The Vintage Caper

stood up, and smiled at Elena. “We need a bloodhound. Got any ideas?”

Four

    Elena sat at her desk and considered the options. If her recent conversation with the police was anything to go by, the L.A.P.D. was unlikely to pursue the investigation with any great zeal. The trail was already cold and there were no immediate clues. She could see the case gathering dust for years.
    To help with other cases in the past, she had called in freelance claims agents, investigators who specialized in different aspects of crime and catastrophe, everything from jewelry theft to collapsing apartment buildings. But wine? She’d never had to deal with stolen wine before—and so much of it. Five hundred bottles spirited away with the efficiency of a military operation. One thing was sure: those stolen bottles weren’t going to turn up on eBay. It had to be a robbery-to-order, a commission job planned and funded by God knows whom, probably another collector. If that was so, all she had to do was find a wine connoisseur with criminal tendencies. Simple. There couldn’t be more than a few thousand of them scattered around the world.
    A bloodhound was what Frank had said they needed. But it had to be a bloodhound with a difference; a bloodhound with imagination and unconventional contacts, ideally with firsthand experience of crooks at work.
    While Elena thought, she had been flipping through her Rolodex. She stopped at the letter L. She looked at the name on the card and sighed. No doubt about it, he’d be the man for the job. But did she really want to get involved with him again? This time, keep it at arm’s length and keep it businesslike, she said to herself as she buzzed her secretary.
    “See if you can get me Sam Levitt, would you? He’s at the Chateau Marmont.”
    Sam Levitt’s C.V., if he had ever been foolish enough to produce one, would have made unusual reading.
    As a law student at college, wondering how he was going to pay back his student loan, he developed an interest in the use of crime as a means of obtaining large amounts of money. But, not being a violent man, he was not attracted to the idea of violent crime. Too crude, too heavy-handed, and, not least of all, too damned dangerous. What appealed to him was the use of intelligence as a criminal weapon. The brain, and not the gun.
    Naturally enough for a young man with nonviolent crime as a career choice, he entered the world of corporate law. He worked brutally long hours and he made money. And, thanks to the obligatory duty of entertaining clients, he acquired a taste for good food and fine wine. But there was a problem, which became worse every year. It was tedium, provoked by those very same clients: dull men who, by dint of greed and ability, had made fortunes and were determined to make more. Asset-strippers, leveraged-buyout merchants, takeover tycoons—all worshipping at the shrine of the share price. Levitt found them increasingly boring, and found his distaste for their world increasingly hard to conceal.
    The final straw came during a corporate retreat weekend, an orgy of executive bonding that left him hungover and severely depressed. On impulse, he resigned and started to look around for crime of a more straightforward and, in a way, more honest sort. “Anything considered” was his new motto, providing it didn’t involve guns, bombs, or drugs.
    This is where the imaginary Levitt C.V. becomes short on detail and a little murky. He spent some time in Russia, and came to know parts of South America and Africa quite well. He later referred to this as his import/export period, a hectic few years of great risk and great reward. It ended with a short but memorably unpleasant stay in a Congolese jail, which cost him three cracked ribs, a broken nose, and a substantial bribe to get out. The experience prompted him to think that perhaps the moment had come to make another career adjustment. Like many Americans before him seeking time and space to ponder life’s important decisions, he went to Paris.
    The first few weeks were spent catching up on girls and gastronomy after the deprivations of Africa. It wasn’t long before Paris made him realize how little he knew about something he enjoyed so much: wine. Like most amateurs with a receptive palate, he could tell good from ordinary, and exceptional from good. But often there were times when the seductive whisperings of sommeliers were beyond him. Parisian wine lists, too, were filled with