When in rome, p.14
When in Rome, page 14
“Is this the piece you’re after?” Nibbs asked me.
“Could be.” I walked around the room, trying to see the piece from every angle. “We’ll have to send someone down to verify before we take it. Can you tell me more about the people who sold it to you?”
“Someone called Lexington White.” Nibbs was still in the doorway, casting a critical eye on the artifact. “Someone else was with him, but I didn’t get his name. He was mostly there to move the thing.”
“And had you done business with Lexington White before?” I asked.
“No, and I never will again,” Nibbs asserted.
It was a bit late for that, but I didn’t say anything about that.
“Thank you,” I replied. “You’ve been very helpful.”
Chapter 22: Marty
After Hawthorne left to investigate the address that kid had given him, I put the name Benjamin Edwards into as many databases as I could. What I found was pretty normal. He was a high school kid living in the same building as Ricci, got decent grades, sister had gotten into a car crash a few months before. It was pretty easy to figure out what had happened from there. His family had needed money, he had done a favor for a neighbor, and then he was stuck in the middle of a criminal case. I felt bad for the kid, but nothing in his backstory seemed absolutely vital to our case.
As I was finishing that research, I got a call from Hawthorne, who was on his way back from the site of the other sale.
“I’ve got another alias for you,” he informed me. “Lexington White. See what you can make of that.”
I immediately turned the focus of my search, Lexington White. I couldn’t find much for the name, only a single mention on social media. Maybe it was a fairly new alias, or maybe the person using it didn’t often make forays into the art world. Either way, I would have to find out who was behind it and how they connected to the Ricci family, which meant I would have to look into Ricci’s family and his other connections. After all, if he had taken advantage of that neighbor kid, who knew what was going on with his actual family members.
Hawthorne got back to the office just as I was beginning to dive into that search. He sat down in his desk chair and swiveled to face me.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“Nothing interesting.” I looked up from my computer. “How was your visit?”
“There is another one of those artifacts,” Hawthorne told me. “I’ve got to get Busch to send some people to get it out of there. The guy wasn’t too happy about it, though.”
“I wouldn’t be either.” I thought about how much money Cecelia had told me she was about to spend on it. “Something like that is really expensive.”
“I guess it goes to show how important it is to know what you’re buying,” Hawthorne replied.
“In the alternate universe where either of us is a big-time art collector,” I replied with a laugh. Hawthorne laughed too.
“What are you doing now?” he asked.
“I’m switching gears,” I explained. “I couldn’t find much on Lexington White, so I’m going to start searching into Ricci’s connections. There’s no way this is a two-person operation at this point.”
“True enough.” Hawthorne got up. “I’m going to go update Busch. Good luck with the research.”
He walked past me to Busch’s office, and I went back to my computer. I started by looking up Ricci’s family tree. I found his brother Lorenzo, who we knew about, and three more siblings. He also had something like seven aunts and uncles on his father’s side, which had clearly led to a lot of cousins. Most of them lived in the US now, although it looked like one branch of the family had stayed in Italy. Many of them had dual citizenship.
Looking at his whole family tree was overwhelming, even though there was almost nothing on his mother’s side. I didn’t let myself get sidetracked, though. If I wanted to know more, there was an easy path to that. I just had to start at the top. I typed his father’s name, Mariano Ricci, into my database.
I didn’t find much on him. He had been arrested for a couple of minor things, sure, but there weren’t any red flags. That didn’t mean he wasn’t involved in all this, or that I wouldn’t be able to find evidence if I looked a little further, but I decided to try some other names first. I tried one of his uncles, Enrico Ricci.
That one worked.
In fact, it more than worked. I discovered that Enrico was in prison for manufacturing and dealing hard drugs, among other charges. The authorities suspected that he’d been at the head of some kind of organization, but it was a testament to his skill as a criminal and his loyalty to his pack that they never figured out who else was involved. There had also been whispers, at the time, that he and his drug trade had led to more violent crimes, but the police could never prove anything. He had had four kids with an Italian-American woman, all of whom were now adults.
Finally, I was getting somewhere. If Enrico had been jailed for drug trafficking and now his nephews were smuggling ancient artifacts between two countries, and if both crimes were connected to a wider ring of people, then the chances that they were connected or at least that Enrico had taught his nephews some tricks were fairly high.
From there, I looked up Ricci’s siblings and a few of his cousins, focusing on people who had a connection to Enrico. There wasn’t much I could find for any of them, which itself was a red flag. Most people these days had some kind of social media presence, or at the very least, I’d be able to find records from the last few jobs they’d worked. These people all had US passports, but none of them had drivers’ licenses, which might have been normal for people living in New York if I could find a record of a Metro Card or other public transit transactions, which I couldn’t. In fact, the most that I could find on the family were records of them entering and exiting the country on their way to and from Italy.
For completion’s sake, I looked up Enrico’s wife, Lucrezia. She seemed to be unconnected with the whole thing. She was a cosmetologist who worked at a corner salon, and she had no history of crime. I even found posts on her social media accounts, where she talked about how shocked and betrayed she was when her husband was arrested. Digging deeper gave me no new information.
