Natalie's Art: a Frank Renzi novel Read online

  A flashback blindsided her. Shooting Tex in the back of the head in New Orleans.

  Sickened by the memory, she gritted her teeth, willing the vision away. She had to get out of here, fast. But first she had to finish the job.

  Kill them. Or you will die, too.

  The Security Director's body was curled up on the floor. Mercifully, his eyes were closed. She stood over him, extended the Beretta, then lowered it to her side.

  Shoot them. If you don't, you will die, too.

  Tears flooded her eyes. Why did it always come down to this? Her life or someone else's?

  But how could she kill this defenseless man?

  He uttered a soft groan and his eyes fluttered.

  Startled, she shrank back. This man was innocent, utterly defenseless, his wrists and ankles bound together. No way was she going to kill him.

  But she had to get out fast before he regained consciousness and saw her. With grim determination, she jammed the Beretta into the knapsack, grabbed the metal container that held the Rembrandt, dashed to the entrance door and tried to calm herself.

  Her heart refused to cooperate, pounding her chest like a wild thing.

  Where was Gregor? Somewhere near the museum. Not close enough to hear the gunshots perhaps, but close enough to see her when she left.

  Her shoulders tensed as she opened the door and stepped outside. Thick clouds filled the dusky sky, obscuring the moon. She shut the door, averted her face and strode past the security camera. Only then did she remove the balaclava.

  She stuck it in her pocket and set off down the sidewalk with a purposeful stride. Walk, don't run. Running attracted attention. The last thing she wanted while she was carrying a painting worth several million dollars. The getaway car was two blocks away, a stolen Toyota Yaris. The license plate was also stolen, stripped from a different vehicle, one that would cause no problems if the police stopped her.

  She'd been given a cover story in case that happened. Be prepared. Leave nothing to chance.

  But the Security Director had foiled that part of the plan.

  She reached the first intersection and crossed the street. So far so good. Usually, she was afraid witnesses would see her, or the police.

  Not tonight. Where was Gregor?

  Kill them or you will die, too.

  Her breath came in shallow gasps and her neck prickled a spidery warning. She rotated her head and arched her neck. Was Gregor inside one of the brownstones that lined the deserted street? Standing in an upper window, holding a Bushmaster, drawing a bead on her head?

  Gripping the metal container, she strode along the sidewalk and tried to reassure herself.

  He wouldn't shoot her while she had the painting, would he?

  She walked faster. If she could get into the Yaris, she'd be less of a target.

  In the distance, she heard a car engine start behind her. Her heart catapulted into her throat. Rigid with fear, she glimpsed the glow of headlights behind her, closing fast, the car engine roaring.

  She broke into a dead run. The headlights came closer.

  In thirty seconds she reached the Yaris. With trembling hands, she unlocked the door, yanked it open and jumped inside.

  A black Mercedes passed her and flashed its lights. Gregor.

  Sick with despair, she started the Yaris and pulled out of the space.

  Ahead of her, the street was deserted. No cars. No black Mercedes.

  But so what? Now they had a club to hold over her.

  Stealing a painting was one thing.

  Murdering a man in cold blood was another.

  CHAPTER 2

  June 19, 2010 – 3:30 AM – Southwest London

  She parked the Mini-Cooper in the four-bay garage behind Pym's mansion. Safe at last. But for how long? What would Gregor do when he found out she didn't kill the Security Director?

  The Beretta was still in the knapsack. She should have ditched it, but she hadn't. Intent on survival, she had driven to the garage where her Mini-Cooper was parked. No police car sirens yet, but soon there might be. She hurriedly wiped down the stolen Yaris with alcohol-soaked baby wipes. Then, sweaty and anxious, she had stowed her knapsack and the Rembrandt in the Mini-Cooper and fled.

  Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth to curb the emotions raging inside her, fear and self-loathing and a rising tide of anger that threatened to boil over. She grabbed her knapsack and the Rembrandt container and strode toward Pym's three-story mansion, the gabled roof stark against the gray moonlit sky.

  Gravel crunched under her feet as she entered the portico and approached the side entrance. The employee entrance for those who did Pym's bidding.

