The Chase (29 page)

Andy was hands on hips, looking at something in the distance. This was just one of his many behavior tics. Kate called it his
thinking spot
. He was deciding what he should do about her.

“Well?” Kate asked. “What’s it going to be?”

He looked at her and shrugged. “This isn’t my problem. You’re on vacation, seeing the sights of New York. You were strolling down Madison Avenue, back from a walk through Central Park, when you just happened to run into an old friend. We spent a few minutes catching up and you went on your way. How does that sound?”

“Really? You’d do that for me?”

“As long as you don’t mess up my op,” Andy said, “and promise me you’ll keep on walking and not show up anywhere near Julian Starke again.”

This was an easy promise to keep. They were done with Julian Starke. Kate saw Nick and Joe get into the backseat of a taxi. The taxi merged into traffic, headed east on Fifty-seventh, and sailed past them.

“I’ll give your regards to Lady Liberty,” she said, and walked away.

Andy was a nice guy, Kate thought. He was cute, and he could be funny, and he was a great kisser. He was so right and at the same time so wrong. Just like Nick Fox.

The building in SoHo looked familiar to Starke as soon as they pulled up to the curb. Once he got inside the loft, and saw the Willem de Kooning painting on the wall, he immediately knew why. The big-busted, bug-eyed woman lost in a swirl of smeared colors was a fake.

“This is Hugh Sinclair’s place,” Starke said.

“Indeed it is,” Boyd said. “Since he’s out of town for the next fifteen years, I didn’t think he’d mind if I borrowed it for a showing.”

“Were you a friend of his?”

“If I was, I certainly wouldn’t have let him buy so many fakes from you,” Boyd said, gesturing to the numerous pieces of abstract art in the loft. “I read about his misfortune and the properties that had been left orphaned. Homes like this come in handy when you’re looking for safe places to stay or to stash stolen artwork.”

Boyd led Starke into Sinclair’s study, where the remaining two Rembrandts were propped up on easels. The sight of all those
masterpieces, and the fortune they represented, almost gave Starke an attack of irritable bowel syndrome.

Nick and Joe had the taxi drop them off at a Starbucks on West Broadway, a couple blocks away from the loft. They could hear the exchange between Boyd and Starke perfectly. Nick got them coffee while Joe got a seat and connected his MacBook to the free wifi so they’d be ready to move the money.

Kate didn’t know if Nick had cooked up a scheme on the fly, or if he’d aborted everything and chosen a clean escape instead, but she knew where the Rembrandts were and that he wouldn’t go anywhere without them. So she flagged a taxi and took it down to SoHo.

Starke took his time examining the paintings. There was no doubt they were real, but he wanted to appreciate them while he had the chance. He got up close to them and sniffed. Old paintings had a scent. He liked to think it was the smell of history, of the centuries that had unfolded around the paintings. These paintings had that unique scent. That is the sexiest fragrance on earth, he thought.

Boyd tapped his foot impatiently on the floor. “Are you authenticating the paintings or making love to them? You lick it, you own it.”

Starke turned around slowly. “I am staking my life on the fact that these paintings are real and that my client is getting what he’s paying for. Forgive me if I don’t want to rush it.”

“Really? You think that I happened to have copies of the three Rembrandts lying around and was just waiting for the day when the real ones got stolen so I could swindle a collector? Stop stalling. You have thirty seconds and then I take my business elsewhere.”

Starke took out his cell phone. “Give me a bank and an account number.”

“I’m in the bank and waiting for the funds,” Joe said, staring intently at his screen.

Nick sat beside him, his feet on the silver case, sipping a latte and picking at a slice of cinnamon coffee cake. It was all coming together now. He hoped Kate would make contact before they had to run.

The Escalade was parked in front of Sinclair’s loft. Kate got out of the cab, walked over to the Escalade, and knocked on the passenger window. Willie unlocked the doors and let her in.

“I was wondering if you’d make it,” Willie said.

“You were afraid I got caught?”

“Last I heard through the earbud you met some guy. I thought you might have gotten a room.”

“Old boyfriend,” Kate said. “Nothing more.”

“You can activate Kate’s earbud again,” Nick said to Joe. “She’s with Willie.”

Joe nodded, absorbed in what he was doing. “We’ve got the money. I’m moving it now.”

Nick punched a number into his cell phone.

Boyd’s cell phone rang, though he didn’t need the call from Nick to know the money had been transferred. He’d heard Joe on his earbud. This call was strictly for show. He took the phone out of his pocket, listened for a moment, then put it away again and smiled at Starke.

“Congratulations, Julian. You’re a rich man.”

“Let’s do this again sometime,” Starke said.

They shook hands and Boyd walked out. As soon as he was gone, Starke called Mr. Wayne.

“The deal is done,” Starke said. “You are now the owner of three new Rembrandts.”

Carter Grove was playing one of his vintage slot machines when Starke called with the good news and the address where the paintings were located.

“I trust you are absolutely satisfied that the paintings are authentic,” Carter said.

“I am,” Starke said, nervous despite his certainty. It was his life on the line. That was never explicitly stated, but he knew it.

“Stay where you are. I have people coming to secure the paintings.” Carter had kept an armed BlackRhino extraction team on call in Manhattan since last night to recover and transport the paintings. He had both air and ground assets in play. He was treating this as a military operation, no different than if he was kidnapping a terrorism suspect from Pakistan for the U.S. government. There was too much at stake if things went wrong. “Do not move until they get there, and do exactly as they say when they arrive.”

“Of course,” Starke said.

