Midnight Angels (11 page)

By the time he sat in his seat in the second row of a field-level box along the first base line at Wrigley Field, Andrew MacNamera had put in place his international operation of nearly five thousand sources, giving
the Vittoria Society eyes in corners that were shaded and dangerous. The operation was funded by a well-stocked financial network of art collectors, dealers, academics, and historians who, across a twenty-year span, built a massive cash base to help support their various endeavors.

“Day baseball will soon be a remnant of the past,” MacNamera said, scanning the ivy walls, watching the players leave the field after their pre-game drills. “Have you ever noticed it’s always the things that give people the simplest pleasure—double features, drive-in movies, carnivals, amusement parks—that are the first to vanish whenever civilization gets the urge to go modern?”

“That shouldn’t pose a problem for you or me,” Edwards said, “since we live in the past. For men like us, nothing ever dies. It’s just frozen in time.”

MacNamera sat back and thrust his hands into the pockets of his worn Cubs jacket. He always dressed for the occasion, easily blending in regardless of the circumstances, making it a point never to be the one in any group who stood out. He was short, and now, due in part to the ravages of the disease coursing through him, somewhat frail, his once stout upper body reduced to a shell of bones and stretched skin, the booming voice of old replaced by a hoarse wheeze. But the eyes, so prominent in his gaunt face, told even the most casual observer that there was still quite a bit of fight left in the old man.

He glanced over at Edwards and rested a thin, withered hand, purple veins bulging over knuckles and fingers, on the professor’s elbow as the game began, the crowd cheering the strike thrown on the first pitch. “Have you heard from Kate much since her arrival in Florence?” he asked as the cheers abated.

“Between the e-mails, letters, and cell phone calls, I’m surprised she has any time left for her studies,” Edwards said, his eyes on the field, but his attention focused on MacNamera.

The older man’s face crinkled, the edges of a smile forming around the corners of his mouth as he dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his warm-up jacket. “Did you know Wrigley was the first ballpark to use an organist?” he asked. “They tried it back in the summer of 1941, hoping to draw a younger crowd. Even back then, ‘Bring Out the Youth’ was the message of the day.”

“I don’t think you dragged yourself to the game to exercise your baseball trivia muscles, Andrew,” Edwards said. “What is it you need to tell me?”

MacNamera turned from the field and stared at Edwards for several long seconds, then shifted his body closer. “They’ve made contact with Kate,” he said. “Two days ago in the herbal pharmacy.”

“She in danger?”

“Not at the moment,” MacNamera said with the slightest shake of his head. “They’ll wait and give her the time she needs, see if she comes up with anything. If she does, then they’ll make their move on both Kate and her discovery.”

“Who approached her?”

“None other than the Raven himself,” MacNamera said. “We shouldn’t be surprised. He is probably as curious about Kate as he is about you. After all, had he stayed true to the cause, he would have been the director of the Society. And young Kate would have been groomed by him, not by you.”

“How did she handle the meeting?” Edwards asked.

“She was fine, I’m told,” MacNamera said. “My guess is she was initially caught off guard, but she seems fine.”

“What are we doing about it?”

“To start with, I’ve doubled the eyes on Kate,” MacNamera said. “I’ve also put two men on that friend of hers. But I don’t need to tell you, our people are not out there alone.”

Edwards leaned back, ignoring the home crowd cheering a Carlos Zambrano strikeout. “I wonder at times if the right thing to do would have been to keep her away from the ugly end of our business,” he said. “Just let her live her life.”

“She is what she is, Richard. And do not deceive yourself into thinking you had any say in the decision,” MacNamera said.

Edwards took off his Cubs cap, ran a hand slowly through his thick, wavy hair and shook his head. “The Immortals,” he muttered, his voice dripping with disdain. “He was always a pretentious twit.”

“He fancies himself a warrior, and so named his group accordingly,” MacNamera said with a slight smile. “The Immortals, after all, did defeat the Spartans. Granted, the odds were more than slightly in their favor, but a win is a win.”

“Let’s assume Kate does indeed find something of value during her time in Florence,” Edwards said, returning to the dilemma at hand. “How can we make sure we learn about it before the Raven does?”

