Among Thieves (11 page)

The Irishman didn’t trust Devon. It didn’t take a lot of brains for Devon to recognize it. In some ways, Devon could understand.
Devon was undisciplined. He talked too much. The Irishman had a singular purpose, and from what Devon knew of him, he had
dedicated his life—everything he was or would become—to waging a war that required the kind of commitment Devon would never
understand.

It had been more than four weeks since they’d met at the Body Shop, and Devon still hadn’t delivered. They’d made one try,
and it had been a farce. Two weeks earlier they had acted out a pathetic pantomime in front of the museum off Fenway. The
Irishman and Devon pretended to assault another one of Murphy’s crew out on the street late at night, well within the range
of the outdoor security cameras. The third man then ran to the museum’s side entrance and started banging on the door and
ringing the bell, calling out for help. The guards, though, had been more cautious than Devon had expected, and had simply
called the police, staying locked up in the museum themselves. The three of them had just barely cleared the area before the
cops arrived.

“Don’t worry, Irish,” Devon had said. “I got another plan.” It was a lie at the time, and for three days Devon hadn’t slept
or eaten. He knew his life was on the line. It took some time, but eventually he hit on another idea.

In some ways, the new plan seemed as foolish as the first. They were parked on the street in a beat-up red Toyota on a Saturday
night, just a hundred yards or so from the museum’s main entrance. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and Boston was consumed in a
spastic, celebratory madness. Even Dublin didn’t debase itself the way Boston did in recognition of Ireland’s savior.

It was just the two of them, Devon and the Irishman, and they were dressed in police uniforms, complete with caps, badges,
and fake mustaches. Devon felt as if he were in a cheap Laurel and Hardy remake, and he had to stifle a laugh at the thought.
He’d been around the Irishman enough to understand that he was not a fan of levity.

They had planned to make the move just after midnight, but there was a delay. A party was in full swing in an apartment building
near the museum and there were too many people out on the street. They decided to wait until the party broke up, and they
just sat there in the car, for all the world to see. If they got caught, Malley knew that the Irishman would kill him as soon
as he had the chance. Even if that didn’t happen, one of Bulger’s guys would push a button on him in jail, just to cut the
line to the boss. Any way he looked at it, failure at this point would be fatal.

At one o’clock in the morning, the party in the nearby apartment building was just starting to break up. People were stumbling
out of the building and moving on. A group of revelers broke away and started heading toward the car.

“Fuck,” the Irishman cursed. Devon’s heart stopped in his chest.

“Just wait,” he said. He pulled the brim of the police cap lower on his forehead.

There were four of them, all male, headed straight toward the car. They looked young and drunk. The Irishman reached into
his pocket for his gun. “Not yet,” Devon said.

They sat there for what seemed like an eternity as the boys approached. Out of the corner of his eye, Devon saw two of them
look into the car, and he considered getting out. They moved quickly past the car, though, and picked up their pace.

“Kids,” Devon said. “They’re underage, and they’re more scared of us than we are of them.”

The Irishman reached up and swiveled the rearview mirror so that he could get a look at them. They were nearly a block away
and still moving quickly. “Maybe,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they didn’t see us.”

“All they saw was the uniforms. They’re drunk. They won’t be able to tell the cops shit. Don’t worry.” Devon turned to look
at the Irishman and smiled reassuringly. He could tell that the other man wanted to kill him.

“We move now,” the Irishman said. “We’re not sitting here anymore.”

“The party’s almost over,” Devon said.

“I don’t give a fuck. We’re not waiting anymore.” The Irishman opened the door and stepped out onto the street.

Stone stood before Sanchez’s front door in Brookline, just to the west of Boston. She’d called in sick. Word at the station
was that she would likely be in later in the day, but he had no idea when. He checked the address listed in her personnel
file and headed out. She didn’t know he was coming, and he figured she’d be pissed, so he was holding a container of chicken
soup he’d picked up at a local deli, hoping it would allay her annoyance. Probably not, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. Ultimately,
he didn’t care; he wasn’t going to spend his life with a partner who wouldn’t discuss cases with him. He’d decided to push
the issue.

When he’d visualized Sanchez’s home, he’d pictured a small, dark apartment somewhere in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods.
Two, maybe three rooms, sparsely decorated, with few pictures and no personal items. A place befitting this woman who was
so focused on her work, and so distant from those around her willing to help. It was a dark, lonely, angry life he’d envisioned
for her.

The dwelling that matched her address from the personnel files met none of his expectations. It was a medium-sized house in
a nice neighborhood right off the Green Line. Two blocks from Commonwealth Avenue, it had a large well-tended yard, and flowers
flanking the covered entryway. The driveway had been swept, the flower beds had been edged, and there wasn’t a hint of peeling
or cracking in the bright yellow paint on the home’s exterior. The place exuded contentment.

He rang the bell and waited. It took a moment, but the door opened, and a young boy stood in front of him, wearing pajamas.
“Hello,” he said. He had dark hair and dark skin—far darker than Sanchez’s. His eyes were bright and trusting. He couldn’t
have been more than six years old.

“Hello,” Stone replied. “I may be in the wrong place. I’m looking for Detective Sanchez.”

“Mom!” the boy shouted. “She’s here,” he said. “I’m Carlos. I have the flu.”

“Carlos, get back in bed!” Sanchez’s voice was unmistakable, though the tone was softer than Stone was used to.

