A Glancing Light (A Chris Norgren Mystery) (31 page)

"Aha, Correggio, without a doubt; the soft, painterly, almost antilinear style, the luscious flesh tones. . . And this, this with its icy elegance of line can be nothing but a Bronzino. . . . And this? Let me see—Ah! Tintoretto, no question about it. The masterly use of
repoussoir
, the receding diagonals . . ."

It was sheer mummery, of course. I couldn't see a thing. But luckily for me, they had a list of the paintings to refer to, and I somehow managed to bring it off. In a sense I wasn't lying, because I was sure they were authentic, even if I didn't happen to know a few trivial details, such as which was which. I knew it from their smell, their feel, their condition, a hundred little clues. Maybe even by way of a little innately spiritual perception.

"All right," Ettore said the instant Croce hesitantly nodded his acceptance of the last one. "Where's the money?"

"I'll drive you there," Croce said, darting his tongue over his lips. His protuberant eyes glistened. He was looking extremely shifty. More so than usual.

"That wasn't the arrangement," Ettore said. His face had stiffened, darkened, as if a shutter had clanked down over it.

"Of course it was. You're trying to change things now." Croce's voice was on the rise. "What do—"

"The money was to be left in two packages, wrapped in paper. Somewhere nearby."

"It is, it is Only fifteen minutes from here. Come, I'll take you."

"No, you'll tell us," Ettore said stonily.

"But—" Croce's forehead shone with perspiration. He looked at all three of us, but help wasn't coming from anywhere. "All right, then," he said. "It's in the Giardini Margherita, near the tennis courts. Just to the east of them, in the shrubbery, next to a stone wall, there's a—a concrete pedestal, a vent of some sort with metal grills in the sides. The grill on the east side, away from the courts, toward the wall, it comes off. The packages are inside, taped to the back of it. All right, are you satisfied? Now, if it's all the same to you, I'll take these and leave."

He said it as if he didn't think he'd get away with it, and he didn't.

Ettore ignored him. "Pietro, I'll drive out there and see if it's all right."

"I assure you–" Croce said.

"If it's all right I'll call, and you can let him have the paintings. Then drive back to where we started from. You understand?"

Pietro frowned while he absorbed this. "What if you don't find it?"

"He'll find it, he'll find it," Croce bleated.

"Well, I guess I'll go now," I put in. "I've done what I came for." Croce was lying, and I didn't want to be there when they found out. I wanted to get the hell out of there and get on the telephone to Antuono.

I didn't get away with it, either. "You stay, too," Ettore said.

"What for? I've done what I was paid for. I—"

"If I don't call in half an hour," Ettore told Pietro, "take the paintings and get out of here."

"Now you'd better listen to me—" Croce began.
 

"What about these two?" Pietro asked.

"Take them with you. If they don't want to go, beat the shit out of them. If they give you too much trouble, just shoot them and leave them."

Pietro nodded and patted his jacket, over the holster.

This exchange effectively silenced Croce. I wasn't making much noise, either. But a few minutes after Ettore left I probed for a little more information from Croce.

"Who's your buyer?" I asked offhandedly.

He frowned at me. His eyes swelled with affront. No stratum of society is without its code of ethics.

"Shut up," Pietro said. He sounded edgy. "I don't want any more talking. Sit down."

We sat. So did Pietro, first meaningfully unzipping the front of his jacket. It had begun to rain. For a long time the only sounds were the water thrumming against the window, the traffic noises, and the occasional whine of a jet.

Pietro looked at his watch frequently. After the ninth or tenth time he spoke: "Ten more minutes."

"Don't worry," Croce said with an unconvincing laugh, "he'll call. That vent isn't so easy to find."

Fifteen minutes later the increasingly uneasy Pietro looked at his watch a final time, chewed his lip, and came to a decision. He stood up, shoved a big leather suitcase across the floor with his foot, and pointed at Croce. "You."

"Me?"

"Put those wooden ones in there." The more nervous he got the more he slid into a kind of slow motion.

"These?" Croce said. "The panels?"

Pietro's heavy eyelids drooped. The big muscles in his heavy jaw moved. He took a ponderous step forward.

