“Please do.”
“You know why I am here.”
Park nodded. “Of course.”
“Then may I ask if you have Mr. Vespucci’s daughter?”
Park did not answer directly. “Koreans value their children greatly. But every man you have seen today has said the same thing. Have they not?”
Gulliver nodded.
“They would. We all say things that one part of our hearts believes. But there is another part of our hearts that knows that we in this business value other things more. There are things Mr. Vespucci has done. Things all these other men have done. Things I have done that would put lies to all the lofty things we say we value. But we are men who value more greatly power, fear, respect and wealth. There is no limit on the things we would do in order to attain and keep that which we prize.”
Gulliver said, “I know that, sir. That is why I have come to you.”
“You do not value these things, Mr. Dowd?”
Gulliver laughed. “I mean no disrespect, Mr. Park. I laugh because the question has no meaning to me. Do you know Shakespeare,
Richard III
?”
“I do. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”
“Exactly. All the money and power in the world could not change the man that looks back at me from the mirror each morning. So of what value would they be to me?”
Park thought about that for several seconds. “If I thought we could somehow gain what we wanted from Mr. Vespucci by taking his daughter, we would. But we do not think that.” Park did not smile, but there was a sudden warmth in his eyes. “We do not have his daughter. I have only
the sincerest hope that you can return her safely to her family. I will not disrespect you by offering unwanted help, Mr. Dowd. Please know that you are always welcome here.” The warmth in his eyes vanished. “Now, if you would leave me to my golf.”
Night had fallen on New York by the time Gulliver got back to his van. As he was about to get inside, his phone rang. It was Happy Meal.
“Hey, Shea. What’s up?”
“Get over here,” Shea said in his flat-toned voice. “Get over here right now. And you don’t have to stop for a Happy Meal.”
Gulliver got from Flushing to Bed-Stuy as fast as he could. He skidded to a stop in front of Shea’s brownstone and hobbled down to the basement as fast as his uneven little legs would carry him.
“What is it?” Gulliver asked, out of breath.
“That was fast, Mr. Dowd.”
“As long as I don’t have to run, I can be quick.” The joke was lost on Shea. “So, what’s so urgent?”
Shea pointed at a big monitor on a desk next to his work station. “Pull up
a chair over there and keep your eyes on the monitor.”
Gulliver did as the hacker supreme instructed.
“Bella’s phone is definitely a dead end. It’s probably at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay, and I didn’t find much in her texts either,” Shea said. “There were some texts from a guy in her art-history class that I think were flirty, but it’s hard for me to know. And there were some graphic texts from two girls in her figure-drawing class. They mentioned wanting…wanting to be with her.”
“Should we check them out?”
“I don’t think so. Unless I’m totally wrong.”
“Where are you going with this?” Gulliver pushed.
“I’m not sure yet, so just follow me for a few minutes.”
Gulliver knew he had no choice. Shea worked in his own rigid way, and you either went with it or not at all. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
“There wasn’t much in her email account that on its own would get anyone’s attention either,” Shea continued. “But when I was digging around, I found this. Look at your screen, Mr. Dowd.”
An image flashed onto the monitor. It was the home page for a website called
bellartgirl.com
. At the top of the page were the headings “Home,” “About Bellartgirl,” “
FAQ
,” “Gallery” and “Sales.” Below the headings and set against a dark-green backdrop was the image of a wildly colorful painting. Red. Orange. Black. Deep blue. Neon green. There were drips and splatters. Droplets and sprays. Thick lines and shadows. Circles and squares. It was very good but looked like a combination of paintings done by famous artists.
“Click on ‘Gallery,’” Shea said.
And when Gulliver did, he was amazed to see the wide range of Bella’s work. He was impressed. She had done figure drawing. Sculpture. Photography. Mostly she had painted—and in very different styles. Some of her paintings were almost like photos. Others were like the home-page cover image. Daring and splashy. Some were portraits. Some were landscapes. Some were street scenes. Some were still lifes.
