The Collection Page 27

  “Couple years back, when I started working with him.”

  “When the Russians first showed up. How many are left?”

  “For sure? Don’t know.” He refreshes his browser screen. It doesn’t tell him anything new. “Half, maybe less. Don’t know what the other guys’ve been moving. We’re selling like crazy. Not everything makes the collection. I’ve bought pieces one week and turned ‘em the next. I’m sure the others have, too.”

  “Are the others skimming like you are?”

  I get an angry-pit bull look. “I take a commission, a good commission. There’s overhead.” He must mean Herr Stoeller’s services. “Undocumented pieces are harder to move. It’s a lot of work. I earn the money.”

  “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” starts playing in my head. “Does Morrone know how much commission he’s paying you?”

  “You and Gar did the same fucking thing,” he snarls. “Don’t make like you didn’t.”

  We did. “Lucca figured it out and kicked you loose, right?”

  Belknap peers at me. “Why him?”

  Just his asking that confirms my guess. “If it was Salvatore, you’d be planted in one of those fields out by his house. Lucca figured you’d be useful later.” Useful hanging by his thumbs in the torture chamber, if it comes to that. “How much of the ‘collection’ is hot?”

  He has to think about this. “Maybe half.” Good God. “Over half the pieces I got. All the antiquities are looted—no such thing as legal ones anymore. Hear he’s got one of Becchina’s old tombaroli working—”

  “Tomba-who?”

  “Tomb robbers. Etruria, Greece, Syria, Iraq, someone’s gotta dig it up. Get to the point, asswipe.”

  I’d love to keep slow-rolling this just to piss him off, but I need to wrap this up so Carson and I can start checking out his story. “Okay. Where is it? Where’s the collection?”

  He refreshes his browser screen again. He’s like a lab rat pushing a button for treats that don’t come. “How do I know you got my money? Maybe Dima screwed me. Maybe it went to the wrong account.”

  I want to get out of here and not see this prick again. I probably sound a little testy when I say, “What do you want? A photo of a stack of hundreds holding up today’s International Herald Tribune?”

  He shrugs. I’m getting tired of that, too. “Just want proof you’ve got my money. I’m not saying shit ‘til you do.”

  Goddamnit. Now it’s my turn to sigh. I text Carson: U hearing this?

  Yes.

  Can Os guy prove we have $$?

  Sb.

  “See, I don’t think you’re smart enough to pull this off.” Belknap swivels back and forth in his chair. The smug look is solidifying. “This is some con you’re working. Just your style.”

  I know he’s baiting me, but for once I’m not going to let him. For once, I’ve got the power. “If you think that, you should call your bank and confirm your balance.”

  “Yeah.” He nods and picks up his phone. “I will.”

  The bank picks up, and Belknap starts speaking slowly in Mandarin or Cantonese or something sounding like that. He recites what may be a twelve-digit string of numbers, answers a couple questions, then leans back in his chair in the universal posture of somebody on hold.

  I ask, “Good hold music?” He flips me off.

  My phone buzzes. Proof on Bs screen. At the same time, Belknap leans forward and squints at the popup on his laptop. Judging from his expression, Olivia’s hacker left a dog turd on his lawn. He barks a couple short phrases into his phone, then stabs it off.

  “We’ve learned a valuable lesson today,” I say. “Don’t underestimate me.”

  Belknap’s look is like he discovered the gal he’s been lusting after is a guy. He props his elbow on the desk and presses the pad of his thumb between his eyebrows. “Fuck you.”

  “Keep being an asshole and we’ll take the rest of what’s in there. Answer my question. Where’s Morrone’s art?”

  He has a good, long chuckle, then refreshes his irritatingly smug look. “Don’t know.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Belknap holds up his hand in the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. “God’s honest. Don’t fucking know. Know why?” He leans forward and shows off his shark smile. “It moves.”

  Of course it moves. That’s why Lucca hasn’t found it in a year of looking. That’s why the Russians don’t know where it is. This makes all kinds of sense. “How’s that work?”

  “It’s on a truck.”

  “All of it? One truck?”

