Fifteen minutes after the auction closes, I lean against Belknap’s office doorjamb. “You got your 500K. Time for your quo for my quid.”
He’s pounding his laptop’s keyboard. The scowl on his face tells me he’s not as happy as he should be. “How the fuck you pull that off?”
“You mean, how’d I get past you rigging the auction? I thought one step ahead. Just like you say I don’t do.”
Belknap sits there staring at his screen for several deep breaths. Then he pins me with a shotgun glare. “You son of a bitch.” He stabs at the screen. “Were those even my bidders?”
I shrug, just to piss him off. “Ask the FSB dude. He’s gotta be pretty happy right now.”
He keeps up the glare for a moment, then hammers his laptop’s “enter” key and reaches for his phone. “Fuck it. No deal. I’m selling you to Morrone.”
Somehow I knew that’d be his reaction. “Before you do, you should check that money in your account.”
“Way ahead of you. It’s all there.”
“Try again.”
His thumb hovers over his phone’s keypad. He sets down the phone, brings up the homepage for his bank, logs in and clicks through a couple screens. “What the…?”
I can’t control the grin I feel spreading across my face. This is just too good. “It’s in a safe place. It’s even still in Singapore. But you won’t see it again if you do anything stupid, like try to raffle me off to the Mob. So the way I see it—and it’s all about me now—the deal’s still on. You owe me information. Correct info, if you want your money before the Russians get to you. Try to screw me and I tip the Russians that you’re skipping.”
Belknap slumps into his Aeron chair and runs his palms over his shaved head. It’s like he can’t look away from the screen showing the half-million-dollar hole in his escape fund.
While he simmers, I check his office for anything threatening. It’s smaller than I expected: a plain white box with halogen pendant lights and three-tone gray industrial carpet. A few early-twentieth-century pencil-on-paper studies line up on the wall opposite the door. His pedestal desk is 1920s Art Deco, gorgeous bird’s-eye maple with dark-walnut insets and sweeping spiral grooves let into the two full-height legs. Forget the paintings; I want that desk.
“What do you want?” Belknap finally grumbles. He’s doing everything he can to avoid looking at me.
Seeing him like this makes the past two weeks worth the trouble. It’s also a little sad. He’s losing his edge. “Morrone has a stockpile of paintings,” I say like I know it’s a fact.
“No shit. Antiquities, too. Rare books and documents, some coins. When do I get my money?”
“When your information checks out. Are you the only one supplying him?”
He sighs, scrubs his face with his palms. “No. There’s five others. We work inside our lanes. I do the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art. Buy and sell.”
“How many pieces?”
“High tide? Around four hundred canvases. Never saw the other stuff.” His voice is resentful but not belligerent, like Dad’s scolding him and he doesn’t dare fight back.
Four hundred? Morrone could start his own museum. “When was high tide?”
“Couple years back, when I started working with him.”
“When the Russians first showed up. How many are left?”
“For sure? Don’t know.” He refreshes his browser screen. It doesn’t tell him anything new. “Half, maybe less. Don’t know what the other guys’ve been moving. We’re selling like crazy. Not everything makes the collection. I’ve bought pieces one week and turned ‘em the next. I’m sure the others have, too.”
“Are the others skimming like you are?”
I get an angry-pit bull look. “I take a commission, a good commission. There’s overhead.” He must mean Herr Stoeller’s services. “Undocumented pieces are harder to move. It’s a lot of work. I earn the money.”
“It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” starts playing in my head. “Does Morrone know how much commission he’s paying you?”
“You and Gar did the same fucking thing,” he snarls. “Don’t make like you didn’t.”
We did. “Lucca figured it out and kicked you loose, right?”
Belknap peers at me. “Why him?”
Just his asking that confirms my guess. “If it was Salvatore, you’d be planted in one of those fields out by his house. Lucca figured you’d be useful later.” Useful hanging by his thumbs in the torture chamber, if it comes to that. “How much of the ‘collection’ is hot?”
He has to think about this. “Maybe half.” Good God. “Over half the pieces I got. All the antiquities are looted—no such thing as legal ones anymore. Hear he’s got one of Becchina’s old tombaroli working—”
“Tomba-who?”
“Tomb robbers. Etruria, Greece, Syria, Iraq, someone’s gotta dig it up. Get to the point, asswipe.”
I’d love to keep slow-rolling this just to piss him off, but I need to wrap this up so Carson and I can start checking out his story. “Okay. Where is it? Where’s the collection?”
He refreshes his browser screen again. He’s like a lab rat pushing a button for treats that don’t come. “How do I know you got my money? Maybe Dima screwed me. Maybe it went to the wrong account.”
I want to get out of here and not see this prick again. I probably sound a little testy when I say, “What do you want? A photo of a stack of hundreds holding up today’s International Herald Tribune?”
He shrugs. I’m getting tired of that, too. “Just want proof you’ve got my money. I’m not saying shit ‘til you do.”
