Lost Art Assignment (3 page)

“And that's it?”

“That, and this,” Morgan said. “Break the deal, any part of it, and I'll find you. After that, you won't be pretty.”

Nicole walked over to Morgan, staring deep into his eyes. “You've never beaten a woman in your life. I can see it in there. But I won't make you have to break your record. Now, if I'm to be on a plane in two hours, I suppose I must
be going.”

“Your things?” Felicity asked.

“The room is his, not mine, and I travel light. Au revoir, mes amis.”

When the door clicked shut behind Nicole, Morgan said “I'll bet you've got a plan for recovering the lost paintings, huh?”

“Well, sure and I've got a hunch as to how we can locate them. But first, I think we ought to wake up the boy and take him home, along with this painting and a complete report.”

Felicity watched Gerard Cartellone's hands trembling slightly as he lifted his newly returned Robert Bechtle oil by its plain walnut frame, hanging it in its own place of prominence beside two others by the same artist. He took one step back and ran a rough hand through thinning gray hair.

“Such sharpness, such practiced simplicity,” Cartellone said quietly. “How could I have missed that forgery?”

“Be fair, Mister Cartellone,” Felicity began.

“And again, will you please call me Gerry?” he asked over his shoulder, while he removed the next two paintings from the wall.

“All right, Gerry,” Felicity said. “But of all painters, the realists are the easiest to copy. Look at those two fakes you just took down. It's a lot harder to see the style in their exact realism.”

“You'd have spotted it before long,” Morgan said, scanning the art lining the room. Track lighting highlighted each work on the two long walls. A bar stood at the room's near end, opposite the stereo delivering Brahms at moderate volume. “We're just lucky you invited us down here socially. Felicity knew because it's her business. If we found out about the switch after the last one your boy was going to take, we'd have been stuck.”

“You know, it's funny,” Cartellone said, although his face said just the opposite. “I started collecting art in the
late seventies, when the first restaurant started making money. Most of these were brand new when I bought them. Not worth much, but I saw something in this stuff, you know? No philosophy, no point of view. You just get the picture clear and sharp so you can make up your own mind.” He paused a moment to sip from his scotch.

“Then Florence died giving me Tommy. Ain't it funny how everything can be going great in your life and one thing can make it all empty? After that all I had was that boy, and these paintings. He grew. The business grew. This collection grew, and grew in value.”

“You raised him alone, right?” Morgan asked. “I mean, you did it all by yourself. And ran a string of Italian restaurants. And put him through school. And he pays you back by taking what you love the most.” Felicity shot him a devastating look, but Cartellone's face didn't change.

“It would seem that I've lost him too, Mister Stark. Maybe even my fault, I don't know. But I've lost him. I can't stand another loss.” Cartellone's watery eyes suddenly pinned Felicity in place. “Can you get my two missing paintings back?” He pointed to the fakes, now on the floor, leaning against the wall. A boy riding a bicycle. A girl walking on a city street. Felicity opened her mouth to speak, but he anticipated her. “I know, I know. It'll cost me, right? Well, I don't care, and I don't care how much. I want what's mine. Can you make the set whole?”

“We can't promise to find those things,” Morgan said, hands in pockets.

“But you'll get our very best effort, you will,” Felicity added. “Don't you be worrying, okay? We'll give you a report in a couple of weeks.”

Rolling down Cartellone's lengthy driveway, Felicity
turned to stare for a moment at the extensive manor house the restaurateur had purchased from some actor who could no longer afford its upkeep. Cheap houses didn't exist in Bel Air, but even in such elite company, this particular rambling Spanish structure stood out.

“Started out in New York, like me,” Morgan commented. “Came up from nothing in the world's toughest city. Sure would hate to disappoint him.”

“Me too,” Felicity said. She steered her Corvette ZR-1 past The San Diego Freeway, preferring to take The Pacific Coast Highway down along the ocean to their offices in Manhattan Beach. “I'm glad I've got company this week. Raoul might have an idea how we can track those paintings. Maybe, if we can locate them, I can get in and steal them back.”

