I got back to Greece. Then for the rest of the morning I couldn't get thoughts of Mia and the beautiful island of Thasos out of my head.

  ~

  It was noon in New York when Saul called and brought me out of my reverie.

  "Hello, Saul. Good news today, eh?"

  "Fantastic news, Colt. I was beginning to think that fool Fasko at SFPD had cost our company three hundred million dollars. We still haven't gotten a straight answer from the department about why he didn't act on the search warrant as soon as it was issued."

  "Well, it doesn't matter now. We've got everything back except the one piece that's in the possession of the former congressman."

  "Yes, but I haven't been able to find anyone willing to take him on. I think they believe him to be too powerful and are afraid of him because we might be wrong about the painting being in his possession. Are you sure about your facts?"

  "I was— yesterday. It's possible that the painting has been removed from his home if he feared we'd get a search warrant. I told you I believe there's at least one inside man, or woman, feeding the thieves information. From what I've seen, I now believe there could be a number of inside people involved."

  "Is there any way to verify that the congressman still has the painting?"

  "Well, I'll see what I can find out today."

  "Thanks, Colt. Keep me informed."

  "Will do, Saul."

  Removing the gizmo from its storage location in my lighter, I put it up against the wall above the desk, then sat down to work. I quickly returned to Milan and tagged the still missing painting, then returned to a time two days ago and let the gizmo take me to the painting. It was still hanging on the wall in the 'congressman's luxurious basement back then. There weren't any windows down there, so there was no chance that anyone could see it unless they were in the room or they had a gizmo.

  Then I jumped ahead to the present. The painting was in a new location. And wherever it was, it was pitch black. I raised the gizmo's window up until it was outside and panned around. It was still in Oakland and appeared to be in a commercial building on Adeline Street. That meant the connection to the congressman was probably gone. If he was smart enough to remove the painting from his house, he was probably smart enough to ensure it wasn't still on any property he owned or was connected with.

  I wondered when it had been removed from the congressman's home, so I entered the coordinates of the house and went there with the intention of jumping backward in time until I saw the painting again. The image that appeared on the gizmo was a view of the surrounding area from above the house, so I lowered it down until it showed the room where the painting had hung.

  The congressman was at home, and he was engaged in a very animated conversation on the phone as he walked around the room, waving his free hand with purpose. You could tell he was screaming at someone. I guessed he was tearing someone a new one for screwing up the robbery. I wished I could hear, but that wasn't meant to be.

  In addition to the congressman, I could see two other men in the room. From their appearance, I'd have to say they were his private muscle. On demand, they could probably produce IDs that showed they were part of a private security company. But I wasn't interested in any of them at the moment, so I began panning around the room. When I got to the wall where the painting had been, it was still there. That couldn't be! I knew it to be at the location on Adeline Street.

  I sat back and tried to think this through. Perhaps I had made a mistake with the timeline. I checked the data for the current image and verified it was the present. Then I checked Adeline Street again. The gizmo confirmed that the artwork was still there, and that image was also the present. The only obvious answer was that there were two paintings. One was an original and one was a copy. I verified that by having the gizmo go to the painting I had tagged in Milan. It would only take me to the Adeline Street location.

  As I sat there thinking about the new information, I formulated a theory. The congressman must have had an exact copy made some time ago, including the frame, and then hung
it on his wall. By now, innumerous influential people had to have seen it hanging there. When he acquired the real painting he could hang it up in plain sight and enjoy it. If anyone ever questioned his having it, he could say it was a forgery made to exacting standards and produce dozens of influential people whose testimony was beyond question and who would swear to having seen it hanging there many years before the real painting was stolen.

  He must have been planning this robbery for a long time— years at the very least. Although he had his alibi all set up, he must have gotten spooked and moved it off his property so it couldn't be associated with him just in case the police came and impounded the painting for testing. His attitude when I'd seen him on the phone today was understandable.

  I made a note of the Adeline Street address and then decided to work on something I had procrastinated doing until now.

  The man who tried to kill me had to have been hired by someone, and I knew it was going to be a time-consuming search that may never yield results, but I had to try. Now that most of the paintings had been recovered, I could afford to make an effort at finding his connection to the case and who had hired him.

  I went back to the time just before he had tried to bust into my hotel room and tagged him with the gizmo. Then I went back and tagged the two thieves. I checked to see if they had ever met with the hitman but came up dry, so they might not have sent him. Then I tried to link him to the congressman but struck out again. That didn't mean that neither the thieves nor the congressman were behind the attempted assassination; it only meant that they hadn't dealt with him face to face.

  I again started back at the hotel just prior to the attack and went backwards a little at a time as I tried to learn who the assassin's contact might have been. He'd had contact with a lot of unsavory-looking characters during the previous days, but I wasn't familiar with any of them. The only one I tried to identify was the guy who had handed him the gun.

  It turned out that the guy who provided the gun would sell to anyone with the money, so it was unlikely he had been behind the assassination attempt. As in New York City, if a person traveled in the right criminal circles and wanted a gun, they were readily available when they flashed the cash. It was only the law-abiding citizens who usually didn't have easy access to handguns, unless they were in law enforcement.

  I'd known it was probably going to be a waste of time, and by bedtime I still hadn't a clue to the identity of the person who hired the leg-breaker to kill me. He'd talked to so many people in the prior days that I could spend months just trying to identify the individual, and even then I probably couldn't be sure because I couldn't hear the conversations.

  ~ ~

  Although I knew where the last painting was, and I had confirmed it was still there when I got up and began my day, I hadn't called Saul yet. It was the usual dilemma I faced. I was anxious to be on my way home and then to Greece, but I had to play the game of withholding information for as long as I could so it seemed more reasonable that I had learned it by using proper law enforcement or deductive reasoning techniques.

