ROBERTO KLIMT STEPPED OUT onto the balcony of his sumptuous apartment on the Via Veneto and watched the sun setting over his beautiful city.
Roberto Klimt considered himself a lover of beauty in all its forms. Tonight’s wine-red sun, bleeding into the Rome skyline. The Basquiat portrait hanging above his bed, showing two simian faces in a riot of yellow and red and blue. The perfect curve of the rent boy’s buttocks awaiting him in bed at his country house in Sabina, forty minutes outside the city. Roberto Klimt enjoyed and savored and delighted in them all.
I have them because I deserve them. Because I am a true artist.
Only true artists should be rewarded with true beauty.
Fifty years old and breathtakingly vain, with thick, dyed blond hair, a full-lipped, cruel, sensual mouth and the amber-yellow eyes of a snake, Roberto Klimt was an art dealer, businessman and pedophile, although not necessarily in that order. He made his first ten million in crooked real estate deals, cutting in the corrupt local police on a piece of the action from day one. The next ninety million came from art, a business for which Roberto Klimt had a uniquely brilliant commercial eye.
Roberto Klimt knew what beauty was, but he also knew how to sell it. As a result, he lived like a latter-day Roman emperor—rich beyond his wildest dreams, debauched, corrupt and answerable to no one.
A late-summer breeze chilled him slightly. Frowning, he withdrew from the balcony into his palatial drawing room, closing the tall sash windows behind him.
“Bring me a blanket!” he commanded, to no one in particular. Roberto Klimt kept a fleet of servants in all his homes. He was never quite sure what any one of them did, but he found that if one had enough milling around, one’s desires were always promptly catered to. “And bring me the bowl. I want to look at the damned bowl.”
Moments later, a pretty, dark-haired boy with long eyelashes and an adorably dimpled chin presented his master with a saffron-yellow cashmere throw from Loro Piana—with fall approaching, Roberto Klimt only tolerated an autumnal palette in his soft furnishings—and a locked, Plexiglas case containing a small, solid gold bowl.
Roberto Klimt unlocked the case with a key he kept on a platinum chain around his neck and cupped the bowl lovingly in his hands, the way a mother might cradle a newborn child.
No bigger than a modern-day dessert bowl, and entirely unadorned by any carving or decoration, the bowl was an object lesson in simplicity. Burnished and dazzling, its sides worn thin and smooth by two thousand years’ worth of hands caressing it, it seemed to Roberto to glow with some sort of magical power.
“This belonged to the Emperor Nero, you know?” he purred to the boy who’d delivered it. “His lips would have touched it just here. Right where mine are now.”
Roberto Klimt pressed his wet, fleshy mouth against the metal, leaving a glistening trail of saliva in its wake.
“Would you like to try?”
“No, thank you, sir. I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”
“TRY!” Roberto Klimt commanded.
Blushing, the boy did as he was asked.
“You see?” Klimt smiled, satisfied. “You’ve just touched greatness. How does it feel?”
The boy stammered helplessly.
“Never mind.” Klimt dismissed him with a curt wave. “Philistine,” he muttered under his breath. This was the cross that Roberto Klimt had to bear, to be surrounded constantly by lesser mortals, people incapable of grasping the true nature of beauty.
Still, he consoled himself, it was the cross borne by all great artists. A noble suffering.
Tomorrow, Roberto Klimt would leave Rome for his country house. Nero’s bowl would follow a few days later. Klimt employed an elite private security team to protect his treasures. The head of this team had informed Roberto a few days ago about a rumored plot to rob the Via Veneto apartment.
“It’s nothing concrete. Just rumors and whispers. Some hotshot foreign thief’s in town apparently. He likes the sound of your collection.”
“I’ll bet he does!” Roberto Klimt laughed. A thief would have a better chance of infiltrating Fort Knox than of circumventing his state-of-the-art security. Even so, he’d been guided by his expert’s advice and agreed to move Nero’s bowl and a couple more of his rarest pieces to Sabina. The only private residence in Italy better protected than Roberto Klimt’s Rome apartment was Roberto Klimt’s country estate. He would be there himself to oversee the bowl’s installation in his newly redesigned “Treasures Room,” and would enjoy the rent boy’s body while he awaited its arrival.
