This had to happen sometime. I just wish it hadn’t happened now, or this way.
“Gianna,” I say, “go to lunch.”
Gianna glances over her shoulder at Belknap. He nods. She hurries to her desk, grabs her purse, then trots out. She shoots an indecipherable look at me as she passes.
“What did you do to her?” I growl.
“Not a damn thing. Just told her to get you down here, or she’s out of a job. She surprised me—didn’t have to push all that hard.” He barks out a laugh. “Thought I was getting this Hoskins asshole, not you. They let you out?”
“I served my time. Not like you.” I’m angry enough about him threatening Gianna that I don’t feel like a meerkat yet. Maybe I can keep that up. Not likely, though.
His fists open and close by his hips. “I kept hoping someone’d shank you in the pen.”
“I hear you tried to make that happen.”
He laughs again. “Don’t believe that shit. If I tried, you wouldn’t be here sniffing around my girl.”
We stand eyeing each other for a few moments. I wonder for the first time if he’s carrying, not that I need something else to worry about. It would make sense with the kind of cash he seems to have here.
Little bits of what all this means trickle into my brain: my cover’s blown, he knows I’m here, he can tell Gianna, he can tell Morrone. It’s getting harder to keep my anger from turning into terror. Be Rick, dude. Play it like he would.
“You did okay for yourself.” I spread my hands and swivel to take in the room. “Better than okay. Nice gallery. Pretty assistant. Connected sponsor.”
He takes a sudden step forward. It’s all I can do to keep from turning and running. “What’re you babbling about?”
“Come on, Geoff. I know who you work for. I know who owns this place.” I take a step forward with all the confidence I can fake. The farther I am from the door, the less likely I am to use it. “And I know you. You couldn’t go straight if somebody welded you to a ruler.”
“Fuck you. You’re still a prissy little Boy Scout. Or that’s the act you put on for the feds.” His tone hasn’t changed since L.A. Snide, belligerent, nasty. “That skinny little dyke you were so friendly with. You feed her to them? No? Feds know how many people you let slide?”
“I let Sierra slide. Remember her? You put that girl in so much shit when you disappeared.” I point out the door. “That your plan for Gianna? Pin it all on her when your world caves in and you run off to China or something?”
“What do you care? You fucking her?”
“No. Are you?”
“I did.” He gives me his evil shark smile. “That’s one prime piece of ass, let me tell you.”
If I had a gun, I’d shoot him right now. First in the balls, then in the face. “You’re an asshole. You were an asshole in L.A., and you’re still an asshole. That’s why I wanted to put you away.”
Belknap snorts. “Fucking weasel.” He pulls his phone out of his back pocket. “’Scuse me while I call some people I know. Have you taken out with the trash.”
“You mean Morrone? You should hear how he talks about you. Him and Lucca.”
The phone stops halfway to Belknap’s ear. His face freezes between a sneer and a question.
Did I just let him think I’m buds with the Morrones? Bad me. “Yeah. We had a nice chat. Are you looking under your car, in your back seat, before you get in? Maybe you should start.”
His phone slowly sinks toward his hip. “What’re you doing here? They send you after me?” Some of his go-to-hell attitude has gone to hell.
“You? You’re just a pimple on the ass of my project.”
“Project?”
“Yeah. I’m after something way bigger than you.” I love rubbing this in, even if it’s bullshit, just for the look on his face. “In case you decide to get cute, let me tell you how this works. Anything happens to me—even if you’re not involved—the next phone call goes to the FBI legal attaché at the Embassy, telling them where you are. You’re still wanted, you know. Then this whole pretty world of yours goes in the toilet.” I hope. Maybe Carson’s still listening. If I get out of here, we need to make contingency plans.
“Bull. Shit.” He doesn’t sound as confident as all that, though.
“Try it. Find out.”
Belknap shakes his head and chuckles. “You’re working with the feds. Should’ve guessed.” He stows his phone. “So who’s that Carson wench? You fucking her? That’s too much woman for you.”
“She’s my partner.”
“No shit? No wonder she was so hot for me. Jesus, for a minute I thought she was gonna take me right here, on the floor. Whew.”
I did not need to hear that. Did she?
We stare at each other for what seems like a long, long time. I think I’ve got the upper hand so far, which helps keep those meerkat feelings away. How long can it stay that way? He’s got more pressure points on me than I do on him. The longer we stand here, the more likely he figures that out. “What’d you want with Hoskins?”
