“The guy in the Oxford?”

“Yes. Otto Von Lindberg.”

“You knew exactly how to set him up, didn’t you, exactly how to play him?” And that was a sobering thought.

“Otto and I go back a few years,” she said coolly.

And there was another sobering thought. She played hardball on this court all the time. Geezus.

“So what was your dad up to, trying to buy the painting back from Von Lindberg? Was he working for Nachman, being a go-between?”

She let out a short breath. “Initially, yes, but Dad has a way of getting into trouble. He gets in over his head, and then it’s just one big Ponzi scheme for him, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and making deals and promises he shouldn’t, hoping it will all turn out right in the end.”

“He gambles,” Johnny said, and she agreed.

“With everything.”

Which Johnny couldn’t have cared less about, except this time, Burt Alden had gambled with Esme’s well-being, with her safety, and frankly, that pissed him off-royally.

“Can I see it? The painting?” He’d sure like to know what all the fuss was about, because the night had been full of fuss.

“Sure,” she said, reaching down and opening the messenger bag.

He concentrated on the road, until he heard her snap open the metal case she’d slipped into the bag at the office.

He glanced over to where she had opened the case. It was dark inside Solange, but Esme had taken out her flashlight and had it shining on the small piece of art inside its protective covering.

“That’s not canvas, is it?” The painting was too solid, too stiff.

“No. Meinhard painted this piece on copper. It’s one of only three pieces he did on metal. One is in the Louvre, and the other was with the Rothschild collection. It hasn’t been seen since 1942.”

Johnny could see it, even under its covering. Sure he could, and he supposed if a person liked red, orange, gray, and green with a big smear of blue and a little dab of pink-well, yeah, he could see that if a person liked that, well, then they would like Jakob Meinhard’s Woman in Blue on copper.

Alrighty, then. Now he knew. Their asses were on the line, and the one thing that could save them and old Burt was an eight-by-ten-inch brightly colored piece of copper that didn’t look anything like a woman-and yes, it was called art. He wasn’t a complete heathen. He didn’t doubt for a second that the thing was worth all the trouble everyone had ever gone to for it. But by flashlight light, in a moving car, under its cover, it was a stretch to see the “masterpiece” part of the Expressionist masterpiece.

It was plenty expressionistic, though. He could give it a perfect ten for expressionism.

“Very cool,” he said, and yeah, he knew that was about a low-end one on the art appreciation verbalization scale, but for all that he’d posed for Nikki, he’d never really picked up the lingo.

“Cool?” Esme sounded a little disappointed in his opinion.

He was, too. Truly.

“Yeah, cool. Very, uh, colorful. It kind of looks like Solange, with the blue and all, and the curves, and that thicker swath of gray straightaway. The red could be her taillights.”

“Solange, your car?”

“Yeah, very curvy, very female, I guess, when I look at it a little more. I never heard of Jakob Meinhard, but the painting looks like it could be worth quite a lot of money.” He was telling her the truth. The long slinky lines and the colors reminded him of the Cyclone, but as far as opinions went, that one probably didn’t have many redeeming qualities either-a fact she conveyed quite succinctly with her closing of the painting into the case.

“It is,” she said.

And there he was, back in high school, in another classic Esme Alden moment-in over his head.

“The word masterpiece alone implies a certain value.” That sounded a little better-maybe.

Hell, if she wanted to talk art, she needed to be talking to Hawkins. Superman could even outtalk Nikki about all the “this and that” of art, and he’d married a woman who owned art galleries, for crying out loud.

“Yes, it does.”

He heard her snap the case shut.

“How much could you get for it on the open market?” he said, cutting to the chase. There probably weren’t any additional redeeming qualities in that question either, but he wanted to know.

“There is no open market, per se, for works of this quality if they’re stolen,” she said, sliding the case back into the leather messenger bag.

Fair enough.

“How much on the black market?”

“Half a million.”

Quite a hell of a lot of money, just like he’d said.

“And if it wasn’t stolen and could be bought legitimately?” he asked.

“One point five to two million.”

He didn’t whistle at that. He just kept driving.

Two million dollars, sitting in his car.

He’d known life was going to be interesting, being back in Denver, being part of SDF, or at least almost part of SDF, but, man, he’d come up with Esme Alden and a two-million-dollar painting all on his own. And any girl dealing in two million dollars’ worth of art had done damn well by herself, her screwup dad aside. Private investigations on that scale were a few cuts above following errant spouses around with a long lens, or tracking down the guy who hadn’t paid his construction lien.

The sudden vibration of his phone had him reaching in his pocket to pull it out. He automatically looked at the screen before he answered.

“Skeets, wazzup?”

“General Grant, Johnny-boy. He’s here, up on The Beach with a bottle of Scotch.”

Johnny sat up a little straighter behind the wheel. Oh-kay.

He might not have been an official member of the SDF team yet, but he’d been working at Steele Street and living in the annex at the Commerce City Garage for almost ten years, and of the few times that General Grant had come to Denver, he’d only gotten plastered up on The Beach once, when he’d come to mourn J. T. Chronopoulos, one of the original chop-shop boys and one of the original members of SDF.

“Did someone die?” It was a hard question, an awful question, the kind a guy felt in his gut, but with a few of the operators out on missions, anything was possible, and the hard questions always needed to be asked first.

“No. I ran everybody down as soon as I realized where Grant had gone and that the Scotch was missing from the guest suite,” Skeeter said. “He’s called a meeting for the A.M., and he wants everyone here.”

“Red Dog and Travis-” Johnny started, but she cut him off.

“They won’t make it. Senators rule, SDF drools when it comes to fact-finding tours of Third World countries. They stay put.”

“Smith?” C. Smith Rydell was the other operator currently deployed.

“Arriving at Peterson in a couple of hours. Everyone else is either driving in or flying in before dawn, and we’re all meeting up here. Your name is on the guest list.”

The news set him back for a second. He’d expected it, sure, but to hear it.

Hoo-yah … he grinned-except if Grant was here to deliver good news, what was up with the Scotch?

“Yeah, I’m wondering the same damn thing,” Skeeter said, reading his mind-business as usual with SDF’s spooky long-legged blonde. He’d spent enough time with her under the hood of a car not to be surprised when she knew exactly what he’d been thinking.

“Exit,” Esme whispered, pointing up ahead to an exit ramp.

He nodded and pulled over into the right-hand lane.

“Who all’s at the garage?” The building at 738 Steele Street had thirteen floors, seven of which housed cars, mostly American muscle from the sixties and early seventies.

“The jungle boy and I have been working on Mercy all night, and Superman is here.”

“And the meeting?”

“Eight A.M., everybody on board, front and center. Creed and I will be hosting. The coffee will be Jamaican, hot, and strong, and the doughnuts will be fresh from Sugarbombs.”