Willie was in her mid-fifties but looked twenty years younger, if you didn’t look too close. Her hair had been bleached to the color and texture of straw. Her boobs had been surgically hoisted and stuffed with silicone. And her taste in clothes screamed redneck slut. She had the uncanny ability and insatiable desire to drive or pilot anything with a motor in it, from a bus to a blimp, whether she owned it or not. Her tendency to borrow vehicles for joy rides often got her into trouble, which is how she’d come to Nick’s attention. Getting Willie out of one of those jams was how Nick had recruited her for the first swindle he and Kate had pulled off together.
The Corvette salesman’s hand had been doing a slow creep up Willie’s bare thigh since they’d left the Phoenix dealership, where she’d shown up all cowgirl in short denim cutoffs, her shirt tied under her breasts, her power nipples pointing at the Stingray and hypnotizing every man in the showroom. A square-chinned salesman named Buddy, with a mustache like Hitler’s, gladly stepped up and offered her a test drive before she could ask. She’d learned that alert nipples could get her into more cars than a slim jim, which was why she’d augmented hers today with a pair of Bodyperk silicone stiffies.
Buddy broke out of his nipple trance the instant she shifted into seventh gear on the two-lane desert highway and the scenery became a blur outside the windows. It was like the Millennium Falcon going into hyperdrive.
“You can’t go this fast,” Buddy said. “It’s a test drive.”
“When you buy a Corvette, honey, it’s for the 460 horses under the hood, and you aren’t going to feel ’em parallel parking.”
“This car isn’t meant to be driven this hard.”
“They didn’t put seven gears in this transmission for dropping the kids at school and going grocery shopping. It should be against the law to sell this car to anybody who isn’t going to make the tachometer lick the redline at least once a week.”
Willie’s cell phone buzzed in the hip pocket of her short shorts. She squirmed in her seat to pull out the phone and the car veered into the next lane. Buddy yelped and clutched her thigh again. She answered the phone, slowing to ninety-five while steering with one hand. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Nick said. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“I’m having a great time,” she said. “I’m test-driving the new Corvette Stingray.”
“Does the owner know it’s missing yet?”
“I’ve got the salesman right here.” She held the phone out to him. “Say hello, Buddy.”
“It’s against the law to talk on a cell phone while you’re driving,” Buddy said. “You’ll get a ticket.”
“A cop would have to catch me first, and if he can then you’ve got some balls selling this car for seventy-five thousand dollars.” Willie put the phone back to her ear. “What’s up?”
“I need you for a job.”
“What will I be driving?”
“A moving truck,” he said. “I know it’s not as sexy as a Corvette, but it pays better.”
“How much?”
“More than enough to buy yourself that car.”
“That would take the fun out of it, sweetie. I like cars the way I like my men. I pick them up, grab the stick, and drive them hard down the straightaways and fast around the curves.”
“Is Buddy panting yet?” Nick asked.
“Are you?”
“I’m taking a cold shower as soon as we get off the phone,” Nick said. “Are you in?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Great. You’ve got a reservation at one-thirty this afternoon out of Sky Harbor on United Airlines flight 1607 to JFK, where Joe Morey will be waiting for you. I need you two to pick up a van for me in the Bronx and drive it up to Montreal. I’ll text you the addresses and details. Can you make it?”
She made a sharp U-turn and floored it, throwing Buddy hard against the passenger side door.
“With time to spare,” she said.
• • •
“Cut,” the director said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Now everybody in the film crew let go of the sobs they’d been holding back while the cameras were rolling. They were crowded into a diner on the San Pedro docks and had just shot a scene about a waitress turning down a date with a lonely fisherman played by Boyd Capwell and, because of his bad breath, leaving him heartbroken and confused.
Boyd had given a powerful performance, though it had lasted only a few seconds. Relying almost entirely on the subtleties of body language, tone of voice, and facial expression, he’d conveyed how the waitress’s rejection was yet another indignity endured in a lifetime marked by bitter disappointment. It was a moment that deeply resonated with the crew in every one of the sixteen takes of the scene he’d done so far.
The director was a young woman best known for a tampon commercial about women who didn’t let their periods stop them from climbing mountains, running into burning buildings, or walking on a tightrope over Niagara Falls. She wiped her tears away, went up to Boyd, and gave him a hug.
“That was the most dramatic performance I’ve ever seen in a mouthwash commercial,” she said.
“Thank you,” Boyd said. “I wanted people to feel his deep sorrow, to wonder if the next thing he might do is throw himself off his boat into the cold embrace of the sea.”
“I asked you after your last take to dial it down.”
“I did. I lost the humiliation and downplayed the utter hopelessness, so all he’s doing now is staring into the dark abyss of his unrelenting loneliness.”
“I need you to get rid of the dark abyss and all the drama.”
“But then he wouldn’t have any textures. He’d just be a one-dimensional cardboard character.”
“Perfect. Let’s try that.”
He couldn’t believe she wanted him to give a lousy performance. Not only did he think it was beneath him, he didn’t think he was capable of delivering anything less than fully layered, richly textured greatness.
“But you just praised my powerful portrayal.”
