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

by Charlotte Elkins

  Since then, he had called on Ferrante dozens of times, officially and unofficially, aggressively and amicably, in hopes of ferreting out some overlooked datum, some factoid that might lead to the recovery of the looted art, but Ferrante had fended him off every time.

  This case, his very first major case, was, in fact, the reason he hadn’t retired years ago. He had stayed on the job for a long time; too long, even in his own eyes. He was nearing sixty now, older than Colonnello Tebaldi had been in 1987, and any possibility of promotion to maggiore, let alone colonnello, was long gone. Even his promotion to capitano five years ago, he had been made to understand, was more a reward for his long and loyal service than anything else. And then there was his deteriorating health: an arthritic hip that couldn’t wait much longer for an operation, and a recent, troubling diagnosis of incipient Parkinson’s disease (neither of which his superiors knew anything about). It was time to go and he knew it, but the need to solve that ancient crime and, if at all possible, to retrieve the loot or at least to determine for sure what had happened to it, was still with him. He understood himself well enough to know that it was closure he was after; a deeply personal need, not an official one. But that didn’t stop him from dreaming—and it was little more than a dream now—of getting it done before he retired, which he would surely be forced to do in any case before much longer.

  As soon as Teo had mentioned Ferrante’s name, Moscoli had peppered the FBI man with questions, hoping there might be a connection to the old theft, but no. This was something about an ornamental mirror, and no mirror, ornamental or otherwise, had been involved.

  The entrance to Ferrante’s gallery was an unprepossessing doorway wedged into the narrow space between a chic women’s-wear boutique and a trendy new gourmet shop specializing in caviars, pâtés, and Belgian chocolates. The door itself was a dull brown, as ordinary as they come (although steel-reinforced, Moscoli knew), and the only indication of what lay behind it was a postcard-sized brass plate on the doorjamb:

  Galleria Ferrante

  Arte Moderna et Contemporanea

  Below it was a push button, which Moscoli now pushed. From the perforated speaker came a robotic voice that explained that the gallery was open only by appointment, six days a week from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and then again from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. If the caller wished to apply for an appointment, he or she need only press 1.

  Moscoli pressed 1.

  “Galleria Ferrante, come posso aiutarla?” said a familiar female voice. How may I help you?

  “Buongiorno, Filomena,” Moscoli replied. “It’s Capitano Moscoli. I’d like to speak with signor Ferrante if he has a moment.”

  Moscoli recognized the scraping, shuffling noise that meant that a hand was covering the telephone. A moment later she was back on. “Please come up, Capitano.” The lock clicked, the door opened a couple of inches, and Moscoli pushed his way through.

  The neon-lit foyer was as unwelcoming as the door, its walls a sludgy, dismal olive-green. The place was a mess, with construction debris and equipment everywhere. A six-foot, paint-splattered aluminum ladder leaned against one wall, a threadbare work apron hung from a seemingly randomly placed nail, and the floor was littered with sawdust, power tools, and scraps of plywood. The air smelled of turpentine and lubricating oil, and the steel staircase to the upper floor looked as if it had been liberated from a heavy manufacturing plant.

  There was no construction underway, however. This unfortunate introduction to the gallery was the gallery’s latest “installation.” They changed every few months. In the recent past it had been the back room of a butcher shop, a macabre wax museum, an autopsy room, and a two-story prison cell. Why these grisly, off-putting settings should put clients in the mood to buy art, Moscoli had no idea. He had asked Ferrante once, and the answer had been that “edgy” was what was selling these days. For Moscoli, that had explained nothing but had only confirmed his long-held conviction that people were unendingly perverse.

  Moscoli wondered what he would do if something like this mess were stolen and he was ordered onto the case. It wouldn’t be a happy assignment, he knew that much. Personally, he’d be in favor of the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage paying some gang to steal this brainless litter. As long, that is, as they’d promise to get it out of Italy.

