The Collection Page 3

  I roll that around a bit. “Who are these people? The CIA? Oil companies? Political parties?”

  She arches an eyebrow.

  “The Mafia? Terrorists? Drug cartels?”

  “Are they so different?”

  Good point.

  “Our clients don’t care to be disappointed. In some cases, I’d be quite afraid to disappoint them. So I expect all my people to be resourceful and success-oriented while on a project.

  “I have no full-time staff. All my people are independent contractors—it makes the tax accounting considerably easier for everyone. While in my employ, my staff has access to my legal and financial advisors for support. I pay for time and reasonable expenses. All—”

  “What’s ‘reasonable’?”

  “It’s highly situational. All my people have various means of accepting their pay discreetly. I have two main rules I expect everyone to follow. The first rule is, of course, to succeed. The second rule is, should whatever passes for the authorities take charge of you, say nothing about your project or me to anyone. Help will arrive.”

  “The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club.”

  Allyson smiles. She has a great smile. “Exactly. Does any of this cause you any concern?”

  “Is this my on-boarding?”

  “No. Should I decide to employ you—that’s if, not when—I’ll contact you with the particulars of your task and expect you to be available within forty-eight hours. You’ll be told where you’re going so you can pack appropriately.”

  “Um… I still have two years left on my supervised release. I can travel inside the U.S., but I can’t leave the country. My PO has my passport.”

  She frowns at me. “I’m aware of that. If it was a problem, you’d not be here. I’ll ask again: does any of this cause you concern?”

  It sounds like a great way to end up in a foreign prison, or a shallow grave. But I sort of knew that before I sent her that email. Deep-breath time. “No.”

  Allyson digests this, then stands. That’s my cue. As we shake hands, she says, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Friedrich. I hope I needn’t remind you that everything we discussed today is quite confidential.”

  “Right.” I reluctantly let her take her hand back. “Thanks for seeing me… Ms. DeWitt.” I turn to go.

  “Matt?”

  I almost didn’t hear her. It took a moment to process that she called me “Matt.” I turn to see more concern in her eyes than I expected.

  “You’re quite… thin. Please take care of yourself.” For a moment, it almost sounds like she cares. Then she adds, “You’re of no use to me sick.”

  For once, I don’t know what to say, and I don’t trust myself to say it. I nod, take one last look, and leave.

  Chapter 4

  It’s six weeks since the interview. I’ve heard nada, not that I’m surprised. Our history’s probably too much baggage for Allyson to overlook. Oh, well. I got to see her again, talk to her, touch her. I got to see that this woman I’ve been dreaming about for four years isn’t some figment, some random chick I saw on the street that I spun this huge fantasy around. Not that it helps.

  I’m sitting at one of the store’s outside tables on Hill, watching the traffic and walkers pass by on Santa Monica’s version of Main Street. It’s the pre-lunch lull, just the usual people piling on the free wifi and treating the store like an office. I’m about halfway through my milk—they limit how much free coffee we can guzzle, but nobody seems to pay attention to milk—and watching a couple babes in shorts cross the street.

  A dude in black bike-racing leathers rounds the corner and heads toward me. His visor’s up, but all I can see is eyes and a nose. The leathers creak as he walks. A black messenger bag’s slung across his chest.

  He stops in front of my table. “Matthew Friedrich?” An accent, but I can’t tell which one.

  “Yeah?”

  The guy zips open the messenger bag and reaches in. I flinch; I’ve seen this movie before, and the scene ends with him shooting me with a silenced pistol. But instead of a gun, he pulls a 6x9 manila envelope, drops it on the table, then turns and leaves.

  I watch the thing for a few moments, waiting for it to explode or for poison gas to come out. It just sits there, my name and nothing else on the front. I finally pick it up—it’s not heavy—and rip open the tape sealing the flap. Four things fall out.

  A blue flash drive, about the size of my thumb. Great; all I need is a computer, which I don’t have anymore.

  A strap of used ten-euro notes. A thousand euros, or about $1,100. A yellow sticky says, “Advance on expenses.”

