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I haven’t thanked Helen Hills on an acknowledgments page since my first published book. So here on my seventh I’d like to reprise my gratitude for all the continued support and love she’s provided throughout my career and throughout my life. Thanks, Mom—

XOB

I SAT ACROSS FROM HUEY
LaMouche at one of those little café tables, surrounded by one of those little cafés. The French kind, with Toulouse-Lautrec posters and croissants and coffee that makes my belly hurt. It was a sunny Monday morning in Brooklyn, cold and October.

Huey says,
“Il y a un problème.”

So I says, “In English,
por favor?
You grab the goodies or not?”

Huey wore a pastry apron, checked chef pants, and nervous lips that struggled with each other. He had short white hair and long, furtive eyelashes. His veiny hand stirred a mug of coffee:
tink, tink, tink …

“We arrived to the target, Tommy,
et tout va bien
. Everything was good.” His eyes met mine briefly, those furtive lashes fanning. “As you said, at that hour, the entrance to the museum kitchen was open. With the duct tape, we tie the prep chefs.”

“Huey?” My big hand stopped his veiny one from stirring the coffee:
tink, tink, tk-
. “Did you get the goodies or not?”

His lips fell into a frown, like I’d said his croissants were soggy.
“Absolument!”

“Then what, Huey? You had to cut and run? Caught with your pants down? What?” I looked up and saw his wife, Ariel, behind the pastry counter. Short graying hair and short. The look she was giving me? It could freeze ice cubes. Twice. She turned away.

“We lifted the paintings, all three.” Sunlight from the shop windows sparked the blue in Huey’s eyes. “But someone took them from us.”

I stood, my chair falling backward.

“Someone absconded with our goodies?”

“Abstructed?”
Huey looked confused. “No, they
took
the good stuff. By our van, they were waiting for us. Two men, with guns, in black, with ski masks. We had only the stun guns. It was necessary to hand over the good stuff.”

“The word is
goodies
, not
good stuff
!” My shout turned the heads of the few patrons who sat in back. I smiled at them as best I could and leaned down close to Huey. My voice was back to a whisper. “Who?”

“Who?” he says. I was close enough to smell the Pernod on Huey’s breath.

“How drunk are you, Huey? One of your guys set us up. Assuming you didn’t decide to rip me off yourself, it had to be one of the other two. Who else would know we were taking those paintings last night, to be waiting for you at that van?”

Now we had a rat, and no paintings. That’s no way to start the day.

I reached across and took Huey by the apron. “You think it was Frank? Or Kootie?”

“You think one of them—?”

“What do you think I’m talking about, Huey? I don’t know about you, but I was counting on that money.”

“Please, Tommy, my apron.” I felt his hand on mine. “People are looking…”

I’m a big guy in every respect, and didn’t quite realize I’d lifted him out of his chair. So I eased Huey back into his seat.

If ever there was a time for Delilah’s tantric exercises, that was it. Delilah was my masseuse.

Breathe slowly in through the nose; close the eyes.

Breathe slowly out through the lips; stroke back my hair and beard.

Breathe slowly in through the nose; open the eyes.

Breathe slowly out through the lips; focus on that goofball Huey sitting across from me.

“So which was it?” I says, all quiet. “Frank or Kootie?”

He shrugged, as only the French can, with his palms up and the mouth down around his ankles. “How would I know?”

I straightened my tie and buttoned my topcoat. Then I whispered. “You’re a pro, Huey. A pro keeps an eye on his string to make sure there’s no monkey business. Does Frank or Kootie gamble? Does a woman have her hooks into one of them? Find out. You have twenty-four hours.”

Huey followed me into the vestibule, which wasn’t easy. There was only room for me and a sheet of paper.

“Twenty-four hours?” He was looking up at me, like some scared kid at the class bully. “Then what?”

“I like you, Huey.” I put a hand on his shoulder, and not lightly. “But this is business.” I patted him on the cheek.

I left him standing in the vestibule.

What
was
I planning to do in twenty-four hours? I was no mobster, no goon, no hard-ass. I was the chump with four cats at home: Snuggles, Lady Fuzz, Tigsy, and Herman. Damaging people or animals wasn’t my hustle, mainly because people who hurt eventually end up hurt. Even at my size, because guns change the equation. Like Pop used to say, a pistol can turn a monster into a mouse. I didn’t much like the idea of being tortured or killed, so a long time ago I decided there was a line I wouldn’t cross. Just a little rule I had.