  Upstairs, there were two high-ceilinged exhibition rooms with Spartan white furniture and chalk-white walls. One held a show of sardonic “religious” paintings by a Norwegian artist, the other a “neo-Soviet Constructivist” exhibit by a Genovese painter. These consisted mostly of posterlike, 1930s-style representations of workers with brawny forearms, raised fists, and fervent, skyward gazes, but with wizened old faces and spotted, balding heads with wispy white hair. Snakes, lizards, and fish crawled over the ground. A woman in a black shawl sat on a kitchen chair, facing away from the viewer. Delightful.

  Ferrante’s office was at the rear and quite different, a tasteful, unassuming room that might have been the office of a well-to-do attorney or psychologist. On the walls were black-and-white landscape photographs of the Apennines, one to each wall. Beneath each one was a pedestal holding a flowing, abstract steel sculpture, tributes to the works of Brancusi (or maybe mockeries, who knew these days?).

  By the time Moscoli got to the office door, Filomena was right behind him with a tray holding two espresso cups of caffè corretto—espressos spiked with a few drops of grappa—and two small glasses of water. This had become a welcome custom whenever Ferrante knew his old enemy was on his way up.

  Smiling, Ferrante stood behind his bow-top, maple desk (uncluttered, as always), and offered his hand. Also as always, he was immaculate in a conservative, three-piece suit and tie. “Good morning, Gino, I wonder to what I owe this pleasure.”

  Moscoli shook the proffered hand and smiled back. “Why, primarily, my hope that I might be offered a cup of Filomena’s marvelous coffee, of course.”

  “As you see, Filomena herself has anticipated you. Thank you, Filomena, you may go.”

  Filomena left, wearing her usual unreadable face.

  Ferrante sat and invited Moscoli to do the same, which he did. One of the minuscule cups, resting on a saucer, was slid to the capitano across the burnished surface of the desk, and both men drank their coffee.

  “Thank you, Alessandro.”

  “My pleasure, Gino, as always.”

  This was normal interaction for them now. They had known each other so long, sparred with each other for so many years, that they had eventually moved naturally to a first-name basis two decades and more ago, polite but chilly at first, but in the last few years they had become more like old friends than old enemies. Moscoli no longer had any desire to put Ferrante away, which wouldn’t happen in any case, any applicable statutes of limitations having run out years ago. Over and above that, he would have been sorry now to see this urbane, sophisticated man spend his declining years behind bars.

  In any case, that was not what he was here about today. “About a week ago, Alessandro, you made a telephone call to America, to Seattle, no?”

  “True. To Alix London, an art consultant there.”

  “And would you mind telling me the nature of that call?”

  Ferrante leaned back in his curvy ergonomic chair and folded his manicured hands at his waist. “Signorina London’s photograph was on the cover of a magazine last week. On the wall behind her was a small mirror set in a decorative panel—a pretty thing. A client of mine, let us call him signor X, saw it and was much impressed. He asked me if I could find out who had crafted it and whether the craftsman might be amenable to making something similar for him. Naturally, the simplest way for me to go about it was to contact the signorina to see if she could put me in touch with its maker, which is what I did. Whether my appeal was successful or not, I don’t yet know.”

  “I see,” Moscoli said agreeably. “Now: Your client, this signor X—I don’t suppose you would care to tell me his name?”

/>   “You know my policy on that, Gino. I don’t wish to be uncooperative, but unless I am served with a warrant, ‘signor X’ he must remain. Gino, excuse me, why are we discussing this at all?”

  “Because,” Moscoli said, “the lady’s apartment was ransacked within a very few days after your call, and among the objects taken—the only one that might be of any value at all—was that very mirror.” From beneath lowered eyelids he watched for Ferrante’s reaction.

  All he got for his trouble was a brief, tiny flicker of the skin under Ferrante’s right eye, an itch that he scratched with a single finger and that probably meant nothing. “Taken? Stolen, do you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think—surely, you don’t imagine—that I had anything to do with that?”

  “I thought that you might have some idea of why it would have been stolen,” said Moscoli tactfully. “If I understand correctly, it wouldn’t be worth much, a few hundred euros at most.”

  “Oh, a bit more than that, I should think. But Gino, why is this a carabinieri concern? I would have thought it a problem for the police in America.”

  “And so it is. I’m here as a favor to an American colleague.”

