Among Thieves (30 page)

Kozlowski didn’t argue. Finn half expected Kozlowski to tell him to come in with him, just to make sure that she was all right.
He hadn’t, though. “I’ll meet you down there in a little while,” he’d said. With that, he’d turned and walked down the hallway
toward her room. Finn stood there for a moment, then headed toward the elevator.

He was sitting on a bench, trying to focus on Sally’s kidnapping, working through all the various ugly possibilities, when
Kozlowski walked off the elevator forty-five minutes later.

Finn could tell nothing from Kozlowski’s face. The older man walked over to him, looked down. “We’ve got work to do,” he said.

Finn got up. “How is she?”

“She’s fine. They’re keeping her for a night, just to make sure.”

“The baby?”

Kozlowski nodded. “Still alive. Let’s go.” He turned and walked toward the lobby exit. Finn had to walk quickly to keep up.
“We’ve got to get to this guy,” Kozlowski said. “He’ll kill the girl. He’s not just fucking around.”

Finn agreed. It was the only conclusion he’d come to about which he was sure. “Should we bring in the police?” he asked. “Maybe
the FBI? It’s a kidnapping, so they’d have jurisdiction.”

Kozlowski shook his head. “I thought about it. This guy’s desperate. It’s not just about the money, there’s something else
driving him. That means he’s unpredictable. The cops and the FBI work from a standard playbook that depends on predictability.
We call them in, he’ll know, and he’ll kill her without even thinking twice. We need to get to this guy ourselves.”

“How?” Finn asked. “I’ve been sitting here, racking my brain, trying to come up with some way to find him, and I’ve got nothing.”

“We won’t find him,” Kozlowski said. “There’s not enough time, and he’s smart enough to be holed up in a place we’d never
locate.”

“So? What do we do?”

They were out at the car, and Kozlowski was opening the passenger-side door. He looked over the roof of the car at Finn. “We
find the paintings.”

“What?”

“He wants them,” Kozlowski said. “Why not give them to him?”

Finn blinked back at him. “Well, yeah. That sounds good in theory; in practice it seems a little unrealistic, doesn’t it?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because every relevant law-enforcement agency in the world has been looking for those paintings for twenty
years and hasn’t come up with anything. That doesn’t even include all the journalists, private investigators, art houses,
and every profiteer with any knowledge of art.”

“We’ve never looked for them,” Kozlowski pointed out.

“You sure you’re not being a little bit overconfident?”

“Probably,” Kozlowski said. “You got any better ideas? Maybe this will give us back some control. Besides, we have a better
reason than anyone else to find them.”

“How do we even know that they’re still in Boston? In all likelihood they were sold a long time ago and moved out of the goddamned
country.”

Kozlowski shook his head. “They’re here. This asshole helped steal these things almost twenty years ago, and he’s
here
,
now
. Not only that, but he seems pretty fuckin’
sure
that someone here knows something. He’s smart, we know that much; and he’s careful. Careful enough to torture and kill a
bunch of people and not leave behind anything that’s got him caught by the cops. A guy like that doesn’t make the kinds of
moves he’s making after twenty years unless there’s been some reason—unless he’s learned something concrete.”

Finn considered this. “Okay, that seems logical,” he said. “There’s only one problem with it. It assumes that a guy who’s
running around torturing and killing people is rational. That may be a stretch.”

“It may be, but if we want to have any hope of getting the girl back, we have to make that assumption. If it’s wrong, then
we’re fucked and he’s going to kill her no matter what we do.”

Finn started the car, let the engine run for a moment. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll buy all that for the moment. But I need to know
one thing.”

“What is it?”

“Is this personal? Because of what he did to Lissa?”

Kozlowski took a deep breath. “He took the girl. The daughter of our client—a girl we were taking care of. He assaulted Lissa,
and he could have killed my child before it was even born. It doesn’t get any more personal than this.”

Finn stared back at him. “Good,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to hear. So where do we begin?”

“Where every investigation starts,” Kozlowski replied. “At the scene of the crime.”

Finn made the call from the car. Sometimes being a lawyer seemed like a life strung together in a series of unpleasant phone
conversations.
Your parole was denied; the judge ruled against you; there’s a problem with the contract
. Nothing in his experience, though, had prepared him for a call as difficult as this one.

“Devon,” Finn said. He stopped. He couldn’t figure out how to say it.

“What’s wrong?” his client asked.

Finn took a deep breath. “Sally’s been kidnapped.” Three words. The worst three words Finn had ever uttered.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Devon said after a minute. “How? When?”

“A couple of hours ago. From her school.” Finn could hear Devon suck in air like a drowning man pulled from the ocean.

“Was it him?”

“Yeah,” Finn said. “We got a call from him within the last hour. He said she’s okay, but he’s only gonna let her go if he
either gets the paintings or he gets you.”

“Did you tell the cops?”

“No. He told us that if we did, he’d kill her. She’s your daughter, though. If you think we should get the cops involved,
we will. It’s your call.”

“No cops,” Devon said. “He’s not the kinda guy who bluffs. He’ll kill her. I gotta deal with this myself. Can you get me outta
here?”

“Probably,” Finn said. “I’ve got a motion for a new bail hearing ready, and I can get it filed today. After the last hearing,
it’s not gonna be cheap, but they’ll set bail.”

“I don’t care what it costs. Just get me out. It’s me he wants. That’s her only chance. When do you think the judge will hear
it?”

“He’s got a motions session tomorrow. I’ll try to get it scheduled for then.”

“Get it done. I gotta get outta this place.” Devon sounded deep in despair.

“It’s the best I can do,” Finn said. “It’s not gonna be an easy hearing.”

“Okay,” Devon said. “Finn, I’m worried.”

