Page 10 of The Thief

And that’s how, three days later, I find myself touching down at Venice’s Marco Polo airport.

5

ANTONIO

Beautiful,recklessLucia.

Once the meeting is over, I go back to my office, shut the door, and play the brief security camera footage again.

It’s been ten years, but I still remember the bottle green of her eyes. Still remember the hitch in her voice as she asked me to stay with her.Don’t go,she whispered, her lips quivering.I don’t want to be alone tonight.

I left her a message asking her to call me, but she never did. When I stopped at the hotel after dealing with the trio who accosted her, she wasn’t there. She’d already checked out and left for the airport. Flown out of Venice and out of my life.

And now, she’s made herself a target. Kirkland is a sore loser with a malicious streak. If he’s distributing this dossier to everyone he knows in the art world, then Lucia is soon going to find herself in a world of trouble.

So what? You’re not her protector. If she gets into trouble, that’s her problem.

But all week, I can’t stop thinking about her. Finally, on Friday, I make up my mind. I’m going to send her a message warning her about the danger she’s in. After all, I reason, she’s Valentina’s friend and Angelica’s godmother. Giving her a heads-up about the situation is just common courtesy.

But when I navigate to her Instagram page, her latest post stops me cold. She has a new job, she writes. She starts a five-month contract as an assistant curator at the Palazzo Ducale on Monday.

After stints worldwide and ten years away, she’s finally returning to Venice.

Why? It can’t be the job. The Palazzo Ducale is a prestigious museum, but it’s a short-term contract, and the pay is crap. She stayed away for years, and this isn’t the one-in-a-lifetime role that would lure her home.

But if it isn’t the job, then it must be a painting she’s coming home for. A stolen one.

Is Lucia Petrucci planning on stealing my Titian?

* * *

Over the next week,I go about the process of setting a trap for Lucia.

I start by becoming intimately familiar with her previous heists. The moment I dive into the details, it’s clear that Valentina has been helping her. This makes perfect sense; the two women have been friends all their lives, and Valentina’s hacking abilities are a perfect complement to Lucia’s thieving skills.

So, I make sure Valentina knows that the Titian is mine. She comes into headquarters over the weekend, and while she’s within earshot, I have a conversation about art with a slightly puzzled Tomas, and I let drop that I stole the masterpiece from the Palazzo Ducale when I was sixteen, swapping it out with a fake. She overhears, as I intended.

That’s step one. Step two is a conversation with Signora Alvisa Zanotti.

The legendary fence has got to be Lucia’s source of information on the underground art market. She’s supposed to be retired, but I’ve met her at least a dozen times in the last five years, usually at a glitzy museum benefit, and I very much doubt that she’s truly walked away from the game.

Signora Zanotti lives in Castello, not too far from the apartment that Lucia’s parents owned. On Sunday night, I drop by unannounced.

Her eyes sharpen when she sees me. “Signor Moretti,” she says. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“May I come in?”

I phrase it as a question, but we both know it isn’t one. She nods and steps aside. “Please.”

I walk into her living room. There’s a painting above the couch, bright yellow poppies shoved carelessly into a glass vase. My lips twitch. I’m looking at Van Gogh’sPoppy Flowers, stolen from Cairo’s Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in 2010 and never recovered.

The older woman follows my gaze to the wall. “It’s a fake, of course,” she says blandly. “Even if I owned the real painting, which I don’t, I would never be so brazen as to display it openly in my house.”

She’sverywell-informed. “Unlike my Titian, you mean?”

“Do you own a Titian, Signor Moretti?” she asks blandly. “I hadn’t heard.”

I laugh out loud. She’s in her late seventies or early eighties, and she’s still as sharp as a knife. “I’d like you to do me a favor, Signora Zanotti.” I fish a business card out of my wallet. “If someone approaches you with questions about my Titian, I’d like you to call me.”

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