Page 4 of The Honeymoon Heist

Buck pulled his car into the old farmhouse and sat for a minute. He could still turn all of this off. Doing so would mean he would lose a veritable fortune, but it would also ensure his existence. He had a good life. Not great, but good. Did he really want to enter the world of the Italian Mafia? Maybe it would be better to just walk away and hang the damn painting in his own basement.

He remembered what his cousin had told him—one connected to the Irish Mafia: “You think it’s an easy score, and easy money. Then you learn that once it’s done, it has tentacles all its own. You never leave a score. You constantly look over your shoulder waiting on some idiot to talk. And then those idiots start dying, making you wonder if you’re next.”

Did he want to live that life? Would the Italians feel he was a threat and come for him in two, ten, or twenty years?

Yeah, he did, and he had twenty-five million reasons why. The painting was worth more than four times that, but he wasn’t greedy. Well, he was greedy enough to ignore the danger the transaction represented. He’d take the money and disappear, possibly to a foreign country, but most definitely away from here.

He opened the car door and took a breath, the air unseasonably crisp in September, his exhale turning to vapor. He closed the door loud enough for Miles to hear, and then pushed open the barn door, seeing the artist in front of the frame, putting on the finishing touches, the original to his left on a stand.

Buck looked at the canvas in front of Miles, then the one on the easel next to him, and said, “Damn, youaregood. Looks exactly the same.”

Miles grinned and said, “The secret is in the paint. Gotta at least act like you’ve done this a century before.”

Sitting in front of him were two paintings by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, titledThe Taking of Christ. Twelve such paintings were known to exist, and the dispute as to whether each was an original painted by the master or painted by an acquaintance or student of the master was continually debated. Ukraine had one that was supposed to be by the master, but was contested. Ireland had the one true version, until it too, was contested. All of that didn’t matter to Buck, because his contact in Italy had one as well. Whether it was a real Caravaggio was irrelevant, as long as Miles could duplicate it.

Buck said, “Will that rice paper peel off? Can he get to the real painting underneath?”

“Yeah, I don’t think that will be an issue, if he has anyone with half a brain about art, which, if he’s gone to this trouble, he does.”

“Okay, let’s box them up. We have to pack for the trip.”

Miles said, “Hey, I do the paintings. You never said what the ‘trip’ is about. What’s the play here?”

Buck sighed, then said, “It’s a little convoluted, but the payday is the same.”

Miles waited a beat, then said, “And?”

Buck did a little circle in the barn, wondering what to say to Miles, and settled on the truth.

“Okay, here’s the deal. That painting you just coated in another is worth over a hundred million dollars. We’re going to get twenty-five. That’s the endstate.”

“How? Why did I cloak it in a painting of another? What’s the point of that?”

“Thepointhere is that the one you painted over is well-known as having been stolen. Thepointis that I had to find someone willing to take it, knowing it was stolen. Thepointis that we transfer this painting in Italy and get a payday. Are you good with that?”

Miles sat for a minute, then said, “No, I’m not. What’s the transfer?”

Buck didn’t expect the inquisition and was a little hesitant to expose the seedy underbelly of what was about to occur, not the least because his contact in Italy had told him not to. But he was in a hard position. He needed Miles.

“Okay, here it is: I’ve sold this painting to a connected man in Italy. He wants the painting, but wants nothing to do with the original theft. We’ve come up with a method of transfer. There’s going to be a Caravaggio retrospective in the town of Positano, Italy. My buyer has been asked to contribute his painting—the same one you just copied. We slip this one in, and he gets both back clean as a whistle.”

“But the one I copied isn’t a real Caravaggio. It’s a duplicate.”

Buck laughed and said, “Yeah, well, there’s a fight about that, but honestly, they don’t care. They apparently couldn’t get enough real ones, so ones that are close are good enough. The bottom line is that we get this injected into the art world, and then my client gets the real painting underneath.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Buck liked the “we” in that sentence. If Miles was reticent about the operation, he would have said, “you.” Miles was on board whether he knew it or not.

Buck said, “That painting you’ve been copying is worth a few million dollars. It’s known as a Caravaggio imitation that was painted at the same time—and might be an original, depending on who is talking, so it’s still worth a lot of money.”

Buck paused, starting to pace again and wondering if he should even be giving this much information. He’d been told of the punishment for failure, and Miles was a link in that endstate. But he was also the only man Buck trusted. He decided to let it all out.

“Okay, look. Here’s the deal. The client sent that Caravaggio here with great fanfare for a refurbishment before it goes to the exhibition. The press covered its flight. They know it’s here. Of course, it didn’t go to an art house for refurbishment. It came to me. We’re going to send the original out of here undercover, and the one you’ve painted will go back out with the same fanfare, for the exhibition, just like it came in.”

“You’re going to send this painting out as an original Caravaggio? Or at least an original painting from that time? Are you insane? I can’t match that. Anyone who takes this thing to an X-ray machine will know it’s a fake. In fact, they’ll see the painting underneath.”

Buck held his hands up and said, “Whoa, there. None of that is going to happen. For one, it’s known as a contested Caravaggio. For another, nobody is going to X-ray anything. They invited him to present. They aren’t going to accuse him of presenting a fake. The very fact that he sent it to the United States for refurbishment ‘proves’ it’s real. That’s what makes this so perfect.”

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