Page 96 of Disarming Caine

“Sign the consent and let me know what you find bynotfollowing any leads on that Constable,” he said with a grin. “And I’ll tell you what little I can.”

I skimmed the letter. I was getting the better end of this bargain by a long shot.

“But be warned…” He turned back to his laptop while I read. “You can’t unknow what you’ll find out.”

Nathan said Antonio wasn’t involved. Was he wrong? Either way, I needed to know. I signed and he took the sheet from me, filing it away in his briefcase.

“Dr. Ferraro’s likely going to throw a wrench into your background check, but from what I know of him, I should be able to clear anything up.” He tapped a key on his keyboard, and a new image lit up on the wall-mounted screen.

A satellite map of a small town on the edge of a body of water zoomed in close enough I could see the Cypress trees and terracotta roofs. Streets labeled Via and Vicolo told me it was Italy.

“As you no doubt know, Dr. Dominico Ferraro has two brothers. One operates an art restoration company in Rome, while the other lives here.” He pointed to a large estate on the edge of the town, near the water. “Since you signed the smaller letter, I’ll only say this brother’s well connected. He arranges for the sale and transfer of stolen art and cultural heritage items, using the Ferraro name to give him credibility within the art world.”

Shit. That must have been what Valentina had been talking about on Christmas Eve.

“The Carabinieri have a revolving wire tap on the estate, so we pick up calls every now and again with the family members in the States.”

That explained so much. The Carabinieri officer accusing Antonio of the theft in Naples. The call Nathan said they intercepted, which proved to him Antonio wasn’t involved. And why he had a burner phone in Naples. But that also meant Antonio was in recent contact with these smugglers.

“How does this tie in with the Gardner heist?”

Elliot’s face snapped back to me. “Did Miller tell you about that?”

“No, it was a guess. But you just confirmed it.”

His face tightened for a moment. “The wire tap on this Ferraro estate and a few others started picking up chatter about the light and a piano over the summer.”

“Light and a piano?” What did that… I sucked in a sharp breath when it dawned on me. “Light as in the ‘master of light’? You’re kidding me?”

He shook his head. “That’s all you get, unless you want to sign the first letter.”

“I’m tempted.” I tapped my fingers against my lips. In the art world, the master of light was Johannes Vermeer. He completed four paintings of people playing harpsichords or virginals, both similar enough to a piano for it to work as an obvious code word. One belonged to Buckingham Palace, two to the National Gallery in London, and one—The Concert—had been stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. It was the most valuable stolen object in the world, worth up to five hundred million dollars, depending on who you asked.

“And if I tell you the chatter’s been steadily increasing?”

“How the hell did you get on this one?” I asked. “Isn’t Boston still in charge?”

“Lucky coincidence. I was on the smuggling case before this came up. Having a prosecutor from Boston helped smooth things over.”

That’s why Nathan was in on this. The Boston angle.

“That’s all you get for now.” He closed his laptop and started putting things away in his briefcase. “Once your paperwork is through, I’ll see if I can swing something your way, but your relationship with Dr. Ferraro is a wild card. It might mean there’s no chance, it might mean there’s a good one.”

It was a break in my dream case. The case I was supposed to be working on when I joined the FBI.

Matt’s voice came back to me:At least for the short term, we need you with SIU if we’re going to have a company.

How short term did Matt need me? And how much time until Elliot’s team cracked this case? And why was I stuck in the middle?

“One other thing, Elliot. It’ll be in my statement to Jimmy, but you should know, Parker said someone’s trying to recruit Antonio. I don’t know what that means, and he doesn’t either.” At least, he said he didn’t. “But maybe it’s related to all of this.”

“Interesting.” He pulled out his phone and tapped something into it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Thanks. This has been… yeah.”

Elliot shook my hand and opened the door, letting me go first. “Thanks for stopping in. I apologize if I kept you longer—”

“Samantha!” came an urgent voice as I stepped into the hallway, paired with a jangle of metal. A cuffed Cam-ron Parker was exiting a room two doors down from us, escorted by an officer and a woman in a suit. Dirty blond, shoulder length hair, goatee, and his ridiculous ‘Stay calm and paint on’ T-shirt under a zip-front sweater. “You’re okay! How’s your husband? They wouldn’t tell me—”