“You think this is the work of a Mexican gang?”

“He thinks we’re dealing with Russian mafia,” McAdams said. “Bratva is the local name for it.”

“Because of some stolen Russian icons?”

“The Petroshkovich icons . . . which is a thirty-year-old case, FYI,” McAdams said.

Decker said, “I think it has to do with Russian mafia because John Latham was the primary target and Latham’s specialty was Soviet art. I’ve worked what . . . three hundred homicides? This one feels foreign. These guys don’t care about cops because they’re not beholden to American law. And then when you throw in this codebook.”

“Yeah, it is kinda spy versus spy,” Oliver said.

McAdams said, “It could be a red herring—the codebook.”

“Someone went to all that trouble to produce a very complex and educated red herring?” Decker said. “I don’t think so.” He opened the manila envelope and pulled out the fax. “Marge’s report on Chase Goddard.” His eyes scanned the page. “Nothing much. A couple of DUIs in Miami.”

“He had a gallery in Florida?” McAdams asked.

“Uh . . . ten years ago . . . about two years before he moved to New York. He’s certainly hopped around.”

“So maybe we are dealing with a drug cartel,” McAdams said.

“Why do you say that?” Decker handed Oliver the fax.

“Isn’t Florida an entry point for drugs?” McAdams said. “Maybe the codebook has nothing to do with art. Maybe it has to do with shipments of drugs from Florida.”

“So now we’re tagging John Latham as a drug dealer?”

“It was one of your theories early on,” McAdams reminded him.

Oliver held up his hand. “Let me get this straight. Chase Goddard has had art galleries in Miami, New York, and Boston.”

“Not to bolster my theory, but maybe he’s distributing,” McAdams said.

“Or maybe he’s just following the money,” Rina said. “Most galleries are in big cities or resorts because who else can afford art and antiques.”

“Where there’s money, there’s drugs,” McAdams said. “And like Oliver said . . .” He turned to him. “Do I call you Oliver or Scott?”

“Oliver’s fine.”

“Like he said, who shoots up the police unless they’re in a chase or a shoot-out or they have utter disregard for the law. Drug dealers have utter disregard of the law.”

“Do you see Chase Goddard as a drug dealer, Deck?” Oliver said.

“Not really. He’s a little old and most dealers aren’t Harvard educated. Plus he was obsequious when Tyler mentioned his father. He seems to want business. I can see him buying stolen art and drinking too many martinis. I can’t see him in the back room castrating bodies and cutting heroin with quinine.”

“Heroin’s cut with quinine?” McAdams asked.

Oliver said, “Quinine, powdered sugar, caffeine, powdered milk, gypsum, baby formula. That’s the powdered stuff. With black tar heroin, dealers will cut it with brown sugar, coffee . . . heat it all up into one big goop and then smoke it.”

“I don’t see Chase Goddard as a drug dealer,” Decker said.

“What about John Latham dealing drugs?” Oliver asked.

“No indication.”

“No indication he was an art thief, either,” McAdams said.

“He had an association with Angelina Moreau who most likely forged the Tiffanies,” Decker said. “And you know she didn’t steal or fence them on her own.”

Rina said, “It sounds like you could go in a thousand directions. What you do know is that someone wants you two dead.”

Oliver said, “If it had to do with Latham’s death, why haven’t the triggermen shot at the Boston cops?”

“Summer Village,” Decker corrected.

“Whatever,” Rina said. “They were the ones who found the codebook. So if that’s the key, they should be targets just like you two.”

Decker said, “First off, they’re a bigger force so there’d be too many to kill. Second, maybe Harvard and I are much closer than we know. The problem is the triggerman probably thinks we know more than we do.”

“Who’s on the radar right now?” Oliver asked. “Just Chase Goddard?”

Decker shrugged. “It’d be nice to tie him to the case but I don’t have anything on him.”

“What about . . .” Oliver flipped through his notes. “Justin Merritt?”

“Jason Merritt,” McAdams corrected. “He’s the specialist in Russian art. His gallery is in New York and we don’t have a damn thing on him, either.”

“Just like John Latham,” Oliver said.

“No, John Latham’s field of expertise was Soviet-era art,” McAdams told him. “It’s an entirely different field than Russian art. And Soviet art is not very collectible.”

“Why not?”

“Because most of it was propaganda. I’m not saying it’s worthless. Some of the posters are pricey. But because it’s so stylized, it’s more important as a recording of history and culture than as fine art. That’s what John Latham won the Windsor Prize for: Soviet art as a tool for dissemination of propaganda during Stalin’s administration.”

“How’d you find all this out?” Decker asked.

“I’ve had time on my hands, Old Man.”

“What about Russian art?” Oliver asked. “You don’t hear of great Russian artists like you do French impressionists.”

“That’s because the czars were way more interested in western European culture than promoting their own heritage,” McAdams said. “The Hermitage is loaded with great Western art. Most of Russia’s own homegrown painters have been relegated to storage. And once the Bolsheviks took over, they denigrated anything that smelled of Western society.”

Oliver said, “But you just said that the Hermitage is filled with great western European art.”

“That installations came later when Khrushchev made it a point to rebuild all the incredible buildings that the Nazis had destroyed. Probably that was propaganda, too. He wanted to show the West that Russia wasn’t a backwater country.” McAdams thought a moment. “I was talking to my dad in one of the rare moments when he wasn’t screaming at me. We got on the subject of the Hermitage . . . which actually I brought up because I knew my grandfather had been to the Soviet Union when it was mostly closed off to Westerners. Dad told me my grandfather had seen the Hermitage way back when . . . in the forties or fifties maybe. It was an absolute mess . . . just piles and piles of all this invaluable art. The Soviets originally put it on display to show the extreme wealth of the aristocracy at the expense of the proletariat.”

“So you’re saying that there is no valuable Russian art?” Oliver asked.

“No, no,” Decker said. “The older stuff is quite valuable because a lot of it was destroyed in the revolution. Mostly religious stuff like icons.”

“So is there any kind of Russian art worth killing for?” Oliver asked.

Decker and McAdams spoke at the same time. “The Amber Room.” They gave Oliver a rundown on World War II Russia. Decker said, “Supposedly twenty-seven cartons of the dismantled room were shipped to a castle where the cartons along with the building were destroyed by fire. Since then the trail has gone cold . . . or cool, I should say. Because pieces of amber from the original room keep showing up. The amber and the jewels are not only worth a small fortune, the room has national significance.”

“So maybe we shouldn’t be looking at Russian icons at all,” Oliver said. “Maybe we should be looking at Nazi-looted art. Maybe that’s what the kids were onto—a cache of looted art. If a wealthy and prominent collector had a disputed painting, it might be worth killing over.”

“You’re thinking that John Latham was blackmailing a wealthy collector and the guy hired a hit man or hit men to whack him?” When Oliver shrugged, Decker said, “It would make way more sense for the collector to pay him off. Certainly he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and take down the police unless you are foreign and you don’t like Americans and you get a thrill out of mutilating bodies as part of the retaliation.”