Chapter Thirty
Gabriela and Ahmed stood in the middle of Tartoni’s office and scanned the room.
“It has to be the built-in bookcase,” Gabriela said. “It’s always the bookcase.”
“That’s a terrible cliché,” Ahmed said.
“Everything they do is a cliché,” Gabriela said. “They get all their ideas from the classic movie channel.
“Pierce Brosnan had a button on his desk in The Thomas Crown Affair. He pressed the button, and a painting slid up into the wall and left a niche where he briefly displayed the painting that he stole from the Met. San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk by Claude Monet.” She went to the desk and ran her hand under the edge of the walnut and leather top.
A section of the bookcase gave a slight shudder and rotated to reveal a spiral staircase.
Gabriela flipped a light switch and led the way down.
She was working hard to stay calm, concentrating on steady breaths and steady steps on the pie-slice-shaped stair treads.
She was refusing to give way to scary thoughts of what she might find.
They’re okay, she told herself. Everything is okay.
The room at the bottom was cavernous. The barrel-vault ceiling was brick with massive stone arches. The floor was limestone tile. Wood crates of wine were parked on the floor in front of racks of wine.
At the very end of the room Gabriela could see Rafer and Jacko sitting, chained to the wall. Her heart skipped a beat. She’d found them and they were alive.
Gabriela thought Rafer looked good. A little bedhead and a day-old beard, but that wasn’t so far from normal for him.
Jacko was pale under his Mediterranean coloring.
His slacks and shirt were bloodstained. The right pants leg had been cut off midthigh and the bullet wound just above his knee was wrapped in blood-soaked gauze.
Gabriela crossed the room at a run and knelt to look at Jacko’s leg.
“How bad is this?” she asked Jacko.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They told me the bullet went through and didn’t splinter any bones. They looked at it and then they left. It’s mostly stopped bleeding, unless I move around too much.”
“He’s in a lot of pain,” Rafer said. “We need to get him to a doctor.”
“How about you?” she asked Rafer. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, and I have to say, I’m happy to see you and whoever that guy is with you.”
“Ahmed.”
Rafer cut his eyes to Ahmed and back to Gabriela. “Are you serious?”
“I needed help.”
“Did you think about the police?”
“I wasn’t sure they would be entirely sympathetic. Do you know where the key is for these chains?”
“I think it was pocketed and taken upstairs,” Rafer said.
Ahmed called Serge and told him to bring the three employees down the spiral staircase in Tartoni’s office.
“I’m sorry I got you into this mess,” Gabriela said to Jacko.
“It was good up until getting shot,” Jacko said.
Rafer got to his feet. “So, what did I miss upstairs? Did you and Ahmed lay waste to the household staff? Are there a bunch of dead bodies in the basketball court, AKA the foyer?”
“No dead bodies, but one of Tartoni’s associates got soup splashed on him,” Gabriela said.
“Wow. That’s impressive. Who needs guns when you’ve got soup,” Rafer said.
“There weren’t a lot of people left on the property when we talked our way in,” Gabriela said. “Two men and a cook. Teddy Searl, Rocky Mausud, Tartoni, and Bench took off in a helicopter shortly after we set up surveillance. Do you know where they went?”
“No,” Rafer said. “We were stun gunned when we got to the house and next thing, we were in chains in this wine cellar. I didn’t know Searl, Mausud, Tartoni, and Bench were here. This place is like a bomb bunker. You can’t hear anything going on outside of it.”
Anna and Frankie managed to get down the staircase in cuffs. Mario stumbled halfway down and faceplanted at the bottom. Serge grabbed Mario by his shirt, dragged him to his feet, and shoved him to the end of the room where Ahmed was standing.
“We need the key to these chains,” Ahmed said.
Anna snorted. Mario and Frankie just stood there, dumbly staring at Jacko and the bandaged leg with the dried blood.
“The key,” Ahmed said.
Nothing.
Ahmed nodded to Serge and Serge sucker punched Mario in the face. Blood gushed out of Mario’s nose, and he staggered back a couple feet. Serge grabbed him before he fell to the floor.
“It’s in my pocket,” Frankie said.
