The Trouble with Mirrors (An Alix London Mystery Book 4)

by Charlotte Elkins

  “Hence ‘Tiny’?”

  “Exactly. Let’s see, what else . . . I remember him talking about Jerome Avenue in the Bronx as the street he was born on, but he has a pretty definite Italian accent. His parents were both immigrants and I gather they spoke Italian in the house. Oh, I think I remember his saying that they lived over a barbershop, but I’m not sure about that. I know he’s got a prison record, so that should help.”

  “Do you know where he was, or what the charges were?”

  “Well, I know he was in Lompoc at the same time as my father. And I guess there was a time quite a few years ago where he was in and out of jail a lot, but I don’t know where. Mostly fraud-related stuff, I’m pretty sure—the guy was a serial forger—but I never wanted to press him on it. It’s sad, really—”

  “Um, Alix? You sure you want this guy back?”

  “Yes. Tiny is the kindest, most generous, wonderful man in the world. I love him deeply. He’s just, well, not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. He took a tremendous set of talents, and instead of pursuing a career of his own, he took to doing fake Homers and Velázquezes instead. He’s over that now—”

  “What was that? Did I just hear you knock on wood?”

  Alix laughed. She’d done it unconsciously. “Well, he’s kind of a slow learner and it did take him awhile to straighten himself out. But he is straight now. Really.”

  “Okay, I believe you,” Jamie said, after waiting a second to see if there were any more telltale knocks. “Anything else?”

  “My father says he’s estranged from his family in New York, but he must have other family in Italy because he has a piece of his salary sent to a village there. Oh, and I also know he’s had contacts in San Francisco’s Little Italy in the past, so I’m heading down there tomorrow with my friend Chris to see if we can find anybody who might be able to tell us something, and . . . that’s it. Anything more you can come up with, Jamie—”

  “Gotcha. I’m on the case. I can reach you on your cell while you’re in Frisco?”

  “Yes.” Keep cell phone ON! she wrote in her mental notebook. It was something she frequently failed to do, but from now on, ON was going to be its normal state. And not only because Jamie might call. What if Ted wanted to reach her?

  “Thanks a lot, Jamie.”

  “Not a problem, you’re welcome. I’m going to be doing my daily check-in with Ted in a few minutes. Do you want me to pass all this along to him when I do, or is this just between us for now?”

  “No, you don’t need to, Jamie. I already—” She winced. “Oops.”

  “You already told him?” She sounded suddenly concerned. “How did you get his number?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly call—”

  “He called you? You’re telling me he called you? While undercover?”

  “Well . . . yes, sort of . . . I guess you could say that. But it wasn’t . . . that is, he didn’t say where he was, he didn’t—”

  She was saved from continuing to flounder by the welcome sound of Jamie’s rolling laugh. “I don’t believe it!”

  “Jamie, tell me I didn’t just get him into trouble.”

  “No, come on, don’t worry. Really, it’s nice to know that Mr. High-and-Mighty-Stickler-for-Protocol is actually human under there.” She chuckled a little more. “Love really does conquer all, I guess.”

  “You won’t rib him about it, though, will you? I know he was kind of uncomfortable doing it.”

  “Well—”

  “Promise.”

  Jamie sighed. “Okay, I promise, no ribbing—even though I already had my little lecture half-prepared—mostly taken from his own little lectures to the troops, I should add. You sure take the fun out of things, Alix.”

  “Thanks, Jamie. But I wouldn’t mind if you told him that . . . well, you know, that I love him and I can’t wait to see him again.”

  “You don’t think he already knows that?”

  “Well, but he hasn’t heard it since this morning.”

  “I’ll be sure and squeeze it in,” Jamie said.

