The Looters (30 page)

Noting the similarity of the crime to the destruction of Lipton’s gallery-mansion, the FBI’s Madrid office had sent a heads-up to the London office.

Nunes had already returned back to New York when the London agent advised him about the incident. After convincing his superior that he should investigate the Spanish crime scene personally, Nunes flew to Madrid. The following morning he arrived in Malaga in the company of Homer Clyde, a Spanish-speaking FBI agent from the Madrid embassy.

“No human remains were found in the debris?” Nunes asked.

The question was intended for the Malaga police captain but was addressed in English to Clyde, who translated it.

“He says no. Also, the police haven’t been able to get a make on who had been occupying the villa before it was attacked. It was rented three months ago through a leasing agency by a Panamanian corporation. There’s still a chance that some prints will be found, but none of the neighbors knew the occupants. A woman walking on the beach saw the man who fired the rocket launcher, but other than ‘a big man in dark clothes’ she gave no description of him. She ran when she saw the explosion.”

“Smart woman. So what we have here,” Nunes muttered, more to himself, “is the same type of weapon used in London, another building burned, no one can ID the perp, another connection to antiquities—”

“Yes, the local police are excited about the hoard found in the boathouse. A little scorched, but intact. They believe it came from an illegal treasure hunt in the bay, a sunken galleon from the days when Spain ruled the seven seas. A fishing boat had been observed off the coast here for the last couple of weeks. The police think the boat brought up the antiquities. They suspect there was a quarrel over dividing up the contraband. What do you think?”

Nunes walked along, pursing his lips before he answered. “It’s more complicated than that. This wasn’t a squabble over what was in the boathouse. The stuff had been abandoned. Hell, it barely survived the attack. Obviously, the shooter didn’t even want the items. Killing was more important to him than the antiquities. Nothing was taken from the gallery in London, either.”

“What’s the motive?”

“The two incidents are hits, pure and simple. He was after people. The antiquities were just a coincidence when the shooting started. At this point, we know who some of the targeted people were. Other than the Dupre woman and whoever was present for the fireworks here, they’re dead. But we still don’t know who’s pulling the trigger, why, or who’s next.”

“That leaves a couple universal motives: greed and/or revenge.”

Captain Ramirez asked a question, which Clyde translated. “He wants to know if you’re certain that this crime and the one in London are connected.”

“Absolutely. You not only have the same weapon and modus operandi with a connection to antiquities, but the clincher is the woman.”

Earlier when the Spanish officer mentioned that a taxi driver had dropped off an English or American woman in the area hours before the attack, Nunes asked the police to check all nearby hotels. Not only had an American woman and man stayed at a local hotel, but their rental car, picked up in Calais, France, and their luggage were still at the hotel also. The man couldn’t be identified, but the car had been rented under the name of Madison Dupre.

“The fact that Dupre never returned to her hotel again to get her things raises several possibilities. She may have been kidnapped by the shooter, be on the run from him, or, worst-case scenario, she’s dead and we just haven’t found the body yet.”

“What about the possibility of her being in bed with the shooter?” Clyde asked.

“Possible, but unlikely. We know she went into Lipton’s gallery before the shooter did and left barely escaping an inferno. I don’t think she would have voluntarily put herself into that much risk. It’s more likely that the shooter has the typical motive—money or revenge. Dupre got in the way, maybe as a former accomplice. She scrambled out of London without going back to her hotel. I suspect she dodged the bullet and did the same here.”

When Nunes told him about the woman’s cryptic voice-mail message, Clyde said, “Doesn’t sound like a real call for help to me. If she was completely innocent, she could’ve gone to the local police.”

“She avoided the Spanish police, just like she did in London. And New York.”

“So what is it with this woman? Sounds like she went from mild-mannered art curator to being involved in international murder in short order.”

“I don’t know. It just keeps getting more and more complicated.”

Nunes stuck his head in the boathouse to get a look at the antiquities being examined by museum personnel and stepped back again shaking his head. “It started with a Babylonian queen who had a reputation for stirring up murder. Sounds like Dupre is following the same path.”