  That thought led me to wonder if perhaps I had chosen the wrong field of endeavor. I was really, really tired of people shooting at me, and the attempts on my life seemed to be increasing. The odds that I was going to catch a bullet that would end my life increased with every encounter.

  It's true that I never would have met the love of my life if I hadn't followed the pathway into the recovery of stolen art that had taken me to The Netherlands. And there had been no guarantee that Kathy and I would have been happily married, or even married, if I'd remained a poor author, an IT person, or whatever other 'safer' career choices I could have made. And I'd probably still be living in that third floor walkup on the West Side of Manhattan instead of the multimillion dollar co-op I now owned across from Central Park.

  But— would I have been happier if I'd limited myself to just tracking down bail skips for my livelihood? And would I have been any safer? Those folks know how to hold a grudge. I'd looked at all of the various career options I could choose from once I'd acquired the gizmo and selected the one with the greatest rewards, but it was also the one that presented the greatest dangers. So maybe it was time to 'hang up my spurs' as they used to say in the old westerns. I knew I'd never be able to 'hang up my guns' while Delcona was alive and free, but just not making any new enemies who wanted me dead might improve my quality of life while also extending it.

  Perhaps Uncle Yannis would offer me a position in the shipping business, although from what I'd learned from Mia, that might be just as dangerous as what I was doing now. The home on Thasos had obviously been built like a fortress for a reason. It wasn't too difficult to imagine everyone in the family ducked down behind mattresses with their Uzis at the ready as the minions of a competitor scaled the compound walls.

  Perhaps I had just begun to see the world from a different perspective since the first determined attempt on my life aboard the ferry from The Netherlands to the U.K. Or maybe it was the second attempt, in Spain. The leader of that gang, and also the minion I'd always thought of as an 'anxious wannabe' killer, hadn't been apprehended yet. There was always the chance I could run into them again one day in Europe or elsewhere. I had, after all, 'robbed' them of their fifty million dollars in stolen artwork, and I imagined they still held a grudge.

  I was still thinking about my future when Saul called.

  "Hi, Saul."

  "Colt. I haven't heard back from you. Were you able to learn if the painting is still where it was?"

  "It's not where it was. I can't tell you where it is right now, but it's definitely not hanging on the wall anymore. So I wouldn't pursue that search warrant."

  "I'm glad you told me. With the picture being in Oakland, I think we might have found someone willing to execute a search warrant. You have no idea where it is now?"

  "I hope to have some new information for you tomorrow. I'm waiting to hear from someone."

  "I don't know how you do it, Colt. Uh, can you at least give me a hint?"

  "You've heard the old saying that there's no honor among thieves, right?"

  "Of course."

  "Well, I can verify that. And I can promise that part of the thirty million you're going to owe me for this recovery will be money well spent."

  "You've turned somebody on the inside?"

  "When a million dollars is talking, someone with information doesn't need a whole lot of convincing."

  "I'm sure you wouldn't tell me who you've turned, so I won't ask. I just hope you get the information quickly."

  "I should know by eight a.m. Pacific Time tomorrow. Can you have your people lined up and ready to go at that time?"

  "I'll have them ready."

  "Okay, give me a call then. With luck, I'll be able to give you the location of the twelfth painting. But I'm afraid I won't have anything to convince a jury that the congressman was involved."

  "It's more important that we get the painting back. Fasko and his people can worry about building a case— if they even try. They deserve having the likes of that congressman in their backyard."

  "I'll be talking to you, Saul."

  I hadn't actually lied to Saul. I just talked in generalities that would make him think I had a well-paid snitch who was passing along information about the paintings. By making him think that, he wouldn't press too hard to learn more, and he'd know that he would never have an opportunity to interview the 'witness.'

  I spent the rest of the day trying to learn who had set the assassin on me, but at bedtime I didn't have any more information in that regard than I had when I'd started.

  ~ ~

  As soon as I awoke in the morning, I checked to make sure the painting was still where it had been for the past couple of days. It was— so I ordered breakfast.

  Saul called exactly at eight a.m. Pacific.

  "Good morning, Colt. Have you got good news for me?"

  "Yep. Got a pen and pad handy?"

  "Go."
/>
  I gave Saul the address of the building where the painting was located and described exactly where it would be found. "I suggest you get your people out there to surround the building while they wait for the search warrant to be signed by a judge. Right now the building is being watched to make sure that if someone removes the painting before the police arrive, we'll know the make, model, and license number of the vehicle, but if police are surrounding the building, no one will try to remove the painting."

  "Is that how you knew the eleven paintings had been removed from the other location and were on their way out of the state?"

  "It's a good system, don't you think? I don't have any police powers but, as far as I know, there's no law against observation by a private citizen as long as you're not illegally trespassing on anyone's private property. It's amazing how small the wireless video cameras have become. They even have them on lightweight drones that can hang suspended over an area and see everything that's going on."

  "So you're using drones now?"

  "I've always been sort of a technology nerd, and I use whatever's necessary to find the stolen goods and get the job done. Crooks are using technology to the max, so law enforcement must do the same, as long as we take care not to violate the rights of honest citizens."

  "I agree. Thanks for the info, Colt. I'm going to get our people on this right away."

  "Okay, Saul, I'll be standing by in case you need me."

  I didn't think it was really necessary but I took out the gizmo and put it on the wall over the desk, then checked once more to verify the painting was still there. It was.

  I'd had a reason for telling Saul the building was being watched. If he passed that information on, it might stop anyone from trying to remove the painting when the search warrant was requested if there was someone in the know passing on such information. We were in another law enforcement jurisdiction now since the painting was in Oakland rather than San Fran, but one never knew who or how many people were accepting payoffs from crime figures to provide such information. All it took was one temporary secretary to ruin an investigation that had taken months to set up.