It takes over an hour for Carson to wrangle a car and get us next to the red dot in Lambrate, a run-down district east of downtown. At least she got an Italian car this time—a sapphire-blue Fiat Bravo, a little four-door hatch just a bit too big to fit in a Suburban. Monday’s driving ordeal convinced us both that the chance of getting into a high-speed chase around here is zip.
We’re parked in a vacant lot next to an autostrada overpass. Big trucks make booming noises when they drive over us, and we hear every landing airliner at Linate go into reverse thrust. We hardly notice it after a couple hours. The red dot’s on the other side of the freeway in either a block of fleapit apartments or the rathole of a garage behind it. We can just see the driveway from here.
“Don’t keep pulsing the chip,” I tell Carson. “You’ll run down the battery.” I shouldn’t have given her the tracking app, no matter how much sense it made at the time.
“Wanna sit here all day?”
“The chip isn’t going to move the canvas, Burim is. Aren’t you used to stakeouts?”
“Hated stakeouts.”
Figures. I gave up on trying to chisel personal information out of Carson an hour ago, so now all I can do is sit here and worry about Gianna. When I texted her this morning to see if she was okay, she said she was going to work. Ever since I’ve been seeing mental videos of what Belknap might do: fire her, slap her around, have one of his Mob buddies kill her. All of it my fault.
Carson hunches over the steering wheel and squints toward the ratty jumble of buildings. “They’re moving.” She cranks the engine and backs fast to the curb cutout. “Check the chip.”
A pair of hatchbacks—one silver, the other a curdled white—bounce into the street and buzz west, toward downtown. I poke the painting’s GPS chip and after a few seconds see it’s also heading west. “They’ve got it.”
Instead of streaking out at felony speed to catch up, Carson brings us within sight of the trailing silver hatch and lets a couple cars get between us and them.
“You know, we don’t have to follow them,” I tell her. “We can watch the chip.”
She glances at me, then refocuses on the cars. “And if they wrap that thing in foil?”
“Just don’t spook them.”
We’re heading down an unlovely two-lane road, graffitied wall to our left, railroad tracks to our right. Once we cross the tracks, we’re on a road flanked by apartments and split by a park. A depressing thought: it looks like the one we came in on last Saturday, like we’ve driven in a big circle and we’re back where we started.
Carson keeps us within a few car lengths of the two hatchbacks even as the traffic thickens. The farther west we go, the nicer the parked cars and the cleaner the walls. It’s not hard to keep track of Burim’s convoy as the buildings scroll by at city speed, so my mind wanders back to Gianna.
“What’s your plan for when they get where they’re going?” Carson asks.
“See if they leave the canvas, then go to the hotel and wait for the dot to move.”
“Big fun.”
We’re deep in traffic now, so it’s no problem to keep up with the hatchbacks. My general feeling of déjà vu solidifies into something else after a few stoplights. “We’ve been here before, last Saturday. We’re near Belknap’s gallery.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yeah.” Except it doesn’t feel good. “They came straight here, like they’re not worried about being followed. Is that weird?”
“Fuck! They split up!”
No no no… I look forward just in time to see the silver hatch scoot north on a side road.
“Which one do I follow?” Carson yells.
“Just—”
“Which one? Quick!”
The few seconds it takes to poke the GPS chip feel like hours. “Silver car.”
Carson screeches around the corner. The silver hatch is almost two blocks ahead of us and weaving through traffic. Shit shit shit…
Then my brain starts working. This makes sense only if the tracker and the canvas are in different cars. If I was playing this game, I’d send the chip off with the nearest garbage truck and take the Fantin to my fence. “Let him lose us, then go to the gallery.”
“What? If he doesn’t go there, we—”
“The painting’s in the white car. Plan A’s blown. Let’s make a Plan B.” I’m so glad I took the time to plant that thing.
She grumbles, but she circles the next block to head south.
So Burim got a bright idea. Was this his plan all along? Did he figure out how much the Fantin is worth? Did he find the tracker? Or did we piss him off by leaving his buddies on the ground with their bells rung? It doesn’t matter now. What matters is reconnecting with the canvas.
As we dart through the maze going toward Belknap’s gallery, I start to think of all the other ways this can go wrong. If Burim’s really smart, he’ll go home, come back tomorrow, and tell Belknap some guy named Neutra is gunning for him. Or he’ll sell the Fantin to the Russians and let them take whatever heat’s on it. But I’m pretty good at reading people, and what I get from him is cunning and greed, not brilliance or foresight. Hope I’m right.
Carson drives like she’s auditioning for The Italian Job. We slide into a tiny parking space outside the marble-fronted Kartell furniture store half a block from the gallery.
Neither of us can sit still. Every white hatch that rolls by sends a lightning bolt through our car. I never got the make or model of “our” hatchback, but I remember the color: not quite white, but not tan or yellow either, like something soured the paint.
I ping the chip again, just because. It’s on its way out of town. Have a nice trip.
Ten endless minutes. Twelve. Carson’s face has that sunburned look. She rolls down her window to let in the street noise and exhaust fumes. I don’t realize how much I’m sweating until I lean forward and feel my shirt stick to the seat. Come on come on…
A Skoda Citigo the color of a thin layer of dust rolls past from behind us, then cuts left across traffic to disappear into the driveway gate next to the gallery.
“That’s it! That’s it!” I point out the windshield.