A moment later, Sanchez was standing in front of Stone. She was dressed in chinos and a loose blouse, and he barely recognized
her. The difference wasn’t so much in the way she was dressed, it was in her face. She normally wore her hair pulled back
from the temples, giving her face a severe, angry look accentuated by the scowl she wore as a permanent expression of contempt
for the world. Now her hair was down and her features were relaxed. She resembled less a bitter cop, more an attractive middle-aged
woman.

She recognized Stone, and her expression changed. She morphed before his eyes into the angry woman he knew from their time
together. “What the hell are you doing here, Stone?” she demanded.

“I heard you were sick,” he said. “I brought chicken soup.”

The boy, who had disappeared for a moment, was standing behind Sanchez now. “I don’t like chicken soup,” he said.

“I asked you to get back in bed,” she said to him.

“Aw, Mom,” he replied sullenly. He headed back into the house.

She looked back at Stone. “This is my personal, private space,” she said. “I don’t want you here.”

Stone stood his ground. “We need to talk.”

“He’s adopted.”

Carlos was in the family room, watching television, and Stone was alone with Sanchez in the kitchen. He was sitting at the
table; she was cleaning the breakfast dishes. The question had been unspoken. He was glad she’d answered it without his having
to ask it, though; he wasn’t sure he’d have had the guts. It was clearly a question she had to address fairly often. She was
a single cop in her fifties. A six-year-old calling her
Mom
didn’t fit.

“He’s normally in school, but he woke up this morning with a fever, and the woman who takes him in the afternoon isn’t available
this morning.”

“Seems like a cute kid,” Stone said.

“He was two when he came to this country. Now you’d never know he lived anyplace else. Funny how the world works that way,
isn’t it?” she said. “Time moves on; kids forget the bad.”

“Is he your only child?” Stone asked.

“I had a daughter,” she replied. “She was murdered. So was my husband.”

He had no idea what to say. “That’s why you became a cop.” It was the only thing that came to mind.

She glared at him. “Yeah. That’s why I became a cop. And that ends our discussion of my personal life. You wanna talk work,
fine, but talk quickly. Then I want you out of here. You shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Fair enough,” Stone said. “Let’s talk work. Why would the IRA kill a Boston mob boss?”

She sat down across from him at the kitchen table and stared at him warily. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not stupid,” he replied. “I know how to use the Internet.
Padre Pio
. It’s a form of torture used by IRA enforcers. Named after some Spanish monk from the 1960s who had the stigmata—bleeding
from the palms and feet where Jesus was nailed to the cross. IRA enforcers tie their victims’ hands together and shoot clean
through, so it looks like they’ve been nailed to the cross. They say they save it for people who’ve betrayed the cause. So
why was it used on Murphy?”

She tilted her head. “Not bad,” she said grudgingly. “But I gave you that one.”

“Fine, you gave me that one. I thought that was what partners did—they gave shit to each other.”

“Keep your voice down,” she ordered him. “If my son hears you swear, it’ll be the shortest partnership in departmental history.”

“It already has been,” he said. “It’s never been a partnership at all.”

She took a deep breath. “Look, you seem like a decent kid—”

“No,” he interrupted her. “I’m not a decent kid. I’m a good cop.”

“You may be,” she said.

“No, not
I may be
. I am. You’d know that if you gave me a chance. So I’ll ask you again, what is the IRA doing knocking off a Boston mob boss?”

“I think it’s about art,” she replied after a moment.

“Art who?”

“Not art
who
;
art
, as in paintings.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What does this have to do with
art
?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. How old were you in 1990?”

He thought for a moment. “Ten,” he replied.

“Jesus,” she said. She rubbed her forehead wearily. “I’m too goddamned old.”

“What happened in 1990?”

“You remember the theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?”

He sat back in the kitchen chair. “Not from back then, but I know about it now. Two guys got away with a couple of paintings,
right?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Another way would be to say that it was the greatest art theft in modern history. They say
the stuff that was stolen would be worth close to half a billion dollars today.”

“Billion? With a ‘b’?”

“Yeah, billion.” She stood up and walked over to the kitchen counter. “Coffee?”

“Sure. Black.”

She pulled out a coffee brewer. It had tubes coming out of it and looked as if it would take a degree from MIT to operate.
He wondered where her money came from.

“It was the easiest robbery imaginable, too,” she said, her back to him as she continued to brew the coffee. “There were just
two of them, and they faked their way into the museum. The guards were amateurs; not real security guards at all. They weren’t
properly trained; they didn’t follow proper procedures. The robbers tied the guards in the basement and spent an hour and
a half pulling artwork off the walls, then left. The paintings have never been found.” She brought two mugs over to the table.

“Interesting,” he said. “What’s this got to do with Murphy’s murder?”

“People have searched for these paintings for twenty years,” she said. “The police, the FBI, Interpol, private detectives,
insurance detectives, art historians, treasure hunters. People have spent an enormous amount of energy trying to find these
things, but no one has done it yet. There have been lots of theories about who was responsible. The most popular is that the
IRA teamed up with the Boston mob to do the job, then split the take between the two groups.”

Stone considered this. “It’s an interesting idea. But it seems like a pretty big stretch to assume that this is what Murphy’s
murder was about, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Sanchez said. “But one of the works stolen was a painting by Rembrandt. It was one of the most valuable pieces the
thieves got away with. The title of it was
Storm on the Sea of Galilee
.”

It took a moment for the connection to register with Stone. “‘The Storm.’ You think that was the message that was being sent?
That whoever did this was coming for the paintings?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have anything better to go on at this point,” she said. “Do you?”