Goddamnit. Now it’s my turn to sigh. I text Carson: U hearing this?
Yes.
Can Os guy prove we have $$?
Sb.
“See, I don’t think you’re smart enough to pull this off.” Belknap swivels back and forth in his chair. The smug look is solidifying. “This is some con you’re working. Just your style.”
I know he’s baiting me, but for once I’m not going to let him. For once, I’ve got the power. “If you think that, you should call your bank and confirm your balance.”
“Yeah.” He nods and picks up his phone. “I will.”
The bank picks up, and Belknap starts speaking slowly in Mandarin or Cantonese or something sounding like that. He recites what may be a twelve-digit string of numbers, answers a couple questions, then leans back in his chair in the universal posture of somebody on hold.
I ask, “Good hold music?” He flips me off.
My phone buzzes. Proof on Bs screen. At the same time, Belknap leans forward and squints at the popup on his laptop. Judging from his expression, Olivia’s hacker left a dog turd on his lawn. He barks a couple short phrases into his phone, then stabs it off.
“We’ve learned a valuable lesson today,” I say. “Don’t underestimate me.”
Belknap’s look is like he discovered the gal he’s been lusting after is a guy. He props his elbow on the desk and presses the pad of his thumb between his eyebrows. “Fuck you.”
“Keep being an asshole and we’ll take the rest of what’s in there. Answer my question. Where’s Morrone’s art?”
He has a good, long chuckle, then refreshes his irritatingly smug look. “Don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
Belknap holds up his hand in the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. “God’s honest. Don’t fucking know. Know why?” He leans forward and shows off his shark smile. “It moves.”
Of course it moves. That’s why Lucca hasn’t found it in a year of looking. That’s why the Russians don’t know where it is. This makes all kinds of sense. “How’s that work?”
“It’s on a truck.”
“All of it? One truck?”
“A semi. Just the paintings. I think the antiquities are in the Geneva Free Port. Should’ve put the paintings there too, but it would’ve been a pain in the ass.”
A semi.
A semi that keeps moving.
Nobody knows where it is except Morrone. And maybe… “Is it a white Scania?”
Belknap gives me a what-the-hell? stare. “Don’t know. Never saw it.” He says it slowly, like he’s wondering how much I know. “He asked me to design a racking system that’d fit in a box trailer. Then a year back, he started cleaning out the pieces he had in storage—here, everywhere else. All I got left is what’s in transit.”
Lucca lost track of the paintings a year ago. His story and Belknap’s are lining up. “If you never saw it, how do you know it exists?”
“Told you. Morrone asked me to design the racks. And I hear shit.” He starts shutting down his laptop. I hope Olivia’s hacker got a chance to look for the missing data keys. “Either that, or he sent them to the Free Port. If they’re there, you’ll never see ‘em again. We done?”
I’ve run out the list I worked up since Friday, and I really want to get away from this asshole. “For now. Just in case you decide to get cute? I’ve recorded this whole talk.” No shit—I really did it, on my phone. “Step out of line and Morrone gets the file.”
“Fine.” He slams shut the laptop. “You and Gianna went out Thursday night, didn’t you? She was all happy that day, singing, dancing around. That was you, right? Or Hoskins?”
“None of your business.”
He snorts. “Yeah, right. Fucked up, didn’t you? Friday she was stomping around, all pissed off. Grab the wrong thing?”
Oh, hell. I did make her mad. No wonder she suckered me into coming here.
Belknap slides his laptop into a black carry bag and slings it over his shoulder. “Long as you got my money, I don’t tell Morrone or the Russians.” The shark smile surfaces. “But I can sure tell Gianna. Hope you got some Thursday, ‘cause you ain’t touching her again.”
My heart drops into my stomach. It’s bad enough I pissed her off. I remember the hope and respect in her eyes when she looked at me, something I haven’t seen for a long, long time. Having her find out who—what—I really am will break her heart, and maybe mine. Especially if it comes from Belknap. He’ll make me sound as bad as possible.
“That buys you nothing, and—”
“Oh, it buys me plenty. It’ll feel fucking fantastic.” He skirts the desk faster than I expect and shoves me out the door. “Get out of my fucking gallery, asswipe.”
I stand as tall as the bandages let me. “Don’t forget who’s got your money.”
He fills the office doorway, looking me up and down. His face scrunches like he’s smelling a toilet overflow. “You know, it might just be worth losing the money to see them cut you into little chunks. Fuck off.”
He locks the front door behind me once I step into the lobby. I hang there for a minute, trying to figure out where we stand. I got the information I wanted (sort of). Maybe some leverage over Belknap. But he may not be as “managed” as I’d planned, and he’s going to tell Gianna about the real me, something I desperately don’t want. Who won this round?
Once I’m out on the sidewalk, I pull out my phone while I look for Carson’s royal-blue 1-series BMW. “Carson? Flash your lights. I—”
The explosion nearly knocks me on my butt.