“Not an easy task,” MacNamera said. “Much will depend on what she finds and where she finds it. And also, what she decides to do with that discovery.”

“My guess is she would contact me right off the bat,” Edwards said. “In that case, we can hold a slight advantage, perhaps buy ourselves a few hours.”

“Working on the assumption that she does contact you first,” MacNamera said, “we then need her to be savvy enough not to use a landline or a traceable cell. We will also have to hope that her friend Marco can be trusted to remain silent.”

“How does he check out?”

“No links whatsoever to the Raven or anyone remotely associated with him or his group,” the older man said. “He is all that he appears to be—a student behind on his bills and his assignments who has developed a rather large crush on our Kate.”

“Does she feel the same way about him?”

“I’ve never been able to judge which way a woman’s heart leans,” MacNamera said. “But my guess is that her feeling is simply friendly. At least for now.”

“If Kate’s going to find anything at all, she’s going to need some time,” Edwards said, “and we have to make sure she gets that.”

“Which means bringing trouble down the Raven’s path,” MacNamera said. “That can be arranged.”

“Then throw as many diversions at him as you can,” Edwards said. “And let’s not depend just on the strength of the Society. I’m sure the Rome Art Squad has him under their lens for one heist or another. Let’s see if we can be of any help in that regard. He’s also had a price on his head for several years now, with few venturing to make even an attempt. Why do you suppose that is?”

“He hires any potential assassins who might rise to the bait and pays them handsomely to work by his side,” MacNamera said, “leaving the inexperienced and the desperate as potential prey. He also commands a certain level of fear and of invincibility in both the art world and the criminal underground. There are many who think we are the only ones who can battle him on equal footing, and we haven’t been able to touch him for more than two decades.”

“Do you ever think I’ve taken it too far in that regard?” Edwards asked.

“What choice did you have?”

“I often wonder if Frank and Andrea would have turned the Society into such a lethal force,” he said. “In truth, how different are we from the Immortals other than in the methods we choose to dispense the lost art? Blood on both sides has been spilled in equal amounts.”

“Perhaps it may one day revert to what Frank and Andrea originally had in mind,” MacNamera said. “If Kate so desires.”

Edwards turned to the game and briefly allowed himself the luxury of getting back into its rhythms, a respite from the talk of danger and deceit. He glanced at the scoreboard and then turned back to MacNamera. “The Society will defeat the Raven and ultimately bring his run to an end,” he said. “I have never doubted that fact.”

MacNamera nodded. “That and a well-played game is more than enough to bring a smile to a dying man’s face,” he said. “In the interim, I’ll cause as much havoc as I can to the Raven and his illustrious Immortals, allowing Kate to pursue either her studies or our next adventure.”

“I always take you for granted, Andrew,” Edwards said. “I never mean to do it, it’s just that you have been there for me for such a long time that it’s easy to take your talents as a given. But I would be lost without your help and friendship.”

“I fear you will be without both sooner than either of us would like,” MacNamera said, avoiding eye contact. “It’s spreading faster than the doctors anticipated. I doubt I will be of much use to you past this summer.”

“Where do you stand on the question of miracles?” Edwards asked.

“I draw the line at dreams,” MacNamera said. “And I have had the good fortune to have lived to see one of those dreams—the Vittoria Society—take root. Such a rare gift is worth more than any miracle I can imagine. However, if a miracle gets thrown on me, I won’t fight it off.”

“I think there’s time for you to realize one more dream,” Edwards said, “if you’re up to it.”

“It would take more than sickness to prevent it,” MacNamera said.

The old warrior then stood, patted Edwards on the shoulder, bowed his head and turned, walking up the stone steps, heading out of the ballpark, prepared to engage in one final battle.

CHAPTER
14

A
NTONIO RUMORE STARED OUT AT THE CROWDS FILING ALONG
the stalls of the Mercato Centrale, the central market of Florence, the dueling odors of fresh meats, fish, poultry, and cheese thick in the air. He took a lazy gaze up toward the second floor, where the fruits and vegetables were stored and sold, giggles of children echoing off the partially open walls and filtering down to the street. It was ten minutes after nine on a Saturday, the early morning mist slowly giving way to a warm sun and rising temperatures.

