“Investigation?”

“I’ve been following you, Perrone, and it is a good thing for you that I have, or you would be dead.”

“Like I said before, it’s debatable who saved who.”

“The man had his gun to your head, Perrone.”

“And then at yours,” I said.

“What did you stuff into your pants after the fight?”

I tugged the small painting out of my waistband and placed it on the table. “I always keep a spare in my pants.”

Smith didn’t laugh, stared at it a moment. “Whose painting is it?”

I considered telling him it was mine but told the truth. “Peruggia’s.”

“I’ll just hold onto that,” he said, “for evidence.”

“Evidence of what?”

He didn’t answer, instead told me he had already searched my Florence hotel room, had been through my laptop too, then slapped the journal onto the table.

“How did you get that?”

“INTERPOL credentials open doors. I asked the librarian what you’d been reading and might have implied you were under arrest, so she was particularly cooperative. I don’t think you’ll be welcomed back there. I thought it was a good idea to get the journal when I saw you were leaving Florence. A lot safer with me.”

“Yeah. I feel safer already.”

“I could have gone to the library anytime, you know, but I wanted to watch you, see what you were up to. You could have died tonight.” Smith sat back, locked his hands behind his head, said he knew I had come to Florence to read Vincenzo Peruggia’s journal, that he’d seen my correspondence with Luigi Quattrocchi.

I cut him off to say that Quattrocchi had been avoiding me, that he was missing.

“Quattrocchi is dead.”

“What?” I had known something was wrong, but still it was a shock.

“You don’t realize who you are dealing with, Perrone. There’s a network of art thieves and collectors out there who will stop at nothing to protect themselves and get what they want. That man tonight, he’ll be back. If not him, someone else.”

“Why?”

“I would venture to say that he—or the people he’s working for—think you know something important.”

“I don’t know anything.”

He leaned across the table, face close to mine, prickling with expectation. “You speak to Quattrocchi and he’s dead. You visit Étienne Chaudron and he’s dead—”

“I don’t know anything about that!” I bolted up, knocking my chair to the floor.

“Sit down,” Smith said.

I wavered a moment, then righted the chair and sat.

“What did Étienne Chaudron tell you about the Vermeer painting, the one in his living room?”

“That his great-uncle painted it.”

“Why did you take it off the wall?”

“It was already off when I got there. I stopped to look at it, that’s all.”

Smith eyed me coolly. “There are two dead bodies on the floor, but you take your time to look at a painting?”

I told him yeah, that I liked art, and his eyes went dark, almost black.

“You understand you are in serious trouble.”