Gulliver knew some of the people in the portraits. Maria. Bella’s sisters. There was even one of Tony, looking tired and glum. There were none of Joey. There wouldn’t be. Not for sale, at least. All were well done, but all had that young-artist feel. The feel of a girl trying to discover her own style and voice by copying others. Gulliver had no artistic talent himself. Yet he understood that you found your own voice and style by first copying others.
“Okay,” he said. “So Bella was talented. She wanted to sell her stuff, and she set up a website to do it. There must be thousands of sites like this all over the Internet. Kids who want to sell their art or their T-shirts or whatever. But does it get us anywhere?”
“We’re almost there, Mr. Dowd. The domain name is still hers, and the hosting fee has been prepaid for five years. There are still two years left on that. But the site hasn’t been active for at least two years. Click on ‘About Bellartgirl.’ Look at her image. Look at her bio.”
Gulliver did so. Bella was a smart girl. She wanted to sell her work and get it out into the world. But she also knew she could not do it as the girl of a Mafia don. So there was no photograph of her. Only a sketch done in charcoal with her turned away from the viewer. All it revealed was a portion of the right side of her face, her bare shoulder and the sweep of her hair.
Her bio was just the opposite. It was full of details—but the details were lies. The post-office box to which buyers were to send payment for her art was in New Jersey, not New York City.
“And did people buy her art?” Gulliver asked.
“Some. Mostly other art kids.”
“But not all.”
Shea smiled the Happy Meal smile he flashed when you got to where he wanted you to go. Gulliver had seen it before.
“One person bought most of it,” Shea said. “A man named Igor Telenovich. He also wrote to her all the time. Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘About Bellartgirl’ page. See? There’s a box for sending messages to her. At first his messages were pretty plain. Stuff about how much he loved her work and how with the right teaching she could be great. She would thank him and be nice. Then after a few months, his messages
started getting weird. I have all of them printed out for you. He started asking to meet her. He offered to be her teacher. He said he could make her great. Then they turned threatening.”
“Threatening?”
“You can read for yourself. But they aren’t threatening like, I will kill you. He says he must save her from herself. He will take her and teach her and make her great. That it would be a crime to waste her talent, and how he can’t let that happen.” Shea stopped to let his words have their full impact on Gulliver.
“Go on.”
“Once his messages got weird, Bella seems to have abandoned the site. This guy spooked her. She no longer responded to sales requests and didn’t answer when people wrote to her.”
“And you say this was two years ago?”
Shea nodded. “Look at your screen,” he said, clicking his mouse.
And there on Gulliver’s screen were two side-by-side photographs. Both showed an older man with gray hair and a gaunt face.
Gulliver said, “Igor Telenovich.”
“That’s him. The photo on the right is from Plandome Art Institute on Long Island, where he used to teach painting. The one on the left is from—”
Gulliver finished the sentence. “The closed-circuit video outside Bella’s building in Brooklyn.”
“That’s right, Mr. Dowd. I think this Telenovich guy has her somewhere.”
“The Phantom of the Opera,” Gulliver said to himself.
“What?”
“Never mind. What about this guy? Where is he? You said he used to teach at
the Plandome Art Institute. Why not any longer?”
“It’s all printed out for you there, and I’ve sent all this to your computer. Telenovich was fired.”
“Why?”
Shea shrugged. “It’s not clear why. The when is more important.”
“About two years ago,” Gulliver said.
“Twenty-two months ago. It took him most of that time to track Bella down.”
“How?”
Shea said, “I may be the best at this, but I’m not the only one who does it, Mr. Dowd. He might have even taught himself how to do it.”
“That’s not important now.”
Gulliver collected all the materials Happy Meal had printed for him and turned to leave.
“You may have found Bella, Sha’wan. Maybe even saved her life. Thank you.”
“You saved me, Mr. Dowd. Go get her. I like her work, and she is beautiful.”
“Do you think so?”
“The most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”
Gulliver smiled and left.
Tony and Ahmed met Gulliver at his office. He filled them in on Telenovich and the possible Phantom of the Opera scenario.
“I have a source who thinks it’s likely this guy has her stashed somewhere,” Gulliver said.
