Thomas sighed. The theft had been so perfectly planned, the haul so astonishing… When Heusen had heard that Tony Olsen was putting together a memorial for Rosemary, Christopher and Heusen had immediately put together a plan that would allow them to snag one of the biggest troves in the history of art: works by da Vinci and Michelangelo, mostly, but also by Rembrandt, Watteau, Rubens, Tiepolo, and de La Tour. Christopher had buyers for virtually all of the pieces in place, and the net to him, after expenses, would have been millions.
But it’d all turned to dust…
And topping off the tragedy, just today he’d received that phone call.
“I have information on Christopher Thomas…”
Information? Christopher Thomas had been murdered by his wife and stuffed into an iron maiden. Christopher Thomas was dead and buried. Christopher Thomas was a faded memory-a despised or hated or, in a few cases, envied memory. That’s all the information he wanted anyone to have.
But he knew the caller.
A noise behind him intruded. He swiveled around to see Tanya-no, her name was Taylor, right?-pulling her tiny dress back on. When he’d yanked the handful of Lycra off her an hour ago and flung it to the floor, he’d been focusing on her supple body and trying to forget about the failed heist. The sex was supposed to distract him from the loss; it had zero effect, and he blamed her for that.
“Oooh,” she said, eyeing his cognac, “I wanna cosmo.”
“No. Leave.”
She blinked. “Well, you’re not very nice.” In a little girl’s singsong tone.
He walked away, ignoring her. He heard her pull together her things and leave, sighing loudly.
Who cared? There’d be more Tanyas. Wait… Taylors.
He called Heusen again, using the untraceable, prepaid mobiles that they relied on in their operations.
Finally an answering click.
“Hello?” said the slurred voice.
“You haven’t been answering me,” Thomas snapped.
“The police’ve been taking statements from everybody.”
“You’ve been drinking. Now is not the time to get drunk. What’s going on? Do they suspect anything?”
“About us? I don’t know. I didn’t hang around at the museum to find out.”
“Where are you? What’re you doing now?”
“Sitting on the boat and getting drunk.”
“Well,” Thomas said slowly, “I think we’ll be fine. There’s been no personal contact?”
“Absolutely no connection.”
“How’d they figure it out?”
“I don’t know.”
Heusen was a snake and a drunk, but he wasn’t fundamentally stupid. After all, the two men had been stealing art for the past decade and had managed to avoid the smartest cops and insurance investigators in the business. Thomas said, “I think everything’ll be fine. We’ll let the dust settle. Lay low for a while.”
“Yeah, lay low.”
Thomas disconnected, resisting the urge to pitch his glass against the wall. He sat down and stared out the window.
Thinking back to the days when Christopher Thomas had an evergrowing need for money and mistresses. And all the while Rosemary had been growing more and more impatient with him, less willing to dole out her family money to him.
So Thomas began to reconsider his future. As a curator, he’d forged connections with shady businessmen and criminals around the world and had learned about the huge market for private art placements.
Tidy euphemism, that.
People thought that some paintings were so famous that they were safe from theft. Ah, but they didn’t know about men-always men, it seemed-in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, China, Japan, Malaysia, and India with limitless funds and a lust for owning genius. They never showed the art in public; sometimes they didn’t show it at all. The passion was about possessing what someone else could not.
And so Thomas came up with his idea, inspired by the iron maiden. He and Heusen, with the help of Artie Ruby, who worked for Christopher, would fake his death and slip another body into the device, and Ruby would arrange to have the maiden shipped to Germany. In a bit of medical trickery, Christopher had to break off one of his teeth and cut off his own finger, placing it strategically in the dead guy’s thigh so the body would be identified as his. Hell, what was one finger and a chipped tooth compared to escape from his debtors and billions? Besides if he hadn’t taken such elaborate measures to ensure his own safety, he’d probably have been killed years ago by one of his “connections.”
But framing Rosemary had been Peter’s idea. Thomas went along with it reluctantly because he had to. He needed Peter. Even now, twelve years later, the memory of how he’d smeared her blouse with his blood and torn a button off and placed it with the dead body disturbed him occasionally. Still, better Rosemary should die than he. That’s probably how she would have wanted it anyhow. That was always the problem with her in the first place, the more she gave him, the more he despised her. She’d never understood that. Poor Rosemary.
And so Peter Heusen, the tipsy socialite, and Christopher Thomas, the former curator with an eye for the art market and connections, made a perfect team. They despised each other, of course. But so did half the Allied commanders during World War II (Thomas loved his history). Over the past decade they’d stolen hundreds of millions’ worth of art and artifacts and placed them privately overseas-generally one or two pieces at a time: a Renoir from a university museum in upstate New York, a jewel-encrusted medieval chalice from a fashion magnate in Milan, a Picasso from a foundation in Barcelona, a Manet from the secret pied-à-terre that a philanthropist kept for his mistress (no police reports on that one, unsurprisingly).
And there were more to come.
But right now he had one thing on his mind: escape. As fast as he could. Jon Nunn was no longer a cop, but he was still nosing around. After the botched heist it was only a matter of time before Nunn learned of Heusen’s involvement, and the path would lead to Thomas himself, if it hadn’t already.
Then there was the phone call.
A fast, clean escape wasn’t as difficult, or unanticipated, as it seemed. Christopher Thomas had always known that he risked being found out and that he might have to bail at any moment. He had an escape plan, millions in cash, gold in international banks, his safe house in Brazil.
He placed a call to his private charter service and had them stand by.
Thomas now strode into his bedroom and pulled the American Touristers out from under the bed. (Vuitton? He didn’t even own any. What is somebody going to steal, a suitcase from Macy’s or a $1,000 one? Why are people such idiots?)
In five minutes he’d packed all his clothes. He’d drive himself to the Oakland airport, leave the rental car in long-term parking, where it wouldn’t be noticed for two or three months.
Thomas looked around the hotel room. Where was that other suitcase?
The doorbell rang.
He looked through the peephole. Grimacing, he opened the door.
Artie Ruby stood there, hip cocked, looking… jaunty was the word that came to mind. The man was wearing a rumpled suit that he might’ve owned when they’d first met more than a decade ago. He blinked uncertainly as he gazed at Thomas. Then his eyes took in the deformed hand. “Chris! It is you!”
A sigh. “And you’re the one who called, Artie.”
“Holy moley. I never saw the new face. You look… Jesus, what’d they do, move bones around or something?”
Thomas looked over the man’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry. I wasn’t followed. Took me hours ’cause I doubled back three times.”
Satisfied, Thomas muttered, “How did you find me?”