I didn’t answer, slipped off my jacket, pushed my shirt sleeves up, wanted him to see my muscles and tattoos—my version of a big-dick contest.

Smith rolled up his sleeves. No tats, but his muscles were bigger than mine.

He told me that the Vermeer was on its way to a lab for testing to see if Yves Chaudron had painted it or if it was, in fact, the original. If the paints and solvents dated earlier than Chaudron, then the painting would go to the Gardner Museum for further tests. Then he asked again why I had taken it off the wall. When I didn’t answer, he slammed his hands down on the table so hard, it rocked.

I kept my cool, repeated the painting was already on the floor, or maybe it had fallen off when that thug attacked.

He glared at me, a muscle in his jaw twitching, asked why I’d gone to see Étienne Chaudron, and I told him the truth—that I’d been reading about his great-uncle, Yves, the art forger, so I wanted to meet him. “If you have the journal,” I said, “then you know what Peruggia wrote.”

Smith sucked in a breath, something behind those dark eyes I couldn’t read. “Truth for truth, Perrone?”

I waited; a flickering overhead light added a kinetic throb to the moment.

“A deal of sorts. I have the journal but haven’t read it, because I don’t read Italian. For that, I’ll need an interpreter.”

“I’m sure you have plenty at INTERPOL.”

“True.” Smith paused. “But I want someone discreet. I want you.”

I saw it in his face: Smith had no intention of turning the journal over to INTERPOL. I didn’t know why, but now I had something he wanted. “Why should I help you?”

“Because the games are over, Perrone, and you’re in trouble. I may be the only friend you have, your only chance.”

I laughed, and that did it. Smith reached out and grabbed me by my shirt, a vein in his temple pulsing. “Luigi Quattrocchi is dead! Étienne Chaudron and his girlfriend are dead! The girl’s blood on your phone, your shirt, your hands!”

“You trying to pin that on me?” I wrenched free. “You know I had nothing to do with that. Fuck you, Smith!”

“What I know and what I will tell the French police are two different things. You get my drift, buddy?”

“I’m not your buddy.”

“You got that right,” Smith said. “You will be arrested and found guilty when an INTERPOL agent testifies against you.”

“Fuck you,” I said again, but much of the fight had gone out of my words. I could see it, my arrest and trial spooling out in front of me, the obvious verdict.

“You play ball with me, or that’s it—you’re a guilty man. And believe me, the French prisons are not nearly as nice as the ones in the States, and from what I know, those aren’t very nice at all.”

I fought the urge to throw a punch, took a deep breath, tried to think. Smith would learn what he needed from the journal anyway, no reason not to tell him. I asked him what he wanted to know, and he said, “Everything.”