“The problem is that people don’t watch commercials for stirring performances. What they want is a vision of a better life. But the way you’re playing the fisherman, nobody will believe that mouthwash can change his life or anybody else’s.”
“Of course it can’t,” Boyd said. “It’s mouthwash.”
“But that’s what we’re trying to sell.”
“I’m an actor. What I sell is emotional truth,” he said. “I quit.”
And on that overly dramatic note, Boyd turned his back on her and stormed out of the diner. When he took on a role, he embodied it, and if she and every other commercial director in town couldn’t appreciate that, then so be it. He had more than $100,000 in the bank. He didn’t need mouthwash money. What he needed was to perform, to indulge his raw, natural talent, without compromise or apology. He couldn’t deny that need, or who he was, any more than a vampire could stop himself from sucking blood.
He was on his way back to his trailer when Nick called him.
“What a relief it is to hear your voice,” Boyd said. “Are you and Kate all right?”
“Yes, we’re fine. Why do you ask?”
“I had a visit from two nasty BlackRhino agents. Carter Grove is out to get you both.”
“Not if we get him first. I have a scheme, and there are two parts for you to play in it. One is a minor role, hardly worthy of your immense talent, but the other might just be the best character you’ve ever attempted. It will certainly be the most fun. The downside is that if you blow it, you won’t go to jail. You’ll probably be killed.”
The risk only made the challenge more enticing, the role more real. “What’s the big part?”
“A master thief,” Nick said. “Suave, mysterious, and deadly.”
“In other words,” Boyd said, “you want me to play myself.”
“If you’re up for it.”
“Hell yes,” Boyd said.
In the early
1900s, seventy percent of Canada’s wealth was in the hands of just fifty men in Montreal who lived in mansions made of carved limestone in a neighborhood known as the Golden Square Mile. Two of those men, Walter Clagmann and Mecham Florentiny, were bitter rivals who ran competing railroads. Florentiny ultimately prevailed, driving Clagmann into bankruptcy and taking not only his railroad but his home, which he dismantled, shipping the stones across the St. Lawrence River to build a hospital for lepers.
Florentiny was not a well-liked man, except by the owners of the world’s finest auction houses, who’d helped him amass the most impressive art collection in Canada. Upon his death in 1938, his will directed that his mansion on Rue Sherbrooke be turned into a museum and that the bulk of his fortune be used to protect and preserve his collection. This came as a huge shock to his adult children, who were still living in the mansion at the time and had no vocations of their own beyond enjoying their wealth. The disgruntled heirs challenged the will, embarking on a doomed lawsuit of Dickensian proportions that was finally resolved against them in the 1950s, leaving them destitute. The Musée de Florentiny opened shortly thereafter.
The pride of the Musée de Florentiny collection were three Rembrandt oil paintings from the late 1630s that were displayed in what once was the mansion’s grand dining room. The paintings were Old Man Eating Bread by Candlelight, Two Men Laughing in a Tavern, and an untitled self-portrait.
Kate and Nick were currently standing in front of the self-portrait, and Kate thought the painting should be titled Rembrandt Hungover because Rembrandt was pale and grimacing, his brow furrowed, turning his head ever so slightly away from the morning light as if it were causing him pain. She thought he must have been partying way too hard the night before he posed for himself.
There were about twenty people in the long gallery that Friday afternoon, all under the watchful eyes of three security guards who wore navy business suits with photo IDs clipped to their handkerchief pockets. One guard stood at the entrance and another at the exit on the opposite end of the room. The third guard roamed the gallery.
“At one time, this room had windows that looked out over Montreal clear down to the St. Lawrence River,” Nick said. “Between the Rembrandts and the spectacular view, one prominent guest visiting from London remarked in his journal that ‘the greatest feast served by Monsieur Florentiny in his dining room was for the eyes, and it was glorious.’ ”
“You should be a tour guide here,” Kate said.
“I like to know everything about what I’m stealing and where it’s kept. Besides the cameras, this room is protected by motion detectors, thermal sensors, and two hundred infrared beams that crisscross the room in random, constantly changing patterns. Anything larger, heavier, and warmer than a fly moving through here will set off the alarms.”
“Is that all? No hidden machine gun turrets? Jets of poison gas? I’m not impressed.”
“But the security measures work. This museum has never been robbed. The biggest art theft in Canadian history happened in 1972 just a couple of blocks down the street at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Thirty-nine pieces of jewelry and eighteen paintings, including a Rembrandt, were taken and have never been recovered. I’ve seen the Rembrandt, though. It’s part of Carter Grove’s secret collection.”
“That’s why you think he’ll be hot for these when they turn up on the black market.”
“He’d be interested in any stolen Rembrandts, but the provenance of these, stolen in yet another historic Canadian heist, will be too sweet for him to resist.”
Nick and Kate walked through several more galleries to a wide corridor that led to the exit, where another guard sat on a stool by the turnstile a few feet away from the entrance. They walked past the solid double doors onto Rue Sherbrooke, which was Montreal’s equivalent of New York’s Fifth Avenue or L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard.
