The Collection

by Lance Charnes

  “Sorry to drop all this on you,” I say. She glances at me. “I know it’s a lot to take in. Um… can I buy you lunch? We can get out of here, talk, decompress a little.” My stomach’s been grumbling at me for half an hour.

  She makes a pfft sound. “You are like the Italian mama. ‘Bambina, I wreck your life. Eat! Eat!’” Her windmilling arms finish the picture. Then she drops her hands and starts pulling on her right thumb while she scans me up and down. At last, she nods. “You can buy the lunch for me. But I warn you, Mr. Hoskins—” she shakes a finger “—to ‘decompress,’ as you say? I need a very, very good wine.”

  I can’t help but smile. I still like this girl.

  Chapter 27

  Judging from the suits at the tables, Conte Camillo in the Hotel Cavour across the street from the gallery must be popular with the expense-account gang. A few sets of eyes follow Gianna as the hostess leads us across the parquet floor to a two-top in the corner. Gianna insists on taking the chair in the aisle—maybe to escape if I get grabby—while I get the banquette.

  “Is the wine expensive enough for you?” I ask. I’m looking forward to blowing Allyson’s money on the closest thing I’ve had to a real date in four years—since the one in Geneva with Allyson. The irony’s pretty tasty.

  Gianna’s spent as much time eyeing me as she has studying the wine list. “It will do.” Her straight face dissolves into a half-smile.

  We each order an antipasto and a primi, and I get the €41 bottle of Vintage Tunina that Gianna helpfully points out for me. There’s a couple suits next to us and all the hard surfaces—wood wainscot, plaster walls sponged a dusty pink—bounce sound like crazy, so we have to lean in to talk to each other without shouting or having the neighbors listen in.

  “How’re you doing?” I ask her.

  Gianna shrugs her face, then plants her elbows and rests her chin on her folded hands. She has a faraway look. “Do you think Lorenzoni… maybe he does not know?”

  “What do you think?”

  She shakes her head. “Why do you hide from him?”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “You stand in the cabinet so he does not see you. That is hiding, I think.”

  Can’t argue with that. Those forty-five minutes in the storage room gave me a chance to scrape together a story I hope will fly. Some of it is even true.

  “I met him in Los Angeles.” I consider telling her about his pre-Italy name, but with “Belknap,” five spare minutes, and Google, she’ll find my mug shot and it’s game over. “He sold me a canvas that I found out later he’d misrepresented. Lawyers got involved; it wasn’t pretty. He left the country soon after. That’s when I found out he had a reputation for being… let’s say, ‘slippery.’ I had no idea he was here until Carson met him Saturday and showed me his picture.”

  Gianna’s face steadily slides south. “Why do you still come?”

  “You gave Carson your card and told her when Lorenzoni’s gone. I figured, why not? You do have some nice stock.”

  “None that you fall in love with.”

  “Don’t write me off yet. Your client has some pretty nice pieces. I wouldn’t mind taking a couple of those home. What’s the deal with storing client assets?”

  “Lorenzoni says they pay him to keep the art they have no room to show.”

  That explains the cypher locks and the wire reinforcement on the clerestories. “You said lots of things come and go. Do you mean client holdings, or the gallery’s?”

  She narrows her eyes, then slowly sits back. “Who are you, Mr. Hoskins?”

  I put on my aw-shucks smile, hoping it still works. “Just a guy who got lucky a couple times and made some money. Now I’m trying to enjoy it.” One of Gar’s clients said that to me once. He was a decent guy, not like some of those “I made it all myself” assholes.

  “Lucky. Pfft.” She shoots me a skeptical eyebrow. “You can buy anything, yes? Why not buy the boat or the airplane or the fast car or the pretty girlfriend—”

  “What makes you think I don’t have those things?”

  Gianna throws her hands out. “Okay. You have everything. Why do you want art?”

  “I grew up with it. My mom taught art—” in high school, but still “—but she was also a real artist, landscapes, seascapes, mostly oils, some watercolors. She was good—sold canvases, got a couple shows. We lived in museums. She taught me how to see beauty.” All totally true. Mom’s was the first art I fell in love with.