  “A semi. Just the paintings. I think the antiquities are in the Geneva Free Port. Should’ve put the paintings there too, but it would’ve been a pain in the ass.”

  A semi.

  A semi that keeps moving.

  Nobody knows where it is except Morrone. And maybe… “Is it a white Scania?”

  Belknap gives me a what-the-hell? stare. “Don’t know. Never saw it.” He says it slowly, like he’s wondering how much I know. “He asked me to design a racking system that’d fit in a box trailer. Then a year back, he started cleaning out the pieces he had in storage—here, everywhere else. All I got left is what’s in transit.”

  Lucca lost track of the paintings a year ago. His story and Belknap’s are lining up. “If you never saw it, how do you know it exists?”

  “Told you. Morrone asked me to design the racks. And I hear shit.” He starts shutting down his laptop. I hope Olivia’s hacker got a chance to look for the missing data keys. “Either that, or he sent them to the Free Port. If they’re there, you’ll never see ‘em again. We done?”

  I’ve run out the list I worked up since Friday, and I really want to get away from this asshole. “For now. Just in case you decide to get cute? I’ve recorded this whole talk.” No shit—I really did it, on my phone. “Step out of line and Morrone gets the file.”

  “Fine.” He slams shut the laptop. “You and Gianna went out Thursday night, didn’t you? She was all happy that day, singing, dancing around. That was you, right? Or Hoskins?”

  “None of your business.”

  He snorts. “Yeah, right. Fucked up, didn’t you? Friday she was stomping around, all pissed off. Grab the wrong thing?”

  Oh, hell. I did make her mad. No wonder she suckered me into coming here.

  Belknap slides his laptop into a black carry bag and slings it over his shoulder. “Long as you got my money, I don’t tell Morrone or the Russians.” The shark smile surfaces. “But I can sure tell Gianna. Hope you got some Thursday, ‘cause you ain’t touching her again.”

  My heart drops into my stomach. It’s bad enough I pissed her off. I remember the hope and respect in her eyes when she looked at me, something I haven’t seen for a long, long time. Having her find out who—what—I really am will break her heart, and maybe mine. Especially if it comes from Belknap. He’ll make me sound as bad as possible.

  “That buys you nothing, and—”

  “Oh, it buys me plenty. It’ll feel fucking fantastic.” He skirts the desk faster than I expect and shoves me out the door. “Get out of my fucking gallery, asswipe.”

  I stand as tall as the bandages let me. “Don’t forget who’s got your money.”

  He fills the office doorway, looking me up and down. His face scrunches like he’s smelling a toilet overflow. “You know, it might just be worth losing the money to see them cut you into little chunks. Fuck off.”

  He locks the front door behind me once I step into the lobby. I hang there for a minute, trying to figure out where we stand. I got the information I wanted (sort of). Maybe some leverage over Belknap. But he may not be as “managed” as I’d planned, and he’s going to tell Gianna about the real me, something I desperately don’t want. Who won this round?

  Once I’m out on the sidewalk, I pull out my phone while I look for Carson’s royal-blue 1-series BMW. “Carson? Flash your lights. I—”

  The explosion nea
rly knocks me on my butt.

  Chapter 46

  We do the only sane thing after the bomb goes off—run away as fast as we can. Carson managed to peek through the passage into the courtyard on her way to pick me up and said all she saw was burning cars.

  Now she’s flogging the little BMW north on Via Vittore Pisani through the usual SigAlert-level traffic. She’s trying to get us to Cinisello Balsamo, where Angelo dumped the semi on Friday. We’re stuck in a canyon formed by modern office and apartment buildings on both sides of the street, far away from where we need to go before that truck disappears. Fire engines and cop cars with their lights and sirens going scream by in the other direction.

  Once again, I’m sitting on my hands to keep them from shaking. I’ve never been so close to an explosion, even if it was on the other side of the building. “Who did it? The Russians?”

  “Nah.” She weaves through near-invisible breaks in the traffic. I close my eyes a lot. “Bombs aren’t their style. They’d just empty a couple mags into him. Plus he owed them money.”

  “The Albanians, then? Burim thinks Belknap set him up?”

