I have to think of what to say that’ll satisfy her and not have Carson kick the shit out of me afterwards. That’s a hard square to circle. “We’ve been here less than a day. We haven’t had time to build a plan. We’re still doing research.”

  “I have everything you’ll need about Oma or the portrait.”

  “Not that kind of research,” Carson says. There’s more of an edge on her voice than I like.

  I put up my hands: slow down. “We’re still figuring out how the museum works, getting the lay of the land. You can’t help us with that. We don’t know enough yet to know what we don’t know.” Did that make sense? Whatever. I try to come up with something that’ll make her feel valuable without giving her an inflated idea of how involved she’s going to be. “It’s great that you have all the background on the portrait. We’ll totally need that really soon, but we’re working on basics right now. So relax, catch up on the jet lag.”

  Julie’s jawline gets a little tighter. “I can’t tell Ron that. How long have you been here?”

  “None of your business.” Carson’s eyes are stripping the skin off Julie’s face. “Not like buying a Coffee Crisp at Mac’s. Gotta scope it out first. That takes time.”

  I cut off Julie before she can jump on Carson. “Tell him we’re doing our due diligence. He’ll understand that. We’ll let you know as soon as we have a plan.”

  Carson kicks my shin. I try not to react, but damn, that hurt.

  Julie carefully folds her napkin on the table. She looks appeased but not happy. “This isn’t a vacation for me. I have to work on my book. And today I’m finally going to see Oma’s portrait.” She aims a flat, direct look at me, not quite a challenge but close. “That’s not going to be a problem, right?”

  I start counting the ways it could be, but stop. “Um, well, not necessarily…”

  “Stay away from the staff.” Carson’s leaning in with her forearms on the table edge. “Don’t look at it more than the other pictures. Don’t drool on it. You’ll be on camera.”

  “Don’t take it off the wall, either. Let us do that. We’re professionals.” I say it like it’s a joke, but it might not be for her.

  Julie aims a not-quite-irritated look at Carson for a few uncomfortable moments. Then she puts on a stiff smile. “Thank you, Ms. Carson. I have experience at being… invisible.” She pushes away from the table, stands, and gives me a softer-but-not-soft look. “Please let me know when you’re getting ready to do something. Have a nice day.”

  Then she marches out.

  Chapter 7

  Carson and I check out the museum’s conservation lab. The Mainwaring at Thirty, a slick coffee-table book I bought at the museum shop on our way out yesterday, calls it the Dundas Lane Support Facility. It’s in a light-industrial area northeast of central Portsmouth that looks like light-industrial areas everywhere else.

  The DLSF is two adjoining structures. The first is a narrow two-story brick office block that parallels the road, with garnet trim and a flat roof. Behind it, a warehouse sided in concrete panels stretches back what looks like a hundred feet or so. Only the discreet museum logo on the office building’s front door gives away what’s inside.

  Carson scans the complex through her mini-binoculars. She insists on having the car window open even though it’s just over fifty outside. “Keypad on the front door,” she says. “Another keypad on the double doors into the warehouse. Lights and cameras over both entries. Floodlights around the perimeter.” She lowers her binoculars and frowns.

  I’m on the lookout for the owners of the parking lot we’re squatting in. “Can you get us in?”

  She shrugs. “Probably. But what’s in there? Alarms, locks, motion sensors, guards? Wanna walk into that?”

  No. Just another complication.

  How do we get into that lab?

  I’m on my surprisingly comfortable queen-sized bed staring up at the ceiling light fixture, which looks like a large, white, upside-down artichoke. The radiator’s on and I’m finally warm again. My brain’s back online, but it’s got no ideas.

  We need detailed pictures of the portrait so we can get a good copy made. The conservation lab has the best camera setup available. But getting the portrait sent to the lab doesn’t do us any good if we can’t get in there afterwards. We need to check out the security inside the building before we knock over the first domino. How?

