The Collection

by Lance Charnes

  “I can hold that for you,” I say.

  “Watch for visitors.” It comes out, “Otch fa istors.”

  I jog back to the main door and peek around the jamb. No parked cars, no ninjas with laser sights on their guns, only brush and a sky fading to purple. While I wait, I shoot a couple pictures of the truck, just in case. I hear a metallic clunk in the dark, then the screaming of unhappy hinges.

  “What the fuck?” Carson’s voice has a distinct head-scratching tone. That can’t be good.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Pallets.” Huh? “It’s stuffed with wooden pallets.”

  That makes no sense at all. Yes, they’re worth something, but this? “Are you sure? Is there something behind them?”

  “Can’t tell.” Now she’s irritated. “Way they’re packed, I can only see one or two layers in.” She grunts a couple times. “They’re solid. Only way we’re getting in is pulling out all this shit.”

  “Let’s not.” I’m paranoid enough that it seems like the bushes are crawling toward me. “Time to go. Remember the ninjas?”

  I have nothing but questions as we close up and leave. Why pallets? Why hide them? Why is Angelo doing it?

  Carson sums it all up as she jets the GTI toward the freeway: “What the hell?”

  Chapter 40

  “I get leaving the truck there.” Carson merges us onto Viale Fulvio Testi, a broad commercial street divided by K-rails. Most of the traffic is heading north on the other side. “It’s pretty common. Driver A takes the truck someplace, drops the keys in a slot. Couple hours later, Driver B takes it someplace else. First driver doesn’t know where it goes, last driver doesn’t know where it came from.”

  “Yeah, but pallets?”

  “Don’t get that.”

  “Maybe there’s something inside them or behind them?”

  Carson shakes her head. “Should’ve unloaded the damn thing.”

  Tall trees and a grass median replace the K-rails, and apartment blocks take over from the commercial buildings. The GPS says we’re in Sesto San Giovanni. The name rings a bell. I look it up on my laptop and discover a browser favorite that reminds me why. “Get off at the next exit and turn right.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m hungry, and I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Wonderful.”

  The road leads us through an endless parade of ‘60s and ‘70s apartment buildings, small ground-floor shops and offices, and lots of graffiti all around. But it’s more down-on-its-luck than threatening, and there’s plenty of life on the streets.

  “Sick of Italian food yet?” Carson says.

  “Getting there.”

  We find a doner kebab place that doesn’t look too deadly and stuff ourselves on lamb, lavash and grilled veg. As we eat, we try to hash out the truck’s story but can’t get past the brick wall in front of us. The one thing we agree on: if Angelo wasn’t mixed up in it, we’d probably write off this mini-mystery. I’ve got his number now, and it’s all I can do to keep from calling him up and saying, “Yo, dawg, saw you at the warehouse. Wazzup?”

  Carson lets out a delicate burp. “So what’s this surprise?”

  “Maybe ten minutes down the road. Let’s go.”

  We turn left at the train station and drive past apartments on one side and a rail yard on the other until we park at the Palasesto, a huge building with a concave roof. A couple steps inside the place, she sniffs the air. “Ice? This is a rink?”

  “Surprise. This is for helping out with Len.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Remember that little bird?”

  “Fucking Olivia.” But the smile she’s holding in is going to explode in the next few seconds. “Let’s get skates.”

  “I’m just watching.”

  “Bullshit. This’ll be fun.”

  I’m a Southern California boy. I don’t do ice. I went ice skating once on a date in high school and the only thing I got out of it was a bruised butt. So it surprises the hell out of me when I wobble out into the crowd on what looks like powder-blue ski boots with blades on the bottom.

  Carson glides out the door at the end of the rink in old-school black lace-up skates. It’s like watching a penguin dive into water—you suddenly realize how graceful it is in its element. She makes a few circles around curling targets to warm up, then coasts back to me. “Easier if you keep moving.”

  “I just crash faster that way.”

  She barks out half a laugh. “Back in a minute.” Then she launches. Three or four strokes later, she’s charging through the fifty or so people in the smallish rink, knees low and flexed, turning and banking without any visible effort. A tiger cutting through antelope. She finishes by sliding into a backwards turn around me.

