Chapter 2 - The Coat in My Apartment
Morning sunlight made Roman Costa’s coat look even more absurd in my apartment.
It was draped across the back of an armchair I had bought at a thrift store for thirty-eight dollars. The chair leaned slightly to the left. The coat probably cost more than every piece of furniture I owned combined.
I sat on my couch with instant coffee and stared at it.
My apartment had one bedroom, a kitchen the size of a closet, and three unfinished restoration projects balanced on easels because I could not afford proper storage. There were bills beneath a ceramic bowl on the counter, rolls of Japanese tissue paper beside the television, and a nineteenth-century gilt frame drying on towels near the radiator.
Roman’s coat did not belong there.
Neither did the memory attached to it.
I had barely slept.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him coming down those stairs.
Not the gun.
Not first.
His eyes.
The way he had looked at my face while the rest of me was desperately trying not to become a wardrobe malfunction.
I opened my laptop and typed his name.
That was a mistake.
The first page of results was respectable.
Roman Costa, thirty-eight. President of Costa Development. Chairman of the Costa Arts Foundation. Investor in shipping, hospitality, and commercial real estate. Donor to children’s hospitals. Trustee of three museums.
The second page was less charitable.
Organized crime allegations.
Federal investigations.
Two former business partners who had disappeared.
One witness who recanted testimony after his brother’s restaurant burned.
A photograph of Roman leaving a courthouse in a black coat almost identical to the one currently hanging in my living room.
I closed the laptop.
“Excellent judgment, Gemma.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then a message appeared.
YOUR ANKLE?
No greeting.
No name.
I knew anyway.
I typed: STILL ATTACHED.
Three dots appeared.
GOOD.
I waited.
Nothing else.
That irritated me more than it should have.
At ten, I carried the coat to the dry cleaner downstairs.
Mr. Patel examined the label and immediately handed it back.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean I am not responsible for this coat.”
“You clean coats.”
“I clean normal coats.”
“It is cashmere.”
“It is fear.”
I laughed.
He did not.
So I took the coat with me to the restoration studio in SoHo where I rented bench space by the week.
At noon, my supervisor, Nina, walked in carrying two coffees and stopped when she saw it.
“Whose is that?”
“A man’s.”
“I gathered that from the shoulders. Which man?”
“Roman Costa.”
Nina nearly dropped both coffees.
I told her the story.
Not all of it.
I left out the way Roman’s attention had felt like standing under a heat lamp in a cold room.
Nina listened, then said, “You need to return that coat immediately.”
“I know.”
“Preferably through a priest.”
“I’ll call the gallery.”
I did.
The receptionist put me on hold for nineteen seconds.
Then Roman answered personally.
“You kept it.”
“I attempted to dry-clean it. The cleaner declined on moral grounds.”
There was silence.
Then I heard him laugh.
Actually laugh.
It was short, surprised, and gone before I could decide whether I liked the sound.
“I’ll send someone.”
“No. I’ll bring it.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I borrowed it. I return things.”
“Four o’clock.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“It was a time.”
“Dangerously similar tone.”
“Four, Gemma.”
The call ended.
At three forty-five, I took a cab to the gallery because the coat was too heavy to drag through the subway.
The building looked different without donors.
Less glamorous.
More honest.
Crates stood open in the main room. Technicians removed temporary lighting. The brass fitting that had caught my dress was gone.
In its place was a smooth protective cap.
I noticed that.
Roman stood near the central painting from the exhibition, speaking with a conservator I recognized from a museum lab uptown.
He dismissed the man when he saw me.
I held out the coat.
“Returned alive.”
Roman took it.
His eyes went to my ankle.
I had covered the scrape with a bandage.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the bandage for one second too long.
Then he gestured toward the painting behind him.
“Tell me what you see.”
I frowned.
The work was an unsigned portrait of a woman in blue, supposedly French, late nineteenth century. It had been the centerpiece of the opening because someone had recently paid three million dollars for it.
“I see a painting I was paid to stabilize.”
“What else?”
“Poor overpainting around the left shoulder. Old wax lining. A frame that is twenty years newer than the canvas.”
Roman’s attention sharpened.
“The frame?”
“Yes.”
“How sure?”
“Very.”
He glanced toward the empty gallery.
“What if I told you the paperwork says they have been together for eighty years?”
“I would tell you your paperwork is lying.”
Roman smiled without humor.
“That is what I was afraid of.”
I crossed my arms.
“What does this have to do with me?”
He stepped closer.
“Someone moved that painting through three Costa warehouses before it reached this building.”
“So?”
“One of those warehouses has been sealed for ten years.”
I looked at him.
“Then your paperwork has a bigger problem.”
“Yes.”
He studied me.
“I need someone who understands frames, repairs, and provenance. Someone outside my organization.”
“No.”
“I haven’t asked yet.”
“You are Roman Costa. Asking seems optional.”
That nearly-smile again.
“I want you to inspect it privately.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because last night I borrowed your coat. Today I learned the internet thinks you have people buried under parking structures.”
“The internet is dramatic.”
“Are the parking structures empty?”
He did not answer.
I stared at him.
“Exactly.”
Roman reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and placed a business card on the worktable.
No title.
Just his name and a number.
“If you change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
I walked away.
I made it six blocks before Nina called.
Her voice was wrong.
“Gemma, where are you?”
“Heading back.”
“Don’t come in alone.”
I stopped on the sidewalk.
“What happened?”
“Someone broke into the studio.”
My heart dropped.
“Were you hurt?”
“No. I was at lunch.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing obvious.”
I closed my eyes.
Then Nina said the thing that changed everything.
“They only went through your bench.”
I looked back toward the gallery behind me.
May you like
Roman’s business card was still in my hand.
For the first time, I understood that the coat had never been the dangerous thing I carried home.
