A Glancing Light (A Chris Norgren Mystery) (16 page)

"—but I don't like coincidences. They can upset finely laid plans, as can the meddling of the most well-intentioned of people. I hope they will not continue."

"Well, I'll certainly avoid all coincidences in the future." Not much of a retort, but I never seemed to be at my best with Antuono, who continued to demonstrate his remarkable knack for nettling me. My chief consolation was that it seemed to work both ways.

"I'm relieved to hear it. You're returning to the city center?"

I nodded. "To my hotel. I have a meeting later this afternoon with Amedeo Di Vecchio at the Pinacoteca." I thought I'd better let him know ahead of time, in case another "critical moment" occurred.

"Would you like a ride?" he asked unexpectedly, and, without waiting for my reply, slid aside to make room.

I almost turned him down, but I had no idea where the nearest taxi stand was, and I wasn't quite up to walking the couple of miles into town yet. Besides, I was naturally curious to see where further conversation with him might lead. Resolving not to let him irritate me, I got in. The interior smelled faintly of cloves, as had Antuono himself the other day, now that I thought about it.

Although he might smell the same, however, he didn't look the same, or even seem like the same person. It was amazing what a well-tailored uniform could do. Now his 135 pounds or so looked spare, not scrawny. His arid, whispery voice no longer seemed beaten-down and querulous, but self- assured and reserved, even commanding.

"Alberto? " he murmured to the carabiniere who had been standing at attention and now managed to stiffen even more alertly in preparation for the colonel's next words.

There were no words. Antuono merely nodded his head faintly toward the open door. The carabiniere closed it. Antuono tipped his head minutely toward the driver's seat. The carabiniere quickly trotted around the back of the car, got behind the wheel, and started the engine.

This was fascinating. Obviously, Antuono had considerable cachet, at least with the rank and file. During the recovery of the two pictures, he had remained outside, like a soldier-king, while his minions carried out the operation. And just now the carabiniere had waited, practically quivering, for his command, then jerked like a mechanical soldier at his delicate gestures. What was more, Antuono was very clearly used to this treatment. Yet the higher-ups had assigned him to a disgraceful mole-burrow of an office—an old storage area, as he himself had said—and left him to spend his time riffling through the papers in his precious cardboard boxes like Silas Marner with his hoard. And Antuono seemed quite used to
that
, too. Content with it, in fact. Suited to it.

So who was he, really? How much weight did he carry? Or was I making too much of what were simply the concomitants of rank? When colonels spoke, corporals jumped. And when generals decided, colonels concurred. The carabinieri were, after all, not a civilian police force but a military body. Most of the corps still lived in barracks.

Antuono had wedged himself up against the far side of the car and sat holding on to the strap above the door, his doleful, droop-nosed profile backlit by the window, his tunic buttoned across his narrow chest. He looked out the window and sighed, his mind somewhere else. For someone who had just executed the recovery of two stolen, reasonably valuable paintings, his spirits hadn't been perceptibly raised.

"Congratulations, Colonel," I said as the car slipped out into the traffic. I was determined to get us on a better footing.

"On?" he said absently, still looking out the window.

"Retrieving the Carrá and the Morandi."

He gave a deprecatory shrug. "
Pittura Metafisica
."

I understood his feelings. It was hardly the same thing as finding, say, a couple of missing Raphaels. Another bit of data about Antuono registered. He knew something about art, which isn't necessarily true of art cops: enough to know the term
Pittura Metafisica
in the first place, and enough to have an opinion on its merit. I also realized he hadn't even bothered going into the building to see the pictures they'd retrieved. That seemed odd,
Pittura Metafisica
or not.

"In any case," he said, "locating them was little more than luck."

"But your men walked in knowing what they were looking for. How did they know where to find them?"

"In the usual way," he said, covering a yawn as he watched the traffic. "An informant. A dealer from Ferrara, new in the area. "

"Filippo Croce?"

He kept looking out the window, but I saw his eyelids whirr briefly. "You know Filippo Croce?"

"I just met him yesterday. At Clara Gozzi's house. "

 
"I see. Yesterday."