“And the key to the lock on the outside door?”
“Also in my pocket.”
Ahmed got the keys, released Jacko and Rafer, and locked Anna and Mario up in the chains. He told Serge to send one of the men down with real cuffs to secure Frankie to one of the chains and to bring one of the cars around to the back and park it on the terrace with the high-top tables.
“Where did they go?” Ahmed asked Frankie. “Where did the helicopter take Tartoni and his friends?”
“Milan.”
“Where in Milan?”
“That I don’t know,” Frankie said. “Business meeting.”
Jamal came down the stairs and cuffed Frankie to Anna’s chain. Rafer and Ahmed got Jacko on his feet and managed to walk him to the Range Rover.
“It’s time to get the authorities involved, and we need to get medical help for Jacko,” Ahmed said.
“None of the men who boarded the helicopter had any sort of luggage. I’m hoping that means they’ll be back tonight.
I don’t want a lot of flashing lights and obvious police presence to scare them off. ”
“Not a problem,” Jacko said. “My uncle is the chief of police in Valgenico, and my cousin is a doctor. I’ll take care of everything.”
“He’s the fixer,” Gabriela said.
Rafer maneuvered Jacko into the Range Rover. Jamal got behind the wheel. Homus and Zac joined them.
“Stay with Jacko for as long as he needs you, and then return to the hotel,” Ahmed said to Jamal.
“What’s the plan now?” Rafer asked. “Are we going to stay here and wait for the four men to show up?”
“I haven’t decided,” Gabriela said. “Obviously the art wasn’t returned to the wine cellar. I’m hoping it’s in storage in Milan. If it’s been passed on to a third-party buyer, things become much more complicated.”
“I thought they always ransomed whatever they stole back to the original owners,” Rafer said.
“This appears to be different,” Gabriela said. “To my knowledge, none of the parties involved have received any ransom requests.”
Rafer had his thumbs hooked into his pants pockets. “What’s your stake in this?” he asked Ahmed. “Are you still in it for the golden coffin?”
Ahmed nodded. “I’m still in it for the golden coffin.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
“What’s so special about the golden coffin?” Rafer asked him.
“For starters, it’s golden,” Ahmed said.
“I’m surprised you want the police brought in,” Rafer said.
“I find it’s often easier to delegate and pass responsibility on to legitimate law enforcement.
They can secure this house and detain the people in the wine cellar.
And I can move forward with locating the coffin.
At the very least, Tartoni and his associates are responsible for kidnapping you and Jacko.
And as it turns out, someone in Tartoni’s employ made the embarrassing error of shooting the chief of police’s nephew.
That was a nice surprise. That will keep the police focused. ”
“Tartoni isn’t the only one guilty of kidnapping,” Rafer said.
“Yes,” Ahmed said, “but I’m much better at it than these amateurs. And truth is, I will be delighted to be relieved of entertaining your cousin.”
“When will he be released?”
“When I have my golden coffin.”
“That’s harsh,” Rafer said.
Ahmed shrugged. “I’ve partnered with the premier finder of lost treasures. I’m sure she’ll deliver on the coffin. And Harley will be free to eat his peanut butter sandwiches wherever he chooses.
“My current plan is to remove my men from the scene and wait for Gabriela to figure this out. It’s in our best interest for the police to detain Tartoni’s people. It would be inconvenient for them to want to keep me close as well.”
“It would be equally inconvenient for me,” Gabriela said. “Leave a car. I need fifteen minutes to go through Tartoni’s office and then we’re out of here.”
“You have fifteen minutes,” Ahmed said. “I’ll set some cameras. If the Kings return, I don’t want to be the last to know.”
Gabriela wasn’t sure about delivering the coffin. She was halfway confident that she would find the paintings. The coffin was a whole other deal. No one seemed to know the location of the coffin.
She ran through the wine cellar up the spiral stairs and went straight to Tartoni’s desk.
“Jackpot,” she said to Rafer. “He left his MacBook Air here.” She unplugged the computer and handed it to Rafer. “This goes with us.”
She went through the two file drawers and found a jar of pretzel bites, Twizzlers, some porn magazines, and a bottle of vodka in one drawer. The other drawer contained files on household furnishings and medical records. Nothing recent.
