Elizabeth Bevarly - Undercover with the Mob

Natalie, however, still wasn’t convinced of Jack’s, ah, connections. For lack of a better word. Even if she had heard faint strains of Don Giovanni coming up through the floor a few times—it wasn’t like it was the theme from The Godfather. And even if the faint scent of garlic always did linger around his door—lots of people cooked with garlic, Natalie included, and it wasn’t like he reeked of pesto and Aqua Velva. And even if she had seen him toting a bottle of Chianti up the stairs one day when he was bringing in his groceries—maybe he was just planning to make one of those interesting candles out of it. None of that proved anything. Except that he liked Italian food and opera music and that he maybe had a hobby that included hot wax.

He hardly ever used the word whacked as far as Natalie could tell. And not once had she seen him dragging suspiciously heavy black plastic garbage bags out to the Dumpster under cover of darkness. So that was a definite plus. And he’d worn a suit once or twice, too, she’d noticed. Boring, bland suits, too, and they weren’t always black. And he wore them with neckties that were tasteful. Silk, even. And the toes of his shoes weren’t quite as pointy as she’d first thought, and they might have been made someplace other than Italy, possibly even with man-made uppers. So there. Take that, Mrs. “I-know-a-mobster-when-I-see-one” Klosterman.

And now here he was, viewing a visiting art exhibit at the Speed Museum. Totally, totally non-Mob activity, that. Even if he did seem to be preoccupied by the Italian masters.

He appeared to be as surprised to see her as she was to see him, and suddenly, Natalie wished she’d worn something other than the flowing, flowered skirt in shades of fall, and the oversized amber sweater that came down over her fanny. She had thought the outfit feminine and comfortable when she purchased it. Now, though, it just felt frumpy. Jack Miller seemed like the kind of man who went for tight and sleek and bright, and, quite possibly, latex. Not that Natalie cared, mind you. But she did wish she had worn something different. The hiking boots, especially, seemed inappropriate somehow.

“Well, hello to you, too, neighbor,” Jack said in a deep, rough baritone that belied the Mr. Rogers sentiment. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Natalie looked first left, then right, then back at Jack. “It’s an art museum,” she pointed out. “It’s a nice place.”

He smiled at that. “So it is,” he agreed. “I stand corrected.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant by that, so she pressed onward. “So you’re an art lover, are you?”

He nodded, and fiddled with the program he’d already twisted into a misshapen lump of paper. Vaguely, she wondered what had made him do such a thing. It was as if he were anxious about something. But what was there to feel anxious about in an art museum? This was where people came to escape the pressures of the day.

“Yeah, I like art okay,” he said.

But something in his voice suggested just the opposite. He seemed uncomfortable here somehow. Or maybe he was uncomfortable because he’d seen Natalie here. Maybe he was trying to keep a low profile—that was what people did when they were in the Witness Protection Program, right?—and now he was scared that if Natalie had fingered him, the Mob might, too.

Because, hey, it was common knowledge that mobsters hung out in art museums, she told herself wryly, wanting to smack herself upside the head for her Mrs. Klosterman-like thoughts. If Jack was uncomfortable, it was more likely because she’d made him feel uncomfortable by asking him what she just had. Maybe he was here because he wanted to learn more about art, and he was embarrassed to let her know how unschooled he was on the topic.

She opened her mouth to change the subject—she did, after all, completely sympathize with that whole being-out-of-one’s element thing, since she’d felt out of her element since the day she was born—but he started to talk again before she had a chance.

“Yeah, I especially like the Italian masters,” he said.

But again, he seemed uneasy when he spoke, and instead of looking at Natalie, he was looking at something over her shoulder, as if he couldn’t quite meet her gaze. Oh, jeez, she really had caught him out with her question and embarrassed him, she realized. The male ego, she thought. It was such a fragile thing.

He was probably only saying the Italian masters were his favorite because he’d glanced down at his hastily rear-ranged program, where it read, in part, The Italian Masters. She told herself to just let the matter drop there. But there was something in his voice when he spoke, something kind of tense, something kind of apprehensive—something kind of suspicious, quite frankly—that gave her pause. And still he was looking over her shoulder, not meeting her eyes, as if he were wishing he was anywhere but here.

To alleviate his distress, Natalie decided to step in and take the lead, thereby preventing him from having to say anything that might get him in deeper than he could afford. “I like them, too,” she said. “Especially Michelangelo, but we don’t have any originals by him here, which is a real shame.”

Jack lifted his shoulder and dropped it again in a gesture she supposed was meant to be a shrug. Somehow, though, it came off looking like strong-arming. “I like all of ’em,” he told her.

Of course he did. Poor guy. He was still trying to make her think he was knowledgeable about the subject, clearly trying to preserve his male pride. Next he’d be telling her he didn’t know much about art, but he knew what he liked, since that was the cliché everyone uttered in a situation like this.

“It’s kind of funny, really,” he said. “I know a lot about art, but I’m just not sure what I like.”

Man. He couldn’t even get the clichés right.

“Michelangelo is arguably the master of the masters,” he said. “I mean, I wouldn’t argue it, but some people might. Like you, he’s a favorite for a lot of people.”

Natalie wondered just how deeply he was going to wade into this stuff, and prepared herself to throw him a line if that became necessary by tossing out a few other names to him. Raphael, perhaps, or, Titian, since she’d just been looking at that one herself.

“Raphael, too,” he continued, making her think maybe he’d read his program a little better than she’d first suspected. “Even if he did borrow nearly all of the Big M’s repertory gestures and poses,” he continued, rattling Natalie just the tiniest bit. “He was still a better portraitist. Me, though, I’m more of a Titian kind of guy, I think. He was just so great at that whole opposing the virtuosity of pigments to the intellectual sophistication thing, you know? And the distinction between High Renaissance—all that formalized and classic balance of elements—and Late Renaissance—the more subjective, emotional stuff, not to mention all those bright colors—wasn’t as sharply divided in Venice as it was in the rest of Italy.” He nodded. “Yeah, I like the Venetians, I think. And Uccello. You don’t hear much about him, but you gotta admire the way he tried to jibe the Gothic and the Renaissance stuff. Plus, he had a really great beard. Piero della Francesca’s okay, too, but his portraits have kind of a pedantry without compassion, knowwuddamean?”

Natalie blinked a few times, as if a too-bright flash had gone off right in her face. Wow. He really did know a lot about art. And he really didn’t know what he liked. She was intrigued.

“I, um, I actually prefer the Flemish painters myself,” she said lamely.

Jack swept a hand carelessly in front of himself. “Yeah, well, they were all profoundly influenced by the Italians, you know.”