“Mind if I come up to your apartment for a couple minutes?” Morgan asked. “I don't want to intrude, but I'm in no mood to hang out in the office. That kid, stealing from his own father like that. He doesn't know what it's like to not have a father.”

“Or to see him killed in front of you,” Felicity added. “I can't imagine what it'd be like to be raised in this splendor. Nothing like rural Ireland.”

Felicity punched in her cipher lock's combination and her penthouse's door swung open. The aroma of blackened butter hooked her petite nose. She stepped in, her feet sinking into her deep, rose-colored carpet. Morgan dropped into his favorite overstuffed chair while Felicity skipped across her sparsely furnished sunken living room, then up the three steps to her small galley kitchen.

The man in front of her stove was handsome in a classical way, with a long aquiline nose and thin expressive
lips. He was tall and quite thin, his brown hair carefully styled, his suit the pinnacle of fashion, even with an apron over it.

“Raoul, just what are you doing?” Felicity asked, stepping up behind him, delivering a kiss on his neck.

“I told the security man downstairs to signal me when you came in,” Raoul answered in a strong French accent. “I knew Morgan was with you, and, as it is getting late in the day, I thought a couple of omelets might be in order.”

“He knows you couldn't cook your way out of a paper bag,” Morgan shouted from the living room.

“That is the worst mixed metaphor I've ever heard,” Felicity said with a grin. “Now get to the table.”

The table stood on a marble mezzanine at the back of the living room, against the glass wall. Actually, the wall was a series of glass panels running from floor to ceiling. Facing a huge orange sun settling into the Pacific Ocean, the three old friends enjoyed large mugs of strong coffee with fat cheese omelets, and discussed the day's events.

“I knew as soon as we made that commitment that we'd live to regret it,” Felicity said at the end of her tale. “I hate to say it, but we may well end up running through every East Coast art fence alive to locate the missing paintings.”

“My darling,” Raoul began, around a mouthful of omelet, “your beauty is unmatched and your form would shame de Milo's Venus, but I must admit I had more reasons to come to The States from Paris.”

“What?” Morgan gathered an errant mushroom onto his fork. “Don't even smugglers ever just take a vacation? What's the world coming to?”

“Me dear, we been friends and more than friends for too many years to be loading me with all this flattery now,” Felicity fired back, sipping her coffee. “I know you're just
taking advantage of me bed and board while you make business contacts.”

“Mmmm. Especially your bed,” Raoul said into his plate. “I just wanted you to know that I'm still in contact with the people in that business and, truth to tell, there might not be too many fences for you to sift through on the East Coast. There's been a recent shake-up in the New York underworld, one of those periodic reorganizations. You know I sometimes deal in art myself.”

“So, you saying you know where we should look?” Morgan asked, emptying his cup and handing it to Felicity. She just stared at him. “I mean, you know a black, New York dealer who handles hot paintings?”

“You'll never get that information out of me, mon ami,” Raoul said, quite straight faced. “But this charming young lady might very well get me to talk before daylight.”

“Nice car,” Paul said. He had just left Felicity's New York City apartment with her and Morgan. After years as a bodyguard for hire and months as head of courier services for Stark and O'Brien's security and risk management firm, nothing seemed to surprise him. The fact that Felicity owned an apartment in New York that was identical in layout and decor to her home in Manhattan Beach, California, prompted no comment. Now, facing a brand new BMW 650i convertible in her parking space he merely remarked “Nice car.” Morgan wasn't so subdued.

“Jeez, Red, you just can't walk past anything on the lot if it'll do a hundred fifty miles an hour, can you?”

“Every girl needs a hobby,” she said, settling comfortably into the driver's seat's emerald green upholstery and lowering the top. “You like to reload your own bullets, and hunt. I collect sports cars.”

“Yeah, and every one a special order,” Morgan said as she pulled into Fifth Avenue traffic. “I don't think they come this way, with the interior matching your eyes. Your own I mean, not those stupid contact lenses. Now, you sure this De Camp Gallery is the place?”