That started a debate between them about whether to call the local cops. It lasted through most of the ride from Brooklyn, through Queens and past the Nassau County line. Gulliver pointed out, “Once the cops get involved, they’re
in control. It becomes their show, and they run it. We’d be watching from the sidelines.”
“And we don’t even know if this is where he has Bella or even if he has her for sure,” Tony said.
Ahmed argued hard to call in the cops.
“There’s a reason they control everything,” he said. “It’s ’cause they know what they’re doing in these situations. Navy Seals get all kinds of training for all kinds of assaults, but this, man…We don’t even know for sure what we’re dealing with.”
In the end, Gulliver and Tony outvoted Ahmed. And they decided they could always call the police if they felt they had to. If they got in over their heads. Gulliver laughed when Tony used that phrase. “Then we better call the cops now,” he said. “I’m always getting in over my head.”
They all laughed at that. The laughter didn’t last long. Gulliver read aloud from
the intel that Happy Meal had gathered about Telenovich.
“He’s a classically trained artist. Studied in Moscow, Paris, London and New York. He was a minor success in the early eighties but has been teaching at different schools to support his art. He was at the Parker School in Boston for fifteen years. But he was dismissed in 2002. The reasons are unclear. The rumor is he became involved with one of his female students, and when she wanted to end it…you can guess the rest. The school didn’t want its rep hurt, so they quietly let him go and didn’t share the details with the next school he worked at. Or the next.”
“Did he do bad stuff to the girl?” Tony asked, though it didn’t look like he was sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“No,” Gulliver said. “Nothing like that. He just became obsessed. Wouldn’t leave her alone. Followed her. Like that.
“When Bella started selling her art online, Telenovich bought a lot of it,” he continued. “He wrote her messages about how talented she was, but that she needed help.”
Ahmed was curious. “Help?”
“His help,” Gulliver answered. “He wanted to be her teacher. He said that art school would ruin her talent if that’s the path she decided to take. He said he saw greatness in her, but that only he could free it. At first she liked his attention, and they wrote back and forth to each other. But then he went too far. Here, let me read this last note he sent her.
“Bellartgirl: You have no choice but to be great. And as I have said many times, only I can let that greatness out of you. Even if I must remove the skin you wear to hide it, I will do that. If I must beat it out of you or starve it out of you, I will do that. There is no escaping your greatness or me.
I don’t know who you are, but I will someday. I don’t know where you live, but I will. Nothing will stop me. You will be mine. Your soul. Your heart. Your art will all belong to me. I will be your maestro. Your master. Let me be that. IG.
“After that, Bella basically abandoned the website. I’m sure she was just afraid to tell her parents what she had done. And maybe she was afraid of what Joey might do. Maybe IG was harmless, and she didn’t want his blood on her hands.”
Tony was mad. “Stop talking bull, Dowd. What blood?”
“You wiseguys crack me up, Tony. You think it’s easy growing up in your world? Bella’s a smart and sensitive girl. You can hide stuff for only so long from kids. It was only a matter of time before Bella and her sisters discovered what her father did to people who got in his way. How many people have you hurt or killed for your boss, Tony?
And if Bella ever found out you were her real dad, do you think that would change anything?”
Tony opened his mouth to say something. No words came out. Even he knew it was pointless to argue. Gulliver was right. They rode the rest of the way in silence.
The last known address for Igor Telenovich was in the incorporated village of Manorhaven. Manorhaven was the poor relation of Port Washington, an upper-middle-class area on the north shore of Long Island. And directly north of Manorhaven was the ritzy area of Sands Point. Many people believed Sands Point was the model for East Egg in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby
. But no one in Ahmed Foster’s Escalade was thinking about Gatsby’s mansion, his wild parties or the green light on Daisy’s dock. They were thinking of Bella.
Telenovich’s rented house was a drab-looking split-level ranch on a side street off Cambridge Avenue. Gulliver shook his head at the sight of it. He had seen some of Telenovich’s work. He liked it. He liked it a lot. The figures in his realistic paintings seemed alive, almost as if they were breathing. As if they could walk off the canvas. Yet he lived here in such a dull house. Lifeless. Boring. It was like the cobbler whose kids went barefoot. Or the contractor whose house was the most rundown on the block.