Chapter 47

New York

Something big that had changed since I had returned to Manhattan was my mode of transportation.

The subway had always been the most convenient way to get around the island and across to the other boroughs but not the snootiest. I had walked on clouds when I acquired the privilege of calling for a driver in a Town Car whenever I needed to get around the city. When I got bumped up from a Town Car and rode around in one of those big black Cadillac SUVs… well, as the Mafia said, I was a made woman.

Kiss that luxury good-bye.

Now I sat in a subway car rubbing shoulders with the great unwashed masses at five o’clock commute time. Although subways are damn convenient, commute time was hot (any time of year), crowded (any time of year), and stinky (any time of year).

Taxis were still an option, but the subway was faster and more anonymous, not to mention cheaper.

My New York Yankee hat, sunglasses, sloppy pullover, blue jeans, and running shoes put me in disguise mode.

Coby and I had been back in the city for three days now after flying into Boston’s Logan Airport, then taking Amtrak’s high-speed Acela express train to Penn Station. We set up camp in an eighty-foot tri-level luxury yacht called the
Luv Mate
, which belonged to Coby’s old Navy pal who had left the service and made millions with a Web site that specialized in hooking up military people with other military people.

I spent most of the day making my way around the city picking up art publications and gallery and auction house catalogs. Since Stocker needed to sell antiquities to pay off his mob creditors, I was sure he’d seek private sales, with an art dealer brokering the deals. The word had to be circulated someway. I hoped one of the catalogs or art magazines I picked up would have a clue. I made sure to check out Rutgers in case Neal was involved. I came up with zero from their catalogs.

When I got back to the yacht Coby was in a soft chair with his bare feet propped up on a railing, a cold beer in hand, tortilla chips and a bowl of guacamole at his side.

“Don’t we look comfortable,” I said, annoyed that he was laid-back and relaxed when my mind and body were hyperventilating.

“My mind is working every waking and sleeping moment to analyze the mission.”

I wanted to slap him across his smug mouth. He was one of those people who seemed to get away with everything I never got away with in life. I knew better than to try to reform him. Some men—and women—can’t be housebroken. He simply wasn’t pliable. But he was hard where a woman wanted a man to be hard.

I just shook my head and sat down and started going through the thick stack of materials I had gathered. His crunching slowly got on my nerves.

“Would you mind closing your mouth when you chew?”

“Already found it,” he said, crunching some more chips as he spoke.

I looked up. “Excuse me?”

“You wanted a lead on Stocker selling something. I found it.”

I pressed my lips together and looked at him, stupefied. I had just spent five hours hopping in and out of subway cars, up and down steep stairs, in and out of subway stations, pounding concrete sidewalks and dodging taxis as I ran across streets to pick up a shopping bag full of written material while he sat here filling his gut with Corona and chips.

“You know, you really are a bastard.”

“What did I do?”

He crunched more chips and I kept myself from grabbing one of his beer bottles and giving him a good old-fashioned attitude adjustment across the side of his head.

“Well, are you going to tell me?”

“It’s over there.” He gestured at a laptop computer on the seat to my right, which had a stack of printed pages on it. The computer had a
Luv Mate
decal on it.

“I got on the Internet and typed in the key words for ancient Middle Eastern art, ‘Mesopotamian,’ ‘Babylonian,’ ‘Akkadian,’ that sort of thing.”

“And you came up with something?” I grabbed the papers off the laptop.

“A lot came up, but the stuff in your hands is the most intriguing.”

The first piece of paper was a gossip column article. It said that Paula Golding, who had a messy divorce going with Carter Golding, had filed a restraining order to keep him from disposing of or hiding valuable pieces of his art collection, including a Babylonian piece acquired within the last week for $3 million.

Coby shook his head. “There’s just no privacy left in this world. It cost me all of seven dollars to access the court records and print out the wife’s restraining-order request. Look at the page I have folded over.”

The art piece was described as the marble head of Marduk, chief god of the Babylonian pantheon.

