The Flinck Connection (Book 4) (Genevieve Lenard) (19 page)

“Then deal with it.” I was convinced she was the key to understanding and interpreting all the evidence we’d gathered up to now. “I want to speak to her as soon as possible. Tonight even.”

“Not asking for much, now are you?” Manny grumbled, but I knew he was already thinking how to arrange a meeting with President Mariam Boussombo. “Why do you want to speak to her?”

“I think her life is in danger. Remember I told you about the Gabonese politician, Minister Paul Ngondet, visiting Minister Savreux? He was talking about a woman who was insisting on an independent commission to look into corruption. He also said that it would benefit everyone if she were to ‘dance her last dance’. I googled that phase to see what different interpretations it might have, and I saw a very disturbing meaning. What if they were planning her assassination?”

“Holy hell, Doc.” Manny put both hands on his head. “Now we’re adding a bloody hit on a president to the list of current disastrous situations?”

Francine was looking at her nails, stretching her fingers. “Do you want to know what I think?”

“No!” Vinnie, Manny and Colin spoke at the same time. I smiled at the men’s solidarity in this odd issue, and Francine’s unconvincing anger at their reaction.

“Doc, we’re going to have to be careful with this.”

“I know. Just because I am not naturally charming or manipulative doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the strong undercurrents of international politics.”

Manny nodded, his eyes losing focus as he rubbed his hands over his head a few times. I had full confidence that he was going to organise a meeting with Gabon’s president within a few hours. I turned back to my monitors. I also needed to strategise if I wanted to be prepared for a diplomatic meeting with a president.

“Doc G! Doc G!” Nikki ran into the room, her breathing erratic. “Oh good. Everyone’s here. I got another DM.”

Nikki shoved her phone at me. “Take it. I don’t want this. I think I’m buying a new phone after this stupid case.”

Colin took the phone before Manny could grab it. I wanted to ask Nikki about her reasoning behind getting a new phone, but knew the latest direct message took precedence.

“Well, Frey? What does it say?” Manny moved from one foot to the other.

“It’s another address.” Colin tilted the phone. “
‘Manet @ 381 Rue Danielle. High five, low rectitude.’
”

“The address is all good and dandy. What the bleeding hell does the rest mean? What is ‘rectitude’?”

“Moral virtue,” I said absently. “Also rightness in principle or conduct.”

“If anyone is interested?” Colin waited until he had everyone’s attention. “Manet’s Chez Tortini was also stolen from the Gardner museum in Boston. Anyone want to bet that this is the Chez Tortini?”

“It’s too obvious, dude. I’m not the brains in this outfit, but even I know that it will be the Chaz Tortellini.”

Colin smiled at Vinnie’s many incorrect statements. The tall man didn’t have my IQ, but he was not dim-witted. He had the type of intelligence that Francine called street smarts. I would unquestioningly accept Vinnie’s advice about situations outside of my expertise. He knew how to deal with dangerous people, violent situations and even how to make friends with a chilli dog vendor. Those were innate skills I sorely lacked.

“Jenny?”

I looked up to see everyone watching me. “What?”

“What do you think about the last sentence?”

I played with the four words in my mind. “Nothing. It’s simply too little to go by. At least in that other case we had, the professor sent us decent cryptic clues. These are just a few words, no context, and we’re expected to make assumptions. It almost appears as if this person is trying to sound intelligent or cryptic just to gain our attention. I don’t even know what to make of the high five.”

Vinnie and Nikki looked at each other, smiled and slapped each other’s palms high in the air.

“That’s a high five, Jen-girl.” Vinnie nudged Nikki with his shoulder. “A lower high five for me, because punk is so short.”

“I’m not short. You’re freakishly tall.” She punched him on his shoulder. Vinnie smiled.

“We need to know who owns this house.” My mind was working at top speed now. “The last two addresses gave us Minister Claude Savreux and René Motte. We’ve been able to connect them to the Libreville Dignity Foundation, Elf and Gabon. This next person might be another connection to these two men and all the other elements in this case. It might help us find the nucleus of this case—what, or who, everything is revolving around.”

“And what these idiots are planning,” Manny said. He rubbed his stubbly cheek for a few seconds and looked at me. “To show you just how trusting I am, I’m going to let Frey handle this one.”

“Rock on, handsome.” Francine kissed her fingertips and blew over it towards Manny.

