There’s no truck. That’d be too easy.
The car’s very quiet on our way back into the city.
I call Gianna as soon as I can plausibly say I saw what happened on the news. The first big surprise is that she picks up. “Are you okay?” I ask.
There’s a long silence. “I am okay. I am not at my work this morning.”
“Any damage to the gallery?”
I hear rustling in the background, footsteps, keys jingling. “I do not know. I go there now to see. I cannot talk to you now, Mr. Hoskins. Buona sera.”
So I’m not “Rick” anymore. That hurts more than I thought it would. I sit there staring at my phone for a few moments after she hangs up. “Drop me at the gallery,” I tell Carson.
The passage between the courtyard and the street is blocked by red-and-white barrier tape and a couple bored cops. I slow as I walk past. The air still smells like burned rubber and gas. Guys in white bunny suits poke through the still-smoking mass of tangled, charred metal in the courtyard. Polizia di Stato vehicles line the curb two deep. Nobody seems to mind me gawking.
A couple gallery windows are cracked. All the shades are still down. Gianna said she’d be in there, but I can’t tell if she is. I stand in front of the locked door (also shaded) and sort out my priorities one last time. Then I push the silver button on the doorjamb.
It opens a few moments later. Gianna’s in black capris and a sleeveless, collared tomato-red top. She still looks great. “Siamo chiusi—” Her eyes and lips shrink and she folds her arms hard. “Mr. Hoskins. Why are you here?”
“May I come in?”
She sizes me up, chews over her options. Then she swings the door open and stands back without a word.
Everything looks like it did this morning. “How are you doing?”
Gianna closes the door, then looks up at me again. I still see what do you want? scrolling through her eyes, but her lips aren’t as flat as before. “I am okay. The windows in the storage are broken. In Italy, it is very slow to fix the windows.” She folds her arms again and edges toward me. “The policemen ask about Lorenzoni’s auto. Why do they do that?”
“Was he here this morning?”
“I think yes. Today’s La Gazzetta dello Sport is in his bin.” For the first time she looks away from me, toward the back of the gallery. “I ring him, but he does not answer. He does not come. The polizia think he is…?” She nods toward the courtyard.
Ever since I started thinking straight again yesterday, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell Gianna that Lucca’s gunning for her. This is my opportunity. “There’s something I need to tell you. Can we sit in the waiting area? We don’t need to stand here like this, like we don’t know each other, do we?”
She silently leads me to the alcove and perches on one of the black Deco armchairs. Her palms are pressed together between her knees. The weather around her isn’t warm, but it’s not freezing, either.
I sit on the loveseat and lean toward her. “I found this out over the weekend and it’s something you should know before the police tell you.” I take a deep breath. “Lorenzoni’s working for the ‘Ndrangheta.”
Gianna blinks but holds my focus. Her mouth works a bit. “I know.”
She knows. Great. “So you know who Rossi and Angelo—”
“Yes. I know.”
Well, hell. So much for protecting her. “You didn’t mention it. I could’ve used the heads-up.”
An eyebrow goes up. “I say to the client, ‘Yes, my gallery sells paintings to the criminals.’ You think this is good for the sales? Yes?”
“I understand you not telling me at first. But when we were working together? When—”
“When we are ‘business partners’?” She says the words like they’re a curse.
Oh, hell. Her lips are back to being a tight line with a downward curve. I have to say something, so I reach deep into the mess in my head and hope I don’t make things worse. “Gianna… believe it or not, I was trying to do the right thing Thursday night. I saw how fast we were going. As much as I wanted it, I didn’t want you to feel used or betrayed.” I’m getting nothing back. This is so not working. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. It’s the last thing I wanted. I… like you. A lot. I hope you get everything you want.”
She bolts from the chair and stalks to face the back wall with her arms wrapped around herself. I hear a sniff, but I can’t tell if it’s an about-to-cry sniff or a you-bastard sniff.
