Pushover (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 5) Page 11

  “FBI. Ms. Thorne, please stop kicking me.”

  Iris stopped fighting him long enough to get a look at the badge and identification card he was holding.

  “Everything’s under control. Let’s remain calm. No one’s going to get hurt. Sir, would you please be kind enough to park Ms. Thorne’s car by the wall over there, lock it, and bring me the keys? We’re going to leave it parked here awhile. Is that all right?”

  The mechanic nodded and jogged to the Triumph.

  “Ms. Thorne, I’ll gladly let you go if you promise not to run.”

  “I wouldn’t have had a reason to run if you hadn’t been chasing me,” she snapped.

  He released her and handed over the keys that the mechanic gave him. “My name is Roger Weems. Why don’t we sit in my car and have a little chat?”

  Iris looked at the dark-windowed Thunderbird and shook her head. “Not until you tell me what this is about.”

  In a gesture that conveyed that it had been a long day for him, he ran his hand over his lined face that was marked with acne scars across his cheeks. “That’s why I’d like to chat with you in my car.”

  “Why there? Why not here?”

  “It’s cool inside the car, Ms. Thorne. Okay?”

  “Can I see your identification again, please?”

  His jaw stiffened but he patiently complied with her request. She scrutinized his ID then handed it back to him.

  Without a word, he opened the passenger door. A blast of chilled air hit her. The engine and the air conditioner were still running. She got inside. When he closed the door, she detected a slight coconut odor. He’d opted for the piña colada fragrance at the car wash. Something about the small extravagance made him less intimidating to her. She looked around. Tossed across the back seat was the jacket that matched his dark gray suit pants. There were also several file folders and a briefcase.

  He opened the driver’s door, slipped behind the wheel, and faced her with one leg propped on the seat. “I do believe it’s a hundred degrees today.” He elongated the vowels, having a Southern accent that Iris hadn’t noticed until now. He smiled quickly, out of politeness, displaying straight but small teeth, then grimaced as he ran his finger inside the collar of his white button-down shirt and pulled at the knot in his tie. Circles of perspiration had darkened the fabric at his armpits.

  He took a rumpled handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the back of his neck and around the edges of his black hair that was styled in a crew cut. The hair on top of his head stood straight up and was cut so close at the sides, his scalp was visible.

  Iris startled when he put the car in gear and released the parking brake with a thud. “Wait a minute. You said we’d talk in the car.”

  He started to pull out of the gas station. “We have several matters to discuss, and I think it’s best if we talk in my office. I’m over in the Federal Building in Westwood, just a few miles from here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Iris opened the door and was about to leap from the slowly moving car when he stepped on the brake and threw the transmission into park.

  “Now, just hang on one second, here.” His words were clipped. He punched the button on the glove compartment and took out a small digital camera. “Would you mind closing the door? You’re letting all the cool air out.”

  Iris ignored him and remained sitting with one foot in and one outside the car.

  The vertical lines down each of his cheeks grew deeper but he said nothing as he switched on the camera and held it so Iris could see the screen on the back. He clicked through a series of photographs, all shots of her poolside meeting with Rita Winslow and Fernando Peru.

  Iris swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry.

  “Who are these folks, Miss Thorne?”

  Iris raised her hand to point, but it was trembling. She tucked it under her thigh. “That woman is a client of mine, Rita Winslow. And that’s her driver, Fernando Peru.”

  Weems tapped a finger on the small screen. A long, white scar cut diagonally across the back of his right hand. “That’s Rita Winslow, a low-level British aristocrat. Passes herself off as an art dealer, owns a shop in London. She’s actually a well-established fence for stolen art. This guy is Fernando Peru, Winslow’s lover. Does her dirty work, moves the art and the money. And that’s you.”

  He turned off the camera and looked at Iris. “You smuggled a piece of stolen art into the United States from Moscow, Miss Thorne. Let’s go to my office and have a little chat about that.”