Most of the mansions that once made the Golden Square Mile so golden were now long gone, demolished to make way for the apartment towers, office buildings, and elegant brownstones that lined the wide boulevard in each direction. Directly across the street from the Musée de Florentiny was the Collège de Montréal and, behind it, the wooded hills of Parc du Mont-Royal.
“How did the thieves break into the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts?” Kate asked.
“They climbed a tree beside the building and got in through a broken skylight that was being repaired. The alarm attached to the skylight was deactivated.”
Nick led Kate around the corner onto Rue Saint-Marc, a narrow street with apartments on one side.
“They dropped into the museum, overpowered the guards, and went shopping,” Nick said.
“I guess that’s why there are no trees near the Florentiny museum.”
“And no skylights,” Nick said. He gestured to a side door. Two cameras mounted on the building were aimed at it. “That’s the employee entrance, operated with a card key that’s swiped over a reader. That’s the only way in and out for guards when the museum is closed. The guards don’t patrol the galleries or they’d set off all the security measures. So for a number of years they just sat in a windowless control room, watching a bank of monitors.”
“Sounds tedious,” Kate said.
“So tedious that the guards would nod off after a couple hours. So to alleviate some of the boredom and keep the guards alert, the museum brought in cable TV. It sounds like a great idea, but it’s actually a huge mistake. The cable is a backdoor into their entire video surveillance system.”
Nick tipped his head toward the Bell Canada panel van parked on the other side of Rue Saint-Marc. The van blocked any of the museum’s security cameras from seeing the technician working on the cable junction box that served all the buildings on the block. The technician was Joe Morey, a cap slung low over his face.
“They got rid of the skylights and cut the trees down for nothing,” Kate said.
“Not necessarily,” Nick said. “You’d be surprised how often old-school approaches can still work.”
The back of the museum, and a rear door, faced Avenue Lincoln and the block of apartment buildings across the street. Nick gestured to the door. “That’s where we’ll make our escape.”
“With three Rembrandts in our hands,” she said. “In broad daylight.”
He grinned. “Exciting, isn’t it?”
Exciting wasn’t the first word that came to Kate’s mind. Terrifying was the first word. After terrifying were words like risky, stupid, crazy, and WRONG.
They crossed Avenue Lincoln to Château Florentiny, a ten-story apartment building. It was a concrete monolith that didn’t fit in at all with the smaller, more charming brownstone townhouses that flanked it. A sign in the lobby window read: APPARTEMENTS À LOUER.
Nick stopped on the sidewalk, pulled a ring from his pocket, and handed it to Kate. “Your wedding ring.”
It was a platinum band inlaid with diamonds. Simple but elegant.
Kate put the ring on her finger. “That’s got to be the least romantic proposal in history. Where did you steal this?”
“I bought it,” he said.
“That must have been a new experience for you.”
“It was. Cost me ten grand.” He slipped a matching platinum band onto his finger. “I want that ring back when this marriage is over.”
“No way,” she said. “You can keep the dishes.”
They stepped into the lobby alcove of the Château Florentiny and pressed the intercom button to summon the manager. The speaker crackled, and a woman’s voice said, “Oui?”
“It’s Jonathan and Jennifer Hart,” Nick said, smiling into the security camera. “We have an appointment with Lorie to see Apartment 1007.”
“C’est moi.” She switched to English. “I’ll meet you on the tenth floor.”
There was a buzz, the door unlocked, and Nick and Kate went inside. The lobby had all the charm of an airport boarding gate. They got into the elevator, and as soon as the door closed Nick slid his hand around Ka
te’s waist and pulled her close.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting into the part.”
“It feels like you’re trying to get into something else.”
“That’s because we’re a young, vivacious couple who are passionately in love,” he said. “This is probably the first time we’ve ridden in an elevator together without having sex.”
Before Kate could reply, the elevator doors opened, revealing a young woman with a big sugary-sweet smile on her lollipop-round face. She had pixie-cut blond hair and ruby red lips and wore a red-and-white-striped sundress that made her look to Kate like a candy cane.
“Bonjour, I’m Lorie,” she said, jangling the large key ring she wore like a charm bracelet around her thin wrist. “Let me show you the apartment.”
“Thank you,” Nick said. “We can’t wait to see it. We need to find a place to live right away.”
“Where are you living now?” Lorie led them down the hallway to a door that was already unlocked and ajar.
“Out of a suitcase,” Kate said. “We’ve been crewing on yachts for the last five years. We’re just getting used to having our feet on solid ground.”
“Jennifer is very eager to settle down,” Nick said. “We’ve only been ashore a few days and we’re already trying to get pregnant.”
“I hear that trying is the best part,” Lorie said, pushing the door open for them and beckoning them inside.
Nick squeezed Kate’s waist, and Kate gave Nick an elbow to the ribs.
The living room, large and unfurnished, had freshly painted walls, new carpet, and French doors opening onto a long, narrow balcony.
Lorie gave them a quick tour, starting in the small kitchen, which had linoleum floors, fake granite countertops, and aging appliances. She showed them the two bedrooms, gushed over the his-and-hers sinks in the bathroom, and then brought them back to the living room.