  “You say ‘was.’ She does not paint now?”

  How do I answer that? Tell her schools don’t have money anymore for stupid stuff like art and music and theater and shop because you can’t put them on a standardized test? That once you’re over fifty-five in America, you’re unemployable? That she can’t afford food, far less paint? I look away for a moment, trying to bottle up the anger that always surfaces when I think about this. “She had to stop,” I finally tell Gianna.

  Her eyes soften. “I am sorry. Many people who come to the gallery, the art means nothing to them. It is something pretty to buy, like the jewelry. I am happy you are not that way.”

  The waiter brings our wine just in time to buy me a couple minutes to think. I wish Gar had taught me more about wine. This one’s the color of freshly cut straw, smells like a sunny meadow and is dry and smooth, so I guess it’s okay. The waiter pours for us both.

  I take a long breath, lean a bit closer and hope I don’t blow this next part. “Knowing what I do about Lorenzoni, and knowing he’s back in business, I’m worried for you.” Which isn’t completely a lie.

  Gianna chokes on her first mouthful of wine. “Me? You see me first two hours ago and now you worry for me?”

  I put up my hands. “Just hear me out. When Lorenzoni took off from L.A., the police went after his assistant. They looked at her for a long time but couldn’t make anything stick. She had to leave town. I’d hate to see that happen to you.”

  True story. I didn’t burn Sierra even though I knew she was carting around cash for him. She was pretty okay otherwise and just unbright enough to not understand what kind of shit Belknap was getting her into. It didn’t help that the little turkey was half in love with the man.

  More blinking. Gianna chews on her upper lip. Then she slams half her wine. “Maybe… maybe we ring the police now, yes?” It’s more than a question but not quite a plea.

  Oh, hell no, no cops. “Maybe so. First let’s make sure that’s your best move, okay?”

  She nods, but there’s no spirit behind it.

  “Is the inventory turnover in the clients’ holdings, or the gallery’s?”

  “It is not for the gallery,” she tells her wine glass. “I look at the inventory more than I should maybe. It does not change so much.”

  “Have you met these clients? Who are they?”

  Gianna concentrates way too hard on smoothing the cream tablecloth in front of her. In a voice I can barely hear, she says, “If I help you, you must help me, yes?” She looks up. “If the police take Lorenzoni, you must tell them I help you, I give you the information. Yes?”

  She’s using big, brown puppy-dog eyes on me. I’m a complete sucker for that. So even though I’d rather eat drywall screws than hang with the local law, I say, “Sure. Of course.”

  She takes a slug of wine. “The, um, racks? They are full not long ago. Lorenzoni says the client is Signore Rossi. It is a lie. That is for you like, um, Smith. He is not on my list of clients for the post and email.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “I see Rossi one time. He is very rich. He rides in the limousine, and he has men for the security.”

  “Bodyguards?”

  “Yes, bodyguards. He says to me, ‘Hello, you are too pretty to work for this man.’ Lorenzoni says the man is Rossi. With Rossi, Lorenzoni is, um…” she taps her breastbone “…not scared, um, nervous. I do not see him this way so much.”

  Belknap didn’t scare ea
sily back in the day. What kind of mojo does Rossi have to rattle him? Is Rossi the landlord? No, that wouldn’t be bad enough.

  Is he Belknap’s “protection”?

  If he is and Burim is right, that means Rossi is with the ‘Ndrangheta. Very bad dudes.

  “Are those his pieces in the storage room?” I ask.

  “Yes. Where you find the stolen paintings.”

  “You said there used to be more. What happened? Where’d the other pieces go?”

  She shakes her head. “I do not know. The meeting I tell you about, with Rossi? The paintings go after that. A year now, maybe.”

  I lean back against the banquette and swirl my wine. A picture develops in my head like one of those old-school Polaroids. Belknap was holding art for Rossi that was either coming in from purchases or going out for sale. Then a year ago, Belknap and Rossi fell out and most of Rossi’s stuff took a hike. Belknap doesn’t have the cache of stolen paintings—if it still exists—because it belongs to this Rossi dude. And Rossi makes Belknap nervous. That’s a bad sign.