  I’ve made it maybe a quarter of the way around the rink. Eight-year-olds are passing me. “You’ve done this before.”

  “No shit.” Carson pivots to skate backwards in front of me. She’s smiling. It’s an honest-to-God, teeth-and-everything smile that goes all the way up to her hairline. It looks good on her.

  “Speed skating?” I ask her.

  “Hockey.”

  I should’ve known. “Little Canuck girls grow up wanting to play hockey?”

  “Little Canuck girls grow up wanting to be figure skaters.” Carson pushes off into a backward circle, then sinks into a low spin with her right leg sticking out like a dancing Cossack. She slowly rises, twirls on both feet, then glides out with her arms spread and her left leg straight out behind her. She stops with her hands clasped over her head, back arched and a toe behind her heel. A couple nearby girls cheer and clap.

  “Very nice,” I say when she gets back to me.

  She gives me a little curtsey. “Wanted to be Liz Manley. Had the poster, same hair, everything.”

  I’ll assume Manley was a big-deal skater. “What happened?”

  “Turned thirteen.” She holds her hands out at her sides. “This happened. Mom told me I come from a long line of tractor girls. Canuck girls who’re built like me turn into power forwards.”

  Carson finally turns around and skates facing front. She snorts when I fall on my butt, but helps me up. Soon she’s towing me along by my hand, keeping me going fast enough that I can actually stay upright. It’s kinda fun.

  After a while, we lean back against the rail and watch the show. Some skaters know what they’re doing; others are like me. Outfits range from skating dresses to jeans and sweaters to a pair of teenaged girls freezing in black skinny jeans and skimpy tops.

  “Thanks,” Carson says. “This a date?”

  It takes me a while to figure that out. “Sure.”

  She shakes her head. But she’s smiling.

  Chapter 41

  Our town car’s rolling through plowed, bare fields. We may be only three or four miles southwest of the inner ring road around Milan, but it looks like Kansas.

  Morrone’s farm is growing in the windshield. Google Maps showed the compound’s built in a rectangle, apparently normal for a Lombard country estate. Close off the back gate and you’ve got a little fortress… or a prison. I may need a drink or three to calm my butterflies.

  “I hate this skirt,” Carson grouses.

  “It looks great on you. And Morrone will love it.”

  An innocent question this morning—“Do you own a skirt?”—led to a blitzkrieg shopping trip to the La Rinascente (kind of the Bloomie’s of Milan) next to the Duomo. Carson hates to shop for clothes, no surprise. After a lot of arguing—I used up most of the goodwill from last night’s skate date—we came away with an Esprit Collection black leather skirt with a banded waist. It hits a couple inches above her knee, sets off her white raw-silk shell, and it was on sale at €119.

  “Why am I dressing for that slimeball?”

  “Because he likes you. We need to remind him why. Maybe he’ll talk more.”

  “I can’t move in t
his thing.”

  “You don’t have to. Just stand there and breathe.”

  She growls and folds her arms.

  A pair of armed, bullet-headed guys in black utility pants and polos hold up their hands to signal “stop” at the compound’s southeast corner gate. The driver announces us to the security guy at his window, who checks us off a list on his clipboard. His partner hauls two steel posts out of the driveway in front of us.

  I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I finally let it out when we pass into the courtyard.

  The Armani blonde from the party meets us in front of the three-story house at the west end of the compound. Today she’s in a demure short-sleeved, knee-length dress the slightly bluish white of skim milk. She says “Welcome, Mr. Hoskins” when the driver lets me out. Carson takes my hand and slides out of the back seat in a surprisingly ladylike way. “Miss Carson. Thank you for joining us.” The blonde waves toward the nearby garden. “Please relax and have refreshments. Signore Morrone will see you presently.”

  The garden takes up a quarter of the courtyard. Grass, flowers, shrubs, a couple decent-sized trees. Wrought-iron patio chairs and glass-topped café tables are scattered around the lawn.

