I needed my phone. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
He had been about to speak and my simple request stopped him as suddenly as if I had screamed. He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time and realizing I spoke only Urdu.
“I’ve been here a long time. Please.” In movies, the female spy doesn’t have a bladder and can stand pressed up against a concrete wall in her remote desert jail cell, knife drawn, for hours waiting for the bad guy to walk through the door. I’m not her and this wasn’t a movie. I hadn’t been thinking about it, but now that I had said it to J.P. it was real. The bathroom thing was the only way I could think of to get my phone, sure, but I didn’t have to fake the need.
“You can’t. I mean, not without the door open,” he said, although he sounded a bit embarrassed. I hoped the idea was as unappealing to him as it was to me. I hoped he wouldn’t decide to shoot me because it was simpler than maintaining good manners.
“Open? No way. Where am I going to hide? Come on,” I pressed, whining a little. “It’s urgent, J.P. You have my word I won’t try to escape.”
“You can’t escape,” he mumbled. “There’s no window.”
Damn, one option gone. “Okay then. What’s the problem?” I stood up, raising my hands in the air to reinforce that I had nothing hidden in them.
He stood there, gun still aimed at my chest, and thought. By now, I understood he was a slow thinker. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and his hair looked damp. I felt the stifling heat in the room, the result of the closed window and door and two highly stressed occupants. Cold water on my face would be nice. Get a grip, I told myself. This isn’t really a bathroom break.
He was saying something and I jerked my attention back to the room. “…two minutes, no locking the door. I warn you, I’ll come in if it’s any longer.”
“It might be three.”
“All right, three,” he said in a sharp voice. “But I’m counting and that’s final. Let’s go.”
“I need something from my bag.” I tried to look embarrassed. I knew he had it somewhere, and I needed to get my phone back.
“What?”
“You know, my time of the month.”
“Oh, geez,” he said. But his upbringing prevailed. He grabbed my arm and marched me out of the room, to the doorway into a living room, where he scooped up my bag and jammed it into my chest before hauling me down a short hall. We stopped before an open door and he shoved me in, pulling the door closed behind me.
“I’m counting,” he yelled through the door.
Nature called so I multi-tasked, digging the phone out of my bag and turning it on. Six messages, probably all Charlie. I didn’t dare listen since the sound might be picked up by my captor. Instead, I hit “call back” and prepared to whisper while flushing.
“In or near Bridgetown,” I hissed. “Margoletti’s son grabbed me but someone else killed—”
“Three,” yelled the voice outside. Frantically I pulled up my slacks, pushed the phone back in the bag, and was buttoning the waistband when the door opened.
“Can I wash my hands?” I said, turning to the sink without waiting for a reply. Hastily, I threw some cold water on my face. It was still dripping off my chin as J.P. dragged me back to the bedroom, yanked my bag away and tossed it on the floor without noticing that the phone was in there, or that I hadn’t turned it off. If there was a heaven, Charlie would be able to make something of this, like they do in the movies, and send in the Bridgetown police.
“Where are we?” I said, as loudly as I could for the microphone.
“What does it matter?” J.P. said. “You won’t be calling a cab.”
Not a happy thought, but I ignored the implications. “J.P., let’s call your father. I bet if he knew how tough your situation was, he’d come up with the money you need right now.”
“It’s way too late.”
“I don’t believe that. I saw how proud he was of you at the polo match. Come on, we can solve this problem if we do it together now.” Now, as in before some cold-blooded dirty cop drug dealer gets here. “Look, your father can help with any police charges too. He has pull, and if you’re telling me the truth, that you didn’t shoot anyone—”
“I didn’t,” he burst out. “It wasn’t me.”
“Okay, I believe you, but you need to tell the police. If you keep me here, if anything happens to me, it’ll be too late and even your father won’t be able to protect you. Let me go and I’ll call him myself.”
“Shut up and let me think.” He was darting around the room, so jittery that I was afraid the gun would go off if anything made him jump. It occurred to me I didn’t know enough about guns to know if the safety was still on. My inner voice reminded me that J.P. might not know either, which might have been comforting but wasn’t. He was mumbling. “It wasn’t supposed to happen, but he said she recognized him.”
“And because of that, he killed her. Think about that, J.P.”
J.P. wavered, uncertain of his best move. But then he pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and tossed it to me. “You do it. Get my father over here, but nothing else. No cops. I’m locking the door and the windows.”
Good. We were on the same side now. I had to keep him thinking like that. I found Vince’s personal number in J.P.’s directory and punched the glass face of the phone so hard I almost dropped it. Vince answered. “Son, where are you?”
I began to talk so fast I was panting. “Call the Bridgetown police. We need help, your son and me.” Oh, shit, I didn’t know where we were. “J.P.,” I yelled, trotting to the bedroom door. “Where are we?”
Margoletti senior wasn’t buying. “Who are you? How did you get my number? This is absurd.”