  I think about bringing flowers for Ms. Vivian Whitehaven, the senior conservator in the Mainwaring’s YouTube promo videos. Sixtyish, grayish, roundish, but even grandmas deserve flowers, right? Chances are, I’d never get past the front door or the security guard. The old repairman/janitor/city inspector trick falls apart because it’s too easy for the museum to poke holes in it. Can Olivia scrape up someone legit? It seems like she can do anything, so maybe. Would they be able to get the info we need? Unless we buy somebody from the alarm company, probably not.

  What we need is access and time. Access to the whole facility and the equipment in it so we can see what’s there. Time enough for thorough fact-finding so nothing bites us in the ass when we come back.

  That sounds like a tour, not reconnaissance. And it sounds like the longest long shot.

  Carson asks, “Why do we need someone else?”

  This is my first time in Carson’s room this trip. It’s shallower but a little wider than mine, with the same cream walls and gold carpet. I’m in an armchair next to the radiator, in a little patch of early-afternoon sun. Warm is good. “To be a potential donor. Buy our way into the lab.”

  She scrubs her hands over her face and slumps lower in the black wooden armchair in front of her Shaker-style desk by the window. “You do it. Be Hoskins again.”

  I was Richard Hoskins for my first project. He was a zillionaire property developer and a shady art collector. He’d be just the kind of guy who’d lay a multi-zero check on someone and demand whatever he wanted in return.

  I shake my head. “They wouldn’t buy it. There’s no reason in the world he’d want anything from a regional art museum in England.”

  “Be someone like him, then.”

  “I don’t think that’ll work this time. A rich guy my age is all ego. He’d drop money on the museum, but he’d want his name on a gallery or an exhibition catalog or the whole building. We need either an old dude or a woman.”

  “Don’t look at me. What’s he gonna do?”

  “Actually, I think we’re better off with a woman. She needs to pass as a museum patron. Offer to grant ten or twenty grand for support services, like the lab or storage.”

  “And she wants a tour before she cuts the check?”

  I nod. In poker, this is called betting on the come.

  She grimaces. “This’ nutser than that ‘copy the back’ thing.”

  “Just hear me out. The local council’s cut its arts grants to almost nothing. The museum’s subsidies are drying up. I doubt they’ll turn down free money.”

  “Will Bowen cough it up?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask the cousin.”

  “Yeah, you do that. Do they even let people into the lab?”

  I’d spent some time on the website’s “Support MWG” page looking for this answer. “Yeah. Every year you give them £5000 to be in their Collector’s Circle, you get a tour of Dundas Lane with a curator.”

  “When’s that?”

  “June.” Nine months away.

  “Wonderful.” Carson shoves her butt against the chair back and drapes her forearms over her knees. She looks tired and disgusted. “All we need is a hole, and you’re building a fucking subway.”

  She’s got a point. We haven’t even started and this is getting convoluted. Allyson’s notion of keeping it small and contained is already falling apart. And the more I get into it, the more I realize I only sort-of know what I’m doing.

  She asks, “No other way to do this? Nothing?” It’s almost a plea.

  “Not that solves all three of our problems. There’s ways we can do one or two, but…”

  Carson sits staring at the carpet, breathing like it’s hard. “Calling it. Ain’t gonna work.”

  “Any other ideas that get us where we need to go?”

  “No. That’s what ‘calling it’ means.” She waves in my direction. “All this shit, and the Princess breathing down our necks? Miss I’m-helping-whether-you-want-it-or-not?” She grunts out of her chair and starts pacing. “I’m out. You should be too.”

  Wait… out? Like, quitting? “Can we do that?”

  “It costs. We get on Allyson’s shit list. Some other darts’ll get tagged with it. Better them than me. Cops don’t do so good in prison. And you…”

  I know what she means. “What’s being on Allyson’s shit list like?”

