Breaking Loose

CHAPTER THREE

Suzi knew junk when she saw it, and she was following Remy Beranger through aisle after aisle of junk, looking at junk from one end of the Old Gallery to the other, nothing but piles of junk and stacks of Galeria Viejo T-shirts. She slipped her sunglasses off and dropped them into her purse, which didn’t do a damn thing to improve the view.

No one looking for anything of value would come to this place. She’d owned a few galleries, and Beranger’s Old Gallery wouldn’t have made her “B” list on its best day.

Hell, it wouldn’t have made her “D” list.

Maybe not even her “Z” list.

There were plastic blowguns and rubber knives on the shelves.

“I have recently acquired a few unique items, including a small quantity of very nice Moche pottery,” Beranger said, stopping in front of a heavy wood door and taking a moment to wipe his face with a crumpled-up handkerchief. The man’s cream-colored linen suit hung off his thin frame and had definitely seen better days. His shoes were scuffed, his shirt stained, his face deathly pale with sweat running down the sides. This outfit, combined with his slow, shuffling gait made him look more like a homeless derelict than a businessman, even a shady businessman, and yet the finest intelligence-gathering agency on the face of the earth had sent her here to deal with him, a man whose Rolex all but screamed “knockoff,” who was wearing half a dozen tarnished “goldtone” bracelets on his left wrist and half a dozen chains loaded down with all kinds of religious medals around his neck. He clinked and jangled with every sliding, limping step he took.

Using a set of keys hanging from a retractable fob off his belt, he undid the locks on the door, then let the fob snap back to his waistband, before leading the way into a long, narrow, poorly lit room.

“The Chapel Room,” he said in an aside over his shoulder, with obvious pride. “My reliquary, so to speak. The Sacred Heart of the gallery, Sacré-Coeur.“

Reliquary? As in plastic saints’ bones, and rubber splinters of the Holy Cross? she wondered.

Well, that would be damned uninteresting.

Suzi followed him in, the 9mm automatic pistol snugged up against her body under her jacket, and her willingness to use it, keeping her from having any particular concerns about being alone with the Frenchman or about following him into the depths of his odd Old Gallery.

“The Moche is very rare,” he continued, closing the door behind her and giving his face another quick mopping. His longish dark hair hung down over the collar of his suit in damp, curling locks. “Quite explicit, if your client is truly interested in owning something, shall we say… unusual… something perhaps not to everyone’s taste. Though I must warn you, I do have another buyer.”

Rare and unusual Moche meant erotica, and Suzi figured Beranger might possibly have a shipment of it, because at first glance, the quality of the Frenchman’s sales goods in the Chapel Room were nominally better than in his main gallery.

That was the good news.

The bad news was unnervingly obvious. Despite the comfort of her 9mm, she was now closed in a small, dusty room with a sick little man selling pornography.

Buck Grant was going to owe her for this-big-time.

Beranger shuffled on, and she followed, being careful to stay close to him, without getting too close. They passed a heavy oak table covered in dust with an iron cross nailed to its top. Smaller crosses-some iron, some tin, some painted, some bare metal or wood-were haphazardly stacked down the table’s length along with an intricate, if doubtfully ancient, array of Mughal boxes, carved soapstone ankhs, leather flasks, and all-around junk. He even had a pile of small, gold-painted Buddhas, every one of them smiling, all in a jumble with about a gross of neon-bright, pink and blue yin-yang key chains at the end of the table-which, in her book, made Remy Beranger the undisputed king of religious kitsch. He had it all.

But did he have the Memphis Sphinx?

That was the day’s question.

Opening the clasp on her purse, she glanced down and checked inside to see if the light on the RFID scanner was on-and it wasn’t.

Now, why wasn’t she surprised? Dammit. That would have been easy-and nothing was ever easy, not when she worked for General Grant. Nobody pushed her like Buck Grant pushed her, except herself, to her limit and then some. But Buck always gave as good as he got. She didn’t fail him, and he didn’t fail her. He’d been there every time she’d called in one of her favors-every single time, even though she knew he thought she was playing a losing game.

Truth was, she thought so, too, but that wasn’t going to stop her. Losing or not, it was the only game in town, the only protection she’d found against the pain.

Her mouth tightened in fleeting remembrance, and in the same breath, she forced herself to move on, to think about the heat, the job, the need to stay on red alert, anything. It was the only way to keep going, to never remember.

In front of her, Beranger came to a stop next to a large, darkened case and reached for a small switch on the side. When the light came on, she knew that the DIA’s intel was getting closer to the mark. She’d been sent to the right place, even if she hadn’t yet been within three meters of the exact right place.

Chavín, Incan, Lambayeque, Aztec, Mayan- carefully inked signs were set in amongst the hodgepodge collection of pre-Columbian artifacts filling the long case from end to end. A lot of what she was seeing was in bits and chunks, but there were a few whole pieces of at least “ancient-looking” goods.

“So will it be the Moche?” the Frenchman asked, mopping at his face again.

The Moche. Sure. And she had a feeling his Moche would look exactly like his Incan, and his Lambayeque-crumbles. He did have one good piece that wasn’t too damaged, a stone Mamacona, a mother figurine in pretty damn good shape, possibly even auction worthy, and where there was one pretty damn good antiquity, there might well be another even better one-within three meters of the case.