“There was a head of Marduk in the looted items, wasn’t there?” I asked him. If anyone knew the answer to that question, he did.

He nodded. “Yeah, we took one. Which tells me that Stocker found out where Lipton kept the goods before he killed him. That’s why Lipton became expendable. And why all the rest of us are. Course, there’s the chance this may be a piece we didn’t take. Any more of these around?”

“None that I know of, and for sure not one that has appeared openly on the market. He paid three million for it. That’s suspicious in and of itself.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s worth two or three times that. I would have paid seven or eight million had it gone on the auction block. And there would have been plenty of competition bidding against me.” I was so excited, I got up and paced. “No, you’re right; this has to be one of the looted items. It’s too important a piece not to have created a buzz if it had been offered for sale publicly. Someone didn’t want the world to know it was being offered, so it was sold privately—at a fire-sale price. And Golding is the perfect candidate for it. He’s not too scrupulous and he has enough money so he won’t miss a meal if the deal turned sour and a legitimate owner showed up and claimed the piece.”

“You sound like you know this guy.”

“I’ve bumped into him a number of times at gallery showings. He’s well-known in the art world. Very rich and very secretive about his collection. Most collectors like to beat their chest about what they own, but Golding isn’t that type. He’s a hoarder. He owns to possess and doesn’t want to share his darlings with anyone. And he has a reputation about not being too particular about the provenances of what he buys. That works well if your transactions are kept confidential.”

“He’d buy a stolen piece?”

I thought about the question. “If you mean would he buy a piece that was known to have been stolen, I’d say no. He wouldn’t buy it because it would come with prison stripes on it, but there are many levels of scrutiny. He’s definitely not the type to look too hard at the provenance if he really wants something. I once passed on a piece from Petra in Jordan and—”

I suddenly stopped as I realized how Golding would have gotten connected to the Marduk piece: Neal. I had suspicion before. Now I was sure.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just got a revelation. I told you Stocker couldn’t do it alone. He’d have to run newspaper ads and probably have the police on him.”

“You said he needed an art pro.”

“Neal.”

“Your auctioneer pal?”

“He’s the chief auctioneer for Rutgers. A few months ago, he offered me the Petra piece, a second century B.C. vase. The piece had significant damage and the provenance was really suspect. While I was considering it, an American archaeologist, a university professor studying the Petra site, was arrested for smuggling another piece out of Jordan. He’d put a removable ceramic coating around the vase to make it look like a cheap tourist item. A sharp-eyed customs inspector at JFK got suspicious when the professor looked tense while the inspector asked how much he paid for it. The piece Neal offered me came from the same dig as the vase. I wouldn’t touch it. Neal later bragged to me that he’d sold it to Golding despite the suspect provenance.”

I didn’t add that Neal’s boast was made in bed during one of those nights he was bragging about his deals and I was faking an orgasm.

“So you think he sold Golding the Marduk? Were you fucking your pal Neal?”

How rude. I ignored him. I was no longer surprised that Neal got involved with Stocker—Neal obviously had been connected with Lipton, and assisting Stocker may have been just a matter of survival. Though, knowing Neal, he’d figure out a way of making a profit even off a crazed killer.

“Would that much money get Stocker out of his debt to these mob people?” I asked.

“I doubt it. From what Lipton said, he’d have to sell most of the collection. You didn’t answer my second question.”

“Get back on the Internet and run a search on Neal’s name. Because of his connection to a major auction house, you’ll have a million hits, so narrow it down to the past week. I’m going to check the antique catalogs and ads.”

An hour later, neither of us had anything. And I still hadn’t answered his question.

“I have one more idea,” I said.

I called the telephone number listed in the court papers for Paula Golding’s attorney. I got past the attorney’s assistant by telling her that I had information for the attorney about Mr. Golding’s art collection. After I waited on hold for an intolerable time, a woman got on the line. I identified myself as an art dealer but refused to give my name. After verbally fencing for a moment, I got down to the bottom line.