  Iris pulled her leg inside the car and closed the door.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Weems drove conservatively on the surface streets, stopping at yellow lights and letting other drivers merge in front of him without attitude. He didn’t hum, play music, or attempt idle chit-chat. Iris didn’t notice the silence. She turned the vents that were spouting overly cool, piña-colada-scented air away from her and then sat quietly, looking out the window at people going about their business—busy, pressed for time, happy, or not feeling any particular way at all. Unlike her, they were free.

  “Do I need an attorney?” Her voice came out in a schoolgirl pitch. She cleared her throat.

  “There’s no need for an attorney, Miss Thorne.” He spoke loudly for the small space. “We’re just going to have a chat. I’m not going to arrest you.” He glanced in the side-view mirror and changed lanes. “Unless you refuse to cooperate.”

  He activated the turn signal. Its rhythmic clicking sounded to Iris like a time bomb.

  “Cooperate?”

  “Let’s just go to my office where we can sit across a table and discuss things.”

  He pulled into the outside parking lot behind the Federal Building, a tall, boxy structure of white cement that looked as blank and indifferent as the entity it housed. A broad, verdant lawn and large trees didn’t soften it.

  The lobby was crowded with people of all sizes, colors, and social status. It was a cross-section of the city’s population that was rarely gathered under one roof.

  Weems maintained a strong grip on Iris’s upper arm as he maneuvered her through the crowd. They might have been a couple here to obtain passports for a long-awaited overseas cruise. He even gazed down at her and smiled, his teeth as small and square as Chiclets, his eyes betraying a hint of triumph. She wanly smiled back. Through his suit jacket, she felt the hard butt of his gun against her arm.

  With a key card, he accessed a restricted area of the building and took an elevator to the tenth floor. Exiting there, they reached a bullet-proof glass door with the seal of the Department of Justice in the center. Weems opened and closed his hand to a young receptionist sitting behind a large, curved desk inside. The door clicked and Weems let Iris walk in ahead of him, finally releasing his grip on her.

  “Good afternoon, Meghan. Any messages?”

  “Hi Roger. A few.” She handed him several slips of pink paper and amiably smiled at Iris.

  An inner door off the reception area opened, and a group of men entered the lobby on their way out of the suite. Some of them were more casually dressed than Weems, but they also had short-cropped hair, compact physiques, and an edge in the way they carried themselves. Weems and the other men acknowledged each other without speaking.

  Weems walked to the inner door and pulled it open after he heard it click when Meghan unlocked it. He again let Iris pass first, then walked beside her through a spacious area of partitioned cubicles with offices along one wall. Men and women were at work, just like at any other office, but here many of them were wearing guns.

  The glass wall that faced west overlooked Olympic Boulevard across West L.A. and Santa Monica to the ocean. It probably offered a terrific view, but today the ocean was barely visible through the smog that an inversion layer had held trapped in the Los Angeles basin for the past several weeks.

  Weems walked quickly through the suite, reaching a set of wood doors with polished brass fixtures. He held one open and Iris walked ahead
of him into an expansive conference room. A long rectangular table surrounded by high-backed chairs was in the middle. There was a large-screen television, a VCR, a large white board on wheels, and several easels with pads of paper, the used pages rolled over the top. The windows in this room looked north over the UCLA campus and the hills of Westwood and Bel-Air, all encased in dense smog.

  Iris didn’t pay attention to the view. She was looking at the materials strewn across the conference table. There were art books, some lying open, stacks of file folders, official-looking reports bound with tinted Mylar covers, a multi-line telephone, and a statuette of a fox.

  “Whew,” Weems exclaimed as he took off his jacket, pulled a hanger off a coat rack in the corner, and hung it up. “They tell me you don’t feel the heat out here because it’s dry. I’m from Louisiana and I’m here to tell you, heat is heat. Humid, dry—makes no difference.” He unbuckled his shoulder holster, hung it with the gun inside next to his jacket, and began plucking at his shirt where it adhered to his skin.

  “Would you care for coffee or something to drink?”

  “Water would be great. Thank you.”