“He keeps everything on his computer,” she said to Rafer. “His file drawers don’t contain any financials.” He had a yellow pad and several sticky notes on his desktop. She gathered up all the sticky notes and gave them to Rafer. “I’m done here. Let’s go.”
“Are you going to leave the Twizzlers?”
“You’re kidding. You want the Twizzlers?”
“I don’t kid about Twizzlers,” Rafer said.
Gabriela grabbed the pack of Twizzlers, and they left the office and went out the side door. Ahmed and Serge exited the building a few minutes later and found Gabriela was already behind the wheel.
Ahmed looked in at her. “Really? You’re driving?”
“You snooze, you lose,” Gabriela said. “Are we going back to the hotel or do you want to hang closer to Tartoni’s house?”
“The hotel,” Ahmed said. “You can use their Wi-Fi to muck through the computer you borrowed.”
Rafer gave the secret knock and opened the door to Gabriela’s hotel room.
“Thanks for the knock first,” Gabriela said.
“Yeah, I was afraid if I just walked in you might shoot me.” He put a bag of burgers and two sodas on the desk. “I don’t know what kind of soda this is. It looks like Coke, but it’s in Italian. How’s it going?”
“It took me a while to get into his computer, but I finally was able to access his emails. I pulled up all emails between Tartoni, Bench, Teddy Searl, and Rocky Mausud. He doesn’t have a lot to say to Rocky.
He talks to Teddy about sports. He bitches to Bench about his wife and money.
Calls her ‘the cow.’ The most recent emails with Bench were about flight times and today’s meeting.
In one of the emails, he tells Bench that he had a call from Teddy and that Teddy is freaked out over meeting with Oleski. He’s afraid Teddy is going to bail.”
“Who’s Oleski?”
“Don’t know. I have Marcella working on it.”
Rafer pulled the burgers out of the bag, gave one to Gabriela, and unwrapped his. “Did Tartoni say anything else about the meeting?”
“He said he’d be happy to get the money and move on with his life.
Then he asked about Harley’s bank, Searl and Junkett.
Wanted to know if it was in trouble yet.
Bench said it was under investigation, and he expected something to break in a week or two.
” Gabriela unwrapped her burger. She lifted the top half of the roll and looked at the patty. “There’s a fried egg on it.”
“And?” Rafer said.
“Just sayin’.”
“About the meeting,” Rafer said.
“No more info in any of the emails but one of the sticky notes I took off his desk was a reminder of a ten o’clock meeting in Milan.
So, unless they have further business in Milan, they should be back in Valgenico this afternoon.
Ahmed is watching the cameras. The police arrived an hour after we left.
They hauled Frankie, Mario, and Anna off to wherever and left two officers in the house.
They have their cars stashed somewhere. Ahmed said the outdoor camera saw them leave. ”
“Have you heard anything from Jacko?”
“No. I imagine he’s getting patched up.”
Information on Oleski started coming in from Marcella while Gabriela was eating her burger.
“Not a lot of men named Oleski in Milan,” Gabriela said, reading from her computer.
“Actually, only one. Vladimir Alexi Oleski. Seventy-two years old. Born in Estonia. Migrated to Amsterdam when he was in his twenties. Landed in the US in his thirties. Diamond merchant. Crypto billionaire. Accused of wire fraud and tax evasion in the US eleven years ago. Charges were dismissed. Marcella calls the case murky. Now living in Milan and Monaco. He has a website. Oleski Trading Company, dealing in antiquities and objets d’art.
Looks like it’s only online sales. He has a Milan address in the Lombardy region. ”
“Home address or business?”
“Both,” Gabriela said. She gave the business address to Google Earth and enlarged the satellite picture. “Looks like a warehouse. It has a parking area surrounded by chain-link fence.”
“A warehouse that could hold a lot of hot art,” Rafer said.
Gabriela called Ahmed and told him she had a name and an address in Milan.
“Text it to me and I’ll check it out,” he said.
“I’ll meet you in the parking lot and we’ll check it out. It’s about a two-hour drive.”
“Roger that.”