“It must have bothered you when the place was robbed,” Kozlowski said. It sounded to Finn like he was prodding the old man.
Bass looked at them both, tears of anger in his eyes. “That wasn’t a robbery, it was an abomination. It was a betrayal.”
“Baxter was the director at the time?” Kozlowski asked.
Bass looked at him and chuckled. “Baxter thought you were the police because you sound like the police.”
“I used to be on the force,” Kozlowski said. “He assumed. I didn’t correct the assumption. I never misrepresented myself.”
“Ah,” Bass said. “So you’re lawyers.”
“I am,” Finn said.
Bass looked at him, then pointed to Kozlowski. “He’s been around you for too long. Only a lawyer would draw his kind of distinction. Why are you here?”
“You already know-you said it earlier,” Finn said. “To find the paintings.”
“But why?” Bass asked. “Why are you looking for the paintings? You said you’re not treasure hunters; so what then? What’s your interest?”
Finn said, “We need to find the paintings because a little girl’s life depends on it. I can’t explain it any more than that, but I’m telling you the truth.”
The old man looked at him. “I believe you,” he said. “If you find the paintings, will you protect them? Will you return them to the museum?”
“If we can,” Finn said. “We’ll do everything we can.”
Bass seemed to consider this for a long time. “All right,” he said wearily. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything you can tell us that might help. Anything you know.”
“But I don’t know anything,” Bass said. “I’ve talked to the police a dozen times over the decades; given them every scrap of information I had; nothing’s done any good.”
“What do you know about Baxter?” Kozlowski asked. “Is there any chance that he was involved?”
Bass shrugged. “I don’t know him well enough to tell. He’s a bit of a tyrant at times. He and I have never really gotten along. He only tolerates me because I’ve been here so long the trustees view me as a part of the institution. But his betrayals are on a smaller scale. I’m not sure he even has the imagination to have conceived of something like the robbery. Besides, the police checked him out. They checked us all out.”
“He was wearing some very nice clothes,” Kozlowski noted. “Expensive clothes. Where does he get his money?”
Bass looked down at the fraying lapels of his own jacket, and Finn instantly wished Kozlowski had been more tactful. “As you might suspect, I don’t know much about fashion or the cost of nice clothing,” he said. “I never made much more than minimum wage, so from my perspective, I’ve always thought of Baxter as rich. I don’t know if he has money beyond what he makes here. I never thought to wonder.”
“Did that ever bother you?” Kozlowski asked. “Did you ever feel like you deserved more respect around here? More money, maybe?”
For a moment, Finn thought perhaps Bass would be offended or angry. But he just looked at Kozlowski with a contented smile. “You may not understand this, but no. Without this place, I would have been dead before I turned twenty. Because of this place, I spent my life surrounded by beauty and comfort. No matter who was in charge, nothing about this place has ever made me feel disrespected.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us that might be helpful?” Finn asked.
Bass looked pensive for a moment. “Nothing specific. My impression, though, was that the FBI was very concerned about the offer to sell the paintings that was apparently put out recently.”
“You heard the call?” Finn asked.
Bass shook his head. “Not exactly. But I saw Mr. Baxter’s reaction, and I heard his conversations with a number of others at the museum after the call. You may have noticed, I’m treated as if I’m invisible. It has its advantages at times.”
“What was his reaction?”
“He was excited. Or perhaps agitated would be a better word. He seemed to truly believe that something was happening that might bring the paintings back to this place.”
“Is that particularly unusual?” Kozlowski asked. “I would think a guy in his position would be thrilled at the prospect.”
“Of course,” Bass replied. “If there was really a chance. But we here at the museum have lived through dozens of false leads and rumors regarding these paintings. It has gotten so that we are skeptical about anything we hear. Baxter didn’t seem skeptical after talking to the FBI the day they called.”
“Why do you think that was?” Finn asked.
Bass shrugged. “I don’t know. As I said, I didn’t hear the conversation. Maybe they had more specific information this time.”
“Maybe,” Kozlowski said. He didn’t sound convinced. “Or maybe Mr. Baxter knew something himself this time.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Bass said. “I suppose that unless Baxter wants to talk with you, only the FBI can tell you more.”
Kozlowski nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Finn and Kozlowski emptied their pockets into bins as they passed through the entrance to the Kennedy Federal Building and walked through the metal detector. It occurred to Finn as he gathered his belongings on the far side of the X-ray machine that, should the trends continue, he could soon expect to be frisked vigorously walking into the neighborhood grocery store.
They headed to the elevator and crowded in with a dozen others, many of them wearing bright plastic badges identifying them as federal employees. Most wore the long, bored expressions of civil servants enduring their own version of purgatory, forced to deal with forms filled out in triplicate by an angry, impatient citizenry all too eager to roll eyeballs and issue heavy sighs at the government’s inefficiencies. The only solace they found was in the occasional opportunity to really screw with the most obnoxious. It was cold comfort to them, Finn was sure, but he supposed it beat none at all.
The trip to the Gardner Museum had been helpful in orienting them, but it wasn’t enough. It gave them no leads. If they were going to have any hope of finding the paintings, they needed some inside information from the authorities, and there was only one way to get that.
“You’re sure your guy’s here?” Finn asked Kozlowski as the elevator door opened on the seventh floor and they stepped off into a fluorescent elevator lobby with stained, battleship-gray industrial carpeting.
“He said he would be,” Kozlowski said. “If he said he would be, he will be.”
Finn accepted it with a nod. Kozlowski had burned his share of bridges in his law-enforcement career, Finn knew. That was just a part of who he was-he didn’t suffer fools, and he had no political savvy. The pencil pushers and ass-coverers who often seemed to thrive in the world of bureaucratic law enforcement had hated him and ultimately succeeded in ending his career. But many of the others-the real cops-never lost respect for the man, and the respect of people like that was priceless. It provided contacts that made Kozlowski one of the most valuable assets to Finn’s practice.
Kozlowski had reached out to an FBI agent he had worked with in the late nineties trying to clean up the fallout from John Connolly’s relationship with Whitey Bulger. He and his contact had forged a friendship over long hours and heavy stress, and the friendship had stuck even after it was all over.
The sting of the Connolly affair was still felt by the Bureau, even down in Washington. But in Boston it was defining, and many speculated that the damage was enough to neutralize any effectiveness the feds could have in the city. John Connolly was an agent from South Boston who had risen through the ranks in the eighties and nineties, winning commendations and promotions from his campaign to shut down the Angiulo branch of La Cosa Nostra, which operated out of Boston ’s Italian North End, and ran the mob for the Patriarca family in Providence. With bust after bust over a ten-year period, Connolly brought the Italian-American mob to its knees with amazing proficiency, culminating with the 1986 RICO indictment of crime underboss Gennaro Angiulo and others.