Steal, page 20
“Pistol, right hip,” whispered Julian.
“I see it,” I said.
Tracy walked through a foyer, past a dining area, and into a spacious living room. Brunetti was about to pocket fifty million, so the least he could do was spring for a suite.
“Hello, Bill,” said Brunetti. “How are you?”
“That depends,” answered Tracy. “Are you going to make me strip again?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Are you sure? I wore nicer boxers just for the occasion.”
“What you can do for me,” said Brunetti, “is spread your arms out wide so Matthew here can see if you’re ticklish.”
Tracy obliged, allowing a guy who seemed way too big for the name Matthew to give him a good old-fashioned pat down. Matthew gave his boss a nod. Clean.
Except Brunetti was now giving Tracy a strange sort of stare. “There’s something different about you,” he said.
Tracy didn’t hesitate. “I already told you about the boxers,” he joked.
It was as if Brunetti couldn’t hear him. Or didn’t want to. “Your face,” he said. “What’s different?”
“I got a haircut yesterday?”
“No. That’s not it.” Brunetti snapped his fingers, the reason coming to him. He pointed at Tracy. “Glasses. You weren’t wearing glasses when we met.”
“Easy now,” I whispered to Tracy.
“I wasn’t wearing these? Are you sure?” asked Tracy.
“I’m positive.”
“Then I was wearing my contacts. No need for glasses.”
Brunetti nodded. “They’re nice,” he said. “Those frames. Who makes them?”
Oh, shit.
“Don’t lie,” I whispered. “Tell him you don’t know.”
I’d already done the math in my head. Four seconds to reach the door of the suite. One second to shoot the lock. Another second to take down left-handed Matthew before he can reach for the holster on his right hip.
Julian was suddenly in my ear. He could isolate his channel so it was just me who could hear him. “I know what you’re thinking, mate, but not yet,” he said. “Hold tight.”
I watched as Tracy glanced at Matthew before answering Brunetti. “I don’t know who makes them,” he said. “I barely even remember where I got them. I think it was one of those chains, like Pearle Vision, or something.”
“They usually put the name of the maker on the inside of one of the arms,” said Brunetti. He reached his hand out. “Here, let me see them for a second.”
CHAPTER 80
My gun was out. I was going in.
I was just about to push through the stairwell door and bolt into the hallway when through my earpiece came the sound of knuckles on another door. Someone was knocking on Brunetti’s suite.
It couldn’t be Laszlo. There was no way Julian missed her coming into the hotel. That was his main job at that point, spotting her. But if it wasn’t her?
Whoever it was, the knock immediately changed the topic of conversation in the suite. There was no more talk of Tracy’s frames. I looked back down at the camera feed on my phone. The glasses were still on his head. Tracy was watching Brunetti’s man, Matthew, walk to the door. The guy’s hand was hovering over the pistol on his right hip. He disappeared from the living room of the suite, only to reappear seconds later.
“It’s not her,” Matthew announced to his boss, keeping a low voice. He’d obviously looked through the peephole. “It’s a guy.”
The ire on Brunetti’s face when Tracy turned to him. You better explain fast. Real fast.
“The authenticator,” Tracy offered. “He and Laszlo, maybe they’re arriving separately.”
“Or maybe something else entirely,” said Brunetti, beginning to pace. He wasn’t liking this.
Julian was our eyes in the lobby. Tracy was our eyes in the suite. The only one with a view of the hallway was me—that is, if I was willing to risk opening the stairwell door to take a peek.
Tracy beat me to the punch. He was on the move before I could decide, walking past Matthew to the entrance of the suite. Damn, Matthew’s trigger finger looked twitchy. Tracy leaned in, looking through the peephole. He was too close to it for me to see what he could see.
“Can I help you?” he asked through the door.
“I work with Dorian Laszlo,” came the man’s voice.
“Where is she? Why isn’t she with you?”
“Think of me as the advance scout team.”