  Alix shook her head and smiled to herself as she disconnected. A pretty weird marriage, all right, when you had to get another woman to do it for you when you wanted to tell your husband you loved him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Les Ports Francs et Entrêpots de Genève (Geneva Free Ports and Warehouses) is the oldest, largest free-port facility in the world, an enormous, altogether nondescript complex offering high-security, customs-friendly, tax-free storage options for anything worth storing. With over a million works of art in it at any one time, it is the world’s largest such assemblage. “If it were a museum,” say those who know, “it would be the finest museum in the world.” But of course it is not a museum, it is the opposite of a museum: a place to hide things from curious eyes. There are many possible motives for burying fine paintings and sculptures in secret underground vaults for years or even decades, most of those motives ranging from dubious to downright illegal.

  It was this practice that had engaged Ted’s interest and brought him to Geneva. He was the FBI’s liaison with the Spanish Guardia Civil, Interpol operatives, and the Swiss Customs Agency, and was helping to plan the interception of a shipment of twenty-four nineteenth-century paintings stolen from a museum in Barcelona in 2002. For almost the entire thirteen years since then the art-theft ring that had taken them, had kept them at the complex, waiting until—the thieves hoped—the world’s investigative agencies lost interest and moved on. They were wrong; Interpol never “moves on.” And now Interpol had word that it was the pictures that would finally be moving on, to shadowy intermediaries in Thessaloniki.

  So far Ted’s operation had gone smoothly. Even the Swiss authorities had been cooperative, which the Swiss are not known for; not when it comes to their vaunted bank accounts and their anonymous vaults. Their attitude in this case seemed to be that as long as the works were inside a Swiss facility, their secrecy would be defended, but once they were out the door they were fair game.

  As always, the schedule for Jamie’s daily call to Ted changed each day. Today it was 1:30 p.m. DC time, which made it 7:30 p.m. in Geneva—convenient on both ends for a change. Making the call was simpler than ever, thanks to NSA’s new telephone encryption system. No more complicated setup each time, no more codes to put in or questions to answer. You just let the mini-camera look you in the eye, and if it liked what it saw, you were on. Jamie loved it.

  There was a momentary wait while the similarly equipped portable phone in Geneva checked Ted’s irises, and then he came on. “Yes?”

  “Guten Tag. How’s it going in Yodel-land?” Jamie said. This sort of blithe, silly telephone greeting was her own break with protocol, but when someone was undercover more than twenty-three hours a day, possibly for weeks at a time, she thought a little lightheartedness was in order.

  Ted responded in kind, with a lame quip of his own. “Not too bad, not too good,” he said. “Pretty neutral here in Switzerland, I’d have to say.” And then, after a beat: “Well, you could at least pretend to laugh.”

  “I’m smiling,” Jamie said. “That’s all you get. Seriously, everything’s all right? Anything you need?”

  “Nope, everything’s right on target. A model operation. Things okay at your end?”

  “Perfect, couldn’t be better. You’d be amazed at how well we get along without you.”

  “Thank you so much.” He cleared his throat. “So. Heard anything from Alix lately?”

  “You mean since you called her this morning?”

  “Since I . . . ? Uh-oh, I’m in hot water, aren’t I? You’re going to read me the riot act.”

  “You bet your life I would, if Alix hadn’t extracted a promise from me not to.”

  “You’re not going to tell any of the guys about it, are you? I’ve been kind of strict about that sort of thing, you know.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Jamie said. “Besides, I think it’s kind of sweet. Anyway: you know ab
out what’s been happening with her, so what are your thoughts?”

  “That her father’s behind it all, that’s what. I’d trust that guy about as far as I could throw him.”

  “How can you say that? You haven’t ever met him, have you? You don’t know the man.”

  “Met? No, but I know his record, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Well, if you want my thoughts,” she said stiffly, “I’m sure he’s got nothing to do with it. What, break into his own daughter’s apartment to steal something? Worry her like this about her Tiny? No way. He’s not involved at all, I’m sure of it.” I’m not being entirely truthful, she thought. She’d never met the man either and, well, records did speak for themselves, and his was spotty, to put it charitably. Still, she knew how much Alix loved him and even respected him. “And, frankly, I’m surprised to hear you make a totally uninformed prejudgment like that.”

  “I thought there wasn’t going to be any riot act.”