“Not absurd. This is Dani O’Rourke. I’m with J.P. and we’re in danger.”
“My old apartment,” J.P. said, appearing in the doorway, licking his lips and looking back and forth between me and the living room. “The complex is being torn down, but I was able to use my key to get in.”
“A crooked cop named McManus is on the way to J.P.’s old college apartment, where we’re hiding. He’s going to kill me, and your son too. Sooner rather than later.” J.P. darted back to the living room, waving the gun around so loosely that I might have told him to watch it if I hadn’t been consumed with getting through to his father.
“You’re insane,” Vince Margoletti said in a cold, hard voice.
“Listen, there’s no time to waste. J.P. has a gun. He’s in big, big trouble and he’ll need all your influence to avoid going to prison. But first we need you to call the chief of police in Bridgetown, now. Do you know where this place is?”
He wasn’t impressed. “You expect me to believe this?”
“J.P. seems to think I know something worth killing me for. He let Saylor die—”
“This is ridiculous,” Margoletti said, sputtering. “Is this extortion? Have you kidnapped my son? Is that why you called my office?”
I could have wept, or beat the phone against the wall. “Listen to me. Your son kidnapped me.”
“He’s in Argentina,” Margoletti said. “In South America.”
Duh. I knew where Argentina was. I didn’t know as much about where I was, and it didn’t sound like this man, in major denial, was going to help figure it out.
“No, he’s here,” I shouted, wondering why I had bothered.
“Wait, wait,” he said, the first measure of doubt creeping into his voice. “I still don’t believe you, but…Let me speak to him.”
J.P. was back in the doorway. I held out the phone and looked my entreaty.
“No way,” he said and stepped out of sight.
“He can’t,” I told Vince. “But I’m sure he wants to explain—”
“—stay there and I’ll come over.”
Was he not getting this? “Stay there” as if I had options? “There isn’t time. Call the police station. Talk to the chief, but only the chief. There’s a crooked cop in this. I think he’s headed over here.” But Margoletti had hung up.
“Your father’s on his way. I told him to call the police. We should stay away from the windows,” I said, speaking to the hallway. “Is the door locked? Maybe McManus will think we’re not here.”
“My car…” J.P. began, and stopped to swear viciously. It was past sunset but there was enough light coming in from the streetlights so we weren’t in complete darkness. The space was both dangerous and intimate.
“I’m still trying to figure it out,” I said, speaking softly into the darkness and silence. “You have a special interest in a handful of expensive paintings, for which there doesn’t seem to be as much regular documentation as for the rest of the collection. Those paintings are, I’m guessing, on the accountant’s list, the one Larry had that was worrying him, but not on the list your father’s lawyers drew up for the gift. I’d assume that only meant your father didn’t intend to give them to Lynthorpe, except that people have died because of the discrepancy, and now you’re threatening me while someone outside is after both of us.”
A loud exhale but nothing else from J.P.
“Something criminal, then. Meanwhile, Vince has demanded Lynthorpe accept the gift without looking further into any discrepancies. He is definitely trying to paper over something, and having all that art come to Lynthorpe is the answer. You, on the other hand, are trying to intimidate me into going away without finishing the job, which could slow things down.”
Still nothing from J.P.
“I thought about money laundering, something to do with drug cartels.”
A harsh laugh. “He’s ethically compromised, but not that much.”
“You?”
Another laugh, quieter this time. “Who would ask someone with no money to start moving large sums around? No, not me.” Silence, then “All I have to do is get the Lichtenstein.”
“The Lichtenstein is missing. I remember that.”
“Actually, it’s not. Not yet, anyway. I got it from that Loros guy but the deal to move it is still in the works.”
“Got it?”
“Told him my father was going to expose how he took someone else’s idea and ran with it to the tune of a few hundred million unless he gave him something extra nice for the collection.”
“You were blackmailing the CEO on your own?”
“I have a buyer in Austria waiting for it.”
“Then someone told him that the inventories didn’t match, the accountant, I’ll bet, and Vince knew somehow that you were stealing from the collection. That’s why he’s been so determined to transfer everything to Lynthorpe, to stop you.”
“He doesn’t know,” J.P. insisted. “The accountant was worried and told Saylor. The accountant guessed it was me because I’d been in the San Jose storage facility a few times when the staff was there, but he had no proof. No one wanted to tell my dad.”
“I think he does know, J.P. He knows, but he’s protecting you.”
“No way. Even if he figured it out, he’d only care about the money he was losing or the embarrassment if it came out.”
Maybe, but I was sure Vince cared about J.P. and J.P. cared about his father, wanted his approval. Tragically, father and son were talking on different channels. “Were there others? I only saw a few that had incomplete or unusual provenance.”
“Don’t need many. That O’Keeffe? It’s on its way to a private buyer in Mexico right now.”
“You’re kidding. You can’t disappear a major piece like that.”