Half of me says go to her, while the other half says she’ll slug you if you touch her. I want to believe that first voice. I want to feel her skin under my fingertips again. Unfortunately, the vibe coming off her tells me the second voice is right.
“When you say you want to help with my gallery,” Gianna finally says to the wall, “is it true, or the fairy story?” Her voice is clenched, almost like her jaw’s wired shut.
“It’s true.”
She turns to scan me like she’s never seen me before. “Angelo says he will help me.”
Oh, God, no. “Be really careful. Remember who Angelo is. What he is.” She starts to interrupt, but I hold up my hand. “I’m sure he’ll give you money, but there’ll be strings. He’ll own you. What Lorenzoni’s been doing for them here? You’ll be doing for them there. They won’t let you get away. And when they’re done with you…” I point toward the courtyard.
That gets me a flicker in her eyes, but nothing else. “If you give me money, what do you want? My body? I try to give it to you and you say ‘no.’ What do you want?” I see a light bulb click on. She looks over her shoulder like she’s trying to see the wreckage in the courtyard, then turns back to me. “Lorenzoni. You want Lorenzoni. That is why you are nice to me, why you make the promises, to get to him. Yes?”
She’s closer to the truth than she knows. I very much don’t want her thinking I’ve been using her—even if I have—because I really do like her and I don’t want to hurt her. She doesn’t deserve it. Gianna’s the nearest thing we’ve got to an innocent in this story.
“No.” For once I know exactly what to say. “I want you to succeed and be happy with the way you did it. I want you to be out from under Lorenzoni and Angelo and his dad and everybody like them. I want you to be your own person. I want something good to come of all this… mess. That’s what I want. How about you?”
She watches me for a few moments, her head cocked a bit, maybe wondering if I’m feeding her a line. For once in my life, I don’t have to fake sincerity. Maybe she sees it, because she breaks her laser-lock on me and looks down at her espadrilles, which are the same color as her top. “I want that too,” she whispers.
“I’m glad.” Now’s the time to download the rest. “Something else you should know. Lorenzoni fell out with Salvatore Morrone, right?” She nods. “Well, Lucca’s even more pissed at him. I’m afraid… he might do something to you, too.” She doesn’t need to know why. It won’t change anything.
That startles her. She glances toward the back again with eyes twice as big as a few seconds ago. Then her hand drifts to her mouth. For a moment I think she’s broken up about Belknap, but then I read confusion and fear in her eyes, not grief.
I stand and take a step toward her. “Let me protect you.” I have no idea how to do that. If she says yes, I’ll have promised her something else I can’t deliver. I’m useless to her now. But I have to make the offer. I have to try.
She laughs. “Protect me? From them? No one can protect me. If they want me, they will find me.” She turns a little circle, like she started to do something and forgot why. “Only one person can help me. Angelo.”
“No, no no. Wait.” I put up both hands. “Number one, you don’t know whose side he’s on. Number two, remember what I said about not wanting to owe him? You go to him for protection, you’re his. Is that what you want?”
Her eyes flash. “I want to live. It is my life. I do what I must.”
Shit. This just gets worse and worse. Maybe Carson should’ve drowned me in the bathtub. “Just… think real hard before you do that. I can stash you someplace. Nobody’ll know you’re—”
“They will find me.” She charges me, stops just before we’re nose-to-nose. “They pay people, someone will tell. Then Lucca finds you in front of me, and—” She snaps a backhand flick, like brushing away a fly. “Then he has me.”
Wow. She has so much confidence in me. She really is smart. Fighting with her isn’t going to fix this, but I can help her limit the number of people who want to kill her. “Please be careful. Don’t sleep at home. Look, Lorenzoni left you with a mess you need to clean up. Is there a Dima Belaiev on your client list? In St. Petersburg?”
Gianna gives me a seriously? look, then marches to her desk. After a minute of typing and clicking, she says, “Yes, he is here. He is on the phone only. Why?”
“There should be an Henri Fantin-Latour still life in the storage room. Lorenzoni sold it to Belaiev. You need to send it to him discreetly. You don’t want him coming to get it.”
