The Collection Read online

  The ticker running across Belknap’s forehead reads shit… shit… shit. I love seeing that. If a meteor hits right now, I’ll go out happy. The problem is, if he digs a little deeper, he’s going to see how thin my facts are, and then we’re back to him shopping me to the Morrones. I need to switch gears before he can catch up.

  “How much do you need to get straight with the Morrones?”

  He blinks hard. “What do you care?”

  “Just wondering. You’re pretty anxious to move that Fantin if you’re strong-arming Gianna to bring Hoskins in. How big a hole are you trying to fill?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I know you’re greedy, just not how greedy. It’s gotta be pretty bad if you’ve pissed off your sponsor. You used to be smarter than that.”

  Belknap stabs a finger at me and snarls, “You got no idea what it’s like here. There’s—” He pulls it in a notch. “Good try.”

  “You mentioned ‘other players.’ Are they involved?” A flash of something gallops across his face. “Oh, dude, seriously? The Russians too? Was that before or after the Morrones pushed you out?”

  He charges a couple steps my way. “You think I wanted this? You don’t say ‘no’ to the Russians. They’ll kill—” He realizes what he’s saying and turns to kick the end of a partition. “Fuck you.”

  If he’d come one step closer, I’d be halfway to the hotel by now. I’m trying to sound confident, but it’s bullshit, and the longer this goes on, the harder it is to keep it up. Belknap’s a lot bigger than I am and he scares the shit out of my lizard brain. But if I stop needling him, he’ll have time to think. I can’t have that until I come up with something to keep him from ratting me out. “Talk to me, dude. Like I said, I’m not interested in you unless you force me.”

  “You know a helluva lot about my business for not being interested.”

  “It’s homework.” I decide to show him one of my cards. “It’s the art I’m interested in. The stolen pieces. Where they came from, how many more there are. Is the Fantin to square up with Morrone or the Russians? How much do you need to get out of it?”

  “This going in your report to the feds?”

  “They don’t know I’m here. If I walk out that door under my own power and it’s status quo, they don’t need to know. What do you have to get out of the Fantin?”

  Gears turn behind his eyes for a long stretch. He throttles his left wrist with his right hand, a nervous tic I remember from L.A. Finally he says, “Half a million for the Russians.”

  “Why don’t you use what you’ve skimmed from the Morrones to pay them off?”

  “I did. That’s what’s left.”

  That doesn’t make any sense. “How much did you owe them?”

  “I got money, it’s just not liquid. I got investments in China. Made a shitload on Shanghai real estate. I just can’t get it out because… well, because of my partners.”

  “The triads?”

  “Nah, that’s Hong Kong shit. I’m in with a bigger gang.” He takes a deep breath, then snorts. “The Chinese fucking Army.”

  I almost bust out laughing. “Jesus, you don’t do anything small, do you? All right, you need half a mil. Since Hoskins isn’t going to bail you out, what’s your next move? Private sale? Swiss auction?”

  “Private auction, online.” A what? He must see my confusion, because he laughs. “Gotta stay up with the times, asswipe. This piece’s undocumented. Can’t sell it at any of the big houses. But I can work a list of people I know’ll be interested, get eight or ten signed up, then run the auction through a teleconference site. Quick, anonymous, everyone’s happy.”

  I haven’t heard of this happening before, but I’m not surprised. As the law cracks down on auction houses and galleries, what else can a self-respecting dealer in stolen art do? Everybody can use burner email addresses and anonymizers, nobody mentions exactly what’s on sale, and even if our buds in the NSA are listening, they’re not going to get a lot out of it.

  “What’s your estimate on the piece?”

  “At an open auction? Mid-six to mid-seven hundred. It’s a nice canvas.”

  He means thousands, which is in line with what I figured out. Of course, with a limited number of possible buyers, no valid provenance and no way to pass clear title, the sale price’s going to take a big hit. It’s a crap shoot whether he’ll get his half-million. I doubt the Russians will settle for less than a hundred cents on the dollar, though.