  Carson shrugs. “We don’t get projects. She forgets we’re alive. How’s it end? Depends. Replacements get busted? She’ll see we were right. They pull it off? She fires us. You. Me she keeps for Rodievsky and shit work.” Rodievsky is Carson’s boss in the Russian mob. She owes them money for something—a lot of money. I’ve seen how she works it off.

  None of this sounds good to me. Neither does getting busted. “How’s this work? Is there a form or something?”

  Carson snorts. “Not that easy. I call Olivia. She tells Allyson. Then our world gets fucked up. But we get to sleep in our own beds. You in?”

  I don’t want to lose this job; it’s the only way I’ll get out of debt in my lifetime. But I can’t pay off those debts in prison, either.

  No matter which way it goes, it’ll suck. But I’d rather have it suck with me outside the fence. “Make the call.”

  Chapter 8

  I spend the rest of the afternoon… not exactly hiding in my room, but keeping on the down-low. The last thing I need is to run into Julie and have her start grilling me about our plans, especially since those plans are all about dropping her like a hot rock and running the other way.

  I keep researching the museum while I wait for Carson to reappear. Partly it’s a way to pass time, and partly it’s to see if maybe I missed the easy, risk-free way to boost the portrait and make everybody happy. It doesn’t look like I did.

  Even though I’m trying to duck Julie, a little something in the back of my head is thinking about her. As potentially scary as she is to have around, I get where she’s coming from. She’s like Ida was—she wants her stuff back, and “no” isn’t the right answer.

  Is she worth having my probation yanked?

  Would it have been worth having Gar fire me to keep Ida from living in my head for the past five years?

  Around six, I wander to the window, stretch out my back, and watch the day start to turn into dusk. I haven’t been able to decide whether I should feel guilty for dropping this project, anxious about losing the job and being in debt for the rest of my life, or relieved that I won’t be setting myself up to spend a lot of poor-quality time with people not evil enough to be politicians or bank executives. So I’ve done all three in a loop, over and over, which is exhausting.

  When Carson pounds on my door, I don’t know what I want her to tell me. Her face and neck are scalding red, though, so whatever it is, it’s not good.

  She stalks to the window and braces her palms on the sill. I don’t think I’m imagining the low grinding sound coming from her direction; it may be her teeth. She doesn’t say anything for what seems like a long time.

  Eventually I say, “Allyson’s pissed?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “How pissed? Like we’re-fired-instantly pissed, or she’s-sending-a-hit-man pissed?”

  “Worse.”

  That vaguely queasy feeling I’ve been working on turns into full-blown nausea. “When do we leave?”

  “We don’t.” She spins around, folds her arms, and leans her butt against the windowsill. Her face still looks like it belongs on a lobster. “Can’t quit. Can’t ditch the Princess. She said, ‘The only way out is forward.’”

  I thump down on the bed and let my stomach finish balling up in a knot. Not only are we stuck, but she blew us off with a line from a motivational poster. “You explained it to her?”

  “Tried. This went through Olivia. Never get read out by Olivia. Can’t fight back.”

  “Why not?”

  I get The Look. “Think. She sends you to some shithole, then your return ticket disappears.”

  I guess there are teeth behind Olivia’s gorgeous voice. “So now what do we do?”

  Carson shakes her head slowly. “You think of a better plan?”

  “No.”

  “Then we go with the old one. Allyson’ll send someone to be rich. We gotta get the Princess sorted, too.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  She spends a lot of time peering at me, like she can’t decide if I’m real. “You tell your wife everything you did at your gallery?”

  “No.” Knowing Janine, though, she’d want to help if she was in the right mood.

  “Your boss tell you everything?”

  “Enough. But no, not everything.”

  Carson points through the floor. “Think Princess is gonna let us get away with that?”

  “She won’t know what we’re not telling her.”

