The Missing Piece (10 page)

“Sharon called me in first thing this morning. The Appellate Division is about to issue a decision in the Roman silver trial. She wanted to give me a heads-up.”

“Why?”

“Because the AD wants a new trial to go forward immediately. And the presiding judge intimated to Sharon that the panel wants the trial assigned to me.”

Hugh backed off onto another cushion.

“Do you really want to try this case?” he said.

“I want to and I need to.”

“Because of those pretrial rulings. You were the law clerk, not the judge. You gave him your advice. It was his to accept or reject.”

“I still feel I need to make it right.”

“And I don't know why this is your responsibility,” said Hugh. “I never have.”

“Because I was there,” said Linda. “Because I should have stood up to him and stuck with my convictions. But I didn't, I couldn't. And the fault was not my reasoning or my research or my powers of persuasion. The fact is, I was cowed. I was cowed by his bluster, by his reputation, by his ability to make me feel like a little girl. I hated being cowed, and that feeling has not gone away one iota.”

“I understand all that.”

“No. I don't think you do.”

With an exasperated sigh that signaled an end to the discussion and to any possibility of sex, Hugh stood up.

“Far be it from me to tell you what to do.” He knocked back the rest of the drink. “At least we'll both be occupied.”

 

CHAPTER 10

Foxx left after the pizza was gone. McQueen stayed behind and cleaned the mess in the kitchen, thinking that when they started the renovation he would insist on a heavy-duty dishwasher. He came out to find Gary at the computer.

“I gotta show you something,” said Gary. “Get a stool and sit down. This'll take a while.”

The left-hand monitor showed a long-range shot of the sun-splashed front steps of 60 Centre Street with a group of six uniformed court officers standing together midway to the top. The right-hand monitor showed a high-angle view of the steps from the top of the column.

“Are these what I think they are?” said McQueen.

“Security camera feeds from that day.”

“How'd you get them?”

“Felix demanded them as discovery in my case. You'd be surprised how many cameras there are in the courthouse.” Gary minimized the left image to show dozens of file icons on the desktop. “Each of these is a camera. There are forty-three of them.”

“Courtrooms, too?” McQueen leaned forward to read the icons.

“Nah,” said Gary. “The judges won't permit that, but there are enough cameras in the public areas to chart someone's movements inside the building.”

McQueen settled back on his stool.

“Felix wanted the feeds to put together a timeline for the trial. I want them for something else.”

“Don't you care about your case?”

“I never cared about my case. If I cared about my case, I'd have taken the settlement offer instead of letting Felix push for a trial. I have something bigger in mind. We are going to find the missing piece.”

“The what?” said McQueen.

“The missing piece. You know, that urn those two bastards stole from the courtroom.”

“And why do you want to find it?” said McQueen.

“
We
,” said Gary. “Why do
we
want to find it? We want to find it because it's worth a shitload of money.”

“But it's been in the wind for three years,” said McQueen.

“And that's where this comes in.” Gary patted the computer tower. “You think I read those blogs and Twitter feeds for my health? You think I read those websites because of my interest in art history? I'm looking for news on the urn, and I haven't seen the slightest hint that it's surfaced anywhere.”

“That doesn't mean anything,” said McQueen. “It's not like whoever took it is going to broadcast it.”

Gary clicked the mouse and brought up a web page on the right-hand screen. A banner along the top showed a head shot of a man with a leonine head of curly gray hair and a thin matching beard. Beside the head shot, the name Dieter van der Weyden appeared in Gothic letters.

“This guy claims to be a descendant of a Renaissance painter. Whether that's true or not, he's one of the foremost art critics in the world and an expert on the Salvus Treasure. He posted this a couple of months ago.”

Gary highlighted a section of text.

