David Hosp - Among Thieves

When he’d visualized Sanchez’s home, he’d pictured a small, dark apartment somewhere in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Two, maybe three rooms, sparsely decorated, with few pictures and no personal items. A place befitting this woman who was so focused on her work, and so distant from those around her willing to help. It was a dark, lonely, angry life he’d envisioned for her.

The dwelling that matched her address from the personnel files met none of his expectations. It was a medium-sized house in a nice neighborhood right off the Green Line. Two blocks from Commonwealth Avenue, it had a large well-tended yard, and flowers flanking the covered entryway. The driveway had been swept, the flower beds had been edged, and there wasn’t a hint of peeling or cracking in the bright yellow paint on the home’s exterior. The place exuded contentment.

He rang the bell and waited. It took a moment, but the door opened, and a young boy stood in front of him, wearing pajamas. “Hello,” he said. He had dark hair and dark skin-far darker than Sanchez’s. His eyes were bright and trusting. He couldn’t have been more than six years old.

“Hello,” Stone replied. “I may be in the wrong place. I’m looking for Detective Sanchez.”

“Mom!” the boy shouted. “She’s here,” he said. “I’m Carlos. I have the flu.”

“Carlos, get back in bed!” Sanchez’s voice was unmistakable, though the tone was softer than Stone was used to.

A moment later, Sanchez was standing in front of Stone. She was dressed in chinos and a loose blouse, and he barely recognized her. The difference wasn’t so much in the way she was dressed, it was in her face. She normally wore her hair pulled back from the temples, giving her face a severe, angry look accentuated by the scowl she wore as a permanent expression of contempt for the world. Now her hair was down and her features were relaxed. She resembled less a bitter cop, more an attractive middle-aged woman.

She recognized Stone, and her expression changed. She morphed before his eyes into the angry woman he knew from their time together. “What the hell are you doing here, Stone?” she demanded.

“I heard you were sick,” he said. “I brought chicken soup.”

The boy, who had disappeared for a moment, was standing behind Sanchez now. “I don’t like chicken soup,” he said.

“I asked you to get back in bed,” she said to him.

“Aw, Mom,” he replied sullenly. He headed back into the house.

She looked back at Stone. “This is my personal, private space,” she said. “I don’t want you here.”

Stone stood his ground. “We need to talk.”

“He’s adopted.”

Carlos was in the family room, watching television, and Stone was alone with Sanchez in the kitchen. He was sitting at the table; she was cleaning the breakfast dishes. The question had been unspoken. He was glad she’d answered it without his having to ask it, though; he wasn’t sure he’d have had the guts. It was clearly a question she had to address fairly often. She was a single cop in her fifties. A six-year-old calling her Mom didn’t fit.

“He’s normally in school, but he woke up this morning with a fever, and the woman who takes him in the afternoon isn’t available this morning.”

“Seems like a cute kid,” Stone said.

“He was two when he came to this country. Now you’d never know he lived anyplace else. Funny how the world works that way, isn’t it?” she said. “Time moves on; kids forget the bad.”

“Is he your only child?” Stone asked.

“I had a daughter,” she replied. “She was murdered. So was my husband.”

He had no idea what to say. “That’s why you became a cop.” It was the only thing that came to mind.

She glared at him. “Yeah. That’s why I became a cop. And that ends our discussion of my personal life. You wanna talk work, fine, but talk quickly. Then I want you out of here. You shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Fair enough,” Stone said. “Let’s talk work. Why would the IRA kill a Boston mob boss?”

She sat down across from him at the kitchen table and stared at him warily. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not stupid,” he replied. “I know how to use the Internet. Padre Pio. It’s a form of torture used by IRA enforcers. Named after some Spanish monk from the 1960s who had the stigmata-bleeding from the palms and feet where Jesus was nailed to the cross. IRA enforcers tie their victims’ hands together and shoot clean through, so it looks like they’ve been nailed to the cross. They say they save it for people who’ve betrayed the cause. So why was it used on Murphy?”

She tilted her head. “Not bad,” she said grudgingly. “But I gave you that one.”

“Fine, you gave me that one. I thought that was what partners did-they gave shit to each other.”

“Keep your voice down,” she ordered him. “If my son hears you swear, it’ll be the shortest partnership in departmental history.”

“It already has been,” he said. “It’s never been a partnership at all.”

She took a deep breath. “Look, you seem like a decent kid-”

“No,” he interrupted her. “I’m not a decent kid. I’m a good cop.”

“You may be,” she said.

“No, not I may be. I am. You’d know that if you gave me a chance. So I’ll ask you again, what is the IRA doing knocking off a Boston mob boss?”

“I think it’s about art,” she replied after a moment.

“Art who?”

“Not art who; art, as in paintings.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What does this have to do with art?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. How old were you in 1990?”

He thought for a moment. “Ten,” he replied.

“Jesus,” she said. She rubbed her forehead wearily. “I’m too goddamned old.”

“What happened in 1990?”

“You remember the theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?”

He sat back in the kitchen chair. “Not from back then, but I know about it now. Two guys got away with a couple of paintings, right?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Another way would be to say that it was the greatest art theft in modern history. They say the stuff that was stolen would be worth close to half a billion dollars today.”

“Billion? With a ‘b’?”

“Yeah, billion.” She stood up and walked over to the kitchen counter. “Coffee?”

“Sure. Black.”

She pulled out a coffee brewer. It had tubes coming out of it and looked as if it would take a degree from MIT to operate. He wondered where her money came from.

“It was the easiest robbery imaginable, too,” she said, her back to him as she continued to brew the coffee. “There were just two of them, and they faked their way into the museum. The guards were amateurs; not real security guards at all. They weren’t properly trained; they didn’t follow proper procedures. The robbers tied the guards in the basement and spent an hour and a half pulling artwork off the walls, then left. The paintings have never been found.” She brought two mugs over to the table.

“Interesting,” he said. “What’s this got to do with Murphy’s murder?”

“People have searched for these paintings for twenty years,” she said. “The police, the FBI, Interpol, private detectives, insurance detectives, art historians, treasure hunters. People have spent an enormous amount of energy trying to find these things, but no one has done it yet. There have been lots of theories about who was responsible. The most popular is that the IRA teamed up with the Boston mob to do the job, then split the take between the two groups.”

Stone considered this. “It’s an interesting idea. But it seems like a pretty big stretch to assume that this is what Murphy’s murder was about, isn’t it?”