  “Really? She’s a pain, but she ain’t stupid.” She sighs, then tumbles into one of my armchairs. “Gotta watch Every. Single. Word we say around her. Gotta hide our movements. When we get the picture, gotta hide that, too. And guess what—she’s still got enough to burn us if she gets scared or pissed or we get caught.”

  “I bet not telling her anything will piss her off, too.”

  “No shit?” Carson plants her elbows on her knees. “Gotta get her dirty. She wants to help? Fine. Get it on video. That way, she flips on us? We got plenty to throw back on her.”

  I let that filter through my skull. According to Carson, we have to turn Julie into a criminal. I get where Carson’s coming from—we have no idea what Julie will do if this project goes sideways—but it feels almost as scummy as ripping off a museum. Well, I’ve done scummier things before when the stakes were lower. “How do we do this?”

  Carson rocks out of the chair. “Give her a choice.”

  Julie looks at Carson, then me. Her eyes are blown. She works her mouth a few times before any sound comes out. “Let me see if I understand. I can either hide in my room and let you ignore me, or I can steal something. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Carson’s arms are folded hard. It always makes her look bigger, like she really needs that. “You got it. You wanna be our partner? You gotta have skin in the game.”

  “I have plenty of ‘skin in the game,’” Julie snaps. “More than either of you. I—”

  “Wrong kind.” Carson steps closer so she can loom over Julie. “Don’t know you. You don’t work for the agency. Maybe you’re a cop. Wanna get in our panties? Drop yours first.”

  So many reactions are crawling across Julie’s face—shock, anger, embarrassment, disbelief—that it looks like it’s trying to jump off. The look she’s giving Carson is straight out of a horror movie. She finally remembers to close her mouth.

  Carson says, “Figure it out. We got work to do.” Then she grabs my arm and drags me out of Julie’s room.

  I don’t dare look back.

  Chapter 9

  Portsmouth has only a handful of buildings taller than half-a-dozen stories, including the Spinnaker, the city’s answer to Seattle’s Space Needle. Most everything is low-rise red brick. As we chug through endless streets of two-story townhouses, it’s hard to remember that Portsmouth is the most densely populated city in the U.K. and that downtown is only a few minutes behind us. At night, on empty roads with mist halos around the spotty lighting, it seems like we’re passing through an endless village on our way to stake out the lab.

  “Why aren’t we going the same way we did last time?” I ask after the umpty-eleventh turn down another side street. For once, I’m driving. Carson’s navigating. Bad passenger or not, she’s behaved herself so far.

  “Avoiding cameras.”

  “How do you know where the cameras are?”

  “Found a map online.” So that’s why she’s squinting at her phone. “Turn left up there.”

  I turn more carefully than I need to—everything’s backwards, so I can’t drive on autopilot like I’m back home. “Did you find out anything else today?”

  “Left again at the end. Yeah. City’s got this thing online, you can look up planning docs for permitted projects. Museum reno’d the warehouse in ’07. Lab’s where you called it.”

  “Office building, ground floor, south end?”

  “Yeah. No electrical plan, though. Figures.”

  “Good work.” Carson finds the damnedest things online.

  “Better slow down,” Carson says. “Might get there tonight.”

  “Gimme a break.” I leave out the fuck you I’m thinking. “I’m driving a too-big car on the wrong side of a too-small road, at night.”

  “Wimp.” She snickers a little. “What do you think the Princess’ll do?”

  “Hard telling. She’s got a good reason to go all-in.”

  Carson sits up straight and drops her hands into her lap. “I’m so glad to meet you. I’m so excited you’re here. What can I do to get in your way?” The voice isn’t quite Julie’s, but she nails the cadence, her posture and gestures.

  “Cute. Just saying. She might surprise us.”

  “Doubt she’s got the stones. Right at the roundabout.”

  I’m still not used to these. “I have to go left to go right, right?”

  We survive the traffic circle, several more turns, an overpass and roads the size of goat paths. Then I see tilt-ups and light industrial development. We’re not out in the country.

 

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