  A young woman in white over black takes our drink orders. We claim an iron bench in a patch of sunshine. Carson surprises me by sitting close and draping a hand over my thigh. It’s not bad, just takes some getting used to. “Lots of security,” she whispers in my ear, “but it’s discreet.”

  I thread an arm around her shoulders. Just to keep up the picture, of course. “I was looking for the guys in red jumpsuits with machineguns.” She gives me a blank look. “Bond flicks? Blofeld’s guys?” That gets me a raised eyebrow. “Never mind. What else do you see?”

  “Vehicle storage over there.” She shifts her eyes toward the fieldstone east building, which features a row of dusty forest-green roll-up doors. “Security office’s by the gate. Workspace behind us.” She nods to the south building. “Storage over there. Van pulled in right after us.” Between concrete columns, swinging wooden doors the size of small trucks stretch slab-to-eaves all along the inside wall. Their green paint is worn along the latch edges.

  I tilt my chin toward the south building. “Think we’ll find anything interesting if we poke around over there?”

  “Yeah.” She slaps my thigh. “Lots of trouble.”

  While the outside of the main house is the traditional tan-stone-and-white-stucco box, the inside’s been remodeled to make modern-sized rooms. Unfortunately, somebody likes heavy rustic furniture and dark wood-plank flooring, which sucks out all the air and light.

  Morrone meets us in the front parlor. He gives me another manly handshake and kisses Carson’s hand again. We settle onto a bench padded with overstuffed cushions while Salvatore and Angelo squeeze onto the upholstered loveseat. I can’t help glancing at Angelo. I know what you’ve been doing… just not why.

  After a few minutes of polite chat, Morrone says, “You come for my art, si? Not to make the talk.”

  I put up my hands. “I’m perfectly happy to talk with you, Salvatore.”

  “No, no. We talk later. I show you now.” Morrone stands with a discreet assist by Angelo. “I bring you here for this, si?”

  That grab-bag of canvases Morrone has sitting in Belknap’s gallery? The better pieces are here, starting with a Bronzino Madonna and Child hanging on the parlor’s back wall. The ground floor takes us from Mannerism through the Baroque and Rococo, Neoclassicism and Romanticism, heavy on religious and classical themes. I recognize several of the artists’ names from my art history classes.

  This has never been my favorite stuff. I’ve consumed more Annunciations and Adorations and Depositions than your average Catholic-school survivor. The Mannerist and Baroque works are just too overwrought for me. Still, I “ooh” and “aah” as Morrone shows off each one. Carson’s a good sport, finding something nice to say whenever Morrone asks her opinion even though I can see the low-level burn in her eyes. She’s also photographing each one on the sly with her phone as I’d asked her to.

  “You have so many religious paintings, Salvatore,” Carson says. “Are you a very religious man?”

  I flinch inside. It’s not the most delicate subject, and I know that secular fine art wasn’t acceptable during the earlier periods. But it’s Carson, and Salvatore gives her the same smile he’d show a little girl asking why is the sky blue?

  “Si, signorina. I hope I am very, ehm, devoto—” Angelo pitches in “—devout? Si? But these paintings, they are favorites of mia moglie. My dear wife.”

  In her research, Carson discovered Salvatore’s wife died a while back. “Will we get to meet Mrs. Morrone?”

  She didn’t ask that…

  Morrone’s smile flickers and dies. He looks away briefly, then takes a deep breath. “My wife… she is… excuse, please.” He takes a step away with his back to us.

  I wheel on Carson and flash a stop that glare at her. She arranges her face to something like embarrassment and touches Angelo’s shoulder, startling him. “I’m sorry, was that a bad question?”

  Angelo nods. “My mother passed three years ago. It is still… emotional for him.”

  “Please apologize for us.” I’m trying to cover up the big turd Carson dropped, imagining the security guys hauling us out into the courtyard to shoot us. “We had no idea—”

  “No, of course. We understand you mean no harm. Please wait.”