“‘The heist of the urn from a New York City courtroom was the worst thing that could have happened to the Salvus Treasure. In bodily terms, it lopped off a limb. The treasure was greater than the sum of its parts and, conversely, the loss of one of those parts has had a disproportionate effect on the value of what remains. The thugs who stole the urn know this. They can sell it to someone, who might sell it to someone else, who in turn might sell it to someone else again. But they would only be making pennies on the dollar, so to speak. The true payoff can only come from one sale, which will be to the party who prevails at the retrial. If there is a retrial.'”

“Okay, so?” said McQueen.

“So this expert says what I've been thinking for a long time,” said Gary. “The piece is impossible to fence and it will command the greatest price once the new trial is held and declares who owns the treasure.”

“But there is still an awful big world out there where it could be.”

“Could, but isn't,” said Gary. “I think the missing piece never left the courthouse.”

“That's crazy,” said McQueen.

“Except,” said Gary. “Now I have proof.”

He ran McQueen through the timeline it had taken him hours to piece together: the two gunmen coming into the building, snatches of them moving down several corridors, and then exiting by the rear door just before the courthouse was locked down. The images showed nothing in their hands, not the guns and not the urn.

“So,” he said after the last feed ran, “you see anything that looks like the treasure piece leave the courthouse?”

“How do you know these are the guys?”

“They are the guys,” said Gary. “You were out cold on the floor, but I was watching those two guys as carefully as I could in case I ever needed to ID them. When I was in the hospital, I replayed those images until I burned them into my brain, because even though I wanted to forget I also wanted to hold on to what I remembered, even if it hurt like hell, because I figured that some day it would matter. I've constructed models of them in my mind. I've only seen them walk, but I know how they would sit, I know how they would lift a fork or drink a beer. I've created them in my head the way a paleontologist can create a dinosaur out of a single bone. Okay? Those are the two guys and they don't have the piece.”

“So who's got it?” said McQueen.

“Whoever was their inside guy.”

“Who said anything about an inside guy? I never heard anything about this being an inside job.”

“That's because no one's ever going to say that out loud,” said Gary. “Think about it. Think about how difficult it is to get one gun, let alone two, into the courthouse. Unless…”

“Unless you don't need to clear the mags,” said McQueen. “A court officer?”

“Anyone who works in the building,” said Gary.

“That's five hundred people,” said McQueen. “But even if it was an inside job, whoever helped them could have taken it out any time in the last three years.”

“You're right,” said Gary. “But my theory is the piece is in the courthouse because that's the one place nobody expects it to be. But it's not going to stay here forever. Once the trial is done, it'll be gone. We need to find it now, before the trial comes back.”

“How do we do that?” said McQueen.

“My brains, your legs.”

“Are you crazy, Gary? We're friggin' court officers. We put our time in, we moonlight for extra cash, then we retire. We don't recover stolen art.”

“Doesn't mean we can't.”

“This isn't something out of a paperback novel, Gary. This is real life.”

Gary lifted himself off the battle chair until his face began to twitch.

“Don't tell me about real life.”

“Sorry, Gary. I shouldn't have said that.”

Gary dropped himself back onto the seat, panting and red-faced.

“No sweat,” he said. “All you do for me, you're entitled to your say. But now I want you to listen to me, not because you're my friend, not because I trust you, but because you and I were the only ones hurt that day. That treasure owes us, Mike.”

“I got slugged in the head,” said McQueen. “I bled like a pig and I had a headache for a few days. But the bleeding stopped and my headache went away.”

“No, it was you and me on the front lines,” said Gary. “And if you got permanent brain damage, you'd be getting jerked around the same as me. Look, Mike, we do this and you won't need to run any more fund-raisers. I won't need to guilt-trip guys to come here on Saturdays to run wires and sweat pipes. You can sock something away. Stop worrying about me. Get married.”

“Yeah, like who am I marrying?” said McQueen.

“You'll be much more attractive with a wad in your pocket.”

McQueen laughed.

“So forget women. You'll have the money to fix up that piece of shit cabin you bought upstate.”

“Hey, it ain't a piece of shit. I got big plans for it.”