One more mark in Antuono's mental black book. Christopher Norgren, perpetrator of unlikely coincidences. Still, I had to admit to myself that I did seem to be in the thick of things. If I were Antuono, maybe I'd have been wondering about me, too.

"And just why did you assume it was to this gentleman I referred?" he asked.

"Well, he's a dealer from Ferrara, and he mentioned being new, so I just, uh, took a stab."

"Sheer coincidence."

"That and the fact that I didn't trust the guy."

He turned to regard me keenly. "And why not?"

"For one thing, he was pushing Clara to buy some paintings against her better judgment."

"And trustworthy dealers do not do this?"

"No, they don't. And for another—" But how could I tell the Eagle of Lombardy that my suspicions had been aroused by his pointy-toed shoes and polka-dot bow tie? "It's hard to say, Colonel. There was just something that didn't seem right."

"You think not? And yet his information was reliable, as you saw for yourself."

"How did
he
know about the paintings?"

"On that, he provided great detail. He was seated near two men talking in a bar on the Piazza Garibaldi in Parma. He heard them mention the name of Morandi. As an art dealer who had heard about the theft from Cosenza, he was naturally curious and listened more closely. They began whispering. He tipped his head closer still. And eventually he heard them say `Trasporti Salvatorelli' and 'Lot 70.' Thinking it might be important, he wrote it down. He also tried to see the speakers, but they were seated behind him and he was unable to do this. Afterward, he came immediately to us with the information. Do you see anything untrustworthy in that?"

I was flabbergasted. I hadn't expected any substantive answer at all to my question, let alone this torrent of particulars. Why all the information? Was he testing me to see how much I knew about this kind of thing? As it happened, this was a quiz I thought I could pass; I knew, or thought I knew, most of the usual ways art thieves conducted their business.

"He'll get a reward, won't he?" I asked.

"Certainly. Twenty million lire has been offered, and signor Croce has expressed interest."

Twenty million lire. Roughly thirteen thousand dollars. Not quite the same league as the reward for missing Rubenseses. That was a relief anyway, an indication that some things were still right in the world.

"And you find something improper in this?" he prompted.

"Colonel, I'm sure it's occurred to you that his story is a little pat. I mean, he just happens to be in a bar where he just happens to overhear the name of an artist that not one person in ten thousand would recognize, coupled with a few words that pinpoint an exact location. . . . Doesn't it strike you as too much of a—"

"Coincidence?" Antuono said with the most meager of smiles. Not playful, exactly. Not even chaffing. But all the same a smile.

What do you know, I thought. Does a sense of humor lurk in there somewhere?

"And your conclusion?" he asked, turning again to the window. We were now on the trafficky Via Mazzina, swinging around one of the half-a-dozen grandiose gates on the perimeter of the Old City; all that was left of the thirteenth- century city walls.

"My conclusion is that there never were any talkative, careless thieves—they were careful enough to be unseen, you notice—in any bar, and that Croce either stole the paintings himself or he's in league with the people who did. He comes to you with this story, which was probably part of the plan from the beginning, and he and his friends collect the reward. Croce gets commended as a public-spirited citizen, winds up a lot richer, and nobody at all gets arrested or even accused. My conclusion is it's a scam, a hoax."

This succinct description of a hoary and often-used scheme was received
^-
in moody silence, with Antuono hanging on to the strap and staring out the window, nodding rhythmically as I spoke. When we stopped at a traffic light, he swung around to look at me again with an expression that told me I 'd passed the test; I wasn't quite the naive academician he'd supposed me to be on first acquaintance. I got the impression it didn't make him like me any more.

"Of course it's a hoax," he said abruptly. "It's more of a hoax than you realize. Would you like to know what I think our friend signor Croce is up to?"

I said I would.

"I think these two paintings, the Carrà and the Morandi, are not in themselves significant; I think they function as an advertisement."

Antuono's accent, although slight, clouded his pronunciation enough to make me think I'd misheard him. "Did you say an advertisement?"

He nodded. "I think in this way he sends a message to the underworld here."