“Dad’s mistake was to leave the collection in the hands of bean counters who don’t know what they’re looking at. They write down what they see, going by the labels.”
“So you substitute forgeries?”
“No, just fancy photocopies of the originals in frames.”
“Giclees.” A lot fancier than photocopies and so good that artists who supervise the printing often sell them openly as prints. “Hey,” I said, suddenly remembering. “The Sam Francis?”
“My first. A disappointment. Not enough to set me up and cover old debts. A contact in Argentina found me a buyer in Europe who would pay cash for bigger names, no questions asked. The good news is he’s panting for the cartoon painting.”
“Roy Lichtenstein,” I said absently. Good going, Dani. As if an art lesson matters right now. “Let me guess. You knew Sotheby’s would be fussy about letting the painting leave their custody. They’d hardly hand it over to you. So, you had it delivered to the facility where the dealers knew Vince kept his art with proper climate control and high security.”
“I wish. It wasn’t supposed to make it into the warehouse. The Sotheby’s sheet and the papers came to me and I planned to have the painting picked up in New York by a friend. But Corliss screwed up, had it sent over to the storage place on his own. So I had to rescue it, and then try to erase it from their list. Corliss paid more than twenty million for it, did you know? Of course, I’ll only get half that if I’m lucky.”
“Weren’t you afraid he’d go directly to Vince?”
“Nah, he hated my dad by that time. My father made such a big deal about what he’d done for Corliss whenever anyone asked, and I bet Corliss was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think he was relieved that he could deal with me instead.”
“You must feel bad that he’s dead,” I said into the dark room.
“Dead?” he said, standing up straight suddenly, his voice rising an octave. “He’s not dead. What do you mean?”
“You didn’t know? He threw himself under a train in Palo Alto a few weeks ago. I think your blackmail convinced him Vince would hold his actions over his head for the rest of his life.”
“Not from anything I said. I told him this was it.”
“All blackmailers say that.”
A string of curses, and then suddenly his fist slammed into the door.
J.P.’s phone rang and we both jumped, jarred out of our dark cocoon. He grabbed it from the bed and frowned. “Why is my father calling me?”
“Why don’t you answer and find out?”
“Why don’t you?” he said, tossing the phone in my direction. My reflexes kicked in, I caught it, and before he could change his mind, I hit the talk button.
“Mr. Margoletti? Did you call the cops? You’re in your car? Great, but did you talk to the police chief?”
J.P. wasn’t making a move to terminate this conversation. “You’d like to talk to him? J.P., what about it? The police are on the way. Why don’t you explain…” J.P. had disappeared again. I lowered my voice. “There are several paintings in the collection you’re giving to Lynthorpe that aren’t accounted for. Do you know which ones I mean?”
There was silence for so long I wondered if he’d hung up on me, but then Vince said, “Put him on now. I insist. Tell him he has to talk to me right away, while there’s still time. I can help him. Tell him I’m on the way.”
I repeated the message in a loud voice to J.P. He laughed from somewhere in the apartment, not a good laugh. “A little late, don’t you think? Ask him about risk and reward,” he shouted. “Ask him how hard it would have been to give me a fresh start when I asked for it. Tell him I have some very nasty people looking for me, thanks to his not giving me some cash to pay them back. Tell him none of this would have happened if he hadn’t been so hard-nosed. Let him think about that for a few minutes.”
Sharing this with his father wasn’t my highest priority right now. “Did you or did you not call the police?” I snapped into the phone.
“Yes, and they’re coming, as am I. Why are you even involved in this family dispute?” the senior Margoletti said in a cold voice. “Let me speak to my son.”
“I would if I could. He doesn’t want to talk to you, but I do.” All I can say is I was tired, I was stressed, my head hurt and I don’t usually talk to donors this way. “Your son has been pointing a gun at me for two hours and he keeps threatening to kill me, so I guess I am involved. He’s talking about goons who want to kill him and plots to extort money to pay off the goons.”
“I’m pulling into the parking lot now. The police are close by. Tell J.P. I want to come up there. We can talk about it in person.”
I turned around. “He wants to come up here. He says you can talk about it here. Listen.” In the silence, we both heard sirens.
“No,” the son yelled. “Keep him away from me.”
“I heard that,” the senior Margoletti said in my ear. “Give him the phone. Please.”
I walked out to the living room. “Tell him yourself,” I said to J.P. and held the phone out. He lashed out with his free hand and slammed the phone from my palm to the floor, where it skittered into a corner. There went my lifeline. “Are you crazy?” Stupid question. Of course he was crazy.
“If I am, you’re the reason,” he shouted.
We might have continued bickering like an ill-matched couple but there was a sharp banging on the apartment door. At the same time, we heard sirens getting much closer. Could be a highway crash, or a fire, or a meteor crashing to Earth, but I was hoping it was Detective Kirby and the entire Bridgetown police department, minus one dirty cop.