"In any case," she said, "I don't believe for a minute that Max told only five people. I think everybody in Bologna knew. Max doesn't have secrets. Have you ever been around him when he's drinking?"
"I know what you mean."
"Talk, talk, talk," she said, which pretty well summed it up. "I should have sued him at the time, when the Rubens was first stolen."
"Why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I?" Clara peered at me with a sober, bleary look that I was beginning to recognize as her version of waggishness. "Christopher, how familiar are you with the Italian legal system?"
"Not very." And Colonel Antuono hadn't done much to edify me.
"You're fortunate. It is, should I say, a little tangled, and the results somewhat erratic. We have a saying here: Never sue when you're in the right. It's too risky."
I laughed, and we ordered from the young waiter who had been standing at the ready. Lunch began with antipasto from a self-service table against the far wall. I offered to get Clara's for her, but she shook her head and, with a movement of her chin, sent the waiter scurrying for her instead. A good thing, too, because I had all I could do to manage my own. It is not lasagna or fettuccine or tortellini that I dream hungrily about when I think of Italy's food, but the antipasto tables, and the one at La Provvidenza was as good as they come. I loaded my plate with mussels and shrimp, marinated octopus, prosciutto, smoked mackerel, oily roasted red peppers, two gleaming whole anchovies, and a thick wedge of artichoke frittata. Halfway back, I returned to get a roll, which had to be precariously set on top of the frittata.
This Smorgie-Bob's-all-you-can-eat approach is not the way they do things in Italy, but in my own defense I'll point out that I had had only coffee and a brioche for breakfast, a couple of stale little sandwiches for last night's dinner, and not much else since the attack three days before.
Clara was already eating when I came back. One of those large people who never seems to eat much, at least in public, she had on her plate only a slice of prosciutto and some cheese. She stopped chewing and studied my heaped plate intently. "I think you missed the squid," she said.
"I'll get some when I go back for seconds," I told her, and dug in.
"Christopher," she said after leaving me to it for a few minutes, "this matter of my Rubens. Tell me, what are your impressions of the way it resolved itself? How much do you believe this Blusher's account?" She had finished her hors d'oeuvres and pushed her plate away. A cigarette was back dancing at the side of her mouth.
I considered the question while I finished chewing a bony, crackling mouthful of anchovy. By now I'd given Mike Blusher a lot more thought, and I knew precisely what it was I suspected him of. In the last few decades the field of art thievery had developed well beyond the crude old days when paintings had usually been stolen and then held for ransom. Now, with the prodigious rewards offered by insurance companies, nasty ransom demands had become unnecessary. You could be more decorous. You merely stole the piece of art, waited awhile, and then turned it in for the insurance reward. All you had to do was come up with some reproachless way of "finding" the object in question and getting the word to the insurance company.
It was safer, less complicated, and more civilized than trying to collect ransom, less dangerous than trying to fence stolen art. The money was better, too. On the black market the going rate was only three or four percent of the value, as opposed to the ten percent most insurance companies would pay. And, as in Blusher's case, one could even wind up with some favorable publicity as a bonus.
After all, wouldn't you want to buy a fake antique ashtray from the guy who discovered the famous stolen Rubens?
But it took patience, ingenuity, and care, none of which had seemed to be Blusher's strong suits. Or had I underrated him? Was he more patient, ingenious, and careful than I'd thought? I was beginning to believe it was possible. And if ever an operation was made for processing stolen art, Venezia Trading Company was it. Remember Chesterton's famous question about the best place to hide a stolen Madonna? Well, apply it to a stolen painting and the answer was surely among five hundred look-alike paintings.
There was another possibility, too. It might be that Blusher wasn't in it alone. It might be that Trasporti Salvatorelli was more in the thick of things than Luca and Di Vecchio gave them credit for, and the whole affair had been concocted between them and Blusher. After Blusher collected his reward and the dust settled, the money would be split. Or maybe not split. Maybe the Salvatorellis had been behind it, and Blusher was only a hireling who would receive a small cut.
I told all this to Clara, almost beginning to believe it myself. She sat listening, fingers steepled against her upper lip. "Christopher, let me ask you this." She leaned forward, shaking another cigarette from her pack. Before she got it to her mouth the peach-sleeved arm shot forward with a lighter. She sucked in a deep lungful and wedged the cigarette in the corner of her mouth as before. "Assuming that something crooked is going on," she continued, "why do you think the Rubens is the only picture to surface in this way? Why none of my other paintings? Why none stolen from the Pinacoteca?"
"I suppose," I said doubtfully, "that the theft of the Rubens might have had nothing to do with the others, that it was a different gang. A coincidence."
She snorted. "On the same night? Within a few hours of the time my Correggio and my Bronzinos were being taken from my home?" She shut her eyes for a moment, mourning her Correggio and Bronzinos. "Don't be ridiculous."
I nodded, agreeing with her. "Why, then?"
"I'm asking you."
By now our second courses had come. I had a couple of mouthfuls of a fragrant risotto con funghi while I thought about it. "Clara, do you happen to know if all the paintings stolen that night were insured by the same company?"
"They were, yes: Assicurazioni Generali."
"Well, then, the Rubens could have been a feeler, to see if the insurance company would come through and be cooperative—you know, no hard questions, no investigation, no charges."
She cocked her head, evaluating the idea. "It's possible, yes."
"Now may I ask you something?"
She lifted her head warily.
"How did they manage to steal the paintings from your house? How did they get in?"
"What's the difference?" she said gruffly, poking away at her spaghetti alla Bolognese. "It's water under the bridge."
"Didn't you have security systems in place?"
"Of course I had security systems in place. What do you think?"
"Well, who knew about them?"
"Nobody knew. You think I'm your friend Max?"
"Do you think it was an inside job? Somebody on your staff?"
"No." She was mumbling into her food. I could hardly hear her.
"Well, then, what—"
The hand holding the fork thumped exasperatedly on the table. "They weren't turned on, all right? I forgot to turn the damn things on!"
"You—" I did manage to keep down a sudden burst of laughter, but something must have twitched somewhere, because she raised her fork menacingly.
"The merest hint of a smile and you'll be impaled, Christopher. I warn you."
I said: "I was startled, I wasn't amused," half of which was true.
It had been a fleeting moment of amusement, however. Clara had my sympathy. Comic Abstractionists and Trans-avantguardists may have represented so much capital investment for her, but her love for the Old Masters was as deep as mine. To lose a Correggio from carelessness . . .
"I take my paintings down fairly often," she said quietly. "Sometimes I would forget to reactivate the systems." She lifted her shoulders in a glum shrug. "Sometimes I would forget for days."