  “Mr. Hoskins?” Gianna’s staring at me like I’ve been talking in my sleep.

  “Please, call me Rick.” I refill her glass and my own, wishing I had something stronger for us both. “Look, now’s not the time to go to the police. We’ve got too many unanswered questions and not enough proof. We need to know more about Rossi, like, who he is really.” I hesitate. “Can you poke around the gallery some more? Try to find something on him?”

  She’s not happy—the big frown tells me that—but she doesn’t freak out, either. “I look already, there is nothing. Lorenzoni has a computer, maybe the information is there, but I cannot touch it. He takes it away with him.”

  That figures. I burn a few moments looking for another idea in my wine glass.

  “Rick?”

  The almost-bedroom tone makes me look up. She’s tilted forward so her boobs rest on her folded forearms. Which I’m sure is completely unintentional.

  If anything, her eyes are bigger and more bottomless than before. “If the police take Lorenzoni, the gallery, it is finito. I will need work…”

  Oh, Gianna, seriously? “I already have a personal assistant. Remember Carson?”

  “Oh, no no no. Before I work for Lorenzoni, I work for Conti, a friend of my uncle, who has a gallery. It failed. From Conti I learn many things I should not do in a business. I learn many things from Lorenzoni, too. I can be better than they are at the business.” She breaks out her half-smile, which is almost as cute as the puppy-dog eyes.

  “Wait. You want me to help you open a gallery?”

  “It is very hard to get the loan to start the business in Italy. It is harder if you are young, and very much harder if you are a woman. Maybe if a man like you says the good word to his bank, they will give me the loan.”

  Great. Another woman with an agenda.

  At least I know what her agenda is: she wants to land on her feet. I totally get that. And she’s got balls to make a pitch like this to an almost-stranger. With that kind of mojo, she probably doesn’t need me, er, Hoskins.

  Our antipasti arrives—a summer salad for her, risotto with tomato sauce and basil for me, small helpings prettily arranged—and we have to sit up straight so the waiter can fuss with our plates. Gianna keeps her focus fixed on me, though I can’t tell if it’s because I’m magnetically attractive or because she’s afraid I’ll try to run away.

  Once the waiter leaves, I ask her, “Have you thought of equity crowdsourcing? Circle Up or Crowdfunder? A lot of people are getting their startup capital that way.”

  She leans toward me. “Yes. It is very new in Italy. Only the technology companies use it here. I need much money to start, but no one gives so much money online to this person they do not know, not for an art gallery.”

  “How much?”

  “It is €84,000 to, how you say, open the door.”

  That’s chicken feed to Hoskins, so I don’t choke on the number. It may be low. Still, it’s way more than I’m worth, alive or dead. “Write up a business plan and let me go over it.”

  Her smile is the cat-cornering-the-bird kind. “I have the business plan. I send it to you?”

  “In English?”

  “No, in Italian, but you can get the translation, yes?”

  I stepped in this one fair and square. “Sure.” A few moments later it chirps into my business phone’s mailbox. I forward it to Olivia and ask her to arrange a translation. I’m sure I’ll have some explaining to do later.

  From there through our first course, we have a reasonably normal conversation for a first date between a penniless gallery assistant with big ambitions and a fake millionaire trying not to fall out of character. Origins stories, mostly, except the one I tell her is Hoskins’, not mine. There’s a lot of overlap, though.

  “Seriously?” I ask when she mentions her university days. “A business degree? The way you talk about art—”

  She waves her hands in a no-no-no way. “I study both, business and patrimonio culturale. I learn about video and art and film and theater. I like it, very much. When Conti gives me work, I study the art business so I can help him.”

  I almost say I did the same thing, but that’s Matt talking, not Rick. It’s funny how I can go a third of the way around the world and meet somebody who could be the younger me.

  The younger me.

  When I walked into Gar’s gallery for the first time, I wasn’t Hello Kitty. I’d seen contract fraud, bribery, kickbacks, undocumented substitution of materials, shoddy construction, the works. But I’d always been a witness, not a hands-on criminal. Gar cured me of that.