He snorts again. “Sell him a canvas. So much for that, unless you got fed money to play with.”
“What kind of canvas?”
“A real nice Henri Fantin still life, 1881.” He squints at me. “But you already knew that, didn’t you… Neutra?”
My heart goes sideways. “What?”
“Yeah.” He nods to himself. “Guy I got it from says a guy called Neutra set him up to bring it here with a tracker chip in it. He described you.”
Damn you, Burim. “He described me? What’d he say? Five-eleven, medium build, brown hair, brown eyes? Look out your window, Belknap. One of those walks by every five seconds. Why would I even bother? I told you, I’m not after you.”
He chews this over for a moment. “It’s a fed thing to do. That’s why I like you for it.”
“Maybe it’s the Carabinieri. How well do you get along with them?”
“Pricks.”
Same as his relationship with LAPD. “Well, I don’t know anything about it. If the Fantin’s so nice, sell it to Morrone. He’s got money.” Maybe.
“I know what I’ll sell to Morrone.” Again with the shark smile. “You.”
Whoa, not this again. I manage to swallow the lightning bolt of panic. “Didn’t you catch the part about you on their shit list? Think they’ll listen to you? Even if they do, don’t forget the FBI in Rome. I turn up dead, all this goes away.” I sweep my hand around the gallery. “And you get to spend the next few years fighting extradition in an Italian cell.”
He shakes his head. “It’s all going down anyway.”
“What?”
“You said it yourself. I’m sideways with the Morrones. There’s other players here, too.” He points toward the ceiling. “This ain’t gonna last much longer. If it’s going, I want it to take you with it. Hell, maybe the feds get me back home before Morrone has me hit.” He laughs. “Thought you had me, didn’t you? You never did plan that extra step ahead.” Out comes the phone again.
I should’ve realized this was going too well. I should’ve known pretending to be on the Morrones’ good side would go only so far. But no, I didn’t think of this. This is why I ended up in Pensacola while Belknap was over here doing the dolce vita thing. Now I have the next few seconds to try to think a step past him while I ignore the sweat waterfalling down my back.
Then I remember all the stuff I read in Belknap’s files over the past few hours. The Morrones think he’s crooked; do they have any idea how crooked? Maybe I can take a little bit of knowledge and a lot of guesswork and wave him off. I’d better be able to.
“How much have you told Morrone about your sales?”
Belknap looks up from his phone. His thumb’s bent over the screen. “What’re you talking about?”
“For instance, those seventy-eight pieces you moved for him over the past two years. The Palmer, the Leibl, the Tissot, all those. They were his, right? How much does he think you got for them? Sixty-one mil, or something less than that?”
He scowls. “You don’t know shit.”
“Yeah? Who owns those shell companies you used to catch the proceeds? You know—Toluca, Brentwood, Mar Vista, Inglewood, and the other fifty-some. Those sound a lot better than Landeck Asset Management, don’t they? Are those his… or yours?”
Some of the color drains out of his face. Not much, just enough to see. My unfounded speculation has some foundation, after all.
“How much of a commission is he giving you? Or maybe I should say, how much does he think he’s giving you?”
Belknap’s not paying attention to his phone anymore. “Where’d you get this shit?”
“It’s out there.” I wiggle my fingers like falling snow. “In the air. The Morrones may have it already, who knows. You’re still alive, so I doubt it. Anything strange happen here in the past few weeks? Break-ins? People hassling your clients or suppliers?” I might as well make Burim pay for screwing me. “How about that tracking chip? The cops aren’t the only ones who can try that. How much do you trust your guy with the Fantin?”
He puffs out his chest, maybe to try to feel more confident. “He’s a regular. Never had trouble with him.”
“But things are different now, aren’t they? They froze you out. Maybe he figured out which way the wind’s blowing.”
The ticker running across Belknap’s forehead reads shit… shit… shit. I love seeing that. If a meteor hits right now, I’ll go out happy. The problem is, if he digs a little deeper, he’s going to see how thin my facts are, and then we’re back to him shopping me to the Morrones. I need to switch gears before he can catch up.
“How much do you need to get straight with the Morrones?”
He blinks hard. “What do you care?”
“Just wondering. You’re pretty anxious to move that Fantin if you’re strong-arming Gianna to bring Hoskins in. How big a hole are you trying to fill?”