  Ferrante’s hands came up to steeple in front of his mouth while he cogitated and then he slowly shook his head. “Truly, my friend, I wish I could help you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Half an hour after Moscoli left, Ferrante was a different man, distraught, in shirtsleeves, his tie undone, and raving into his telephone. “Idiota! Stupido! Testa di . . . di . . .”

  Nine thousand miles and nine time zones away, in Bellevue, Washington, Gus Voss muttered “Jesus Christ, do you know what time it is here?” and hung up on him.

  “What! Don’t you dare—” Ferrante babbled pointlessly. “You . . . you . . .” Trembling, furious, he redialed at once.

  “How could you do a thing so stupid?” he screamed when the phone was picked up again. “Do you even realize what you’ve done? I hired you because you were supposed to be a professional, not just another brainless—”

  “Oh, man, screw this,” Gus said, and then as he crammed his phone into its cradle, in a barely heard afterthought: “And screw you too, Ferrante.” Click.

  The next three tries produced busy signals. Ferrante put his elbows on his desk and with a groan laid his pounding head down on his forearms. What was he to do next?

  Alessandro Lucio Ferrante rightfully prided himself on his stringently cultivated ability, whatever the crisis might be, to maintain not only a calm exterior but also an inner calm as well. But then had there ever been a crisis like this before? He was practically frothing at the mouth, and not only because he was furious with Voss; he was terrified for himself as well. Greasy rivulets of perspiration slid down his cheeks and over his jaw line, and disappeared under his shirt collar. Despite his determination to still his fingers, they fumbled as he tried to light what must have been his tenth cigarette since Moscoli had gone, most of which he’d forgotten before he’d finished them and now lay smoldering in the ashtray. At one point he’d found himself with a lit cigarette in his mouth and another one between his fingers.

  What was wrong with Voss? What had he been thinking? That he could sell the mirror, was that it? Stupido, stupido, stupido. If word of this were to reach Don Rizzolo before Ferrante had time to straighten it out (assuming it was even possible for it to be straightened out), Ferrante was as good as dead, and so, in all probability, was Voss. (That was one bright spot, anyway.) And even if Ferrante could somehow make things right, the don would be seriously irked, and not many people still walked the earth who had seriously irked Don Rizzolo. And those few who did walked it with a prominent limp.

  Despite the panic filling his chest like a cold lump of clay, Ferrante’s lip curled at the thought of the Mafia chief. “Don” Rizzolo, indeed. It took effort not to sneer when the “don” allowed some crawling supplicant to kiss his ring, as if he were the damn pope. And who let himself be called “Don” anymore? Even in the Sicilian Mafia, the real Mafia, the custom had died out a half-century ago. But then came The Godfather, and suddenly the capo of every two-bit, would-be Mafia cosca in Italy thought he was Marlon Brando. Don Rizzolo’s father, the Mafia chieftain who had commissioned Ferrante for the theft, had never gone along with the trend. His intimates continued to call him Piero. To others he was simply signore, as he had always been. Now there was a man who didn’t require a title to be respected.

  But in 1989, when the old capo died (at home in his bed, of pulmonary disease) and his son replaced him, it was as “Don Rizzolo.” The whole thing was ludicrous, farcical; they blindly followed a movie made in Hollywood, not even knowing enough to get the protocol right. “Don” was a traditional honorific, yes—it had been in use since the 1500s—but as a form of address it was not to be paired with one’s surname alone, but with the given name, as was the case with “Prince” or “Sir.” Don Corleone should properly have been Don Vito, and Don Rizzolo was properly Don Pantaleone. Although with a name like that, even though it was in honor of a thirteenth-century saint greatly admired by his father, one could understand why he’d prefer “Don.”

  Not that Don Rizzolo himself was ludicrous, or that the Genovese cosca was two-bit. Far from it—it was one of the very few new Mafias that lived up to the vicious old tradition in every respect. They were smart, powerful, unforgiving, implacable, and brutal in the extreme. And it was the don—

  Ferrante jumped when his telephone rang. He jammed his cigarette into the ashtray—good God, he had two of them going again. Calm down, Alessandro, get hold of yourself.