Rumore reached into the front pocket of his tailored white shirt and pulled out a filtered British cigarette. He held it in his right hand and rested his head against the shuttered door of a long-abandoned Laundromat, keeping his dark eyes on the activity in the marketplace across the plaza. Then he glanced to his left, watching the older man slowly make his way to his side, two small paper cups filled with espresso in his hands, beads of sweat forming across his forehead.

“I have a sweet roll in my pocket,” the man said, handing Rumore one of the cups. “We can split it, if you like.”

“I’m good with just the coffee,” Rumore said, holding the cup close to his lips and blowing.

“Did I miss anything exciting?” the man asked, finding a shaded spot next to Rumore and reaching for a sugar-dusted bun wrapped in a swath of napkins in the right-hand pocket of his crumpled tan jacket.

“I think they’re running low on artichokes,” Rumore said. “Other than that, it’s business as usual.”

“And what of our friend?” the man asked. “Did he hold true to his usual form?”

“Creatures of habit always do, Stefano,” Rumore said. “He made his first stop at the butcher’s stall, where he was handed two full plastic bags. He handed the bags off to a tall, bald man standing to his left, and then the two of them moved on toward the fish counter.”

“God, how I do love police work,” Stefano said, stuffing the last bite of the bun into a corner of his mouth. “You tell me. Where else could we find this level of excitement—and on a Saturday morning, no less?”

“He hasn’t been coming to Florence these past few weeks because there’s a shortage of fresh meat and fish in Rome,” Rumore said. “He’s caught wind of something and it must smell of a big score, otherwise there would be no need for him to get this directly involved this early in the process.”

“I’ve been checking the stats every morning, as always,” Stefano said. “What’s out there isn’t worth the squad’s time, let alone the Raven’s.”

“It may not have surfaced on anyone’s radar just yet. But the big hauls seldom pop up until those final hours before they’re ready to hit the market. And it may not even be a discovery he’s after. He might be here for a heist.”

“The Florence police have been put on alert,” Stefano said. “As have all the museum security forces. If he or anyone in his crew makes a move, we’ll be sure to hear about it.”

“It would be of great value if we heard about it
before
it happens,” Rumore said.

“That was one incident, and if there was someone we could point a finger at and blame, then I would have fired him myself,” Stefano said. “It was a mistake on our part and a good luck landing on the side of the criminals. It happens sometimes.”

“Never to me,” Rumore said, his eyes focused on the activity in the marketplace.

“Then it’s time you got over it,” Stefano said. “I’m not talking to you like a partner here. I’m speaking as a friend.”

“I will get over it,” Rumore said. “As soon as I see the Raven in handcuffs or in a coffin.”

…

ANTONIO RUMORE WAS
a police captain assigned to one of the most prestigious units in the world—the Rome Art Squad. Since its formation in 1969, the squad had been responsible for the retrieval of more than 1.2 million stolen or missing works of art, 300,000 of them captured outside Italian borders. The Art Squad consisted of 186 detectives working out of eleven cities, its members expert in fields as diverse as art history, antiterror tactics, martial arts, and languages, with contacts—both legal and otherwise—deep inside the varied worlds of antiquities, money laundering, and drug trafficking.

On paper, Rumore would have been deemed an odd choice for the Art Squad.

He was the only son of a devoutly religious Neapolitan hotel manager, a hardworking and lonely widower whose wife had been yet another in a long line of innocent victims of Camorra street battles. They lived in an apartment along a section of the city known as Lungomare, a working-class district overlooking the bustling harbor and vistas of the Bay of Naples. Rumore had been a frail and sickly boy, often forced to miss as much as a full semester of classes due to a variety of ailments, from a bout with double pneumonia to a rheumatic fever scare to a leg broken in three places. The boy didn’t spend time complaining, content to pass his days and nights alone in a world of his own making—spent in his corner bedroom reading thick volumes of art history and biographies of the great and the infamous. His father had wedged his bed against the small window that opened out onto the harbor, the rich sounds of Neapolitan love ballads filtering up from the open-air restaurant that filled the first floor of his thirteenth century apartment building.