“Do you have a name?” asked Tracy.
“I’ll give you one better.”
As soon as he said that I knew who he was. What he was. And what he was about to hold out in front of him to show Tracy. His ID and badge.
Expect the unexpected.
Julian and I were right about Hungarian intelligence. We just didn’t expect him to arrive in advance of Laszlo. He wasn’t posing as the authenticator.
Tracy could only be thinking one thing: What do I do now?
“Ask him if he’s carrying a weapon. He’s going to say no,” I whispered. I waited and listened to the exchange.
“I’m clean,” said the agent.
It was plausible. Advance teams are often just a fancy way of saying guinea pigs. This was about Laszlo’s safety, not his. Most important, it was about the deal going through.
I continued in Tracy’s ear. “Now go outside into the hallway. Don’t look back at Brunetti for approval. Just do it. I’m right here if something goes wrong.”
Thinking this agent wasn’t carrying and knowing it were two different things. As soon as Tracy stepped into the hallway and hit him with the thermal camera, both Julian and I could see that the guy was telling the truth.
“Ask him where his partner is,” I said.
It was like that scene with William Hurt and Holly Hunter in the movie Broadcast News. I’d say the words into Tracy’s ear and out his mouth they would come.
“What makes you think I’m not alone?” the agent asked.
“Don’t answer, just stare at him,” I said. The guy, of course, had a partner. He was simply weighing the pros and cons of admitting as much. The pros won out.
“He’s outside the hotel,” the agent said finally.
Tracy knew the next question. He asked it before I could even tell it to him. “And you’re here to do what, exactly?”
“One, check the room. Two, make sure there’s only two people in that room when Ms. Laszlo arrives. You and the seller,” said the agent. “As was agreed to.”
Again, Tracy was ahead of me. There was no hesitation. “Wait here,” he said.
With that, Tracy had officially taken the reins. He’d been our eyes and ears. Now he was also the brains. He’d gained a true sense of Brunetti by this point, namely, that the guy spoke only one language. Leverage.
Tracy went back into the suite, marching straight up to him. “Here’s the deal. That is, if you want this deal to happen. The guy outside is a Hungarian intelligence agent. He’s doing the same thing you wanted to do, making sure this room is safe.”
“So what did you tell him?” asked Brunetti.
“The same thing I’m telling you. He’s not coming in. That’s because your man Matthew here is leaving. He’ll be waiting for you in the lobby.”
“And if I say no to that?”
“Then you can have this room all to yourself,” said Tracy. “Also, you’ll be out fifty million dollars and own a pretty painting that you’ll never be able to sell to anyone else. The Hungarians will make sure of it.”
George Burns said it best. Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
I watched. We all watched—Tracy, Julian, and me—as Brunetti bobbed his head for a few seconds, making up his mind. He may have looked undecided, but I was convinced it was all just for show. Brunetti had already made his decision. In that moment it was Tracy who had all the leverage.
Brunetti turned to Matthew, all three hundred pounds of him. “Go wait in the lobby,” he said.
CHAPTER 81
Tracy had moved everyone around like chess pieces, clearing a path for Dorian Laszlo to arrive at Brunetti’s suite. “She’s here,” said Julian. “She just walked in.”
With her was a guy who, now fittingly, would never be mistaken for Hungarian intelligence. His look screamed one of two professions, art authenticator or eighth-grade science teacher. Either way, his wearing a bow tie seemed utterly redundant.
Tracy handled the introductions once everyone was face-to-face. This was the very definition of a private sale, but there was no way to keep the players a secret. As long as the transaction itself remained a secret, neither Brunetti nor Laszlo cared. There was even some polite small talk. Brunetti said he’d never been to Budapest. Laszlo assured him it was worth the trip. “Try our nokedli,” she said. “They’re almost as good as the gnocchi at Frankie’s.”
Brunetti wasn’t entirely immune to flattery. He beamed. “You’ve been to my restaurant, huh?”
