She could cry. She could scream. She could call the cops, or Belknap, or the Mob. Gianna doesn’t do any of that.
Instead, she grabs my phone and stares at the screen, then the canvas, then back to the phone. Her face turns bright pink. Then Italian starts geysering out of her. I don’t know exactly what she’s saying, but if she was swearing in English, it would sound like this. Lots of arm movement makes me think my phone’s going through a wall next. “Lorenzoni” comes up a lot. She spins in a circle and drags her fingers back through her hair.
“Um, Gianna—”
The Slashing Finger of Death nearly impales my nose. I let her vent until most of her steam’s gone. She finally stops and heaves out a huge sigh. “Bastardo.”
“Lorenzoni or me?”
“Both!” She throws my phone at me. I just manage to trap it against my chest. “Who are you? Polizia?”
Why does everybody think I’m a cop?
“Who are you?” Now she’s pleading. “What do you want? Why do you do this?”
If she was going to rat me out, she’d be on her phone by now. I can still fix this, get her on my side. But first I need to figure out if she’s steamed because there’s a stolen painting in her gallery, or because somebody found out. I step toward her; she backs away. “You didn’t know about this?”
“No!” Her eyes go big again. “You think I do this? You think I want this?” She’d throw something else at me if she had anything, but she doesn’t, so she just flings up her hands.
“I hoped not, but I had to ask.” I’m using my calming-the-pit-bull voice, low and soothing and careful. Then, like a cartoon light bulb going off over my head, the story pops into my brain. “Look. I came here to buy art. But… well, I’ve been interested in art crime for a long time. When you have a lot of money, you can turn your hobbies into businesses. The market on the enforcement side isn’t in services, it’s in tools, because there aren’t any. Here.” I return to the StolenArt home page on my phone. “I’ve been working on this for the past year.”
She jerks the phone out of my hand, then steps back in case I try to throw a net over her. She jabs at the screen. That’s fine; neither my name nor Evan’s—the programmer—is anywhere on the site. It’s going to be hard enough to get acceptance without having a couple ex-cons splashed across the “contact us” page. “What is this?” she grumbles.
“Do you research provenance for new pieces?”
“Yes, for the gallery’s art, not for what we keep for the clients.”
“Then you know how hard it is to do due diligence. How many places do you go to before you say a piece is clean? Five? Ten? There’s dozens of them. Some of them are useless, like INTERPOL’s if you don’t have an account. You pay Art Loss Register a fee for each search if you don’t have a subscription with them.” I point to my phone. “StolenArt’s like art-crime Google. We have hooks to thirty-seven databases and registries including ALR and ArtClaim. One-stop shopping. Think that might make your job easier?”
Gianna fiddles with my phone some more. Her face has gone from furious to skeptical to doubtful-but-intrigued. She suddenly shoves my phone back at me, then pulls hers from a side pocket and stabs the screen. “How does it work?”
“Put an artist’s name in the search box. You’ll get everything by that artist that’s on a watch list. If you want to narrow it down, go to ‘advanced search’ and start checking boxes. You can’t use the title yet—we’re still trying to sort out translations, and not all the databases list titles.”
She stalks to the nearest storage panel holding the gallery’s stock, yanks it out, then starts finger-pounding her phone. After three tries, she glares over her shoulder at me. “It finds nothing, only advertising from the Art Loss Register.” It’s an accusation.
“About certificates? That’s good. If the piece shows up, it’s listed someplace. You hit the link and it’ll bring up the page it found. Except on ALR—you have to pay for those.”
Gianna’s eyes slowly thaw. She looks off to the side, thinking. It’s like seeing the profile on a Roman coin come to life. Cheerleader noses are highly overrated.
“Why are you here?” she finally asks. “Why do you do… this?” Most of the heat’s gone from her voice. She sounds bewildered.
“Did Lorenzoni tell you why he wraps the clients’ art?”
“He says it is for the dust.”
“There’s no dust.”
She nods. “I know.” It’s almost a whisper.
I step next to her. She doesn’t try to run away this time. “You figured he was up to something, didn’t you?” She nods. “What?”
Gianna sighs, then shakes her head. “I do not know. He has meetings, who knows where, who knows with who. Things come here and they go, and he says nothing. I do not see the…” she taps her breastbone “…um, the inventory for that—” she waves toward the wrapped art “—I cannot find it. At university, I study the business, but Lorenzoni, he does not let me see the accounts. I look anyway, they make no sense. But…” She spreads her hands, palms up. “I cannot ask. I cannot lose the work. It is very hard for young people to get the work in Italy.”
“I get it.” I want to be gentle, but I have to push her over the line she’s wavering on. “It could be bad for you if this gets to the police.” She winces. “But everything you do to help me figure this out will show them you’re not part of it. Will you help?”
There’s still skepticism in her eyes, but fear is crowding it out. She can’t stop frowning at the Boudin. Then she swallows and flaps her hand at the gallery’s five panels. “I start here.”
Great decision. “Is Lorenzoni coming back?”
She shrugs her face. “I do not know where he goes, or why.”
For the next half-hour we tap away at our phones while we work through the art. Gianna hums a tune I don’t recognize. We don’t talk much, but we both freeze every time there’s a noise outside. She’s smart and works fast. I know she’s found her first stolen canvas when her humming suddenly cuts off. I’d get my part done faster if I didn’t keep noticing when she bends and stretches.
Our hands collide when we both reach to roll the last panel back home. Gianna holds her hand out toward the frame as an invitation. “Prego.”
I slide the panel into place. “How many did you find?”
“Two. Here and here.” She points to two panels. She looks gloomy as a bloodhound.
“I got four, all in those far panels. How many clients store their holdings here?”
“Only one now, I think. There were many more paintings here before.”
I catch Gianna watching me out of the corner of her eye. The clouds on her face tell me she’s got a lot going on inside. She should. I’ve just proved to her that her boss is storing stolen property, and if I do anything about it, I’ll kill her job. I’m still just some stranger to her—a rich stranger maybe, but still some dude she doesn’t know. Until I can figure out the next step, I need to make nice with her.
She stands staring at the first rack’s frames, hugging herself. The soft light from the clerestories does some really lovely things with her skin. Yeah, make nice with Gianna. It’ll be a huge sacrifice, but that’s the kind of guy I am… or want to be.
“Sorry to drop all this on you,” I say. She glances at me. “I know it’s a lot to take in. Um… can I buy you lunch? We can get out of here, talk, decompress a little.” My stomach’s been grumbling at me for half an hour.
She makes a pfft sound. “You are like the Italian mama. ‘Bambina, I wreck your life. Eat! Eat!’” Her windmilling arms finish the picture. Then she drops her hands and starts pulling on her right thumb while she scans me up and down. At last, she nods. “You can buy the lunch for me. But I warn you, Mr. Hoskins—” she shakes a finger “—to ‘decompress,’ as you say? I need a very, very good wine.”
I can’t help but smile. I still like this girl.