Quick & Dirty

46

Stone instructed Fred to drive to Forty-second Street and turn right on Twelfth Avenue.

“What’s this little trip about?” Art Masi asked.

“Does the name Rocco Maggio ring a bell?”

Art’s brow wrinkled. “Yes, but I can’t place it.”

“Same here.”

“Sounds like a baseball player.”

“That’s DiMaggio.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Think mob,” Stone said.

Art thought. “Pietro Maggio,” he said.

“Not Pietro, Rocco.”

“Pietro was Rocco’s father — a rather elegant New Jersey don, died five or six years ago. Had a decent art collection — paintings, sculpture.”

“Any of it stolen?”

“Not that hung in his house. I got to have a close look at it once, with a warrant on a non-art case. He was rumored, though, to have moved the proceeds of a couple of big-time art heists — one in Boston, one in Philadelphia.”

“Were any of the pieces ever found?”

“Not a single one,” Art said. “Overall value, a hundred and fifty million, and that was ten, twelve years ago. Who knows what it would be now, with all the billionaires bidding.”

“How old is Rocco?”

“Maybe mid-forties.”

“Any record?”

Art got out his cell phone and tapped away at it for a couple of minutes. “Nothing but parking tickets.”

“How many?”

Art tapped some more. “More than a hundred grand’s worth. Apparently all of New York is a parking lot to Rocco.”

They reached Twelfth Avenue and turned uptown. All that Stone knew about the area was a big car wash and a number of taxi garages. Yellow cabs were parked on the side streets. A couple of more blocks, and Stone told Fred to pull over. He did. “Back up a few feet.” Fred did. “Now hand me the binoculars in the glove compartment.” Fred forked them over.

Stone trained the glasses on a spot halfway up the block from Twelfth Avenue. “Art, see that sign, maybe six doors up the street? The little one, near the top of the building?”

“Yes,” Art said.

Stone handed him the glasses. “See if your eyes are better than mine.”

Art gazed at the sign and fiddled with the focus. “Eisl,” he said.

“Take a right, Fred,” Stone said. “Stop halfway up the block on the right.” Fred did so.

“Now, Art,” Stone said, “before we cross the street and make nuisances of ourselves or get rousted, maybe shot, tell me more about Rocco Maggio.”

Art started Googling. “He’s on the board of a couple of lesser museums downtown. Goes to a lot of artsy cocktail parties with fashionable women a lot younger than himself. Used to be a member of the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League — remember that one?”

“Yes, I believe it sort of faded after its chairman got himself wasted at a clam house in Little Italy.”

“Right. That was twelve, fifteen years ago, when Rocco was a lot younger.”

“Weren’t we all?” Stone said. “I think this guy shapes up as a pretty good suspect.”

“So do I,” Art said. More tapping. “I thought that maybe there’d be a connection to the Eisl Gallery, that he was on the board or something, but he’s not.”

“And yet when Mr. Eisl calls his warehouse for the van Gogh to be brought over, he gets a call back from Rocco Maggio. Rocco doesn’t strike me as a guy who works part-time as a warehouseman.”

“Me, either,” Art said.

“Is there a lot of art theft in New York these days, Art?”

“More than you might think. It’s mostly burglaries — they take the jewelry and the silver, then maybe grab a picture or two. That’s how somebody like Sam Spain gets involved. There’s a museum robbery every few years, but surprisingly few big-time pieces are taken from private collections, like Tillman’s. The security arrangements are pretty tight in those cases — the insurance companies insist.”

“Still,” Stone said, “an important piece every year or two could make it a profitable business, what with the big-time artists pulling down multimillion-dollar sales at auction. That should create a market for bargain, under-the-counter sales to unscrupulous buyers.”

“You’re right, it does,” Masi agreed.

“Google Maggio’s business connections. Let’s see what his legitimate connections are.”

Art tapped away. “Ah,” he said, “shipping.”

“What kind of shipping?”

“He’s got a company that handles small-lot goods — you know, for companies that can’t fill a container on their own — and... oh, good, an air-freight company.”

“How could he compete with FedEx or DSL in that market?”

“You want to ship a grand piano, or maybe a horse or two, the big boys aren’t going to deliver those to your door — or your stable. They’re also not going to put multimillion-dollar artworks in their delivery trucks, or insure big-ticket items. There’s a market for specialty shippers. If you want to take your Bentley along on a European vacation, for instance. Some of them even have passenger compartments, so you can travel with your goods.”

“It sounds like the sort of service that could ship a stolen painting one way and bring back a suitcase or a hay bale full of cash,” Stone said.

“You know,” Art said, “if we could make a case for a warrant, we might find all sorts of stuff in the Eisl warehouse.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Stone said, “but we come up short in the probable-cause category, so I think we’re going to have to confine ourselves to a look around the place.”

“Getting caught at that sort of thing is a career ender for me, Stone. I’ve got my pension to think about. I don’t think you ought to go in there alone, either. I mean, I can come running if I hear gunshots, but when you hear gunshots you’re often too late.”

“You know,” Stone said, “there was a time when I would just barge into a place like that, and the hell with the guards. Nowadays, I’m more likely to hire somebody to do it for me.”

“Good idea,” Art said.

“Is there anybody on your personal services list who might qualify for that sort of excursion?”

“I might be able to come up with a name or two,” Art said. “But you’d need to handle those arrangements yourself.”

“Put on your thinking cap, Art,” Stone said. “And, by the way, how long would it take to scare up an arrest warrant for a hundred grand’s worth of unpaid parking tickets?”

“Dino could do it pretty fast.”

Stone called Dino.