  The solid oak door opened immediately, sending shafts of light into the darkness. Smiling broadly, Jonathan Pym said, “Here you are at last. I was beginning to worry.”

  His smile faded when he saw her grim expression. She strode past him into the mahogany-paneled library. Two crystal chandeliers cast light over a Persian rug and two leather recliners facing a low table. A bottle of champagne stood on a sideboard, chilling in a silver ice bucket. Pym was expecting a celebration, but she was in no mood for it.

  She leaned the Rembrandt container against the sideboard, set her knapsack on the floor beside one recliner and paced the room, unable to quell her anger.

  Pym entered the library, a hollow-cheeked older man with thinning light-brown hair, pale eyes and skin. No celebratory smile. Now he was frowning at her. “Valerie, what's wrong?”

  “A man is dead! That's what's wrong.”

  Her words seemed to age him. Moving slowly, he sank onto his favorite recliner, the brown leather seat hollowed out like his cheeks. “What man? Where?”

  “In the museum.”

  His eyes narrowed, a sure sign he was angry. In the two years she'd known him, she had seldom seen him angry, and never at her. “Stop pacing,” he snapped. “Sit down and tell me what happened.”

  Waves of nausea hit her. She didn't want to tell him, didn't want to think about pulling the trigger and seeing the blood. She sank onto the other recliner. “Just as I was about to leave, the museum security director showed up. I don't think the guard knew he was coming. I told the guard to let him in.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “No. I hid in a closet. But Gregor was watching. He saw the security director enter the museum and called me.” Even now the memory of his sinister voice unnerved her. She went to the sideboard and poured herself a glass of brandy. “Would you like some cognac, Jonathan?”

  “No. Tell me what happened.”

  She returned to her chair and sipped the brandy. It didn't help. Her pent-up rage erupted, a torrent of angry words. “Jonathan, when I agreed to steal these paintings, you said there would be no violence. But you gave me a Beretta. In case the guard got cold feet, you said. You didn't tell me I might have to kill someone!”

  “Stop this rubbish, Valerie. Tell me what happened. You shot the security director?”

  “No. I knocked him out with the baton.”

  A muscle worked in Pym's jaw. “Did you kill him?”

  “No, but I shot the security guard.”

  “Why?” His implacable pale-gray eyes bored into her, laser-beams of rage.

  “Gregor told me to kill them. He said if I didn't he would kill me!”

  Pym's face grew pale, as if all the blood had drained from it. In the silence, his gaze wandered to the leather-bound volumes on the floor-to-ceiling shelves, then to the sideboard and came to rest on the Rembrandt container. He massaged his eyes with both hands and heaved a sigh. “I will deal with Gregor.”

  “There was no need to kill the guard! I could have tied him up, disabled him as planned and left with the Rembrandt.”

  Pym shrugged. “What's done is done.”

  His callous remark infuriated her. Easy for him to say. He wasn't the one who'd pulled the trigger. He hired others to do his dirty work—Gregor and the insider guards—and paid her to steal the paintings. Then
Pym delivered them to the wealthy collectors who had ordered them and raked in the money.

  She leaned forward, opened her knapsack and took out the Beretta.

  Pym's jaw dropped and his mouth sagged open.

  She almost laughed. Did he think she was going to shoot him? That would be stupid. Kill a well-known London businessman? She would spend the rest of her life in jail. The one she wanted to kill was Gregor. But she had already killed too many people. Tonight she had murdered a man in cold blood. Never again.

  “Jonathan,” she said through clenched teeth. “You don't get it. This gun killed a man tonight.”

  “Stop pointing that fucking gun at me. Put it away.”

  Shocked, she put the Beretta in her knapsack. Pym never used profanity. But that didn’t change her decision. “Get someone else to steal the paintings, Jonathan. Tonight was my last.”

  Expressionless, he said, “Go to bed, Valerie. We'll discuss this tomorrow.”

  Her decision would be no different tomorrow, but why prolong the argument? She set her brandy snifter on the sideboard and left.

