Midnight Angels (28 page)

“At the moment, you’re not on any police department’s radar, and even if you did catch the eye of an enterprising detective, he would have little in the way of proof to question you, let alone hold you in custody,” Edwards said with a degree of assurance. “As to the Immortals, Kate will remain their main target. If they wish to retrieve the Angels, they won’t waste time chasing after you. It is Kate they will need to confront.”

“I’ve never held a gun,” Marco said, his voice lower, knowing what he wanted to do, yet fearful of the consequences of such a decision.

“Not everyone is able to kill,” Edwards said quietly.

“How much danger is Kate in?” Marco asked.

“More than you could imagine.”

“Then what kind of a friend would I be if I left her now?” Marco said.

“Not much of one,” Edwards said. “But at least you would be cut clear from a situation not of your doing, free to go about your studies, a career, a life.”

“I’m afraid it’s not going to be that simple to be rid of me,” Marco said, determined. “I’ll stay by her side and do whatever I can to keep her safe.”

Edwards listened and nodded, staring down at the dark, mangled stones by his feet, his hands thrust deep inside the pockets of his khakis. “One more question, then,” he said. “This one more out of curiosity than anything else.”

Marco wiped the sweat from his brow with the right sleeve of his blue shirt and looked over at Edwards. “I doubt it can be any more difficult to answer than all the others,” he said.

“Do you ever plan to tell Kate how you feel about her?” Edwards asked. “Or will you simply wait until she has it figured out on her own?”

“No, sir, I will not tell her,” Marco replied with a slight smile. “I’m afraid the limits of my bravery only extend so far.”

Edwards grinned. “We are all cowards when it comes to women,” he said.

“Do I tell Kate that we’ve met?” Marco asked.

“Not just yet,” Edwards said. “So far I’ve managed to keep my presence unnoticed, and I would like that to continue for at least another day, maybe two. It makes it easier to accomplish what I need to get done.”

“And I assume you’re aware the Angels are missing once again,” Marco said, curious as to what reaction, if any, the statement would illicit from the professor.

“It’s a small city and an even smaller profession,” Edwards said. “Word travels very quickly in our circle. But I have faith in both you and Kate. You uncovered them once. You’ll do it again.”

Marco walked to the other side of the narrow alleyway and reached for his bicycle. He sat on the seat and curved his feet around the pedals. He glanced up at the morning sky, the sun slowly making its way above the rooftops to bring with it a warm day. “Is there anything else, sir?” he asked.

Edwards shook his head. “A new bike wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” he said. “Has anyone mentioned that to you before?”

Marco lifted the kickstand and started to peddle down the rocky street. “Only everyone I meet, sir,” he said, before disappearing down the alley and around a bend.

A thick wooden door behind Edwards swung open and Russell Cody stepped out, handing the professor a fresh cup of coffee. “What’s the verdict?” he asked.

“He cares for her,” Edwards said. “And the affection is real. He’s not savvy enough to fake it.”

“Can he handle himself?”

“No, but it won’t be due to any lack of courage,” Edwards said. “He shouldn’t get in our way, if that’s what you mean.”

“But what if he does?” Russell asked. “What if he manages to do something that puts either Kate or someone else from our crew deeper into danger?”

Edwards sipped his coffee. “Then get him out of the way,” he said. “Fast.”

CHAPTER
4

C
LARE JOHNSON SAT AT A CIRCULAR TABLE NEAR THE BAR IN A
small room off the lobby of the Hotel Excelsior and sipped a green apple martini. She smiled when she saw Antonio Rumore enter from a side door, catch her eye, and walk toward her table. He nodded at the bartender as he approached, rested his hands on the back of the chair across from her and returned the smile.

“Now I
know
there was a theft,” he said, “because you’re in town.”

“I ordered you a double Fernet on the rocks,” Clare said. “And they serve lunch and snacks in case you came in hungry.”

Rumore sat and waited as a waiter in a white jacket and black bow tie rested a thick glass filled halfway with the harsh-tasting digestive he had been drinking since he was a small boy sitting across the table from his father. He lifted the glass, raised a half toast to Clare, and took a long swallow of the cold Fernet, a drink invented by monks during the Renaissance and said to be favored by both Michelangelo and Da Vinci, making the potion one of the few pleasures in life enjoyed by both men. “Are you here on a case?” he asked.