“You don’t know?”
“I know you’re greedy, just not how greedy. It’s gotta be pretty bad if you’ve pissed off your sponsor. You used to be smarter than that.”
Belknap stabs a finger at me and snarls, “You got no idea what it’s like here. There’s—” He pulls it in a notch. “Good try.”
“You mentioned ‘other players.’ Are they involved?” A flash of something gallops across his face. “Oh, dude, seriously? The Russians too? Was that before or after the Morrones pushed you out?”
He charges a couple steps my way. “You think I wanted this? You don’t say ‘no’ to the Russians. They’ll kill—” He realizes what he’s saying and turns to kick the end of a partition. “Fuck you.”
If he’d come one step closer, I’d be halfway to the hotel by now. I’m trying to sound confident, but it’s bullshit, and the longer this goes on, the harder it is to keep it up. Belknap’s a lot bigger than I am and he scares the shit out of my lizard brain. But if I stop needling him, he’ll have time to think. I can’t have that until I come up with something to keep him from ratting me out. “Talk to me, dude. Like I said, I’m not interested in you unless you force me.”
“You know a helluva lot about my business for not being interested.”
“It’s homework.” I decide to show him one of my cards. “It’s the art I’m interested in. The stolen pieces. Where they came from, how many more there are. Is the Fantin to square up with Morrone or the Russians? How much do you need to get out of it?”
“This going in your report to the feds?”
“They don’t know I’m here. If I walk out that door under my own power and it’s status quo, they don’t need to know. What do you have to get out of the Fantin?”
Gears turn behind his eyes for a long stretch. He throttles his left wrist with his right hand, a nervous tic I remember from L.A. Finally he says, “Half a million for the Russians.”
“Why don’t you use what you’ve skimmed from the Morrones to pay them off?”
“I did. That’s what’s left.”
That doesn’t make any sense. “How much did you owe them?”
“I got money, it’s just not liquid. I got investments in China. Made a shitload on Shanghai real estate. I just can’t get it out because… well, because of my partners.”
“The triads?”
“Nah, that’s Hong Kong shit. I’m in with a bigger gang.” He takes a deep breath, then snorts. “The Chinese fucking Army.”
I almost bust out laughing. “Jesus, you don’t do anything small, do you? All right, you need half a mil. Since Hoskins isn’t going to bail you out, what’s your next move? Private sale? Swiss auction?”
“Private auction, online.” A what? He must see my confusion, because he laughs. “Gotta stay up with the times, asswipe. This piece’s undocumented. Can’t sell it at any of the big houses. But I can work a list of people I know’ll be interested, get eight or ten signed up, then run the auction through a teleconference site. Quick, anonymous, everyone’s happy.”
I haven’t heard of this happening before, but I’m not surprised. As the law cracks down on auction houses and galleries, what else can a self-respecting dealer in stolen art do? Everybody can use burner email addresses and anonymizers, nobody mentions exactly what’s on sale, and even if our buds in the NSA are listening, they’re not going to get a lot out of it.
“What’s your estimate on the piece?”
“At an open auction? Mid-six to mid-seven hundred. It’s a nice canvas.”
He means thousands, which is in line with what I figured out. Of course, with a limited number of possible buyers, no valid provenance and no way to pass clear title, the sale price’s going to take a big hit. It’s a crap shoot whether he’ll get his half-million. I doubt the Russians will settle for less than a hundred cents on the dollar, though.
I don’t want anything to do with Belknap. I had my fill of him in L.A. But he knows about me now, which means he has the power, whether he knows it yet or not. I can put him in jail, but he can get me killed. I can’t afford to trust him. He does have a primitive code of not-exactly-honor, though, and I need him to owe me. This isn’t the kind of decision I should make under the gun or in a few seconds. Oh, well.
Deep breath before I jump. “Make you a deal. I’ll get that 500K out of your buyers. You tell me what you know about where the stolen art comes from and where it is now. Then we say ‘adios’ and we forget about each other. No stories to anybody, no phone tips, no names. Take it or leave it.”
He stands there with the calculator clicking away in his head. Then his shark smile comes out one more time. I know what his counter’s going to be before he opens his mouth.
“Fine. If you don’t get the money, I’m selling you to the Morrones or the Russians. Whoever pays the most. Take it or leave it.”