Murder at the National Gallery by Margaret Truman Read Free Book Online

only half a glass of red table wine, so he knew his discomfort wasn’t from alcohol. His face felt hot; was he visibly flushed? he wondered. He started to explain to Sensi howthings would progress but stopped in midsentence. The truth was that in this circumstance, and under these conditions, he was incapable of rational dialogue.
    Giliberti jumped in. “Signor Sensi, I realize what my good friend has proposed is highly unusual. But you and I have done business before, huh? Many times. And we have never had trouble between us. Am I correct?”
    The groundhog nodded.
    “And so I come to you with my friend, Mr. Mason, who is respected in the United States as a man of honor and integrity. He has carefully thought about what he proposes and has explained it to me in great detail. I understand what it is he wishes to do. I support his plan. I only ask that you trust him as an extension of your faith in me.”
    Without warning, Sensi motioned for his bodyguards to stand. He placed his misshapen hands on the table. “Then we will do business,” he said to Luther. Sensi was up now. One of his guards handed him a cane, and he lumbered away from the table, the young men following closely behind.
    Mason drew a deep, audible sigh of relief. Giliberti said, “See? I told you I could arrange it.”
    “But what about my opportunity to examine it?” Mason said.
    “Oh, I am relieved you did not insult him by questioning that,” Giliberti replied. “Everything is arranged for tomorrow morning. You will see it then. Now, I suggest we celebrate.”
    By the time Mason extricated himself from Giliberti at a lively, loud discotheque on the water’s edge, where they were joined by a voluptuous young blond woman whose only interest seemed to be to hang on Giliberti—who said she was a cousin he hadn’t seen in a while—his head was pounding, and a fiery heartburn had set in. He was also drunk, a condition he hadn’t experienced in years until getting better acquainted with Giliberti, and stumbled twice on the way up the steep steps from the waterfront to the hotel.
    He stood on the terrace outside his room and looked over the tranquil, shimmering sea. He had done it. All the months of planning were now about to be converted into action. How long had it been since Carlo Giliberti first told him of the existenceof the painting? Six months? Seven? There had been two previous trips to meet with the old mafioso, Luigi Sensi, but each meeting had been canceled at the last minute. “He is a very cautious man,” Carlo had explained. And ruthless, Luther knew. He’d never before met anyone involved in organized crime. The Mafia? La Cosa Nostra? He didn’t even know the proper term. If he’d been told a year ago that he’d be sitting down to dinner with such a man, he would have scoffed at the suggestion. If he’d been told he would be poised to do something … irregular beyond that, that, too, he would have dismissed as folly.
    But here he was, in Italy, having come from dinner with a “Godfather”—was Sensi called that?—should he have kissed his ring?—and about to meet with him again in the morning.
    He sat and wrapped his arms about himself. He suffered, at once, a rush of excitement tinged with almost religious joy and a powerful feeling of dread. Then he started to shake. His stomach went into a spasm that caused him to double over, followed by nausea, and soon its release in the bathroom.
    He fell onto the bed in a cold sweat and continued to shake until sleep calmed him.
    The Italian sun had not yet made an appearance when Giliberti and Mason drove away from the hotel in Giliberti’s Fiat. The forecast was for a sunny, pleasant day with low humidity.
    Because Giliberti seemed unsure of the route, he drove more slowly than usual. Mason was not displeased, and neither was his stomach. They passed through lush farmland as they traveled inland from the coast, past fields of sheep and large grape arbors that looked like