  Morrone’s back in a minute with a dimmer version of his previous smile. “Mi dispiace. I am with Teresa the thirty-six years and not with her the three years. The three are so much longer than the thirty-six.” He gestures to a black-framed, black-and-white full-length studio portrait on a nearby mantelpiece. “My Teresa.”

  Now I see why Morrone likes Carson. The rawboned woman standing next to a much younger Morrone is the same general design as Carson, but darker and not as fit. They’re both in their Sunday best, circa 1976. I say “Handsome couple” because I figure he wants to hear it.

  He nods. “Come, Ricardo. I show you things you will like much more, I think.”

  It starts at the top of the main staircase with a nice mid-career scene of pastures and hayricks by Giovanni Fattori, one of the leading Macchiaioli (the Italian version of the Barbizon school). The hallway between the bedroom doors is lined with Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, mostly French, Russian and English.

  “Every room has one painting.” Morrone pushes open a door to his right. Above the bed hangs a gauzy Impressionist landscape and farmhouse. Nice. “Do you like her? She is Americana, like you. Mr. Theodore Robinson. You know him?”

  “Early American Impressionist, friends with Monet, studied under Sargent’s instructor at the École des Beaux-Arts.” Depending on how late it came in his career, the canvas could be worth six figures.

  “Ah, Ricardo, you impress me.”

  He shows us what’s behind every door. An Émile Bernard still life with the flat planes, simplified shapes and dark contours of Cloisonnism. A dreamlike Parisian streetscape at dusk by Maximilien Luce, with blue-gray shadows against fleshy stone, the Pointillist dots looking like a mist. An Impressionist study by Federico Zandomeneghi (who I’d never heard of), a young woman on an iron bench in a park, full of Renoir-like color and sweetness. He’s got a better modern-art survey than the city’s. We chat about the artists. Every time Carson gears up to say something, I jam a thumb into her wrist.

  Morrone shakes my hand and pats my bicep. “Please be comfortable. Enjoy the art. We speak after pranzo, si?”

  You bet we will.

  Morrone’s office is in the south end of the house, locked away at the end of a short corridor behind a heavy, dark oak door. It’s a smallish room with a big stone fireplace, open-beam ceiling, and a massive country wood desk with its brown stain turned black. Salvatore, Angelo and I pretty much fill it up. Not quite: Lucca’s there, too, sitting in a corner
behind me. He showed up for lunch and spent most of his time glowering across the table at me. Carson’s outside somewhere, probably breaking into something.

  Salvatore leans into his ancient high-backed leather swivel chair and goes through the cigar-lighting ritual. He’d offered me one, but smoking’s one of the few vices I never picked up. “Do you like the pranzo, Ricardo?”

  Lunch was hearty southern Italian food served family style, lots of meat and red sauces. Morrone and I talked art and collecting with Angelo’s help. It was nice enough, but not especially useful. When Morrone asked Carson about herself, I couldn’t tell if what she told him was real, but she said it very convincingly.

  “Great meal,” I tell Salvatore. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to get a break from all the northern Italian food we’ve been eating.”

  Salvatore smiles and nods. “Si, si. I miss my home in many things, but the food I miss most.” He takes a slow draw on his cigar. “You say at the festa you look for the souvenir. Maybe you find the souvenir here.”

  I’ve been waiting for this. I even prepared. “You’re selling from your collection?”

  “Si. What I show to you, do you see the painting you like?”

  “You have some very nice pieces in your collection.” Careful now. “I understand the pre-Modern works on the ground floor are very special to you. I say with respect that the Modern works are more interesting to me, closer to my collecting focus—”

  “Of course, of course.” He waves his cigar hand. “I know this. I… understand.”

  Good; I managed to not offend him. That’s important right now. “That said, I still need to evaluate what I saw. The Robinson is lovely, for instance, but some of the others are outside the scope of my collection. We’d be talking about a private sale, right? No dealer?”

  Salvatore has a quick exchange with Angelo before nodding. “Of course. You want to be, ehm—” Angelo whispers in his ear “—discreet, si?”

  “That would be best for us both, I think. Minimize our exposure to our tax authorities.”