"I'm afraid I don't get it. What message?"

"The same message that you seemed to find in his actions."

"That he's a crook?"

"Exactly. It's a subtle way of telling those who know about such things that he is approachable in matters of this kind; that he can deal skillfully with the authorities without implicating others; that for a reasonable consideration he might help in disposing of other missing artworks; that he is—"

"Bent."

"
Eccoti
, bent," Antuono agreed with another pale smile— two inside of five minutes! "My belief is that he hopes that those behind the robberies of two years ago will approach him to make contact with us or perhaps with the insurance company regarding the return—the profitable return, to be sure—of the paintings. I tell you frankly,
dottore
," he said resolutely, "I hope in my heart it works. I would like to have those paintings back."

"But how could he do that? If he comes to you again, you'll
know
he's a crook."

"Of course we'll know. We already know." He snorted. "Two men in a bar! So? Next time he'll come up with another story. He'll tell us someone called him anonymously on the telephone, or someone—also anonymous—tried to sell him one of the paintings and the selfless, virtuous signor Croce wormed the location out of him and ran straight to us with it. He will not be too selfless to accept the reward, however."

He hunched his bony shoulders. "So what? How could we prove anything? But we would have the paintings; that's the important thing. The paintings would be preserved."

And to hell with finding the thieves, with prosecuting Croce himself, with worrying about the millions that the insurance company would shell out. Forget about catching the thugs who broke Max's legs, or punishing the murderers of Paolo Salvatorelli and old Giampietro the watchman. The paintings were the only thing that mattered, that was Antuono's philosophy.

Tony Whitehead has told me many times that I'm a rotten negotiator (it's true) because I'm no good at hiding my feelings. My face gives me away. As it apparently did now.

"You don't agree?" Antuono asked with a tinge of acid. "You think I look at this in the wrong way?"

"No, it's just that . . . Well, sure, the paintings are important, but does that mean we just write off the human costs? That we hand these creeps their ransoms, collect the paintings, and call it square? Until next time, when we play the same game all over again?"
 

It was more than I'd meant to say. Antuono had defended his position cogently enough in his office the other day, and who was I to quarrel with him? Especially when I had no alternative to offer.

He waited sourly for me to finish. "Do you happen to know what the recovery rate is for stolen art in America?" he asked.

"About ten percent."

"That's correct. Interpol's rate, too, is ten percent. France does better: almost thirty percent. Do you know what our rate is?"

"More than thirty percent or you wouldn't be asking me. "

"Almost
fifty
percent. Since 1970 our unit has recovered 120,000 works of art-120,000! Italy recovers more stolen art than any other country in the world."

"Maybe that's because it has more stolen art to recover," I said. "What other country even
has
120,000 stolen works of art?"

Why was I being contentious? Possibly because I was still smarting from his cavalier treatment of me in his office on Wednesday. Or maybe I'd never forgiven him for not being the imposing Eagle of Lombardy I'd expected (although he was doing a lot better today). Or—most likely—because I kept seeing Max, lying mustache less and wax-fleshed with pain in the clutch of that monster-contraption, and I wanted somebody to pay for putting him there. As far as that goes, I wouldn't have minded seeing someone called to account for my own lumps and bruises. Antuono responded with surprising moderation. "You're right," he said with a sigh. "It's a hopeless task. You know what we say here? We say: `Come and see the wonderful art treasures of Italy—only don't wait; they might not be here next month.' " He sighed again, sagged against the seat, and went back to gazing out the window.

And suddenly, uniform or no uniform, Antuono was Antuono again. Tired, crabby, defeated. Scrawny, not spare. The Turkey Buzzard of Lombardy. I was sorry for what I'd said.

"Colonel, I apologize. I don't know what I'm quarreling with you about. Your record speaks for itself."

He glanced quickly at me to see if I'd intended a double meaning, which I hadn't. "You know, Dr. Norgren," he said slowly, "it's not that I wouldn't like very much to put my hands on those responsible. It's only that we have learned— learned in the hardest possible way—to go about it in our own manner."