Sure enough. “Habla usted Español?” Do you speak Spanish?
With a self-deprecating shrug and a shy smile, I said, “Poquito.” A little bit.
I had caught Donny’s attention. One of the girls he was flirting with wandered off. The other one looked irritated. I ignored her and focused on him.
Two hours later, I had discovered that the taco basket was delicious, Donny was happy to help me drink my margaritas even though he couldn’t hold his liquor worth a damn, and he got very touchy-feely when he was drunk. The last part was exactly what I was hoping for.
“Hey, baby,” I said, leaning close to his ear and ignoring his hand on my breast. “Let’s get out of here and go someplace more private.”
He gave me a sloppy kiss that half-missed my mouth and said, “Sure. That sounds good.”
I managed to get him upright and we started toward the door when a tall, well-built man with light brown hair walked in.
“Hey, Karl,” Donny said, swaying and leaning against me.
“Jeff wants to see you.” Karl shook his head. “Shit, you’re drunk.”
“Just celebrating a little bit. Tell Jeff tomorrow.”
“No, tonight.”
“But, this chick’s into me.”
Karl gave me an unfriendly look. “Another time.” He grabbed Donny by the arm and dragged him out of the bar. I waited a minute, then followed them. I watched Karl shove Donny into Karl’s van, then he got in and drove off. They left Donny’s van sitting next to the bar.
I rushed around the corner to where Mike was parked and jumped in the car. “What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know. No one has contacted me.”
“Follow them.”
That lasted less than five minutes. Karl took a turn onto a freeway onramp, then immediately took the next off ramp. A truck got between them and us, and they were gone.
Chapter 22
I morphed back into myself and called Wil. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“A couple of men dropped a crate off at the hotel, took it to the room Margarita reserved, then took off. That was about three hours ago. Margarita and Maillard just sat down to dinner.”
“Have you confirmed what’s in the crate?”
After a moment of hesitation, he said, “No.”
“Why not?”
Silence, then, “You think we should go into the room and check on the painting?”
“Duh. Yeah, I think you should. How do you know we’re not being set up? Everything could be happening somewhere else, with Margarita and Edouard as decoys.”
I hung up and turned to Mike. “Any ideas?”
“I’m curious as to where those two are going,” he answered. I knew he meant Karl and Donny. “I’m also curious as to how Hollande’s men plan to take the painting out of the country. It’s a little too large to stick in a suitcase, and the airport’s being watched.”
I thought about it, trying to figure out what I would do in their situation.
“Mike, just because they flew in on a commercial airplane, doesn’t mean they plan to fly out that way.”
“The train station is being screened, too,” he said. “Private plane?”
“How many planes do you think Hollande owns?”
“So why did they fly in commercial?” Before I could even open my mouth, he answered his own question. “Misdirection. They want us watching commercial flights. How many airports in this vicinity?”
Pulling out my phone, I called Wil again. We talked for a couple of minutes, then he said, “Libby, hang on a minute.”
I waited. When he came back on, he said, “Chung thinks we should intercept them right after they leave the hotel. He doesn’t want to take the chance of losing them.”
“I agree,” I said. “Make sure they’re far enough away that you don’t alert Martinez.” I hung up and told Mike, “Wil says there are six airports in the greater Chicago area that can land a plane capable of a nonstop flight to France. There are five more within a two- to three-hour drive.”
We drove to the hotel and parked where we could see the exit closest to Martinez’s room. Mike stayed with the car, while I blurred my form and entered the hotel.
I knew the hotel from my stay there with Dad. Margarita had booked a room at the end of the hall next to a stairway. At the bottom of the stairs were two doors. One led to the hall on the ground floor, and the other opened outside to the parking lot. That doorway was partially concealed from the parking lot by a hedge and a low wall. Someone could drive up in a car or van and block sight of the door entirely. Perfect for loading priceless paintings unnoticed. One might have wondered if Margarita had done that sort of thing before.
I didn’t want to meet anyone on the stairs, so I walked down the hall to the elevator and took that to the third floor. With my form still blurred, I squeezed into a space by an ice machine and waited. Half an hour passed before Margarita and Maillard got off the elevator.
They went into the room. Forty-five minutes later, Carpentier came out of the stairwell and knocked. The door to the room opened and admitted him, then quickly closed. It opened about five minutes later, and the two men carried a slim rectangular wooden crate out of the room.
As soon as they disappeared into the stairwell, I followed them.
They’re coming down, I texted to Mike.
I stood ten feet away and watched Hollande’s men load the crate with the painting into a white rental van. When they finished, they jumped in and drove off. I saw Wil’s car follow them out of the parking lot at a discreet distance. Mike drove up, I got in, and he followed Wil.
I sat back and relaxed. There wasn’t a lot to see as we traveled through the night, but I got the feeling we were in a new part of town for me. I soon realized that we traveled in a convoy, the van with the painting in front, and at least a dozen Chamber Security cars, including us and Wil, trailing behind.
After about an hour, Mike said, “It looks like they’re headed for Midway.”
“I thought we were going to take them down before we got to the airport.”