He rolled his eyes. “I’ve been getting calls from little Henri all day. Apparently he now wants to meet with me at Minister Antoine Lefebvre’s offices. I’ve got to handle this to keep them off our backs. Frey, you go to this address. Take the criminal with you. Do not, I repeat, do not get caught. That task force has it in for you and I don’t know why yet. If you get caught, I don’t know what the top brass will do to get you out of their clutches.”

“Oh, keep your panties on, Millard. I’m not going to get caught.” Even though Colin attempted annoyance, the acceptance of Manny’s trust was there on his face. I wondered why he wasn’t more concerned about the task force. “Vin will back me up. We’ll be in and out before you can say, ‘bloody hell’.”

Everyone laughed, except Manny. “Watch your back, Frey. You too, criminal.”

“Aw, old man. Look at you caring about us.”

Manny ignored Vinnie. “Doc, I’m going to do my best to get you your meeting with the president of Gabon. I don’t promise anything, but I’ll try. For now, I want you to stay here. You don’t leave. Neither does Nikki. Supermodel, you also stay here. I don’t want to worry about you gals.”

I shut out Francine’s weak arguments against Manny’s chauvinism, expecting the little women to stay in the kitchen and cook. She wasn’t making sense and I wanted to get back to my computers. Manny’s orders had been rational and I had seen no reason to dispute his decisions.

“Jenny, will you be okay here?”

I studied Colin’s expression. “Why are you asking me when you know I’ll be safe and content working in my viewing room?”

“Double-checking.”

I turned towards my computers. “I can see that you are comfortable leaving me here. You should trust that. Go and find out whose house is at 381 Rue Danielle.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His tone was light.

I looked back at him until all his lightness turned serious. “Please be safe.”

He leaned closer to me until our noses touched. “I’ll make sure to come back to you in one piece, love.”

“I’ll make super sure of it, Jen-girl,” Vinnie said from the door. “I’ve got my man’s back.”

A few more unnecessary reassurances were given before the three men left. Nikki settled herself between the two filing cabinets with a sketchpad and Francine returned to her computers to find the names of the thirteen account holders. I sat back in my chair, crossed my legs and allowed Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major to organise my thoughts. The different threads of this case were beginning to untangle as we discovered more pertinent information. I hoped that Colin and Vinnie would return with even more information to help infuse more sense and connect the unconnected elements of this case.

“Love, we’re back.” Colin’s soft touch and relaxed tone pulled me out of the concerto. He was sitting next to me, dressed in black, a genuine smile lifting his cheeks. “It was a quick in and out. The maid was home, but
Vin kept her busy.”

“She wants to meet me for coffee later this week.” Vinnie was leaning against the doorway. “Poor thing is going to be heartbroken when I don’t show up.”

I took my time studying first Vinnie and then Colin. Both were unharmed from this recent breaking and entering. I was annoyed at the intense relief I felt. “Was the painting there?”

“Oh, yes.” Colin took out his smartphone and swiped the screen a few times. He handed it to me. “Hanging as large as life above the bed in the master bedroom. I got a nice close look while Vinnie was flirting. It’s the original Manet, Jenny. The real thing.”

The picture of the painting was small, but clear enough for me to see the man dressed in a black coat and top hat, sitting at a desk, writing something. Next to his hand holding the pen was a glass, and he was looking directly at the painter. It was simple and beautiful.

“This dude has some serious dough… er, money. Another rich asshole.” Vinnie folded his arms. “Poor people commit crimes out of desperation. I get that. These rich idiots who commit crimes for the fun of it? They’re bad seed, man.”

I inhaled, but Colin stopped me with his hand on my arm. “Don’t. You’ve had this argument with him before and it went around in circles for hours, remember?”

I remembered. Vinnie couldn’t see how his crimes fell in the same category as the ones he despised. For more than a year, I had suspected that Vinnie was committing crimes without any moral motivation, unlike Colin. Reappropriating art was Colin’s forte. He stole back property that was taken from their rightful owners. Vinnie never talked about his activities, but the more we worked together, the more I realised he had a strict moral code. He seemed to take great pleasure in betraying the trust of his criminal friends to other criminals in order to damage reputations, product quality and even lead them to be arrested. He had been successful in doing this while maintaining the appearance of a ruthless criminal.

“Jenny?”

“I’m listening. Vinnie is wasting time talking about all the expensive electronics in the house. Whose house is that?”

“A Monsieur J.L. Legrange.”

“J.L.?”

“There were a few certificates in his home office for that name.”

“I don’t know why people use initials for names,” Vinnie said. “Are they ashamed of their names or something?”