The boy was eighteen and had been paid handsomely in advance for his services. Roberto Klimt preferred them younger, and unwilling—feigned submission was a poor substitute for the real thing. But after the unfortunate incident with the two Roma Gypsy boys who’d gone and jumped off a building after an alleged encounter with the art dealer, Roberto Klimt had been forced to become more cautious.
Damned Gypsies. Human vermin, the lot of them.
There were those in Rome’s high society who made apologies for them. Liberals, who excused their ugliness and filth and thievery on the grounds that they were poor. Roberto Klimt despised such people. Roberto had been poor himself once and considered it a grave stain on his reputation and good name.
He would rather die than go back to that life.
JEFF STEVENS CHECKED IN to the Hotel de Russie under the name Anthony Duval. Gunther gave him the brief.
“Anthony Duval, dual French/American citizenship, thirty-six years old. Lectures at the Sorbonne and acts as an art consultant to numerous wealthy collectors in Paris and New York. He’s in Rome to make some acquisitions.”
“I hope Anthony likes the good things in life?” asked Jeff.
“Naturally.”
“How does he feel about the Hotel de Russie?”
“He only ever books the Nijinsky Suite.”
“I like him already.”
The girl at the check-in desk was a knockout, dark and voluptuous, like a 1950s Italian film star. “Your suite is ready for you, Mr. Duval. Would you like some help with your luggage? Or . . . anything else?”
For a split second Jeff considered the promising possibilities implied by “anything else.” But he restrained himself. The job Gunther had sent him on was complicated and dangerous. He couldn’t afford any distractions.
“No thank you. Just the key.”
The Nijinsky Suite was spectacular. On the top floor of the hotel, it boasted an enormous king-size bed and flat-screen TV, a marble, mosaic-tiled bathroom with a sunken bathtub, a living room and office area stuffed with priceless antiques, and a terrace with breathtaking views of the Pincio and the rooftops of Rome. Jeff showered, changed into linen trousers and a duck-egg-blue shirt that perfectly complemented his gray eyes and headed for the Russie’s famous “secret garden.”
“Will you be dining with us tonight, Mr. Duval?”
“Not tonight.”
Jeff ordered a double gin and tonic and strolled through the garden. The man he was waiting for sat quietly beneath the bougainvillea, reading La Repubblica newspaper. He wore a handlebar mustache and sideburns, and even sitting down, he was, Jeff could see, unusually tall. Not exactly the gray man in the crowd he’d been hoping for.
“Marco?”
“Mr. Duval. A pleasure.”
Jeff sat down. “You’re here alone? I was expecting two of you.”
“Ah, yes. My partner experienced an unexpected delay. We will meet him tomorrow at the foot of the Spanish Steps at ten, if that’s convenient?”
It wasn’t convenient. It was irritating. Jeff disliked working with other people. With the exception of Tracy, he lived by the rule that you could never trust a con artist and preferred jobs that he could pull off alone. Unfortunately, robbing Roberto Klimt of the Emperor Nero’s bowl, the centerpiece of one of the most closely guarded private collections in the world, did not fit into that category.
“Marco and Antonio are the best,” Gunther Hartog had assured him. “They’re both world class at what they do.”
And what exactly do they do, Gunther? Jeff thought now. Hang out in bars looking like the strongman from a traveling circus and blow off important meetings? Worse than that, someone had obviously been bragging about the planned heist. Jeff had heard whispers almost the moment he got off the plane. He knew he hadn’t said anything, and Gunther was far too discreet. Which only left one of these clowns.
Jeff waited for a woman to walk by before whispering in Marco’s ear.
“Everything has to be ready by tomorrow night. You both need to know your roles inside out. Wednesday is our one shot to do this, you do realize that?”
“Of course.”
“There can be no more delays.”