  I don’t want anything to do with Belknap. I had my fill of him in L.A. But he knows about me now, which means he has the power, whether he knows it yet or not. I can put him in jail, but he can get me killed. I can’t afford to trust him. He does have a primitive code of not-exactly-honor, though, and I need him to owe me. This isn’t the kind of decision I should make under the gun or in a few seconds. Oh, well.

  Deep breath before I jump. “Make you a deal. I’ll get that 500K out of your buyers. You tell me what you know about where the stolen art comes from and where it is now. Then we say ‘adios’ and we forget about each other. No stories to anybody, no phone tips, no names. Take it or leave it.”

  He stands there with the calculator clicking away in his head. Then his shark smile comes out one more time. I know what his counter’s going to be before he opens his mouth.

  “Fine. If you don’t get the money, I’m selling you to the Morrones or the Russians. Whoever pays the most. Take it or leave it.”

  Chapter 39

  We don’t shake on it. We never get within ten feet of each other, which is still close enough to leave me wanting a shower. I give him the number for my burner—Burim’s not going to call it anymore—then leave.

  Carson grabs my arm the moment the door closes and hauls me into the back of the little lobby. “Really? You made a deal with that asshole?”

  I never thought I’d be this glad to see Carson. On the other hand, she’s cutting off the circulation in my arm. “Tell me what other choice I had.”

  She makes a low growling sound. “Come on.”

  Carson drags me through doors that shouldn’t be open until we reach the courtyard behind the building. Her pewter VW Golf GTI crouches near the back door. Once we’re inside, she launches the little hatch out into the street.

  I’ve got the jitters now that I’m over being in fast-thinking mode. I stuff my hands under my thighs to keep Carson from seeing them shake.

  “Trust him?” she grumbles.

  “No. But I think he’s more scared of the Russians than he’s pissed at me.”

  “Stupid fuck. He should be.” She drives a block with a dark look on her face. “Guess there’s no more stakeout.”

  “No, he’s holding onto the canvas. Morrone won’t ever hear about it.”

  “Unless we tell him.”

  There’s an idea. Bad or good, I can’t tell, so I think it over until Carson swoops into a still-warm parking space. Do I dislike Belknap enough to goad Morrone into killing him? I was ready to do it myself when he was oinking about Gianna. Would the world be a better place without him? Sure. Then again, some people have said that about me.

  I’m a cheat, not a murderer. “Getting him killed isn’t the solution I’m looking for.”

  Carson falls back into her seat and makes an exasperated noise. “You hate the bastard. He can put you in a hole. It’s you or him. Don’t see anything to think about here.”

  That’s cold, but she’s right on a strictly dog-eat-dog level. “What if they don’t kill him right away? They beat information out of him? The first thing he’s going to do is shop me. Then I’m dead. You, too, maybe.”

  “Russians, then. They don’t care about you. He won’t get a chance to talk anyway.”

  The certainty in her voice gives me the shivers. I’d ask how she’d go about telling the Russians anything, but I don’t really want to know. All I know is that plotting how to get somebody else to kill Belknap is creeping me out.
r />   “Look, he’s gotta know where the stolen art is. That’s why we’re here, remember? We need to keep him alive until he tells me what he knows. After that…” I shrug. By then, Belknap will either have the money he needs to disappear, or somebody will take him out without our help.

  Carson’s leaning against her door, her lips pursed, staring at me. It’s not an unkind stare, more are you sure? than you idiot. “You’re the most moral crook I’ve ever met,” she finally says.

  “Is that bad?”

  She rolls her eyes.

  I have a sudden thought. “We need to change hotels. Now.”

  Carson nods. She doesn’t need me to explain why.

  Olivia reserves two rooms for us under a corporate name at the Spadari, a boutique hotel a couple blocks west of the Piazza del Duomo. Carson checks in for us both so I can limit my exposure to the front desk. I’m not exactly hiding, but why make it easier for Belknap (or anybody else) to find me?

  It’s completely different from the Park Hyatt—contemporary art littering the public areas, lots of blond-wood-and-leather furniture that looks like mashups of Art Deco and Pop Art. There’s a surplus of aqua in my room. How Memphis.