  He snatched up the phone. “Voss?” he said, disturbed to hear how short of breath he was. He’d barely managed to get out that one syllable.

  “Yeah, Voss. Okay, now you got me wondering instead of sleeping. So tell me, what’s the big deal? What do you want?”

  Ferrante told himself to take a deep breath but couldn’t manage it; he continued to pant. “Are you . . . are you out of . . . your mind? Did you think . . . whoo . . . did you think you could . . . could sell it? Was that it? It’s not . . . whoo . . . it’s not worth anything, you moron. You’ll be lucky to get twenty dollars for it, that is, if you can even find anyone—”

  “I got no idea what you’re talking about,” Voss said placidly. “Call me again if and when you can control yourself. And Ferrante?”

  “Yes, what? What?”

  “Don’t yell at me again, Ferrante. Not ever.” Voss’s voice was burred from four decades of booze and cigars, but it was icily level. “Remember what I told you when you hired me. I’m not your lousy employee, I’m an independent contractor, and I take crap from no man, least of all you. You can’t be polite, I don’t want to hear from you.”

  “Now . . . now, just one minute, my friend. You listen to me—”

  Click.

  Ferrante sat there, motionless, his eyes unfocused, for two minutes, three minutes. Then, surprised to find himself still clutching the telephone, he set it on its stand, went to the maple and glass liquor cabinet in the far corner of his office, and poured himself a brimming shot glass, not of the famous but insipid French champagne kept for his run-of-the-mill customers, but of the top-tier Vecchia Romagna generally reserved for his most favored clients. He downed it in a single gulp, tipping his head back to toss it down his gullet like a seasoned rummy, which he was not. Still, once he felt how the brandy warmed and eased him on the way down he poured another, drinking it slowly this time, in three swallows, after which he tried another deep breath and found he could do it this time. He put the glass down and studied his fingers: not shaking now, or only a very little. And the pounding in his temples was down to an almost pleasant sort of buzz. Madonna mia, no wonder people became drunks.

  He gave himself another ten minutes to collect himself and lit another cigarette, just a single one this time, and thought about Voss while he smoked it most of the way down.

  Voss had been difficult
to work with from the first. Most of the professionals for hire in the illicit surveillance business were young, manageable kids—nerdy hackers or moonlighting IT specialists—but Gus Voss was a hard-nosed, fifty-eight-year-old ex-lieutenant with the Seattle police. He’d been their hacking and identity theft expert, fired when he’d made a few forays of his own to the Dark Side and had gotten caught at it. He had then served four months in jail for his misdeeds, but within only a few more months he was making more money than ever. He had morphed into one of the world’s most sought-after—and most expensive—“consultants” when surveillance services were required. “Legal” and “illegal” were not terms that concerned him. He’d worked for (and just as likely against) everybody from McDonald’s, to the US Defense Department, to Britain’s MI5, and, now, for the Genovese Mafia.

  He was worth his exorbitant price, certainly, but he was not an easy man to get along with. The American who’d been the middleman between Ferrante and Voss had described him as “your typical Yankee hard-ass.” Ferrante hadn’t fully understood the term at the time, but it didn’t take him long to get it. This was one very tough guy, but a thin-skinned one—someone who had to be handled with kid gloves if you wanted his cooperation. And now Ferrante had stupidly let his emotions—might as well be frank, his goggle-eyed terror—get the better of him.

  The brandy was relaxing him, helping him see things in a new light. He had a third glass—or was that his second? His fourth? Hurriedly, he capped the bottle, put it back in the cabinet, and locked the door. He knew better than to allow himself to get carried away. He sighed. Why had he gotten so excited? Things weren’t as bad as all that, not yet. Given a little luck, a little time, they could still be resolved. Maybe. But the key was Voss. He dialed the number again.

  “This better be good,” Voss said in a singsong voice when he picked up his phone.

  “Good morning, my friend,” said Ferrante. “First let me apologize for my earlier rudeness. I did overreact, but, you see, it appears that you may have—inadvertently, it goes without saying—created a serious problem. I’m calling in hopes that, by working together, we might remedy it before it’s too late.”