Lucrezia was a dead end.
I sat back in my chair. The enormity of what I had found was settling over me. All signs were pointing to the artifact smuggling being part of a larger network of organized crime. Maybe it wasn’t a surprise, since the crime we’d originally been called to investigate was a murder, but there was a huge difference between murder committed by a single person as a side effect of a less violent business and a criminal organization spanning at least one family. I would have to keep researching the other members of the Ricci family, but for now, I had enough information to know that we were getting involved in something that was bigger than we had first thought.
Just then, I heard footsteps behind me. It was Hawthorne, coming out of Busch’s office. He sat down.
“How’s it going?” His voice sounded like it was coming from a million miles away.
“I’ve found some stuff,” I said when I was ready to talk again. “It looks like Ricci’s whole family is in on this. His uncle got sent to prison for being the head of a major drug ring, and the rest of the family has almost no presence on social media or anywhere else.”
“Wow,” Hawthorne said softly. “Think Lorenzo has backup, then?”
“Probably,” I replied. I hadn’t even thought about that yet, but if this was a network and not just a weird passion-project-slash-major-criminal-operation, the family probably had all sorts of connections to people who could make sure no one bothered Lorenzo on his dives. In fact, that was probably part of why no one had caught him yet. They even might have been paying off local law enforcement to keep quiet about the whole thing.
Hawthorne jolted me out of my thoughts, as he looked at me with wide, worried eyes.
“I have to get word to Angie.” He got up and hurried out of the room, his focus entirely on his cell phone. I hadn’t even thought about what this new information would mean for her, but now that Hawthorne mentioned it, it worried me too. But there was nothing I could do about Angie’s situation. I blinked, trying to think what to do next.
I needed to keep researching this. But there was something else I needed to do first.
I dialed Cecelia’s hotel room.
She picked up after a few rings.
“Hello?” Her voice was almost chipper. She really was recovering from the trauma she had experienced during the art sale.
“Hey, Cecelia, it’s me,” I said, much more subdued.
“Oh, hi, Marty.” There was warmth in her voice, which I was secretly glad to hear, even though I had much higher priorities at that point in time.
“I can’t talk long,” I cautioned.
“You never can,” she interrupted.
“I just have to warn you about something,” I said quickly as if even another second of her not knowing could put her in grave danger. For all I knew, it would.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“You might be in more danger than we thought.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“It looks like this art thing is tied up in something bigger,” I continued.
Still silence.
“Are you okay?” I ventured.
“I’m fine.” She did sound fine. “I was worried that might be the case. But I know I’m protected here. And anyway, what would they want with me?”
“I’m glad to hear you feel safe,” I told her. “You’re definitely not a likely target. I’ll be calling your guard with an update soon as well. I just wanted to make sure that you knew and felt safe.”
“Thanks so much,” she replied. “I really appreciate it, Marty. You’ve been so nice through all of this.”
“Yes, well, it’s part of my job.” I winced. I didn’t want her to think I was only nice because I had to. In fact, I really didn’t have to; I could have made Hawthorne or Angie talk to her or set her up with a hotel room when this had first started.
“Still,” she insisted. “Thanks.” Her words hung in the air for a moment, suspended in the space between us.
“I have to go,” I replied hastily. “I’ll talk to you later.”
It annoyed me that I was so awkward on the phone with Cecelia, but I had bigger things to worry about… like the entire life history of every single member of the Ricci family and all their friends. I sighed and turned back to my computer. This was going to be a lot of tedious work, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. But for every big discovery and easy find, there were a million drawn-out searches like this one, and I knew that was what I had signed up for when I first decided to apply for a job in the field of intelligence analysis.
So, I got to work.
Chapter 23: Angie
As we drove toward Lake Nemi, Agent Stein sent me messages confirming Lorenzo Ricci’s favorite diving spot. It was on the opposite side of the lake from the museum that had displayed the original two ships. In addition to an image and basic biography, Stein had given me the GPS coordinates of where Lorenzo had been seen in the past, and I relayed them to my Italian companions.
“We are going to have to walk down to the lake,” Ferro cautioned. “We cannot drive.” I was prepared for this too. Stein had said that the lake was a former volcano, and as such happened to be situated within a high-walled crater. After the hours I’d traveled, I was tired, but I was still itching to move my limbs even a little bit.
“That works for me.” I twisted back and forth in an attempt to stretch my back muscles. “I could use a workout.”
“It will be good for you to walk,” Ferro determined. “Do you need food?”
The minute she said it, I realized how hungry I was. I had had lunch, but no dinner, and as delicious as the pizza had been, it didn’t have the power to sustain me into the night.
“That would be great,” I said gratefully.
Ferro pulled a pouch of mixed nuts out of one of her pockets.
“You do not have allergies?” she asked.