“Wilbur wants to get the plane.”
I sat up straight. “When did he decide this?”
“While you were inside the hotel.”
“Nice of everyone to update me.”
The cars in front of us sped up as we entered a gate in a tall fence. The signs pointed left to “Private Aircraft” and everyone took a hard left. Ahead, I could see the Frenchmen’s van headed toward a hanger with a plane parked in front of it.
One of the Chamber vans screeched to a stop right in front of the plane. Other cars swung around the end of the hanger. Wil followed the painting, and we followed him.
A man emerged from the plane and stood at the top of the stairs for a moment. Then he raised an automatic weapon and started firing. Everyone in sight dove for cover, and vehicles swerved all over the place.
Mike also swerved, the car skidding and throwing me into the seat belt. He straightened the car out, and drove past Wil’s car and the Frenchmen’s van, cutting between the rear of the plane and the hanger. I looked out my window as we passed and saw men with guns in the hanger.
“The ground crew’s armed,” I told Mike.
The car skidded again as he cut to the right, putting the hanger between us and everyone else. We slid to a stop, and he leaped out, a pistol in his hand. I got out my door and crouched low between the car and the hanger.
“Are you wearing a vest?” Mike asked.
“Ballistic corset,” I answered. “It covers me from shoulder to crotch.”
He laughed. “Good. Watch your head.”
“You, too. What are we doing?”
“Recovering the painting. Don’t get caught up in peripheral crap and keep your attention on the objective.”
I had to laugh at that. It was one of my dad’s major precepts.
We faced the rear of the plane, with the hanger on our left. The thieves’ van sat to the left of the plane’s tai
l. I had seen armed men inside the open hanger, people from the plane with machineguns, and most of the Chamber officers were on the other side of the plane from us as well. The area sounded like the New Year fireworks had come early.
“Mike, I’m going to sort of disappear. Can you cover my back and not shoot me?”
He scuttled around the car and said, “I’ll certainly try.”
I moved to stand in front of him. “This is how I don’t look.”
His brow scrunched, then I swayed back and forth and his face cleared. “Oh, I see. Or rather I don’t. When you move in front of the plane, it disappears. And I can see you move if I’m looking directly at you.”
“Exactly.”
“So, what are we doing first?”
I phased back into visibility and held out my hand with four mini-grenades, each about half the size of a golf ball. “I thought we’d clean out the hanger so no one’s behind us.”
“Good thinking.”
“I’ll go low, you go high,” I said. “Don’t shoot down.”
Creeping along the hanger wall to its end, I blurred my image, primed the four grenades, and threw them inside. A few moments later, they exploded. I waited for quiet, then slunk around the corner. One man staggered upright toward the open front of the building. I fired two shots and he fell.
Two other men fired at Mike as he followed me in. I shot one of them, and Mike shot the other. We disarmed two wounded men, then turned our attention back to the war going on outside.
“I’m going to sneak under the plane and try to get into that van,” I said.
“Be damned careful. The walls of that van aren’t going to stop any bullets.”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me. “Okay, going now.”
I crawled the hundred feet to the van on my stomach. Standing up, even invisibly, seemed like a bad idea with bullets whizzing all around. At least once, I heard the pop a bullet made as it displaced air directly over me.
What I couldn’t understand was why Hollande’s men continued fighting. They were badly outnumbered and couldn’t escape. Airport and Chicago police were arriving to reinforce Wil’s Chamber Security men.
As I crawled under the plane, I saw a man hiding behind one pair of the plane’s wheels. He stuck his gun out and fired, then ducked back. He had a direct view of the back of the van I was trying to reach. Taking aim, I fired three shots and watched him slump, his automatic rifle clattering to the ground.
The .380 caliber pistol I used was specially made with a silencer and a built-in flash suppressor. As an assassin and a chameleon trying to be invisible, I didn’t want my pistol’s muzzle flash to give me away.
After what seemed forever, I reached the van. The driver’s side door was open. I’d seen Carpentier bail out and run when the vehicle came to a stop. Raising up and peering inside, I saw Maillard curled up in a ball in the floorboard. Surprisingly, the windows and the windshield were intact. It didn’t look as though anyone had wasted time shooting up the van.
I let my form become visible, aimed my pistol at the man on the floor, and said in French, “Monsieur Maillard. I have a gun pointed at your head. Please show me your hands. Move slowly.”
He did move slowly, unwinding and sticking his empty hands in the air.
“Very good,” I said. “Now, crawl toward me.”
When he got close enough, I reached in, grabbed his collar, and pulled him out onto the tarmac.
“Where’s the painting?” I asked.
“In the back.”
Good. That’s where I thought it was. “You’re going to help me get it.”
“No. We’ll get shot.”
“Either you help me, or I’ll shoot you and then get the painting. I’m not turning my back on you. Do we understand each other?”
The fear on Maillard’s face was real. The man was an art curator for a thug, but not a thug himself. I hated watching people beg for their lives. It was so undignified for both sides of the conversation. I pulled a jet injector out of my purse, held it to his neck, and gave him a shot of sleepy medicine. His babbling and crying ceased, and I rolled him under the van, hoping he’d be more protected there, making sure he was clear of the wheels.