  “This is a different subject,” Jamie pointed out, “but never mind, I will withhold further comment and leave the matter to your conscience, such as it may be. Anyway, I was on the phone with her just a few minutes ago, and things have developed since she talked to you. She’s found a possible lead to Tiny in San Francisco, and she and her friend Chris are flying down there tomorrow.”

  “What? Why isn’t she waiting at least until I have a chance to check on this Ferrante and see what’s up at his end?”

  “So she should be sitting around waiting to hear from you before she does anything?”

  “Well . . . yes. Sure.”

  “So that you could have given her, through me, the benefit of your wisdom in guiding her next steps.”

  “I wouldn’t put it in quite your inimitable way, but yes, I suppose so. Is there anything wrong with that? I’m her husband, aren’t I? For all we know, there might be some danger involved here.”

  “Let me put it to you this way, Buster—”

  “Buster? Hey, let me remind you, madam, that there is a code of expected office behavior in this esteemed agency, among which is the rule that minions and underlings do not address their superiors in any manner that—”

  “Sorry about that. I’ll try again: Let me put it to you this way, Lord and Master . . . Is that better?”

  Ted emitted a so-so sound. “Better, but your tone needs work. Now, you were saying?”

  “Just this: Among the reasons you were so attracted to Alix in the first place were that she was independent, capable, self-willed, and self-sufficient. Is that not so?”

  “And ornery, don’t forget ornery.”

  “Yes, ornery too when the mood strikes her, and if you’re thinking that because she now has a husband who’s maybe even more ornery and self-willed than she is, she’s about to become a timid little woman asking for approval and guidance on anything before she does it, you are in for a disappointment, pal—Excuse me: you are in for a disappointment, my liege.”

  “But at least—”

  “Give it up, Ted. You’re not going to change her, and she isn’t going to change you. And if it was any other way, you wouldn’t like it. You know that.”

  A long sigh from Ted. “Yeah, okay, you’re right . . . as usual. Damn it, Jamie, do you have any idea of how annoying that can be?”

  “I apologize. Now do you want to talk about what we’re doing on our end? I have other things to do too, you know.”

  “Of course I do,” Ted said docilely.

  “Okay. I’ll start by informally checking out Tiny on this end. I’m going to call Homeland Security and also someone I know at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and see what they have on him. And I gather you’re going to be checking out the Genoa gallery owner, Ferrante—not right away, I assume, since you’re still on assignment.”

  “True, but I’m hoping that’ll be wrapped up inside of a day or two. But before then, I know just who to call in Genoa to get whatever police information there is on him, and I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 11

  A visitors’ guide to the city of Genoa contends that it has more fifteenth- and sixteenth-century palazzos per square inch than any other city in the world, and that just might be so. In some places there are nine or ten to a city block. Many are very grand indeed, sporting colonnaded porticoes and magnificent facades with long rows of tracery windows. Others couldn’t be plainer. The somewhat hyperbolically named Monumental Complex of St. Ignatius, sitting on the crest of the Carignano, the scenic rise in the center of the city, is one of the plainest, looking less like a palazzo than an office building—which is what it’s been for the last two centuries.

  Since 1817, the structure has been occupied by the State Archives, except for two unpretentious rooms at the rear of the ground floor, which now house the Genoa branch of Italy’s art squad, the Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale. The smallest of the twelve branches, the Genovese art unit currently has only one full-time caribiniere. Capitano Gino Moscoli was the most senior member of the entire nationwide team, having joined it as a simple carabiniere in 1979, only ten years after its inception.

  Over these decades he had made many good friends in the law enforcement community, both in Italy and internationally. Among them was a much younger man, but a competent and resourceful one, pleasant to associate with, open to instruction from an older, more experienced colleague, and always ready to pitch in when called upon by the Italians. This was the American Ted Ellesworth, “Teo” to the Italians, who headed the FBI’s art squad, a far smaller operation than the Italian one. This was natural enough; Italy had a thousand times more art treasures just waiting to be snatched out of remote churches and poorly guarded municipal museums. Besides, Italian art thieves—one might as well be honest about it—were more up to the job.

