16

I walked into the conference room after clearing security on the ground floor. Mike and Mercer were exchanging war stories with four very buttoned-down federal agents while they waited for me to arrive. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me what was obvious from the expression on Mike’s face as he looked up to see me.

“Mother of-jeez, what the hell happened to you? That picture’s got ‘line of duty’ written all over it. Someone messes me up like that and I could go out on three-quarters disability pay tomorrow.”

Mercer came over to examine the scrapes on my arm and ask whether I was all right.

“Yeah, I tripped into a hole on my way over from the courthouse.”

“All those years of ballet lessons and you’re a regular twinkletoes. You got four city blocks to walk here, what kinda hole we talking about?”

“I’ll explain later. Let’s get going here.”

“You’ll explain now, blondie.”

“Ran into somebody who doesn’t like me. Wakim Wakefield, a forty-something ex-con. Took his fifteen-year-old plaything away from him this afternoon and he didn’t appreciate it.” I told them a short version of the story.

“Just another friggin’ Ponce de Léon looking for his fountain of youth,” Mike said. “Let’s call in a police report on your hit-and-run attempt.”

“No,” I said firmly. “Just leave it alone. I’m not hurt. And this’ll blow over by the time he goes out tonight and finds himself another teen angel. It couldn’t have been anything more than chance that he saw me on the street as I was leaving and took out his frustration on me. I hate to tell you, but some cop’s going to walk out of Central Booking later tonight and find a radio car that got bashed up worse than my pride. Point me to the ladies’ room and give me a little time to make myself presentable.”

Special Agent Rainieri chose not to delay the discussion until my return, since I had already kept the group waiting an extra twenty minutes. He seemed to be speaking in answer to a question one of the detectives had asked. “Yeah, we had a turncoat. That’s what started the whole investigation. Seems he got cheated out of a very big sale and decided to rat out some of the other dealers in the pack.

“The point of these rings, you know, is to keep the prices of the artworks at auctions way down. One of them buys the painting at the public sale, then resells it at a vastly greater price-usually to a private client-and splits the big profit with his-or her-small clan of coconspirators.”

“Denise Caxton?”

“She was a player all right. Don’t forget, not only do we have ordinary business receipts and phone records, but we’ve got tapes of all the telephone bidding that goes on during an auction house sale. And the expense statements and each gallery’s credit agreements.”

I had to remind Mike that beyond the social cachet and great expense connected with the grand auctions, art was one of the only objects in the world that could be purchased in any currency and from any location.

“Do you know who her cohorts were in these deals?”

The only female agent present, Estelle Grayson, answered. “She moved in and out of a few partnerships. Lowell Caxton didn’t mess much with auctions, and didn’t run with the pack. He has always had his own sources and paid dearly for them. Doesn’t leave much of a paper trail, and didn’t mix well in the sandbox with the other kids.”

“Bryan Daughtry?” I asked.

“He’s everywhere in this. Not up front, not sitting there with a paddle in the air. But he was pumping cash into her operation and trying to guide her into play with some of this very contemporary art inventory.”

“Any names you can give us connected with the auction investigation?”

“Denise Caxton spent a lot of time at events this year. Sometimes she was with a personal client, a big collector.” Rainieri referred to his file and gave us a list of names, none of which sounded at all familiar. “Often she brought a friend or escort, and it’s hard to tell if there’s any business purpose instead of a social one. Chapman says you’ve been talking to Mrs. Caxton’s friend Marina Sette. She’s a figure at these things. Could be she’s just a big spender.

“Two of the men Denise had been socializing with also show up-Frank Wrenley and Preston Mattox. Again, one’s an antiques dealer and one’s an architect, so we’ve got subpoenas out for their records, too. Nothing in on them yet. We just don’t know if they’re around for the fun or the profit.”

“Well, do they buy anything?”

“Wrenley does. But that’s a new twist, new buzzword in the auction world. It’s called ‘cross-marketing.’ So, when Sotheby’s has a sale of Impressionists, for example, they don’t start the program off with a Monet. Last spring at their big show, the first piece sold was a pair of silver soup tureens made by a French silversmith in the eighteenth century. Used to belong to J. P. Morgan. Went for more than seven million bucks. The houses are trying to lure art collectors into new passions.”

“Wrenley bought those tureens?”

“No, no. But he’s shown up often and bought a lot of silver pieces-old French royalty. And Denise Caxton had Preston Mattox bidding on a set of murals out of an old Scottish estate. So we haven’t reached a point of figuring whether this was business or romance.

“Anyway, Kim asked us to start making connections between Mrs. Caxton and anyone who’d have a reason to do her in. We’re looking, and a few months down the road, when we have all the paper we need, something might leap out at us. In the meantime, if you guys have subpoenaed some of the same phone and business records that we did, we can cut through a lot of this and give you our copies. Maybe you’ll find things that wouldn’t mean anything to us.”

I fished through my overstuffed pocketbook to pull out copies of the file folders with the subpoenas inside. The bag had turned upside down in my fall and was even more disastrously messed up than usual.

“I don’t know how she finds anything in there,” Chapman said as I clasped lipstick, a compact, a handkerchief, Tic Tacs, four pens, and a wallet in my left hand, trying to free up the folder with my right. “What do you know about the Gardner Museum heist?”

“Not our turf. We’ve talked to the team who’ve worked it for practically ten years, just ’cause they’re figuring the stolen items have got to surface somewhere before too long. So they’re watching the auction houses pretty closely, too. D’y’all know about Youngworth and Connor?”

More than anything, Mike hated telling a Fed that there was something about which he was ignorant. He wouldn’t say no to them, so I did.

“There are two guys in Boston, William Youngworth and Myles Connor. Youngworth’s an antiques dealer-been in and out of the can on minor things-and Connor’s a master art thief. Both of these men were in jail when the Gardner job was pulled, but word is, if they weren’t the brains behind the theft, they certainly knew about it.

“Last year Youngworth claimed that he could broker the return of the missing Rembrandt for the five-million-dollar reward the FBI put up, along with immunity for him and his pal. You know about the chips?”

Another thumbs-up for Joan Stafford. “Sure,” said Chapman, puffing. “Know all about the chips. Those assholes cut the painting right out of the frame.”

“Yeah, well, Youngworth gave some Boston news reporter a few chips to support his claim that he could produce the goods. Our experts looked them over. Not authentic, not from the missing painting. That’s the latest on the Gardner case.”

“Who was your expert? Got a name for us?”

“No idea who it is. We’ll get it for you tomorrow.”

We spent the next half hour sorting through documents to see which ones I was legally entitled to examine at this point. At six fifteen, Mercer suggested we close up. “Let’s get over to the funeral parlor before the seven o’clock visiting hours. Maybe we can chat up some of Marco Varelli’s friends and family.”