  Weems opened a small refrigerator in a corner and took out two chilled plastic bottles of water.

  Iris examined the statuette. The fox was rendered as if it was slinking away, fluffy tail carried low between its haunches, its head turned back to look over its shoulder, ears pricked, mouth retracted in a sly smile. It was about five inches long and four inches high at the tips of its ears. It appeared to have been dipped in gold at one point, but the coating was peeling off, revealing dull lead underneath. Small red gems were set in its eyes. It was covered with rows of white gems set down its back and on the tuft of its tail. Several were missing. Many were cracked and stained.

  “That’s a forgery I picked up in Buenos Aires twelve years ago.” Weems set a bottle of water on the table in front of Iris. He twisted the cap of his bottle, breaking the seal with a snap. “Probably looked authentic when it was first made but…” He sucked his teeth, making a noise of distaste.

  He rubbed his palms together. “Rita Winslow not only contacted you directly, but she doubled what she’s willing to pay for the fox. Not like her to dirty her hands like that. She wants the fox bad.”

  Iris gaped at him. “You were listening to our conversation?”

  “Of course.” He stared evenly at her. “You claimed to have a connection to Enrico Lazare and the fox. It’s best if you come clean now, Miss Thorne, before you dig yourself into a deeper hole. Everything’s off the record. Tell me what you know and maybe we can work something out. Why don’t we both have a seat?”

  He pulled out a chair and waited for her to sit.

  “Know?” She backed away from him. “I don’t know anything. I don’t have anything to do with that damn fox. I don’t even know what it is.”

  “That’s not what you told Rita Winslow.”

  Iris became more exasperated and frightened. She gestured toward herself. “I’m an innocent victim in all this.”

  “Do tell.”

  “You have to believe me!”

  He patted the top of the vinyl-covered chair. “Miss Thorne, please.”

  She sat and folded her hands in her lap.

  Weems sat in a chair across from her. He leaned forward with both elbows on the table. “Look. I’ll tell you what I know. I was close, Miss Thorne, close to recovering one of the most famous pieces of missing art in history and arresting Rita Winslow and Fernando Peru, who have slipped through my fingers for years. I had a bead on the fox and there was no way Winslow and Peru were getting away from me this time. It was going to be the arrest of my career. Then you showed up and everything went to hell in a handbasket. I don’t know who you are, Miss Thorne, or why you’re involved in this, but you are involved in this and you’re going to start talking or your comfortable life as you know it will be over.”

  Iris grabbed the bottled water, opened it, and took a long drink. She slowly screwed the top back on and set it in front of her, grasping it between both hands. She released a long sigh. “Look, this is exactly what happened.” She relayed the chain of events that took her to Moscow less than a week ago up to the poolside meeting with Rita Winslow that afternoon.

  Weems listened with his chair tipped back and his hands laced behind his head.

  Iris concluded her story. “I thought I’d visit Rita Winslow and string her along, letting her think I could get the fox, hoping I’d find out who murdered Todd and set me up.”

  “That wasn’t a good idea, Miss Thorne.”

  “Well, yeah. I know that now. I just don’t know who put her onto me.”

  The edges of Weems’s mouth turned up only slightly. His eyes betrayed him.

  Iris bolted from her chair and walked to the window. When she turned to face him, she was furious. “You put those creeps onto me? Do you realize they pulled a gun on me in my office and broke into my house?” She jerked her head at him. “And you sit there with that self-satisfied smirk on your face while my life is falling apart.”

  Weems continued watching her. She had a dreadful suspicion that she was playing right into his hand.

  “How did you find out about me?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He picked up the bogus fox, stood, cradled it in his arm, and stroked it as he walked around the room. “But this is an interesting turn of events.”

  Iris’s bluster faded. She leaned against the window, tipping her head back to touch the glass. “What is this fox anyway? Why are people getting killed over it?”

  Weems slowly drew his hand across the fox’s back. “It’s called the Czarina’s Fox. It’s sometimes called the Snow Fox.” He pulled one of the art books toward Iris and tapped his finger against a color photograph. “That’s the only known photo of the original.”

