A Long Time Coming by Aaron Elkins

Author:Aaron Elkins [Elkins, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503902381
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2018-08-06T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The entrance to Dante’s apartment—actually two apartments; he had the upper two floors of the building, plus a storeroom at the rear of the ground floor—was between the café and a small optician’s shop, both probably catering to the factory employees. Today being Sunday, the factory was closed, as was the shop. The café was open, but only a couple of tables were occupied. Two aproned waiters stood smoking and chatting in the doorway. They waved at Dante, who granted them a cursory nod.

Beside the door to the building was a blackened, easy-to-miss brass plate with two engraved lines:

D. ZAMPA

RESTAURATORE DELLA PITTURA

I couldn’t imagine that it had ever brought him a scrap of new business (who wanders down an out-of-the-way little neighborhood street like this looking for a painting restorer?) but I suppose it served as confirmation to new customers that they had found the place, and the man, that they were looking for. Below the plate was an even smaller keypad.

With his finger halfway to it, he paused. “It’s up a flight of stairs. I have another entrance in back, with an elevator. If you’d—”

“This is fine.”

Shrug. Onward continued the finger, and five numbers were slowly punched in. He was so measured and deliberate about it that I pretty much couldn’t avoid seeing the first four: 2-0-1-4. I looked away, feeling as if I were snooping. Once inside, in a cramped foyer, we faced a narrow, two-flight stairway with a landing between the flights. “The Renoirs are in here,” Dante told me as we reached the landing. “This is my studio. I live above, but sometimes, when the work’s going well and I keep at it through the night, I catch a nap down here.”

There was another keypad beside this door and this time I watched more closely as he worked it. Now I wanted to see if someone could actually get the whole combination just by standing next to him. And I could, easy as pie: 2-0-1-4-8. The same number as on the street-level pad, then, or close enough not to matter.

Not for the first time, I shook my head at the lack of care people gave their works of art. And not only people, but museums, famous museums. Off the top of my head, I could give you examples of cultural treasures and art objects successfully stolen from museums not because ingenious thieves had evaded the motion detectors and heat sensors by rappelling down from the skylights with ropes and pulleys (although that has most assuredly happened, and not just in the movies), but simply because the place was wide open. Somebody had neglected to turn on the alarm system, or it was getting its monthly servicing, or it had never been installed in the first place, or it just didn’t work right from Day One, and someday, darn it, they were going to have to do something about it: everything from the theft of the priceless (and I mean literally) solid gold Aztec and Mayan

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