The Deceivers Read Online Free PDF Page B

antiquities ending up in the collection of rich people who didn’t give a damn about—
    Sammy suddenly shouted. Almost a cry of pain. He took the cell phone away from his ear and stared at it wide-eyed as if it had suddenly come alive.
    â€œGive me!” He grabbed the piece from me.
    â€œWait!”
    He fled with the piece, out my door with me right behind grabbing at his shirt.
    â€œWait—I’ll give you money!”
    He knocked my hand away and flew down the stairs. I stood at the landing and watched him disappear.
    With my salvation.
    Or maybe he saved me from myself.

5
    As I watched the street below from my window, Sammy shot out of the building and ran down the street as if all the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels. Maybe they were. A noodle deliveryman with an incredibly valuable piece of ancient artwork—obviously there were some tangled webs about the piece. For all I knew, the restaurant was a den of art thieves. Right off it sounded like a great front for smuggling art in from the Far East.
    The first scenario that jumped at me was no honor among thieves—he was supposed to deliver it somewhere and decided to sell it himself. And the person on the phone had given him a preview of what was going to happen to him if he didn’t return the item real fast.
    Whatever the caller said had put a fire under him. And I didn’t think it was the Thai restaurant cook chewing him out for being late for a delivery. Sammy was really scared.
    Alarm bells were going off in my head, the kind that ring between my ears when I’m doing something stupid that I know is stupid. I should pick up the phone and call the police.
    My phone rang and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
    I stared down at the number. It was that Mrs. Garcia who wanted me to pony up the Saks’s bill.
    I ignored the call and paced. This wasn’t the first time Sammy had brought artwork to me. A month ago he had shown me two small bronze statues. Because they were cast rather than carved, bronze objects were especially easy to reproduce with an appearance of being ancient. As many as 90 percent of bronzes for sale are fakes or copies.
    I noticed the poor workmanship immediately, though to a tourist in a souvenir shop they would have looked authentic enough.
    He hadn’t seemed surprised when I told him they were fakes. He just wrinkled his brown eyes and smiled at me.
    Now I realized he had been testing my skills as an appraiser because he had something more significant he planned to show me.
    To get his hands on a piece as valuable as the Apsarases, Sammy had to be connected to very big-time art smugglers. Or art thieves. For all I knew, the piece had been stolen from a collector, gallery, or museum here in the States, but that premise immediately sounded unrealistic to me. The contraband art trade was so widespread in poor Asian countries it would be infinitely easier to obtain antiquities there and smuggle them in rather than steal a piece here and have the theft publicized not only in the news media but posted on Internet art loss sites.
    Sammy said there were more pieces. Considering the value of the Apsaras relief he showed me, if there were more pieces, the inventory would be worth millions.
    I wondered if he really knew what a valuable item he had. I suspected he didn’t. The value of stolen works escalated from very little to very much as the piece made its way up the art theft food chain. And Sammy would definitely be a bottom feeder in that chain.
    Even if he didn’t know the value, he wasn’t stupid. He had to know it wasn’t a tourist souvenir but a genuine work of art.
    For sure, there was money to be made, one way or another … hopefully honestly. I didn’t want to spend my life running from creditors or stick my nose into something that left me running from criminals.
    I couldn’t let this thing drop. I was pulled too many ways by too many emotions, from feelings of a