"All right," Croce said hurriedly. "Very well. They'll have to be wrapped first. I can—"

"No wrapping," Pietro said. "Just put them in."

"But he's right," I said. "You can't just toss them into a suitcase without protection. They'll be—"

The gun came out: stubby, nickel-plated, toylike in the big hand. It waved me quiet, then leveled at Croce. "Do what I say."

"Certainly, at once." Croce knelt, opened the suitcase, and lay the two Madonnas side by side in it, handling them with more reverence than I imagined him capable of.

He glanced up from his knees. "At least let me—"

"Now you," Pietro said. The shiny little gun jerked in my direction to indicate which
you
he was talking to. "Put the rest of them in there, too, quick."

I didn't see much room for argument. I picked up the first rolled cylinder, placed it in the suitcase as carefully as I could, and reached for the next one.

It was too methodical to suit him. "Come on, come on, just throw the damn things in."

"Look—" I said.

Pietro gestured for silence again, then stood motionless, head tipped, sleepy eyes suddenly alert. He was listening intently. All I could hear was the rain. He edged up to the window, his back against the wall, and scanned the street, shielding his body behind the casing. I was reminded of a hundred old movies. This was the scene just before the final barrage of bullets from the cops killed all the bad guys. Or maybe it was Indians, arrows, and ranchers.

Pietro turned back to us. "That's it. We're going right now. You, close the suitcase and pick it up," he told Croce. "You"—me again—"grab the rest of them and let's go."

"What do you mean, grab them?"

"Just scoop them up. Hurry up."

"Scoop them up?" I echoed. "You mean just—just—"

With his left hand Pietro reached around the side of the gun's barrel. There was a click that I recognized (those old movies again) as the safety being released. I gulped, bent to the table, and, as carefully as I could, gathered them up in my arms, all twenty-two of those precious, irreplaceable masterpieces, like so many old window shades to be taken down to the dump.

"Now," Pietro said, "out the door."

But at that moment the door, about four feet to Pietro's right, exploded from the wall with a window-rattling crash. Even before it hit the floor a stream of men in heavy vests and blue police uniforms burst into the room, shouting incomprehensible orders and brandishing handguns and rifles. Croce was swept out of the way. Pietro was still blinking with surprise, waiting for his brontosauruslike nerve impulses to make it to his brain and tell him what was going on, when the gun was deftly plucked from his hand. Two burly officers spun him roughly around and shoved him face-first against the wall. More men crowded in; there were brown carabinieri uniforms along with the blue ones. The room was all dust and pandemonium.

I couldn't believe it. I was so relieved I wanted to cheer. I think I did cheer. I know I laughed. "Your timing's great!" I shouted over the racket. "We—"

"
Alto
!" several of them screamed. "
Zitti
!" I didn't have to be told that these amounted to the Italian equivalent of "Freeze!" At the same time three pistols—heavy, malevolent black weapons, nothing like Pietro's shiny tiny toy— were thrust out at me, trained on the bridge of my nose. All were held by palpably overstrung men in the classic shooter's posture: tautly crouched, gun hand stiffly extended and supported at the wrist by the opposite hand. All three of the weapons were quivering.

Me too. It took me a moment to find my voice. "Gentlemen," I said in my softest manner and without moving a finger, "I . . ."

I what? I wasn't really heading for the door with $100,000,000 worth of stolen art in my arms? It only looks that way? I shrugged and closed my mouth. Things would work themselves out. The worst was over.

Almost. A slight figure approached from the side and peered at me. There was a long-suffering sigh.

"Weren't you supposed to be in America?" asked the Eagle of Lombardy.

"I can explain," I said, staring straight ahead. "Really."

"If you will put those paintings down over there," he said quietly, "I will do my utmost to see that these gentlemen don't shoot you."

At his nod and a few murmured words, they lowered their weapons—rather reluctantly, it seemed to me—and turned away. Antuono, in his black undertaker's suit, looked down his fleshless nose at me as I placed the rolled-up canvases back on the table.

"Colonel—"

"You could have been killed," he said. "Worse, you might have ruined the entire operation."

His prioritizing of possible outcomes did not escape me. "Colonel—"

"Do you know," he said musingly, "if you hadn't turned up blundering about in the midst of things—with the best of intentions, of course—I think I would have felt a sense of disappointment . . . of incompleteness."