I knew that the first thing Huey would do after I left would be to tip off Frank and Kootie. Intentionally or unintentionally. This meant I’d have to put a tail on all three of them, using an investigator kind of guy, an associate. I had already put a fix on where they all lived because I liked being careful. As soon as Frankie and Kootie realized they were suspect, they would start acting mutable. Mutable means losing your cool. People who act mutable always make mistakes.

Which is why I found my emotional center at Ariel’s Patisserie Bistro and stopped being mutable.

I could either freak out or figure out.

Guess which pays?

DID I WANT FOUR CATS?
No.

That bastard Snuggles spewed vomit around the apartment like a fire hose. Lady Fuzz sat in the litter box but managed to crap over the side every time. Tigsy was diabetic and needed shots twice a day. Herman wouldn’t eat.

Then why did I have four cats?

I asked myself this question every day, usually as I was cleaning up barf or shit from my rugs and furniture. Then again, I asked myself a lot of questions about why I did the things I did, and the answer to my questions was invariably the same:
It seemed like the thing to do at the time
. That is to say, circumstances seemed to indicate this was the best thing I could do given a series of scenarios, a set of options, especially those that lead to possible gain.
Love or money
.

I was in corporate recovery, a CR. Some liked to joke that’s shorthand for criminal. That’s a little unfair, I think. I recovered stolen art, sometimes documents or antiquities or collectibles. This meant I had to find the person who took it. Only I didn’t put the cops on the crooks—if I did, my entire network of information, my ways into the underworld, would have collapsed and I’d’ve been nothing better than the cops or Interpol at finding the things these victims lost. I brokered the goodies back to the insurance companies, for a percentage. A finder’s fee. A vig.

I said these victims—museums, collectors, and institutions—“lost” pricey stuff. Well, they’re stolen, sure, but the screwups by the museums, the collectors, and the corporations who own this stuff are more criminal than the actual gig.

That’s my opinion.

Then look at the facts.

Look at the 1990 Gardner Museum gig. Two goofballs dressed as cops with no guns knocked on the door at 1:00 a.m.and the guards let them in. These two nabbed a bunch of Rembrandts, a Vermeer, and some other goodies.

Look at Edvard Munch’s
The Scream
. In broad daylight, the crooks bopped in a second-story window of the National Gallery in Oslo, scrambled in, and snatched the painting. Hardly broke a sweat.

Look at the São Paulo Museum of Art, which more recently lost a Picasso when three men used a car jack to crawl under a security gate. In three minutes the burglars were in and out with some choice art.

Look at the famous estate in Ireland, known for its fine collection of Goyas and Vermeers, which has been robbed successfully no less than four times over the last thirty years or so. Do they not even lock the doors at night?

Look at what’s called the Kingsland Hoard. A musty old eccentric named Kingsland (a.k.a. Melvyn Kohn) died on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and his apartment was loaded with three hundred individual pieces of stolen art, all of it missing from various collections. When I say “missing,” I mean the museums didn’t know exactly what happened to the pieces.

This is not the work of cat burglars, of slick hondos like Tom Cruise or Matt Damon tiptoeing around rooftops. There are no laser beams to dodge, usually not even motion detectors like suburbanites use to protect their patio furniture. Just some rent-a-cops and cameras to watch the goodies go bye-bye. You should see the video of the hooded thieves walking across the lawn of the Oslo museum—in broad daylight—with the Munch under their arms. I kid you not.

And this is only the stuff the public hears about. Art is stolen all the time from private collections, all under the radar. Insurance companies don’t like it, and try to get their clients to improve security. Any idea how much museum guards get paid? Any idea how hard it is to plug all the holes—even obvious ones—in museum security? Any idea how expensive it is, and how the museums don’t like using a lot of their operating budget on high-tech security? At this point it’s all the insurers can do to contain the situation to acceptable losses.

They also want to keep the museum from calling the cops. The insurers know that as soon as the police get involved, the crooks wink out and the art is never seen again. Almost never. At least I can usually get it back and recover most of the insurer’s losses. Sending a goofball to jail gets the insurance company bupkis; it doesn’t service the bottom line.