“Sometimes.” I’d had a classmate at university whose name was initials. It had triggered a bout of research. “For others it creates gender obscurity. For a writer, it is sometimes better to not have a gender attached to their name if they write in certain genres. Men writing romance novels, women writing thrillers. What is this J.L. Legrange’s profession?”

“Those certificates were all legal stuff, so I reckon he’s a lawyer.”

“I’ve got him here.” Francine walked into the viewing room, holding her laptop in front of her. She sat down on the third chair in my room and settled the computer on her lap. “As soon as the guys got in, I started checking out the name. His full name is Jean Louis Legrange. Maybe he felt too average with every Tom, Dick and Harry in France being named Jean Louis.”

“Why would…”

“Ooh, sorry, girlfriend. That’s just a silly saying. Ignore that. I’ve got juicier stuff here.” She pointed with both hands to her computer screen. “Our J.L. was René Motte’s lawyer during the Elf trials.”

“René Motte was prosecuted?” Colin asked.

“Yes.” I frowned. Had I not told him this? “Even though he left the oil company before France took ownership, he had brokered quite a few deals between the French government, Elf and the Gabonese government. Because of that, he was included in the investigations, indicted on a few crimes and tried. I hadn’t thought to check who represented him during the trial.”

“You can’t think of everything, Jenny.”

“I should.” I put aside my self-aimed annoyance and focussed on what I had learned. “The case against René Motte was quite strong, but it was not because of his actions. It was the deals he had brokered and the people he had been connected to. The prosecutor had built her case entirely on those facts, because she couldn’t find anything in his financial history, in his correspondence or anywhere else that incriminated him.”

“So it was mostly circumstantial evidence.”

“Yes, and that was why he was acquitted.”

“By the one and only J.L.” Francine tapped her nails on her computer. “Want to hear what other dirt I have on J.L.?”

“Shoot,” Vinnie said. He used this word often enough that I had early on surmised its meaning from the context.

“Like the other two men, he also studied law. But he’s quite a bit older than Savreux and Motte, so by the time they got their first internships, he was already working his way up to top lawyer in his company.”

“Where?” I asked.

“In Paris. It’s one of those fancy legal companies that only work for the rich and famous. And sometimes they come down from their thrones to do a pro bono case for the poor people so they can look good.” She waved her hand and her bracelets jingled. “Anyhoo, in 1995, he became one of the top guys in another legal firm, the one that represented quite a few of the forty executives, politicians and intermediaries prosecuted during the Elf trials. Motte was only one of his clients, but he won most of the other cases too. He has a very good reputation as a white-collar criminal lawyer.”

I thought about this while Vinnie complained about rich people. He was very opinionated today, the affluent his focus. Next time, it might be another demographic.

“What do these three men have in common other than stolen paintings from the Gardner heist?” I asked.

“They studied law. Ooh, let me quickly check.” Francine typed faster than I did and soon her nose crinkled. “They didn’t all study at the same university. Wait. Wait. Oh, my God.”

All of us leaned towards Francine, waiting for her to continue.

“All three of these men worked at FGMB in Paris. It is that top legal company I mentioned earlier, and it’s the place where they all began. Hmm. Let me just make sure.” She clicked around on her computer a few times. “Yup. Savreux and Motte started there as interns in 1980. At that time, J.L. was already working there. I don’t know what position he held, or if he even worked with the other two, but that puts them in the same company more than thirty years ago. As we know, Motte didn’t go for the lawyer thing. He left FGMB after only seven months in the company, went into engineering and onto the fertile fields of Elf.”

While Francine was talking, I looked for their photos and put it up on the three centre monitors. I tilted my head and studied these men who shared a history that stretched over thirty years. Colin shifted in his chair and I glanced at him. His expression caught my attention. “What do you see?”

“This.” He took his smartphone from my lap where I had absentmindedly put it. Four swipes later he handed it back to me. “I took a few photos while I was in J.L.’s house. This photo was in his home office in an obscure place. It looked like J.L. wanted to have this photo around, but not allow anyone else to see it. He had it pushed deep in between books, almost unnoticeable to any visitor.”

I looked at the photo on the small screen.

“Let me put this on one of the monitors.” Francine held out her hand and I gave her the phone. A few seconds later, she clicked around on my computer. The monitor below the three with the men’s photos filled with a portrait of four men in their early twenties in an obvious gay mood. Their hairstyles and clothing indicated that the photo was taken a few decades ago. Possible the late seventies, early eighties.