He hadn't wasted any time getting under my skin again. I faced him angrily. "I didn't
have
to be here, you know—"

 
"Indeed."

"I put my life on the line for those paintings. If you'd let me, I could have been helping you all along."

"No doubt."

"Damn it, I told you
days
ago that Croce was involved, didn't I? But no, you—"

His attention had wandered. He was looking over my shoulder, a slow smile actually lighting up his pale eyes. "Wonderful work, Major," he said. "A year's effort—congratulations!" He reached around me to shake hands. "I believe you already know
dottor
Norgren?"

I turned.

"Sure, we're old friends," said Filippo Croce.
 

Chapter 23

Yes, that wonderful facility of mine to make razor-sharp character judgments had done me in again. The odious, transparently disreputable Filippo Croce was in fact Abele Foscolo of the
Comando Caribinieri Tutela Patrimonio Artistico
; one of Antuono's most trusted undercover agents. Antuono, in what I now recognized as one of his little jokes, had practically described him to me at our first meeting, specially grown mustache and all.

For almost a year Foscolo-Croce had been working meticulously to establish his credibility as a shady dealer, first building a suspect reputation in Sicily to provide "credentials" that could be checked when he appeared on the scene here. Antuono and Foscolo had quickly zeroed in on the Salvatorellis, but as Antuono kept telling me, it was the paintings he was after, not the people. The important thing was to get the pictures safely back.

And so, just about the time I got to Bologna, Foscolo had begun working his oily charms on Bruno (Paolo had just been killed). The two
Pittura Metafisica
paintings "discovered" in the Trasporti Salvatorelli warehouse had of course (in retrospect, "of course") been planted by the police. Salvotorelli had truly known nothing about them. The raid had been staged to give him convincing proof that Foscolo was indeed the crook he appeared to be, and that he had art-world connections. More important, he was shown to be a "trustworthy criminal"—the phrase was Antuono's, delivered with a straight face. What he meant was that, inasmuch as no arrests were made, "Croce" demonstrated his reliability at keeping names to himself when required.

In a way, this had all been explained to me days ago by Antuono himself, on our drive back to town from Trasporti Salvatorelli. He'd neglected to mention only a couple of trifling particulars: It was fact, not surmise, and Croce happened to be working for
him
.

And all this time I'd gone along thinking he didn't have much of a sense of humor.

"You must see,
dottore
," he said now, leaning over the table and clasping his hands, "that I couldn't very well let you in on our plans. I had to mislead you just a little. I hope you accept my apology."

We were in the Palazzo d'Accursio, not in Antuono's makeshift warren of an office, but in a big, handsome upstairs chamber that he had commandeered, with thick, wall-to-wall red carpeting, red-flocked wallpaper, and massive old furniture. I had been making statements and signing depositions in one part of the palazzo or another for the last three hours, except for a twenty-minute break I'd insisted on to call Anne and tell her what had happened to me.

"I was starting to wonder," she'd said dryly when I reached her. "You hear these stories . 'Yes, well, the last time I saw him he said he was going down to the corner for cigarettes. That was back in '54, of course.' . . ."

But I'd heard the breathy tremble in her voice, and it had warmed me. And now for the last hour I'd been basking in a different kind of warmth, one not experienced before: the freely given gratitude of a relaxed and expansive Eagle of Lombardy. Antuono had been openly impressed with the information I'd provided on Max and Blusher. He had immediately arranged to have Max placed under arrest for murder and attempted murder, and since then he'd been—well, friendly. And unless I'd misheard him, he'd actually offered an apology a moment ago.

"I accept it," I said, "but you misled me more than just a little. You also told me Salvatorelli wasn't a suspect."

He nodded. "We were very near to moving, as you now know. Your ... explorations were threatening the sensitive balance we had achieved. I wanted you out of our hair." He smiled, pleased with himself. "I believe that's the American expression."

"Well," I admitted, "Salvatorelli had me fooled all by himself, even without your help. I thought he was just another harried businessman." I uncapped one of the small green bottles of mineral water an aide had brought, and poured it into a glass. "And what do you know, he's tied up with the Sicilian Mafia." I drank down the water thirstily, my third bottle.