I crawled into the van and took a look at the crate holding the painting. No way I was going to lift and carry that thing by myself, even without people shooting at me. I looked back at Mike and waved him toward me. He covered the distance much faster than I could have. Vampire speed.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Do you think we can push this van into the hanger?”
“Why not just drive it?”
“I didn’t want to attract any notice. The electric engine won’t make any noise, but I thought that if it just sorta crept into the hanger by itself, no one would pay attention to it. I mean, there are a lot of other things demanding people’s attention.”
A burst of machinegun fire and a scream punctuated my statement, followed by another fusillade of gunfire.
“Maybe so,” Mike said, “but start the engine anyway. If we have to hurry, I want to be able to hurry.”
That made sense. I reached in and punched the starter, waited for the engine to come to life, then put the van in neutral. It would have helped if there had been any kind of slope, but airports were pretty flat on purpose.
We started pushing, Mike probably doing more of the work than I was. The idea seemed to be working at first. Until we pushed the van past Maillard’s body, I didn’t think anyone noticed. Then I heard someone yell, and a bullet shattered the window on the side facing the Chamber forces.
A minute later, it got a lot harder to push. Mike ducked down and looked under the van. “Damn. Someone shot out the tire on that side.” A clang sounded through the van. “Shot out the other damned tire.”
I pushed the gearshift into forward, and said, “Hang on,” and pushed on the throttle. The van picked up speed. It was hard to steer, walking beside it, but I had no desire to sit inside and become a target.
With the engine doing the pushing, Mike took up a position to cover our backs. I heard his gun fire once, and then he ducked after me.
After what seemed like a couple of years, the van inched into the hangar, and I tried to figure out the best place to park it. I managed to steer it in behind some kind of equipment and a large toolbox. Having shut down the motor and set the brake, I leapt into the back of the van and checked the crate.
With a huge sigh of relief, I announced, “Mike, it looks like we got lucky. I don’t see any bullet holes in the box holding the picture.”
He didn’t answer. I stuck my head out of the front window and saw him standing twenty feet away. I didn’t know where the guy holding a gun on him came from, but he didn’t look friendly. We thought we had secured the hanger earlier. So much for that assumption.
“Come on out, sweetheart,” a gruff voice said. “Be a shame if I had to shoot your friend so I can come in after you.”
I blurred my form and stepped past the crate to the doors in the back of the van. I threw the double doors open and dropped out of the van, prone on the floor. The guy with the gun half-turned in my direction, and Mike dove in the other direction.
Too much movement, too many people to keep track of. The guy didn’t see anything to shoot at in my direction. I shot him when he turned his head back to follow Mike.
“Nice,” Mike said as he picked himself up and walked back to where his pistol lay on the floor.
We checked out the shipment, opening the crate so that I could briefly inspect the painting, then sealing it back up again. The war outside continued for another half an hour. We elected to sit it out behind the large toolbox. It would have taken a canon to punch a hole through that thing.
“Come out with your hands in the air,” Wilbur’s voice finally announced after everything outside went quiet.
I winked at Mike. “You promised you wouldn’t arrest me again. I’ve been good.” I yelled, putting a terrible whine i
n my voice.
The response was too faint for my ears. I looked at Mike and raised an eyebrow.
“He said, ‘Oh, for crying out loud’,” Mike whispered with a grin.
I raised my voice again. “We’re coming out.”
I stood, opened the back of the van, and stepped out where Wil could see me.
Wil stood there with an expression on his face that a person might get from eating jail food.
“The painting is in there,” I said. “It doesn’t appear to be harmed, but of course it will have to be authenticated. I assume Chung will have someone to do that.”
Wil shook his head slightly, and the lines between his eyes deepened. “Authenticated? Why?”
“The theft broke its provenance, sort of like a break in the chain of evidence. They’ll have to make sure a substitution hasn’t occurred.” I looked beyond him at dozens of uniformed men milling about. “What is so special about that damned airplane? Do you get to keep it and take it home with you, or something?”
Wil glanced back toward the plane. “We got a tip that Hollande was on the plane.”
That stunned me. “Is he?”
He nodded. “Yeah. We got him. And with this shootout, not only do we have him on art theft, but on murder. He’s done.”
I sobered immediately. “You lost people.”
“Yeah, we did. Me and the cops. We didn’t expect that kind of firepower.”
Chapter 23
I made sure that Georges Hollande didn’t see me. He wouldn’t have known who I was, at least I didn’t think so, but I didn’t have Wil’s faith that Hollande would never be free again. People with that kind of money and power were hard to keep down. If I ever met him again, I didn’t want him associating me with what was surely one of the worst days of his life.
The carnage was terrible. Twenty-five of Hollande’s men had died and seven cops, including two of Wil’s Chamber Security people. All over a stupid painting.
“I’ll bet most of the people who died there didn’t even know who Degas was,” I muttered to Mike as we drove back to Doreen’s place. I was bone tired and couldn’t wait for a hot bath and a soft bed.
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