“I know,” Finn said. The guilt ripped at him. “I’m sorry, Devon. I didn’t know. I didn’t even think that this could happen.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s mine. All this is my fault.”

“We’ll get her back,” Finn said with false confidence.

“We will.” Devon sounded even less sure than Finn felt. “I’m gonna make sure we get her back.”

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum wasn’t far from the hospital. It covered half a block on Fenway Drive, next to Simmons
College, just around the corner from the Museum of Fine Arts and Northeastern University. Across the street to the east was
a patch of garden that was the last natural remnant of the swampy fens that had once covered much of the area west of downtown
Boston.

Finn had never been to the Gardner before, and he was surprised by its exterior. He was familiar with the larger Museum of
Fine Arts, with its towering Ionic columns and broad marble staircase leading up from the sidewalk to the main entrance. He’d
been to the Boston Public Library, with its imposing neoclassical facade, rising from the center of Copley like some great
mausoleum. It seemed to Finn that such pomp was a necessary hallmark of cultural landmarks. The Gardner had none of it. From
the outside, the museum begged for little attention. It had gray-brown stucco sides, set flush to the sidewalk, with a stubby
steel door for an entrance that for its lack of pretension could have been admitting them to a college dorm.

Finn and Kozlowski walked through the dark entryway, paid their admission fee, and walked into the main section of the museum.
Upon entering, Finn felt transported. Before him was an enormous three-story indoor courtyard garden, roofed by a great glass
ceiling allowing in all the sunlight of the day. Rustles of clover and ivy covered the ground surrounding an intricate mosaic
that was centered under the transparent ceiling. Across the courtyard from the entrance, a large fountain with inverted Chinese
fish-dragons was framed by an elaborate two-way staircase. About the courtyard were strewn various works—headless statues,
urns, and obelisks—looking almost haphazard in their placement. And yet there was an order to it all, as though the informality
of their selection and display was central to their purpose. Above, balconies set against huge arched marble windows observed
the scene.

“Nice,” Kozlowski said.

“Yeah,” Finn agreed.

The entire building was centered on the courtyard, with galleries and halls ringing the place on every floor.

“I guess we should find out who’s in charge,” Kozlowski said. He walked over to an information desk, off to one corner of
the ground floor. The woman there blended well into the place. She appeared to be in her fifties; her dark hair was streaked
with gray. Her clothes were respectable, demure, and prim. They were neither expensive nor shabby. She was looking down at
the desk, motionless. Finn wondered for a moment whether she might be part of an exhibit. Kozlowski walked over and stood
in front of the desk. She must have seen him; he was too imposing a presence to go unnoticed. But she didn’t look up. “Excuse
me,” he said in a polite tone after a moment.

“Yes?” she said. She still didn’t raise her eyes, giving the impression that whatever she was studying was far too important
for her to be pulled away at the first effort.

“Can we talk to the manager?”

With the question, her gaze was drawn upward, and she looked directly at Kozlowski for the first time. Her head remained at
a downward angle, as if she was still deciding whether he merited a shift in her actual body position. “Manager?” she said.
“No. We don’t have a manager. We have a director.”

“He’s the person who’s in charge?”

“He is.”

“Is there any chance we could talk to him for a moment?”

This time she seemed to latch on to the
we
, and she craned her neck at an angle to get a line of vision around Kozlowski, examining Finn. She took only a quick look,
and didn’t seem impressed. “Can I ask why?”

“We have a couple of questions about the art theft.”

With the mention of the robbery, her posture straightened. Her brow knit itself tightly and her eyes narrowed angrily. “We
don’t answer questions about the theft,” she said. “Not ever.”

“Never?”

“Not ever.”

Kozlowski’s voice became serious. “My name is Kozlowski,” he said. He took out the leather billfold in which he kept his private
detective’s license and held it up. It had his picture and looked official. He kept his eyes on the woman’s and she took only
a glance at the identification. “We’re chasing down a lead in a more recent crime that may be related. It would be helpful
if we could talk to him just for a moment.”

The look on the woman’s face soured even further. “What additional information could you people need beyond what we’ve provided
over and over again? It’s been twenty years, do you really think there’s anything more that anyone here has to say to the
police?”

“Please, ma’am,” Kozlowski said. “It will just take a moment of his time.”

She shook her head in frustration, but picked up the phone and punched in three digits. She turned away from the two of them
as she spoke, and her voice was swallowed up in the enormity of the marble lobby. Then she turned around and hung up the phone.
“It will be a few minutes,” she said. “He’s very busy.”

“I’m sure, ma’am.”

“He said you can wait for him up in the Dutch Room, if you wish.”

“The Dutch Room,” Kozlowski repeated. He turned and looked at Finn. “The Dutch Room.”

Finn gave him a blank stare.

The woman let out a condescending sigh. “Up the stairs to the right,” she said. “It’s where the Rembrandts and the Flinck
used to hang before they were stolen.”

“Ah, the Dutch Room,” Kozlowski said.

Finn nodded. “Of course, the Dutch Room.”

“Thanks very much.”

She was still shaking her head as the two of them walked up the stairs. She probably would have been muttering as well, if
it wouldn’t have struck her as an unpardonable breach of etiquette.

The second floor was just as breathtaking as the first. It, too, was built around the huge courtyard, and it consisted of
a series of gallery rooms lined up one after another, each looking out through ornate balconies down to the garden below.

They turned right at the top of the stairs and walked along the hallway to a large arched doorway that led into a huge room
paneled in dark wood. It had towering ceilings and antique chairs upholstered in heavy fabric. The walls were covered in green
silk and lined with large dark oil paintings, many of them portraits. The faces of the long-dead peered out from their places
on the walls. For some reason, Finn felt as though they were judging him; it made him feel depressed.