  _____

  She rode the elevator up to her quarters on the third floor. We'll discuss this tomorrow. Pym would never accept her decision, and she knew how dangerous rich powerful men could be.

  After entering her quarters, she shoved a steel wedge under the door. It had no lock. Not that she feared Pym would come here uninvited. They had sex in his suite on the second floor. But old memories die hard. As a teenager in Pecos, Texas, she had woken one night to find her cousin sitting on her bed. He tried to kiss her, but she fought him off. Two days later, she had made her uncle install a lock on her door.

  She put the knapsack on a table in the sitting room. She hated the decor. Pym's mansion was like a mausoleum, dark and dreary, like the paintings his wealthy clients favored. Midnight-blue drapes covered a small window overlooking a park. Two Louis XIV settees with curved legs faced a teak armoire that held her sound system and a television set. An alcove held a sink, a small refrigerator and a two-burner stove in case she wanted to cook.

  But other than breakfast she ate her meals with Pym. One of her duties. Smile and make small talk. And provide sex when Pym had the energy. Be who they want you to be, a lesson she'd learned while working as a call girl in Paris. A high-class escort.

  Bullshit. She was a whore.

  She hated her life, hated the woman she had become.

  Overcome with fatigue, she went in the bedroom. Steep slanted eaves left only enough space for a single bed, a chest of drawers and a dressing table with a frilly skirt draped over the legs. She took off her wig, placed it on one of the Styrofoam wig stands on the table, removed the pins to release her long dark hair and scratched her scalp. Wearing a wig made her scalp itch like crazy, but wigs were useful for disguising her looks.

  She stripped off her clothes, sank onto the bed and massaged her throbbing temples. Every muscle in her body ached. Her mind churned, replaying tonight's ordeal. Gregor ordering her to kill the two men. Fearing Gregor would kill her. Her frantic escape. Pym browbeating her, as if the screw-up was her fault.

  But that didn't change the facts. Natalie Brixton had killed again.

  Tears flooded her eyes. Two years ago in Boston she had killed Oliver James, the man who knew too much about Natalie Brixton. No one, not even her lover, was going to hinder her mission to take revenge on the man who murdered her mother. But Oliver still haunted her dreams, filling her with an aching sadness and profound remorse.

  Chip Beaubien was different. His father had murdered her mother, and Chip was just like him, an arrogant rich man who used women. He had driven her to a seedy motel anticipating hot sex, not an accusation that his father had killed her mother.

  Even now she could picture the hatred in his eyes before she shot him. But what good did it do? Taking revenge brought her no satisfaction, just an empty feeling that wouldn't go away.

  Worse, the New Orleans police were hunting for her. Homicide detective Frank Renzi, the man who relentlessly stalked his prey and usually caught them. A frisson of fear raised goosebumps on her arms.

  Was Renzi still hunting for her? Or was he busy chasing other killers? She pictured his angular cheekbones, the hawk-like nose, the scar on his chin. But his dark eyes were what she remembered most, intense and penetrating.

  Renzi wouldn't give up. He would continue his pursuit, just as he had pursued her into that alley two years ago. She could have killed him as he lay on the ground after she shot him. That would have been the smart thing to do. But she didn't want to kill him.

  That day she had vowed never to kill another person as long as she lived. Now she had.

  After she fled to Paris, her manager at the escort service had given her a new identity, Valerie Brown, and sent her to London to work for another escort service. She'd been here ever since. Far too long. For months she had been planning her escape. After Pym paid her for tonight's job, there would be two hundred thousand dollars in her bank account. Not as much as she needed to disappear forever, but she had to get out now, before they forced her to steal another painting. And kill someone else.

  She had already chosen her destination, a large European city where she would be one person among six million. Every morning during her five-mile run she listened to language tapes. She wasn't fluent yet, but that wasn't her biggest worry.

  Pym might tell Gregor to find her and kill her. After all, she was a woman who knew too much. She knew how Gregor orchestrated the heists, hiring insider guards, warning them not to squeal to the cops. But the guards died anyway, from muggings or suicides or drug overdoses, according to the news. She didn't believe it.

  Gregor had killed them. And he could just as easily kill her.

