Firetrap by Otho Eskin

Author:Otho Eskin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I HURRY UP the front steps of my house.

And freeze. An electric shock runs through my body.

My front door stands wide open. I’m sure I double-locked it when I left the house.

The lights in my living room are out. But I can just make out the form of a woman sitting in semidarkness.

“You broke into my home. That’s criminal trespass, Carla. Or something. Should I call the police?”

“Shut up, Marko.” Carla, the head of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division, does not seem impressed by my threat about the police. “Criminal trespass is the least of your problems.”

“How in hell did you get in?”

“That’s a trade secret.”

“The locks on my doors are supposed to be impenetrable.”

“Guess again. Sit down! You’re making me nervous pacing around like that.”

“May I ask why you broke into my house and are sitting in my living room?”

“We need to discuss the Stewart Gardner Museum robbery.”

“That was thirty years ago.”

“That theft is a black eye for the FBI. And for me personally. I want to clear the record.”

“Why is it a black eye for you?”

“A few years after the robbery, I was assigned to the FBI’s Boston field office. I was a brand-new recruit in those days and a very junior officer. I was assigned the Gardner case, among others. We never solved the robbery.”

“What’s your real interest? There have been hundreds of robberies since then.”

“Nothing on the scale of the Gardner Museum robbery. The largest art theft in American history. On my watch. I can’t let it go.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“One of the pieces of priceless art stolen was a painting by Johannes Vermeer called The Concert. You’ve recently been talking with some very unsavory characters involved in buying and selling stolen art. The Concert keeps coming up.”

I was expecting the vultures to show up. Not this particular bird. “Have you been listening in on my phone calls?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Marko. We may have been monitoring some of your scuzzy friends, though. The Concert keeps being mentioned in your conversations. What do you know about the Gardner robbery?”

“Just that some guys broke into the museum and stole some paintings.”

“The details are important. On March 18, 1990, at one twenty-four in the morning, two men entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston dressed in Boston police uniforms. There were two guards on duty at the museum that night. They were essentially rent-a-cops. The thieves specifically targeted one painting. The Concert by Johannes Vermeer. We think the other paintings were just picked up as random targets of opportunity.

“Whoever planned the robbery was highly professional. The thieves knew the museum’s security system, the routines of the museum guards, when they were on their rounds, and how they communicated. The FBI suspected that a man named Digger Granger was somehow involved.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“He was a low-level, Boston crime figure at the time. We were never able to nail him. Digger Granger is now in prison serving two life sentences for a double murder.”

“Nice guy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.