She looked in her purse again and felt the sudden surprise and satisfaction of the perfect score. The scanner was glowing.

And then it wasn’t.

And then it was… and then it wasn’t, and wasn’t, and wasn’t.

What the hell? Two blinks? What was that? The DIA file on the RFD scanner specifically noted two modes of response: light on, with the GPS locking in on a position and signaling completion of the data transfer with a beep; and dead quiet with no light on. There was no “silently blinking” option-and yet the thing had just blinked at her twice.

Dammit.

Clearing her throat, she shifted her attention back to Beranger.

“Perhaps,” she said, keeping her voice perfectly neutral, not registering her disappointment in the monumental equipment failure she’d just experienced. Without the scanner, she had only one way of knowing if the Sphinx was in Ciudad del Este-eyeball-to-rock-crystal-eyeball. She’d have to see the damn thing.

“Perhaps?” he questioned, looking at her through his dark, rheumy eyes, and bringing his handkerchief back up to wipe the sweat off his face.

“Yes,” she said, discreetly turning away from the smell of him as if she were taking in the rest of the room. Damn it all, faulty equipment was a hurdle, a big one, and she hated damn hurdles when she was in Third World countries with a crime ratio bigger than the bond yields in her portfolio.

She glanced around the room on the off chance that Beranger might have the statue displayed on one of the open shelving units or in another case, maybe with one of his hand-lettered signs with the words Twelfth Dynasty Egyptian Sphinx taped below it.

No such luck.

Nothing was ever that easy.

Behind her, Beranger coughed, a small, choking sound, and she hoped to hell whatever jungle fever he had wasn’t contagious.

A little distance couldn’t hurt.

She took another few steps down the side of the case, perusing the contents.

“This is all very nice,” she continued, deciding to play her hand. She was on a schedule here, and she’d just lost one of her major advantages. “But my client is possibly… well, actually… more interested in acquiring something older than Moche pottery, if you have any artifacts that are two to three thousand years older perhaps, or… “She paused, her gaze caught by a set of narrow, rickety stairs winding up from the far end of the room into total darkness. That was interesting, definitely creepy, and maybe even a little ominous. “The congressman is currently quite taken with the ancient Near East. It’s a new area of interest for him, a new arena for him to explore. Perhaps if you have something Egyptian, something from the Twelfth Dynasty?”

Beranger looked at her for a moment, meeting her gaze, and a small, discerning half smile slowly curved his lips.

“Egyptian,” he finally said, drawing the word out, his gaze still on her. “It’s true, then…yes…yes, I had wondered, had thought as much when Jimmy called me, if indeed my benefactor had sent someone to check on my progress.”

Benefactor?

Now he had her interest.

“Egyptian, yes,” she said. “Twelfth Dynasty.”

“So you are here to see if I have done my job?” He stood there, in front of her, so small and bent and damp and sick, and yet a light had come on in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said, tamping down a small surge of excitement-but this was good, very good. No one believed Remy Beranger had come up with the Sphinx on his own. No one believed he had the skills, the cash, or the balls to have stolen it from the DIA’s laboratory, and he didn’t look like he could “teleport” a gnat’s ass, let alone a granite statue. He was a third-rate broker of low-end junk, and after the Sphinx, the number two item on the DIA’s Christmas list was the name of Beranger’s contact. With that name, they’d go looking for the next name, on up the chain, until they found someone who conceivably could have teleported the damn thing out from under their very noses, some telepathic freakazoid psychic. The DIA had a long list of them. “Thief was General Grant’s preferred term, and inside job was what he had conjectured, and he’d conjectured it loudly and repeatedly on the way to the airport last night, assuring her that the spooks need look no further than their own to find whoever had “hands-on” stolen their statue.

Realistically, he was probably right, no matter how many times the folks at the DIA used the word “teleported.”

“Sent by a congressman, then,” Beranger said, his smile widening for a brief moment. “A congressman from…”

“ Illinois,” she filled in when his voice trailed off, her excitement dampening all on its own. Damn. Beranger didn’t know who he was representing on this deal. It had been a blind contact, maybe even a double-blind. But he’d dealt with someone somewhere, and he’d all but confessed to having the Sphinx.

“Ah, Illinois,” he said. “A very rich state.”

“Have you been there?” she asked, angling for a clue.

“No,” he shook his head. “I was in Miami once, a few months ago, and as you might… ah, know, I do have a piece from the Near East, perhaps as ancient as you wish.”

“Excellent,” she said. “I’d like to see it.”

“Of course… of course.” His gaze went to the door leading back into the main gallery. “You can tell your congressman that I have other very interested buyers for the Egyptian piece, and the sale should-” The ringing of his phone stopped him in mid-sentence. “Excuse me.”

He pulled his phone out of his pants pocket, checked the number, then answered it.

While Beranger spoke softly into the receiver, she did her best to listen in.

“Policía?” he said, his voice suddenly growing sharp.

The police? That couldn’t be good. Oh, hell no, not good at all.

She leaned in a little closer, but didn’t get much out of his half-Spanish, half-French inquisition of whoever was on the other end of the phone.

But she did get the sound of sirens, loud and clear, coming from the street side of the building.

Dammit.

Beranger was getting busted.

She looked around to see which was the best way to go, if things started to go downhill, when a soft, muffled beep coming from inside her purse all but riveted her to the floor.

Good Lord, the GPS had kicked in.