  “They’ll come after you before they go after their fence.” She mutters at a small Fiat delivery van that cuts her off. “My money’s on Lucca. You must’ve told him about Belknap. He moved before the Russians got their payoff.”

  I already knew that, I just didn’t want to think about it. If that’s what happened, then I killed Belknap. If he’s dead, that is. The first English-language reports about the bombing are just now hitting the Web; no casualties mentioned yet. I’ve always figured Belknap will slither out of dying like he does everything else.

  Both my head and my chest are throbbing from everything I’ve done since I got up this morning. I knock back a couple ibuprofen (unfortunately, not the special kind) with a swig from Carson’s half-empty water bottle. I’m assuming she doesn’t have anything I haven’t already caught. “I’m worried about Gianna. What happens to her now?”

  “Not your problem anymore. You heard Belknap. She’s pissed at you.”

  “I know, I know.” I’m not sure why exactly she’s mad. It doesn’t matter—I feel the loss like we’d known each other for months instead of days. “If Belknap’s dead, he left unfinished business. That Fantin’s supposed to go to Belaiev, and his half-mil’s supposed to go to the Russians. Will they go after Gianna for it?”

  “If they had mothers, they’d go after their mothers for it. Still not your problem.”

  I have this quick, sickening flash of goons torturing Gianna for money she doesn’t know exists. “She went way out on a limb for me. I put her in danger. I need to fix it.”

  “Nice thought, but dumb.” I can almost hear the gears turning in Carson’s head. “Maybe she set this up.”

  “Seriously?” I glance at her. She doesn’t look like she’s joking. “Why?”

  “Working with Angelo now. Who knows? Maybe she’s not as dumb as she looks.”

  “Hey, back off.” Yes, I suppose it could happen. I can’t believe it, though. That’s not the Gianna I got to know last week. I can’t be that wrong about her. “She’d have to know about the auction.”

  “Whatever.” She screeches into the plaza fronting the massive central train station. “Next time you see her, think with your head for a change.”

  We eventually break out of the midtown traffic and race north on Viale Zara, which turns into Viale Fulvio Testi, the road that took us to our skate date Friday night. Carson’s trying to make Formula One drivers look lazy. More detail’s seeping into the news reports on the Web. They now say “at least one dead.” I don’t want to think about that.

  We finally pull up in the turnout across Via Menotti from Morrone’s broken-down warehouses. They haven’t changed since sunset Friday.

  Carson scans the place with her binoculars. “No movement.”

  “If it’s still in there, what do we do with the pallets?”

  “Take ‘em out.” Right. She pokes around some more. “It’s dead. Let’s go.”

  It’s hard to look like you belong in a place when it’s obvious nobody belongs. The mosquitos are MIA, though, which is a nice change. We already know there are no cameras outside. When we get to the first warehouse’s door, Carson tosses me a mask and starts picking the padlock.

  Now that we’re here, potentially a few feet away from what we’ve been searching for these past two-plus weeks, I let myself get a little hopeful. Angelo’s truck has to be the right one. There’s no reason for him to move it yet. We’re almost done. I can almost taste it.

  “Ready?” Carson asks.

  Chapter 47

  There’s no truck. That’d be too easy.

  The car’s very quiet on our way back into the city.

  I call Gianna as soon as I can plausibly say I saw what happened on the news. The first big surprise is that she picks up. “Are you okay?” I ask.

  There’s a long silence. “I am okay. I am not at my work this morning.”

  “Any damage to the gallery?”

  I hear rustling in the background, footsteps, keys jingling. “I do not know. I go there now to see. I cannot talk to you now, Mr. Hoskins. Buona sera.”

  So I’m not “Rick” anymore. That hurts more than I thought it would. I sit there staring at my phone for a few moments after she hangs up. “Drop me at the gallery,” I tell Carson.

  The passage between the courtyard and the street is blocked by red-and-white barrier tape and a couple bored cops. I slow as I walk past. The air still smells like burned rubber and gas. Guys in white bunny suits poke through the still-smoking mass of tangled, charred metal in the courtyard. Polizia di Stato vehicles line the curb two deep. Nobody seems to mind me gawking.