  Carson’s bash-down-the-door knock comes while I’m still unpacking. The door’s barely open when she barks, “What did you tell her?”

  “Tell who about what?” Is this about Gianna? I stand back before Carson runs me over.

  “Allyson.” She stalks to the middle of the room, fists on her hips, with a thunderstorm in her face. “You a keener? Tell her I was bitching about my pay?”

  Oh, shit. I got her in trouble. I’m getting really good at that. “I told her it’s unfair to pay you half your rate if you have your own project. I didn’t say anything else about what you told me.”

  She stares at me for a few seconds. Her face is doing complicated things. “You’re sure? Didn’t tell her I’m a suck?”

  Whatever that is. “No. I’m sorry if she’s pissed at you. It’s, well, I don’t think it’s fair, and I told her. I’m the new guy, I don’t know the boundaries.” Or I do, but after tongue-wrestling Allyson four nights ago, I thought I could break them. She doesn’t need to hear that. “What happened?”

  Now it looks like Carson’s fighting with her own face. She swallows hard. “Getting my full rate.”

  Yes! It worked! Allyson finally did the right thing.

  She takes a slow step toward me. “Why’d you do that? She could’ve canned you.” It’s the same tone as are you trying to get yourself killed?

  Of course, I can’t tell Carson my real reason—to try to keep her from shafting me. “Because we’re partners, and we should look out for each other.”

  Carson looks away. She drifts past me to the door, but stops herself with a hand on the frame. “Thanks.” Her voice’s so low, I can barely hear it. Then she turns. I can’t quite read what’s on her face, but I haven’t seen it there before. “Gonna look at more of Morrone’s property. Gotta do something, can’t just sit here. Wanna come?”

  Seriously? She’s never invited me anywhere before. “Sure.”

  This time we prowl through the north end of the city. Carson drives and the Golf has GPS, so I’m just cargo. We pass a lot of postwar apartment buildings, light industrial, ruined factories, and 1960s and ‘70s institutional architecture, none of it especially interesting. I spend the time thinking about my wrangle with Belknap, wishing I’d played things differently (not that it would’ve mattered) and wondering if he’s selling me out as I sit here.

  Once an hour, I try to get through to Gianna. Her phone goes straight to voicemail; texts vanish into a galaxy far, far away. This radio silence has me worried. I start to hear Belknap saying he “didn’t have to push all that hard” to get Gianna to lure me to the gallery. Did she really sound scared on the phone, or was that what I wanted to hear?

  “What’s wrong with you?” Carson asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not yakking my ear off.”

  “Is that what I do?” There’s no razor wire wrapped around her words, so I guess she’s not pissed about it. “Thinking about Belknap. And trying to figure out what happened with Gianna, last night and today.”

  “Still not picking up?”

  “No. The way it usually works, you’re in trouble if you have sex with a woman and don’t call her, not the other way around. You have any idea what’s up with her?”

  She shrugs. “Can’t help you. Don’t play those stupid little games.” One of the rougher parts of the city slides by outside for a silent minute. “Maybe she already had the ring picked out. Mrs. Hoskins. And you shit on it.”

  Last night she was down with it. What changed? “And I was supposed to do… what?”

  “What you did. I’m onside with you. Own it and move on. Bet Hoskins wouldn’t bug her like this.”

  She has a point. Not that I feel any better about it.

  Cinisello Balsamo is a suburb perched on the northeastern edge of the outer ring road around Milan. Carson slides us off the eastbound A52 and around a traffic circle to Via Ciro Menotti. Morrone’s property is to our right—a bunch of scrub and a couple rusting prefab warehouses. We bust right past without slowing down. “Aren’t we stopping?” I ask Carson.

  “Didn’t see the transport truck? I’m going around.”

  We reach a crosswalk about a hundred yards down the street. Carson hangs a U around the median, then races back to a turnout next to a vacant lot. We’re across the street from the rough gravel driveway leading to the warehouses.