  A U.S. passport. Inside is my picture—my real DMV picture, except for the dress shirt and tie—and the name “Richard Hoskins.” This Hoskins dude lives on Mulholland and he’s been all over the place in the past two years—Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Russia, India, China, Brazil, on and on.

  Finally, a folded itinerary for a United flight two days from now.

  To Brussels.

  Chapter 5

  The Grote Markt is the heart of Brussels. I’m standing in the right ventricle, drowning in the riot of stonework and gilding. Gothic, Baroque and Louis XIV overkill surrounds the bigger-than-a-football-field cobblestone plaza. The almost-sunset paints everything gold.

  For the past two days, Brussels has looked like the inside of a very nice, very anonymous business hotel. I finally escaped a couple hours ago.

  Now this… this is Europe.

  Besides Canada, Mexico and the Caymans (and Texas), I’ve only been out of the U.S. a couple times, to London and Geneva on gallery business. Dad never wanted to go overseas, and since he used to make most of the money, he got the final word. We did a lot of driving trips to places like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite.

  Getting here was every spy movie I’ve ever seen. I flew on a ticket in my real name to JFK. While us proles in coach were pulling our stuff together to get off the plane, the guy across the aisle accidentally-on-purpose dropped an envelope in front of me. It said “Hoskins” on the front; Richard Hoskins’ boarding pass for the Brussels flight was inside.

  Every TSA agent at JFK looked straight at me. The guy at the security gate took forever going over Hoskins’—my—passport. I spent the next seven hours (in business class, which was pretty sweet) imagining what will happen when my PO discovers I’m not interviewing in New York City like I said I’d be. When that wasn’t keeping me wide awake, I was figuring the Belgian border cops would take one look and grab me right there. But no; the bored immigration guy at the Brussels airport spent a minute leafing through my entry stamps, then added his own and waved me on without a word. I must’ve lost five pounds just from the sweat.

  When I checked into the Sofitel Brussels Le Louise, the desk clerk handed me a message: “Don’t leave your room until I get there.” No signature, but it had to be from Allyson.

  So I was the good soldier and didn’t leave the hotel for the first day and a half. I had to leave my room; I needed to read the stuff on that thumb drive, and I could only do that in the hotel’s business center. I also gave up on room service after lunch the first day. I’m not good being all by myself. I’ve always been around people, even in prison. When I’m not, I worry that the zombie apocalypse happened while I’ve been in my room.

  This evening, I couldn’t take it anymore. One of the great cities of Europe was right outside the hotel’s front door, and all I’d seen of it was the back end of a church out my window.

  So here I am.

  The breeze is knocking down what’s left of the day’s warmth. I zip my windbreaker and start the nice twenty-minute walk back to the hotel. I love watching the people rush by, going home from work, going to dinner, going on dates. Narrow cobblestone streets, signs in French and Dutch, yellow-and-blue buses. While I eat at a sidewalk café, I wonder what it’ll be like to be with Allyson in another foreign city. Yeah, yeah, I know about her r
ule, but she broke it once, why not again? Who’d know?

  I’m feeling pretty good about things when I finally walk under the Sofitel’s glass awning, go up to the lobby on the escalator with the purple edge-lighting under the hand grips, then take the stairs to the fourth floor (gotta work off the beer and frites). Next up: scamming my PO. I have to report in tonight. We’ll see if the NSA throws a flag on that play.

  The minute I step through my room’s door, I know something’s wrong.

  “The fuck have you been?” a woman’s voice barks.

  It’s not Allyson.

  Her name is Carson (first or last, she didn’t say), and when she finally gets done bitching me out for not being here “like you were fucking told,” I get to enter my own hotel room. I lean against the angled wall at the mouth of the entry hall just in case I have to run for it. “Who are you?”

  She’s around my age, squarish face, strong features, decent cheekbones. Not pretty, but not ugly either. Her dark-chocolate hair’s cut short—like, almost as short as mine on the sides. She’s wearing an oversized black warmup jacket and faded gray sweat pants that completely hide her figure, if she has one.

