A Dangerous Talent (An Alix London Mystery) by Aaron Elkins, Charlotte Elkins

block. There he leaned his back against the restaurant’s adobe wall and flipped open the cell phone. He pressed the speed-dial button. The telephone dutifully whirred out the number and rang it: 202-324-3447.
    202 was the area code for Washington DC.
    322-3447 was the number for 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. The J. Edgar Hoover Building.
    Headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

    His name was not Roland de Beauvais, he was not of French ancestry, and he was not a dealer in art. He was originally from Boston; that much was true, and that was about all that was true. His name was Ted Ellesworth, and he was a member of a small, elite unit of the FBI formally designated as the Art Crime Team, but generally known as the Art Squad, which consisted of thirteen special agents, three trial attorneys, and one operations specialist. Ted was a special agent, one of only two who specialized in undercover work. The person whose call he was returning was the invaluable Jamie Wozniak, the unit’s operations specialist, who provided “investigative support,” an all-purpose term that didn’t come close to describing the computer skills, information-ferreting abilities, and cut-through-the-bureaucracy savvy that she brought to the squad.
    He looked up and down the street. No one within earshot. Good. He was more than ready to ditch the laid-on Boston baked bean accent for a while. “Jamie, hi, what’s up?”
    “So how’s it going?” she asked in response. “Connected with the subject yet?”
    “Just about. Unless I’m mistaken, Ms. Coane is in the process of establishing contact with me, even as we speak. I’d be surprised if I don’t hear from her tomorrow. Maybe even this afternoon.”
    “Gee, what took you so long? You’ve been there over a day.”
    “Must be the altitude. I’m dragging a little.”
    “Seriously, it’s going smoothly?”
    “Going perfectly.”
    Indeed, it was. Liz Coane was the focus of an investigation into a scam entailing the sale of extremely expensive art forgeries to Asian and Middle Eastern buyers. Since the Blue Coyote Gallery was the main conduit for the paintings, Liz was necessarily right at the heart of it. What was not known for certain, however, was whether she herself was criminally involved, or merely a dupe in the chain between forger and buyer. Ted suspected it was the former, and one of the things he was here in Santa Fe for, in the person of the elegant, slimy Roland de Beauvais, was to find out for sure, one way or another.
    In this kind of operation, it was essential that the “subject” think she had made contact with him of her own volition. His first day in the city, he had stopped in at several galleries—not the Blue Coyote—to let word percolate through the art community that there was a new man in town, a player with money to spend and, not to put too fine a point on it, a man not overburdened with ethical concerns. On information from Jamie (how did she find out about these things?), he had arranged a lunch with Doris at the place to see and be seen on a Friday afternoon if you were anybody who was anybody in the Santa Fe art crowd. And it had worked beautifully. Liz Coane had obviously heard about him—the art world grapevine almost matched the speed of the prison grapevine—and he had barely reached his seat before he saw her checking him out.
    “Tell me, though,” he said, “why were you calling? Anything new?”
    “Oh, yes indeedy,” she said enthusiastically. “You remember Geoffrey London, don’t you?”
    “How could I forget? He was what started me in this very bizarre line of work. But that was before your time.”
    It was nine years ago, in fact. He had been an agent for less than a year then, operating out of the New York office, specializing in corporate fraud and white-collar crime. The Washington-based art squad had requested the help of an agent who was familiar with the New York art gallery scene. Ted was the closest thing they had,