  She yanks her mini-binoculars from the center console and focuses on the buildings. “He’s backing in. See it?”

  A white cabover semi’s inching into the nearer warehouse. The sun’s low on the horizon, so all I see inside is dark. After a few moments, the gloom swallows the truck. A brief flash of red—brake lights, probably—silhouettes a tall box where the semi used to be. The driver slides the warehouse door closed a couple minutes later, then trudges down the driveway toward the street—and us.

  “He’s making a call.” Carson hands over the binoculars.

  The driver’s a young dude in a baseball cap, jeans and a black tee, with a red-and-black windbreaker slung over his left shoulder. Maybe it’s the distance, but he looks awfully clean for a working guy. He stows his phone in his back pocket.

  “Wherever he’s going,” I say, “it’s gonna be a long walk.”

  “Maybe he called for a ride.” Carson slowly sinks in her seat until the top of her head just clears the bottom of her window. “Get down.”

  I duck enough to not stand out but not so much that I can’t see. The driver steps into an orange wash of low sunlight. There’s something familiar about him, but I can’t figure out if it’s because I’ve seen him before or if I’m reaching the all-Milanese-dudes-look-alike stage of this trip.

  He passes a chipped yellow metal post, bends to pick up a chain and clips it to the post, closing off the driveway. Then he turns and steps to the street.

  Holy shit. “It’s Angelo.”

  “Morrone’s kid?”

  “Yeah. He’s the driver.” He’s showing up an awful lot lately.

  Carson snatches the binoculars from me and aims at Angelo. “Why’s he here?”

  “What’s he doing driving a truck?”

  “What’s in the truck?”

  All really good questions. The only one that counts, though, is what now?

  “Follow him?” I ask. He’s walking east toward the traffic circle.

  Carson lowers the binoculars and squeezes the bridge of her nose. “What’s that tell us?”

  If he goes home, it tells us where he lives, which doesn’t help. We get nothing if he goes to a bar or something. “I think the truck’s more important.”

  “Good call.”

  Angelo trots across the next crosswalk, then stands on the corner of the traffic circle. Eleven minutes later, a white
Prius with a taxi sign on its roof picks him up. They disappear northbound toward the freeway.

  We sit for another ten minutes, Carson watching the warehouses for any signs of life, me wondering what we just saw. Then she grabs her purse from the back seat and lurches out the door. “Come on.”

  It’s warm and damp and the mosquitos are coming out for dinner. Mom never mentioned mosquitos in her Italy stories. I’m pretty sure I’ll catch malaria in the couple-hundred-foot walk from the street to the first warehouse. “Are the ninjas going to come after us again?” I ask.

  “Not if we leave first.”

  The warehouse is in even worse shape than it seemed from the street. Its sheet-metal walls are peeling and rusty, and most of the plastic clerestories are busted out. The light’s just bad enough to turn the unidentifiable junk and trash surrounding the place into a minefield. As we get closer, it’s clear the other warehouse is almost a ruin; its roof is mostly gone, and some of the wall panels are either off or thinking about it.

  Carson holds her flashlight in her mouth while she picks the padlock on the big sliding door at the front. The door casters’ squeal sounds like it’ll split the sky open.

  “Cameras?” I ask. Carson tosses me a mask.

  Besides the truck, the warehouse holds a sizable collection of crap—rusty metal racks, wheel drums, empty cable spools, a stack of cardboard boxes so rotten I can’t read the labels anymore. The gentle bouquet of mold shades the air. Good thing it’s dark in here.

  The truck’s dirty white with faded red trim, a Scania 144L according to the badges on the grille. It’s attached to a forty-foot box trailer that used to also be white a long time ago. The previous owner’s logo is covered with what looks like house paint. If this thing pulled up in the lane next to me, I’d move over.

  Carson waves the flashlight at me. I trot to the rear of the trailer. It’s about two feet from the back wall, maybe the best anti-theft device ever. Who’s going to take apart the building to open the doors?

  Not Carson. She studies the padlock on the back door, then bites the flashlight again and starts poking at the lock with her picks.