  She’s pacing, arms crossed, in front of the full-length oatmeal drapes covering my window. There are a lot of taupes and warm grays in this room, except for the purple lounge chair. “Didn’t read your briefing package, eh?”

  “The stuff on the thumb drive? Not all of it, not yet. There’s a ton on there. The only time I could read it was sixty minutes at a shot at the library back home, and here at the business center.”

  Carson shoots me a you’re useless glance. “Your babysitter. Someone new comes on, Allyson puts an old hand on them their first time out. Teach you how we do things, keep track of you.” She throws me another nasty look. “Get to tell Allyson if you’re a plug, too. So fucking pay attention when I talk to you.”

  I’m trying to figure out where Carson comes from. So far, I’m hearing a lot of flat Midwestern vowels and an extra something I can’t quite finger. Watching her pace is like seeing a lion or tiger in a cage. So, yeah, I’ll pay attention when she talks.

  “Computer’s over there.” She jabs a thumb toward the black-laminate inverted “L” of a desk under the room’s flat-screen. I’d noticed the black laptop case but figured it was hers. I’ll wait to check it out when I don’t have to invade Carson’s space and risk getting my head taken off. “Phone and the rest of your ID’s in there, too. Don’t lose them, comes out of your check. Know who you are?”

  “You mean, who Hoskins is? Yeah, that’s the first thing I looked at. Generic rich guy. Partner in a development company. Got bought out by private equity in ‘07, right before the crash.”

  “Better start saying ‘I.’”

  “Okay. I bought another developer out of bankruptcy in 2008 with my pocket change, built it up, sold it last year for another mint. It was all private, so it didn’t get much press.” In other words, the kind of guy I used to hate to deal with at the gallery. They were usually like land mines—okay until you tell them “no,” then they blow your legs off. On the other hand, they usually bought people to have taste for them, so at least they got decent art.

  Carson flops into the purple chair. It squeaks. “Got it down? Names, places, dates, all of it?”

  “Yeah. How good are these IDs?”

  “Real good. Allyson’s got this guy, used to be CIA or MI-6 or something? He does them. Sure you’ve got it? Fucking better be.”

  “I’m sure. I’ve got this thing, I read something and I can remember it for a while. A few weeks or so. If I read it a lot, I can remember it forever. It’s always been that way. If you’d like, I can tell you an Encyclopedia Brown story from when I was ten, word-for-word.”

  She frowns at me.

  Now that she’s out of the way, I cross to the desk and unzip the laptop case. Inside is this insanely thin, silver Acer ultrabook that weighs basically nothing. The phone’s in the case’s front pocket, a quad-band Samsung with a big screen. I hold it up. “No iPhones, I guess.”

  “Allyson hates Apple. That cell’s been hacked. Doesn’t keep call histories. Delete something, it’s gone like it was never there. There’s an encryption app you use when you talk to any of us.”

  “Wow. My very own spy phone.” I hook it up to the charger and pull a number-ten envelope out of the laptop case. Inside are Hoskins’ California driver’s license, business cards, three credit cards, an AAA Premier membership card, and some other wallet stuffers. I hold up the American Express Platinum. “Is this for real? I could buy a Ferrari with this thing.”

  “You do, I get to kill you.” Carson says this completely straight-faced, so I can’t tell if she’s kidding. “Don’t go nuts. Use it for normal stuff, like hotels and food and airport lounges. Bills go to Olivia. She—”

  “Who’s Olivia?”

  “Let me talk. She takes care of us. Don’t use the concierge service on the cards—use her for everything. She reviews your charges. She has a question, she’ll ask. She doesn’t like your answer, she tells Allyson. Allyson asks you a question, better fucking answer straight up. She doesn’t like your answer, you’re in the shit. Got it?”

  Between the three credit cards I’m holding, I could buy a small house. I saw these wander through the gallery pretty regularly and I’d wondered what it would be like to even qualify for one. Now I know: it’s like they’re going to burn my fingers off.

