An Insignificant Case

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Guido Sabatini walked into La Bella Roma Italian Ristorante a few moments before Gretchen Hall left her office to tell her ma?tre d’ that she had resolved a problem with one of their suppliers. Guido looked like some of the religious paintings of Jesus that Gretchen had seen in cathedrals and churches. He was six foot four and dressed in a white floor-length caftan that was secured at the waist by a gold rope. His thick blond hair flowed over his shoulders, and his downy beard and mustache framed a beatific smile that beamed at Salvatore Borelli while the ma?tre d’ berated him.

Gretchen, the owner of La Bella Roma, was on the downside of forty, but she could have passed for someone much younger. Her hair was as blond as the biblical figure who was standing in front of her ma?tre d’, and her black pantsuit and white, man-tailored silk blouse clung to a figure that a teenage girl would have envied.

“What’s the problem, Sal?” Gretchen asked.

Borelli turned toward his boss. “This guy came in last week. He’s trying to hawk his pictures to our customers. I told him to get lost then, and I’m telling him again. If he’s not outta here in two seconds, I’m calling the cops.”

It was the height of the lunch hour, and a restless crowd was stacking up behind the artist. Gretchen saw that the object of Borelli’s ire was holding a portfolio. To avoid a scene, Gretchen opted for diplomacy.

“What kind of pictures do you have for sale?” Gretchen asked.

“Not pictures, signora, works of art,” the man said in a poor imitation of an Italian accent. “Paintings of martyred saints, landscapes of Tuscan hill towns, depictions of the canals of Venice.”

“Why don’t we go to my office so I can take a look?”

Gretchen turned, and the artist followed her to the back of the restaurant between tables of gawking diners.

Gretchen’s office was starkly modern and windowless. She had decorated it with a granite-topped desk, a black leather sofa, and black-and-white photographs of the Colosseum, the Via Veneto, the Piazza Navona, and other landmarks of the Eternal City. The only anomaly was a mirror with an ornate gold frame that had belonged to a mistress of one of the doges. Hall had found it in an antique store in Milan during Fashion Week and had fallen in love with the story of its origin. The mirror was mounted on the wall across from a photograph of the Trevi Fountain.

“I’m Gretchen Hall, and I own La Bella Roma,” she said when they were inside her office. “Who might you be?”

“I am Guido Sabatini, signora.”

A small glass-topped coffee table covered with menus, invoices, and other papers stood under the photograph of the fountain. Gretchen cleared the tabletop.

“Well, Guido, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Sabatini opened his portfolio, and Gretchen was stunned. The artist had created the optical illusion of a Saint Sebastian who writhed in pain from the arrows that pierced him. The crowds wandering the street of a Tuscan hill town actually seemed to move. But it was a moonlit view of a Venice canal that Gretchen decided she had to have.

“They’re not bad,” said Gretchen, who had been taught how to bargain at an early age by her attorney father. “What do you want for the Venice canal painting?”

“One thousand dollars, signora,” Guido said.

“Oh, well. I really like it, but one thousand dollars…” She shrugged. “I could manage two hundred and fifty.”

Guido knew what Gretchen was doing, and he didn’t really care about money. His art was his passion, and seeing it displayed where others could be awed by it was what really motivated him.

“For you, signora, I will make a sacrifice. You can have my painting for five hundred dollars.”

Five hundred dollars was nothing to Gretchen, and Guido looked like he could use the money.

“Done,” she said as she moved the painting to her desk. “I don’t suppose you take credit cards?”

Guido smiled. “Cash only, signora.”

Gretchen returned the smile. “Of course.”

While Guido gathered up his other paintings and returned them to his portfolio, Gretchen took down the photo of the Trevi Fountain, revealing a wall safe. She punched in the combination on the keypad, opened the safe, and reached inside. When her hand came out, it was wrapped around a wad of bills. Gretchen counted out five hundred dollars, put the rest back in the safe, closed it, and hung the photo back on the wall.

“Do me a favor, Guido,” Gretchen said as she held out the money. “Don’t come back to La Bella Roma. I appreciate your talent, but Sal has a hard-on for you, and a scene is not good for business.”

“No problem,” Guido promised as he pushed the money into a pocket in the caftan.

“I’m glad you came in. I really like the painting.”

Guido bowed and left. As soon as the door closed behind him, Gretchen held up the painting in front of the wall safe. She liked the photo of the fountain, but she loved the scene from one of her favorite places.

Guido drove into the yard in front of his farmhouse and went up to his bedroom. He opened the top drawer in his chest of drawers and took out a metal box where he kept his money. Five hundred was a good sale, but he hadn’t sold enough paintings to pay his expenses for the month. That meant he would have to become Lawrence Weiss tonight, something he only did when there was an emergency.

As soon as the sun went down, Guido traded his caftan for faded jeans, a plaid shirt, and a Seattle Mariners baseball cap. Then he drove to a store that sold guns in a strip mall in Clackamas County.

Guido walked over to the cashier and gave him the password. The cashier nodded toward a door at the back of the store. A large man with a day-old beard and a bouncer’s build opened the door, and Guido repeated the password. The man stepped aside and let Guido into a back room where men and a few women sat around three tables playing poker.

Guido had played against a few of them after the casinos had blackballed him and forced him out of the high-stakes games. They would be easy pickings, but he had to be careful about how much money he won, because some of the players were sore losers and could be violent.

Guido took a seat at one of the tables and played modestly while he sized up the opposition. There was one old-timer who played a decent game, two players who had no idea what they were doing but thought they did, and Brad and Brent Atkins, two brothers who had tells that flashed like a neon sign whenever they were bluffing. The brothers looked like hard cases, so Guido only took advantage of them a few times, but the pots he won from them were the biggest of the night.

Guido acted like he wasn’t sure he would win those pots and apologized to the loser as if he were embarrassed by his luck, but one of the brothers didn’t look like he was buying the aw-shucks routine.

When Guido had cleared $3,000, he decided it was time to quit. There was another game in Washington County he could hit tomorrow that had slightly higher stakes.

“Night, boys,” Guido said. “Thanks for letting me play in your game.”

Guido heard two chairs scraping against the floor just before he left the back room. When he was outside and hidden in the shadows at the side of the building, he focused on the door to the gun store. Seconds later, the brothers walked into the parking lot.

“I have a gun and I will shoot you,” Guido said.

The brothers whirled toward the sound of Guido’s voice, but they couldn’t see Guido until he stepped out of the shadows with his gun trained on them.

“You play poker as poorly as you play the role of robbers. Please go back to the game and don’t come out for twenty minutes.”

Brad hesitated, but Brent moved his hand toward his coat.

“I can see you going for the poorly concealed gun you’re hiding under your coat. Please stop and go inside.”

“You ain’t gonna shoot us,” Brent said.

Guido pointed his pistol at Brent’s heart.

“You have a tell that let me know every time you were bluffing. That’s how I won those hands from you. Were you able to tell when I was bluffing? If you can, go for your gun. If you can’t, go inside so I don’t have to shoot you.”

Brad touched his sibling’s shoulder. “Let’s go, Brent. It ain’t worth it.”

Brent glared at Guido. “You better not show your face here again,” he threatened before following his brother inside.

Moments later, Guido drove away from the strip mall and headed home.