“You go first,” Clare said. “Things must be very quiet in Rome for you to take the time to come up north, and sniff out a rumored robbery—and that tells me you have a bit more information about what went on than I do.”

“Who are you working for this time, Clare?” Rumore asked. “And don’t hand me your insurance card. Who’s your partner in this?”

“Frankly, I’d like it to be you,” she said. “I can’t do what I want to do on my own, but with your help, I might be able to get there.”

“And what is it you want to do?”

“Bring down the Raven,” Clare said. “Not his organization. That’s spread out too thick and too wide for any one job to accomplish. I’m talking about him personally. In handcuffs or on a slab, it makes no difference to me.”

“You’ve done business with him in the recent past and both of you walked away with quite a tidy profit from each pairing,” Rumore said. “That job in Lisbon three years back alone brought in fifty million euros apiece, and that comes on top of your insurance retrieval commission. Now, I don’t mean to sound cynical, but why would you want to turn your back on such a lucrative situation?”

“It’s personal,” she said. “Would it be okay with you if we left it at that?”

“No, Clare, it wouldn’t,” Rumore said. “If I have to trust you, I need to believe you. And right now, I don’t.”

Clare finished her drink and sat back. She was wearing a sleek black pantsuit with a small string of pearls wrapped around her thin neck. Her eyes sparkled under the twinkling lights of the barroom and she stared down at her hands, folded in front of her as if she were a schoolgirl. “I was engaged to be married about eight years ago,” she said. “He worked for an art house out of London. Handsome, sweet, crazy mad over me.”

“
That
I believe,” Rumore said.

Clare smiled. “My father would have liked him, even though he might have wondered how one man could go through life being so honest.”

“And your father would have despised the Raven,” Rumore said. “Your father was the best of the cat burglars, but he treated the profession and the works he stole with respect, and he understood the boundaries. He would not have been happy to see you do business with a man without limits.”

“I had my reasons,” she said, “and believe me, if Pops were still alive and I had made him aware of the entire story, he would have happily embraced my plan. Then again, if Pops had been alive, then maybe Glen would be, too.”

“In what way was he connected to the Raven?”

“Not in any way,” Clare said. “He was aware of him, of course, as is anyone who works in the high-end galleries, and he knew to be wary, but that’s the extent of their relationship.”

“Did he know about you and your connections to him?” Rumore asked.

Clare slowly shook her head. “I was involved with the Raven a long time ago,” she said. “Sometimes it seems so far in the past I can barely remember it, but it’s there and it has come to haunt me to this very day. I fit all the clichés—young, naive, swept up by his looks, his charm—and by the time I realized what kind of man he truly was, well, the bed had already been made. But as honest as I had been with Glen, it was one part of my life I felt too ashamed to share. I thought he would end up hating me for it.”

“But then the Raven decided to hit Glen’s gallery,” Rumore said, trying to piece the scenario together and make it a bit easier on Clare, “and you tried to talk him out of it.”

“And you can imagine how far that got me,” she said. “Instead, he came up with an alternative plan, one that would guarantee both my involvement and Glen’s safety, and I went along with it.”

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing,” Clare said. “The Raven’s plan went exactly as he plotted it out, from the break-in to the sale of the stolen pieces. It was executed to the letter—there weren’t any prints left behind and not a single clue that could be traced back to anyone involved in the heist, myself included.”

“But the Raven likes to have a cover on
all
his tracks,” Rumore said. “It helps to limit his risk involvement. He wouldn’t see you as a threat, since you were a participant in his scheme.”

“And Glen wasn’t,” Clare said, her eyes misty, her hands resting flat on the surface of the table. “The Raven waited a few weeks before making his move. I was back in the States, working with the Art Squad in Boston, and Glen was busy prepping a new exhibit, both of us working long hours, as usual, putting a big dent on our cell phone minutes.”

“How?”

“He was on his way home the day before the official opening,” Clare said. “It was so late that it was closer to daylight than night. He was just about half a block from his apartment, walking on an empty street, when a car jumped the curb and ran him down.”

