"Correct. Recovery of our stolen heritage. That is our first goal. We do not overly concern ourselves with the apprehension of criminals."
"I would have thought the two might be related." Sarcasm is not something I use often, particularly with public servants who are doing their jobs, and especially with policemen. But Antuono was giving me a pain. And I had my doubts about how well he was doing his job.
He looked at his watch; studied it, in fact, as if to determine just how much of his invaluable time could be squandered on me. Apparently, he decided there was a little more to spare. "I want to explain to you something of the way we work." He cleared a space on the table and leaned forward to rest his elbows on it, his hands steepled beneath his sharp chin. He pursed his small mouth pedantically.
"In many ways we are like narcotics agents. Most of our work is undercover. Our men use disguises—false mustaches, invented identities. We pretend to be buyers, and arrange false purchases. We make use of crooked dealers, petty criminals, and informers—they are much the same people—to help us, and when they do, we protect them. They may help us another day."
"They may also steal some more paintings another day."
"Let me ask you something. When a seller of narcotics hears the police pounding down the door to his apartment, what does he do with the kilo of cocaine in the closet?"
I shrugged. "Flushes it down the toilet, I guess. Or throws it out the window."
"Very good. He destroys the evidence. A criminal with stolen art does the same thing when the police are about to close in. He does not flush it down the toilet, of course; the circumstances are different. But he tries to destroy it. Now: If it is cocaine, the world is better off for its loss, no?" He leaned back and economically crossed one knee over the other in the cluttered space beneath the table. "But what if it is a Tiziano, a Raffaelo? Should I risk the destruction of an irreplaceable work of art for the satisfaction of seeing a thief in jail for a year? For two years, if the courts are feeling particularly stern?"
He knew how to hit an art curator where it hurt; talk about the destruction of Old Masters. "I guess you have a point," I said.
The telephone buzzed. Antuono picked it up. "Prego." He sat there nodding impatiently into it. "Si, capisco... . Capisco. . . ."
Most of what he had explained to me I had already known. The Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Artistico was the most celebrated art-theft squad in the world, and rightly so. With a staff of less than a hundred, they had recovered a staggering 120,000 works of art in the twenty years they'd been in operation, and I couldn't really quarrel with their first-get-the-art-then-worry-about-the-bad-guys philosophy. But when it's your own body that's been battered by the bad guys, you tend to see things in a different light.
Antuono emitted a final "capisco" and hung up. "No," he told me dryly, "they were not caught." He rose. "If there is nothing else, Dr. Norgren, I have a great deal—"
I looked up at him, surprised. "Don't you want a report on what I've been hearing?"
"To reply with perfect frankness, no."
"But I thought—"
"May I speak directly? This matter of your running to me with tidbits of gossip—"
"Look, Colonel," I said hotly. I was feeling distinctly ill- used. "It wasn't my idea in the first place. If you—"
"Nor mine. It was a suggestion made by your FBI, and I have no doubt it was well-intentioned. I felt it was best to accept the offer of your services. But between us, signore, truly, it's not necessary. We are well able to gather our own information "
"The FBI?" I stood up too rapidly and winced, barely managing not to groan as my knees straightened out for the first time in fifteen minutes. "How could they offer my services? How could they know I was coming?"
"I believe the original idea came to them from a Mr. . . . Let me see. . ."
"Let me guess," I said. "Whitehead."
"Ah, yes, I think so. Whitehead. Exactly."
It figured. Tony Whitehead's belief in the virtues of publicity was every bit as unequivocal as Mike Blusher's, even if more sophisticated and of purer intention. If his curator of Renaissance and Baroque art could have some part in the recovery of the Bolognese art thefts, so Tony's reasoning would run, then publicity for the museum would result. And that would of necessity be good for the museum.
I wasn't so sure. I also wasn't so sure about my obligation to stay in touch with Antuono. Tony's agreement to fund the purchase of Ugo's Boursse was contingent on my continued reporting. But the Eagle himself had just made it amply clear that he had better things to do than listen to my "tidbits." Could I therefore consider my obligation fulfilled? Could I go ahead and buy the Boursse with a clear conscience? A moral dilemma.
I knew what I was going to do, of course, but how was I going to rationalize it? We ethical people are very fastidious about our rationalizations. It was going to take some thought.
After leaving Antuono's hodgepodge of an office, I stopped at a coffee bar for a lunch of cheese and tomato panini. Then I went back up to my room in hopes of getting there before the maid did so that I could recover my precipitately discarded codeine capsules. No luck. She had been there and done a thorough job. I took a couple of aspirin and, with a muffled groan or two, lay myself stiffly down on the freshly made bed.
Twenty minutes later I was roused by a telephone call from the polizia criminale. They understood that I was still recuperating, but would it be too much of an imposition if they came in a car and brought me to police headquarters to verify the transcript of my interview and perhaps look at a few photographs of local criminals? As miserable as I was feeling, it was still far from an imposition. It was, in fact, nice to know somebody cared.
When I looked at the transcript, I was astonished to find it lucid and complete, with the remarks I made while I was unconscious being, if anything, marginally more coherent than what I said after I woke up. I signed it, then leafed through a few thick loose leaf books of photographs, but was unable to find either of the thugs. The two policemen accepted this fatalistically, then shook my hand with expressions of gratitude. I was courteously taken back to the Hotel Europa, where I went back up to my room to try to sleep again. I napped for almost two hours, and woke up at 3:30, feeling better and worrying about Max. I caught a taxi at the stand in front of the hotel and headed for the hospital, this time without calling first.
Chapter 7
Among the many social skills in which I seem to be lacking is the knack of providing cheerful solace at hospital bedsides. My conversational charms atrophy, my sense of humor withers, my smile petrifies. My friend Louis, who experienced this firsthand after his double-hernia operation, has a ready explanation, of course: My relief that it is someone else and not me in the bed creates a powerful sense of guilt, which in turn effects an overcompensatory reaction that sharply suppresses any behavior approximating good cheer.
Maybe so—who am I to argue with Freud?—but if I felt any relief at seeing Max, then it was deeply suppressed indeed. I had run into Dr. Tolomeo in the hallway outside the room, and he had taken me aside for an ominous warning. "Your friend—It looks worse than it is. Don't be frightened when you see him."
It was a good thing he told me, because Max was a frightening sight. He was propped into a semi-sitting position by the mechanical bed, with his naked legs straight out in front of him. Instead of the casts I'd expected, there was a horror- movie contraption of bolted-together steel rods encasing each leg from just above the knee almost to the ankle. Heavy steel pins—six on each leg—skewered the limb, piercing it through and cruelly transfixing it between the rods. The flesh was ghastly; purple, red, and black, swollen and split open like a hot dog that had been on the grill too long.