  Iris leaned closer to the heavy book to get a better look.

  “It was made for Catherine the Great, commissioned by her lover and advisor Prince Potemkin, to commemorate one of the greatest triumphs of Catherine’s reign, the annexation of the Crimea in seventeen eighty-three.” He stopped playing with the fox and set it on the table with a sharp thwack. “The original is solid gold, eighteen carat. The eyes are set with rubies and the fur is depicted in blue diamonds—very rare, each one flawless—ranging in size from a half to five carats with a total weight of about three hundred carats.

  “The fox remained in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg until the Russian revolution in nineteen seventeen when it disappeared. It turned up in nineteen twenty-three, on display in the Bremen Museum in Germany. Museum records indicate it was a gift from an unknown donor. More likely, one of the servants of the Czar’s household fled with a few priceless ornaments and falsified records to make them look like legitimate gifts.

  “The fox remained in Bremen until the city was overrun by the Nazis at the end of World War Two when it dropped from sight. It was presumed lost until twelve years ago when it was spotted in Buenos Aires. I flew there, but the closest I got to it was this replica. But it definitely had been there. I found an old jeweler who swore he reset blue diamonds on a solid gold statuette of a fox. The man who brought him the fox was not from Argentina. The jeweler thought he looked like a Gypsy. In any case, the man waited while the jeweler repaired the fox, never taking his eyes off it, and paid him generously in cash. The jeweler commented on how unique the piece was, but the man wouldn’t talk about it. I searched every corner of Buenos Aires looking for the Gypsy.” He unconsciously traced his fingers along the scar that rent his hand.

  Iris drank from the bottle of water while she listened.

  Weems paced beside the table, his hands clasped behind his back. “After that, I heard nothing about the fox for a decade. Then Todd Fillinger went to the Club Ukrainiya in Moscow to take photographs of the restored mansion for an architectural magazine. Nikolai Kosyakov’s secretary Irina, an occasional girlfriend of Fillinger’s, showed him her boss’s latest acquisition. She told Todd
how Kosyakov bragged about taking the fox from a Hungarian businessman who owed him money, along with the Hungarian’s thumb. Apparently, Kosyakov wasn’t aware of the fox’s value or history until it was stolen from him.”

  Weems walked to his jacket, reached inside a pocket and took out a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. He held the pack toward Iris, who declined. He took out a piece and shoved it in his mouth.

  “What’s the fox worth?” Iris asked.

  “Hard to know exactly. Estimated to be worth about twenty million.”

  “Did Todd tell Winslow about the fox?”

  “He did. Winslow immediately knew he was talking about the Czarina’s fox and told Fillinger she’d pay him five hundred thousand dollars for it. Fillinger mulls it over for a few days, calls Winslow back and says the gems on the piece have to be worth at least a couple of million, plus robbing Kosyakov will be dangerous. He told her he didn’t have the expertise to do it on his own. He wanted to bring in his associate, Enrico Lazare. The whole deal would cost Winslow a million dollars. Winslow agreed.”

  “How do you know so much about what happened?”

  Weems looked at her as if the answer was obvious. “I’ve been in this business a long time, Miss Thorne. I have many sources.”

  “Was Todd Fillinger one of your sources?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Was someone shot during the robbery at the Club Ukrainiya? I saw bullet holes in the wall and blood on the floor.”

  “One of Kosyakov’s security men. It happened the day you arrived in Moscow. Two masked men broke into the club and stole the fox from Kosyakov’s office. We believe the robbers gave the fox to Fillinger, who then met Fernando Peru in the Park Kultury metro station. Peru had already given Fillinger a five hundred thousand dollar deposit from Winslow and was carrying the balance on him. As Peru and Fillinger were completing the sale, they were robbed by a sole gunman. Peru was handcuffed to a bench. Fillinger escaped and was shot to death an hour later on the steps of the Metropolis Hotel. Somehow the fox got in the hands of Dean Palmer, who put it in the urn for you.”