“Did you get all this from the police report?” Rumore asked.

Clare shook her head and wiped at her eyes. “I didn’t have to see any
police report,” she said. “The Raven called my cell and gave me all the details I needed. He wanted to give me enough of a warning so I wouldn’t miss Glen’s funeral.”

Rumore caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for two more drinks. They both sat in silence as they waited for the liquor to arrive along with two long glasses of flat mineral water and a small bowl of assorted nuts. “Yet with all that, you continued to do business with the Raven,” he said, “to this very day. Now unless he’s holding something over your head I’m not aware of, that wouldn’t appear to me to be the reaction of a grieved lover.”

“You’re not one for a warm bedside manner,” Clare said, taken aback by his harsh tone.

“I’m a detective,” Rumore said, “not a doctor. I didn’t come here to offer comfort. I’m here to find out what you wanted and why.”

“I knew I was going to get him for what he did to Glen,” she said, her voice now stripped of all emotion, cold and matter-of-fact. “I knew it the minute I heard his voice over the phone. But I also knew he would expect it and be primed for any suspicious move I might make. So, instead I brushed Glen off as just another in a line of lovers long forgotten, and continued to work my deals with the Raven whenever the opportunity presented itself. I needed to let the time pass, the memory fade, the trust build. I needed to let the perfect moment arrive.”

“And that moment is now?” Rumore asked.

“Yes,” Clare said. “I can’t think of a better time or a more convenient place. The setup is perfect and all the players are lined up in their proper order. All I was missing was a cop, and then, lo and behold, you showed up, the final piece to my elaborate little puzzle.”

“I admire your determination, even though I’m still not totally sold as to your true motive,” Rumore said. “Then again, you must forgive me my suspicious nature, but it comes with being born a southern Italian. So tell me, what makes you think this is the perfect time to bring the Raven’s run to an end?”

“I’ve agreed to help him retrieve and remove the Midnight Angels,” Clare said. “He may not completely trust me—he’s no better than you in that department—but he feels he needs me because my international contacts offer him the cleanest way to move the Angels once they’re out in the marketplace and guarantee him his biggest return.”

“That’s assuming the two of you will be the ones who end up in possession of the Angels,” Rumore said.

“I don’t want him to end up with the Angels,” Clare said. “And he won’t, especially if I have you working on one end and the Vittoria Society fighting him on the other. Toss in a handful of those freelance art hunters roaming through the city, and the odds in his favor dwindle considerably.”

“His group is not one that can be dismissed lightly,” Rumore said. “They may not leave behind any prints or clues, but they’re never shy about blood.”

“I don’t dismiss them,” she said, “though I am counting on the Society to contribute their share to the body count, and at the very least keep the Immortals on their guard. Meanwhile, the Raven will be busy tracking the girl and her young friend. If he is indeed going to end up in possession of the Angels, then she will be the one who leads him to them.”

“What do you know about her?” Rumore asked.

“Not much more than what you’ve most likely already dug up,” Clare said. “I just wouldn’t be as quick as some to place her name in the inexperienced and naive category. Just because she hasn’t been in this type of situation before doesn’t preclude her from being very adept at handling it.”

Rumore finished off his drink and sat back, giving the ornate room a quick glance. He noticed a young couple off to the side, clasping hands, sharing a quiet moment, and a middle-aged man, portly, balding, and alone, contentedly working his way through what was no doubt an expensive bottle of Montepulciano, a red glow to his cheeks and a smile on his face. Rumore always thought of Florence as the perfect city in which to be a tourist. Due to its size and the attitude of its residents, it lacked the frenzied pace of cities like New York or Paris, allowing a visitor a relaxed chance to devour all that the town had to offer—from its vast trove of Renaissance works to the finest in current fashion to the best in Tuscan cuisine. It was also a small city, and therefore easy to manage by foot, a fact he always relished after spending far too many days and nights caught in the congestion and madness of Rome. He watched as a tall, long-haired young man in a suit well past its prime sat behind a large piano near the entrance to the room and began to play the first few bars of an old Frank Sinatra song long loved by Italians, “Strangers in the Night.”