“Don’t worry, my friend.” The mustachioed man smiled broadly. “We have completed many such jobs in Roma in the past. Very many.”
“Not like this you haven’t,” said Jeff. “I’ll see you both at ten. Don’t be late.”
LATER THAT NIGHT, IN bed, he turned on his laptop and reread the file Gunther had sent him on Roberto Klimt. Revulsion and anger swept through him again, hardening his resolve.
A notorious predator, Klimt had sexually abused and raped two young Gypsy boys two years ago. Posing as a wealthy mentor who could offer them an education and a better life, he had paid the boys’ mother a thousand euros to have them accompany him on a tour of Europe. The older child reported Klimt to the authorities on their return to Rome, but thanks to the art dealer’s connections and deep pockets, the case never made it to trial. A few weeks later, rejected by their own families thanks to some obscure Roma honor code, the boys leaped from the roof of a tenement building to their deaths. They were ten and twelve years old.
Jeff would never forget Wilbur Trawick, the disgusting old tarot-card reader at his uncle Willie’s carnival. Wilbur had abused countless carnie kids before he made a pass at Jeff, who had ended the old man’s career with a deftly placed knee to groin. Wilbur Trawick had been grotesque, but he had never wielded the kind of power of a man like Roberto Klimt. Klimt knew that the law couldn’t touch him.
But I can, thought Jeff. I’m going to hit him where it hurts.
He prayed Gunther was right about Marco and Antonio, that they wouldn’t let him down. Jeff’s plan was bold and daring, but it required absolute precision timing, and it could not be done alone.
Klimt’s security team was SAS standard. Thanks to somebody’s loose lips, they already knew that Nero’s bowl was a target.
Jeff felt the adrenaline begin to pump through his veins.
It was on.
“HIS NAME IS JEFF Stevens and he’s posing as an art dealer.”
Roberto Klimt was irritated. He was supposed to be at his country house by now, enjoying a professional blow job from his beautiful new boy. Instead he was still in Rome, locked in a meeting with the head of his security team, a fat, middle-aged man with sweat patches the size of dinner plates under each arm.
“He’s checked in at the Russie under the name ‘Duval.’ ”
“So? Have him arrested,” Klimt snapped. “I don’t have time for this nonsense.”
“Unfortunately he has not yet committed a crime. The police have an irritating reluctance to arrest apparently innocent foreign citizens going about their business.”
“Are you tailing him?”
The security expert looked affronted. “Of course. It appears he is planning to hit the apartment. He met with one of the top safe crackers in Southern Europe yesterday, Marco Rizzolio.”
Roberto Klimt thought for a while.
“Should we move the bowl today? As an additional precaution?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. I want to make sure the transit is totally secure. Angelo’s sick, so I’m still vetting the new driver. But we can move it tomorrow. That’s a day earlier than planned and should be enough to throw off our Mr. Stevens and his friend.”
Roberto Klimt stretched and yawned, like a bored cat. “I’ll stay another night too, in that case. I don’t like to leave it here in the apartment without me. I’ll also put in a call to my friends at the police department. See if we can’t nudge them a little.”
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Klimt. My team and I can handle this. To be frank, police involvement may do more harm than good.”
“I don’t doubt that you are taking the necessary precautions. But I want to see this Jeff Stevens character spend the rest of his life in an Italian jail. For that, we need the Polizia. It will all be off the record, don’t worry.”
He picked up the phone and began to dial.
JEFF CALLED GUNTHER.
“I have a bad feeling about this job. Something’s wrong.”
“My dear boy, you always have a bad feeling the night before. It’s stage fright, nothing more.”
“Your guys, Marco and Antonio. You trust them?”
“Completely. Why?”
Jeff told Gunther about the rumors that were sweeping through Rome’s underworld. “Someone’s leaking like a sieve. I’ve had to change the plan twice already. You should see that apartment! Dogs, laser tracking, armed guards. Klimt sleeps with the bowl at night like it’s his teddy bear. They’re waiting for us.”
“Good,” said Gunther.