“Who hasn’t? It’s one of my favorites,” said Laszlo.
So far, so good. I knew exactly what Tracy was thinking. Harness this. It was time to segue.
“So who wants to look at some art?” asked Tracy.
The authenticator, who’d barely spoken a word up until this point, couldn’t help himself. “I do,” he said. You couldn’t blame him. He was about to see the painting equivalent of a unicorn, a stunning and storied Monet that had disappeared years ago—poof—and hadn’t been seen since by anyone in his field. Until now.
All eyes were on Brunetti as he reached for the portfolio case that was leaning up against the front of an armchair. The sound of his unzipping the case might as well have been a jet engine, it was so quiet in the room.
“Here,” said Brunetti, stepping aside. “I’ll let you do the honors.”
The authenticator approached the case, or at least I assumed he did. Tracy had kept staring at Brunetti. Julian and I had warned him repeatedly about keeping an eye on him. Still, the biggest threat to the deal at that moment was the guy whose job it was to declare that the painting in the case, Woman by the Seine, was genuine. The real thing.
It didn’t matter how much I was sure that it was. What mattered was what the man wearing the bow tie thought.
I whispered once more in Tracy’s ear. A verbal nudging so Julian and I could see what was happening. “The painting.”
Tracy’s head swiveled to the authenticator, who was unwrapping the Monet from a moving blanket, presumably the one that von Oehson had kept it in. That was a good sign.
I waited for the authenticator to take out a loupe or a black light or some other tool of his trade. Good thing I wasn’t holding my breath. Are you really just going to naked eye this thing, buddy?
Apparently. After propping it up on the arms of the armchair, he stared intently for a silent minute, his eyes darting left and right, up and down, all over the painting. Seemingly satisfied, he then turned it around to look at the back. He stared with the same intensity, only for less time. Mere seconds, in fact. The way he nodded to himself it was almost as if he were looking for something.
Or maybe that’s just revisionist history on my part.
Truth was, I didn’t see the red flag coming until it was waved right in front of my face.
CHAPTER 82
The guy and his bow tie didn’t say anything while examining the painting, not a word about what he was thinking. His verdict came after he stepped back, turned to Laszlo, and gave her all she needed to know. A simple nod.
Although it’s debatable whether a nod that triggers a fifty-million-dollar transaction can really qualify as simple.
Julian and I were beholden to Tracy and wherever he was looking, but as he took turns gauging the reactions of both Brunetti and Laszlo, it was Laszlo’s expression that clearly stood out. She was elated, and as much as she surely wanted to play it cool, she couldn’t. Ms. Prim and Proper, measured and exacting, even managed to flash a spot of dry wit, as Julian might say.
“Cash or check?” she asked, turning to Brunetti.
The answer was, of course, neither. The details of the payment were prearranged, a negotiation that Tracy oversaw and mediated as any art broker would. Laszlo, on behalf of her government, was insistent that there could be no paper trail—nothing spelled out or signed or codified in any way. That wasn’t a problem for Brunetti. He wasn’t exactly intending to give her a receipt.
No, there was easy agreement on the lack of documentation. No one wanted to deal with a printed form of payment. Buyer and seller agreed on a wire transfer. They even agreed on the currency. US dollars. What had to be negotiated, however, was the banks that would carry out the transaction. Laszlo needed their payment to land offshore, meaning not on US territory. In return, Brunetti demanded that no third-party bank be involved. He needed to be paid directly from the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, otherwise known as the central bank of Hungary. It was the only way he could know for sure that he was selling the painting to the one buyer who truly had more to lose than he did if the sale was to somehow be made public.
“Deal,” said both sides.
Brunetti reached into a side pocket of the portfolio case, removing a laptop. No one else could see the screen, but he presumably had it in sleep mode, having already accessed the hotel’s internet. He needed to make only a few keystrokes before handing the laptop over to Laszlo.