Boyd got into the backseat of the Escalade, and Willie drove off to pick up Nick and Joe at the Starbucks on West Broadway at Houston Street.

“That was the best part I’ve ever played,” Boyd said. “I’m sorry it’s over.”

“That’s because you got screwed all night by two five-hundred-dollar-an-hour hookers,” Willie said. “That doesn’t happen when you’re a talking pancake.”

“Of course not. Because it wouldn’t be in character for Percy Pancake.”

“Because you couldn’t afford those women and they wouldn’t do a guy in a pancake suit,” Willie said. “Then again, maybe they would if you paid them the fetish fee on top of their regular rate.”

“I didn’t have sex with those women. Al Mundy did. I was simply playing my part. I’m really going to miss him. I believe there are a lot more facets of that character I could explore.”

“Un-huh,” Willie said.

“You have no understanding of what it means to be an artist,” Boyd said.

They pulled up in front of the Starbucks, and Nick and Joe got in beside Boyd in the backseat.

Willie pulled away from the curb and glanced at Nick in the rearview mirror. “Where to, boss?”

“Four miles away in any direction,” Nick said. “You pick it.”

Nick had carefully sprinkled taggant on all three Rembrandts, allowing the paintings to be safely tracked from five miles away with the special gun. It wasn’t hard for Willie to follow them without being seen.

The paintings headed north on the Henry Hudson Parkway with a chopper following them. When the BlackRhino vehicles got onto the Sawmill River Parkway, Nick suspected they were going to Westchester County Airport to be loaded onto Carter’s
jet. Willie followed them all the way, parking on the airport access road until Carter’s plane was in the air.

Next stop was LaGuardia to drop off Boyd and Joe. Their roles in the scheme were over. Joe took a flight from LaGuardia back to Los Angeles, where he was confident now that he could get lucky with one of the women around the pool. Boyd took a taxi from LaGuardia to JFK, where he caught a flight to London. He was planning to spend a couple weeks seeing plays in the West End.

Willie drove Nick and Kate to the private terminal at LaGuardia. They left the Escalade behind for the rental company and boarded a “borrowed” Hawker Beechcraft King Air for the flight to Owensboro, Kentucky.

Kate hesitated at the steps leading up to the plane. “Can Willie fly this?” she asked Nick.

“I hope so,” Nick said. “She’s the only one in the cockpit.”

“That’s not making me feel good.”

“I sent her to flight school,” Nick said.

“So she has a license for this plane?”

“Maybe not a license, but I’m pretty sure she’s got the instructional manual.”

“That’s it. I’m not going.”

“Hey, Willie,” Nick yelled into the plane. “Do you have a license?”

Willie stuck her head out the cockpit door. “A what?”

“License.”

“Sure.”

“She’s lying,” Kate said.

“It’s a short flight,” Nick said. “What can go wrong?”

Twenty minutes later they were in the air and Kate was able to unclench her teeth and loosen her grip on her seatbelt.

“See,” Nick said. “We didn’t even crash.”

“Yes, and since we didn’t die, we need to talk,” she said. “There’s one part of this plan that really worries me.”

“I know,” Nick said. “It’s letting the paintings go and gambling that we’ll be able to find them with the radar gun at one of Carter’s properties. Of all the places he owns, I’m convinced his ranch in Kentucky makes the most sense. If we’re wrong, we’ll go to each one of his other places until we find the right one.”

Kate shook her head. “That’s not my fear. There’s three hundred million dollars in one of your bank accounts. That’s got to be your biggest score yet and an enormous temptation. Tell me you haven’t thought about taking off.”

Nick smiled and did the twinkle thing with his eyes that he knew all women found irresistible. “I know a beautiful island in Indonesia we could buy. We could live a carefree life of unrivaled luxury and total decadence in a tropical paradise on Carter’s money, and my substantial savings, in a country without an extradition treaty.”

“You know I could never do it, but it worries me that you easily could.”

“No, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve developed a conscience. You’re a career criminal and this is the score of a lifetime. I know you don’t feel any guilt about stealing the paintings or taking Carter Grove’s money.”

“You’re right, I could live with that,” Nick said. “But not with what might happen to you, or your family, if you don’t deliver me to Carter. I know you’d try to take him out. And you’d have Jake working with you, but even if you succeeded, neither one of you would come out of the experience unscathed. You’d
both pay a price and that would be my fault. I won’t do that to you.”

She knew Nick was a con man, that he was a master at manipulating people’s emotions and telling them what they wanted to hear, but against her better judgment, she chose to believe him.

“Okey-dokey then,” she said. “Does this plane have any Pringles?”

Carter Grove flew on a BlackRhino corporate jet into Ron Lewis Field, a tiny municipal landing strip in Lewisport, Kentucky, landing a few hours behind the arrival of the three Rembrandts on the same airfield. He was met by Rocco Randisi, who picked him up in a black Cadillac DTS and drove him the ten miles south to Carter’s ranch in Hawesville.

The ranch was Carter’s getaway. A hundred and twenty acres set amid rolling hills, green pastures, rocky ravines, streams, and thick forests of oak, poplar, and hickory, it comprised a unique variety of habitats that sustained exceptional populations of deer and waterfowl for him to kill.

A narrow country road spilled down a wooded hillside and into the plain where Carter Grove’s rustic eight-bedroom, seven-bath hunting lodge with a wraparound porch stood beside a picturesque five-acre fishing lake. The property also included a
metal barn for storing vehicles, a six-stall horse barn and corral, a two-thousand-gallon gasoline tank and fueling station, a game-cleaning facility with meat processing room, and a secret art collection including some of the world’s greatest lost masterpieces.