  When his phone had quietly beeped at nine o’clock this morning, it was with pleasure that he saw Ellesworth’s name on the screen. It had been awhile since he’d heard from his buon amico americano.

  “Teo! It’s good to hear from you,” he said in Italian.

  “And it’s good to hear your voice, Gino. It’s been awhile.” Ted was speaking Italian too. Like many whose work required familiarity with the history of Western art, he found a grasp of the language indispensable. “I have a favor to ask.”

  “You shock me.”

  “It shouldn’t take more than an hour of your time, all told. I’d just like you to ask one of your local art dealers a few questions and get back to me.”

  “Certainly.” Moscoli opened a small notebook and jotted down the questions as Ted went through them. “Yes, it shouldn’t take long at all. What’s this all about?”

  “At this point I don’t know if it’s about anything, really. I’m on kind of a fishing expedition. It’s a long story, Gino, but if it looks as if there’s anything to it, you can be sure I’ll let you know the minute I do. Listen, I’m working undercover in Geneva right now, so when you call me back, you need to use a special number and then enter a code when you’re asked for it, and you’ll be put through to me.”

  “All right,” Moscoli said, writing down the number and the code as they were read to him. “And who is this art dealer to whom these questions are to be put?”

  “His name is Alfonso—no, Alessandro Ferrante. I was hoping you might know him.”

  Moscoli replied with a snort of corrosive laughter. And then, archly: “I do have some acquaintanceship with the gentleman, yes.”

  Almost thirty years’ worth, in fact, Moscoli thought a little later, starting out on his twenty-minute walk to Ferrante’s gallery. Capitano Moscoli had been stalking Alessandro Ferrante for longer than Inspector Javert had hunted Jean Valjean. Indeed, sometimes he felt as if he and Ferrante were living their own personal version of Les Miserables, although in Hugo’s story Valjean at least had the decency to stay on the run in order to elude the dogged Javert. Ferrante, on the other hand, had been right out in the open all this tim
e, right in front of Moscoli’s eyes, never troubling to leave Genoa. His art dealership boldly bore his own name—the Galleria Ferrante—and was located on the city’s most exclusive shopping street, the elegantly colonnaded via XX Settembre. And not at street level, mind you, among the shops catering to whatever riffraff happened to stroll in off the tiled sidewalk (e.g. Cartier, Rolex, Swarovski), but on the upper floor, above one of the elegant, block-long porticoes, in an airy, spacious suite of rooms with a shrub-bordered terrace atop the portico itself, onto which privileged clients could take paintings out to be studied in the clarifying light of day.

  Moscoli’s acquaintanceship with the slippery Ferrante had begun in 1987. At that time a sottotenente, a sub-lieutenant, Moscoli had been made the field chief of a team working on an important art theft in the city. Colonnello Tebaldi had gone against both protocol and the advice of his superiors in Rome in giving so responsible an assignment to a sub-lieutenant, and a baby-faced, twenty-seven-year-old one at that. Moscoli, grateful for the opportunity, had attacked it with all his youthful zeal, but to no avail; the case had never been resolved.

  That Ferrante had planned and executed the theft, and that he had done it at the behest of the Genovese Mafia, Moscoli knew for a certainty; a dozen meaty clues had led straight to him and to his nebulous association with the Mafia. But when you had judges and juries to deal with, knowing something for a certainty was one thing and having the evidence to prove it at the level demanded in a court of law was another.

  And that, Moscoli had been unable to come up with. The case was never solved and the loot never recovered. Unfairly, to Moscoli’s way of thinking, it was Colonnello Tebaldi, not the young lieutenant, who was penalized for this failure. He was demoted to tenente, which was hard, and reassigned to Calabria, which was worse. But Moscoli had never forgiven himself for what he considered to be his failure, and the case had gnawed at him for almost three decades now, almost like a lost first love that might have been his, had he only been more perceptive, more discerning, more diligent, more . . . something.