  Gut-wrenching fear exploded inside her and bile spewed into her throat. She ran to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. Weak and trembling, she wiped her mouth and sank onto the floor. She was tired of being afraid, tired of hiding from cops, tired of being the person others wanted her to be.

  The only way she would ever have any peace of mind was to disappear like a wisp of smoke. Only then could she be the person she wanted to be.

  Someone who didn't have to kill people.

  _____

  Saturday, June 19, 2010 – 7:15 P.M. – New Orleans

  The murmur of voices and jazz playing over the sound system filled the Bulldog, Frank's favorite place to relax after a long week. Best of all, Kelly O'Neil was sitting beside him. After four years he was still crazy about her. He loved her sea-green eyes, as deep as the ocean, telling him more than words ever could. Styled in a pixie cut, dark curly hair framed her olive-skinned face. She had a temper, but he didn't mind.

  Placid was boring. Volatile was exciting. Both of her parents were Italian. Franklin Sullivan Renzi was half and half. Dark eyes and a prominent nose inherited from the Italian side, an explosive temper from his Irish mother.

  Nina Simone was singing an up-tempo version of “My Way,” about living life with no regrets. Frank had a few regrets, but for better or for worse, he'd done it his way. In November he'd be forty-eight, but other than a few gray flecks in his black hair, he didn't look much different than when he'd met Kelly. She was forty-two, slim and trim thanks to her workouts at the gym. Kelly was an NOPD detective, too. She had a gorgeous body, curvy in all the right places, and a great ass. And she had a great sense of humor. He loved making her laugh.

  After Nina Simone took “My Way” out to a rousing climax, Kelly said, “I love the way she lets it all hang out.”

  He leaned closer and murmured, “I'm always in favor of letting it all hang out.”

  “As if I didn't know. But try to control yourself. There are witnesses.” She sipped her beer. “How was your week? Anything exciting?”

  “Same old, same old.” He didn't want to talk about the carjacking. Not the scariest moment in his twenty-plus years as a cop, but close. Not only that it had taken him an hour to write his report. He hated
paperwork.

  “That's not what I heard. What about the carjacker?”

  “Oh. That. Some idiot held up a bank near the French Quarter, had no wheels for a getaway and hijacked a car. Kenyon Miller and I caught the BOLO and chased him. No big deal.”

  “Compared to what? Atticus Kroll and his gang shooting at you with AK-47s? Jesus, Frank, how come getting a story out of you is like pulling teeth?”

  “A good homicide detective deflects all inquiries.”

  “What about the woman in the car?”

  He fished a cashew out of the dish on the bar and ate it. “You heard about the woman?”

  “Yes, Frank,” she said, oozing sarcasm, “I heard about the woman. I also heard her little girl was in the car.”

  “I don't think he saw the kid. He was more worried about the dye pack that blew up and sprayed him with red dye. The woman was smart though, kept her cool.”

  Kelly gave him one of her patented warning looks.

  “Okay, it got a little hairy after he crashed the car and took off with the woman. Kenyon stayed with the little girl. I chased the carjacker and the woman into a house that was under construction. By the time I got inside, two electricians were threatening the hijacker with—dig this—a power drill and a staple gun.”

  “Hey, give 'em credit for trying to save her.”

  “Right, but the guy was already paranoid, looked like he was on crystal meth. But it worked out okay. I got the electricians to leave. End of story.” He slugged down some beer.

  She looked at him, incredulous. “Frank, he came at you with a knife!”

  “Who told you that?”

  Her mouth quirked, a sure sign she was pissed. “I used to work Homicide, remember?”

  “Yes, and when I find the guy that blabbed the details, I'll give him a dope-slap.”

  Kelly flashed a triumphant smile. “Morgan Vobitch told me. You gonna give your boss a dope-slap?”

  He tried to picture it. Detective Lieutenant Morgan Vobitch supervised the homicide detectives in Districts One, Five and Eight. Vobitch took no guff from the politicians or NOPD bigwigs, and never from his own detectives. Frank had worked with him for nine years. Despite their occasional differences they were in total agreement about one thing. Get the thugs off the street.