It was her turn. Her government’s turn. She was the only one who could see the screen now, but there was little mystery as to where we were in the process. Brunetti’s offshore account required a bank routing number and an authorization code for the transfer of the fifty million. Laszlo pecked at the keyboard, slowly and deliberately, as if each number were being written in stone.
No more than thirty seconds later, it was done. The money had been moved. She handed the laptop back to Brunetti so he could see the confirmation. He nodded, smiling.
“Enjoy your painting,” he said. “I’ll even throw in the carrying case for free.”
And that was that. Only it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. There was something that wasn’t right, something we weren’t seeing. But what? What was the problem?
There wasn’t one. That was it. After all the planning, all the maneuvering to bring Laszlo and Brunetti together, I couldn’t help this nagging feeling that the transaction had gone too smoothly. Sometimes the only thing more troubling than failure is success.
Still, I couldn’t put my finger on it. There was nothing I could whisper in Tracy’s ear, no advice. While I did have one question, it was the equivalent of opening Pandora’s box. This deal was closed. Sealed. I wasn’t about to do anything that might unseal it. Merely asking the question would risk Brunetti’s wrath. I was convinced it wasn’t worth it.
That’s when I noticed what had caught Tracy’s eyeline.
He was no longer looking at Brunetti or Laszlo. His focus was on the authenticator, who was about to wrap up the Monet with the moving blanket.
“I’m just curious,” said Tracy. “How did you know so quickly that the painting is real?”
I could only guess the expression on Brunetti’s face. If looks could kill. Tracy didn’t even glance at him, though. He knew better. If only Tracy also knew better than to have asked the question. That was my immediate thought…right up until the moment the authenticator hesitated before finally answering. It was as if he were deciding whether to share a secret.
“Truth be told, I didn’t even have to look at the front of the painting,” he said, picking it up. He turned it around, holding up the back. “Do you see it?”
“That depends,” said Tracy. “What am I looking for?”
Whatever it was, I couldn’t see it, either. Tracy leaned in. “Oh,” he said finally. “I see what you mean.”
I saw it, too. So did Julian.
Shit. We were screwed.
CHAPTER 83
We should’ve known. The Nazis had a thing for numbering.
If they could tattoo people as if they were objects instead of human beings, further depriving them of any last shred of dignity before being slaughtered, then numbering the things they plundered from them—particularly works of art—would hardly seem out of the realm of possibility.
I cut my audio with Tracy so only Julian could hear me. “What the hell do we do?”
“Panic, for starters,” replied Julian.
“Did you get the numbers?”
“Nine, one, five, two.”
“Do you think it’s a grease pen?” I asked.
“That or charcoal.”
Not that it really made a difference. It wasn’t as if they were selling art supplies in the hotel gift shop.
I kept staring at my screen, Tracy’s POV. The Monet was wrapped up and back in the portfolio case. Brunetti was on his phone. Laszlo was on hers. She was out of earshot for Tracy, but not Julian. We still had the tap on her cell. He was wired in.
“She’s letting her driver know that she’s coming down,” he said in my ear. “Sounds like it’s the same agent who first came to the room.”
That made sense. We knew that someone would be driving her. Now we knew who.
As for where they’d be heading, it had been all mapped out in advance. Laszlo was first stopping at Axion Partners on the grounds of Kennedy Airport, a top-of-the-line air-freight packager used by museums and the highest of high-end collectors. They were the most respected in the industry. More important, they were the most discreet. Because they were headquartered in Brussels, they had no legal obligation to report anything they packaged to the IRS or any other US legal authority, so long as it wasn’t drugs or weapons.
I was back to my original question to Julian. “So what the hell do you want to do?” The only difference being that we’d both had a minute to think about it.
Sometimes a minute is nothing more than sixty quick seconds ticking by. Other times, it can feel like a lifetime.
In Julian’s case, his lifetime had been spent never letting a problem get the better of him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
