David Hosp - Among Thieves

“Ever?”

“In there,” he said. “I’m tempted to leave you out here. This guy trusts me, but this is delicate. He’s gonna be a little hesitant to say anything in front of you as it is.”

“I’m not staying out here,” Finn said.

Kozlowski nodded. “I figured you’d feel that way. So you come in. But don’t speak. The more you say, the less we’ll get out of this. You understand?”

“Yeah,” Finn said.

Kozlowski frowned at him. “I’m serious.”

“I got it. No talking.”

Kozlowski looked at him for another moment or two before letting his gaze drop. If he’d had time to think about it, Finn might have been annoyed, but the door behind the receptionist’s desk opened and Kozlowski’s contact walked into the waiting area. He was a tall black man. Much taller than Finn had anticipated. Six-four, at least, and lean in an athletic way. He was a dominating presence. He looked around the room once before saying anything. Finn followed the man’s eyes with curiosity; Finn and Kozlowski were the only ones in the place other than the receptionist.

“Kozlowski,” he said. It seemed an acknowledgment and little more, but Finn had been around cops for long enough to recognize the code.

Kozlowski nodded but said nothing. It was like some strange Kabuki dance. Neither one had extended his hand. They just stood there looking at each other.

Then the agent looked at Finn. “Who’s this?”

“He’s Finn,” Kozlowski said. “Scott Finn, this is Special Agent Rob Hewitt.”

“Finn’s my partner,” Kozlowski said. Then, as an apology, “He’s a lawyer.” They passed through the reception area and walked into the back offices.

“So was I once,” Hewitt said.

“It’s curable?” Finn asked. He could feel Kozlowski’s glare, and he reminded himself not to speak.

Hewitt led them through a large open area overrun with cubicle dividers covered with gray industrial fabric. It resembled so many corporate offices Finn had been in over the years. There was a hush to the place, and men and women in business attire were hunched diligently over their computer screens. Missing was any of the clattering and mayhem that often broke out in local police stations. The FBI didn’t deal with anything so mundane; their targets were higher profile. The only obvious indication that he wasn’t in a bank’s back office was the fact that many of the men in their cubicles had their jackets off, and their shoulder holsters and guns were visible.

Hewitt brought them through the maze, around toward a long hallway, and into an interior conference room. They went in ahead of Hewitt and he closed the door behind them. They sat around the conference table. It was a cheap piece of furniture. “Okay, Koz,” Hewitt said. “You said you needed to talk to me. I’m here.”

“Yeah,” Kozlowski said. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

Hewitt shook his head. “No thanks needed. Ask what you need to ask.”

“It’s about the robbery at the Gardner Museum that happened back in ’90. You familiar with it?”

Hewitt was silent for a moment. “Sure,” he said slowly. “It’s the biggest art theft in modern history. Still unsolved. I’d have to be dead not to be familiar with it.”

“What’s the status of the investigation?”

Hewitt’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

Kozlowski shook his head. “Can’t really get into that.”

“Can’t get into it?” Hewitt leaned back in his chair. He looked back and forth between Finn and Kozlowski. “That puts me in a little bit of an awkward position.”

Kozlowski nodded. “I understand that. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Hewitt looked at the former cop for a moment before answering. Then he shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Truth is, I don’t really know. I hear bits and pieces from time to time, but it’s nothing more than rumor. You know how it is, Koz-it’s not my case, so I don’t have a whole lot of real information.”

“Whose case is it?” Kozlowski asked.

“Art Theft Program. It’s a relatively new division at the Bureau; they started it up in 2002. There are only ten agents or so. Scattered around the country, but they’re based out of the home office in DC. The division’s headed up by a guy named Angus Porter. He was a field agent up here in Boston back in the eighties and nineties. He used to dabble in a lot of the local stuff-organized crime, drug trafficking, the usual crap we all work on in satellite offices. But he got bit by the art bug. Boston was a major player in the stolen-art world, even before the Gardner got taken. A couple of years before, a guy actually plucked a twenty-million-dollar painting off the wall at the Museum of Fine Arts and ran out the door with it. There wasn’t any security at all. True story.”

“The guy got away with it?”

“For a while. The painting was eventually returned to reduce his sentence on another heist that didn’t go quite as well for him. But there were lots of stories like that back in the day. Angus started the process of pulling together information on the thefts and the movement of the paintings. Studied the fences, the transactions, took art classes-became a real expert. After the Gardner job he started lobbying the brass to start up a special division. It took him a dozen years, but they finally gave in and assigned him a half dozen agents and a budget. I’m sure he wanted more, but I gotta give him credit. After 9/11 we were so focused on the antiterrorism issues that I’m shocked he got anybody’s attention.”

“I’m surprised, too,” Kozlowski said. “Diverting any resources from antiterrorism to find lost paintings seems like a waste of manpower.”

“In principle, I don’t disagree,” Hewitt said. “But I’ve helped out on a couple cases, and you’d be surprised how big a business it is-and how tied in it all is to some other very bad things. Drugs. Terrorism. Extortion. It’s all related.”

“How so?”

Hewitt gave an ironic grimace. Finn figured it was the closest he ever came to a smile. “I could give you the basics,” he said. “But from the look on your face, you don’t want the basics. If you’re looking for the best information, the guy to talk to is Porter.”

“Do you feel comfortable calling him?” Kozlowski asked.

Hewitt thought about it for a moment. Then he stood and walked to the door. “I’ll do better,” he said.

Finn shifted his feet as he and Kozlowski sat alone in the conference room at the heart of the FBI’s offices in Boston. Talking to Kozlowski’s trusted FBI contact made Finn nervous. Talking to an FBI agent neither of them had ever met made him nauseous. He and Kozlowski knew about a kidnapping and they hadn’t reported it to the police or to the FBI. They were already arguably guilty of obstruction of justice. In addition, his client had participated in the robbery at the Gardner Museum -the very crime about which they were asking questions. Just having the conversation with the FBI agents was putting them all at risk, and Finn didn’t like it.

He was still fretting when Hewitt walked back in, another man behind him. It would have been difficult to imagine two more physically different people. Hewitt was huge, with a massive upper body and giant hands. Porter was tiny, with shoulders pinched at the top and a neck that looked too thin to support his head. His hands were wiry and small. Finn guessed his age in the mid-fifties, and he had a disdainful look that made him resemble a British filing clerk.

“Gentlemen,” the second man said. “I’m Special Agent Porter, in charge of the FBI’s Art Theft Program. Special Agent Hewitt tells me you are looking for information about art theft. Specifically the Gardner Museum theft.”