I get back arched eyebrows and pursed lips. “How do you know this?”
“I just do.” The eyebrows get higher. I don’t want to lie to her more, but I have to sprinkle some sugar on this. “Lucca’s not the only one who can pay people for information. You know about Lorenzoni’s storage space at the Geneva Free Port?” Gianna nods. “Write up a sales receipt for €100 and call the Fantin a reproduction. It’ll keep the Customs guys happy. Get it to Geneva, then have the Free Port send it to Belaiev using their return address. Got all that?”
A shade of bewilderment creeps into her eyes. “Why must I do these things?”
“Just take my word for it—you don’t want to make Belaiev mad. Did you keep a copy of Lorenzoni’s computer files?”
“Of course I do.” The confusion is starting to melt away. Her business mind’s taking over her face, making it calmer and stronger.
“Take a good look at the accounts. The gallery owes money to a bunch of people. There’s one debt that’s not on the books, though. A few days from now, a guy’ll come to the gallery and say Lorenzoni owes him money. He’ll be either an Italian lawyer or a Russian.” Carson gave me the download on how the Russian Mob will try to collect its debt. I close in on Gianna’s desk. “Ask him to confirm the amount. Half a million U.S. dollars.”
Gianna’s eyes get huge. She sags into her chair. “Who are these people? Why does Lorenzoni owe so much money to them? Where is the money?”
“You don’t need to know who they are. They’re people you don’t want to get involved with. The money will be in some offshore account. The number may be in his office. You should go look.”
She sits there shocked, staring into her laptop screen. After a long, deep breath, she trots to Belknap’s office.
I give Gianna a couple minutes, then pace down the hall to Belknap’s door and watch her ransack his desk. “Nothing?”
She straightens and turns up her palms. “What do I look for?”
I shrug. “It might have the name of a bank. A couple numbers, one maybe eight to twelve digits, the other four to six.” She shakes her head. “Keep looking.”
She gives me the skeptical eyebrow, then starts tearing through the drawers. I palm out of my pocket the card Belknap gave Carson a century ago. I look under the telephone and a black enameled sorter, then lift his heavy Streamline Moderne desk lamp after I slip the card underneath. “What’s that?”
Gianna scoops up the card, frowns, then shows me its back.
I’d spent the whole auction reading that dope sheet on the bidders. It wasn’t hard to duplicate Belknap’s handwriting. “That’s it. Straits Commercial Bank in Singapore. This is the account number, that’s the PIN.” My anti-conscience’s kicking me for not keeping it. It’d wipe out most of what I owe. “Check the balance online. If it’s right, tell the guy that Lorenzoni left you instructions to hand this over, but you don’t know anything else about it. Can you do that?”
Her focus flicks from my face to the card and back. There’s a lot to absorb here. After a few moments of studying the card, she slides it into her pants pocket. “Maybe I keep the money,” she says like she’s talking to herself.
If she keeps this up, she’ll end up like me. That’s no good. “Do that and they’ll take you out like Lorenzoni.”
Gianna makes a face at me. “I make the joke.” But she wasn’t. “Have you more things for me to do?” The tone in her voice is this weird combination of gratitude and resentment.
“Not for now.” I miss the playful Gianna. At least now she’ll be square with the Russians, though she’s still in Lucca’s crosshairs. Where you put her. “What’ll you do with this place if Lorenzoni’s really gone?”
She squares her chin and shoulders. “I make it open for as long as I can. Until my gallery is open, if I can.”
“Good plan. Give yourself a raise.” She snorts, but a little smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “If Angelo wants you to pick up what Lorenzoni was doing, tell him the truth—you don’t have the contacts and you don’t know how to do it. He’ll push back, but don’t let him win.”
Gianna doesn’t nod or shake her head; she just watches me with caution in her eyes. She may not hate Hoskins anymore, but she doesn’t trust him either. “What do you do now?”
Good question. “Try to finish what I’ve started. I might need your help later on. Can I count on you?”
Her lips flatten out again. Then she nods.