“Big plans you haven't executed,” said Gary. “My point is, we can do this, Mike. I've been studying this for three goddam years. We know the courthouse. I know more about the treasure than the so-called experts. We can do this.”

“Wouldn't it be better if we had someone else with us?” said McQueen. “Like Foxx.”

“No Foxx,” said Gary. “I don't want Foxx anywhere near this.”

*   *   *

After a workday, the two beers at Gary's should have been just enough to propel McQueen ten blocks uptown to his own apartment and into a deep, comforting sleep. But seeing the security feeds on Gary's computer scared the living shit out of him. And when that threat faded, Gary ran his insane plan right in behind it. So with sleep a near impossibility, he turned off Broadway and into a pub.

It was a shot-and-a-beer kind of place, empty except for the barmaid and a couple of guys at the far end of the bar. McQueen downed the first pint and pushed the glass forward. The barmaid came back to set up a second, and he slugged that one down, too.

“You want another, or should I hang an IV bag instead?” said the barmaid.

McQueen wanted to respond with one of his patented wisecracks, but the words never made it from his brain to his tongue. The pizza was long gone from his stomach, and the two quick pints hit him hard.

The barmaid took his silence for a yes, drew another pint, and headed back to the two guys. She leaned in close, and each took turns glancing over in a way that McQueen knew they were talking about him. It was stupid to come in here, stupid to down those two pints, stupid not to leave rather than let the barmaid draw him a third. They didn't know how clever he was, how he could summon a wisecrack for any occasion. But the truth was, he never had Gary's knack for small talk or Foxx's ability to challenge the philosophy of a total stranger. He never actually talked one-on-one with another person. He always needed a third ear as an audience for his wit.

He lifted the glass slowly and took a sip. He could feel their eyes slipping off him, sense the cadence in their talk change as their conversation turned elsewhere.

The inquest had begun one month after the heist. The letters summoning them to the IG's office were hand delivered by courier to the captain's office, then distributed by Kearney as the crew signed in the next morning. Twenty-one in all were questioned—ten officers at the front door mags, three officers at the back door security post, one each at the Pearl Street and Worth Street entrances, and the six assigned to the courtroom. The union rep called a meeting, told them all that they were obligated to tell exactly what they knew. A union lawyer would be present outside the hearing room to advise them beforehand, but could not go in for the questioning.
Sounds like a grand jury investigation
, McQueen had quipped.
I suppose it does
, said the union rep.

The inquest lasted five days, two witnesses in the mornings and two in the afternoons. He and Foxx were the last two before the IG and her crew would travel uptown to question Gary in the rehab center. By then, everyone pretty much knew the Q&A routine.
Officer, did you know that a valuable art object was in the courthouse that day? Officer, were you instructed to be especially vigilant that day? Officer, what measures did you personally take to keep the courthouse secure that day?

He and Foxx walked downtown from the courthouse that afternoon. It was a gray, blustery day, one week before Thanksgiving. The IG's office was on the tenth floor. Foxx went in first. In the waiting room, the union lawyer had leaned in close to McQueen and asked if he had any questions.

I'm good
, he'd answered.

Foxx came out after twenty minutes. Walked past, said nothing, met McQueen's eyes only as the elevator doors closed.

Last chance
, said the union lawyer.

I'm good
, said McQueen.

He expected something he'd seen in many movies about the military—him alone in a chair facing a squad of inquisitors stretched out across a wide table. Instead, the hearing room was cramped with a desk and table in T formation. The IG sat behind the desk, a stenographer on a stool to her right. Six chairs lined the table, three facing three. One was pulled out slightly, and the IG pointed for him to sit there. It still felt warm from Foxx.

The Q&A proceeded like a litany, the general questions he'd heard about in the locker room, then the specific questions tied directly to him.
What did you see when you let that associate into the courtroom? What exactly did Judge Johnstone say about the doors being locked? Do you remember anything about the gunman before he slugged you?