  Gianna’s working for a bigger sleaze than Gar ever was. I don’t get that she’s corrupted yet, though. Maybe I can still save her from becoming a JV version of Belknap… or me.

  The more wine we put away, the more we flirt, though I’m so rusty I still can’t tell if any of it is real. We stroll back to the gallery after almost two hours—not unusual in Italy, Gianna tells me—nicely fed and pleasantly buzzed on the second bottle of wine. She leads me by the hand into the gallery after she turns off the alarm. I think about the possibilities of a sofa in a soundproofed room while she checks to see if Belknap’s come back.

  Gianna returns, takes my hands in both of hers, steps close and says something I’ve wanted to hear for the past two hours. No, not make love to me. (Damnit.)

  “I know where you can find Signore Rossi.”

  Chapter 28

  I get back to the hotel by mid-afternoon and decide I’m done walking past the Duomo every day and never getting inside. I pound on Carson’s door. “If you want to hear what I found out, you’re going to church with me.”

  She bitches all the way until we step inside the Duomo.

  Now we’re standing in the west end of a nave that can pack in forty thousand people. I look up with my mouth hanging open—like the few dozen tourists around us—thinking about the thirty generations of craftsmen and foremen and engineers and architects who built this place. All that backbreaking work, and it was so worth it. “Tell me you’re not impressed. Just try.”

  Forty massive dove-gray columns, eighty feet tall, define the nave. Billboard-sized paintings hang from iron rods between the columns. The ceiling’s almost a hundred fifty feet above us. Four side aisles stretch like freeways toward the stained-glass apsidal windows a football field and a half away.

  Carson shoves her hands down her jeans pockets and sighs. “Okay, yeah. I’m impressed.”

  “Uh-huh. Come on, let’s walk. This floor’s over three hundred years old, by the way.”

  We pick our way across Pellegrino Tibaldi’s red-white-and-black eye-breaker of a marble floor, passing tour groups and the stray rubberneckers. Carson’s not immune; she’s checking out the sights almost as thoroughly as I am.

  “What’s this party about?” she asks.

  I hand her the crisp white card Gianna gave me ab
out an hour ago. “It says, ‘Associati Ingegneria Lombardia s.p.a. invites you to attend a celebration of summer at AIL’s most successful project to date, Palazzo Italia in Expo 2015.’ I looked them up. AIL built the pavilion, apparently for only a 60% cost overrun.”

  She scowls at both sides—it’s all in Italian—then hands it back. “Where’s Rossi in this?”

  “Gianna said Belknap got the invites from Rossi. I don’t know how he’s connected to the company. What’ve you been up to?”

  “Researching the local ‘Ndrangheta. Pretty standard stuff—cocaine, meth, whores, loansharking, extortion. Those ‘Addio Pizzo’ stickers on windows around here? That’s about the protection racket. They also go for padding public construction contracts and ripping off the health service.”

  Something clicks inside my skull. “AIL builds hospitals and subway stations and sports stadiums.”

  “Bet they suck at it, too.” We reach a roped-off part of the central aisle, then drift south. “They moved into the small-business loan market the banks left. High-rate loans to entrepreneurs. They end up owning businesses.”

  Gianna’s words come back to me: it is very hard to get the loan to start the business. I hope like hell she doesn’t try to get her start-up money from these guys. “Real estate?”

  “Yeah. Restaurants, clubs, bars, anything that spins cash. And private security—bet those shooters Monday night were officially security guards.”

  “So you think that warehouse from Monday is theirs?”

  “With a conex full of sex slaves?” Her face goes grim. “It’s theirs.”

  We halt at the south transept. Enormous stained-glass windows surround the huge, colonnaded marble monument in the central alcove at the end. The afternoon sun throws patches of multicolored light against the floor and east wall and sparkles the dust specks in the air. Carson’s mouth drops.

  My big sister Dianne and I got bedtime stories about Mom’s Italian adventures the way other kids got fairy tales. Mom was here almost forty years ago. It’s everything she said, and more. I wish I could call her and tell her where I am, share this dream she never got to relive. My heart breaks a little.