  A couple gallery windows are cracked. All the shades are still down. Gianna said she’d be in there, but I can’t tell if she is. I stand in front of the locked door (also shaded) and sort out my priorities one last time. Then I push the silver button on the doorjamb.

  It opens a few moments later. Gianna’s in black capris and a sleeveless, collared tomato-red top. She still looks great. “Siamo chiusi—” Her eyes and lips shrink and she folds her arms hard. “Mr. Hoskins. Why are you here?”

  “May I come in?”

  She sizes me up, chews over her options. Then she swings the door open and stands back without a word.

  Everything looks like it did this morning. “How are you doing?”

  Gianna closes the door, then looks up at me again. I still see what do you want? scrolling through her eyes, but her lips aren’t as flat as before. “I am okay. The windows in the storage are broken. In Italy, it is very slow to fix the windows.” She folds her arms again and edges toward me. “The policemen ask about Lorenzoni’s auto. Why do they do that?”

  “Was he here this morning?”

  “I think yes. Today’s La Gazzetta dello Sport is in his bin.” For the first time she looks away from me, toward the back of the gallery. “I ring him, but he does not answer. He does not come. The polizia think he is…?” She nods toward the courtyard.

  Ever since I started thinking straight again yesterday, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell Gianna that Lucca’s gunning for her. This is my opportunity. “There’s something I need to tell you. Can we sit in the waiting area? We don’t need to stand here like this, like we don’t know each other, do we?”

  She silently leads me to the alcove and perches on one of the black Deco armchairs. Her palms are pressed together between her knees. The weather around her isn’t warm, but it’s not freezing, either.

  I sit on the loveseat and lean toward her. “I found this out over the weekend and it’s something you should know before the police tell you.” I take a deep breath. “Lorenzoni’s working for the ‘Ndrangheta.”

  Gianna blinks but holds my focus. Her mouth works a bit. “I know.”

  She knows. Great. “So you know who Rossi and Angelo—”


  “Yes. I know.”

  Well, hell. So much for protecting her. “You didn’t mention it. I could’ve used the heads-up.”

  An eyebrow goes up. “I say to the client, ‘Yes, my gallery sells paintings to the criminals.’ You think this is good for the sales? Yes?”

  “I understand you not telling me at first. But when we were working together? When—”

  “When we are ‘business partners’?” She says the words like they’re a curse.

  Oh, hell. Her lips are back to being a tight line with a downward curve. I have to say something, so I reach deep into the mess in my head and hope I don’t make things worse. “Gianna… believe it or not, I was trying to do the right thing Thursday night. I saw how fast we were going. As much as I wanted it, I didn’t want you to feel used or betrayed.” I’m getting nothing back. This is so not working. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. It’s the last thing I wanted. I… like you. A lot. I hope you get everything you want.”

  She bolts from the chair and stalks to face the back wall with her arms wrapped around herself. I hear a sniff, but I can’t tell if it’s an about-to-cry sniff or a you-bastard sniff.

  Half of me says go to her, while the other half says she’ll slug you if you touch her. I want to believe that first voice. I want to feel her skin under my fingertips again. Unfortunately, the vibe coming off her tells me the second voice is right.

  “When you say you want to help with my gallery,” Gianna finally says to the wall, “is it true, or the fairy story?” Her voice is clenched, almost like her jaw’s wired shut.

  “It’s true.”

  She turns to scan me like she’s never seen me before. “Angelo says he will help me.”

  Oh, God, no. “Be really careful. Remember who Angelo is. What he is.” She starts to interrupt, but I hold up my hand. “I’m sure he’ll give you money, but there’ll be strings. He’ll own you. What Lorenzoni’s been doing for them here? You’ll be doing for them there. They won’t let you get away. And when they’re done with you…” I point toward the courtyard.

  That gets me a flicker in her eyes, but nothing else. “If you give me money, what do you want? My body? I try to give it to you and you say ‘no.’ What do you want?” I see a light bulb click on. She looks over her shoulder like she’s trying to see the wreckage in the courtyard, then turns back to me. “Lorenzoni. You want Lorenzoni. That is why you are nice to me, why you make the promises, to get to him. Yes?”