“Well, Raoul named it as a place to find hot paintings,” Felicity answered. “The owner and manager is black. The place's reputation is a little shaky, though nothing's been proven. Course, we can't be sure until I've been inside. Why do you think I'm wearing this wig, the contacts and a
chinchilla wrap?”

They faced typically ridiculous traffic on Fifth Avenue that morning, four lanes of steel beasts clawing and snapping at each other, jockeying for position between traffic lights. Unnecessary horns blared as pedestrians walked calmly through the tangle of cars with an instinctive sense of velocity and momentum New Yorkers seem to acquire at birth.

Morgan sensed a tension in those streets that he found enervating, unlike Los Angeles' artificial “laid back” feeling. True, New York drivers blew their horns and rolled down their windows to shout at one another, but they didn't go around shooting at each other on the Expressway, did they? That was more of a West Coast thing.

A gentle breeze coasted in from the Hudson River with its attendant odor. A fireball sun tried to brighten everyone's spirits, but it had to fight through a dense haze. In this way, Morgan's native New York tried to keep up with smog bound Los Angeles.

Felicity pulled over and double parked in front of a bus stop. Her destination sat nestled between a large furrier and a curio shop. Morgan got out of the passenger's side and helped Paul climb out of the cramped back seat. Paul walked around to open Felicity's door. Morgan eased himself behind the wheel, adjusting the seat and mirrors for his much larger frame.

“You just be careful with my baby,” Felicity called over her shoulder. “That's a piece of art you're driving now.” Then Morgan watched his friends enter the art gallery before he pulled back into traffic, planning to circle the block until they came out.

He was driving when he met Felicity, he remembered, but nothing so luxurious. He was escaping from a
mercenary job gone sour in Belize, driving a stolen army Jeep. He had been moving due north, planning to hide in Mexico, but something had guided him to the girl. It took him a while to understand how an Irish-born jewel thief got stranded in the Central American jungle. He had been attracted to the green eyed beauty then, but of course that had worked out. By the time they realized they couldn't be lovers they had become fast friends, saved each other's lives, and finally destroyed the man who was responsible for her being kidnapped and dropped in the jungle. The same force that initially drew him to her made them closer than siblings. He worried that something might now be destroying that closeness.

Felicity followed Paul down the four steps leading to the gallery entrance. Paul opened the door, standing rigidly straight as she walked in. She had chosen Paul to accompany her for a reason. Tall and stiff, with ice blue eyes and a light brown crew cut, in his standard inexpensive blue suit, he looked like a bodyguard. All part of the image.

The room was wide, but not very deep, brightly lighted and painted in a nondescript matte shade. Felicity found herself facing a blonde secretary who somehow looked incomplete. Perhaps it was the lack of chewing gum in her mouth.

“May I help you?”

“You may,” Felicity said, in an accent from somewhere just west of Martha's Vineyard. “I'm looking for a nice painting for my husband. I understand Mister De Camp might be able to help me choose.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Of course not.” Felicity scanned the walls as she spoke.
“My husband couldn't know I was coming, could he? I certainly couldn't have his secretary making an appointment for me.” Felicity's face made it clear she would not consider making such a telephone call herself. Paul stood with hands loose and open in front of him, his eyes on the door they had entered and two others visible at the ends of the room.

Felicity stepped slowly left to right, casting her professional eye over the works on display. Most of them represented new and unknown artists. She divided them roughly into three groups. The minimalists were well represented, all color and shape and form, an easy sale to less knowledgeable customers. For more adventurous buyers, a group of paintings done on shaped canvas was on display.

At one end of the wide room hung an undistinguished group of realist paintings. Felicity thought it all looked like mass produced, commercial work, the type found hanging at inexpensive hotels. She saw nothing to interest a knowledgeable collector.

“Good morning, Madame.” The words boomed behind Felicity and she turned to face their source, feigning surprise at his race. “I am Carlton De Camp.” He was a big impressive man, startlingly handsome, with James Earl Jones' voice. A crinkly beard counterbalanced his bald head. He had deep penetrating eyes and a downright predatory smile.