“Stop bouncing,” Carson grouses. “Now—”
I’m out the door before she finishes and slaloming through traffic to cross the street. I sprint through the passage between the street and the courtyard behind the gallery and come to the end in time to hear two car doors slam. A quick peek around the corner shows me a forty-by-sixty courtyard lined on three sides with parked cars and dumpsters. The Skoda’s about twenty feet to my right, with a dark guy in jeans and a black-and-red striped soccer jersey leaning against its fender. Burim’s waiting outside the gallery’s steel back door. He’s got a squarish bundle wrapped in a green trash bag under his arm. Yes!
Now what? I lean back against the passage wall for a beat to get over being relieved I didn’t fuck this up. My next look shows me Belknap hunched over the canvas next to Burim. A few moments later, they disappear inside the gallery.
“What’s happening?” Carson whispers behind me.
I almost jump through the passage’s ceiling. When my heart stops exploding, I whisper, “Burim’s inside with Belknap.”
I mentally step through what’s next. Belknap will take the piece into the storage room, go over it with a loupe, maybe a UV light to see if there’s any modern paint on it. He’ll see Fantin’s signature, check the auction results, and make an offer. Burim will dicker with him. Where? In Belknap’s office; he’ll lock the door so Gianna can’t walk in on them.
All we need is to see Burim come out with no painting and we know the trap’s set. Then we’ll figure out how to follow it.
Carson paces back and forth across the passage’s width. She watches Burim’s guy fiddle with his phone next to the Skoda. Her face gets darker and harder every second. After a couple minutes, she growls, “Stay here.”
“Wait! Where are you going?”
She turns to glare at me. “That weasel fucked you. He’ll get bigger ideas if he gets away with it. Time for balance.”
She’s into the courtyard before I can say, “Balance?”
Carson slips behind a nearby green dumpster and disappears. The last thing we need is for her to go rogue, but what am I going to do? Drag her back here? Yeah, that’ll work. But what if she kills Burim?
Well, what if she does?
Getting one up on me isn’t a capital offense, at least not to me. Maybe it is in the league he plays in. Other than the wardrobe, there’s not a lot of difference between him and me—or at least, the way I was. I’d have done about the same thing in his place, and shame on me for not thinking of it sooner.
Beyond not wanting Carson to twist Burim’s head off in principle, I’m worried about the blowback if she does. A dead body in the courtyard could burn the gallery with the cops. It’s too early for that. I want to control when Belknap goes down, and I need to keep Gianna out of the police tornado that’ll happen afterwards.
Carson’s phone goes to voicemail. Knowing her, she won’t let me find her, far less stop her from doing whatever. I doubt she’ll even read a text right now, but I do what I can: DONT KILL THEM!!! 2 much heat on gallery.
I’m shocked as hell when she actually replies: Ur no fun.
A couple seconds later, I hear a thud. I peek around the corner in time to see somebody in Carson’s clothes drag the guy in the soccer jersey around the Skoda’s tail. The dragger wears a black hood; the draggee’s head bobbles like it’s on a spring. He doesn’t look dead, not that I really know what that looks like. Maybe Carson isn’t done with him yet.
She reappears and presses her back against the wall on the hinge side of the gallery door. I stage-whisper, “Carson! Goddamnit, what are you doing?”
She glances toward me, then turns back to the door. “Go back to the car.”
“What did you do?”
“Shut up.”
A few moments later, the door swings open. Burim saunters out, minus the canvas but with a self-satisfied smirk and a cigarette on its way to being lit. The smirk freezes when he turns to see Carson.
She whacks him with her baton. He falls like a set of car keys. Ouch.
Carson drags him to the Skoda’s nearest wheel, zip-ties his wrists to the spokes, then ties his ankles together. If she bothers with this, he’s still alive. The relief makes my knees wobble.
She pats down Burim, yanks something out of his sweatsuit pocket, then jogs to the passage. She skins off her mask on the way to the street, shoves it into her purse, then scrubs her hands through her hair to perk it up after being smashed flat.
I catch up to her just before she hits the sidewalk. “What was that?”
“Keep your voice down.” She slows to an easy stroll, like we’re out window-shopping. “They’ll live. Probably.”
She doesn’t say another word until we climb into the car, no matter how hard I browbeat her. I’m still torqued that she’d run off and do something that could get her crossways with the cops or the Mafia. “Remember when we agreed we need to work together? That means you don’t do shit like this unless we agree. What if…”
While I’m talking, Carson drags a big roll of euros out of her purse, all used hundreds. What the…? She flicks her index finger through the notes, peeling off thousand-euro bundles and laying them on her thighs, one on the left, the next on the right. At the end, she’s got ten bundles. She scoops up the bills on her right thigh and holds them out to me. “Here.”
“How’s Allyson feel about you mugging people?”
“Never asked.” She shakes the bills. “Don’t want it? I’ll take it.”
Five grand? My first thought is, Belknap really is cheap if he got that Fantin for only ten thousand. My conscience mentions that stealing from the Mob—any Mob—has never worked out well in any movie I’ve ever seen. Then my anti-conscience reminds me that five thousand euros is half a year’s pay. I don’t even have to declare it to Customs. Besides, Burim did piss me off.
Of course I take it. I’ve had a lot of practice tuning out my conscience.
Carson stows her half of the cash, then hauls herself out of the car. Before I can ask if she’s going back to break Burim’s legs, she leans in the window. “Park in the courtyard when the weasel leaves. Watch for Belknap. Follow him if he takes the painting. Don’t let him see you.”
“Where are you going?”
“None of your business. When’s your date?”
I almost say none of your business, but it’s not worth the metaphorical or physical pain. “Eight.”
“Relieve you at six. Belknap moves before then, let me know.”
So now I’m on a stakeout… alone. Like I know how to do this. “It’s lunchtime.”
Carson paws through her purse and tosses me a slightly bent Luna bar. “Save some for later.” Then she’s gone.