“No, I don’t,” I replied, accepting the nuts. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Her tone was stiff and formal. It reminded me that she had probably learned English as an adult. The language sounded strange and out of place in her voice. Still, I appreciated that she had learned it. This trip would have been much harder if she hadn’t.
I thought the rest of the drive would be mostly silent, but a few minutes later, my phone rang. It was Hawthorne. I held it up to my ear.
“Hey,” I said.
“Angie, you’re okay.” He sounded relieved.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I assured him. “Not even to the lake yet. Why? What’s wrong?”
“Stein’s been doing his research,” Hawthorne explained. “CliffsNotes version is that this whole thing is way bigger than we thought. Ricci’s family has a history of crime. Lorenzo might have backup. At the very least, he has connections.”
Somehow, this news didn’t faze me. I had gotten out of stickier situations than even the worst-case scenario of what was about to happen, and this time I was with people who were armed and prepared for trouble.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Good to know. Everything good in New York?”
“More or less,” Hawthorne replied. “I’ll update you when you get back. Good luck.”
“Thanks, you too.” I hung up the phone.
“Is everything alright?” Ferro asked.
“That was my partner,” I explained. “He says we have to look out for more trouble than we expected.”
“We’re ready, I think,” Ferro decided. She said something in Italian to her compatriots, and they all nodded. “Ready,” Ferro confirmed in English.
The rest of the drive through the mountains was quick and uneventful, and we parked at the edge of a slanting forest. It was still dark when we got there, the moon hanging over us. I could see the lake below us, its water shining even in the darkness. It was bigger than I had thought it would be. I remembered Stein saying something about it being a volcanic crater, and it indeed settled in a dip in the hill. When I thought of volcanoes, I thought of lava being flung up into the sky and destroying homes and lives, but this one looked peaceful. Well, except for the criminal activity that was taking place in its depths.
“Do you want to go now?” Ferro asked.
I hesitated. On the one hand, we didn’t know whether Lorenzo was there right this very second. On the other hand, though, the chances that he did his work in the daylight were very low, so now was as good of a time as any.
“Yes,” I decided. “If he’s not there, we can wait, or we can come back later.”
“Alright,” Ferro agreed. She spoke in Italian to her colleagues.
I suited up in the drysuit and body armor they had brought me and picked up the diving tank and other gear that was sitting in the back of the car. Once we were all ready for what was ahead, the three of us set off. The walk down to the lake was treacherous. We didn’t use flashlights in an attempt to stay hidden from Lorenzo if he happened to be diving, but the trail was steep and full of foliage, and I almost tripped a number of times. Fortunately, there was a full moon which cast enough light to help us avoid any serious mishaps.
Halfway down, I heard gunshots from below.
“Get down!” I hissed, dropping the dive equipment and pulling my gun out, but the others were already crouching, guns at the ready. I only had my handgun with me, but the others were holding rifles. We were well-equipped to win in a firefight, but in the darkness and with all the foliage, we couldn’t see whoever was shooting.
I heard another shot. This one passed even closer to us, and we took that as an invitation to send our bullets back in that direction. There was a shout, and we inched further along the trail, still crouched and ready to fire.
There were a few more shots. We still couldn’t see whoever was shooting at us, and we shot back blindly, foliage rustling as our bullets whizzed past. We continued down the trail, still shooting.
After five minutes of this, we emerged onto a path that seemed to circle the lake. A man’s body laid at the bottom. He didn’t look like the picture I had of Lorenzo; his hair was much shorter and slightly darker, and his face was too round.
Kneeling next to him, half-hidden by a large tree, was another man, and that was who was shooting us. Once he saw all four of us with our guns pointed at him, though, he stopped shooting and darted away. Durante and Martinelli ran after him, and Ferro and I stayed to look at the fallen man. I knelt to check for a pulse. He was still alive, but one of our bullets had gone through his torso, and even in the darkness, I could see the bloodstain on his shirt expanding.
“We will call a rescue,” Ferro told me. “Even if he is an accomplice in the crime, we will treat his injuries before we taken him to jail.”
“Good,” I said decisively. I would have wanted to give him some first aid, but each moment we lingered here was a moment for Lorenzo and anyone else guarding the lake to realize what was happening and come for us. “Let’s keep moving.”
We went down the path in the same direction that Durante and Martinelli had chased the other shooter. Soon, we came upon them. Martinelli was holding the shooter’s hands behind his back, and Durante was taking his gun. He was still struggling, and in the moonlight, I could see him wrench one of his arms out of Martinelli’s grasp. Martinelli seized it, and Ferro and I rushed in. The man seemed to realize then that we had him overpowered, and he allowed Martinelli to handcuff him. We left him there as we tried to decide what to do next.
On the path where we were standing at that moment, there was still a wide strip of forest separating us from the water, and the underbrush looked dense enough that I couldn’t see a way to access the lake easily. Still, our GPS signal told us that we were just about to the dive spot, and I wasn’t a SEAL for nothing. I slipped between two trees, plunging my foot into a pile of branches and sticks. They had clearly discovered our presence, and there wasn’t much point in trying to sneak around.