“Easy for you to say.”
“Do the police know anything?”
“No. All quiet on that front.”
“Even better.”
“Yeah, but we need to move quickly. Even the Italians will wake up and smell the espresso eventually.”
“So when . . . ?”
“Tomorrow. I just hope Antonio’s up to it. He seems so laissez-faire about the whole thing, but if anyone recognizes him in that car . . .”
“You’ll be fine, Jeff.”
Gunther hung up. Jeff wished he felt reassured.
You can still pull out, he told himself. It’s not too late.
Then he thought about the two little Roma boys. It was too late for them.
Go to hell, Roberto Klimt. Tomorrow’s the day.
“TOMORROW’S THE DAY.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Police chief Luigi Valaperti tapped his desk nervously. His source had better be right. Roberto Klimt was not a man Chief Valaperti wished to disappoint, under any circumstances. His predecessor had retired three years ago to a palatial apartment in Venice, bought and paid for by the art dealer. Chief Valaperti already had his eye on a villa outside Pisa. Or more accurately, his wife did. He and his mistress preferred the two-bedroom love nest overlooking the Colosseum, a deal at under two million euros. Klimt probably has bigger dry-cleaning bills. But Luigi Valaperti wasn’t greedy.
“His henchmen are doing the legwork,” the source went on. “You can catch them in the act, make yourself a hero, then pick up Stevens at the airport later. He’ll be trying to board the eight P.M. BA flight to London.”
“Without the bowl?”
“He’ll have the bowl. Or what he thinks is the bowl. We know the drop-off location, so you can plant a decoy.”
Chief Valaperti frowned. “And exactly how did you come by this information? How do I know we can trust . . .”
The line went dead.
ROBERTO KLIMT GAZED OUT of the tinted window of his armored town car as they left the city behind. The hills around Rome, dotted with poplar trees and firs and ancient villas whose terra-cotta-tiled roofs balanced precariously atop crumbling stone walls, had barely changed since the Emperor Nero’s day. Cupping the gold bowl lovingly in his hands, Klimt imagined that legendary, insane, all-powerful man making this very same journey, leaving the stresses of Rome behind for the peace and pleasures of the countryside. Roberto Klimt felt a sublime kinship with Nero in this moment. The priceless gold artifact in his lap belonged to him for a reason. It was meant to be his. The pleasure and pride that that one bowl brought him was immense.
He wondered when, exactly, “Anthony Duval” and his accomplices would make their move on his apartment. Roberto Klimt imagined the scene. The alarms ringing out across the Via Veneto, the metal grilles slamming shut, the police, already waiting in force in the surrounding streets and alleyways, moving in for the kill. He smiled.
Chief Valaperti was a stupid man, but he knew on which side his bread was buttered. He had wisely diverted considerable resources to catching these vicious thieves, even though he knew that the bowl itself was safe. Roberto Klimt was looking forward to meeting the audacious Mr. Jeff Stevens in person. Perhaps at his trial? Or later, in the privacy of Jeff’s prison cell. Apparently Stevens had outwitted some of the finest galleries, jewelers and museums in the world during his long criminal career, along with a prestigious smattering of private collectors.
He met his match with me, Roberto Klimt thought smugly.
“Not long to go now, sir.” The driver’s voice rang out through the intercom. Irritatingly. Klimt’s usual driver, Angelo, would never have been so impertinent as to interrupt his master’s thoughts with an unsolicited comment. Roberto Klimt wondered where his security chief had dug up this specimen. “We’ve been lucky with the traffic.”
At exactly that moment, two police cars, their sirens wailing, drew up behind them.
“What on earth . . . ?”
Klimt gripped the car door for dear life as his driver accelerated, so suddenly that the bowl almost flew onto the floor.
“Are you out of your mind?” he roared. “Pull over! It’s the police.”
Ignoring him, the driver weaved insanely across two lanes of traffic, setting off a cacophony of beeping.
“I said pull over, you imbecile!”
