With the air of long practice, Holmes waited until Milo raised his mug to his lips, and then reached up to whack his elbow. Coffee splattered down his front. She smiled her black-cat smile.
“When we’re finished here, I’ll fetch you a bleach pen and a new shirt,” Peterson said to a sputtering Milo. “Now, as for your basic education on modern investigation into art crime . . .”
We learned that the art world is largely unregulated. There is no worldwide database that tracks the buying and selling of works of art, so it’s incredibly easy for unethical dealers to sell stolen or forged pieces. Since most large governments only employ two to three full-time art theft investigators, those dealers can operate without any real fear of getting caught.
All of this is complicated, Peterson told us, by the staggering amount of art that the Nazis stole from artists and collectors—mostly Jews—as they fled Germany during World War II. Of course, not all escaped. When German Jews were put into concentration camps, their homes, too, were looted. Though the German government has made attempts to track down these pieces and return them to the families of their owners, many works of art have vanished altogether. In a field like this, it’s easy for those pieces to reappear, magically—and for no one to ever realize that they’re actually forgeries, despite the best efforts of authenticators.
“Essentially, it’s lawless,” Peterson told us, “and most law agencies have more pressing matters on their hands. Private investigators like Leander Holmes are often the last hope for those looking to track down forgers and forgery rings, networks of dealers selling art looted from Jewish refugees, or your token drug cartel using paintings as collateral. Since these are very small, exclusive circles, in order to investigate, he’d have to spend months establishing his cover before he could ever hope to gain access to any real information.”
While he talked, the monitors behind him played an aquarium screensaver. I took notes on a pad that Milo lent me.
August raised his hand, like we were all in class. “How do my brothers fit into this? Lucien? Hadrian?”
Peterson hesitated. “Hadrian Moriarty is best known for paying off the leaders of corrupt countries to look the other way while he and his sister make off with their national treasures.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, turning to Milo, “but how do they fit into this particular situation?”
Milo made a hand motion, and the twelve screens switched over to a security feed. A number of different security feeds, and none of them black-and-white, as they were in the movies, but full, deep color. A beachfront cabana, complete with billowing curtains that framed a view of the ocean. A bedroom with a four-poster bed. Other scenes, other rooms—and the four monitors on the bottom, which all showed a different approach to the Holmeses’ Sussex house. With a start, I recognized the woodpile where I’d last seen Leander.
Milo ticked them off on his fingers. “Your brother Lucien’s latest hideout over here. And here, your brother Hadrian’s pied-à-terre in Kreuzberg—really, August, do get yourself born into a better family next time—and his front entryway, and the view of his back windows, and one of his toilet, though for propriety’s sake I’ve chosen not to show you that one. There’s a rather large window in there, though, so I deemed it necessary.” He flicked his wrist again, and the screens changed. “I have every angle of every room in our family home, including a camera on the septic tank, and two specialists who do nothing but watch these screens and synthesize their deductions.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” August said. Beside him, Holmes leaned forward to see the screens better, drumming her hands against her knees.
“If Lucien sneezes, I know about it. If he orders a different cocktail than what he usually has delivered to his sad little beachfront hideaway, it’ll be one of my men bringing it to him. If he even thinks about getting into a car, it’ll be missing three gaskets and the back right tire, and if anyone remotely connected with him takes a flight to Britain, it makes an emergency stop in Berlin, during which they are forcibly removed from the plane.” Milo’s voice was electric with hate. I shrank a little as he spoke. “I’ve stripped him of his resources and his connections. The last phone call he made was three weeks ago, to his sister Phillipa, and I had it terminated after one point three seconds.
“So to answer your question, if Lucien has something to do with Leander’s disappearance, he is better than me at my own game, and I am the best. I told my sister she shouldn’t worry, and so she won’t. We’ll sort this through.”
Holmes looked up at her brother questioningly. He stared back down at her, his face still tight with anger, until she lifted the enameled coffee pot to refill his mug. Marginally, he relaxed.
She turned to look back at the screens. When Milo spoke, he was his usual dour self again. “As for Hadrian Moriarty, he’s employing me.”
I coughed. August lowered his face into his hands.
“Explain,” Holmes said. She didn’t sound surprised.
“Why, Lottie. I thought you’d be able to figure it out.”
She took a breath. Thought about it. Then began ticking it off on her fingers. “The sort of services you’d provide to a man like that would be in the personal protection business. I can’t imagine that he’d employ your mercenaries for anything else, unless it was the transportation of legally dubious artwork from one country to another, and as most self-respecting governments loathe you and your ‘independent contractors’ as it is, I doubt you’d get your hands that dirty for the sake of a Moriarty. Sorry, August.”