Midnight Angels Read Online Free PDF

that money, invest it wisely or gamble it away all in one night,” the thin man said. “It’s of no concern to me. But in return for taking it, you will work for me on one other assignment.”
    “For how long?”
    “It could be a day,” the thin man said with a shrug, “or it might last as long as a year. The only point that matters to me is that you agree to do it.”
    “And if I choose to walk away instead?” Roberto asked. “Where will that leave us?”
    The thin man stepped closer to Roberto, brown eyes still as stones, his angular face a blank slate, a hint of menace buried beneath. “How much do you know about me?”
    “I know enough,” Roberto said.
    The thin man smiled. “I learned long ago that is an answer given by people who don’t really know anything at all.”
    THE THIN MAN had been born in 1965 in a nondescript suburb of Detroit, in the middle of a late January blizzard. His father worked on the line in a string of auto factories, his hard-drinking ways always keeping him on the cusp of unemployment. His mother held down a part-time job at a diner a half mile from the three-bedroom house she had inherited from an uncle. The boy was their only child, and he was raised in a house that was free of books and empty of warmth. He attended the local public school and did well enough in English and art classes to catch the eye of a teacher who saw promise in a boy whose shabby clothes and silent demeanor hid an insatiable curiosity and sturdy intellect.
    The teacher convinced his indifferent parents to allow their son to take a series of advanced courses at a nearby private school. Those classes propelled the boy to achieve academic credentials strong enough to earn him scholarships to both an elite prep school and Michigan State. He had escaped.
    By all accounts, the boy—named David by his parents but called an assortment of cruel nicknames by his fellow students because of his reticence and his studious habits—was a quick study. He felt a personal connection to the works of the masters, specifically those who thrived during the Renaissance, and devoted his time to researching them. The hard work paid off, earning him a number of fellowships overseas, where he attacked his lessons with an even greater passion.
    David’s commitment to the study of art was extreme, and he allowed himself little time for many of the other activities enjoyed by students his age. He attended few parties, belonged to no one social group, and the few attempts he made at dating led to little more than awkward silencesand quick endings. But David believed that the love of his work would help him overcome anything.
    It was during those years that his name was brought to the attention of Andrea Westcott.
    By the early 1980s, Andrea Westcott was working to expand the membership of the Vittoria Society. She especially sought talented students from the art history community, to reach out to them months before they entered the cloistered environment of academic life.
    “We need to reach our recruits while they’re still pure,” she told her husband Frank one evening, over a meal at Sostanza, their favorite Florentine steak house. “Get hold of them before some of those professors strip them of their sense of adventure.”
    “I am nothing if not adventurous,” Frank said. “I mean, if you were paying attention, you must have noticed I was the one who ordered the wild berries.”
    “How Indiana Jones of you,” she said.
    “What can I say?” Frank said. “I live for the thrill.”
    “Do you think what we’re doing is worth the trouble?” she asked. “Worth the risk?”
    Frank glanced at her, reached for her hand and held it gently. “Yes,” he said.
    “It seems impossible sometimes,” she said. “Especially knowing we could both live to be a hundred and still not even come close to finding it all. I mean, with Michelangelo alone, at least a third of his work is still missing.”
    “I don’t think either one of