Klimt caught the panicked expression on the driver’s face as he turned sharply right off the autoroute. They were going so fast that for one awful moment Roberto Klimt thought that the car was about to flip over, killing them both. Instead, one of the police cars shot past them and pulled directly in front, forcing the driver to brake. They skidded to a halt on the side of the road.
“The bowl!” yelled the driver. He’d opened the partition to the backseat and was leaning through it menacingly. “Give me the bowl.”
“Never!” Klimt cowered on the backseat, covering the bowl with his body like Gollum protecting his precious ring.
“For heaven’s sake. Give it to me! We don’t have much time.”
A huge policeman yanked open the driver’s door. After a brief struggle, the driver was knocked out by a sharp blow to the back of the head. Roberto Klimt let out a frightened squeal as the unconscious man slumped down on top of him.
“Are you all right, Mr. Klimt?”
Two other policemen had appeared at the window. There were three of them in all.
Klimt nodded.
“Sorry to panic you like that,” said the giant. “But we learned at the last minute that Jeff Stevens had changed his plan. Your driver’s real name is Antonio Maldini. He’s a con artist, quite brilliant. Interpol has been after him for a decade.”
“But my security people are the best in Italy . . .” Klimt spluttered. “This man was thoroughly vetted.”
The policeman shrugged. “Like I say, Maldini’s a pro. Faking a background check’s nothing for this dude. Nor is hard-core violence. Antonio Maldini’s a known sadist. He’d have beaten you to a pulp and left you for dead before he took that bowl.”
Roberto Klimt shivered.
“We picked up his accomplice, Marco Rizzolio at dawn this morning,” said the giant policeman.
“And Jeff Stevens?”
The big man glanced at his partners and frowned.
“We don’t have him yet, sir. We raided his hotel this morning, but it appears he was one step ahead of us.”
“He won’t get far, Mr. Klimt,” one of the other cops added, watching the art dealer’s expression darken. “Chief Valaperti has set up roadblocks around the city. We have an alert out at the airport.”
Antonio Maldini made a low, groaning sound. He was clearly beginning to come around. One of the cops handcuffed him and, with his colleagues’ help, bundled him into the back of one of the police cars.
“Chief Valaperti’s asked us to escort you back to the city,” said the giant. “We’ll need you to make a statement. And I’m afraid the artifact the gang was after will have to be impounded as evidence.”
“I don’t care about that,” muttered Klimt. “Just catch that bastard Stevens.”
“Oh, we will, sir. Don’t worry. His entire plan’s just blown up in his face, Mr. Klimt. He won’t get away now.”
THE DRIVE BACK TO Rome took less than forty minutes. Antonio Maldini, still handcuffed to the door, slipped in and out of consciousness beside Roberto Klimt as they pulled up in convoy outside the police headquarters building on the Piazza di Spagna.
“Wait here please, sir.” One of the policemen carefully took the gold bowl with a gloved hand, slipping it into a clear plastic evidence bag. “Chief Valaperti would like to escort you inside himself. He’s arranged a private interview room.”
“What about him?” Roberto Klimt gestured nervously toward Maldini.
“He can’t hurt you now, Mr. Klimt.” The policeman glanced smugly at the handcuffed man. “Although if you’d prefer to have one of my men wait with you . . .”
“No, no.” Roberto Klimt was too vain to admit to feeling threatened, especially in front of such a good-looking young cop. “That won’t be necessary. Just hurry up, would you? I’d like to get this over with.”
“Of course.”
The three policemen hurried into the building, locking the car behind them. Roberto Klimt heard the doors click. He looked uneasily at the man slumped beside him. A few hours ago, Antonio Maldini had planned to beat and rob him, leaving him for dead by the roadside. The big policeman’s words came back to him. He’s a con artist. Quite brilliant. A sadist too.
Roberto Klimt’s nerves returned. Antonio Maldini had already outwitted his security team. Was it really beyond him to get himself out of a pair of handcuffs? He might wake up and overpower me. He might take me hostage! He’s a desperate man after all.
Five minutes passed. Then ten.