  I stand there watching Carson stare back at me for what seems like a long time. She’s drumming her fingers on the chair’s arm. I wonder: when she takes me down to eat me, will she bite my neck from behind and sever my spinal cord, or rip my throat out?

  “Got a plan yet?” she finally asks. It’s more like an accusation.

  “Maybe.”

  “Tell me.”

  I haven’t had a lot of time to think things out yet, but that’s probably not the answer she wants. “How much do you know about this?”

  She shrugs. “Art stuff. That’s all she told me. That’s why you’re here.” She shows me her fangs. “Impress me.”

  Chapter 6

  Carson leans forward, peers at the TV, then shrugs. “Five old paintings. So what?”

  My laptop’s on the desk, plugged into the flatscreen through its HDMI port. If it keeps Carson in her chair and away from me, it’s all good.

  “So they were all stolen from private European collections in the past seven years. And they’ve all turned up in the past eighteen months, these four in China, this one in Dubai.”

  “Huh. So?”

  “So I think maybe the same guy sold all of them. All five sales worked the same way. Check it out. Each one was a private sale through a gallery, set up over the phone with what turned out to be Luxembourgeois companies. The proceeds got wired to Singaporean bank accounts. Each company had a different name, but they’re all registered to the same street address.”

  I check to see if Carson’s bored yet. Surprisingly, she’s not only awake but leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Any line on the phones?”

  “All different numbers. A1 Telekom Austria prepaid chips.”

  “Burners, then. Seller’s in Austria?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Carson squints at the images again, which wrinkles her little snip nose. “What’s special about these things? Famous or something?”

  “No, not even. These aren’t the kind of artists you’d know unless you follow art. All these pieces date from 1820 to 1910. None of them are Impressionists, which is kinda weird given what was going on in that period.”

  “Expensive?”

  “Compared to one of the big names, like Monet or van Gogh? No, they’re cheap. Compared to the average car? Yeah. This Palmer here—” I run the mouse pointer around a Samuel Palmer watercolor-on-board landscape “—is probably the most valuable. Its auction estimate is two-fifty to three-fifty U.S. That’s thousands. This one—” a Wi
lhelm Leibl oil portrait of a farmer with a serious beard “—is probably the cheapest, seventy to a hundred K. These five add up to a bit over a million U.S., low auction value. No idea what the insurance value is.”

  “Chickenshit.” She lunges out of the chair and starts pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed. After a couple laps, she unzips her jacket and throws it on the bed. That exposes a skin-tight, long-sleeved white top with a medium-gray back. Holy shit. Carson’s a big girl. Not fat, but built, like fit. Broad shoulders, powerful arms, and a pretty impressive rack. I can’t tell if I should be turned on or terrified, so I try a little of each.

  By now, her face is darker than it was when she was scolding me earlier. “Someone’s fencing stolen paintings. Why’s that worth paying you?”

  I note that she said you, not us. “The client thinks there’s more of these out there waiting to be sold. A lot more. He says the whole thing could be worth millions. So we’re supposed to find them.”

  She mutters something about a “fucking snipe hunt,” then says, “Then what?”

  A question I’ve been trying to figure out. “Tell Allyson, I guess.”

  Carson throws up her hands. “Why bother stealing paintings if they’re not worth a lot?”

  I point to the TV. “Pieces like these get swiped every day. Some burglar’s raiding a rich guy’s house and finds a horse picture on the wall, so he takes it. Maybe it’s a print from Z Gallerie, or maybe it’s a second-tier Stubbs and it’s worth a hundred fifty, two hundred K, whatever. The burglar doesn’t know. He fences it for ten percent of whatever the fence thinks the market value is. If the fence’s a dealer—like my gallery was—he sells it on to a client who doesn’t care about provenance, like in China or Russia. If the fence is connected, the piece maybe turns into collateral for a drug deal, or a way to move money across borders. And it’s not on refrigerator magnets, so nobody notices.”