No sign of the policemen, or Chief Valaperti. It was getting hot in the car. Maldini was groaning, muttering about the bowl. Soon he would be fully awake.
This is ridiculous.
Roberto Klimt tried to open the door, only to find it was locked from the inside as well as the outside. He flipped the unlock button. Nothing happened.
Feeling his panic build, he attempted to scramble into the front seat. With his blond hair flapping and his tie askew, he knew he looked ridiculous with his backside wedged between the back and front of the car, but he didn’t care. Collapsing at last into the driver’s seat, he discovered that that door didn’t open either.
“Let me out!” He hammered on the windows, to the amused astonishment of passersby. “I’m trapped! For God’s sake, let me out!”
THE THREE POLICEMEN WALKED casually out of the side door of the headquarters building. They walked a few blocks together before shaking hands, parting ways and evaporating into the city.
All three of them were smiling.
CHIEF VALAPERTI WAS STILL in his car outside Roberto Klimt’s Via Veneto apartment when he got the call.
“He’s what?” The color drained from Valaperti’s face. “I don’t understand. In one of our cars? That’s not possible.”
“It was definitely Klimt, sir. He was in there for more than an hour. Right outside headquarters, yes. Hundreds of people saw him, but they assumed he was some madman we’d picked up. By the time it was reported to us, he was delirious with heatstroke. He kept saying something about a bowl . . .”
GUNTHER HARTOG DABBED AWAY tears of laughter with a monogrammed linen handkerchief.
“So you just sauntered off into the street, with Nero’s bowl tucked under your arm? How marvelous.”
“Marco and Antonio were faultless on the day,” said Jeff. He was sitting on the red Knoll sofa at Gunther’s country house, enjoying a well-earned glass of claret.
“I told you they were good.”
“I felt bad for the poor driver, though. What a pro! He knew what was happening right away. Never slowed down for a second when we tried to pull him over. Even when we ran him off the road, he was trying to get Klimt to give him the bowl so he could get it to safety. But the old fool wouldn’t let go of it.”
“I do love that you left him outside the Polizia di Stato building. A wonderful theatrical flourish, if I may say so.”
“Thanks.” Jeff grinned. “I thought so. Tracy would have loved it.”
Her name had come to his lips unbidden. It hung in the air now like a ghost, sucking all the celebration and bonhomie out of the atmosphere in an instant.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?”
Gunther Hartog shook his head sadly. For a few moments a heavy silence fell.
“Well,” Gunther said at last. “My client, the Hungarian collector, couldn’t be more delighted with his acquisition. I wired our Italian friends their cut last night. And here, my dear boy, is yours.”
He handed Jeff a check. It was from Coutts, the private investment bank, in his name, and it had an obscenely large number written on it.
“No thanks.” Jeff handed it back.
Gunther looked perplexed. “What do you mean ‘no thanks.’ It’s yours. You’ve earned it.”
“I don’t need it,” said Jeff.
“I’m not sure I see what ‘need’ has to do with it.”
“All right, then. I don’t want it.” Jeff sounded more angry than he’d intended to. “Sorry, Gunther. But money doesn’t help me. It doesn’t mean anything. Not anymore.”
Gunther gave a nod of understanding. “You must give it away, then,” he said. “If it can’t help you, I’m sure it can help someone else. But that’s your decision, Jeff. I can’t keep it.”
TWO WEEKS LATER, AN article appeared in Leggo’s Rome edition under the headline TINY CHARITY RECEIVES REMARKABLE GIFT.
Roma Relief, an almost unknown nonprofit organization devoted to helping Gypsy families in some of Rome’s worst slums, received an anonymous donation of more than half a million euros.
The mystery donor asked that the money be used to set up a fund in memory of Nico and Fabio Trattini, two Roma brothers who died in an accidental fall from a condemned building two years ago.
“We’re incredibly grateful,” Nicola Gianotti, Roma Relief’s founder told us in an emotional interview. “Overwhelmed, really. Thank God for the kindness of strangers.”
